CHAPTER ONE “WHEN WRONG IS LOUD!”

©️ Opeyemi Akintunde
As Inspired by the Light!

I watched the little boy in his Mama’s arms, and for a moment, I wished I could trade places with him.

The innocence, the peace, the joy he was basking in was a treasure I would give everything to have.

I looked at the passengers in the bus, and their faces told me more than their mouths could. Their grey hairs spoke more of stress than age. Wrinkled faces. Frowned faces. Depressed shoulders. Sunken eyes. Eyes that showed some of their owners were wishing to be in their beds and not on their way to survival jobs.

I was one of those heading to a place of survival instead of where my heart truly wanted to go.

I wasn’t going alone.

My brother and I, in our school uniforms, were on our way to stand in for our mom. Mom worked on the other side of town, where people did not have to struggle before breakfast was served. Mom cleaned the Alabi family house.

The Alabis were renowned political juggernauts, one of the political kingmaker families in our country.

My mom had honourably served this family for fifteen years, but that proximity to wealth was not very evident in our lives. My mother ensured she enrolled us in very good private schools while we were growing up. She spent the better part of her salary on our education, but we had to manage feeding and accommodation.

The Alabi home was heaven on earth. Whenever we went there for parties, we gawked at wealth our hearts could not imagine our hands would ever touch.

But going for those parties came with its own displeasure.

We had to help Mom with cleaning and arranging the house after everyone had slept or left. And when I say cleaning, I mean cleaning the rooms of spoilt teenagers like us: Martins, George, and Sikemi.

Sikemi was the spoilt brat, the princess of Chief Alabi.

My brother couldn’t stand cleaning her room because pants, bras, and unused sanitary pads were almost always everywhere. I was the one who would swallow my pride and clean up her room while she snored on.

My brother and I were therefore not having it when Mom pleaded with us to please go and help her clean up the house. She had woken up with a splitting headache. She told my brother and me to quickly help her clean up within two hours.

“It’s only Sikemi and Martins that are home, so that way, you can quickly clean up. They had a party last night, and Martins pleaded that he wanted the house clean before Chief returns in the evening. He said he would give me five hundred dollars. That’s money for that scholarship form you were asking me for,” she said to me.

My mother knew the words: scholarship, Yale, Oxford, and Brown University were the passwords to make my brother and me do anything.

Martins Alabi was in Harvard, and it was our dream that someday, we would also attend one of those Ivy League schools. We had seen how life treated those whose destiny helped them enter such circles.

We wanted to help our own lineage too.

“Okay, Mom,” I said.

I cajoled my brother, and we were on our way.

We thought we were going to clean a rich man’s house. We didn’t know we were walking into a place where Wrong was louder than the Right that was dear to our hearts.

To be continued…

DEEP THOUGHTS NOVELS
Written by Opeyemi Akintunde
As Inspired by the Creative Word

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 DEEP THOUGHTS NOVELS
Inspired by the TRUTH REVEALER
Written by Opeyemi Akintunde
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