Everyone knows your mother is a cruel sadist.

You know that too. Her cruelty smothers you. It chokes you, just like her cheap perfume that smells like something decayed from the past. You are her favourite theatre for displaying most of her sadistic shows. Just the other day, she lined your bedspread with finely chopped pepper and asked you to lie on it all night, and then gave off her guttural, ghoulish laughter when you screamed and screamed in pain. Your crime? You had allowed a visitor into the house whom she did not feel like seeing that day.

Sometimes, you wonder if she truly could have harboured you in her womb for nine months, if she did push you out of her own body into this world where her cruelty was your greatest nightmare.

It is not your fault that she does not remember who exactly fathered you.

‘Bastard child! I should have aborted you that very day you tainted my womb with your presence,’ she often spits at your face every time another one of her many lovers jilts her.

You wish too that she had aborted you. You would have been salvaged from this misery of a life you're living. Or are you? No, you are not living, just existing. A dead piece of life.

All your neighbours in this cramped ghetto you call home know the tales of your mother’s woes. They taunt you and call you all sorts of names.

Their all-time favourite is ‘Ashawo pikin.’

You do not blame them. Because blame comes when you still have faith in something. No, you have lost all faith in everyone, in yourself, in life itself.

When you pass by in all your raw, unkempt ‘glory,’ their whisperings tease your ears like mosquitoes hungry for blood. Your mother has severed every possible Good-Samaritan tie with them. She has had them backed into the corner again and again that they have become revenge-thirsty.

She was not always like this, though. At least, according to the legend. She used to be a lovable young lady lavished with beauty and brains. She was a law student who only focused on her books and getting the best grades. She was neither extravagant nor religious. She was just a calm girl whose god was her books. Then, just in her final year, she fell in love with a refined lawyer who came to her school as a temporary lecturer from the United Kingdom. Because she was naive and unsophisticated, she could not camouflage her feelings. People say the young lawyer took advantage of her innocence, but sometimes you doubt it. Other times you don’t. Who knows? No one will ever know now anyway. What you do know is that the British-schooled lawyer unclogged a whole new passage to a world your mother never knew existed. Fascinated by this new world, your mother plunged neck-deep. Parties. Clubs. Cinemas. Gaming centres. The UK lawyer took your mother everywhere to experience life. Her academics began to plummet.

On one of the nights they had gone clubbing, some thugs suddenly arrived the scene and began shooting randomly. One of the bullets went straight to the heart of your mother’s UK lover.

Frozen in shock, your mother did not utter any resistance when two of the thugs plundered her body. People say she has no memory of her rape because the trauma was too much for her to handle.

The next morning, she woke up by the roadside and kept walking around the street in circles, until a coursemate of hers found her and took her to the hospital.

Her final exams as a law student were to begin in two weeks. It was the worst of times to experience this tragedy. And so when the doctor announced to her three days after getting admitted in the clinic that her pregnancy test results came out positive, she only turned her face robotically to the doctor, face glacial, and yelled, ‘God forbid! I'm not pregnant.’

Then she bolted away from the hospital and never returned there nor to her school. She was an orphan, so she had no parents to run to. The aunt she had been living with was as vicious as the devil himself. She was not an option.

Again, the legend has it that your mother made several attempts to discard you, but stubborn you! You refused to let go of life and clung tightly to your mother’s womb.

‘Anuri,’ she named you when she finally pushed you out after a complicated labour. Your name translated in English is misery. And oh, how well-suited a name could be. You have been miserable from your first breath. Maybe you will be till your last.

People say your mother has lost her mind and is only tethering on the edge before she fully slips into madness. Maybe that is true. In fact, it is.

Sometimes, you catch her laughing and singing to herself. Other times, you watch her peering into the mirror and saying ‘Nneka, is this you?’ Then she sobs aloud, before suddenly bursting into hysterical laughter.

Whenever she sees you, her face hardens. ‘Witch,’ she calls you. ‘I will kill you for killing me.’

Sometimes, you do not understand her at all.

She comes to your bed when she thinks you are sleeping, but you are really only pretending to sleep, and she gently brushes your face.

Tears fall from her hard-drawn face lined with life’s miseries, and she whispers, ‘My Achalugo. That was the name I always wanted for my daughter. I’m sorry for everything I have done. Forgive me… Forgive me… Forgive me!’

Then she begins to strangle you with her calloused palms, yelling ‘Die, you witch. Die!’ Until you start screaming and biting her. Or until one of the neighbours temporarily shoves aside their grudge and comes to your rescue.

Someday like this would be your last rescue. And then cruel Mother Nature would heave a sigh of relief for one case of misery gone.

‘Everyone, meet John. John will be our new production assistant. He has never worked in production before, so let’s help him settle in.’ That was how Naomi the Line Producer introduced John to everyone on his first day.

John had always loved TV, so despite the fact that he had no experience in production, when the opportunity to be an assistant at a production company came up, he jumped at it.

A close friend of his, Andrew, had told him about the vacancy.

Naomi, who seemed an assertive and kind woman, interviewed him and hired him on the spot.

That was two weeks ago. Today was February 13th. John knew just about everyone.

Production was strenuous work, and despite John looking forward to working with actors and seeing how a movie was made, this was pre-production, and most of it was mostly filing paperwork, typing up minutes and reports, or printing documents from Excel.

John had been struggling with printing out a schedule from Excel for well over two hours. The problem was that no matter how much he tried changing the fonts or orientation of the document, every time he printed it, it just came out wrong; some parts either cut out or were not clear.

‘Are you done with the schedule?’ Naomi peeped in, her teeth exposed in a smile.

‘I’m afraid not. I have tried changing everything from the brightness, orientation, and font, but nothing seems to work,’ John sighed.

‘Maybe you’re not as smart as you think. Have Andrew help you.’ Naomi had a knack for saying things like that, a way of making you feel stupid. John was slowly getting used to it.

‘Okay, I will ask him now.’

***

‘Andrew, my guy!’

‘What has Naomi sent you to ask me to teach you?’

Both men shared a little laughter between each other.

‘I have been trying to print a document from Excel, but it just isn’t coming out right.’

‘What document?’

‘Production schedule. I have tried everything.’

‘Why does she need it printed?’

‘She says she prefers it that way, something about how she does not like seeing people look at their computers during a meeting.’

‘That woman can be dramatic.’

John just smiled at the last statement.

‘Okay, what do I do?’

‘Send me the document. Printing the schedule from a Windows PC has always been a hustle; we use the Mac for that. You change the Excel sheet to PDF, and somehow the Mac puts it in a print friendly format. You can come get it from here, Naomi knows that.’

‘Why didn’t she tell me this? I spent a lot of time on this.’

‘Did you correct her in front of people by any chance?’

Earlier that morning, John had mentioned how she had misspelled a word, so he couldn’t tell what her email meant.

John made it back to his desk dejected.

Hatred for Naomi brewing. When Mary came and said that one of them was needed as extra hands to organize the valentine’s day party, John jumped at it. It was a chance to stay away from Naomi, for whoever agreed to help buy and organize party supplies, by spending much of the day outside the office.

And it was a chance to spend time with his office crush, Mary. She was older than him by about four years and significantly out of his league, but this didn’t stop John from dreaming about a future where an affair between both of them was a reality.

‘I’m free,’ John almost screamed.

***

‘So John, how have you found working here so far?’ Mary inquired.

‘It’s okay,’ John said, hoping he didn’t show how nervous she made him.

‘That’s nice. I know Naomi can be a lot to deal with sometimes.’

‘Yeah,’ he heard himself say, forgetting his resolve to not bad-mouth his boss.

‘But it’s okay. I’m getting used to it.’

‘If you say so. Anyways, I need you to get a banner printed. Can you handle that?’

‘I think so. Where am I getting the banner made?’

‘From here,’ she handed him a business car.

‘It’s a printing shop in the Central Business area.’

‘Okay, the print should just say “Happy Valentine’s” and be about two metres long.’

John thought about how pretty Mary looked while giving him his orders; she was also warm, nice, and so unlike Naomi.

The thoughts of her with him kept him company on his way to the print shop.

When he reached the print shop, he quickly gave the woman at the reception the requirements and everything else.

‘Happy valentine’s, eh?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Who is it for?’

‘Just the most beautiful woman on the earth.’

‘Really? What’s her name?’

‘Naomi.’

‘Nice, you’re a lucky man.’

‘No, it's not like that. We are not seeing each other.’

‘Why?’

John realized he had said a lot more than he should have.

‘It’s a long story. When will the banner be ready?’

The shopkeeper noticed the change in tone.

‘We have lots of orders right now, but I reckon we should be able to deliver it tomorrow morning.’

***

On Valentine’s Day, John made his way to the conference room, which was the only room spacious enough to host the party. He bumped into Andrew.

‘John my guy! You good?’ A huge smile was plastered across his face.

‘I’m alright. How are you?’

‘I’m good. Have you seen the banner?’

‘Not yet. Anything wrong with it?’

Andrew laughed before he continued,

‘They added a little note. The printing shop said it was for you. I could tell you what it says, but I think you need to see for yourself.’

John practically ran to the conference room.

When he looked at the banner, it looked fine; it read ‘HAPPY VALENTINE’S’ in bright red letters. Then he noticed it: in small but visible gold letters, it read, ‘Naomi is the most beautiful woman on earth.’

The aftermath of last night’s downpour still lingered. Her window pane was misty and soggy with some of the water trickling inside and gradually drenching the curtains. A reading table was next to the window with a neatly arranged pile of books atop it. The books ranged from African/foreign novels and different kinds of magazines to motivational books. She was an ardent fan of books. With them, she could travel miles far away to different places, backgrounds, lifestyles, and so on. They introduced her to fantasies that she was fast getting addicted to.

She sat up on the bed. Her hair was a bit ragged from the countless rolling over while she slept. Her eyes still felt heavy; she had spent a little part of her night, with the aid of a rechargeable lamp, reading the new novel that she had borrowed from a friend before she got the phone call from her mother that kind of gave her insomnia. Her mother had really been on her neck ever since Chisom, her immediate younger sister, got engaged a few weeks back. After her elder sister, Obianuju, got married three years ago, all eyes had been on her as the next in line to walk down the aisle. How was she going to explain to her mother that her relationship of five years got shattered the previous year when she found out that Blaise was cheating on her with his ex? There was no way she was going to continue a relationship with a cheating partner, never! Ever since then, she had remained single.

She could remember how the last time she went home, her father had given her a deadline to bring a man home.

‘Chisa, I’m giving you just one more year. I don’t care how you are going to do it. Do the needful. Your mates are getting married year in, year out. Why is your case different? All the men your mother and I have tried to connect you with, you rejected them. Obianuju has been married for three years now. Within those years, if you had accepted one of those men, you would have been married by now, but no! You chose to be stubborn.’ Her father had fumed while calling her aside to the balcony one evening.

The first quarter of the year was coming to an end, and she had not even gotten over her recent heartbreak. To worsen things, Chisom just got engaged before her. Ever since she heard the news, she had been scared of returning home because she knew the kind of trouble she would be in for. Her friends were not helping matters as every month she received not less than two invitations to a wedding ceremony. For some of them, she did her best to attend, whereas for others, she just gave flimsy excuses and did not attend.

On her mother’s part, the woman was doing all she could, going the extra mile to break the ‘curse’ as she had termed it. Chisa could remember getting several texts and calls from her about revelations she had gotten from different men of God on how to break the so-called curse. On one occasion, her mother had mailed a little bottle filled with ‘holy’ water from a self-acclaimed prophet to her. She was to spray it on her body before going to work or anywhere else after reading a particular passage of the bible and screaming ‘amen’ three times. She was weary of all those things but lacked the guts to let her mother know that she never did any of those things as was instructed — poor woman, she’d cry her eyes out.

Grrrh grrrh! That was the sound of the lawn mower. She sprang up to her feet and ran to the bathroom. The house janitor was already up and working, meaning that if she didn’t hurry up, she’d be late to work.

***

She greeted the receptionist as she walked straight to her office. She was a National Youth Service Corps member working in a government-owned hospital as a medical doctor. She was already done with her housemanship at another government-owned hospital in another state. A short distance away from her office, she caught sight of a group of nurses gathered around a colleague of hers. Their voices filled the air with, ‘Congratulations! I tap from your blessing.’

Dr Chinaza, her colleague, was getting married in two weeks’ time and was sharing her invitation card to the nurses. She had already been handed a card the previous day and some yards of a lace material for the duty of a bridesmaid.

‘Please, I would want you to be a part of my bridal train,’ Dr Chinaza had pleaded while handing her the card.

Who was she to say no even if she had begun to dread wedding ceremonies in recent times as they always reminded her of her predicament. Besides, Dr Chinaza had been a very nice person to her.

***

Standing in front of the mirror in the hotel room that she had lodged in with a few of the bridesmaids, she tried her best to tune out the noise from the ladies by concentrating on the concealer she was applying round her eyebrows.

‘Next year has to be my turn! If that man doesn’t want to propose, I’d break up with him.’ One of the ladies had threatened while talking to the group of ladies who were busy wearing make-up while listening to her.

‘Oh God!’ Chisa muttered wearily as she blended the concealer into her skin. Her phone beeped and it was a message from her mother. It read: ‘There was another prophecy. We’d discuss in the night.’

Chisa gave a big frown and sighed heavily.

‘I’m just 27 for God’s sake! If I were a man, this wouldn’t be an issue.’ She cried out to herself, making sure the other ladies could not see her tears.