I'm working on a book called 'Marked By Misfortune'. It's my first try at collaborate writing. Here's what the first chapter looks like.


I dragged my legs along the ground, headed for the one place I wished I could avoid; Sira's house. She'd given us beans on credit, and mama had promised to pay her once we sold out all the akara we'd fried today. We'd made seven hundred and fifty naira today, and this should see us halfway through the week, but most of it would end up in Sira's pocket.
The orb of fury in the evening sky glared at me, forcing me to narrow my eyes. Muttering greetings to some aged ones sprinkled around the road, I made my way to Sira's flat. Life would be more tolerable if these people just stayed in their houses, but their joblessness had caused them to loiter like it were a paid job. And while at it, they groped for steamy new gossips. Failure to say a begrudging greeting would paint me as ‘the girl who doesn’t respect her elders,’ and I would have to live with it for a slice of my life. Not a chance.
Doubled over with her back to me, Sira pulled out some emerging grasses beside her house.
I took a moment to straighten my face. "Aunty."
The woman, roughly mama's age, straightened her spine and turned to look at me. "This one that you came to the house, is Lebura not in the shop?"
"She is there." Handing over a huge sum to a kid was an act I would never repeat.
Once, I'd paid our debt to a shopkeeper‘s ten year old son, only for us to be humiliated for supposedly running away with hundred naira. No sane person would ever make the same mistake twice.
Tightening her faded wrapper around her unevenly bleached body, Sira gazed at the transparent bucket in my hand. Hours ago, it'd brimmed with well oiled, finely rounded balls of akara. But now, only the smell of the snack lingered.
"You've sold everything already," she said. "Thank God o. At least you can go home and rest. Today's sun is something else."
Forcing a smile, I pulled out her money from my decade-old waist bag and handed it over to her. My eyes drooped as I watched her dirt-smeared palm wrap around the money.
"Let me go and measure you some beans for tomorrow,” she said.
“The one we bought yesterday is still remaining,” I said. Although I knew she only sought to help us, I couldn’t help grimacing at her eagerness to keep selling to us on credit.
“Okay.” She turned toward the house, wordlessly dismissing me. “Greet your mother for me.”
“Okay.” I pulled away from Sira’s house and headed home, only halting to buy a miniature loaf of bread mama had specifically asked me to buy. While eating it, our teeth would always stumble over sands and stones alike, not to mention the inconsiderate saltiness that could drive one to the hospital. But what choice did we have?
Thoughts weighed heavily on my mind as I walked home. My legs had started to groan from eight hours of hawking akara, with the sun torching me like I were a piece of cloth spread out to dry. This had become my life for longer than I could remember, and although mama believed God would hear our cries someday, I could never share her faith. God had turned his back on us, muting out our voices as we cried out for help. He looked away while we gnashed our teeth as the fire of poverty tormented us year after year. Shaking off these thoughts, I returned myself to the present.
By this time everyday, one would always find mama sitting outside our house, picking beans. Our hen would cackle excitedly as she swallowed the seeds of beans raining down mama’s tray.
But today, an eerie silence spread its tent around the house, sending a warning bell jingling in my head. Our hen roamed the length of our house, raking her toes and beak into the unpromising ground for food. Something was wrong. I could smell misfortune even from a distance.
Breaking into a sprint, I burst into our one room apartment and cast my bucket to the side. My gaze fell on our mat, where mama’s frail form shivered under a wrapper. Her feet peeked out from one side of the wrapper, and on the other side was her head, resting on her trembling hands. Eyes squeezed shut, she breathed erratically.
“Mama!” I cried, dashing her side. Beads of sweat nested on her forehead.
I dropped to my knees and gripped her shoulder, shaking frantically. Her flaring temperature pushed though her wrapper, scalding my palm. My throat tightened at her helplessness. Painful memories made to surface, but I shut them out. Mama would be fine.
A watering sensation in my eyes told me my attempt to shut out those memories had failed.
“Leesi,” mama called, her voice no more than a whisper.
“Mama,” I said. Although it hurt to look at her, I couldn’t look away.
“Don’t cry,” she said.
I swiped at my eyes. “I’m not.”
Mama smiled a forced, agonized smile to calm me down, but it tightened my throat even more. Sniffling, I averted my gaze.
“Leesi, look at me,” mama said.
Swallowing a bitter lump that had forced its way into my throat, I redirected my gaze to her. “I know you’ll be alright.”
A feeble voice in my head reminded me I’d said the same about Mene. Perhaps if we’d hastened to buy drugs, he would still be with us. But we’d waved off his fever and cold as something that would go away on its own, and we’d fallen asleep only after committing him into God’s ‘loving’ hands.
We had never been able to forgive ourselves over his death. Papa had repeatedly tortured himself till the day we lost him at sea.
“Leesi!” mama’s voice cut through my thoughts. “What are you thinking of? Do you think I will allow ordinary fever to take me away?”
I scrambled to my feet and advanced to a plastic table where our family Bible sat. Between it’s pages laid some naira notes mama had been saving. Pocketing the money, I returned to mama.
“Please wait,” I said. “I’m coming.”
“Where are you…” she started, but I didn’t wait for her to finish. She would try to dissuade me from ‘wasting' the money and would cry over how she’d squeezed out that money to pay for the groundnut oil she’d bought from Sira on credit. Not a chance.
Playing deaf to mama’s voice as she called after me, I started for Aunty Baridilo's chemist. Buildings and pedestrians blurred past me as I broke into a near-sprint. Although I couldn’t hear past my frantic heartbeat, I knew a few passersby had tried to talk to me.
Aunty Baridilo’s chemist sped into view. The first door, a rusty protector, laid open, showing me to the second, a wooden door. Chest heaving, I pushed through the door, admitting myself into a room that could barely hold six girls my size, despite my petite frame.
After ages of not visiting this place, I’d thought the empty spaces in the shelves and counter had been filled with drugs. But nothing had changed, save for the new face behind the counter.
“Good evening,” the slightly older girl said. Savagely chewing a bubble gum, she brought to mind a she-goat.
“Where is aunty?” I asked, gazing at the mat behind the counter in hopes that I’d find aunty laying on it.
The girl grimaced. “She go and collect her children them from school.”
From the cold edge to her voice, she had to be Janet, the new sales girl who had obviously flushed her manners down the drain. In barely even one week, her rudeness had become the talk of the town.
“What do you want to buy?” she asked.
My fist tightened around the money I’d brought along. The girl before me would surely humiliate me for wanting to buy drugs with this chicken change. If Aunty Baridilo were here, she’d let me pay half the price and complete the payment when I had money. Besides, what did this girl know about medicine? She would surely administer medicine that didn’t even relate to mama’s sickness. I would have to go to aunty’s house.
The girl sighed. “If you no buy anything, abeg shift make bleeze touch person.”
Curse her and her twisted tongue. Had mama not been sick in bed, I would have devoted the next few minutes of my life to teaching Janet a lesson. But now, I could only let it slide. Seething, I turned to leave, but found Aunty Baridilo walking in.
She patted my back. “Leesi. This one you’re in my shop today, I hope all is well.”
My glistening eyes pulled her in. It stole away the smile on her face. Even though I’d said nothing, I could tell she already knew why I’d come.
“What is wrong with her?” she asked.
“She is running a temperature,” I said. “I don't know what's wrong, she was fine this morning.”
“Hmm. Let her not get sick o.” She tossed the disturbed look on her face behind a vanishing smile. “Today she’s weak like a vegetable, but when I work my magic, tomorrow she’ll be the stallion I know she is.”
I huffed out a chuckle I hadn’t seen coming. With a smug smile, Aunty Baridilo advanced toward the counter. The stomach-churning sound of Janet chewing her bubble gum turned down an emerging silence.
“Madam,” Aunty Baridilo said, glaring at her with eyes that could kill. “So you can’t even greet? When I told you this morning that you won’t last here you thought I was joking. I don’t know which evil forest my husband brought you from, but you will go back to that place.” She punctuated her words with a flaring voice.
“Ah ah,” Janet said, squeezing her face in a way that brought a masquerade to mind.
“Smell away from my sight,” Aunty Baridilo said. To me, she said. “My dear, sorry. Don’t worry, your mother will be fine. All she needs is some drugs. Since there’s no money to run a test, let’s just assume it’s malaria.”
Turning to the shelf covering the wall behind her, she shuffled through a number of containers and cartons. She placed two containers and three cartons on the counter. She retrieved several tablets from the containers and cartons and placed them into transparent sachets on which she scribbled their dosages.
She glanced at me and smiled. “Relax.”
How could I relax? Would she relax if it were her mother laying sick in bed, battling with an illness that had already swallowed up one family member?
“Make sure she follows the dosages closely,” she said. “They’re written boldly on each of them. You must also make sure she takes something before she drinks her drugs.”
"What if she has no appetite?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s true.” She grabbed a small container from the counter and counted some small round tablets. “This should stir up her appetite. I will make out time to come see her, okay?”
I nodded. She placed the tablets into a sachet and gathered them up in a nylon bag. Tentatively, I presented the money I’d brought along.
She frowned. “How much are you giving me?”
“Three fifty, aunty.”
“It’s remaining eight fifty.”
“I will bring the money before the end of the week,” I said.
“No problem. Start going so she takes her medicine.”
Beaming, I nodded. Just as expected, Aunty Baridilo remained a blessing in this era of wickedness. “Thank you, aunty. God will bless you for me.”
I dashed home with the speed of light: something I never thought I had in me. My house fleeing into focus, I kicked off my slippers and pushed through the door.
Sat on a stool, mama scooped a spoonful of soaked garri from the plate she held on her laps. Her hand trembled rhythmically with her whole body, sending the spoon crashing back into the plate.
Her grip on the plate slackened, causing the plate to glide toward the floor. I bolted to her side and dropped to my knees, placing her medicine beside me. My skin brushed against hers as I clutched the plate. Fever still held her in a death grip.
“Mama, don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll be fine.”
Her raspy breathing tugged at my heart. I’d never seen her in this state. The only family member who’d been in this state had never lived to tell the story.
Blinking away the tears in my eyes, I plucked the spoon from mama’s hand and heaped a generous quantity of the now hardened garri on it. Mama’s mouth opened only slightly, barely even enough to accommodate the spoon.
I emptied the spoon in her mouth and gave her a few moments to swallow. Refilling the spoon, I moved it toward her mouth, but she sealed it shut. Something was wrong. I could tell from the grimace on her face.
“Mama, please eat so you’ll take your medicine,” I said. “Do you want water?”
Her cheeks pumping, she jerked forward and clapped a palm to her mouth. She sprang to her feet, shoving me out of the way. I made to retrieve the plate as it slithered from my grasp, but it hit the floor in a split second, expelling chunks of food.
Paying no mind to anything but an overpowering urge to empty her stomach, mama raced to the door with an epic pace I could never have associated with her. She flung open the door and darted outside.
My eyes burned with tears as the strident roar of her illness clouded my hearing. A tightness formed in my throat as she wretched on. This was all too familiar. Painfully familiar.
I flashed back to six years ago, when Mene had sung the same heart-smothering chorus moments before we lost him. The tears I’d tried so hard to contain stormed out of my eyes like an enraged army. I looked up at the heavens, toward the God who had turned his attention away from us. What now?






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Would you keep reading if the full book was available?

Cover art:

i do enjoy every bit of your story...the sky is your limit

muhawal001:
i do enjoy every bit of your story...the sky is your limit

Thank you (:

And why is there no continuation

This is a masterpiece in the making! Well-tailored dialogue. Teach me how you do it, Darkcrisp.

Frankenstein:
This is a masterpiece in the making! Well-tailored dialogue. Teach me how you do it, Darkcrisp.

Thank you so much for checking out this piece (: I'm sure you have it in you as well.