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Upright: Short Story - Literature - Nairaland

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Upright: Short Story by SmileDance(f): 8:28am On Apr 15, 2022
Faderera was an epitome of beauty, an embodiment of character. She was the definition of big, bold and beautiful and was the best beautician in Oleyo town despite only training for three months. She had studied Vocational Education at the college of education and won the ‘Miss Big Nigeria', A beauty pageant organized for plus sized ladies. She used the price money wisely to set up a small but classy beauty parlour that was patronized by people from all walks of life.

Despite achieving all these at the age of twenty two, Faderera remained humble and respectful to everyone around her including her childhood friend Labake.

Labake had been outspoken and rude as a child and was already exposed to boys at an early age, she was once caught on bed with a married man, stripped naked and chased out by his wife after he promised her a blackberry phone if she agreed to sleep with him. While Faderera decided to further her education after secondary school, Labake got pregnant and was forced to marry her then boyfriend, Kamoru, a motorcycle mechanic. The marriage crashed and Labake returned to her mother’s house barely a year after. All efforts to reconcile Labake and her husband proved abortive even though the latter begged her and insisted he still loved her and didn’t want his child to be from a broken home.

After Labake’s marriage crashed, she started to work at Faderera’s beauty parlour as a pedicurist.

Then Faderera met Daniel. Daniel was a young good looking Medical Doctor who had just been posted to Oleyo for his youth service.
He had come to the beauty parlour twice for an haircut and was impressed to see a young hardworking lady already doing well for herself, he proposed to her and she agreed to marry him. Nine months later, they got married in a low key ceremony and moved to the state capital.
The day to day running of the beauty parlour was left to Labake while Faderera focused on her marriage as it was still early.

She would visit the beauty parlour weekly to check how things were going. While Labake was also planning to also set up her own beauty parlour as she always made it clear that she wouldn’t ‘serve’ Faderera forever. Faderera was keeping her home and continued to maintain her business and her marriage. She was loved by her in-laws and plans were also in place for her to move her business to the state capital where she lived with her husband. One day Faderera came to work with bruises all over and told her staff that she had a motorcycle accident.
Then Faderera became pregnant, and her husband stopped her from going to work as it was risky for a pregnant woman to travel on such bad roads.
Labake on the other hand had decided to marry Alhaji Shittu as his third wife and would set up her own beauty parlour too.

Then one day the news broke, Faderera had died .
This time it wasn’t a motorcycle accident, Faderera had forgotten to drop the house keys for her husband when she went to the market and this upset her husband when she returned, he hit her so hard that she fell down on her head and died on the way to the hospital.

Neighbours confirmed that he had been beating her. Baba Kafila their landlord once asked Daniel what his wife’s offence was, he said Faderera needed ‘iron’ hand because she was a beautiful, curvy beautician who could cheat on him if he gives her too much freedom.

However when Faderera was tired of the incessant beatings from her husband, she had gone to her religious leader to seek counsel. The latter prayed for her and told her to be submissive to her husband and continue to pray for him. She was told that no man will continue to beat a submissive wife.
While Labake left her first marriage due to domestic violence and married a polygamous man ignoring what people would say,
Faderera died of being a 'Virtuous Woman’.

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