Baskadia

I'm sorry if I sometimes seem touchy, I'm just really protective of my child. You see, I had her early and since then it's just been the two of us.

I was 15 when I got pregnant. The usual teenage pregnancy story, girl meets boy, boy dazzles girl, next thing I knew, I was 15 and pregnant.

I lived with my mother who also had me early. You'd think she'd protect me, tell me everything was going to be alright. Wrong! She threw me out of the house.

I would have died. I had no skills to speak of, no money, no relatives that would take me in. Nothing.

I guess I got lucky- or at least I thought it was lucky- when my friends father found me on the street two weeks later.

He took me in. Gave me room and a job as a cleaner in his restaurant. That was the first time I realized everything came at a price.

The price I had to pay for a roof over my head and work that payed was to lie very still each night he came into my room. He insisted I lay still, said he didn't need any of the acrobatics young girls learned these days. He took this rule very seriously.

When I was 16, three months after I gave birth, he started visiting me again. And one really horny night, I moved, just to get it all in there. He beat me to within an inch of my life.

Of course his wife and child heard me scream. I guess it was either they thought I was watching a movie or they just couldn't be bothered, because by the time they could get to the boys quarters, he had dressed me up and had then proceeded to scream at me.

The story he came up with was that I stole two million naira he was supposed to take to the bank and when he came to calmly try to ask why, I started mouthing off to him.

That was the first time I realized there was no such thing as karma. I was kicked out that night with my little Chinenyeudo. And that was after he had to physically remove his wife from my person.

I looked him up last week. He was still alive, had opened three more restaurants since then and was expecting his second grandchild.

It's fine, I've gotten very good at doing things karma was supposed to do.