Chapter 1
PROLOGUE
The loud phone beep woke me up, and just like that I picked the call “ is it true?, I heard your brother is dead, did you know? Are you at school or at home?. The phone fell off, I couldn’t believe my ears, and I called my mother “ Mom what’s going on?, where are you?, how is my brother?, could you please give the phone to him? I wanna talk to him. And mom responded “ Can you come home right now and go back to do your exams? We have a family prayer to do, I would appreciate it if you can come, I would send transport fare to you. She ignored my question, and she said your brother is fine, he is here with me taking a nap, I could have given the phone to him but I don’t want to disturb his sleep because he had a long day. I wish I hadn’t believed that with the last hope I had, and the death of my brother changed my whole life journey. I found myself in the United Kingdom a country where I had no one to call mine, a place where I had no one to rely on, only for me to realize my dad wants to bring his son born out of wed luck home because my mom lost her only son, and right now my family is at the very edge of breaking into pieces. I am getting shattered alongside my life.
CHAPTER ONE
Should I say I am a lost girl from Nigeria? No I can’t, I am actually a great person that my mother looks up to and I ain’t lost. A lovely family of five, two beautiful ladies, a handsome guy, a gorgeous mother and a supposedly caring father . My family is a type of family that anyone would want in term of happiness and satisfaction. We love and support each other a lot and are always happy for each other success. I wasn’t born rich, or born into a rich family, I was rather brought up with a wooded spoon and not a silver one but I used to be happy with that because I was happy. My mother really suffered trying to meet the ends needs of her children and my dad doesn’t have a stable job either, the family was a mess before I was born, my mother is a caterer and my dad was a driver, but then there was nothing. I was born into poverty. In Nigeria, particularly from my tribe it is mandatory to celebrate a child seventh day of birth with a cow and this is called the “ Naming ceremony”. A child gets his/her name that very day. On my naming ceremony day my parent couldn’t afford to get a cow nor a ram, and had to opt for fish which isn’t the right thing to use at a naming ceremony, but what choice do they have?, they had to name their daughter. I was named "Khadijah”, that’s a very lovely name right? I know. Not so many people knew my mom gave birth to me, her boss at work where she worked as a maid then doesn’t know I was given birth to, my mother can’t bear to tell her because she has no time to waste for maternity leave, she had to work and earned for the family. I was deprived of my right as an infant, I couldn’t get breastfeed-ed as an infant should be, but can I blame mother who doesn’t want my sibling to starve?. Both parents were thriving hard, but do you want to know a painful secret?, you would get to know as the story continues. A year old, Two years old, two and a half years passed and I couldn’t walk on my, kids of my age were running around at that age, all I could do was talk and talk, you can guess what caused that right? You guessed right, it was caused by the right I was deprived of as an infant. Amazingly my mother didn’t give up on me and firmly believed I would walk, surprisingly I walked but guess the sad part of it, my leg was almost like that of an handicap, it looked like I was physically challenged but trust me I wasn’t, then people stop calling me by my name and gave me a name instead “Aroke’se” meaning “ Handicapped” the name became metal and I became the magnet and I began to answer to the name if I was referred to by that name. It was a hurtful name but what choice do I have? I have no choice. Then we lived in a rented apartment of twenty eight rooms with a lot of people and the twenty eight rooms shared two private areas and two kitchens, you could guess how rough it’s gonna be. The funniest part of it is that as affordable as the accommodation was, we were long due in our house rent. My mom was selling food at the front of the house then but all to no avail, still my mom vowed to herself never to send her children to a government owned school which we also call public school, still the issues with my leg was there, trust me I was very beautiful as a kid, people would see me and be like “ Wow, what a beautiful girl, you have got a cute daughter” then after they see me in full they be like “ what a pity, as beautiful as she is, her leg is the exact opposite of her”, you see how judgmental people can be?. To be very honest I was tired and sad and so was my mom, believe me my leg was like that till I was nine years old. Boom my mom gathered some money to operate on my leg, guess what happened next…….
