Knowing Despair

Tina looks at the ceiling as she contemplates her next move, she has her cheeks soiled with tears and her eyes sore from so much crying. She stands and staggers, she has not had a meal for a day now. She falls back into the tiny bed and slowly relaxes her back on the small mattress.

She slowly falls asleep, she is at it for half an hour, she wakes up with a start, sweating profusely and confused. Looking at her surroundings she realizes that she was dreaming. She sighs and stands, this time careful to hold into the rim of the bed and move round to the door.

The light from outside hits her hard on the face and she holds her hand up to her eyes to shield them. She must have lost count of the hours she must have been indoors. She looks anxiously to see if Jane her neighbor is around and sees the tiny padlock hanging loosely at the door. It must be midday she tells herself as Jane always closes the door to take food to her three children in a public school a few miles from there.

She walks back to the house, despair displayed all over her eyes. What would she do now? She is so hungry, she has no money and no job. Her last job was a disaster and had almost ruined her life. Partly it was the reason she was in a dilemma. She had been a secretary in a tourism firm. She was very good at her work and wondered how someone could say that she had been stealing from the firm landing her jobless. It must have been Rhoda that mean cleaner who had ruined her reputation. She had been her friend for three months, they spent hours talking about their jobs and other stuff and it was so bad that she had backstabbed her to unemployment as she took her seat at the firm.

She picks up her handbag and rummages through it, there is no coin, she decides it’s best if she spills all the items on the bed and then as if by a miracle she sees a glitter among the rubble of items. She picks it up and with a sigh finds that it can afford her two ‘mandazis’,better than nothing she comforts herself as she walks to the door with renewed hope.

At the local kiosk she finds John who looks as if he has just woken up, he is always like that so that does not surprise her. He has been trying to woo for a while .He starts again this time round saying niceties and smiling anxiously at her. She is at loss whether to go along with the fake smile or rudely snatch the mandazis. She decides to smile along, hurting her jaw instead, she can’t imagine the last time she smiled for anyone.

John is in a good mood today and he disappears for a few minutes behind the counter and comes back with a soda. It’s coca cola brand, he hands it to her smiling and says that she should consider it her treat and should not refuse. On a normal day she would not take it but today but was beyond normal so she takes it with so much gratitude that she forgets and smiles.

She retreats to her tiny room, glad that God had been at her door today and seen her woes. She stumbles upon something at the corner to her house, it’s a sack, she bends and opens it slightly She stumbles and falls to the ground in terror. It’s a body and the eyes staring at her are familiar eyes. She is in anguish as she starts to scream holding her dear bottle to her chest. A crowd slowly forms and starts to mummer in disbelief. Who would kill Rita? She was merely a child. The mother is a nurse and is always away on long shifts and Rita was always with a nanny.

Tina is affected because that dead body is her God daughter. She had stood on the altar holding her when she was just three months old, adorned in a smashing white dress she looked so magnificient.Has someone called the police, she asks in a murmur just then someone takes out a phone and is heard muttering something into it.

A hand holds her up and she looks blindly at the face, she sees its Jane and she goes for her, embracing her tightly. How Rita’s mother would react is totally a different idea and she blocks that from her head as she remains in the embrace a little longer. Jane holds her hand and together they walk towards her house.

She opens the door and enters followed by Jane who looks at her and shakes her head. Not at the fact that Tina looks horrible but at the situation of her house. She takes the soda from her hand, opens it and hands it back to her.”My friend you must eat”, she says as she moves to draw the curtains. She does this slowly as the wall has creaked and a force into the window would bring it down.

This is the simple life that they lead, poverty has become a thing so close to the skin that a sting is deemed normal. The sole purpose of the iron sheet being to prevent the daylight sun from scorching through  and to keep the house warm at night but at the prospect of rain all hell breaks loose because every drop would be felt by the cold floor.

The two friends look at each other and the warmth in their eyes is enough to make them smile amidst the bad times. They have always found comfort in each other and they both believe that the future is bound to be bright. A hope that a few in their exact situation would find difficult to have.