I'm Chimdi from Ita village. My parents are local farmers and never had any experience of what it takes to be in school. They can neither read nor write. According to them, I came into their lives when they first had sex while unofficially married.
After my birth, my mother's parents forced her to marry the man who impregnated her.
My father admitted the fact and assumed his fatherly responsibilities until I was a year old, that was when he could pay my mother's bride price.
After my secondary school in the village, I began to search for better ways to survive aside from doing farm jobs.
My father argued it with me for months and almost hated me for not replacing him, but was a very young lady with lots of expectations, aims and objectives of living like a being.
This created much barriers between me and my father which he transfered the love that he had for me to my juniors.
Well, for me, life has given me + & - signs which I must make good use of in calculating how long my path to greatness is.
Six months after my secondary school experience, I got the opportunity to write a national exam to qualify for tertiary institution level.
I wrote excellently and got an admission to study law in the University of Nigeria Nsuka (UNN), but there was no fund to further my education. I hustled for money everyday, all day, got enough for a start and continued my academic dream.
After my first year in school, I got more debts than credits. All my friends were on me asking for their money which I borrowed from them from first year second semester's exams till second year second semester's exams. This got me depressed because I had no one to ask for money again.
Combining academics and part-time jobs was a war for me and it really dealt with my academic performance, my grade points really dropped because of financial challenges.
One evening, I mate Kalu the first son of Nmeme, a very known herbalist who promised to help first fifty law students with grade points above 4.5. I was so lucky to be touching above that and I was selected to receive a whooping sum of NGN500,000.00 naira.
The money went a very long way to curtail all those who wanted to do something stupid if I failed to pay them before the end of the semester.
I successfully settled my bills, paid my fees and sat for exams.
As it has been, money is not static. Mine was always in its excited state, running from my wallet to other people's wallet just to make me feel comfortable. Before the end of the first semester of my third year, the money was no where to be found.
I began to borrow money again and went to the wrong people this time.
Kalu was my best option to borrow money from and he never hesitated whenever I wanted to borrow money from him.
I successfully graduated through the help that he offered and readied myself for law school.
That point, he came with an agreement to marry me immediately I finish my law school.
As a person in need of a pure source of money not income, I grabbed the opportunity and said yes to everything he wrote, signed with my elders.
While in law school, I began to dig deep about this going faithful man, only to discover that he already has a wife and I've made myself available for the position of a second wife unknowingly.
From that day, my love for him began to fade away. I hardly call nor pick his calls, never hanged out with him and decided to open myself up for another relationship.
He thought it wise to punish me with a deadly disease through the help of his father.
Yeah, it's all my fault that things turned upside down for me immediately I finished my law school, but the capacity and depth of pains that I passed through was ten times greater that all wrong done to him.
He even cursed me to be a failure among successful people. The worst part of it was when I stopped seeing my period.
Damn, this guy was seriously on my neck.
At that point, I had no other option than to submit to my destiny as designed by him.
What a reckoning day, my traditional marriage.
It was a mess as many who had fought him off their daughters' back came to laugh at me for falling short of my strength.
At last, I became his second wife with his first son which am not proud of.
Am a prisoner of my parents weaknesses.
This my entry to inkwell short story contest with prompt "The Reckoning".
Thanks for reading and have a wonderful weekend