It was 5 a.m. when the door opened with a loud bang. She could also hear giggles and two voices speaking in loud whispers. She had just gotten back to bed after changing her five-month-old baby.
“Joel, is that you?” Shishi asked as she walked towards the living room.
“What are you still doing here?” Joel asked her.
“Joel, I am the mother of your child, where would I be? Who is this woman?” She asked acknowledging the presence of Joel’s companion. She was a young girl with major curves. She wore one of those dresses with very high slits such that you could see she had nothing under the dress. Shishi sneered in disgust then turned back to Joel.
“Joel, you know I lost my job because of this pregnancy please don’t kick me out with your child.”
“Shishi, I am tired of you and that child is an inconvenience. Who knows if he is even mine? Get out of my house by the time I’m up. Now if you’ll excuse us, we intend to have some fun.”
Shishi reached out for her phone and called her sister. She had warned her against dating Joel but the heart isn’t so smart. They were once happy but things changed when she got pregnant and then lost her job in her final trimester. She now constantly endured listening to Joel sleeping with other women in the second bedroom.
She felt her heart break into pieces while packing up their belongings as she waited for her sister to pick them up. Her mother would be disappointed to learn of her first-born daughter’s misfortunes. She was a staunch believer who had not hidden her disapproval of single motherhood. Her daughter was now a single mother with no job.
When Shishi’s younger sister came, she started crying but the sister who was the no-nonsense kind hugged her briefly then looked at her and said, “Shishi, anything is better than living the way you have for the past couple of months. You will be fine, trust me.”
Shishi’s sister, Sally, was two years younger than her but people often thought she was older. Shishi had been her mother’s favourite child. Sally, on the other hand, clashed severally with the mother. They had different views of the world and neither accommodated the other’s ideas. The silver lining was that Sally worked extra hard to succeed in her endeavours to prove a point. She was more resilient and hardly gave thought to people’s opinions. Shishi was the opposite and if she was being honest, she stayed with Joel because she badly wanted them to be a family and her mother’s approval was factored in too. The pregnancy was unplanned so building a family with the father of her son was the next best outcome. Joel had other ideas.
Seven months later after Joel kicked them out, Shishi still lived with her sister. The transition had been a lot harder than anticipated. It had finally dawned that she was solely responsible for her child. Luckily, her sister’s determination was contagious and slowly she picked up the pieces. She started by working remotely then she started an online business which helped her afford a babysitter. She was able to look for full-time employment.
It was exactly a year after the Joel ordeal that Sam came into the picture. Shishi met him during a meeting with a client. Initially, she had been hesitant to indulge him thinking he was also a client because she wasn’t going to mess up her employment status but it turned out he was a friend to the client. The next hurdle was that she couldn’t trust her judgement of men after Joel so Sam had his work cut out for him.
Sam was the kind who called in to check on her thrice or twice a day. He listened to her talk about her work and child and then he would ask, “What about you Shishi, how are you?”
“I just told you how my work is and my baby had another milestone,” Shishi responded in confusion.
“Yes, I heard all that but what about Shishi the woman, not the mother, not the professional?” Sam asked her.
It had been so long since she saw herself beyond the titles let alone have another person see her in that light. She felt tears run down her cheeks. That statement unlocked a new level of intimacy with Sam. Slowly she dared to dream again. Sam was the focused type who made detailed life plans and he helped her make such plans. He was also a good communicator and for the first time in a relationship, she was having discussions about important issues.
Unlike in her relationship with Joel, they had parenting discussions with Sam. As expected she would often be defensive about certain parenting ideologies and sometimes feel like Sam had certain ideas because he wasn’t the biological parent but Sam would remind her that even biological parents have different approaches. Sam’s intentions towards them were never in question. It also helped that Sally, Shishi’s sister approved of Sam.
A year and a half into dating, Sam popped the question and Shishi had a chance at having the family that she had wanted. This time she was doing it for the right reasons and with the blessing of those that mattered.
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