Life goes on..

In spite of the pain I was feeling in my heart, seeing Mrs Fletcher there kinda made me feel like my world had not completely crumbled and crashed. I knew that with her help l would find a way forward and survive quite alright. Now, this was all good and fine on paper, but what l needed was an actual strategy-one that would act like an aid to ensure our survival. I hated to think of it, but what my parents had done to us automatically robbed me of my childhood and moved me into parenthood way too soon. Despite Mrs Fletcher's offer to take care of us l knew l had to drop out of school if l wanted to survive this alive. I may be young, but educationally, l was smart enough to know that kids are fragile and delicate, they are not able to encode, process and deal with information the way an adult would. Now due to that, the following day when my brothers still saw no sign of mom and dad, they began to ask questions. I decided to leave out the part where our parents legit abandoned us and just told them that they had gone somewhere for work and would not be back anytime soon-they said to keep in touch. They were disappointed, but not as disappointed as l was, so they went out to play and l had to come up with a feasible plan. I decided that I would use the money that our parents had left us to start a business, nothing huge, but l would just focus on selling simple things like snacks and sweets. I didn't have to worry about the market being "flooded" because as far as I knew, there was nothing like that. How did l know that? I knew it because at school, tuck shop aside, there were at least ten women who sold pretty much the same products, same price, just different spots. Two of them would sit by the gate, the other under a tree, the others close to the sports field and so forth. From the looks of it, all of these women made a fair amount of money from this and they didn't miss a day of business, so l knew fair was definitely better than none at all. After giving it more thought and taking the idea up with Mrs Fletcher, l resolved to try it out and give it my best. I didn't have to worry about how people would see me or what they would think of me. I mean, obviously some would see a troubled young girl, some would choose to see a hard working young girl trying to make money for survival-without necessarily resorting to prostitution as a means of survival. I thought of myself as a young lady with the potential, capacity and ability to face the world head on and make something of herself. Mrs Fletcher was so proud of me she even offered to drive me to the market place to help me buy. She was kind enough to also help me calculate how much profit I was supposed to make out of each product. She even told me if ever l needed help with anything l shouldn't hesitate to come to her for help, and she would be more than happy to help me with just about anything as long as she could manage. One important thing that she taught me was that I should make sure that I always look clean and presentable because that was the only way I could get more clients. She was right, we also used to look at the women who sold snacks at school and the one with more clients was the cleanest. Even though I was perfectly aware that surviving in this manner would not be a walk in the park, l still believed that l would survive just fine. Mrs Fletcher took it upon herself to teach me all the other essentials of business such as, "do not ever give anyone a product without receiving your money first, some people are just cruel you know". She looked so passionate and totally involved as she was helping me, such that I wondered again for the zillionth time why on God's green earth had she not been able to have her own children, because clearly, she would have killed it as a parent. As it would later come to light, life did not only go on at our end. A full month after our parents left us, just when our lives were back on track, or almost there, I received a letter from my mother again. This time she was 'checking up on us', hoping we were doing well and also letting us know that she  was no longer with our father. Apparently they had noticed that they'd been forcing things so they decided to go their separate ways, also, as it turns out, they wanted different things in life so they couldn't be together anymore. Apparently she was missing us and couldn't stop thinking about us and to my surprise, "praying" for us also. She believed we had gotten the hang of things and she had no intentions of coming back to us anytime soon as that would mean that we sort of like, "relapse". She mentioned that she was going to send us some money in the coming week once the people who owed her paid up. I didn't know how to feel when I read the letter, l mean, part of me was really glad our mother hadn't completely forsaken us and forgotten about us. Atleast she was still sober and kind enough to remember us and write to us and even help take care of us. The only thing I wasn't really happy about was the fact that she had separated with our father, and from the sounds of it, it was very possible that she had moved on with a new man. She hadn't been too obvious in the letter about it but she did hint on that. This made me quite upset because from what l had seen in my life, women are the ones that hold families together. Once they separate from their partners, the men tend to disappear for good and never turn back. That is why and how there are so many single parents and most kids just grow up without their fathers. Somehow, l just knew my father's return would be something highly unlikely especially now that he had no wife to return with. It saddened me to know that my brothers would continue and grow up without a father figure even when they got older and need some guidance on who to marry or how to choose a wife properly, they would have no father to help them with such. It was quite sad to be honest, but l've known people to pull through such situations so l knew we would survive too. Besides, they were still young at the moment and l had no doubt that when they got older and felt they were ready to settle, they would have long understood how things work in this life.

For now, I was just grateful everything seemed to be working out fine. And to be honest, part of me was low-key glad our parents had left us because now l got the opportunity to go out into the world, hustle and work with people. I had started making friends even, real mature friends and not just my classmates, people who were just entitled and had never really contributed a dime to get where they were. Now l met people with almost similar life experiences as me, some even had it worse in life but such people served as inspiration and evidence that there's always a way out, somehow. It may take time, or even appear like the world is ending and there is no escape from its cruelty, but  best believe there always is a way out, always.