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Chapter 28: The Math of Slavery
publish date:
2026-09-27 17:37:15
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Mummy, i didn’t Run Away: The Unwanted Child Chapter 28: The Math of Slavery
The house was dead quiet, save for the heavy, rhythmic snoring of one of the girls down the hall and the distant, low hum of traffic outside the iron-barred windows. Sleep had abandoned me hours ago. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Madam Veronica’s face—cold, dismissive, and utterly void of human feeling—telling me that the twenty million naira I calculated from my own sweat, flesh, and blood didn't even amount to a single million.The lie was so massive, so suffocating, that it felt like something physical pressing down on my chest. I couldn't stay in my bed a minute longer. The walls of the room felt like they were shrinking, closing in around me with the weight of forty-four million naira in impossible debt.The moment the compound door was unlocked at dawn, I slipped out before the other girls were fully awake.I hurried down the dusty path to Rose’s camp two streets away. We didn't live under the same roof—Veronica and Rose’s madam made sure of that, keeping different houses a
Mummy, i didn’t Run Away: The Unwanted Child Chapter 27: The Math of Slavery
Morning in the compound didn't come with sunlight; it came with the glare of the bare bulb against gray concrete and the sour, choking smell of cheap bleach left over from the night's mess. I sat on a low wooden stool near the back corner of the yard, the rough planks pressing into my thighs. My fingers were cramped so tightly around the stub of a pencil that the gray lead had smeared across my palm.For hours, I had been adding, subtracting, and recalculating, tracing the jagged lines of my own handwriting until my eyes blurred. When I tallied up every single night on the pavement, every client Madam Veronica had personally brokered, and every exchange converted into home currency, the total hit me like a physical blow. Just the portion I had handed directly to her over the months amounted to twenty million naira. Twenty million. A staggering, impossible sum earned through the systematic exhaustion of my own body, handed over in blind faith that every single naira was chipping away a
Mummy, i didn’t Run Away: The Unwanted Child Chapter 26: The Weight of a Single Word
My heart broke into thousands of pieces. I couldn't even sleep that night, Mommy; my chest was simply too heavy, weighed down by a pain so deep it felt physical.I kept staring at that single word glowing on the phone screen—*Received*—for almost an hour. Silent tears just kept dropping out of my eyes, sliding down my cheeks to soak straight into my pillow in Madam Veronica’s compound.I turned my head and looked at the dark bruises coloring my skin, mapping the ugly purple marks across my arms and legs. I kept thinking about the hell I had lived through every single day in this place, about how I labored for this money, what I had to sacrifice, what parts of my body I had to hand over just to get this cash—and all I got in return was a cold, transactional receipt.There was nothing else from you, Mommy. No inquiry about my safety, no concern for whether I was eating or bleeding, not a single drop of warmth. I didn’t say anything out loud. I couldn't. My voice was completely trapped.
Mummy, i didn’t Run Away: The Unwanted Child Chapter 25: Seven Thousand Euros and One Word
I couldn’t sleep that night. My whole body was burning, every single inch of me sore and stinging from the belt lashes. The girls in the room felt sorry for me. Even the ones who had gone out with me sat around, whispering quietly among themselves. A few of them crept over to my mat after a while. "Juliet, they didn't really pay you?" one of them asked quietly, leaning close so nobody else could hear. "You can tell us the truth. Within the couple of months I’d been there, I’d learned to understand that you couldn’t really trust anyone in this place. No one was your friend. Everybody wanted to be in Madam Veronica’s good books. Everybody wanted to win Madam's favor. Some of them would run and tell Veronica every little secret just so she'll see them as a good girl." I kept my face flat. I took my stand and stayed completely on my word. "No, they didn't give me anything," I whispered back, even while tears leaked out of the corners of my eyes and soaked into the mat. The next day
Mummy, i didn’t Run Away: The Unwanted Child Chapter 24: The Price on My Back
Before we finally left, Mr. Habib handed me a brown envelope. I quietly took it from him. I didn’t thank him. Not even once. I had worked for every single euro inside that envelope with my own body and my own pain. I tucked the envelope deep under my breast, hiding it right against my chest before we walked out to the car. When we got back to Madam Veronica’s house, she wasn't around yet. The moment we stepped inside, all of us rushed straight to the bathroom to clean ourselves up. I turned on the tap and started scrubbing. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed my body until my skin turned raw and red, almost like I was trying to tear my flesh off. I felt like if I scrubbed hard enough, I could cleanse myself from the dirt, from the sin, from the heavy image of those dogs climbing on top of us, and from their thick saliva dripping down onto our bare backs while they were on us. Those pictures kept flashing back into my memory, over and over again. All I wanted to do was cry. All I w
Mummy, i didn’t Run Away: The Unwanted Child Chapter 23: The Weight of Beasts and Blood
I sat down on the cold pavement right outside the gate, my mind spinning so fast I thought I would pass out. How? Where on earth was I supposed to find money for a brand-new bus? Madam Veronica wasn't going to help me. The last time I managed to send her four thousand euros, it had only happened through pure luck. Slowly, I turned my head and looked back at the tall iron gate I had just run out of. Should I go back? What would become of me if I stayed out here with zero money and a mother breathing down my neck? Opening my legs for animals instead of human beings—would I ever forgive myself for that? Would I ever be able to look in a mirror and see a human being again? Those thoughts were tearing my mind apart. Mummy, I was completely defeated. There was nothing else I could do. My body felt weak, and my legs felt completely numb. Slowly, I stood up and walked back to the gate. Nobody had chased after me. No guards had run out looking for me. I was walking right back into that
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