Folakemi

"Kelvin, nothing is going to happen to our daughter, " I insisted.

I had to insist otherwise, the fear he had was going to creep slowly into my heart. Truthfully, it already was. I couldn't stand seeing him this bothered and this was not the first day. This wasn't our first time having this conversation and it was only now that I was starting to understand why he was scared and angry.

"Upon what assurance do you stand? It's like you have no idea how scary, dangerous, and deadly that man truly looks. When I went to the local casino with the sack of money, I saw a few other men, ten times the body size of the loan shark himself. They were seated around him on a wooden table. There were so many fumes, the smell of tobacco, and substances I couldn't even identify. Those men didn't even look like humans literally and you dared to approach such a man for what? Your reason is not even justifiable."

I swallowed hard. Tears were at the bridge of my eyes, ready to fall. Guilt crept in like poison and attacked me defenseless. I had done the worst thing.

"We've paid the money as a refund. This is the assurance I stand upon."

"YOU STILL DO NOT GET MY—"

"Okay. Okay. Don't yell at me. At least not when Cassandra is present. She's little and should not be hearing our loud voices."

Before he could utter another word or even complete the sentence I had interrupted him from finishing, I walked out of the room to fetch Cassie. When I found her in her room, playing with her toys, I heaved a little sigh of relief, thankful that she hadn't heard our argument.

But when my eyes came in contact with her cheerful and ever curious ones, my heart sank. The realization of what I done pelted on my mind like a stone. It was a deal. I had a deal with the loan shark. A fair one. And the loan shark seemed like a person who would only reveal his bad side if the other party did not keep to their part of the agreement.

But only now had I began to imagine what would have happened if Kelvin was unable to return the money. I had put my daughter out there to suffer whatever punishment the loan shark had in store for her to be subjected to and from the rumors, I had overheard, a few folks had made mention of slavery as the price that any human collateral agreed upon in a contract with the loan shark would have to pay.

Slavery was a million times worse than many people thought it was. Someone had once told me of mothers who had to watch their children get eaten by alligators and how bizarre the lynching of African-American slaves truly was.

I had heard of all these things and yet...

And yet...

I didn't mind. I never considered the possibility of things going downhill because, in actuality, it wasn't as though, we were financially buoyant. That my husband was able to pay all the money back was a miracle but yet, I dared to act as though, we had the means to pay back without having to toil or sweat.

I had blindly and comfortably sacrificed one child to please the other. I suddenly couldn't look at Cassie's eyes anymore. I was even more ashamed of the fact that it took Kelvin's immense anger for my eyes to be opened to the gravity of my acts. I couldn't realize it for myself.

I was a danger to myself and everyone around me and I lived in such an injurious ignorance every single day. A bloody disgrace I was.

I mustered up the tiny courage in me to look at Cassandra's face and that was because I already made my presence known and she was curious as to why.

"Here. This is five hundred Naira altogether. I need you to help me get to the mart at the end of the street to buy me a detergent. It shouldn't take you less than fifteen minutes. You don't have to worry about motorbikes or cars. The road is free. You can do this errand for me right?"

I wanted to get her out of the house for a few minutes so Kelvin and I could finish our argument. I didn't want her to know of my sin now at least because Cassie was a smart little girl and would comprehend anything easily.

She nodded enthusiastically and ran out of the room to go on the errand I had sent her. As I turned to head out of Cassie's room, I saw Kelvin standing by the doorway. Holding on to his walking stick for dear life and support to his weak bones.

"If any bad thing happens to Cassandra, I swear you would hate the life that you have been born to live. You will beg for death and it won't come your way," he said very coolly either because our seven-year-old Ebun was asleep or because he didn't have to shout for me to understand just how enraged he was.

He walked away very slowly, whimpering as each movement caused his bones to make threatening, cracking sounds as though they lacked joints to hold them together.

It was then I realized that my reason truly was not justifiable. I thought I was making the sacrifice for my husband's sake and Yemisi's sake. Kelvin could not go to the streets like an average father to hustle. All of the jobs I could occupy myself with didn't bring forth much.

I thought I could make Kelvin a lot more at ease by looking for a faster but decent way to bring in money, lots of it but what I had done was nowhere near decent and it didn't make Kelvin feel any better. If anything, he was aging in an unhealthy way.

I was giving him many reasons to be worried. I knew just how much Kelvin cherished his children.

When we lost one of our children, his health went from the frying pan to fire that year. There was no way I could ever forget that tragic period because it made me wish, I could be one with him, body and soul to make the pain he was feeling a lot less diminishing.

Even till now, I still felt like he was yet to fully recover from the effect of her demise. Kelvin's pain was constantly immune to time. Time never made him better no matter how much of it had gone by. It was the betterment of things that did.

And what I had just done...was worsen it.

I closed my eyes and started to pray for Cassandra's safety. My voice sounded foolish and abominable in my ears. I wished I could segregate it from myself because admitting my foolishness to God made me grossly ashamed of myself.

It was hard to focus on what I wanted from God. All that stayed in my mind was the denseness of my deeds, the reality of it because now, I didn't want to be accountable for it so it was stupid to pray against the repercussions of my actions.

But I thought of Kelvin and the fact that his bad health was in the line. If any bad thing happened to her, it would indeed be a catastrophe.

A few minutes ticked by. Cassandra was not back from the mart located down the street. I tried very hard to assume that she was having a little difficulty with finding her way there. Assumptions took a surreal kind of effort to make especially in the face of fear and uncertainties.

But as the minutes rolled into an hour and an hour into thirty more minutes, assumptions got a lot harder to make. The assumptions didn't even make themselves available to be used because there were no two ways around it, something bad had happened to Cassandra.

And it was my fault.

My damn fault.

Kelvin showed up in the living room where I sat, fidgeting. It was as though he had also made up his mind to get worried if, after an hour and thirty minutes, his daughter doesn't come back. As though he saw it coming.

"She's not back from the mart, " he said coolly.

"We should check around the neighborhood. Perhaps she lost her way somewhere around." I could not dare to suggest otherwise.

"Yes we should." and it had better be so. His extremely cool-tone blared with a dangerous promise.

So we roamed around, from home to home, asking each resident if they had seen our daughter stray away into an unfamiliar place. With every no we got, Kelvin's cold demeanor intensified by one mound of ice per second. His bones were getting very stressful. It showed in the way he limped on his walking stick but I dared not offer to assist him.

Sweat trickled down the side of my face. My prayers became a lot more fervent especially as we got the mart. If we could not find her there, then she was gone. My heart skipped so many beats, I feared it would stop functioning.

We walked into the mart.

"Good day. Did you see a little girl walk in to buy a detergent an hour and thirty minutes ago?" I asked the first worker I saw. I couldn't mention my daughter's name to him because it was the first time I sent her there.

The man shook his head no.

We asked the rest of the workers and even the customers we saw but it was an anthem of no's. However, when we asked the last attendant, we got a negative answer too but it was something different from a no.

"Umm...I saw a minivan pull up about an hour ago. The driver was extremely reckless with his driving though because there was a lot of dust and wind that rose from the force in which he drove then the dust cleared up a few minutes after and I didn't see anything anymore."

"A van?" Kelvin and I asked in unison.

He spoke like he had a clue but would rather choose to mind his business. All he did was drop the information. It was left to us to make whatever we wanted to with it.

We left the mart. Kelvin didn't utter a word until we got to a secluded wall.

"She has been kidnapped. My daughter has been kidnapped." the iciness in his voice had escalated into a pack of frost.

"Kelvin we—"

Whatever gibberish I had to blabber got lost in the sound of the back of my head colliding harshly against the wall. He had weaponized the tip of his walking stick to attack me. It nearly pierced into the flesh of my stomach like a sword.

The walking stick fell onto the ground with a clatter. Suddenly, his hands were around my neck, wrapped with a determination to squeeze out the structure of my airways with every might he had.

"You had better find her. Or else..."

After grunting and letting his promise stick somewhere in my ignorant skull, He released his grip and I fell to the ground, coughing and gasping for every flow of air I could garner.