I was only 12 years when my mom sent me to the shops to buy her bread so that she could drink her medication. As I was approaching the corner heading home, I saw my stepfather sitting by the gate holding his head and half the community was in the yard.

I entered the house and went straight to her room but they had already covered her face and I was taken outside. My eyes were filled with tears, I was running out of breath and I just fell. When I woke up, she was long gone and people kept telling me that she was in a better place, as a child I didn’t understand because I still needed her.

Her funeral became history but her memories still lingered in my thoughts. My stepfather started drinking and going out all night. At school my marks started dropping because I spent all my time writing letters to my mom in heaven. One day, as I was doing the dishes while my stepdad was sleeping, I saw blood. I didn’t understand what was going on, so I panicked and ran into the house and woke him up and showed him.

He looked at me and smiled and said, “Every fruit that is ready to be eaten gives you a sign, go bath and come here!”

I didn’t understand but I could tell it was trouble. In my own mother’s house I became a slave not just a slave but I became a wife to a man who called himself my dad. He took away my virginity and told me that I should not tell anyone about the things that happened in that house because he would kill me.

This became a routine, when he got drunk he needed his fruit. That’s when I decided to leave that slavery hole of a house and went to live in the streets for two years after the horrific three years with my father. In the streets I needed to pay for a place to sleep, since I had no money, I had to give my body to them.

It was nothing new, I fell pregnant and I had no idea how I was going to raise the child. Six months went and I was involved in a fight trying to protect myself from some men who tried to rape me, in the process one bullet took away the only family I thought I had, one bullet took away my closest friend, one bullet took away my only hope.

At the hospital I met a man, he was married and he asked me why I was sitting there all alone, because I’d been there for three days, every time when he came to visit his wife, he saw me sitting on the hospital benches. He offered me a job and a place to stay, his wife didn’t love the idea and made my two years with them hell.

My face became a frying pan because every time I did something wrong, she would pour hot oil on my face. I didn’t want lose a home, so I didn’t report it however she never stopped. One night she got a call that her husband was involved in a car accident, we rushed to the hospital and the doctors told her that her husband had lost a lot of blood.

Her blood didn’t match with his and I offered to try the tests and she agreed, the doctors took the samples and we waited for the results. The doctor came back to us and told us that his daughter’s blood matches. Perfectly with his. I was shocked but she didn’t love the fact that they kept calling me his daughter.

The doctor continued saying, “His daughter,” she told the doctor that I was not her daughter.

The doctor said, “She might not be yours, but the man in that room is her father, the DNA proved it and it is never wrong,” she didn’t know what to say and ran into the car and drove off with her daughter.

I took a taxi home using my last pay money, as soon as I arrived, we got a call from the hospital saying that I had lost my dad whom I never got to know. His wife went to the bathroom and locked herself in with her child. As I was sitting by the dining room waiting for her when I heard gunshots, I ran to the bathroom and found them laying down both dead. They were gone and I was left alone again. I am now married, unfortunately I will never have a child of my own.

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