Unfriendly, unsympathetic,stern.

Ngọzi! Ngọzi! Ngọzi!

Now where is that silly girl?

There she goes again my ornery stepmother.

Ngọzi! Ngọzi! Ngọzi!

She would not stop screaming my name not for anything in this life, huh! Am sure the devil and his entourages already knows that there's a little girl in Anaocha called Ngọzi. I expressed with a sign.

Yes mommy! I responded, running towards her.

Where were you? Why did it take you so long to respond? Ehhh

Sorry mom i was...

"You were what? Speak before i command heaven to strike you dead". She got quite shirty

Sorry! I was in the kitchen at the backyard cooking dinner. I replied while standing some meters away from her to avoid possible hitting from her.

" Sorry mom i was in the kitchen cooking dinner " she mimicked me.

You always have excuse for every silly act of yours....

Am sorry mom...

Just shut up there! Useless girl! Now why haven't you tidy my room and those, aren't they my clothes? Why are they still outside?

Am sorry mom. I just finished fetching water so i rushed to the kitchen to make dinner, that's why the clothes are still outside.

You are so lazy and useless! she glower

Am very sure you expected me to go tidy up the room and pack the clothes as well because you've been busy fetching water since morning, am i wrong?

No! Mom i wasn't i was going to do them i just wanted to be done with the dinner first i promise.

Oh! Shut up and get your dirty self out of my sight. She Hissed angrily

Sorry mom, i walked away lachrymose.

While walking back to the kitchen, these thoughts crowded my mind.

But Ngọzi, this words of hers are not new to you anymore.

Why do you always breakdown whenever she comes at you like that?

It's not like she is your real mother after all, she is just but a step mother and my father third wife to be specific.

Hence her curses should not matter to you Ngọzi.

Your biological mom would never unleash such cruelty on you.

These i said to myself to soothe the affliction her words brought to my frail heart.

As i sat by the fire on a local wooden stool to chop the vegetables, conflicting thoughts crowded my mind.

I pondered on the rumors regarding my mom abscond from my father's house.

I went on and on in my thoughts that i forgot i was chopping the vegetables thus cutting my finger.

Another pain? Oh heavens! Of what exactly are you punishing me?

My heart is already bleeding and now my finger.

I would have chopped off all my fingers by the time i even clock fifteen.

Ouch! That hurts!

Oh heavens! Deliver me from this torture.

I cried and sniff in a fretful way.

When will i get to be loved and treated right?

Am barely 13 years old and am been made to work as an adult. I bemoaned.

The palace is filled up with children older than me but they would rather have me and my elder sister turned to slaves than allow any of their children help in the house chores.

I would not be in this pains if my mom had not absconded from my father's house.

She abandoned me at three months, she did not even give me the chance to know what she looked like. Its been years now since she left yet she has not even bothered to come check if i and my sister are still alive.

I and my eldest sister Nneka are been made to work like slaves in our father's house.

If it was not for our father we could have been dead by now. I hissed.

For some few seconds i felt this compulsion to loathe my mother even without knowing her.

But mercifully i clutched on the narrative that her absconding was as a result of my father's harshness towards her.

According to the gossips in the village, my

Mom ran away because she was ill-treated by my father the king and his other wives.

Rumors still have it that the reason why my father changed and ill treated my mother was because of her inability to birth a male child.

My father's forefathers believed in the superiority of male children over female, this mentality of theirs was successfully passed on from one generation to the other and my own father was not left out.

My father kingship inheritance made matters worse as he was expected to birth innumerable sons.

But unluckily for him most of his wives only birthed one or two male children and a good deal of female children.

This made my father to continue with his wife assemblage.

My father was an educated man few of the eminently educated men in our community, but his education had no impact on his African man mentality.

His education and kingship birthright was not just all he had to allure the women, he is very

handsome too.

His height and dark skin was not something any woman would turn a blind eye to.

He is physically attractive and so easy-on-the-eyes.

These outstanding qualities of him is what

made the women of our village oblige to his untrue marriage proposals.

A full package my own mother could not repudiate.

It was all love and queenly pampering from the beginning till my mother birthed her first baby which was a girl.

My father was not quick to revolt against the news of the baby in as much as he was disappointed, rather he opted to give her a second chance.

But then man do not give children but God does.

A statement my father was not a fan of.

My guilt free mother could not help herself from praying to heaven for mercy and a rescue from a loss of face.

These prayers of hers were not obviously reaching heaven and if they were, it was not the right heaven.

As her second pregnancy still produced another baby girl who turned out to be.

Oh! I wish i could describe how crestfallen my father was...So absurd.

After my mother two pregnancies turn out to be girls, my father lost every affection towards her and began neglecting her just like he did to the other women in her mare's nest.

This new cold attitude of my father towards my mother was appreciated by the senior wives as they took a vexatious pleasure in causing troubles for my mother.

They did not stop taunting her even with the knowledge that her cries no longer meant anything to my father who was already picking interest in another marriage.

The hefty pressure of life was just so much for my infirm mother hence she took to her heels leaving behind a three month and a two years old baby girls at the mercy of her shabby co-wives.