Boomerang

Ever so often, a question beclouds my mind. One so seemingly simple yet not with a YES or NO answer to me and many others alike.

Is karma real?

You see, this three-worded question is one that I have pondered upon so many times and is yet to come to an acceptable conclusion. Life's events spiral out of control sometimes that it seems someone is getting served in their own coin, and other times, it seems whoever is in charge of dishing out the recompense does so in partiality.

So, are we just pawns in the game of life, who have no control over the cards we're dealt or do we truly reap what we sow? -Jekey -

Here's a piece to help us ponder more on this - Hopefully, we all can give an honest response to the above question afterwards.

Boomerang.

Chakram.

She was a babysitter at the time, and he was a young guy who lived in the same compound as the family of the little child she babysat.

This family, they allowed her a room in their home for she doubled as help and had nowhere else to go.

She was diligent and a hard worker, the reason it was easy to let her in. And her story, a heart-wrenching one: she had run away from a stepmother that hated her with derision.

It was while in this compound working for this family that she was brutally raped, by this guy who was their neighbour; while the family she served were away from home, holidaying.

She told no one about it, for he was older and threatened to kill her if she did as much as mentioned it to anyone.

A month after she was raped, the guy who raped her relocated from the compound.

She didn’t even know she was pregnant, she didn’t know the rape planted a seed, and in the second month, the symptoms began to manifest.

“Who impregnated you?”

The wife and woman of the house where she was accommodated asked unbelievingly and disappointed, and after so much back and forth she confessed that she was raped.

The matter was reported to the police and an endless search for the culprit was conducted, all to no avail.

It wasn’t easy to keep her and also fend for her oncoming child, so this family decided to let her go, to allow her to a fate that also overpowered them.

So she was thrown on the street with some money and nowhere to go, and she ran the circles of this harsh world and somehow with fate still patiently watching, eventually put to bed and started a petty business.

Her son.

He grew up knowing the language of the street; hard, mischievous, gruff, impoverished, rough, wild, testament of poor parenting, of poverty, of a life whose mother was not prepared to have.

Twenty-three years later.

One careless night, while in her little shop, one which also doubled as her home, she got a call that her son had been arrested and was at the police station.

“Wetin him do?”

She asked terrified, and the caller, a police officer supposedly, replied:

“Your idiot of a son, him no see woman to carry, na rich man daughter he wan go rape.”

The news sank into her like a spear from the arms of a skilled warrior.

It brought her panic, then shock, then trepidation.

Her own life was playing in reverse before her.

It was already so late at night, so the following day, she hurried off to the station where he was held.

she got there and as she stepped into the office, there was a man with his back turned at her yelling and threatening.

“In fact, you would rot in prison. Did you attempt to rape my daughter? In short, take a clear look at the sky, because this is the last time you’d be seeing any of it. If that mother of yours comes here and care isn’t taken, you both would rot in jail...”

And as she walked closer to the man, almost wanting to kneel in order to start begging, he turned and guess who she saw?

The man that raped her when she was a babysitter.

©️Noel Ijezie