I stole a glance in the mirror opposite and I didn’t look anywhere close to a job applicant. My mustache was muggy and unkempt and my long hair gave me the image of a rascal mad man, who had been in the dirt for Gog-knows-when.
The sleeves, pants and shoes I thought were going to augment for my dirty looks disappointed me. I just discovered that my sleeves had torn at the armpit and shoulders and the pants had torn under the zipper and the shoes were not only oversize but sole was yawning at me.
They were all I could call cloths.
When I stepped out and ran into father outside, he rolled his eyes at me that I felt a churning in my stomach. He was going to blow hot at me.
I comported, pressed my hands in front, hoping he wasn’t going to notice the rags I wore.
But I shouldn’t have asked him for this, “Father can I get two cents from you so that I can shave and look good for the interview?”
The peril on his face could set a city ablaze. He trudged towards me and I pulled away. “May your tongue cling to your jaw for asking me for money. Does it look like I have one penny on me, you idiot. You can’t afford two cents to shave yet you think you can afford half a million dollars for your mother’s hospital bills. You are the worst nightmare that has ever happened to us. You should have died in jail. Why did they release you, uh?”
I squeezed my face before breaking down in vibrating tears. “Why are you telling me all this father? Am I worse than an infidel now? Why do you have to remind me how horrible my life is?”
“Do I need to remind you, you are worse than an infidel? Now you are out of jail to add more pains to my sorrow. You should have rot in jail. I knew you were full of ruins and shame from the very first day I picked you from the street and adopted you as my son.” He stared at me with disdain.
Each time father reminded me of being an adopted child I felt like jumping over a bridge to end my life. It was evident to me that I was a nobody, even the people I thought were my parents weren’t actually my parents.
But I wondered who I was. What was my true identity? Father had told me severally in clamoring tone to find my true identity.
He had picked me up from the dirty, horrible streets of Rio Hondo where I was wandering away. But why would he tell me all of that now? I just came out from prison. If there was anything I needed now it was love and not constant bashing.
Perhaps, leaving his home to find my true identity would give him some ounce of joy.
But who was I? How did I get to wander in the dirty streets where he adopted me? It was evident I was feckless and worse than ruin. I was either a bastard or a nobody, so father wouldn’t need to pester me about finding my true identity.
The answers were actually staring at me when I stared myself from head to toes. And if there was more to my ragged, horrible poverty -stricken life, I would have to prove it.
Father was still yelling at me when I walked out on him. The much I heard before going out of earshot was; “You can’t make life horrible for me. You are a man now so please go and find your true identity and let me be. You stole fifteen billion dollars yet you can’t afford two cents to shave! The mire we are in now has revealed you bring failure and poverty upon the people in your life. You are supposed to be a loner. I hate you!” father sobbed as his voice died away while I disappeared out of sight.
I wept bitterly while on the way. At a time when I couldn’t weep anymore, I fought back my tears and pressed my lips tightly to perk up.
To my very best I strut and started hitchhiking yet no car or bus stopped for me. Worse of it was that commuters kept at their distance as everyone thought I was mad.
My looks were horrible enough to scare people away. My long hair was almost covering my entire heavily mustache face. Now I was almost giving up appearing before a CEO asking for a job.
Almost walking to the heart of town, I saw a job opening in front of a towering building which had the inscription; A CLEANER URGENTLY NEEDED AT DOLBY ICT COMPANY.
I paused to contemplate quickly about it. I dared to pack my hair to a ponytail and smoothed those scraggly beards with my hands before advancing into the complex. Since I couldn’t afford a decent hair cut, I shouldn’t look like masquerade before my interviewer.
“Good morning, ma,” I greeted as courtesy demanded, and bowed my head respectfully.
But the pretty lady flinched and almost took to her heels. I raised my gaze and dared to step forward to my fearful beholder.
“Oh my God! Please go away! Security!” she called, pulling farther away, “Security! How did they allow a mad man into this office!” she wailed at the tops of her voice.
I glared around to see if a mad man accompanied me into the office. But hell no! I was actually the one she was referring to as mad.
“Hello, please give me your attention. I am here for the job opening. I am a good cleaner, please I am not mad.”
The lady scowled irritatingly at me, “Can you listen to yourself? Can you just take a look at yourself? Can’t you see you are mad? Please go away!”
In a jiffy some hostile looking heavily-built men pulled up and bundled me outside.
“Please I am not mad! Please!” I kept shouting…
At dawn a horrendous, mind-seizing knock slammed on our door. Since I had no bed, I had to sit up all night to sleep. I was very much awake to answer the door, should there be any visitor.But father was faster than me to answer the door and afterwards a yell came at him.“Mr. Patrick how long is it going to take you to pay a five hundred dollars house rent, uh?”I paid attention carefully as I heard father plead with our landlord, “Please Mr. Kenny, give me some more time. My wife’s illness has taken everything from me. I am going to pay up in due time, please I promise.”The landlord groaned annoyingly, “You are less than poverty, Mr. Patrick what other due time do you want other than the ones I have given to you. You just manage a one room yet you can’t pay for it. Isn’t it better you pack out and relocate to the cold street, uh?”Initially I craned to behold the landlord but since I couldn’t stand my father being insulted by anybody, I came out side to reprimand him.“Oh who do we
I may be on my way to securing a job at Melody Cab. It was a taxi company that caught my fancy a few days ago during a job hunt.For over an hour, the resource personnel held me in a steamy bickering over my unkempt looks.“Mr. Brian Patrick, it is in my interest to employ you as our taxi driver but for your looks. You look scraggly and unkempt like a bush man and if you understand this business very well you will appreciate the fact that passengers are moved by what they see. With this looks of yours our customers will be daunted.”I had lowered my gaze shamefully all this while he spoke to me so as he just mentioned my unkempt looks, I became nervous to raise it at him.“But sir,” I protested slowly, “I thought I promised to shave as soon as you grant me a salary advance…” He interposed me, “Can you just listen to yourself, Mr. Brian? We have never employed any driver with a salary advance and you are not going to change that tide. Do you understand me? This is Melody Cab and ef
Father wasn’t at home when I got in. in our lonely empty, crammed room, I dropped on the floor and wept bitterly for my life while I relived my agony in jail and this past few days.When I heard a shuffling walker close by, I wiped my tears and perked up hastily so as not to give him the room to chastise me for losing a job.He halted at the door upon gazing on me. I could perceive the suspicion and confusion which beclouded his wrinkled face.“You are not supposed to be at home by this time, Brian. I thought you told me a driver’s job which you secured today. “His gloomy brooding eyes shot at me, “What happened?”I swallowed hard and felt my heartbeat pound over the innumerable bad news in my life. That driver’s job was supposed to put smiles on his face and pay our bills. I had told him the salary and I could recall his excitement over the phone. Maybe I was too quick to dispense news of a job I wasn’t too sure of. Sometimes I felt I should be blamed for all the pitfalls in my life.
I wasn’t going to give up and I would never give up, probably until I got a job to pay up my family’s debt.As for finding my true identity; that was a fate I couldn’t decide and may never be certain about. If I should get to know who my true family was, it might be a plus because my adopted father had rubbed it on my face so much that it was already becoming a night mare.My true identity was as important as surviving.Father had done me good by steering in me, the awareness that I wasn’t actually his blood child and that he had only fostered me to this age. Perhaps that was the beginning of my true identity.Right now I knew who I was; an adopted child, a child found wandering on the streets of Rio Hondo and fostered by him, a no body a ragged, poverty-stricken unkempt, body odor boy who barely survived a fifteen years jail term over a fraud I didn’t commit.I was just a common Brian Patrick; a disappointment and failure about to happen. For now and until I discovered my true identi
“Happy birthday Sarah Canon!” “Oh it is your day Sarah! We can’t wait to cut the cake and give you our expensive gifts!” A female voice sounded from a Masarati, once the car halted by the side of Sarah Sarah blushed, had her soft, well-toned, hands on her mouth in awe. I perched behind a tree, staring at Sarah Canon hoping my help was going to come from her, as she was the last resort that struck in my head. Sarah Canon was the only child and daughter of the oil magnate Canon Johnson. No doubt she was the daughter of a billionaire whose outrageous arrogant character I got to know when she visited the Morgan Group to clench an oil distribution contract with Morgan Harris. At the time she had concluded her conference meeting with Morgan and his stake holders and didn’t know how Lala, a mastiff and our security dog got released on her. She was helpless; all she did was scream at the tops of her voice. I was at the account department at the time, collecting documents which I would de
For over two minutes, Melissa Fanny, stood gaping and staring irritatingly at me. I abandoned myself to shame and uncertainty as I smacked my lips tightly and pressed my hands in front.“Brian Patrick?”She called’ her voice was still and quarrelsome to an extent. All the while we stood staring at each other in shock, her father, Fanny Luis, a middle aged billionaire and the richest oil and gas tycoon in Rio Hondo rolled his eyes at me and kept gulping and pouring his wine impatiently. His jaw set.Her grandmother Lisa Bake through her conical goggles couldn’t stop peering at me from her sitting position. She blinked anxiously as her nose wrinkled.“Is this not your husband? Is this not the same Brian Patrick that siphoned fifteen billion dollars from Community Central Bank?” Lisa Bake, her grandmother queried.“You are right, granny.” Fanny replied and afterwards mumbled, “The criminal son-in-law is out of jail.”I stole a glance at him, lowered my gaze in hurt and swallowed hard, ju
Melissa sniffed. I believed she was fighting back her tears just as I did. Her gaze came upon her diamond engagement ring before she flashed her fingers at me.“A better ring has replaced yours, Brian Patrick. On the night you were convicted of the said crime, I flushed your cheap wedding ring down the toilet. You don’t deserve this heart, Brian Patrick. You have no place on this finger!” she yelled at me so loudly that I noticed Lisa Bake, her granny trudge to the window to stare at us.I scowled my face. I could feel the pounding of my heart against my fragile chest as I argued if she was bluffing or not.“What do you mean, Melissa? I married you before going to jail. We were happy and fated to be together forever until…” my voice broke out and snapped.She interrupted me radically and rolled her eyes, “Go ahead and complete your statement. Until what … until you went to jail, right? You don’t deserve me Brian Patrick. In two weeks, I will be legally married to Zion Don, son to the
“Did you see the divorce I sent to your email?” Melissa Fanny had a fierce expression on her face when she asked me that question.But my expression was more fierce than hers that it could boil an egg. What was she talking about? Divorce? I said within me.“What divorce are you talking about, Melissa?” I queried and my jaw set abruptly.“She rolled her eyes at me and her eyes gleamed as she said, “My family has gotten petition for dissolution of our marriage.” She shook her head in disappointment and her eyes dimmed as though she was going to break down in tears. “Let’s divorce. Listen up Brian Patrick, I don’t want us to over flog this issue, if you watch closely you would see my father and granny staring at us through the window. My father has warned me not to have anything to do with you anymore and he is beginning to feel irritated seeing you frequent his villa. So once you get the email, please sign the divorce and that puts an end to us.” Her voice was still and offensive as her