Chapter 27 BATTLE

When Sobrina was supposed to graduate, she discovered she had issues. She had failed two outstanding courses in final year. When she got home and told her parents, her mother who never gave her any breathing space at home, laughed in mockery.

Few days close to the time her school was to resume, Sobrina asked her father who was scarcely home due to his job - through text messages and for lack of boldness - for money with which to purchase provisions for her return to school.

After morning devotion the following morning, her father told her to stay back while her other siblings left the sitting room. He also asked her immediate junior brother to stay as a witness, because his first son wasn't around, as he later explained.

He told Sobrina how he bought the medium sized LCD TV on the wall for seventy thousand, how the cell phone he was using cost the same, and how he was occupying a profitable office in the big city around then.

"But I will not train you again!" he concluded.

Sobrina was heartbroken.

First, she acknowledged what he had said calmly, and the meeting was over. When she got to her room, she began to weep very loudly out of heartbreak, her father had died in her mind.

Her father came into her room and tried to shut her up by beating her up, and in anger she packed up and left - towards school - without a penny.

At the bus station, she was beaten up by a driver who didn't want to carry her large luggage without extra payment, she quietly accepted the humiliation. Something that wouldn't have ordinarily happened because her father controlled the city.

When she arrived at the University, she called Pastor Melvin on the phone and told him about what had happened. He was dumbfounded, but could do nothing about the situation since he was still faraway with his parents back in Lagunde, enjoying the vacation.

Sobrina was torn to pieces, if it had been years ago when she could still travel to other cities in search for livelihood, things would have been different. Now, she was a different person and totally in love with Pastor Melvin. She couldn't afford to lose her salvation, and the chastity on which her relationship was strongly hinged. To elope to an unknown city as she used to would mean to say goodbye to the love of her life.

She had returned to the University with a bottle of alcoholic wine, she had taken it from the fridge at home. She broke the top and gulped down the entire content. She was the only living being in the large hostel where she was squatting with some friends. She decided to leave before the effects of the wine kicked in, to avoid being attacked.

She took her Bible - her faith hanging on a thread - and went to visit another member of the fellowship who stays in a different hostel. It turned out the lady wasn't around, but there were other people in the building. Sobrina slumped to the ground in front of the lady's closed door and started weeping.

Some ladies ran out of their rooms to find out what was wrong.

"What is the problem?", they inquired.

"God has forsaken me", Sobrina wept. They took her into their own room trying to console her. She passed out few minutes later on one of their empty bunks. She had no memory of how the lady she had originally come to visit returned, and came to take her to her room. She only awoke in the morning to find that she was in the room she had originally come to visit.

She attempted suicide two days later using a sachet of silica gel. She was alone in her hostel. She had once heard from her mother that silica gel was very poisonous. Luckily for Sobrina, it wasn't as poisonous as she had heard. She resolved never to set foot in her parent's home again.

Pastor Melvin returned to school few weeks later bearing gifts for Sobrina, he gradually convinced her to start going home again after her exams.

But her school problems weren't over, she still had too much credit load issue to resolve, she had registered excess credit load in three semesters while trying to catch up on all she had missed during the years she spent with Randy, and the ones she spent gallivanting.

Her mother made home hell for her, she ceased every opportunity to tell Sobrina how she had been lying to them for years about being a University student, and was in fact squandering their money. Money they never gave her except to pay her tuition.

One night, in the estate where they lived, someone forgot to lock the gate. The security guards came in the middle of the night and harassed the apartment demanding five thousand for compensation as was their custom. Sobrina came out and stood in front of her room - which was opposite her parents bedroom - feeling concerned. When her father noticed her presence, he looked at her and told her how she was a leaking pocket for him.

Sobrina's only offense was being home. She wasn't requesting for anything to solve the problems she had in school. She finally left home for good out of frustration, and returned to the University. Once again abandoned to care for her needs.