The Wife ESCAPED!

Few days after the public display of her ruggedness, Caro still moved and hawked in the motor park with no fear whatsoever. In fact, she went out of her way to make herself visible to the garage touts, but they simply refused to notice her. She had heard varying rumors about their boss and many advices to leave the area in order to escape a reprisal, but she was never going to listen to any one of them. So far, she had racked up quite some profit for herself and the orange seller considered her a godsend. But still, she was far from happy.

One warm, sunny afternoon, after finishing the first round of hawking for the day, Caro requested for a break and it was readily granted. In the woman’s words, she more than deserved it. With a quiet ‘Thank You’, Caro strolled off in the direction of the garage.

As she walked, holding both ends of the head-cushion cloth which was draped across her shoulders, she could feel the weight of the money she had made on her. It was quite substantial, but its value was very little to her all of a sudden. She was actually ‘thinking her life’.

For once, she was beginning to question certain decisions she had made in life. She was many hundreds of kilometers away from home. She may not have had a better life back at home, but wasn’t family everything? Had she been right to run from home? Yes, they had shipped her off to some beast to live as his wife for the rest of his ugly life, but what really were the disadvantages? At least, she would have had a home, safety and eventually, children that she would care for with all her heart and might. But then, there were the mates; they would have made life miserable for her children and herself. But still, she would have had a home, wouldn’t she? If she could lie to herself that she didn’t miss her family more and more with each passing day, she would. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t!

It had crossed her mind more than once in the last few days to go back home and apologize to her parents and try to make them understand why she had done what she did. She knew they would never understand or even listen, but it felt good and comforting to imagine that they would. She sighed as she reached a wooden electric pole at the side of the road. It wasn’t a sigh of relief, it was one of confusion and indecision, and the end of it came out as a whimper. She was close to tears, but she was fighting to hold them back.

She believed in God, but why on earth didn’t he give her a caring mother and an understanding father? She wouldn’t want to be rich or anything else if she had such parents. Because they would mean the whole world to her!

She strongly believed that people got punished for their sins, but whose sin was she punished for when she was born by such parents? She looked around her and found that no one was looking her way, then she leaned on the electric pole and cried her heart out.

As she wept, memories of her daydreams flashed through her mind. She had imagined herself being a lovely princess in a beautiful little town populated by kind and always smiling people. She had imagined that she had a mother who gave her a new flower every morning instead of knocks and beatings. She had imagined having a father who bought her beautiful dresses and took her to the zoo instead of giving her stinging slaps and vicious kicks if she dared to request for school levies. The girls who had such parents in real life, what did they do to get them because she would give anything to be like them for only one minute.

When Caro had exhausted all her tears, she bought a sachet of pure water and washed her face thoroughly before resuming her stroll in the garage. She needed to look more composed and normal before going back to the orange seller’s shop. The last thing she wanted was to be asked questions she didn’t want to provide answers to. So far, the woman had not asked her to tell a detailed version of the false story she had told her and by all means, she planned to keep it that way.

As Caro strolled against the wind, so it could calm and dry her face, she no longer thought about going back to her family. All that had gone with her tears. She now had something else on her mind: her future. Not the future she would have had as a wife of Iron Fire, but the future she would have as a runaway bride. What was lying ahead for her? More hawking for years to come? God forbid! She had always wanted to be a doctor, a children’s doctor. She had been inspired, when she was five, by the female doctor who had treated her for malaria.

The young woman had been nice, kind, beautiful, tender and always smiling. From that moment, that was the kind of person Caro wanted to be: someone who made children feel safe and comfortable. But how would she get there? Hawking certainly would not take her there and being back in her father’s or husband’s house wasn’t any better. The solution was that she had to go back to school. But how could she do that without having a home? She needed first a home, food, money and then education. But if her family could not provide it for her, who would? She didn’t need to be a government official or a member of any international body to know that there were very few people like Madam Beryl in the country nowadays. What were the chances that she would meet someone like that again?Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.