Chronicles Of A Runs Girl - S01 E39

2 years ago

Chronicles Of A Runs Girl - S01 E39

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 39

Original sin

There’s a line you shouldn’t cross; a point at which you’ve exhausted all your good luck, all your goodwill, and all the protection of all the prayers ever said for you.

Beyond that point you’re at the mercy of every misfortune you’ve managed to dodge. Every mistake you’ve gotten away with, every accident you’ve walked away from, even your death that you cheated, they are all waiting for you there.

That line appeared before me when I was detained at that police station, and it surprised me that so early in my sinful life, I’d already used up all the grace I had.

If I crossed this last line, if I did this last selfish daring thing, I knew, I just knew that I would regret it in a painful way and in a permanent way.

I cannot say I wasn’t warned, and like all sins, I was given many chances to resist the devil so that he may flee from me. The first was in the form of a thin dark lady who had managed to hide every strand of hair on her head beneath a tightly wound scarf that was the same dark shade of brown as her nylon skirt that started from above her waist and didn’t stop till an inch above her ankles. She had come with a group of prison evangelists to try and save the souls of those who had been arrested and may soon end up in jail for their sins.

She found me in my cell, shielding the wound on my lip against flies that had taken over from mosquitoes. They let her in and brought her a chair, and when they left they didn’t lock the door.

The Bible she clutched against her chest could have been a subconscious habit to hide the fact that she had no breasts.

She asked me if I wanted to sit, and when I declined, she also remained standing. She told me her name was Esther, and God had saved her twelve years ago. Good for you, I thought.

She asked me if I was a Christian, then she asked me if I knew that Jesus died for me. On a good day I would have pointed out to her that my answer in the affirmative to her first question made her second question superfluous, but my lip was bleeding, my nose was bleeding, my body was dying, and my wit was waning.

Sister Esther asked if I was ready to accept Jesus into my life as my personal Lord and saviour.

My body was broken but my mind was not. In me I smiled at the question I would have asked her: If he becomes my personal lord and saviour, my own, who would be other people’s personal lords and saviours? Even in my battered state I thought it through to the realization that the joke would probably fly over her head, but that wouldn’t have stopped me making it – even if it meant I’d be a comedian facing an audience but entertaining only herself.

Sister Esther also had pamphlets, and when she had to lower her Bible to fetch them from between pages of scripture that had been keeping them spiritually charged, it was a very fast affair and the Bible was quickly back pressing against her flat chest.

I took what she gave me. I would use it to fan my face in the night when the heat is unbearable and the mosquitoes have returned.

She told me about her ministry – hers and her fellow prison evangelists, and she most have taken my silence, broken only by yeses, to mean she had found in me a repentant soul ready to be forgiven unto righteousness, for she then went full throttle into Bible-quoting, demon-binding preaching!

“In Proverbs twenty-three, verses twenty-seven to twenty-eight, the Bible says “For a prostitute is a deep pit and a wayward wife is a narrow well. Like a bandit she lies in wait, and multiplies the unfaithful among men.”

She had to consult her Bible to read out the passage, this made me feel short-changed: if you are going to come and call me a prostitute and tell me you are the one sent to save me, at least have the decency to memorize your lines in advance.

“A deep pit!” She said it again. “You know what a deep pit is, sister Amaka? It is a bottomless hole that just swallows everything up. The Bible is telling us that a prostitute is like a deep pit and men will stumble into her and lose their way.”

I was willing to overlook the fact that she had made assumptions about me before even asking me what I was. If she had asked, I would have told her that I’m a student and it would have been the truth. After all, had she seen me standing in front of Ynot at night, smoking St. Moritz? Had anyone seen me standing there?

Like I said, I was willing to overlook this because the police probably told her there was an ashawo in the cell, upon whom she could practice her preaching. But the way I saw it, she was right out-of-order to make such a personal statement about the state of my v----a.

A deep pit! Whadafuck!

Again, I only laughed at my own joke, but I was now finding that not making them actually made them funnier, in a way.

“…But God is willing to forgive you anything. He said that though your sins can be as black as scarlet, he will wash them to be white like snow.”

“Scarlet is not black.”

“What did you say?”