Chronicles Of A Runs Girl - S01 E40

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Chronicles Of A Runs Girl - S01 E40

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 40

I had to press down the wound on my lip to stop pain from talking making my voice almost inaudible.

“Scarlet is red.”

She was confused. Stumped. She didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. I pitied her.

She leafed through her Bible as if searching for a spell that would bind my demon infested tongue.

“Even Mary Magdalene, she was a prostitute but Jesus forgave her and even allowed her to use her hair to anoint his legs.”

It really hurt to talk, but she had been asking for it and now she had gotten it.

“Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute. She was one of Jesus’ disciples.”

“Mary. She was a prostitute but Jesus forgave…”

“No! Show me where in the Bible it says she was a prostitute.”

She had forgotten to cover her chest with her Bible. He arms dangled checkmated by her sides as she looked at me with eyes that betrayed pity from a sanctimonious point of observation, and a little annoyance or impatience creeping in. She didn’t have a comeback.

“Your time is up, you may go now.”

I loved the way I said that last line so much that I smiled through the pain.

Sister Esther stood there looking at me, perhaps silently praying for me – or praying against the demons in me. I looked away the casual bitchy way you’d take your eyes off an irritant and be fascinated with the state of your nails instead – only that my nails weren’t worth looking at right then.

“Amaka,” she had dropped the ‘sister’, “This way you are living your life, it is only grace that is protecting you. Look at you now, young fine girl like you, in prison. Is this what you are seeing as life?”

“It’s a cell, my dear, not prison.”

She shook her head at the audacious temerity of the demons in me.

“I will pray for you, but you have to change your ways or else even the grace that is protecting you wouldn’t be enough again.”

That was my first warning.

Sister Esther left, but not before hiding herself behind her large Bible, then another woman came in. It was the b---h who had tricked me on the phone.

“Amaka, there is one man here who has paid your bail and he said he wants to take you to his house. Or do you want to call your family to come and collect you?”

Her tone was sympathetic and I knew this was all I was going to get as far as an apology was concerned.

“What happened to Johnny?”

“We don’t know o, but his son will be able to explain further to you.”

“His son?”

“Yes. He just fly down from America yesterday night. They are handling the matter themselves; they say they don’t want to involve police. He said his father said he should look for you and explain everything to you.”

“His son?”

“Yes naw. You didn’t know that he has a son before?”

“What is his name?”

“John, too. Amaka, if you don’t want to go with him I will arrange a taxi to take you to your place.”

John, Johnny’s son. But why did I sense that she was hinting for me not to go with him.

“Where is Kike?”

“Kike? Your friend? We have released her since day before yesterday.”

“Is she alright?”

She understood what I meant. “They didn’t touch her,” she said.

“Why does he want to take me with him?”

“See ehn, Amaka, these Lebanese people they have their own ways of dealing with something like this. He told us that his people are already working to get his father out, but let me tell you, I can’t be sure they are not suspecting that you’re involved. And anything that happens to you there, we wouldn’t be able to do anything.”

So that was her concern; laughable – as if I could possibly meet a harsher fate than that which I’d endured in her custody.

Stupid, ill-trained, irritating and downright offensive to my spirit as she was, she was my second chance not to cross the line.

John took me away in Johnny’s car. Johnny’s driver from many years ago, a man I assumed he’d sacked, was at the wheels and he recognized me. He was old when I knew him but he had grown much older. He greeted me with an affectionate hug then with a pained face as he looked at my own face.

“This is your papa’s good friend,” he told John. “She is like daughter to me, and oga too. Oga will be very angry when he see how they have done her.”

John asked him to take us first to a clinic. There, John watched over me with arms crossed over his chest and concern deep in his face as nurses tried to repair me.

A nurse, when she thought no one else could hear, asked me in Igbo if he was the one who beat me up like that.

I managed a smile and I told her it was the police. Then, before she could ask why I got arrested, I told her he was my lawyer and he was suing the police for me.

She looked at him and gave away the fact that we’d been talking about him. I smiled at him to let him know that whatever was said wasn’t bad. He smiled back and my line began to appear – the line I should not cross.