My name is Mama Chinedu.
Today, as I sit on a wooden stool in the middle of the busy market square, watching my only son eat sand with the calmness of someone tasting fried rice, I hear strangers whisper:
“See her there. A wicked woman.”
“She refused to cure her son.”
“Some mothers are heartless.”
They do not understand.
They do not know what happened inside my compound.
They do not know what waits for me on the other side of cure.
If my son’s madness leaves him today,
I will die before sunrise.
This is not a proverb.
This is not village gossip.
This is the truth I live with every day.
But to understand why, let me start from the beginning.
**Chapter One
Fifteen Years of Fire and Smoke**
I was never a lucky woman.
My husband died when Chinedu was only seven. Malaria took him in two nights. Before I could borrow money for drip, he had already left this world with nothing but a cracked pair of sandals and an old transistor radio.
From that day, the burden of life fell on my shoulders.
I sold akara for fifteen years.
Fifteen years of waking by 3 am.
Fifteen years of grinding beans until my arms trembled.
Fifteen years of hot oil jumping out of the frying pan to kiss my hands and leave permanent scars.
Fifteen years of tearing eyes because the smoke from the charcoal stove refused to allow peace.
But I did not stop.
I had a dream, one dream only:
My son must become a graduate.
If suffering was the school of destiny, then I got my certificate with distinction.
Even when I fainted one afternoon from hunger, I woke up and continued frying akara.
People laughed.
“Mama Chinedu, why are you suffering yourself over one boy?”
“What if he grows up and forgets you?”
But I trusted Chinedu.
He was a quiet child, respectful to a fault, always hiding inside books. He told me:
“Mummy, I will take you out of poverty. Just give me time.”