I Was Brought To Near Tears That Morning Seeing Glory

By Cami Ezenwa

I was brought to near tears that morning seeing Glory. She cast a pitiable picture, how she stood, lonely and seemingly rejected.

What she wore, the total picture she cast were enough signals of a life in despondence.

I was left asking myself, If God does not help this lady now, who would?  If God does not come through for her, which man would, especially which fellow would willingly come seeking her hand in marriage?

Very plump and amiable, Glory wouldn’t be anything less than 46, and the veins of aging have become very prominent all over her.

Her face had begun to crease easily and terribly with every movement of her frontal muscles, rendering even her smiles disgusting.

The incidental knee handicap she had been trying unsuccessfully all these years to hide had become very prominent

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And this day, to be able to get to the gate from the compound, she actually was stopping every ten steps or thereabouts – the same stretch she covered in fleeting minutes like lightning before now.

Plainly, the job of walking to the gate that morning was just too much for her to cope with, it brought me to near tears

I could  imagine how long and what stress it must have taken her to crawl from wherever she had been holed as home in whichever other part of Lagos, to our Ogba complex.

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With hunger biting everyone hard, and not a Naira to spare, it has become everyone to himself and God for us all, even in trying to commute from one location to another.

Who would want to give space to another, in the chaos and stampede of hitching rides1 How did Glory manage?

She had got to the stone bench by the lawn for respite this time, and from where I had docked, as not to embarrass her the more, should she sight me, I could see that that paining leg had become terrible, fully disfigured from the knee, as if only held in place by a strand of ligament covered by flesh..

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I docked again by a jeep packed in front of the bookshop, quick enough to escape her surveying eyes.

I was actually one of her fans while she served dutifully in that cafeteria. I had taken to her, hearing a little bit of her background: born out of wedlock and rejected by both sides, how she had embraced life with equanimity, working jobs, all manner of jobs to survive. She was running errands, just any, that came her way, that paid money, no matter how small to keep her dignity.

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And for the reasonable moment of time I docked there, she was still nursing the pain.

O my God. Glory, Glory that could take the stairs countless times per day weeks on end..

Before now, I had asked why she was no longer coming.

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That was when I got to know: after she could no longer get to work on time, nor attend to details as promptly as they required, she was asked to stop, by her madam

She wept her eyes sore, that day, I was told, and when it turned out totally useless, she picked up herself weeping all the way out of the premise, more because of her condition, than that she was stopped.

Today was coming to collect her due and bid the job, the premises and all the people she had been interacting with all these four years, a final bye.

But where were all such people today that she was finding difficult to walk?

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Where were all the customers that that would cluster round her or shout out their orders while she dutifully attended to all? Where were all those staffers she was taking the stairs to deliver food to?  How come people did not follow her about in droves now that she actually needs company and appreciation the most? Has she been discarded in just a month of forced absence from her duty post?

O God, how unkind can life be; not life per say, but the people that live in it! What would happen to her afterwards?

If she could not mobilise resources while at work to take care of that knee, how about now that she had been asked to leave service?

If while she moved like a star from office to office, jokes here and banter there, no ‘bros’ noticed her and no bros toasted her to submission, is it now that Glory is going home with a debilitating knee injury that the bros will spot her?

I was already crying for her on the inside of me, even now too.

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Truly, failure has an orphan, even failure foisted by circumstance. The tears were steadily welling up in my eyes, dropping and welling, even as the picture came cascading down my memory: of the energetic Glory I had known before now.

You were sure of successive bouts of boisterous laugh that created dimples on her fatty light complexioned face, each time you encountered her.  It didn’t matter how mood; in fact, I could not remember finding her face sullen or sad; always full of laughter, but today…

It was the distress I saw as she picked her way that weakened my own emotions, and that caused those tears in my eyes.

So, a wounded soul has no friend, an injured lion has no mercy?  So, once one is expended in terms of what they have to offer, they are abandoned and forgotten?

If all, not me, never, I resolved. I shouldn’t, I resolved. If no one is willing to keep this lady company today, I will.

And immediately, I came out of my hiding, wiping clear my face and heading straight to where she sat.

If she had the will, she would have stood up and ran, or literally disappeared so I do not see her demobilisation, but I could see she couldn’t. Besides, the warm affection and cheerful disposition I exuded even from the distance was reassuring.

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She tried her smile, but it did not come out in its blossom, but she could sight the cheer on my face and boisterous walk-up.

I literally ran the remaining distance, my arms stretched till I got to where she sat.

She had never seen me in such a seeming magnanimity and tried to smile, but her face creased into agony.

“Don’t worry Glo, Glo”, I said, my voice broken by my own despair and swallowing the rest of the things I had wanted to say; I hugged her full, and sat by her right.

She began to shed tears.

“Stop that Glory, don’t do that”, I admonished, “you don’t have to cry. I will not be happy if you cry, we all face challenges.

“Everybody you see faces challenges, but you don’t let such challenges knock you down…”

For a reasonable number of minutes, I was sermonising, consoling, cajoling and petting. And then, I tried a few jokes, trying hard to hide my own emotions.

I knew her next dilemma would be when she would want to stand and leave.

I Was Brought To Near Tears That Morning Seeing Glory, but somehow, God helped me, by bringing along a female colleague who branched by and started another line of discussion.

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She too had heard and had come to offer her own encouragement.

I seized the moment and sought Glory’s permission to leave. I had a programme to attend in the next few minutes, I said; she nodded her permission. And reaching out, I patted her hand, and began to make my way, the way I had come.

I still was hunted by the thought and reality of the new turn of events in Glory’s life. The way the leg has manifested, would require a reasonable amount of money to be attended to. For a lady, overripe for marriage but out of job, and also a hapless victim of the picky and choosey disposition of the average suitor today, what does life hold for her?

If God does not come through for this lady now, who truly will…?