I cleaned his office for eight years; he never knew I was the mother of the boy he abandoned in high school

He never did.”

When Chidera was nine, she fell ill. Fever, cough, weakness. The doctor said:

“It’s a simple operation, but it costs sixty thousand naira.”

I didn’t have them. I borrowed, sold my ring, my radio, but it wasn’t enough.

I bu.ried my son alone, with a torn photo of his father and a blue blanket.