Mpong Edith Udek

Mpong looked on. She liked watching people, each face held a different tale. She would stare at them wondering what each expression meant. She loved the moments when uncontrollable emotions flicker, like a genuine smile, a genuine show of affection. When a mother beats a child, she would seek the hidden meaning that led to that physical action, sometimes anger, sometimes fear, sometimes love, it made her forget her burden. She barely talked never chanted songs or prayers like other beggar she just sat there.

 Yes! She was a beggar but she never truly felt like one. She just felt she landed in the wrong life; be that as it may, she never wallowed in self pity. Having lost both parents in a ghastly motor/fire accident that claimed her legs and left her face disfigured, her grandmother had taken her in and took care of her while she recuperated.  School was no longer an option, and after she lost her grandmother to a strange illness, she had resorted to asking for alms. To her she was an observer not part of the main scene and she was contented that way. However its moments like this that brings the pain of her situation to heart. Just few yards away a young couple passed by walking arm in arm, their faces radiant with smiles. Her heart contracted involuntarily. Growing up she had always day dreamed about her own prince charming, modifying the dreams to suit her different moods and as she grew older into adolescence the dreams had become more erotic. She dared not venture too deep of course, it felt like a sin just imagining it, but she couldn’t deny it felt good too. Then the accident happened and now she has lost the ability to dream, and had since given up on the possibility of finding the man that had brought so much joy to her in her early years. Her life was a joke now; she had been robbed off everything.

 She hadn’t realized she was crying until she tasted salt in her mouth. She wiped off the tears quickly, it was unlike her. She had taught herself not to feel, even when people avoided her, when children cried at the sight of her, or when she could clearly see repulsion on people’s faces. She had taught herself not to feel because they wouldn’t be able to see those feelings; they wouldn’t be able to see that she didn’t choose this life. She looked around nervously to be sure no one saw her.   The day dragged on slowly, people passed endlessly. Some stopping to drop a change, not without an obvious ‘sign of the cross’ of course. While some didn’t, they just walked on, barely noticing her crouched figure. She watched them all.

That night, in that empty uncompleted building that had become her home this last few years, Mpong dreamt. She saw her prince charming then, she saw herself also, not as disfigured as had become, but as beautiful as she would have been. She was happy, her prince charming; now with a face, and drop dead gorgeous accepted her in totality. He told her how beautiful she was and took her with him

Mpong never woke up.