She knew today would come, the day that is for the owner. What she didn't know was that, that day, would be today. He gives her a hard kick on her stomach, but she is determined to not squirm. She would show absolutely no pain. No one can see that she is scared. 'Shift like this' he shoves her head, 'Oya face the camera, thief like you, Oloshi'. He screams, pushing, and kicking her. The pain from his kicks are intense. They are touching her ribs, but she can't show it. She shifts closer, facing the camera. She keeps a straight face, that face she had so often practiced for this day. She hopes her hair is still in the tight knot she had put it. This is the picture that would determine how the world would see her. It would grace the pages of different newspapers. Both people that know her, and people that don't would see her, some may pity, some may insult, some may care less - What is important is that she can't look helpless. She is not helpless. She is not ashamed either. She stares into the camera, the sharp flash of light dazes her and causes her to see clouds of circle. She is a thief and a murderer, and she isn't ashamed of it.
The policeman, a tall dark man, with a deep tribal mark on his left cheek. His dark is disgusting, like soakaway water. She stares at him eyeball to eyeball. 'Witch' he says 'Why you dey look me like that? You want make i slap you. Thief like you, Ashawo Oshi'. She doesn't reply, she doesn't want another slap. It has been 20 slaps since she was arrested. Her face is burning, and her bruises are attracting the swarm of mosquitoes in the prison. They feast on her open wounds and she cannot wipe them away, because her hands are behind her back, in a rusted handcuff. Her ears are sore from the noise; the shouting of the police men, the crying of the prisoners, the sound of gunshots. She hates noise, she hates it so much that right now, her veins puff out in anger, as she watches this poor excuse for a man cry like a sick baby, 'Oga abeg' he pleads ' I get four shildren, and na me be the only pikin wey my mama born'. So he didn't know that this day would come, the day that is for the owner. Didn't he know? Did he think he is invisible? She wants to tell him to shut up. She wants to tell him that only those who are strong at heart should become thiefs. It's his type that would beat their wives, scream at their mother, boast and brag. Now, see the idiot, crying like a man less man. She? cry? Never! God forbid. She would carry her heavy cross with dignity. This is the prize she has to pay for killing that boy. Even though she had told herself it was a mistake, she didn't see him coming, she still killed a ten year old boy. She saw him everywhere, she saw him in her dreams, she saw him in her bathroom, her kitchen, her sitting room but he didn't enter her bedroom; that was her shrine. Her place of absolute peace, the place that was so silent that it almost deafened. He knew not to come there. She felt sorry for him, but she won't cry. It is his destiny, that she kills him, like it is her destiny to become a criminal. After all at the age of ten her parents killed her in the worst form of killing one could think of. They abandoned her, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere with #100. 'Find your way Shola', were the last words she heard from her father. Those words, even in the silence of her shrine, still echoed in her head. She tried in the first years to find her way, but, men always found their way inside her instead. At ten, with #100, no guardian, no food or water, she was asked to find her way.
They walk them to the cell; the policemen, with guns that look too heavy for them. She imagines a quick escape, she knows can beat the hell out of the three policemen at once, they look hungry and tired. The bones on their neck stick out of their flesh, it's almost painful to look at. She doesn't want to escape, there is nothing to escape for. She has no where to go.
She sits on the sticky floor of dry urine and spit, mosquitoes fly around her ears, at least this time she can smack them. She massages her wrist, the handcuff had made deep mark on her flesh. She feels the women gazing at her, their piercing eyes almost stripping off her dirty clothes. She ignores them. They look hungry, and defeated. The policemen had decided that they would move her to where criminals of her type are tomorrow. Today is the last day she would spend with this women, that stared at her as if she was an enigma. She doesn't want to go that cell, she doesn't want to stay in this cell either, she wants silence, absolute silence. Somewhere she could hear nothing. It would end today she says to herself. Her stomach sings in hunger. It's been two days since she tasted food or water. The shitty beans they serve her always ended up inside the small hole near the window that looked like the window of a bird cage, they call pit latrine. She feels the knife inside her trouser. She had hidden it so perfectly, even after so many search, the policemen couldn't find it. Her back aches from sitting upright all day.
The fall of every person, begins with a little mistake, a little slumber, a little carelessness, a little fear. Her own was a little slumber. One moment of confusion that made her pull the trigger on a sleeping child. If she hadn't killed that boy. She would have escaped the police on the mission, she promised herself would be her last. She was fast. Twenty years on the streets had taught her to be sharp, and on the alert. But it took one little slumber, to deadened her abilities. If that mission was a success, she would be in Ghana now. Starting all over, because she has a reason to. A reason to live again. She is pregnant, with a child. At first she thought of abortion, but, it made her feel like the people she had grown to hate.... Her parents that left her to the cold arms of life. She decided to have the baby, she was not her mother. She won't abandon her child. But, sitting in the police station with nothing but blighted hope. She knows she can't bring a child into this her world. A world full of bitterness and pain. They would go together; she and her child. To a place of absolute peace.
It is time, she hopes she doesn't feel too much pain. She isn't scared of pain, but she is scared that her baby might feel the pain. It's dark. Everyone in the cell is asleep, snoring loudly. She wonders how they could sleep to the extent of snoring, in this place that smelt like death. The knife glistens in her hands. She uses her finger to fill the spot were she would put the knife, the base of her skull, the back of her neck. The bone is thin there. It would cut her spinal cord and quickly paralyze her. She would die silently, no screaming or smacking. Plenty of blood though, but she wouldn't see it. She would be in a place of absolute silent. A place of nothingness.
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