Charles was fifteen when he saw his uncle’s gaze freeze like winter steel.
Advertisement
“Your father left no will,” spat Uncle Edward, his voice like shattered glass, as two security guards stood behind them, arms crossed. Favor clutched her schoolbag like a lifebuoy. Olivia, barely eleven, stood barefoot, her sandals forgotten in the chaos. She whispered through tears, “Charles… where will we sleep tonight?”
He had no answer.
Behind them, the man who had just destroyed their childhood adjusted his gold-embroidered agbada with his fingertips and smiled. “Many children find their way,” he said, dismissing them with a wave, like trash. Then he turned toward the house — their house. When the gates closed, metal hit metal with a final cruelty.
Advertisement
No goodbye. No explanation. Just silence. The kind that wraps around your bones.
Outside, Lagos didn’t care. Street vendors shouted prices. Buses wheezed and screeched. Beggars dragged plastic bowls between bumpers. No one noticed three children standing on the sidewalk with nowhere to go. No one stopped. No one asked.
Charles picked up the two bags the guards had thrown at them and took his sisters by the hand. He didn’t cry. Not yet. He couldn’t afford to. The street would smell his weakness. It was already watching.
They walked for hours, past movie posters they’d never get to see again, past buildings taller than their dreams now. Olivia stumbled once, scraped her knee, but said nothing. Favor wrapped it with a paper napkin. They had no money for food, so they drank from a leaking tap behind a garage and slept on flattened cardboard behind a kiosk. It rained that night. Not a gentle rain. An angry one, sharp and punishing.
Charles stayed awake all night, listening to every bark, every passing voice. Each one sounded like a threat. One hand on Olivia’s back, the other clutching a stone he didn’t know how to use.
By the third night, Favor was coughing. Olivia was quieter than usual, and that scared him. She used to talk non-stop… now she just stared.
He tried the church. The security guard chased them away with a stick. He tried a mall, pretending to window-shop with his sisters until the manager yelled at them to leave. That night, they found an unfinished building. Just walls. No doors. No roof. But no one chased them away. So they stayed.
Their uniforms became blankets. Their bags, pillows. The wind had teeth. The cold bit deep. But the hunger? Hunger was worse.
Days passed like punishment. Favor stopped talking altogether. Olivia’s cough worsened. Sometimes, blood. Charles begged in pharmacies with handwritten notes strangers helped him write: “Please, she’s just a child.” No one listened. One pharmacist told him, “Go call your mother.” Charles whispered, “She’s dead.” The man replied, “Then go call your God.”
So he did.
That night, sitting on cement with Olivia burning with fever and Favor curled up beside her, Charles looked up at the cracked ceiling and whispered, “God… if you’re real… please help me. I can’t take this anymore.”
He didn’t sleep.
The next morning, he joined the boys selling sachet water in traffic. He had borrowed 1,000 naira from a woman who sold meat pies. She told him he could pay her back in two days. He nodded, even though he didn’t believe it. That morning, under Lagos’s scorching sun, he ran after cars yelling: “Pure water! Cold water!”
Most ignored him. One driver slapped his hand. But someone bought. Then another. Then another.
By evening, he had made 1,300 naira.
He ran to the pharmacy and begged for cheap cough medicine. Crushed the tablets, mixed them with water, and gave Olivia small sips.
She vomited the first dose.
But kept the second one down.
That night, Charles sat on the floor, Olivia’s head on his lap, Favor’s feet on his thigh. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. The stars watched. The wind watched. Even God, if He existed, watched.
Then came Mr. Matthew.
The former head of the family. He looked thinner. Eyes hollow. Shirt hanging loose. He saw them and froze.
“Jesus,” he murmured. “Charles…”
Charles stood up but said nothing.
Mr. Matthew took three steps and fell to his knees. “I heard what they did. I’ve been looking for you. I… I couldn’t live with it.”
Charles didn’t know what to say.
“I don’t have much,” said Matthew, “but you can come stay at my place. Just a flat. Two rooms. You’ll sleep on a mat. But it’s better than here.”
That was all Charles needed.
They moved in that very night.
The flat was deep in Ajegunle. Crowded, noisy, alive. They shared toilets with three other families. But there was a roof. Warmth. Mr. Matthew’s wife wasn’t the hugging type, but she warmed their bathwater and fried yams when she could.
Charles kept selling water.
Favor joined him on good days, stayed with Olivia on bad ones. They took turns. They endured. They learned to dodge, to haggle, to smile through pain. Every naira mattered. Every rejection left a scar.
Weeks turned into months.
And Charles? Charles became someone else.
Not a boy. Not anymore.
Hunger had killed the boy. Pain had grown something else in his place — something harder, quieter, more desperate for meaning.
One evening, three years later, Charles stood behind a small wooden stall, wiping sweat from his brow. His own stall. His name hand-painted in blue: “CharLive Waters & Drinks.” On the table, sachets of water stacked in neat rows. Crates of Pepsi, Lacasera, bitter lemon.
Favor helped track sales in a black notebook.
They’d left Matthew’s house. Now, they lived in a single room. Still small. But theirs.
Favor and Olivia were back in school. A public one. Nothing fancy. But they had uniforms again. School bells. Homework. Arguments over who spent too long in the bathroom. It felt… normal.
Every morning before school, they hugged Charles. “Thank you.”
He said nothing. Just waved them off.
But at night, when the city went quiet, when the hum of generators faded, he stared at the ceiling and still whispered:
“Dad… I’m trying.”
He said it every night. Like a promise. Like a vow.
And the street?
The street had stopped beating him.
Now, it nodded when he walked by.
Then karma began to stir.
