HER lips were bruised and hurting, yet she hummed, softly, songs that spoke of dreams and faith, of a love that comes from deep within. Her hands worked deftly preparing tasty delicacies for her food stall, a small business she had inherited from her grandmother. It became her only livelihood, a girl whose dreams had gotten lost in the broken pieces of her life.
“Why did this had to happen to me?” she had often asked herself as she grew from a little girl to a young woman. A bitter separation between her mother and father had changed everything in Tanya’s life and she had watched tearful, her little heartbreaking as the two people she loved the most in the world went their separate ways.
“What happened to the love they shared?” she had asked herself, “What is happening now to me?”

She missed her dad, but life went on for her and her mother, who struggled to pick up the pieces. Her father was not visiting too often.
She soon got a new job in a beauty salon and things had begun to improve in their lives until she brought home her new boyfriend. That was another blow in the child’s life for things changed not for the better and soon she was sent to live with her grandmother for a while.

In the nights, she had cried silently, awakening each morning with the hope that her mother would return for her and say, “Let’s go home, baby.”
But though she visited, she never said those words and whenever Tanya asked, her answer always was “I need a little time more.”
Weeks passed into months and when months became a couple of years Tanya stopped asking her. She had to change school and church, living with her grandmother in a small country house. She helped her with preparing the street food she sold on food court tarmacs, learning along the way.

She had managed to adjust her life but her heart still grieved, for she felt she was left on the wayside to bloom like a wild flower.
A beautiful young woman she had become, simple with a pleasant countenance and always a warm smile. She kept God close to her heart and continued to live with hopes that one day in her life she could find a blessed happiness that could make her smile radiantly.
“Yuh ah read too much ah dem love story book,” Aunt Theresa, a food vendor near to her had teased her.
“Yeah,” Tanya had sighed, “I guess I feel safe living in a dream world.”

“Well, you gotta wake up sometime,” Aunt Theresa reiterated, “Da boy in Block C like yuh and he gat ah nice car.”
“I know,” Tanya had responded with a patient smile, “But he has many girlfriends and has been detained several times by the police.”
“Girl, it was just suspicion,” the old lady retorted, “Yuh cyan worry about dem things.”
“Not the kind of guy I would like to share my life with,” Tanya had voiced in a serious tone.

Aunt Theresa had looked at Tanya, liking the young woman for her quiet and simple demeanour and she had said to her, “You really deserve someone good in your life.”
Tanya had smiled at the kind woman warmly but said nothing.
Her main focus was to continue earning her own money and becoming self-independently strong. She was saving so one day she could expand into a small, classy restaurant in the city.
She had already drawn up her plans but had to be patient because she couldn’t save much after living expenses and regularly contributing to charity for the poorer kids.
“I will realise my dream one day,” she kept reassuring herself, “one day.”
But life took an unexpected turn.

She was at a Christmas concert when he walked into her life; tall, dark and immensely attractive. But being the simple girl, she was, she had thought he wouldn’t notice her but he did.
She fell for the sincerity in his words and the charm in his smile.
“Such a deceit that was,” Tanya bemoaned as she packed the food containers.
A special relationship had begun and though it brought happiness in her life, she wasn’t sure if it was what her heart really desired.
“Maybe time will tell,” she said to herself, “he’s quite a nice guy.”
And he had started his own small business too, along with a few small investments in trade. One day he had told her, “When I achieve greater success, I will take you away from here for a better life.”

“That’s good,” she had expressed, feeling excited for the future.
But less than a year after they began living together, cracks began to show underneath his façade of charm. At the beginning of the abuse, he had always expressed regrets after hitting her and she had forgiven him, trying to understand the disturbing change. It had left a sense of fear and uncertainty in her heart.
“Where did the guy I gave my love to go?”

She continued her food business on the tarmac but Mark’s business seemed not to be doing well and whenever he made any losses on his investments, he blamed it on her. It came to a point when she couldn’t take any more of his bad moods and the constant abuse. She told him she was leaving.
But he would not let her, promising to change, that things would get better, but things got worse when he came home one night with a gun.
“What is going on?” she had asked him with a deep feeling of dread.

“Nothing,” he had answered casually, “It’s just for protection.”
She did not like it and she did not believe him.
Something was going wrong with Mark’s life and he kept it hidden from her. He had a den in a part of the lower flat that was his own private space and late in the nights, strange men in heavily tinted vehicles came to meet him. It was something he had forbidden her to talk about.

She had grown up in an underdeveloped community where crime was like lurking tentacles waiting to hold captive the weak and the vulnerable. She had stayed strong in mind, not to become a victim, now the one she was sharing her life with had opened that door to her home.
“I can’t allow this to continue,” she had decided and the last night when she had tried to talk to him about it, he had gotten angry and hit her.
And he had warned her with the gun in his hand, “Don’t ever think of leaving.”

“Just when I had thought I found happiness,” she cried silently as she attended to her customers.
“How do I free myself from him?”
To be continued…