Second Chance

I sit and stare at her with fear and sadness in my heart. She’s seated there facing me like a statue with a distant gaze locked in her eyes. Just like all the others, her limbs are weak. Her face creased with lines like long rivers of tears meandering into one another, making her look twice her age. 

 Her knees are wobbly and her upper lips continues to quiver like a dreaded truth was about to be unraveled. 

I stare at the King James Bible clenched tightly in my hands. I do not know what to do. She moves like a corpse towards me and positions herself on the other chair in the room, directly in front of me. 

Her bottom lands quietly on the leather-bound office chair as she releases a sigh from her chapped pale lips. 

For the umpteenth time, my legs wobble underneath the table in response to her current state. I am nervous. Her eyes boring weakly into mine like a deranged demon begging to be set free.

Over ten years in this profession, but the chills accosting my spine made me realize that this one was different. Unusually so too. I could feel it, in the depths of my guts. This time, with this story, this lady, this verdict, it would only become harder. 

“Please…” she utters a quiet chapped plea that is barely incomprehensible for the first time since our encounter. 

I hardly hear her and lean in closer. Our breaths almost meet. Hers is surprisingly clean and free of any stench for someone in her condition. I am mildly impressed as I chide myself to pay attention to the pressing matters at hand. 

“Please…help…me ”  she utters again..this time drawing another invisible strength from within. 

The way her eyes move frantically with mine puts me in exasperation, and my palms begin to sweat again.

I stare at her long enough that I want to ask God why?  Why would he let anyone go through punishment for a sin that was hardly theirs, to begin with? 

“Please beg your God to save me. I am a sinner, yes. True. But not a sinner that is deserving of such a punishment…please beg him to help me. I want mercy. I am suffering…my parents…my old parents…my siblings …they don’t deserve any of this..please….” She moans in pain, grabbing my shirt tightly. 

I feel a strong stench envelop me immediately and I immediately feel bad and subconsciously chastise myself. 

I was not any less different from her. I was only privileged by the ironic hands of time, separated on the other side of the unconvicted. I had my fair share of sins as well, and besides, weren’t we all pawns of time? I scoffed at myself in derision.

I pitied her for she would be leaving this world soon. Wasn’t it better to be dead than to be in such a piteous condition, Convicted and condemned by men to die?

“Are you listening to me?” She interrupts my thoughts, jerking my shirt again aggressively.

I look at her dry flaccid skin and hate that she does not look anything like the girl in the picture splattered all over the internet. 

That girl had a huge sunny smile, moisturized skin, and full succulent lips that blasted of good health. Now I couldn’t believe my eyes. Right before me, she stood, like a shadow of her former self. 

How long has she been here anyway, that they’d do this to her? Make her look like a walking dead version of her real self.?

She fumbles her scaly fingers together like she’s trying to scrub off invisible dirt from it. 

“My God can save you. If you choose to allow him to do so. That’s the best gift he can give to you, my dear.”

“Can he?” She replied, a dark glimmer of hope glinting in her dark pupils. 

I watched her quietly and shivered in anxiety as her response struck my heart. Who was I to promise her that a savior was coming? Who was I to give her this hope? Whether false or real? Who was I?

“What’s your name?” I asked

“Rebecca,”  she replied with no enthusiasm.

“Rebecca, you must understand that there is nothing I can do that will alter the current progression of your situation. It is clearly beyond me. But there’s one thing I strongly believe. That is if you believe it too. There is someone who can set you free, not just your mortal flesh, but your inner man. Do you understand what I am saying?” I continued, this time drawing scriptures to mind. 

She continued to stare blankly at me, resigned like she could hardly comprehend anything I had to  say  

 I see a teardrop fall from her left eye. This time, it is not resembling desperation. It is like a wish for a life lost, gone, and never to be recovered. 

I nervously press the Bible into the depths of my palm and hope she doesn’t realize that her moodiness was affecting me. 

“Dear God, I am tired,” I quietly muttered underneath my breath. 

I am supposed to bring hope to the hopeless, help them seek salvation. Help them strain to attain a higher place. Build their faith to the point where the evils of this world would not matter anymore. Not drive them farther from you! Lord, please hear me, help me.

“How old are you? “

“23.”

I shut my eyes as she utters the word. I want to scream and say that is not fair. 

You’re too young to be seeing any of this. You should be like any of the rebellious young adults out there, or like any of the other young adults giving their lives to the service of God. You should be getting a good job, getting married, giving back to your society, grooming your siblings, if you’ve got any. You should be everything but what you are right now. 

Instead, I ask like I don’t know what it means to be 23, and young, with busted dreams and aspirations. 

“I heard you’re going to the gallows tomorrow? “

She smiles and shrugs an inaudible “Yes” like we’re discussing something as trivial as the nation’s economy over coffee and not her death—of the most brutal kind. 

“Did you ever go to the university?”

For the first time, I see her teeth flash fleetingly in a half-smile, half sigh.

She stares at me like I’m a wall again. With that vacant empty gaze that is aware of your presence but does not care. 

“Do you want to tell me how you got to be in this position?” 

“No.”

“Why not?”

“What’s the point? I don’t think it’s going to help anyway. It’s useless to go back and forth when the end has already been determined.” 

So much depth, I wondered to myself. How did someone with such a critical mind end up in this messy state of affairs? Why was life this unfair?

Maybe you’re right, I shrugged and responded. 

She looked into my eyes for the first time, and I saw something shift. Something invisible that I could not describe. But it had too much power, I could feel it.

Like she could not believe that I would call her right.

That anyone on this earth would want to hear whatever she had to say.

“Rebecca,” I pressed, ” please look at me. Your story matters. Even you too deserve to be heard.”

She shrugs off my hands and stares through me like a wall again.

“It’d make you feel better. Make you process everything that happened. Everything that brought you here. “

She continues to stare through me until she finally begins the story. 

***

“I was a happy youth. 23 and full of life. I had been certain that everything would have no choice but to work out well in my life from now on. Graduated summa cum laude from the university at the age of 22, and finished my service year not too long after. I was determined to live up to my parents’ investments and expectations for me. I had an okay life. I prayed to get a better job. Heck, like any other normal sensible grown adult would want. That was all I wished for, to make my parents happy. To be truly happy. “

“I had love too. I had met a boy during my NYSC days, and we had both fallen head over heels with one other. “

“One cool Saturday evening, I went over to his place to spend the evening together. He lived in a ghetto street that was notorious for all kinds of inhumane activities. I knew I could risk getting robbed on the way to his place or worse, raped.”

“Jide, my boyfriend promised that he’d be with me during the entire period of my stay at his place. He’d walk me to and from the motor park, and in that way,  I’d be safe. No harm could befall me. “

“I trusted him, his words, and more than anything else, I wanted to have fun, and live in the moment. So I agreed to his idea. “

“On the 23rd of September, I arrived and got settled in. We spent three days in the house and everything was going well until one Tuesday evening, tragedy struck. “

“A Call had suddenly come in, and Jide had rushed off to meet with his boss for an impromptu meeting. He instructed me to stay indoors, and not go out for anything. “

“I…I had been in the house all day, bored and restless. I grew hungry and wanted to make some noodles before Jide’s arrival. I searched the nook and cranny of the small house, but couldn’t find anything that resembled a matchbox.”

“That was when I realized that he didn’t have any. With my stomach rumbling loudly, I reached into my purse, dug out some cash, and hurried over to the mallam’s kiosk directly opposite the house.”

“There was a huge road between Jide’s house and the Mallam’s kiosk, and I could hear his radio blaring from the other end of the street. “

“For some strange reason, the road was desolate and everyone seemed to be inside their houses, which was unusual. I figured members of the neighborhood had all retired to their houses because of the rainfall.”

“How wrong I was.”

“While attempting to cross to the other side, a loud police van intercepted me and the next series of events occurred like a movie.”

“Hey, you! Don’t move, or else, We’d shoot.”

“You’re under arrest.”

“Excuse me? I muttered in panic…Why? …what do you mean?” Of course, it was delirious to assume I’d be under arrest for an offense I knew nothing of. 

“Shut up, you murderer!” One of the police officers yelled at me, as he started to walk menacingly towards me with a gun in his hands. 

I began to run in panic. The mallam had stood on the opposite side of the road and looked on as the entire drama ensued. Not attempting to come to my rescue. 

“Wait…you’re mistaken,” I echoed in fright. Half begging, half frightened.  “I came to buy matches…I don’t even live here…ask the mallam…you think I’m someone else…im innocent…”

“The next series of events ensued almost immediately. One of the police officers cornered me and butted me heavily with the base of his gun in the head. “

“One of the last things I saw on that fateful night before I was forcefully taken away,  was a little star in the sky fading away slowly like it never existed. 

Soon I  surrendered to unconsciousness.”

“After that, the next day, I was charged to court and prosecuted to die by hanging for the murder of a man I had never heard or met in my life.”

“They said I had killed a man and stabbed him 23 times. It was a crime of passion.”

She stops almost immediately and starts to stare through me again. Like a brick wall.

I sit up and start to speak. Not knowing how to console her. It was always different when someone did not commit the crime in the first place.

“I’m sorry,” I say. She looks at me and looks away almost immediately. 

“It’s the way the law is. I am only a victim. We hear of such things all the time in the news. An elite’s son or daughter had probably committed a grievous crime and killed a man. They’d get bail, but I? I was only the missing rat the system chose to complete the puzzle. To build the perfect crime.  I never thought such cruelty could happen to me. That I would one day become the victim in a heinous twisted plot”.

“Do you believe in God?” I ask, trying to get her mind off her predicament. 

“God? I don’t think he cares about me.”

“Maybe you can’t say that yet,” I reply gently, taking her dry hands into mine. “He sometimes lets us face massive persecution for a greater good that is above all of us. Like the way he let his son be sacrificed by men in the most painful and most shameful of death.”

“Maybe this life is over for you,” I continue, “would you like to live a new life, after tomorrow?”

“I don’t care. “

“You just have to believe that there is hope. That’s all you need to be qualified for it. Just believe and have faith.”

“Such things have never helped anyone.” She counters, frowning. 

“Well, there’s a new life for those who believe.”

The timer buzzes loudly, signaling the end of our conversation.

I watch three stiff prison warders walk up to our table briskly and drag her up without mercy. 

“Your time is up”  they recite to me,  like programmed robots. 

“A new life..,.” Rebecca mutters to herself as the women drag her along without mercy. 

“A new life.”

I watch her being pulled back in, the same way she had been brought out. Fiercely and without mercy.  I feel a pool of tears gather in my eyes, blurring my vision almost immediately. My tears falling from joy. She would believe, and because of this, tomorrow Rebecca would be with Jesus. The persecution of this world left behind her forever.

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