Chapter 73

The first day that she came here, for Blessing, it was to follow Mandy to finally see the house she talked about, a duplex resting in a compound filled with flowers.

Blessing imagined her friend, Mandy growing up here, riding her bicycle down the sloping street, returning home from grade school with her bag and water bottle. She imagined Mandy trying hard to turn a bad day at school into one big smile as she approached the entrance of this duplex. Still, the building didn’t move Blessing as she thought it would. She thought it too old, and the road to it too busy, the dust too much, the people who walked along it too satisfied with the smallness of their lives.

But she would come to love it, a hesitant love at first. A love that didn’t come too quickly. A slow one that started from a storytelling that didn’t please her ears at first. It was the eve of Christmas, and Blessing had just followed Mandy to her school.

From the window of Mandy’s hostel room, where two be