It began with a promise made at the altar of God.
And ended with a curse shouted from the same pulpit.
Haneefa didn't know all the details yet, but she could feel the pain lodged in her mother's voice whenever the name "Chijioke" was mentioned in whispers and in warnings. He wasn't just another man. He was a storm that shattered something holy in Adunni—a man who wore the collar of Christ but struck her heart like Judas in the garden.
Chijioke. A claimed man of God. A savior. A liar.
He had walked into their lives with a Bible in one hand and tenderness in the other. And for once, Adunni thought—this is it. Not just a man, but a man of God. A man who would hold her, cover her, raise her daughters as his own. A man who knew love wasn't just affection but sacrifice. He met her while preaching at a revival in Ibadan, and by the third sermon, his eyes never left her in the front row.
He approached her like a man on divine assignment. His voice was gentle, his prayers fervent, and his promises endless. Adunni had already suffered enough heartbreak to crush a village woman, but Chijioke's confidence was holy. He said God spoke to him in a dream. He said she was the missing piece to his ministry. He called her an Esther, a Ruth, a Deborah.
He knew she had daughters. She told him early on—Aisha and Bisola. They were her whole life. "I won't be a man if I can't father what you already love," he said, voice trembling in prayer.
So she believed.
And they married—in secret.
Not because she wanted to, but because his church, his family, his reputation, couldn't take the weight of her story. She was a widow. She had children. She wasn't Igbo. She wasn't born again enough for them. But he said, "Let me fix that first. I'll bring you out when it's right. Trust me, Adunni."
She did.
Months passed. Then a year.
He came home only at night. He refused pictures. He told her not to speak of their union. And slowly, the man who used to pray over her stomach and kiss her daughters goodnight became a man of shadows. His visits became sermons, his sermons became absences, and the whispers in her neighborhood turned into screams in her mind.
Then one day, she heard it.
She heard it from his own lips.
It was a Sunday morning. She had gone to the church to surprise him. The girls were dressed in their best clothes. Aisha had even made a card. She just wanted to stand beside him once—publicly. As his daughter.
The moment he saw her walk in, his eyes widened. Not with joy. With fear.
And then, it happened.
One of the elders, confused, asked him, "Pastor, who is this woman with those girls?"
Adunni expected his smile.
But what came next would mark her soul forever.
He gripped the microphone, hands shaking with fury, and said, "This woman is a devil sent to destroy what God is doing in this ministry! I do not know her. She's been following me for months, claiming things that are not true. Please, church, pray for her deliverance!"
There was silence. Then gasps. Then, as if on cue, the entire church rose and started to pray. Loud. Violent. As if Adunni were a curse.
Aisha dropped the card. Bisola began to cry.
And Adunni—oh, Adunni stood there like a widow all over again, burying not a man, but hope.
That was the day Chijioke buried her alive.
Adunni didn't remember how she got home that day.
Her feet moved but her mind had shut down. Aisha walked beside her in silence, holding Bisola's hand. The world had gone quiet. Not the kind of peace you pray for, but the kind that comes after something has been destroyed. Like a house that has just been burned down. Like a heart.
She vomited that night. Three times. Not from food. But from the kind of pain that curdles deep in your belly. And when her stomach twisted into a knot she could no longer bear, she lay down on her back, eyes staring at the wooden ceiling, and whispered to herself, "Why did I ever believe I deserved joy?"
The next week, she discovered she was pregnant.
Chijioke had not just left shame in her mouth—he had left a child in her womb. A child conceived in secret, under the guise of love. A child who would grow inside a woman now treated like a rumor.
She thought of removing it.
The thought nearly swallowed her.
Because how could she raise another child—his child—after everything?
How could she wake up each day and see his eyes, his nose, his blood walking around her house, calling her "Mama"?
But then something strange happened.
Aisha, only five years old at the time, walked into the room one evening, her tiny frame bathed in the last light of dusk, and said, "Are we going to be okay, Mama?"
Adunni looked at her daughter, and for the first time in days, she let her tears fall freely.
"We're not going to be okay," she said. "We're going to be more than okay."
And she meant it.
She decided, right there, to carry that baby.
Not for Chijioke.
Not for shame.
But for herself.
For the daughters she already had.
And for the daughter she didn't yet know she was carrying.
Chiamaka was born during the rainy season.
The sky wept the day she came into the world, and yet, inside that small room with the leaking roof, Adunni felt a warmth she hadn't felt in years.
She named her Chiamaka—"God is beautiful"—because somehow, through the storm, she had delivered beauty from betrayal.
But raising her was not easy.
Because in a country that never forgets your sins—especially when you're a woman—people talked. Oh, they talked.
They said Chiamaka was a curse. They said she was proof of Adunni's loose legs. They said no man would marry her now, with three children and three different fathers. One no where to be found, one disappeared, and one… a pastor who denied her to her face.
Chiamaka grew up with a question etched into her bones.
Why didn't he want me?
She didn't say it often. But she didn't need to. Her silence was loud. Her eyes always searching.
She was brilliant, though. Fierce like her sisters, but with a fire that burned differently. She asked questions. She argued with teachers. She protected her sisters from street bullies. And as she grew, so did the whispers about how much she looked like him.
Like Chijioke.
Same dimples. Same walk. Same voice when angry.
And sometimes, Adunni couldn't help but flinch when Chiamaka looked at her in frustration—because it felt like he was back in the room.
But she loved her.
Oh, how she loved her.
Even when it hurt.
Even when people said she shouldn't.
That night, Adunni sat in the kitchen.
The light was dim. The generator had gone off again, and the only sound was the rhythmic hum of the neighbor's ceiling fan next door. Haneefa sat across from her, legs folded beneath her, eyes locked on her mother's hands. Adunni wasn't looking at her. She was staring into the steam rising from her cup of millet pap, her fingers trembling slightly.
"I think sometimes," Adunni said slowly, "that God gave me daughters so I would never forget the wars I survived."
Haneefa didn't respond. Not yet. She'd learned to wait—like you wait for thunder after lightning. Let the silence rumble through.
"I thought Chijioke was the last man I would ever love," her mother continued. "Not because he was good, but because I was so sure that I had finally been seen. Isn't that the most dangerous feeling? Being seen?"
She turned now, her eyes meeting Haneefa's. And in them was that same storm—the one that always came after a heartbreak, after another name was spoken.
"He said I was a woman worth protecting. He kissed my scars. Held my daughters' hands. Promised to be their father too. And I…" she paused, voice cracking, "I believed him. Because when you've suffered enough, you don't dream of castles. You dream of shelter."
Haneefa wiped a silent tear from her cheek, her throat tight.
"He called me a devil, Haneefa. Said I was sent to tempt him. Said the child growing in me was proof of my unclean spirit. And he said it on the altar—in front of God and man."
Her voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. The quiet made it worse.
Then she laughed.
A small, bitter sound.
"But I still cooked. I still cleaned. I still raised Chiamaka. Because motherhood is not the reward for being loved—it is the duty of surviving unloved."
A long silence.
Then she added, "And that child… she became my healing."
Haneefa looked away now, the weight in her chest pressing against her ribs. She didn't know how her mother was still breathing. If it were her, she would have drowned in her own sorrow long ago.
"I'm afraid," Haneefa whispered.
Adunni tilted her head slightly.
"I'm afraid of the next story."
Adunni blinked, slowly.
And Haneefa continued, her voice shaking.
"There were seven men. You've told me three. And I feel like I've only just scratched the surface of your pain. But Mama… this pain… it's heavy. It's making a home in my chest. And I'm scared that if you tell me about the fourth man—about Damilola's father—it'll shatter something inside me that I won't be able to piece back."
Adunni didn't speak for a long time.
Then she reached across the table, took her daughter's hand gently, and said, "Good. Let it break you. Let it rearrange you. Because truth doesn't come to comfort. It comes to confront."
Haneefa swallowed.
And in that moment, with her mother's hand wrapped around hers, she understood something she'd never been told but had always known:
Some women raise nations.
Some raise daughters.
And some raise stories that were never meant to be spoken—
because silence was the only way they could survive.