Continued from Entitlement II
“Who do you think you are to slap me like that?” Ruth asks, her temper flaring.
“I am the owner of the house, and if you and your children don’t leave my house right this moment I will slap you again.”
“You cannot kick me out in the middle of the night. Where do you expect me to go with these little children? How heartless can you be?”
“I really don’t care, Ruth. I did not invite you to my house and I certainly don’t want you here. Where you go is not my problem. What I know is that I don’t want you here.”
“What is going on here?” a third voice asks. It is Grace, Flora’s mother-in-law.
“This woman just came and supplanted herself in my house. I don’t want her here, but she doesn’t want to leave. Mother, just tell her to leave before I do something I will regret.”
Ruth didn’t know who the stranger was, but immediately she hears Flora calling her ‘mother’ she figures that she is Flora’s mother-in-law. Ruth knows that unlike Jerome, Nelson comes from a well up family. This is actually the reason why she and her mother planned this move. They feel that it is unfair for Flora, who is a senior officer in the company where she works (which means she has lots of money) and is married into a wealthy family, to continue living in luxury while they wallow in poverty.
“I am not just any woman. I am her sister and she cannot kick me out at night.”
Ruth breaks down and starts crying. She has mastered the art of manipulation.
“Mother, I already told you the story of this woman. The last time I welcomed her into my house, she and my ex-husband betrayed me. They started sleeping together and kicked me out of the house.”
“Are really telling your mother-in-law that you don’t trust her son?”
*
Ruth has suffered. When she realized that Flora’s ex-husband Jerome was going down, she dumped her son at his biological father’s home, and went to live with a man she had met online. His name was Ambrose. He was a flamboyant lawyer and businessman who liked showing off on social media. He lived in Kilimani, and that is where she moved in with him.
Life was perfect for a few months. Ambrose like showing her off to his friends. And he lavished her with expensive gifts. Through him, Ruth got to know many celebrities and politicians. Those were the circles that Ambrose moved in. She went into mansions to attend parties with her beau. She knew that Ambrose was a womanizer, but she was determined to cement her place as his main woman, even though he was a certified bachelor.
She got pregnant.
In her mind, she thought that by getting pregnant, she would draw into Ambrose’s paternal instincts to domesticate him. She could already see the lavish baby shower he would throw for her, which would be attended by celebrity A-listers. She even opened a YouTube Channel to document her pregnancy like other celebrities do. By that time she was already feeling like a celebrity. She Ambrose would approve, even before she told him about it, because being a vain man, he would enjoy the spotlight that the channel would bring.
But she was wrong. Dead wrong.
Ambrose had no paternal instincts. Quite the contrary, when he learned that she was pregnant, he flew into a rage.
“Who told you to get pregnant?” he demanded.
“When a man sleeps with a woman, pregnancy is one of the results,” she had retorted.
“Have you ever heard of the word contraceptive?”
“You are an educated man. You know that no contraceptive is one hundred percent perfect. Failures do happen.”
“Well there is one that has been working for me all these years. It is called vasectomy. This pregnancy just confirms that you have been seeing another man, or other men, behind my back.”
Ruth was shocked, then terrified. She did not know that Ambrose had had a vasectomy done. How would she have known? It was true that she had been seeing other men. She had being seeing her campus sweetheart from time to time. She had never let him completely go, even though they broke up when she started sleeping with Jerome. They kept seeing each other every now and then, and kept that up even after Ruth hooked up with Ambrose. While living with Ambrose, Ruth had also slept with two celebrity musicians and a comedian, who happened to be Ambrose’s closest friends.
In simple terms, she wasn’t sure who the father of the baby was. But she couldn’t tell Ambrose that, so she made a last ditch attempt at blackmail and reverse psychology.
“You know babe, if you don’t want to take care of your baby, it is okay. I will go and take care of my own child. But don’t try to accuse me of things that I have not done. I have never cheated on you. I would never even dream of doing that.”
Ambrose had smiled slyly before responding.
“It’s okay sweetheart. I believe you. But let us do a DNA test on the foetus you are carrying so that we can clarify the issue once and for all.”
“If you believe me as you are saying, why do we need a DNA? You are speaking from both ends of your mouth. You are saying you believe me but you don’t believe me at the same time.”
“I paid a lot of money for the vasectomy, sweetheart. I went to the finest hospital and they assured me that I would never ever get a woman pregnant again. But they obviously lied and I want to sue them. But for me to have a case, I need to prove that I actually made my girlfriend pregnant. You understand that, don’t you?”
Of course Ruth understood that he was setting a trap for her. So she agreed. But three days before the day they were supposed to do the test, she left his house and never turned back. She sent him a message saying she was tired of his toxicity and then blocked his number. She had some little savings from the cash he had been giving her, and this is what she tried to live on as she looked for another means of survival.
She was confident that her brief encounter with Ambrose was enough to earn her celebrity status, especially if she made a big deal about their break up. Her social media numbers would grow, including those on YouTube. She would make money both on YouTube and as an influencer. And somewhere along the way she would hook up with another rich man.
For a couple of weeks the plan worked. She was all over social media talking ill about Ambrose and got plenty of love for it. She particularly got a lot of sympathy when she mentioned that he had made her pregnant and then kicked her out of his house. The fans loved it and her numbers grew. But that all changed when Ambrose decided to hit back with the truth. He talked about his vasectomy saying that all he had asked her was to do a DNA test so that he could tell whether his vasectomy had failed.
The drama lasted for one more week after Ambrose made his social media post, but the tide changed in his favor. Initially Ruth wasn’t worried, because she knew that the publicity would be good for her, even if it was negative. People would follow her if only to get the latest gossip. But it didn’t work that way. Quite inexplicably, people started unfollowing her and her numbers dropped. She tried all manner of stunts to keep herself afloat on social media but she was on a free fall. Within a month, the drama was long forgotten, and she was a nobody on social media, struggling to get even twenty likes on social media.
And her pregnancy was beginning to show.
The months that followed were months of struggle. She was forced to move from the house she had rented in Hurlingam and went to Kayole. That is where her children were born, and she was surviving by doing online writing, which she had last done while in campus. But she had tasted soft life, and she hated the life she was living. She tried hooking up with other rich men, such as the celebrities and politicians she had met while living with Ambrose, but most wanted nothing to do with her. And the few that did just slept with her gave her peanuts, leaving her feeling like a commercial sex worker. Money was quickly becoming tight. Her savings were over, she had sold all her expensive jewelry and her online writing work wasn’t bringing in enough.
She located Jerome, who she discovered was living in Njiru and had somehow gotten back on his feet. Moving in with him would make sense for her, because it would mean that her most basic bills would be covered. She figured he would be easy to manipulate. She had twin girls, and he desperately wanted to be a father. But as she soon discovered, Jerome was now a ‘kept man’. He was living with a wealthy widow in Njiru. The woman had inherited her husband’s property and had grown children. She had used her money to get herself a man, and she was keeping him on a very tight leash. She was foul tempered, and when she discovered that her man was chatting with Ruth, she called Ruth and threatened to have her “butchered and her body roasted over an open fire”. Ruth believed her and stayed away from Jerome from that day.
But she was living beyond her means, even in Kayole, and she was eventually kicked out of the house she was living in. With the Jerome option off the table, she had two options: move to the slums like other strugglers in the city, or swallow her pride and go back to her parent’s house. She chose the latter. She took her twin girls and moved back home.
When she got home, she quickly learned that her “rich” sister had gotten married to a wealthy man. Her parents were feeling aggrieved because they were not getting a share of that wealth, and a plan was quickly hatched.
Ruth was dispatched to Flora’s house.
*
“It’s okay,” Grace says gently. “This is what we are going to do. Ruth, you cannot force yourself into your sister’s house. So you will come and spend the night in my house, and tomorrow morning you go back home. Is that clear?”
“Yes madam,” Ruth says.
As they head out of the door towards Grace’s house, Ruth is already feeling like fortune has landed on her laps. Grace is an old woman. Surely her husband will be tempted by a young, good looking woman. She only needs to find a way of extending her stay in Grace’s house beyond tomorrow, and the man of the house will be hers for the taking.
Continued Here.
*
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