How Single Mothers Expose Their Daughters to Abuse.

Lakeera Watson woke up with a start. The 16 year old teenager looked around with sleepy eyes, wondering why she woke up. Then, she heard some rude noises, the source of which she could not place immediately.

   Impulsively, she glanced at the table clock beside her bed. It indicated that the time was ten minutes after one in the morning.

   She decided to go back to sleep. But when the noises persisted, she got up slowly from her queen-sized bed.

   Grabbing a robe from atop a nearby chair, the girl wore it quickly over her night dress. Then, she walked toward the direction of the noises.

   Lakeera Watson had almost reached her mother’s bedroom, when she realized that it was her mother who had been giggling so noisily.

   Wondering about the object of the older woman’s amusement; the sleepy-eyed girl decided to go check for herself.

   The teenager had barely reached the door of the bedroom when the laughter changed into soft cries. Baffled by the sudden turn of events, the girl quickly moved closer to the half-closed door and gently pushed it to let herself in. And that was when she got the rudest shock of her life.

   Lying intertwined on the bed, with eyes tightly shut was her spread-eagled mother and a man atop her. The man was heard breathing heavily as he engaged in what appeared, in the girl’s consciousness, to be an act of sex.

   Stunned by the gory sight, the girl was momentarily transfixed to one spot while she listened to the heavy grunts and some weird whistling sounds that came from both her mother and the man.

   Suddenly, Lakeera heard her mother and the man cry out in ecstasy. Not really comprehending the situation, the teenager also heard her mother yell a command to the man to get off her.

     In disgust, the teenager bolted from the room. But in the process, she inadvertently knocked one of her arms on the edge of the door.

   It was this commotion that exposed her presence in the room.

   Alerted by the noisy departure of her daughter, Sherri Watson and her lover turned sharply to catch a fleeting glimpse of the fleeing girl.

   “Oh, no.” the older Watson sprang up from the bed to put on a bath robe.

“What the hell was she doing here?” her boyfriend asked in anger as he too sat up in the bed. Without an answer, Sherri Watson walked slowly toward her daughter’s room.     

This is an excerpt from The Temptation of Fate, a book by Femi Olawole.