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A PRICE TO PAY

Cara knew she was in trouble the moment she walked into her posh living room. ‘Dooms day must look something like this’ she thought to her self. She felt like her whole world was shattering into tiny-whiny pieces right in front of her eyes. All those sleepless nights of planning what she so confidently called the undisputable, foolproof, Master plan must have backfired on her because there was no other explanation to the unwelcome presence of what, at that time, looked to her as the whole clan! But this could not be! She knew for sure that there was no way her web of deceit could have been discovered. Hadn’t she covered her tracks well enough? Hadn’t she taken extra precaution to make sure no one would ever unravel her hidden secret? But the sight of old uncle Tom and his ugly wife Sarah, her cousin Lucy, her aunts Mercy and Grace and of all the people matronly aunt Ruth who lived upcountry, her godparents and a host of other relatives, told a tale of its own. Cara thanked God for small mercies when she realized that THE BITCH (her pet name for her paternal aunt Fiona) was blessedly absent. Now of all times, Cara was positive she did not need her shrill voice to blow everything out of proportion! But it’s the presence of her cousin-cum-sister crying at the far end of the room that took the air out of her .She felt like someone had pulled the rug from under her feet. Lucy had been her lieutenant, her confidant, she knew virtually everything Cara was involved in, and how could she be sited there looking so guilty? She couldn’t possibly have told them! All this thoughts flew by her in a fraction of a second or so she thought because as she stood at the doorstep, everything seemed to blur.
Then she forced her head to stop spinning and decided she had to come up with an alibi, quickly, and she almost immediately decided on her course of action. Denial!

‘How long do you intend to stand at that door?’ her mother shrieked at her.
She realized she did need the bitch to make anything worse her mother was present. She would indulge her in that field.
‘Oh hi mom. Why wasn’t I told that we would be having guests? I …I …is there something I am missing here? I didn’t know its holiday time ye…’She was bubbling, absolutely unnerved, tripping all over her words like a drunkard.
‘Shut up! Just shut up ok?’ Her father bellowed from across the living room.

Now she knew she was in real trouble. Never in all her eighteen years had she heard her father raise his voice at her. She was the apple of his eyes .To him, Cara could do no wrong .It was, perhaps, for that reason that Cara had imagined she would get away with her actions. But who is to blame a girl for being young and beautiful? But Cara was in for a big surprise because she would pay dearly for her indulgence. Not only had she utterly shattered her family impeccable image but also she had so disgraced her father to a point where he did not know where to hide his head.
Everyone knew Cara Desmond. He wore her on his sleeve like a medal and did not hesitate to wonder loud enough for everyone to hear whether there ever would be a man worthy of her daughter’s hand in marriage.
Cara secretly wished he would stop all this fussing as she was all grown up and she really did not mind the attention her father was so expertly wadding off.
For beauty, Cara was surely every woman’s private envy and publicly sworn rival. She had grown accustomed to veiled and open jealousy from almost every woman she knew and flattering attentions from their husbands. At only 18 years of age, Cara was the cause of many a domestic squabble in her neighborhood and she did not mind it one bit.
She truly was a force to reckon with but in this instance, her beauty was the cause of her present anguish.
Uncle Tom decided to take over things before everything went haywire. He ordered Cara to sit and appealed to everyone to keep their emotions on check as everyone had been wronged and there was particularly no need to explode and could Cara kindly stop playing games with grown ups as, if she would kindly look around, there was no one her age and if anyone had anything to say, could they please refrain from shouting or interrupting another because, were they not all grown up?
‘WHY?’ her father asked.
Cara realized that her plan to deny could get her nowhere so she decided to draw from her talent- Acting! She would appeal to their emotions and maybe –just maybe- they wouldn’t be too harsh on her.
‘I had to! I did not have a choice or the will power to walk away from the very thing that I had dreamt about every single night! Surely Pa, you of all people should understand where I am coming from.
You have always told people to follow their hearts and not to give up on their dreams, that they should seize the opportunity and give it everything they have.’
Cara had gotten herself involved with the head of theater activities in her school; of course her dazzling looks had almost everything to do with it- but the girl was talented too and she got more than she bargained for. She certainly wasn’t prepared for all the ‘extracurricular’ Mr.mwangi was heaping on her, all in the pretence of giving the poor thing a chance. He knew how badly she wanted to get into the prestigious drama club and he found the combination of innocence and beauty -not to mention a fierce drive to achieve- a heady, irresistible temptation. While Mr.Mwangi was not new in the game of deceit and seduction, he was a terribly good actor as well, not to mention drop dead gorgeous, needless to say Cara had fallen -head fast- for him and would have done anything to gain his favor and a place in the drama club.
He held the key to her dreams (or so she thought) and he was the picture of power, for she really thought her future lay in his hands and power is an aphrodisiac. So Mr.Mwangi played with her psychology and innocence and most of all self-confidence so that Cara depended wholly on him for everything and soon a relationship ensued. Not that Cara was comfortable with the arrangement, it’s just that she so badly wanted a chance to be a movie star, but did one not start at the very bottom? She wanted all the practice and exposure she could get from school so that when she went out into the world, she would have a well of information from which to draw from.
She would waltz into stardom and stay there- at the very top of the list but for the time being she had to make do with what she had, shameful or not, it was her ticket to celebrity and nothing came easy. So Cara made herself believe this and tried not to cry when Mr.Mwangi did all manner of humiliating things to her, in the privacy of his bedroom at the teachers quarters, for he was a pervert and a sadist but he tried to not get to carried away with Cara as she was from a rich family. So he stuck to simple things like taking pictures of her as nature intended and showing them to his friends who were so jealous of him for Cara was a true beauty with or without clothes he reserved the beatings and other perversions for the rest and make them do his chores in exchange of being sneaked out of school occasionally, chocolates, roses the works. But Cara was special because she was beautiful and she had a dream and morals.
One of the things he had promised Cara was an introduction to one of the producers ‘out there’ so that when Cara left school she would have connections to the theater and film makers. When this was done cara went about her business as if in a cloud. She did not merely walk, she floated in the air, and her head and heart in cloud seven. Things were going to well to be true.
That thought might just have been her bad omen because things begun to go down hill. As soon as she was out of school, she found out that the pills she had relied on for so long had let her down. She was pregnant.
As she sat on her bed one night her head weighed a ton and her eyes were swollen almost shut from crying.
Lucy was tired of soothing her and covering for her to her parents when she did not go down for meals, they came to a definite decision unanimously. The bastard had to go. And it went.
That was the beginning of all her troubles. Apparently the Casanova teacher had fallen in love with her-madly and truly-and he was outraged that she would abort his baby. By now Cara had had enough of him and the poor thing was dumped unceremoniously. A mistake she would pay for dearly.

He tried everything to get her back but Cara no longer needed him, so she tortured him, dangling the possibility of winning her heart again then making a fool out of him in front of his friends. Everyone lost respect of him and his pals tried to tell him to get over her but he was a man bewitched. Sooner than later, Mr.Mwangi broke.
He decided that Cara would pay dearly for the life of his unborn child and for humiliating him as she had. So he went home one day and took out every one of the nude pictures he had taken of her and made a presentation with a complete account of what they had done together not leaving out the gory details of their liaison and the benefits thereof, in a very vulgar language. He proceeded to find the email addresses of her father and of all his friends, workmates, and follow board members and did not hesitate to forward the gross details therein.
Mr.Desmond almost fainted when he opened his computer that morning and was duly informed that ‘he’s got mail’ and upon opening, his eyes rested on the one thing that he never thought he would ever come across.
Like on cue his cell phone begun to ring, people telling him that he had better go to their offices as there was something they all thought would interest him.
What Mwangi had not realized was that the company was almost a family business so half the people who received the mail were family.
So there was really nothing Cara could do or say to change anyone’s mind that she was not the slut they all thought she was. That she did all that in innocence. In return she got what her father would have never allowed her simply because everyone else in their family was either a judge a doctor a surgeon an engineer or a celebrated business man no one was allowed to indulge in arts.
She had tried everything to get Mwangi not to do this to her even stolen a large amount of money to bribe him –money he gladly took- in exchange of his silence but he was not to be deterred. He had made good his threat. . That fateful evening, after what seemed to Cara like an eternity the verdict was read.
It was worse than a death sentence. She had been banished to the countryside to live with THE BITCH!
Her ‘darling’ father could not bear to live with her hence it was decided that she would be the child aunt Fiona never had.
Disowned and rejected Cara could only weep silently and wish she could turn back the hands of time then she would undo everything she had done wrong.

Posted by kabii on 2008-03-26 06:20:44 | Rating: