A SILENT BATTLE: THE PHOENIX TEARS

VOLUME ONE:-BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS

CHAPTER 1

There are these statements that says, "All is fair in war and love" and another one, "life is unfair" can relate to anyone and everyone. There are many people out there who are living the lives of Kings while others are living the lives of paupers, servants and slaves.

Does anyone feel pity for them? The answers may vary but the brutal truth will be no, life is unfair and that is true for everyone and there is nothing we can do to change it. In life if one doesn't work hard then the ending for that individual will be obvious, suffering.

In such chaos times there was a woman named Brenda Michaels who didn't complain much about how her life was unfair as in her eyes, her life was better compared to others that she knew.

Brenda was a married woman who gave birth to three beautiful children and all of them were girls. It was very unfortunate of her to not have any male child as society and family expected her to produce one.

She was lucky enough that her husband didn't seem to mind that he didn't have any male child to carry on his family name. This didn't mean that they didn't try, it's just they failed to achieve the desired results they wanted which is why they simply threw the issue at the back of their heads.

Brenda lived in an immediate city which was part of a large province and can be considered one of the major cities among others. Brenda and her family lived in City A in a certain high density location that was newly bought.

The rentals were a bit cheaper thanks to that as there was no electricity at the time they began to live there. At that time her girls were all in school having the older one in high school while the rest were still in primary school.

Sam Michael, Brenda's husband didn't have a fancy job or a high paying job but worked hard as a security man. Every single evening he would leave home for his workplace where he will guard during the night and return home in the morning.

In this low class family only Sam was considered to be working a normal job as Brenda was more of a housewife, taking care of the house and the kids. The family of five including some relatives they all lived in two separate rooms that they rented in the huge house that had a total of nine rooms with all rooms being occupied by tenants.

The parents used the other room that they used as the bedroom while the girls used the other one, that was taken as the kitchen and their room to rest at night. As for the relatives they slept with other relatives at their homes or ask from other tenants so that they may rest for the night before they leave for their respective destinations.

Brenda was forty two years old with no relatives on her side, so she put all her focus on her family as well as her husband's relatives.

Her three girls namely; Zuwa, Susan and Haven Michaels were beautiful by nature and hardworking in their own way.

While Sam was the bread winner of the family the four ladies would do some menial jobs to contribute as the wages provided by Sam were not enough to feed everyone, tuition and pay for the rentals.

The family of four owned some piece of land despite living in a city, they would go and till the land, plant some crops namely; maize cobs, sorghum, pumpkins and wild sugar cane. These crops were planted in small numbers as the piece of land was small and couldn't accommodate everything.

They planted a variety of things so that when it comes the time to harvest they will have a diversity of food to eat.

When there was no school, the girls would accompany their mother to weed out the fields and help in whatever way they should. This will be repeated for three months until the harvest time arrives.

The produce taken from the fields was not sold as the family relied on it to survive even if the produce could last them less than a month as they were used on eating heavily.

In order to earn money to keep the family intact, Brenda would go and help others with their fields to receive something in return. The rewards would come in form of cash, food or clothes as they didn't even afford to purchase new clothes for everyone in the family.

Their expenses exceeded their income, so they had to be very frugal or they will be the ones dying of starvation.

If they weren't doing field work they would be busy selling freezits or ice-pops, firewood, mangoes or anything that can bring money to the table. There was practically no room for being shy or maintaining one's dignity to be graceful. It wasn't like being graceful brought anything to their table.