*MATURE CONTENT WARNING*
"If my classroom is your playground, then your body is mine."
Dr. Zaain Kazem is a cold and routine Palestinian-Canadian professor with something to hide.
Adeola Adebayo is a sharp, international student running from a broo...
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3255 King Edward Ave W, Vancouver - Uncle Tobi's House
12:37 PM
16 weeks since arrival
"They're little girls, Ma! How could you do that to a bunch of defenseless, innocent, little girls?" Tobi was having a more than heated argument with Ma over the phone. He insisted on calling her after I had confessed to him. He called her and called her until she answered.
I had told him everything to the best of my recollection. How Ma would adopt off girls to the highest bidder, regardless if they were good people or caring or had any parenting skills. How her pitching tactics would include purposely making us sick or forcing us to injure ourselves or each other and then sending the pictures to prospective adoptive parents to pressure them into giving her money to pay for "medical bills", but we would rarely ever see that money, let alone the inside of a doctor's office.
She would cut some girls' hair out in uneven chunks and make them do excessive exercise on empty stomachs the morning of an appointment to make them look as ill as possible, so that the potential adoptive parents would feel bad about being on the fence about adopting us.
We'd have to shiver and cough in the background while Ma Ma with her best forlorn and downtrodden expression would pitch an over-the-top sob story to various adults.
But me and Zinhle were never on the auction block.
No, our job was to curl up with a thin blanket in a twin sized bed like a pair of pitiful invalids in quarantine as we sniffed black pepper under the covers so that we would sneeze constantly, further selling Ma Ma's story.
We weren't to speak to or look at anyone.
They're not here for you. Don't get your hopes up. She would always sneer under her breath or through gritted teeth as she fake smiled at the applicants.
Zinhle and I were expected to always be on our best behavior and at the top of all of our classes. One minor slip up that would get the other girls a scolding or smack on the wrist would get us grounded for weeks, cleaning the toilets on our hands and knees until the bowls shined back at us, or we were on something called a silent order that meant we were not allowed to play with or talk to anyone and no one was allowed to talk to us, except Ma of course, until we were allowed to speak again. Sometimes this would go on for weeks.
But most importantly, me and Zinhle had a very important task. We were to study fervently, on top of our regular schoolwork, speedy problem-solving skills, deductive, logical, and analytical reasoning.
She instilled us with high situational awareness skills, an ability that allowed us to analyze and survey our surroundings but most importantly people and what their micro-expressions meant. Our keen observation skills made us human lie detectors. But since brains always needs brawn, we learned self-defense, weaponry and advanced martial arts as well.
