“There is this Måd Woman that usually roam around in the Market, and anytime she sees me, she screams “This is the Woman who stole my Beauty, Please return it back!!”
My name is Amelia, I’m newly married to my husband. To be honest, he’s my dream husband, his family are so nice, and he’s also established.
So I went to the Market one fateful day to buy what I’ll cook for my husband and I. As I entered the market, I started asking for the price of the foodstuffs.
Suddenly, a woman with bottles, on rags, and bushy tattered hairs came to where I was, and screamed:
“Yes!, this is the Woman who stole my beauty, please return my face back to me!!”
I looked at her so shocked and my heart racing. “How does someone steal a person’s beauty?” I asked myself.
The market women and the crowd just told me to ignore her that she’s insane, and that she doesn’t know what she’s saying at all; they also apologized.
“Don’t mind her, my daughter,” one woman selling tomatoes said. “She has been like this for three years. She picks a beautiful face and starts shouting. Just buy your things and go.”
I had to do fast, and leave the busy market, heading to my car, but the Mad Woman was still running towards my direction.
“Return my face!! Return my beauty…”
I quickly start up the car and left.
As I got home, I was still having PTSD of what happened at the market. I kept looking at myself in the mirror. I am beautiful, yes, but I have always been this way.
When my husband, David, came back from work, I was still quiet.
“”Honey, what is wrong?”” he asked, dropping his bag. “”You look like you saw a ghost.””
“”David, something strange happened today,”” I said. I narrated everything to him.
He laughed loudly. “You see a Mad Woman saying such, and you’re still bothered? Her brain is not intact, Amelia. Why are you letting a crāzy person ruin your mood?”
“”But David, the way she looked at me… it was as if she really knew me. She was crying.””
“”Amelia, stop it,”” David said, pulling me close. “”You are just too soft-hearted. Forget about her. Is food ready? I’m starving.””
I just sighed, cooked, and we ate. But to be honest, the thought was still on my head.
Later that night, while David was sleeping, I sat on the edge of the bed. I couldn’t stop thinking.
I have never met her before, so how did I steal her beauty? I moved to this city only six months ago after our wedding. I don’t know anyone here.
As I looked at my husband sleeping peacefully, I felt a small shiver. I remembered the woman’s eyes. They weren’t just “”mad”” eyes. They were eyes full of pain and recognition.
I decided that tomorrow, I would go back. Not to buy food, but to find out who that woman was before she lost her mind.
Who Exactly is this Màd Woman?
What does it mean that “I stole her beauty?”
dịch sang tiếng anh cho tôi
“Who is this Mád Woman? Why is she asking me to return her face back to her?” Amelia asked within herself.
She had just met a very strange encounter when she went to the market. A Mád Woman in rags and bottles came to meet her and was embarrassing her, saying that she should return her stolen face. Amelia hasn’t met her before, or even known her.
Her husband said she should ignore her, but she just can’t. The woman’s eyes were too intense. They looked sane, even if her words were crazy.
Amelia tried to clean the house, but she was slow. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the woman’s ragged hair and heard her scream: Return my beauty!
“Amelia, you are thinking too much,” she told herself. She decided to go back to the market. She wanted to talk to the tomato seller. Maybe someone knew who the woman used to be.
As she was about going to the market the next day to look for that strange Mad Woman, her concerned husband, David, stopped her near the car.
“Amelia, what are you doing?” David asked. He looked worried.
“I’m going to the market, honey. We need fruits.”
David shook his head. “Have you forgotten that you were embarrassed yesterday by a random Màd Woman? Please stay at home. I don’t want anything to happen to you. That woman might result to stabbing you if she sees you. Mad people can be dangerous.”
Amelia nodded slowly. David was right. Mad people are often violent. She remembered the bottles in the woman’s hands.
“Okay, David,” she said softly. “I will stay home. You are right.”
David smiled and kissed her cheek. “Good girl. I love you. I will buy the fruits on my way back. Bye.”
He drove out. Amelia went back inside. She felt trapped, but she was also safe. She started listening to music to forget her troubles.
Around noon, she heard a loud sound from the front.
The heavy noise came from the big black gate.
“Oh my god,” Amelia jumped. It sounded like someone was trying to break the gate.
She quickly walked to the verandah. Her two gatemen, Musa and John, were already near the gate. They picked up big wooden sticks.
“Who is there?” Musa shouted.
There was no answer, just another loud BANG!
Musa cautiously opened the small pedestrian door of the gate to peep outside.
His face immediately changed to fear. He quickly closed it back and locked the iron bar.
The two gatemen went to meet Amelia on the verandah.
“Ma,” Musa said, his voice shaking. “One dirty Mad Woman is standing at the gate.”
“Are you looking for her?” John asked.
Amelia felt her stomach turn. “Are you sick? Looking for her as how? Have you seen me book appointment with Mad people? Lock that gate, don’t open it!!”
“Okay ma,” Musa said. “We will not open it. She is just banging and crying. But…”
“But what?” Amelia snapped.
“She keeps shouting,” John explained. “She is saying that you should return her beauty to her!! She says you stole her face.”
Amelia’s eyes was widened as she heard that statement. She felt a cold sweat on her back.
The Mad Woman had found her. She had found where she was living.
How did she do that? The market was very far from Amelia’s house. Did she foIIow the car?
What exactly did the woman want? It wasn’t just crazy talk. This felt like a thréat.
“Madam,” Musa asked, seeing Amelia’s scared face. “Should we call the police?”
“No,” Amelia said quickly. If the police came, they might lock the woman up, but they might also ask Amelia questions she couldn’t answer. Questions about why a random crazy person thinks she stole her face.
“Just… just leave her,” Amelia whispered. “She will get tired and go away. Don’t open that gate for anybody. Not even a visitor.”
Musa and John went back to sit near the gate, holding their sticks tightly. The banging continued.
Amelia slowly put her hands up to her own cheeks in her room,
“Who exactly is this Mad Woman?!!”
How did she find where I’m staying? …
“How did this Màd Woman know where I’m living? How did she locate me?” Amelia said to herself.
The Màd Woman who accused Amelia of stealing her face had traced her to her house and she was still shouting at the gate,
“Return my beauty back, you stole it!”
She didn’t leave the gate. The noise was too much, and the neighbors were starting to look out of their windows. Amelia was shaking. She had to call her husband on the phone.
When David heard her crying, he rushed home. He didn’t come alone; he came with security agents. They had to use force to bundle the woman away from the house.
Amelia was just crying in the living room. She has never seen such humiliation before. She felt like a prisoner in her own home. She can’t move outside freely again. She’s just scared that the Mad Woman would just pounce on her at any time.
The next day, David sat in his office, but he could not work. His mind was on his wife. His best friend, Tim, walked in and saw his face. After David explained everything, Tim started laughing.
“”David, this is the funniest thing I have heard this year!”” Tim said, still laughing. “”How does someone steal someone’s beauty? Is it a handbag? Is it money?””
“Tim, you have to stop laughing. This is a serious case,” David said, tapping his pen on the desk.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” Tim said, trying to be serious. “But I thought you said they have driven that Mad Woman away. So why are you still scared?”
“If that woman can locate where we’re staying, that means we’re not safe anymore. She found us, Tim. That is what is bothering me. How did a beggar from the market find a house in this estate?”
Tim leaned back in his chair. He looked at David’s worried face and sighed.
“It’s alright, David. I think I’ll take that risk of meeting the woman one on one. I want to ask her what she meant by stealing her beauty.”
David looked at him, surprised. ”Wow, I appreciate that… although I see no need for that because she’s a Iunatic. But let’s just see what she has to say. Maybe she will talk differently to a stranger.”
“”Exactly,”” Tim said. “”If she is always at that market, I will find her. I want to know if there is a story behind this madness.””
Back at home, Amelia was sitting in her room. She didn’t want to turn on the lights. She kept thinking about the woman’s face.
It was dirty and old, but if you looked closely, the shape of the jaw and the eyes looked… familiar.
“”No,”” Amelia whispered to herself. “”It is just my mind playing tricks. I don’t know her!!”
Suddenly, her phone rang. It was a private number. She picked it up, her heart beating fast.
“”Hello?”” she said.
There was no voice, only the sound of someone breathing heavily on the other end. Then, a low, cracked whisper came through:
“”It’s me, Amelia. Give me bàck my face, you thief!.””
Amelia screamed and dropped the phone.
Who gave the Màd Woman Amelia’s phone number?
“Who gave this Måd Woman my Phone Number?!!!”
Amelia was shaking as she sat on the sofa. She had just received a strange call. The voice was rough and cracked, but the words were clear: “Return my beauty back, you stole it!!”
When her husband, David, came back home, she quickly reported everything to him. She was crying as she showed him her phone. David’s head became hot; he was confused and angry at the same time.
“How? Who gave her your number?” David shouted, pacing up and down the parlor. He stopped and looked at Amelia with a serious face. “Wait, Amelia… be honest with me. Have the two of you met before? Do you know this woman from somewhere?”
“No, darling! I don’t know her for real. I haven’t seen her before in my life until that day at the market,” Amelia replied, wiping her eyes.
”In my entire life, I have never seen such type of trouble before. This is just driving me crazy,” David said, sitting down heavily.
He held Amelia’s hand to calm her down. He told her that he had assigned his friend, Tim, to search for the Mad Woman. Tim’s job was to find her and ask what exactly she wanted and how Amelia “”stole her beauty.”” Amelia hugged David tightly in appreciation. She felt a little bit of hope.
The next morning, Tim went to the big General Market. He asked around, and people pointed toward the back where they sell grains. He saw her. She was wearing the same dirty rags, begging for garri from the sellers. She looked tired and hungry.
Tim moved closer. He was careful. He had a defensive object hidden in his pocket just in case she tried to àttack him. He also held a pack of warm, cooked food to get her attention.
“Madam,” Tim called out, making a sign for her to come.
The woman looked at him. When she saw the food, she slowly walked toward him. She took the food and started eating like someone who hadn’t eaten for days.
“Why are you always disturbing that lady?” Tim asked quietly. “The one you followed to her house. Why are you asking her to return her face?”
The Mad Woman suddenly stopped eating. She jumped up, her eyes wide.
“Oh, that woman? She’s a thief! She is the one who stole my beauty!” she screamed, attracting a few onlookers. “I am supposed to be very beautiful. God created me to be beautiful! But because of her selfishness, she stole it. Now see me, I am very ugly! Tell her to return my beauty o! She thought I won’t see her again in this life!”
Tim felt a chill run down his spine. The woman sounded so sure of herself.
“What exactly is the beauty?” Tim asked again, trying to keep her calm. “Explain plainly how she stole it, please. Did she take your cream? Did she go to a herbalist?”
The woman laughed, a high, scary sound. She leaned in close to Tim, and her breath smelled like old leaves.
”She should confess herself! Tell her that her time is up! She thought she could run, but no one runs away under the sun.”
Before Tim could ask another question, the woman grabbed her bag of bottles and ran into the crowd, disappearing inside the market.
Tim sat down and thought within herself
What exactly should Amelia confess?
“What exactly did the Mad Woman mean by Amelia should confess? What exactly is Amelia hiding?” Tim asked himself as he drove away from the market.
Tim, David’s friend, had gone to interrogate the Mad Woman, and she was still insisting that Amelia stole her beauty. When Tim had asked her to elaborate clearly, she said that she won’t be the one to confess it—Amelia should be the one to speak.
Tim went to David’s house immediately and discussed everything. David looked at Amelia, his wife, feeling very confused.
”Honey, I’m totally tired of this madness,”” David said, rubbing his face. “”Should we pack away from this house? Should we leave this street? What are we going to do now?”
Amelia was still acting like she had no idea. She kept saying she didn’t know the woman before. To her, the words were very strange. How does someone steal someone’s beauty? It sounded like a fairy tale or a lie.
“Okay honey,” Amelia said, her voice trembling. “At this point, we’re going to go to that woman. Let’s see what she has to say to my face. I cannot live in fear anymore.”
They agreed.
They went to the market area with some security men for safety. When they arrived, they found the Mad Woman sitting by the roadside. As soon as she saw Amelia’s face, she opened her mouth to shout as usual, but Amelia stepped forward and told her to calm down.
“I need you to tell me how I stole your beauty,” Amelia asked, her heart beating fast. “Have we met before? Why are you following me?”
The Mad Woman did not scream this time. Instead, she smiled a very creepy smile.
”I was supposed to be enjoying life, but you ruined it,” the woman said softly. “I was supposed to be reaping the fruits of my labor, but you ruined it. You made my life useless. I was the one everyone called ‘The Star,’ but you took it all.”
Amelia shook her head. “”I don’t understand you. I have never seen you.””
The Mad Woman’s eyes became very sharp. ”Anyways, since you claim you have forgotten, think deeply. What happened on the 13th of July when you were 21 years of age? Do you remember the lady you shøt with a gūn that night?”
The air became very cold. David jumped back, looking at his wife in total shock.
“Shot as how? Baby, who did you shòot? What is she talking about?” David asked, his voice cracking.
Amelia’s face turned white, like all the blood had left her body. She began to shake uncontrollably.
Her eyes went wide as she stared at the woman’s tattered hair and scarred skin.
”I… I think I remember…” Amelia whispered.
The Mad Woman asked me to remember what happened on the 13th of July when I was just 21 years of age.
I started to think and think, then I remembered! My husband was wondering what the Mad Woman was talking about. He held my shoulders and looked into my eyes.
“Amelia, answer me!” David shouted. “Who did you shoot? What is this woman saying?”
I opened up. My voice was low and shaking.
“When I was in the university, I was so focused in school o. I was not a degenerated child. But along the line, I decided to enter a relationship.
I had some group of female friends in our department. They are all focused on their studies averagely, but they’re all spoilt. They smoke, club, and some of them are whores. All of them had boyfriends, but they still manage to attend classes. Some open their legs to sort courses.”
David looked at me like he was seeing a stranger. “But you told me you were different, Amelia. You told me you never joined those kind of girls.”
“I tried, David. I really tried,” I cried. “So I had a boyfriend. His name was Segun. He was a bit rich and has aura. We started dating, and we had sex…”
David opened his mouth in shock. He stepped back from me. “I thought you said you’re a virgin when I married you, Amelia? You swore to me!”
I was ashamed of myself, but I continued because the truth had to come out. The Mad Woman was smiling, watching us like she was watching a movie.
“I am sorry, David. I lied because I didn’t want to lose you. Then, one evening, I stumbled on a girl in the shopping mall with my man. That very evening, that’s when I planned to teach the girl a lesson. I thought she was trying to snatch my man. I was so angry.
Thats how I told my Friends, and they told me relax that they’ll support me in teaching both the man and the girl a bitter lesson!!…
We’ll get a gùn and shoot the both of them.
David was just staring at me. He couldn’t say a word. The woman I was before was a monster.
“I confessed all my evils before the Mad Woman and my husband, David!!!.
I made him know that I was not a virgin as I lied I was. I told him that when I was in the university, I was in a relationship, but when I suspected a girl with my man in the shopping mall, I met my bad friends, and they told me that we’ll shoot the girl!!.
That’s how they bought me a gùn… and that fateful day, we tracked where the girl was living in the hostel, and stormed her room.
She was surprised on what is happening. She was just sitting on her bed studying when we entered.
“So you had the guts to snatch my man? My first boyfriend ever! I’ll snatch your life!” I shouted at her that night.
The girl was crying and shaking. She was trying to explain that she’s just his colleague in the same department. She said they were only working on a school project. I didn’t even give any listening ear.
My heart was full of devilish anger. I pulled the triggér.. and… and shót her.
“You did what???!!!” my husband, David, screamed. He looked like he wanted to vomit. “Amelia, you are a mūrderer? I am married to a kiIIer?”
“David, please,” I cried, trying to touch his cloth. “I was young and foolish! My friends pushed me!”
“Don’t touch me!” David barked. He looked at me with so much disgust.
Then, the Mad Woman started laughing and crying at the same time. She looked at me with eyes that could burn a house.
“That girl you shot is my daughter!!!” the Mad Woman wailed. Her voice was like a sharp knife. “It was when I heard of her death that I felt my whole life was in shambles. I lost my mind that same day. I miss her every day. I miss her touch. She was the one sent to bring my family out of poverty. She was the beauty of my life! That’s why I was saying you should return my beauty… you killed my joy!”
I realized then that the “”beauty”” she was talking about was not a physical face. It was her daughter. Her pride. Her hope. By killing the girl, I turned the mother into a beggar on the streets.
“I am sorry! Please!” I knelt down on the dusty ground, begging and crying. The market people were all watching, whispering and cursing me.
My husband didn’t even look at me again. He just turned around, entered his car, with his friend Tim, and they zoomed off, leaving me in the middle of the market.
I had to take a taxi back home. My eyes were red from crying. When I got home, I ran to the bedroom, but David was not there. I checked the bathroom, the kitchen, and even his small office.
His clothes were missing from the wardrobe. His big suitcase was gone.
“David? David, please answer me!” I shouted, but only the echo of my voice replied.
I sat on the floor and put my head in my hands. Where did he go to? Was he going to the police? Or was he leaving me forever?
After I confessed everything to this Mad Woman, my husband David and his friend left me right in the spot and zoomed off.
The market was silent for a moment. Then, the whispers started. I could feel their eyes like needles on my skin. I didn’t wait for anyone to stone me. I ran to the roadside, entered a taxi, and went home.
I went home, but I didn’t see him. He wasn’t at home. As a matter of fact, he had packed his few things and left the house. I saw the empty space in the wardrobe where his suits used to hang. My heart broke into a million pieces.
I was crying, rolling on the floor. I thought my marriage was over. I had built a life on a foundation of lies, and now, everything had collapsed.
I did a criminal offense, a murder offense, and I deserve jail. I don’t know my next fate. Every time the wind blew against the door, I thought it was the police coming to take me away.
I couldn’t stay in that big, empty house alone. The silence was screaming my name. I took a small bag, locked the house, and drove to my parents’ house in the next town.
When I got there, I fell at my mother’s feet. I wept and wept until my eyes were swollen. My father came out of the library, looking worried.
“”Amelia? What is the problem? Why are you here in this state? Where is David?”” my father asked.
I couldn’t hide it anymore. I told them everything. I told them about the university days, the bad friends, the gun, and the girl I shot because of a boy. I told them about the Mad Woman in the market who was actually the mother of that girl.
My parents were really shocked that I could do such a thing!!! My mother covered her mouth with her wrapper, tears falling from her eyes.
“”Amelia? You did this? Our only daughter?”” my mother whispered.
My dad was pacing the room. He looked older than he did an hour ago. He stopped and looked at me. “”The woman… the mother of the girl. What is her name? Did you find out who she was before she lost her mind?””
I sniffed and wiped my face. “”The people in the market called her Mrs. Eunice. They said she used to be a teacher before the tragedy happened.””
My dad jumped up, his face turning pale. He gripped the back of a chair to keep from falling.
”Mrs. Eunice???!! I know her!!!!!!….”
“Amelia, I know that Mad Woman! Her name is Eunice!!!” My dad got up as he heard my confession.
My husband has left me totally as he heard everything that I did to the Mad Woman’s child. David could not stand the sight of me anymore. He left me in the market and disappeared.
But as my dad heard her name, he shouted that he knows her. He was shaking, not with sadness, but with a strange kind of anger.
”Wow, what a small world. What goes around, comes around,” my dad whispered. He sat back down, breathing heavily.
“Daddy how? Explain what happened?” I asked. I wiped my tears and looked at him. I was confused. How could my father know a beggar from the market?
My mom sat beside him, nodding her head slowly. She knew the story already.
”I knew her when I was still in my 20s,” my dad began. He looked into the distance as if he was seeing the past.
“This girl, Eunice, usually came to our house then to catch cruise and have fun. She was very beautiful and very tricky. She liked money too much.”
He stopped to drink some water, his hands still shaking.
“There was one day she accused me that I was trying to rape her. It was a big lie from the pit of hell! It was because I didn’t give her part of my money that I saved for that year. I wanted to use the money for my business, but she wanted me to spend it on her. You see the foolish reason right? Just because of money, she destroyed my reputation.”
I was shocked. “She did that to you, Daddy?”
”Yes, Amelia. Because of her lie, I was jailed for over 4 years. I lost my youth in prison for a crime I did not commit. Your mom is aware; I told her the whole story before we got married. It took me many years to recover from that shame.”
“Daddy, are you sure of what you’re saying?” I asked, my heart beating fast. “Are you sure it’s the same Eunice that I’m talking about? Maybe it is a different person.”
”I’m very sure,” my dad said firmly. “A face like that is hard to forget, even with the madness. Let me see her picture. You said you took a picture of her when she was at your gate?”
I opened my phone and showed him the picture of the Mad Woman shouting at my house. My dad took the phone and looked at it closely. He started to laugh, but it was a sad, dry laugh.
“Yes, she is the one,” he said, handing the phone back to me. “See life. Now she’s roaming about looking so confused. The woman who sent me to jail for nothing is now a beggar on the street.”
To be honest, everything is confusing me. My head is spinning.
My dad knows this Mad Woman? She once accused him of rape and sent him to prison?
I looked at my mother, who was just crying silently.
“”Amelia,”” my mom said. “”The world is like a circle. Your father suffered because of that woman. And now, you have made that woman suffer by what you did to her daughter. It is a cycle of pain.””
I sat on the floor, feeling completely lost. My husband is gone because I am a murderer. My father was a prisoner because of the woman I hurt.
The sins of the past have met the sins of the present.
My parents called David, my husband, and explained what this Mad Woman had done to him, and how she once accused him of rapè.
When David heard the truth—that the woman crying for justice was the same woman who had destroyed my father’s youth with a lie—his heart began to change. He realized that the world is a very mysterious place.
David came back to my family house. When I saw his car pull into the compound, I ran outside. We sat together in the living room and discussed everything. We cried together and decided to reunite back.
“Amelia,” David said, holding my hands. “What you did in the past was very bad, but I see now that this woman also has a very dark soul. Let us go and face her one last time.”
Altogether, we went to see that so-called Mad Woman. My father, my mother, David, and I all drove back to the market where she was sitting.
My dad walked toward her first. The market people gathered around to watch. The Mad Woman looked up, her eyes messy and wild. My dad stood tall and asked her whether she could remember his face.
She stared at him for a long time. Suddenly, her eyes cleared for a moment. She began to shake. She remembered the young man she had sent to prison years ago just because of money.
“You!” she whispered, her voice trembling.
”Yes, Eunice. It is me,” my dad said, his voice loud and firm. “You lied against me in the past. You took four years of my life for a crime I never committed. Karma now befell upon you.
You thought you had escaped, but no, you haven’t. You destroyed my life then, and today, you are seeing the result of your own seeds.”
The Mad Woman started to wail, but no one pitied her. She looked at me, then at my father.
She realized that the girl who shot her daughter was the child of the man she had wrongly accused. The circle was complete.
“I am sorry! Please!” she cried out, but my father just turned his back.
“We have nothing more to say to you,” David said, putting his arm around me. “May God have mercy on your soul.”
They left the Mad Woman there and reunited as a family. We walked away from the market and didn’t look back. Out of shame and the weight of her own past sins, the woman kept on wandering around, lost and hopeless. She continued to roam the streets, a living example of what happens when a person uses lies to destroy others.
David and I went back to our home. It took a long time to heal, but we promised never to keep secrets from each other again. The shadow of the Mad Woman was finally gone.
THE END.”
