My uncle and his wife love each other, but when it comes to money, they are not the best of friends. My uncle always hides his money, and his wife does not know how much he has, ever since he opened a business for her. He believes that his wife should take care of feeding the family, though he kept it from her.
Maria, my uncle's daughter, and I were best friends, and we went to the same secondary school and university. In our second year at the university, we received a call that our beautiful grandmother had died, so Maria and I immediately went home to pay our last respects to her. When we got home, my uncle asked us to keep the compound and rooms clean as people would be coming to sympathize with our family.
Grandma's death made Uncle Peter forget his principle of "No one sweeps my room, for I am the best sweeper." My uncle warned that no one should sweep his room, including his wife. To my greatest surprise, Uncle Peter asked Maria and me to clean his room, and Maria asked, "Dad, you mean we should sweep your room?" Uncle Peter replied, "You heard me clearly, and it should be done before I come back from town."
As soon as Uncle Peter left, we went to his room, and it was messy. We started arranging his things and gathering the ones that were not useful to put in the garbage can, such as the unkept books and shoes. While we were arranging his shoes, we saw an old shoe with one leg missing, and Maria said, "What is this? My dad loves keeping things that are not useful as property," and then she put it among the garbage. It took us about two hours to thoroughly clean his room, after which we burned all the dirt, not knowing that the strange shoe was my uncle's bank.
When my uncle came back, I asked about the strange shoe, and we told him it had been burned. He screamed, fainted, and when he regained consciousness, he said, "I regret asking these girls to clean my room. I am now a living dead." Everyone asked him to explain, but he was speechless because Aunty Rose had asked him for money two days before we cleaned his room, and he claimed he had no money because he had spent all the available money on Grandma's health. Then Aunty Rose said in anger, "Honey, so I can no longer trust you. No wonder you are always uncomfortable when one enters your room. May God have mercy on you."
Maria and I felt bad because we thought our efforts would have ended in praise.