DIVORCE IS FOR SCORNED WOMEN

                         

Image by Gregory pappas

  Last night I  lay on my sleepless pillow because I had become a watch woman for my mother’s pain. I watched her smile intently at the broken mirror on the cracked wall that demarcated her wedding picture from the remaining photographs, she observed dryly this lonely version of herself.

Mother spoke very few words especially when father was around. She would send me to find out what he wanted to eat and how he wanted It to be prepared because the Last time she made the poundo yam she got from the supermarket he rejected it and added that she must pound the yam, then roll into tiny balls before he could eat it. He made mother quit her Job and he embarrassed all her university friends.

Mother cooked like her doctorate ended in the kitchen. Perhaps to her it was therapeutic  or It was just another means for Aunty Okwi to give her usual half-baked advice and go home with a cooler of ofe oha. Aunty Okwi had battle scars and black patches on her yellow skin, she tells mother that it is a badge of honor and her husband’s love language is physical touch.

She tells mother that divorce is for scorned women who do not understand the true meaning of womanhood. She said mother must submit even though her elder brother is a brand ambassador for all the brothels in town.

‘’At least he is not beating you and he is giving you feeding money.’’
‘’Onweghi ihe anya huru gba Obara’’ there is nothing the eyes sees and cries blood.
  Aunty Okwi howled because my mother said she wanted a divorce.

 It was not long before aunty Okwi was admitted to the general hospital. She had lost yet another pregnancy and she told the doctor she fell face down while running at the gym, never mind that aunty Okwi was a voluptuous plus-sized woman who panted like a hungry bulldog each time she tried to climb the staircase let alone the treadmill. I pitied her but it seemed like she had resigned to bad fate and she was not my concern, my mother was.

 The frustration of being unwanted by a man that swore sacred vows to you on the altar is a different kind of betrayal so it's little  surprise that my mother began to pray naked every midnight with candles and ashes. she drew the names of Father’s mistresses from her weary tongue

"Prisca may you be scarred until you leave my husband...’’

"Blessing May you be cursed for life’’

"Angelica, you foreign husband snatching demon, let your coven catch fire!....’’

I  prayed with her once before I rebelled because I wondered why she didn’t pray for father's penis to rot like the one I watched on African Magic. Was it not him who met the women in the first place?

Mother paid no close attention to me so she didn’t know when I saw my first period or that it was Uncle Eke – father’s drop out younger brother that bought me sanitary towels after he licked my lips. This was not the first time, the other day he came around he took long minutes to study the lines and curves of my body with his sinful hands and he promised to teach me what it meant to be a real woman. It felt right to meet him when I saw the bloodstain on my dress.

Father’s bloodline was dented with promiscuity but I didn’t complain, uncle Eke and I touched each other whenever he wanted while mother said her lengthy prayers thrice a day.  Father was not a good man but I thought he was a good father because he bought me gifts so I felt I betrayed my mother by letting her marinate in her misery.

I wanted her to live a little and explore the world but I overheard Aunty Okwi say that men are naturally polygamous and it is a woman's divine duty to tame them with bottom power but father no longer found Mother attractive enough to share his bed.
*
‘’Ada... and that prophet said I lacked the fruit of the spirit, especially long suffering’’
‘’mua nka....mua ‘’ me..me, in particular, she yelled as she barged into the house with a bitter snare in her eyes.

Father had not come home in weeks, apparently, he had traveled to America with Angelica. A truck came to pick father’s things from the house and his things were everything except our underwear and some of our clothing.

 Our flat Echoes due to emptiness and mother now goes to 'Restore the mantle ministry' where she ties a suede turban and sings hymns on the pastor's thighs as he rubs her buttocks in Holy Communion. 

What do you think of the characters in this short story?  Who do you hate, love, pity etc? Tell me