"What makes you a man?! Lele, Are you a man? Tell me, are you a full grown man? When last did you keep your own side of the game? I suffer; hustle and do all manner of jobs to see that I keep the family going yet, I am not a good wife. This food you are eating, do you know how it come about? Fool!"
That was how she bark every now and then because I no longer have something doing to sustain the family. She was now the bread winner of the family and everything is loosen now. The mountain now speak of pain and the hills has decided to return to the heavens where it was made. Man, though weak and helpless when things break out between his loins, seems to have turned into the doom that supposed to befall women in their journey of life. . .
I could remember when this love began, we were the latest newly created birds that flown the sky. We danced in love along the road and most people thought we were mad and the madness we made known when we began to hang around town in different joints and bars drinking and making love. I never knew that love could feel like a heart attack, I never knew that love could hurt this deadly bad. I hid my tears the first time I said her name, I hid many sorrow because I met her smile which showed me love. The journey of courtship was good, we dined and moved around town together. Sometimes, when she close from the office; she would come to my office to wait for me so that we could go together. During weekend, she would come to my house to cook for me for the weekend and we had many weekend get away, we had fun, we had each other life in our palms and life was a fairy tale told by shakespear and Dickson but I never knew our joy could be cut short suddenly. . .
After some months I went with my people to see her parents. She was from Mbaise in Imo state and I was though an Uli man by birth but my parents are from Abia state. Because of the love that had eaten deep into man, I didn't make any research or rather findings on my wife to be. I was blinded by love, I was accommodated by ignorance which beckoned with a branished red sharpened doors. My parents and relations advised me against her but I forsaked their advice claiming that she was all I have in this world and without her I don't know what life could be to me. When they discovered I was not in their lane, they allowed me to do my wish; to get my legs into the fire and see how painful fire could be on a fresh flesh. We did the traditional marriage and white wedding at the same time and I brought my apple home to be eaten at my leisure time. Although she was good at the first two years in my house. She was the woman I married from Mbaise, the lady I wooed at the Omalicha Guest house, the lady that her smiles took almost all the part of me; the lady that made me smiled sometimes ago, the woman whose laughter made me realised that every man deserved a good woman whose heart is as pure as the snow of the west. But things began to change from better to worst when she began to associate with Mama Odili, our co-tenant. At first I warned my wife against that woman but each time I left the house to work, she would leave our flat upstairs to downstairs to see Mama Odili. The other day, I came back and met her in the same flat I warned her not to go. I nearly killed her that black friday if not the grace of God that kept her.
In as much as her friendship with Mama Odili was causing problem between me and her, she kept going there like where she was going to her village stream. We quarreled so many times over this issue of going to Mama Odili flat to see her, of which I invited her people and they came to settle us. At the end of the discussion, she told her people that she does nothing at home after I leave everyday for work and that was why she found comfort and solace in the company of Mama Odili, who also doesn't work like her. So to end the madness in her, I opened a boutique for her in one of the plaza in my area but within some few months she squandered the millions I used in the boutique. In a short while after our quarrel over the closure of the Boutique, rumours began to spread like a wild fire that she had began to date one chief I know in my area. I called her as my wife and questioned her on the News , but she told me that she wasn't having any affairs with the chief so I rest my case. May be it was all rumour, maybe the man was just a "Hi" friend or maybe he was one of her customers then. The one that broke the camel's back was when I saw her or rather caught her red handed with this so called me in a bar. I disgraced this man and her in the bar and then dragged her into my car and drove home. I beat the shinning mad hell out of her and, I therefore invited her people who came at my call and I told them the packs of madness that their Daughter had bought from the market and they shouldn't be shock whenever she comes back home with her belongs because what I was seeing wasn't what I saw when I got married to her. Prior to five months of that incident I lost my job. Devil lose the hell on me and took me to the street of pain. My wife became worst, she added salt to my wound, she uplifted my sorrow and built a home for my agony and hardship, so that they could torment me till I die. I searched for job here and there to no avail, the mad sun called on her children for me, the heartless breeze and the embittered rain clapped many times on the street to show me that life itself has no value and worth not living if you get to understand the flavoured ingrediates it was made of. I built more hope to move on because when a man fall, if he could look up, he can get up; tough time does last but tough people do with the right mindset. But the more I move, the tougher life becomes. The more I plan, the more they crumbled on the ground. The more I try, the more my wife frustrate me: the highest thing that can happen to a man is to fall when he has a wrong and bad wife.
" You are not a man! You are died and gone. Wowowowohhh!! Wowowowo!!! Go look for work, go look for work. Don't come and sit here all day waiting for me to feed you and also the children, Pay the house rent and the school fees while only what you do is to sit and eat the one prepared by me. You are a fool, Uche." She walked into her room after abusing me
"Daddy, why is mummy saying all these things?" My first son would ask me.
"Are you really a fool?"
" No son, I am not a fool, mummy is just angry because I don't have a job now"
" But she should be patience for you for sometime, it is not too late. When a man fall, it is not the end of his life."
"It ok son, you know what; go inside and read your book, daddy will be alright after the rain"
" Are you sure dad?"
"Of course, daddy will be alright"
"Don't think oooh, dad"
"Ok son."
He is the only hope I have, others have followed the lane of their mother and there was nothing I could do to save them and make them understand my suffocating plight. Each time I return from my hunt for job, he would be the one that would tell me how many men mother brought home and what they did behind me. I was tired of life, tired of marrying the woman I called my wife.
The day I hated her the most was the day the Landlord came to our apartment for his house rent. She was there laughing and abusing me while the landlord was also abusing and embarrasing me in the presence of the neighbours and my children. She was after my disgrace and pain, she wasn't that special one I said I do to on the altar years back. Some times I wondered why I fell in love in the first place, wondered why the earth I allowed me to messed my life with the wrong woman. The landlord kept barking behind and she continue to laugh mockily at me. The children were shocked at her behaviour likewise the Neigbours but none could say their mind because it wasn't their problem but mine. After the landlord left, she came inside where I sat down and began to laugh again before she said the most ear aching words to me:
"Uche! Uche!! Go pay your house rent, Rachael can't do all things. Lazy man! lazy man!! Uche, you are gone out of man." She moved closer to me and continue "I have told the landlord that I would pay him his rent tomorrow but you can't continue like this Uche. Rachael can't continue paying the house rent while you sit back and watch without pity, no Rachael can't". then she left me and walked out of the house.
There, I looked like a vulture beaten by rain; the way the bitter kola sound does not signify its sweetness. Really not everything that wear skirt are woman. After Listening to her, I wanted the ground to open and take me but nothing happened. So many, many things took hold of me, my brothers come every day for this and that and my wife found this as an avenue to laugh and make jest of me.
Some months later, I was at home eating the bread and beans I bought from down the street when she came inside. The next thing I saw was all her belongs outside, she said she was going to meet the man whose manhood is longer than mine and has money than me. I didn't talk nor response to her accusing voice or words nor did I beg her. She packed her things and left the children for me and till now, I have not heard any word from her but am not bothered since things are taken another shape since she left. Every man can fall but not every man that fall can rise again.
(C) John Chizoba Vincent.
Another Voice From The East
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