HIDDEN TEARS.

Tears in the Diamond.

Sometimes I wish to kill myself, thankfully the thought is as fleeting as the cold breeze that blows into our two bedroom apartment which is usually hot. The Power Authority had disconnected us two weeks ago making the hope of reprieve as distant as the shore to a shipwrecked captain stuck in the middle the deep blue sea.  There are times when a deep seated melancholy grips at me from the depth of my soul threatening to drown me in the pool of my own sorrows, thankfully, I have managed to keep my head above water but I just managed to, by grasping at straws and flapping wildly in the storms that has become my life. If I had sunk in, I would have left my three beautiful children motherless and my sweet husband, a widower.

My husband Ejindu, My tall, handsome Ejindu with his hair cut to the skin and a boisterous laughter which seemed to often empty his soul.

I could remember the first time I met him, I was nineteen and had just finished my West African Secondary School certificate Examination when he came with his father, a very good friend of my father who is also his business partner in the palm oil trade. Over a keg of palm wine, they decided our life and thought that we matched. In my father’s words, he had been waiting a long time for Mazi Nduka to bring his son Ejindu to his compound. The next day, my traditional wedding was fixed and later, my father being a catechist insisted upon and later got us married in the Church by Rev. Fr. Neil O’gilvy. I did not really protest the marriage; Ejindu was tall, broad-chested, fair and handsome. My friends, especially the overly mischievous Chinyeaka had once said that if there was ever a case of “maburu tupu” , the local word for ‘rape’,  against her and she opens her eyes to see Ejindu hulking over her, she will drag him deeper into the bushes and tear her wrappers if he could not get it off faster. We all laughed at her joke because looking at Ejindu who had just come back from the city, one would really question if he could hurt a fly. He observed us whenever he passed with a sneer, obviously, we are village simpletons who had nothing that could interest him. This is not to say that we were ugly, myself, I am a very gifted dancer with firm breasts and a body which often had the boys whistling. In fact, Uwadiegwu had broken through the ranks to inform me that if I ever gave him a chance, that he would worship the ground that I walk on. However, I can only smile at Uwadiegwu. He was not man enough. In the contemporary parlance, he is what Chibuike, my twenty-two year old son would call “Woman wrapper”. Furthermore, the heartbreak he claimed when I got married to Ejindu was not my fault. As at my twelfth year, My Father, Nwoye Mma had told me that it is his duty to choose my husband for me. “maka ime mkpuke” He did well to add after the sermons. In those times after the seventies, contraceptives are not as ubiquitous as they are now and the result of any sexual activity was more often than not a protruded stomach and a nine month assignment for the girl and peremptory fatherhood for the culpable male.

In those times, the two families would meet to discuss marriage terms to avoid gossips and scandal. It is a far cry from these times when I cannot even tell if my twenty year old daughter was still a virgin. My doubts were informed by the frequent calls she made amidst languorousness and was accentuated by my fortuitous discovery of condoms in her purse when she lent me the purse for a ceremony I needed to attend.

Those times were better, they were idyllic and bucolic times spent at the homesteads, telling tales by the moonlight and dancing and watching Uwadiegwu admiring me surreptitiously from behind the Udara tree which stands to the left of the Oji tree situated at the middle of the village square whenever the maidens came to rehearse their dances. The times before my marriage were the time of innocence, I lost my innocence a day after my marriage.

My mother, Nwanyimma spent time to talk to me about my duties as a wife to my husband. The duties she concentrated on were not my culinary duties or home-keeping duties, I learnt those watching my mother in our home. The duties she focused on were the ones she performed for my father which I was not obliged to see but which oddly I was excited about.

“Obiageli Nwa m”

“Eh Nne” I answered in a barely concealed anticipation.  A day to my traditional marriage, I was already excited about what I could possibly be doing with Ejindu in behind the closed doors of a dark room.

“Your body is for your husband and for him alone. Whatever he asks of you, You are expected as a matter of duty to oblige him.” She said clasping her coarse hands into mine. I was not expected to talk during these injunctions. It was assumed that I have no experience with the intricacies of male-female sexual intercourse and I was loath to reveal that I have had my sex education from Chinyeaka who called every boy ‘Udara Mmicha’ and compared the sizes of their penis before her chagrined but thrilled friends which included me.

She once told us that Ezeji’s manhood was as big as a branch of oji tree and that Akubuilo’s was only as small as that of a broomstick.

“Denying your husband sex is a sin against nature and it is also your duty to keep him satisfied in bed.” Right there and then, I could not shake off the mental picture of my much younger mother trysting with my father just before I was conceived, both of them sweating as they made an enjoyment of my conception.

On that night, my mother seemed to be reading from the two tablets of stone handed down from Mount Sinai and all she ever said were what a woman owes to her husband. Her injunctions were scarier than the Decalogue and it was then that I discovered how scared the Israelites must have been when Moses brought down the two tablets of stone.

Her voice brought me back from my reverie.

“The place of a woman is under her husband both in the family affairs and in the bedroom affairs.”

It was a curious night. I learnt that marriage is not easy for women. In a discussion that lasted for more than an hour, my mother did not talk about what I may want from my impending union with Ejindu or what the husband owes his wife.

 What if I want to stay on the top during our lovemaking or during family issues? Is it not proper that my opinion as a part of the family should be respected?

“Thank you Nne.” I stood up to leave scared that if I stayed a little longer, another of my responsibility to Ejindu would fall off my mother’s mouth.

I was already at the door when another commandment fell out.

“You should always understand your husband. You should know that men are polygamous in nature. All your father’s friends have two or three wives. Your father is a catechist that is why you do not have a stepmother.”

I turned to look at my mother by a sheer force of will. It is considered rude to look away when an elder is addressing someone.

“Your father is the exception rather than the rule. Ejindu’s father married three wives.”

My travails in marriage did not take too long to start. The night after our wedding, having gone back to the city; true to my mother’s pieces of advice, I had my bath and loosely tied a wrapper around my waist. In bed, I was already moist in anticipation with my fear forming sweats all over my body.

 I was scared. I was a virgin but I was driven by the idea of pleasing Ejindu and making him mine. My mother had told me about the searing pain I should expect when his member breaches my maidenhead. I can endure the pain. My worst fear is somehow failing to satisfy my husband. My mother without stating why had warned me that it is a sort of crime often punishable by divorce or an introduction of a co-wife.

However, that night he came home and did not come to bed. I stayed up in bed lonely, quietly slipping to sleep and expecting a weight to settle beside me later in the night. The weight of a man did not settle beside me.

In the morning, he gave me some money to prepare his favorite Okazi soup and left. It was long after dark when he came home. It was so dark that the crickets were chirping in the garden close to our house. It was so dark that I could not bother to check the time. I ran his bath for him, expecting him to come to bed when he is through. That night again, he did not come to bed.

I took time to look after myself. I had my bath regular and even started using cosmetics. I started doubting my beauty and began to lose confidence. On a rare night when he returned early, I served him his favorite Okazi soup and even with my meager savings, bought him a keg of palm wine. After his dinner, I broached the topic that has been eating away at me for four days.

“My husband. Why haven’t you come to our marriage bed for once?”

He scowled at me but did not say a word.

“Am I not attractive to you?”

For an answer, he just poured the palmwine into his cup and started sipping.

“My husband. I am ready to be a wife to you and please you as much as I can.”

At that sentence, he flipped. I did not know why even up till date.

“Is that what you do whenever I leave for work? Please people?” he shouted at me in rage, his deep bass voice causing tremors in my body.

“No My Husband.” At an attempt to prove my innocence, a slap singed my cheeks causing whirring noises in my ears. Instinctively, tears rolled down my cheeks.

“Is that how you were trained at home? Pleasing strangers and talking back at your husband? You better be a virgin when I have time for you.”

He stood and stormed out of the house. That night, I cried myself to sleep all the while contemplating if Uwadiegwu who once fought a masquerade for flogging me during the New Yam festival would have treated me differently. 

He did not come to bed that night and since then, I stopped caring.

I remained a virgin four weeks after my wedding but in an ironical twist, at the start of the fifth week, I was raped.

Raped by my husband.

He came home drunk and clutching a bottle of Double Crown Lager beer under her armpits. He walked into the kitchen and threw the bottle of drink down at my feet, breaking it. The shards of the bottle pierced some parts of my leg. I cried out in pain.

He slapped me.

“Why are you not waiting for me in bed like a good wife?” His breath reeked of alcohol.

“Am sorry my husband. Am fixing your dinner?” I was shaking in terror

“As at this time?” He stole a glance at his wristwatch “6:30 PM?”

“Am sorry my Husband.”

“What have you being doing since morning? You have playing with your boyfriends? Are you still a virgin?” He said reaching towards me, his hands slithering into my wrapper and trying to feel for my womanhood. I whimpered as rivulets of tears streaked down from my eyes.

His tried to force his hands into me. I winced in pain and struggled in futility to remove his hands from my body. He was taller and stronger than I am and my resistance seemed to spur him on. He removed his hand from under my wrapper and tore it away from him. I tried to cover my full breasts with one hand and cover my womanhood with the other. I have never felt more ashamed in my life. I felt dirty and abused.

He slapped me again and forcibly carried me into the bedroom with the hot water boiling on the kerosene stove and my body smelling as if I had bathed with Ogiri. I felt dirty and smelled dirty.

In the bedroom, I switched off, feeling his body on top of me.

I woke up in the hospital a week later and was told that I lost a lot of blood. A nurse told me that I had a profuse vaginal bleeding and should stay off sex for a while. I felt sore all over.

However, I was raped a day after my discharge from the hospital.

My misfortune did not start on that fateful night, it started when I was born as a girl.