WHEN THE WALL STRIKES BACK.

Young wife, Nkechi does not like make-up; she is a member of one of the neo-pentecostal Christian denominations who considers make-ups as painting and relates to it as harlotry. She is also reserved, nay reclusive and could spend a whole day without saying more than fifty words. She smiles probably as twice as much as she talks at everyone and everything.

She smiles at the clothes of her three kids while she washes them, smiles at her fellow women when they are engaging in their rudimentary and routine quarrels to re-establish their womanhood,  she smiles at her customers while she softly and with intense miserliness of words explain why her red tomatoes are the best in the market and are in fact not overripe as was suggested by the customer; she smiles, I am certain, at the thick darkness while she balances her pan of tomatoes and pepper and vegetables on her and carefully try to thread a path amidst pitch blackness, sometimes furtively, as she steps into potholes, into murky stagnant pools and non-chalantly wades out of it, her rubber slippers flapping  behind her, splattering specks of mud and dirt on her calves and long skirts through the dirty paths that leads to her one room apartment she calls home after the day’s hustle.

She smiles too, at her husband, a thin, sallow man with balding, graying hair of about forty-three. She smiles even when he shouts and swears at her and call her names.

“Ashawo…” Nkechi would smile.

“You are a good-for-nothing woman” Nkechi would smile.

“You have been giving me several STDs.” Nkechi would smile

Even those nights when he had beaten her, Nkechi would take some minutes; powder her face and smile, baring her broken incisor; that same incisor that was broken by her thin sallow husband; at the world and the unfairness of it all.

What befuddles me most about her long-running agony is not just about her messianic resignation to an abusive relationship that would seem to be heading to an inevitable martyrdom is the glaring mismatch between Nkechi and Ndubuaku, her husband. Nkechi is four-inches taller than her husband and weighs at least 15kg more. She would have been considered a rotund woman if she had not been carrying those ample kilograms on a six-foot plus frame. Simply put, Nkechi is a giant and would easily destroy her husband if she fell on him with any sort of intent.

But Nkechi, a mother of three considers raising her voice at her drunken, abusive husband a transgression with the capacity to land her into the bottomless pit of fire and brimstone. She wants to go to heaven, an escape from the travails of poor motherhood and abusive husband and would gladly suffer hell on earth.

I heard her say once, quoting from her favorite book which she clutches time and again with a wan, weak smile or at times pores over with a squint; that the sufferings of this world is nothing compared to the bliss that awaits in the world thereafter. This I surmised would be the reason that she has not slapped the wimp silly.

Like I pointed out earlier, Nkechi is as sizable a woman as she was beautiful and would certainly not do badly in the second-hand marital marketplace where the divorced, the abused and the bored women shelve their wares.  Mama Risika her heavier, darker neighbour had often remonstrated heavily that her own display of decorum would send her to an early grave, orphaning her three kids none of whom were above twelve. Mama Risika had because of Nkechi’s quiet resignation to abuse nicknamed her “The Wall”.

Mama Risika for her own part was not nicknamed “Action Lady” in vain. She gave as good as she got from her husband and thus while she intermittently sports a black eye, her husband has had his two front teeth removed by Action Lady’s massive, fufu-pounding fists.

“Ejoor…Mama Chibuzor.” She said one day, cupping her face is her massive fists and drawing her head back while inspecting her bruised, swollen nearly-shut eye. I watched from the tinted, sliding windows of my apartment, that same window from where I watched the pummeling of the previous night.

“Even this Bible wey you dey read don talk am say The Kingdom of God don suffer violence tey tey and na wives like us dey break people teeth take am by force.” She concluded emphatically while I watched from my vantage point. She drew up a stool and began to clean her Nkechi’s face with a towel and warm water.

“You fit kill your husband if you just think am. You know sometimes I even dey fear say breeze don carry am those times when he dey go drink come back late.”

“Aiyiii…” She jerked as Mama Risika rubbed at a very sore spot. She frantically removed the elder woman’s hand before she spoke.

“My Pastor don tell me say My Husband dey suffer from demonic attack. Na only prayers go save am.”

“Dey there now make shoe dey wear you.” Mama Risika reprimanded her gently. “You dey wait make he kill you go marry another young girl wey him breast still dey stand?”

“My God still dey alive.” She replied batting away her hand and warm towel that was coming closer to her bruised, swollen eyes.

“Your God fit dey alive but you fit die. This man fit kill you. You no be God.” Mama Risika scoffed before she forcibly dabbed at her swollen eyes.

“Aiisshhh” Nkechi winced and furtively tried to avoid the warm compress by batting away Mama Risika’s hands. But Mama Risika has those kind of hands that no one could bat away without her consent. Nkechi is a formidable looking woman but Mama Risika is the definition of the word itself. Take her arms as an instance, it looks as if it had been cut off from elephant’s calf and were adorned with hairs possibly skinned from the lion’s mane. When she waves her greetings or gesticulates during some of her animated conversations, the fold of flesh that constituted her arms sways rhythmically from side to side as if they were engaged in a royal dance that advised luxurious movements. Her laps quakes the earth and shakes with it and she accentuates all these features with a humongous backside that would have been construed as a blessing in her firmer, youthful years but was now nothing more than a burden, a burden which could only be supported by a custom-made metal seat, the like of which she sat with while she played distress nurse for Nkechi.

If Mama Risika should come to one’s house, offering her a fancy seat is a subtle acceptance that one is planning to buy another one, however being a sensible woman, Mama Risika drags her own metal seat along with her when she plans to seat down more out of fear of damaging a seat and landing her heavy backside on the floor than any sympathy of the host and the seat owner.

Therefore, Mama Risika is often at risk of falling upon her lanky, wiry husband and crushing him than the man was at hurting a hair of her head. Papa Risika often out of a misconstrued sort of manly pride that is often another word for chauvinism has often managed to receive a crushing from Mama Risika and often in the full view of the neighbors who often beg her not to kill her husband.

Nkechi could do the same to her husband, but she was less formidable. The only thing that had always held her back was her faith in God and her belief in the tenets of the Bible both of which advised submission to God through an unreserved compliance to patriarchy.

This gores Mama Risika’s gears.

But what infuriates her the most was not Nkechi’s blind obedience to what a man said from the pulpit while citing a sympathetic verse and obfuscating the rest of the verses that has the potential to nullify those patriarchal lines, it was the fact that her own set up, the family which she manages is not even patriarchal, not in the very least.

Nkechi was the literal breadwinner, the bills payer, the fees sorter and the rents clearer. Ndubuaku on the other hand is a chronic alcoholic with rubbery will and a down-on-the-luck gambler who has never even won a bet.

Sometimes, Mama Risika wishes that she could sit on the frail sallow man for just fifteen seconds just to make a point.

Having dabbed at her friend’s eyes, she leaned back to observe the battered face and using the tip of the wet warm towel, she dabbed at the specks of blood on her split lips.

“Mama Chinua, ekpa mi ooo. I no sure say you go reach next year o”

“God Forbid…My God is alive.”

“Una Pentecost prayers no go save you when this idiot go put knife for your throat.”

“Abeg no call my husband idiot.” She retorted and stood up bristling with indignation.

“Na this thing you go dey do now until you collapse for here one day.”

“My Redeemer liveth…and I sure say I go dey alive see my husband become Christian.” He started heading towards her door leaving Mama Risika and her hundreds of pounds of flesh on her iron seat. However, she did not stop talking, her voice as weighty as her personality.

“I go know wetin you go dey talk when he go make your children motherless come go marry all these woman wey dem body still fresh replace you.”

“My husband no be that kind person.” She said pausing in front of her door and turning to face Mama Risika.

“I don dey talk am before say dem tie you for back come this town…Hei!” She exclaimed before she stood up from the iron seat, her fold of flesh oscillating in its intimidating glory. With five steps or less, she covered up the space between her seat and the front of the door where Nkechi stood. She felt Nkechi’s temperature and pulse sarcastically.

“I been dey talk am say you no well. I no go surprise if dem tell me say this man seal you for one bottle inside this your one room apartment.”

It surely looks that way. Ndubuaku would curse Nkechi at every turn, insisting that she was his biggest mistake whereas commonsense would clearly see he was hers. Sometimes a look at them brings Disney’s Beauty and the Beast to mind with the caveat that Ndubuaku is a very small beast, perhaps a monkey at a stretch whereas Nkechi is a very beautiful woman, tall, for she was taller than most women and bestowed with an ebony skin that glistens against the sun. Her face was shaped like a mango with her cheeks as pointed as her nose and her almond-shaped eyes cast in the alluring dark shade of a half-burnt charcoal. Neighbors had often gossiped that Ndubuaku is a very wicked genie who had hoodwinked Nkechi into marriage. That sort of thing is obtainable these days and had once happened to Jacob of the Biblical fame where Leah was offered instead of Rachael. If it could happen then, this technology-driven age where individuals wield dual and sometimes triple personalities in their assorted social media pages, it is even easier to imagine several scenarios within which Nkechi would have been deceived that the monstrosity he had gotten married to was indeed the epitome of masculine handsomeness. In a world where ‘orange is the new black’, utterly ugly may be the new handsomeness. 

However, Nkechi does not look the part of a social media savvy woman.

“There is no incantation against Zion and no divination against Israel…” Said Nkechi protesting that she cannot be locked down in a bottle by her husband.

“Well...If you no dey bottle because you be prayer warrior, at least I sure say your husband dey bottle. That woman wey yellow like paw paw don dey take all the money wey he dey win for gambling”

Well, a woman can bear anything but jealousy occasioned by unfaithfulness. That is why Shakespeare had stated that hell hath no fury than a woman scorned and Nkechi was feeling scorned when she heard that her husband was cheating.

It hurt more than the beatings which she submissively received as if they were part of the Ten Commandments administered by God through Moses. It hurts more than the broken nose, and the split lips and Nkechi was having none of it.

“Which woman?” She queried

“Oh? Na you be the only stranger in Jerusalem?”

“You no know Madam Durable?”

“You mean that bleaching Madam wey kill him husband?”

“Yes na…That woman wey own that Bar where your husband dey drink dey play pool with my husband?”

“So na my husband that woman dey wear knicker for?”

“Ehen now…She dey marry all the men wey win money for every weekend here.”

“Where she dey?” Nkechi asked before darting into her house and emerging with a scarf which she hurriedly tied around her waist over the wrapper which she had tied upon her silky blue blouse.

“Na now you come…Please make we gather go. I wan sit on my husband again today.” Mama Risika rushed into her room and emerged with her own scarf which she tied around her waist too.

As both of them left, from the vantage point of my kitchen window, I could see Ndubuaku’s teeth flying all over the place as he spat blood. There is no way this would end well for him.

However the street told tales of how Nkechi placed her husband and his girlfriend in a mortar and pounded him to pulp. They said some parts of his teeth and body are still left in Madam Durable’s Bar.

The next time I saw Ndubuaku was at a hospital where he was wrapped in a cocoon, like a spider’s imminent feast. He looked like he had been hit by a moving train. His beautiful wife sat near him commiserating soberly.

He could not talk because of a broken jaw and as such I could not get his side of the story.

However, I can confirm that he will not be hitting his wife Nkechi or any other woman anytime soon. Nkechi on her own part went for evening service the next day to worship Jehova and pray for the quick recovery of her husband who had escaped a very fatal encounter.