By Kasimma
I would meet my husband’s side chick on the most stressful day in my forty-one years of living: I missed my flight; paid double to get on a bus; endured myriad of potholes; and even to wee, a common human need, to wee, I paid an extortionate fee to the toilet custodian at the park where we stopped to stretch our legs. I arrive at Abuja Motor Park peeved and exhausted. My husband, scheduled to come get me, vomits all the apologies in the world: that he is holed up in a meeting.
The cab ride home is the one good thing that day. I have never seen a female cabdriver. She is cordial and convivial. She asks about my trip and laughs when I complain about the toilet fare. I like the sound of her laughter, like a fading siren. Her buckteeth are pretty, and she seems to know so. Her arms are firm. When she rests them on her coffee-brown armrest, the colours merge perfectly so that her arms seem disappeared. I swallow and shut my eyes. There appears my mother, blaming my childhood retrograde amnesia, saying that I was not born like this. She touches my teenage palm to the nodule on her face. It is hot. Please, she says, if I don’t want my father to kill her, I best stay away from women. The head trauma will heal, and with it will go my false sexual personality. She taps my lap, am I hearing her? She taps me again, can’t I talk? Am I hearing her? She taps me. I jolt awake. We are here now, the cabdriver says, her palm still on my knee. Hope I had a nice nap. I rub her fingers and smile. Her skin is so soft. She honks. Ahmed, my slovenly gateman, opens the gate. I pay her triple what she charged me just to see her buckteeth smile.
Home at last, I find a new, floral, pink bedsheet. A bouquet, unaddressed, is on the bedside table. My irritation at hubby scrubs off. I take a shower and dive into sleep.
*
Hubby’s goat meat stew is the best I have ever eaten. I know he cooked it as beg. The flowers and bedsheet allayed my anger anyway. But a nice dinner never hurts anybody. I am deciding between the sweating wine or the frothing beer when we hear the commotion outside. Ahmed is noisy. He is probably arguing about Man U and Arsenal with the neighbour’s gateman. Hubby settles in his chair after kissing me on the cheek. This man that I love. His circle beard and hairline are well-carved, his cheek bereft of hair. I like! He holds my gaze and mouths I love you. I love him too. I’ve loved him for sixteen years, and I’m ready to go for another sixteen. Ahmed’s louder voice spurts incomprehension. The entrance door barges open and in comes a woman, probably aged two dozen. In hot pursuit is Ahmed. A pinkish-black blob sits on her left cheekbone. Her lips are royal blue. She is dressed in a yellow, fitted gown that brushes the top of her knee. Two chain anklets chill on one ankle. She avoids my eyes. I turn in the direction of her gaze. There is hubby, frozen. His mouth and eyes assume a perfect circle. He blinks when he espies me looking at him. I drink her up from neck to toe. Her bone-straight hair, resting on her braless peanuts, reminds me of the mermaid, Princess Ariel. Her skin is a shade darker than her dress. Her legs are smooth. I swallow.
“Sir, ma, sir, I asked her to stop, but she did not listen to me.”
“Is that how you do your job? Eeh, Ahmed? How dare you let an intruder in?” Hubby explodes.
“Sir… sir…” Ahmed looks at me, looks at her, looks at him. His mouth is open, but his words are, perhaps, surfing the sea. A blue smear is on the right side of his neck.
She did not take her eyes off hubby. She has no tint of timidity. She crosses her arms, exuding the aplomb of a captain who knows their ship.
“Ahmed, are you now deaf?” Hubby roars, jolting both of us, but this girl.
“Sir…”
“It’s okay, Ahmed,” I say, my eyes on this aunty. “You may leave.”
Ahmed bows, bows again. “Thank you, ma.”
I wait to hear the click of the door before I ask her who she is.
She puffs a snide snort, slants her right leg forward, and says, “Ask him.”
I turn to hubs. His fingers, all ten, are pressed so tightly together that they look webbed. Were his nose not stuck to his face, when they spread like that, they just might lift his legs. I can now tell who she is, but wallowing in denial is safer.
Hoping he will voice a lie, “Honey, who is she?”
“I don’t know who the hell she is or what she is doing here!”
Good. Lie voiced. I turn to the girl.
“Right?” She gives us a mocking haha. “Have you changed the pink bed sheets I bought?”
First, my eyes spin like a downloading file.
“Did you still dispose of that flower card you addressed to me?”
Second, a JPEG of the pink bed sheet pops into my mind’s display.
“Because I don’t remember you writing another one for the kind ma as you intentioned.”
Third, I shut down and breathe in. It’s not flowers I inhale but fried plantains; the curry leaf in the goat meat stew; and the stinkiest betrayal. I slept on that pink bedsheet this afternoon, didn’t I? I even dreamed of a pink, tarred road, didn’t I? Might I have lain on their cum? I open my eyes. This girl still stands there, her arms folded. Trepidation, if she feels any, must be slammed behind impossible locks. Her ilk must be those sisters who work the thing between their legs, from nine to five (the nighttime variant) to pay their rent. When you cover your index nail with your thumb, the circle you get would be the size of the bruise on her left cheekbone.
“What happened to your face?” I ask.
She softens, just a teeny tiny bit, like butter in a hot pan. Her hands fall. She re-covers her poise with the kind of thick fur that enables polar bears survive frost.
“He hit me.”
Hubs explodes in a burst of vexation. “What the…”
“What the what, Kola? You want to deny it?” Her voice is gravid with rage.
Kola, a name I have almost forgotten. I am so used to calling him, Honey or Hubby. You mean Hubris, no, Hubs, no, Kola planted this guava on this modicum of human? I know he possesses that specie of machismo that forbodes violence. He’s fought with a club bouncer; punched someone for bashing his car. But he halts his testiness with me. He has never raised a hand on me. Never! Not even close. How then is this girl claiming that Kola slept with and beat her? Was the beating a warm-up for sex? Was it their modus operandi? If that were the case, would she be here? Her face is almost disfigured, and Kola did this? Their shouting voices sip in and swamp my brain. I sniff. Something is cooking, maybe burning. And it is not plantain, no. Something smells like cooking blood, like boiling skin and hot blood. My blood? I can’t hear myself think! I grab the unopened bottle of wine. I wave my hand. The bottle detonates on the wall.
They shudder.
They shut up.
Good.
I follow their gazes to the wall, bleeding, squirting blood like the wires in my heart. A sharp pain pinches my neck as if a morsel of hurriedly chewed yam is slowly making its way down my throat. I am outside, under a moonless, starless night. Cold, strong arms grab me. A deep-pitched voice screams my name. I don’t know how or when I reached the ground. The wine I spilled drips off my arms and fingers, soaks my dress and cornrows. I shrug off Kola’s arms.
“Honey, I swear, I don’t know who she is.”
The girl snorts. “He says you have become dull and monotonous in bed.”
Kola positions himself to obstruct my view of the girl. “I don’t know who this idiot is. Don’t listen to her.”
“Oh, and he said your pants are as thick as a blanket.”
Kola cups his head. “Shut up that your dirty mouth or I’ll shut it up for you!” He charges toward her, his palm fisted.
I sit up. Disbelief revolves in an orbit around my head.
“Hit me again nau, na today?”
All that is human in this girl must have melted in that hot pan. This mass standing there must be some sort of evil spirit. Kola drops his hand, hunches his shoulders, shakes his head. I dash upstairs. Kola hotfoots after me, speaking, maybe giraffe language; I don’t know. I slam the bedroom’s door. I yank off my clothing. The pink bed sheet shakes me to my marrow. My vision blurs. I do not realise I am weeping. I imagine Kola and that girl doing… doggy style? Did he suck her clit the way he sucks mine? Did he gobble her vagina juice at its source the way he does mine? And I kissed him! I kissed his vagina-mopping-tongue not long ago. Lawd! Have I become a party to this filth? Puke rises to the occasion. I run into the bathroom and splash. This is when I hear Kola speaking English. He rubs my back. “It’s okay, Honey. It’s okay.” The toilet is messy with smelly, yellow mesh and chunks of flesh. The stink pushes more puke forward. I fear my intestines will slither out of my mouth. Kola flushes the toilet. I pant like a dog under the sun. I sit on the bathroom floor, cup my face in my arms, and bawl.
“Honey, it’s my first time. I swear to you on my life.”
I wish he’d maintain his lies. An adult is someone who takes responsibility for their decisions, whether good or bad. Kola is a recreant non-adult because stable adults don’t cheat. But Kola fears me enough to lie. That must count for something, yes? Did he fear me when he banged her? Did he even think of me, of our love, our marriage?
For the millionth time, “Honey, I don’t know what came over me. Please, forgive me.”
He is on his knees, weeping. His wail is a dirge or a prayer. His tears smell like rusted vomit. I have never seen him so shrunken. He suddenly looks two decades older. I want to touch him, wipe his tears, and tell him we will work things out. But I sight the pink bedsheet, for goodness’ sake! And what did he say my panties were like again? Blanket. BLANket! As per the weather in my privates is always in winter, yeah? BLANKET! I release a thudding sigh, bearing the entire weight of my broken heart. I rake myself off the floor and cup my breasts in my palms. I wet a towel and wipe the wine off my body the best I can. He is still in the bathroom crying when I finish dressing: same when I bang the living nightlight out of the door.
Aunty Swollen-Face jumps up from the couch when I stomp downstairs. I must have caught her off guard because she looks at me, at the floor, at the ceiling, and folds her arms again. She’s not adept at shapeshifting her emotions after all. She tries to match my stare but fails. Her sclera is pink; her eyes mist up. A strand of snot points to her lips. She sniffs. I see through her brashness to her fragile, very fragile, personality. Her heart is a tiny jelly inside a menacing mountain. I see my mother.
I point to her face. “When did this happen?”
She takes two deep breaths, glances at me, and looks away again as though she considers ignoring me. “Late afternoon hours.”
I thought Kola said he was holed up in a meeting by that time. So, you mean his pipe organ was holed up meeting with Aunty’s vagina, playing songs, exploring, spraying sperm, while I broiled under the sun? My hands start to shake. Tears burn my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she coos.
Is that pity scalding her voice? How dare she! How dare she! I imagine Sango eating a drum of fufu, doing press-ups, preparing to crack this skeleton into shreds with his lightning. I wish it would hit that wig off her hair first. Then maybe her skull second, then those small eyes, then her… I look at her again. The guava germinating under her cheeks stings my eyes and shuts them. Memories elide and discharge: my mother writhes under my father’s fist; I rush to her; he slaps me out of his way; I bang my head on the wall; I sleep. I wake up hospitalised; hematoma collection in the frontal lobe, retrograde amnesia, personality change.
I wipe off tears with the flat of my palm. “Have you seen a doctor?” My voice is surprisingly calm. If my family did this to her, we might bloody well treat it.
She shakes her head.
“It hurts?”
She nods.
“You should see a doctor.”
I yank her hand and drag her along. If she protests, I do not notice. I open the passenger’s door of my car, push her in the way policemen force arrestees into the car, and slam the door. I get into the driver’s seat and start the car. Ahmed opens the gate, and I zoom off.
I ransack my brain, trying to decide which hospital to take this mosquito. I cannot take her to our family clinic, which is nearby, because how would I explain to Doctor Obi what Kola did? Where else should I take her? Why the fuck do I even give a damn? This goat shit slept with my husband. She wheeled my marriage into the flood. No, she didn’t, Kola did. Yet, why do I care if she’s alive or in the belly of an anaconda? Her hands are tucked between her legs. Her face shines with tears and remorse.
“You know you’re stupid, right?” I ask.
She shifts in her seat.
“Here you are, in my locked car, at night, after sleeping with my husband. I can kill you and bury that your thin body and nobody will know.”
She does not even raise her head. She keeps her gaze on her hands. Is she the same person who somehow overpowered Ahmed, pounced into my house, and challenged Kola? This docile child beside me is not the moxie who altered my life, is she? I hiss and hit the accelerator. The road is free. I speed for a while and slam the brakes. She lunges forward. I shoot out my arm. Her chest slams on my arm instead of the dashboard. I push her back on her seat. Her eyes are wide open. It is then that I realise she’s not wearing her seatbelt. I could have killed her. My hands start shaking. My body follows suit. I burst into tears. I pound my steering and cry. How could Kola do this to me? I have been faithful. For sixteen years, I have been faithful. Yes, I’ve had desires, but I’ve been faithful. I’ve admired prospects, but I’ve been faithful. What did I do to deserve this? Is it his first time? Does it even matter? Something crawls in my hair. I shudder. Her bony hand is outstretched and in my hair! What the actual…
“Get your filthy, slutty hand off me!”
She obeys. I breathe hard. The car feels too small. I am afraid I will burst into chunks. I wind down the windows despite the blaring AC. I do not want to look at her stupid face. Idiot.
I cannot help but ask. “How many times have you slept with him?”
I do not look at her. It’s the car ignition that answers me.
“Are you fucking deaf?” I turn to her.
She wipes her tears and sniffs. “We’ve been dating for four years.”
God of my ancestors! What! Puke rises to the occasion. I pinch my stomach and cover my mouth: no strength, please, no strength to vomit. Four kini? Papa God! And that bastard lied to me that it’s his first time? Four… ah! No! No! NOOO! It’s not only my pants that are as thick as a blanket, even my brain! My brain is SHIEEELDED in the blanket of stupiiiiidity—if not, tell me how come I did not suspect nada? No, just tell me!
Yet, stupid me, stupid, stupid, I ask another question. “You knew he was married, right?”
She nods, wipes her tears. “I found out after the second year. I stayed because I love him.”
Oh, it’s not even the past tense of love, eeh? And why, in the name of all that is bright and fair, is she telling me this? I asked for it, so, I inhale it.
“I’m sorry. I wanted to protect you from the consuming pain that almost killed me when I found out he’s married. But he crossed the line when he hit me… and…” She cups her face and boohoo.
Protect me? Is this nude non sequitur supposed to console me? Wouldn’t protect-me be her acquittance of her acquaintance with my husband’s dick? Her cries find my heart and soften it. She’s not faking those tears. This voice is not the bold one that stormed into my house, holding a glass of truth. She’s a vulnerable little girl. Why is she sleeping with married men? I do not ask. Enough of the answers, please. Worst has urinated blood on me, zipped its fly, and jaywalked down the streets. What is left is for me to dunk into life’s lubricating pool. I rest my head on the steering and count to ten. Twenty. Forty. At sixty, some balance and calm slip into me. She no longer wails, but she still cries. I wipe my eyes, take my foot off the brake pad, and place it on the accelerator. I do not know where I am going, but I drive. I do not even remember that I should be going to the hospital. It’s just me on the road. This girl is not my problem, Kola is. It’s not her responsibility to protect me; it’s Kola’s. Spitting venom on her is a waste of useful poison. The venom is for Kola who already killed himself when he swore on his life that he’d only slept with her once. I will first blind Kola with this venom and then castrate him. That pipe with which he litters sperm on every bed in every brothel in this city, I shall nip it when I get home. When will I get home? I do not want to go home. I do not want to see Kola ever again. Do I have STD? Does she? Should I ask her or no? I glance at her. She stares out the window. Nothing is out there. Where do I go? This girl’s… what’s even her name?
“What’s your name?”
“Linda.”
“You have a native name, don’t you?”
“Amina.”
“Linda should be your runz name then.”
“Yes.” It was a whisper.
The streetlights make everywhere golden and sublime. The silence of the night is glorious. The disturbing varieties of light on a building ahead call my eyes. A hotel. I should go there for the night. I cannot go home to that Kola. I drive into the hotel’s parking lot, turn off the ignition, take my car key and my purse, and slam my door. Linda is still sitting in the car when I return ten minutes later to lock up. I open the passenger’s door.
“Why are you still here?”
Does she even hear me? Her pink cheek shoots toward me. What kind of mammal would do this? I don’t understand. How is it possible that Kola can pound this girl? I cannot tell what traumatises me the most: his deceit and infidelity to me or his deceit and violence to her. It is absurd, insulting to the penis and testosterone, that a man should beat a woman. Abusive men are worse than worms. Irritants! What manner of low self-esteem is that? Lower than a rat’s surely. And I hate weakness! Abuse is weakness regardless of whether it wears my father’s head or Kola’s head. Idiot, Kola. Idiot!
I decide to give her my hotel room, bid her goodbye, and go find myself somewhere to nurse my wound.
“Come. Come with me.”
She looks at me. She seems afraid, unsure, but she alights from the car. I press the lock button and I walk. I do not look back. Though I do not hear her footsteps, I know the quiet behind me is her. If she develops cold feet and goes back, her loss, my gain; I will lie down and sleep my sleep. But she follows me into the room. I close the door behind her.
“You can stay here for the night.”
Her face is unreadable, but I see, for the first time, that she is a garden of beauty. Apparently, she’s a cognoscenti in matters of the privates else insatiable Kola will not be with her that long. I guess I’m stale and archaic now for Kola. But what then can one say about his fifty-year-old penis? I shake my head and turn to leave. She grabs my hand. Her touch is very delicate, warm, wet. On impulse, I want to hit her dirty hands off mine, but I do not. Her beauty handcuffs me just like the cabdriver’s. She holds my second hand, this skeleton Linda, and draws closer to me. She smells like Vaseline and lust. I must smell like wine. The doorknob is cold on my arm, but I stand there, enslaved by her eyes. Her breath cools my face. I touch the wound on her cheek, the one left behind to tell the tale of her battering. I imagine her powerless under Kola’s mauls. She wraps her arms around my neck. I loosen my pants of indifference on one leg and denial on the other. And I realise, standing there, my hand in hers, that we are both victims. I remember Kola on top of the huge club bouncer, but the man becomes tiny and is now a crying Linda, then the face changes to my crying mother. I staple my eyelids. Lushness falls on my cheek, tickling, but delicious. Is this what it feels like? It’s the head trauma. I stiffen and pull my head back, but her hold is strong. The blood moving in my body this time is not confined by veins and arteries. The side chick and me.
About the Author:
Kasimma is from Igboland—obodo ndi dike. X: @kasimmam IG: @iamkasimma Website: https://kasimma.com/read-online/