It was his aunt who called me at dawn that fateful day. Because of my close relationship with her and his mother, I didn’t panic when I saw her call. I didn’t even wonder if everything was okay. I answered the call with pleasure, only to be met with hostility. The woman who treated me with love and kindness since I married her nephew was everything but kind to me that dawn. “Someone cut a piece of fabric on my son’s shirt. You are his wife so you are the one who has the motivation to do such a thing. Tell me, what did you do with it? Which shrine did you take him to?” Those accusations coming from her felt like she was slapping me in the face. “Mama, what are you talking about?” I asked her.
“Don’t call me mama,” she shouted, what did you do with my son’s shirt? Why did you cut a piece of the fabric?” “I have no idea about what you are accusing me of.” I calmly told her. She didn’t listen to me. She kept asking me what I did with the fabric. So out of frustration, I told her, “If you are so sure that I am the one responsible for whatever is going on, then go and inquire from any shrine of your choice what I did with the shirt. It seems that is the only way you will believe me.” As soon as I said that, she hung up on me. The whole conversation left me confused. I didn’t understand why a piece of fabric would make her angry. Besides, why would they think I would harm my husband spiritually?
At the time this went down I was pregnant. So why would I want to harm the father of my unborn child? If they genuinely wanted suspects, they could have accused his two cousins who were living in our single-room apartment with us. They also had access to his clothes so it could have been any of them. Yet they were so sure that it was me. This aunt of his and his mother were like mothers to me. The two women welcomed me into the family with warmth. We even used it to go out sometimes as a trio. I thought myself lucky, to have in-laws who were so accepting of me. However, that single phone call changed everything. I was an outsider among them so in their mind, I was likely to do them harm, unprovoked. To think that their discrimination started when I got pregnant is what surprised me the most. Did they not want me to get pregnant and give them grandchildren? I don’t know what their problem was but I cut all forms of cordiality with them that very dawn.
I convinced my husband to let us move from our apartment to a new place. “We have a baby coming. I can’t afford to pay for rent for a new apartment right now,” he complained. “If it’s about money then I will pay half of the bill. But honestly, I will feel a lot safer if we move out of your family’s reach. I also hope that your cousins wouldn’t move with us to our new place. We need space for the baby.” After I spoke to him he agreed. We found an apartment far from his family’s home and moved there. Although I was pregnant, I did everything a woman could possibly do to support my husband. To be honest, apart from his clothes and shoes, my husband had nothing to his name.
When it was time for me to deliver I had to undergo CS. The cost was higher than we planned but I managed to raise more than half of the money, while my husband raised the balance before we paid the bill. Six months after I had the baby we travelled to his hometown. There, his aunties ganged up to insult me. They still accused me of doing something sinister with my husband’s shirt. According to them, I control him like a dog on a leash. They believed he was the sole provider for our family. They said things that implied that my husband worshipped the ground I walked on. One of them even uttered the words, “If anything happens to our son, we will request his life from you.”
I was surprised they thought I had that kind of control over my husband. This is a man who closed from work at 5:00 PM and came home to me at 12:00 AM. As for financial responsibility, I bore more than he did. I decided that these people were just bitter because they probably expected my husband to take care of them but he didn’t. So they were looking for anyone to blame but their son. I chose to ignore their insults until someone said something offensive about my parents. I lost my cool there and then and retaliated against their insults. These women nearly beat me up. The saddest part about all of it was that my husband was there through it all, but he never tried to defend me. He watched them abuse me here and there and acted unconcerned. Nobody told me to pack my bags and go to my parents’ house. It was clear no one wanted me there so I woke up at 5:00 AM the next day and left.
My family reached out to his family and a date was fixed for us to sit and resolve our issues. Despite the fact that I was not happy that my husband didn’t protect me when his aunties attacked me, I easily forgave him. We were in a good place when we left for the village. At the village too, things were resolved amicably between us. After everything, my husband advised, “Why don’t you ask your mother to stay here with you for a while? That way your mother and mine can bond. I will have to go back because I don’t work remotely as you do. But you can stay here.” It sounded like a good idea so I agreed to it.
We stayed in the village for two weeks. The entire time we were there, my husband kept in touch with me. He texted and called me throughout my stay there. After two weeks, my mum and I left my in-laws’ house. My mother suggested, “Let me take the baby with home so that you can get some rest when you get back. I was delighted to let her have him for a few days. I got home and shockingly found an almost empty apartment. Our fridge, TV, and ceiling fan were gone. I thought we were robbed but I realized the locks were not broken. I took a close look at anything else that may be missing and found out that all my husband’s stuff was gone too.
I called him and asked him, “Where did you pack your stuff to? Are we moving? What’s going on?” He answered, “No, I didn’t pack my stuff. Everything is where they are meant to be.” The lie he told was the icing on the cake of betrayal I felt. I listed the other items that were missing in the room, “Are you trying to tell me that all these things are here in this room and I can’t see them? Did you cast an invisibility spell on them?” He couldn’t speak. Just when I was dealing with the pain of what he did, my landlord came knocking. “It’s good you are back. When are you packing the rest of your stuff so that I can put up the room for rent?” I was confused, “I am not moving out. Our rent hasn’t even expired yet.” The landlord got angry, “Madam, don’t play games with me. Your husband came to collect the balance of the rent after mounting pressure on me to cough up the money. He assured me that you will come and pack the remaining items and hand over the keys to me. So hurry up and get it over with.”
I crumbled into a heap of mess on the floor the moment he turned his back. I couldn’t believe the drastic turn my life took in just a matter of minutes. My backstabbing husband refused to answer my calls for the rest of the day. I fell into depression in the days that followed. I was in pain and I was angry too. I didn’t know whether to cry or to curse him so I did both. Every time I cried, I cursed my husband. When I run out of curses to heap upon him, I cursed the women in his family. I couldn’t bring myself to eat so I added fasting to my crying and continued to curse all of them for days. The landlord too was very relentless in his mission to throw me out of his house. People in the neighbourhood whispered things behind my back and laughed at me. I was the woman whose husband left her while she was at his parent’s house. I didn’t get any explanation or a goodbye. I kept asking myself, “What did I do to him? Is it because of the missing fabric on his shirt? I thought that issue was resolved. Even his aunties accepted that I didn’t know anything about it. Was I a bad wife?”
I could no longer live in our apartment even if I wanted to. So I gathered some money, rented a new place, and moved into it. Fortunately, he didn’t take the bed, the bedroom fan, and the kitchen utensils. I managed to start all over with those items. To this very day, I don’t know what I did to my husband to make him leave me in such a shameful way. My father reached out to his family several times before they honoured his request for a meeting. When we met I was asked if I still wanted the marriage and I said no. Everything was dissolved that very day.
I am now a free woman but I still can’t bring myself to forgive my ex-husband and his family. I want to completely let them go, but it’s hard. My bitterness toward them is staining aspects of my love life. I am only thirty, but I am as cynical as a sixty-year-old woman who has gone through one too many divorces. Nothing about men or marriage appeals to me anymore. Please, what can I do to completely forgive my past, and live a happy life?
