He started talking about it when I was only two months pregnant. That he wanted to bring someone to help us in the house. I wasn’t doing badly as a pregnant wife. I woke up at the normal time and did my chores before I bathed for work. I was surprised he was talking about bringing in someone to help. I asked him, “Is there something am not doing well enough?” He answered, “Far from it. There’s this woman in my church who has asked me if we needed someone to live with. Soon you’ll give birth. I’m thinking of bringing the person in here to help around.”
I thought it was the woman herself who needed a place to live. I told him, “We don’t have to worry about when I give birth. My mom can come around and help. Your mom too is around and she would be very happy to help. Why do you have to bring a stranger in and probably pay her to do what we have people to do for us for free?” His answer was, “All these names you’ve mentioned have their lives to live. They have their own husbands they would have to take care of. Let’s think about it and see what we can do about it. We’ll need someone.”
The next time we had that conversation again he said, “She’s coming in tomorrow. She has to work with you for a while before you give birth. By the time the baby is due, she would have known her way around things.” I was seven months pregnant but my agility and mobility weren’t affected by the pregnancy in any way. I told him, “I thought we’ve thrashed this conversation so why are you bringing it back from the bin?” He answered, “We need help around here and this girl is capable of helping. She needs a place to live so let’s take advantage of that and let her help around.”
The following day, he came from town and there was this lady tagging along. I looked at her from her top to her toe. She didn’t look like someone who needed a place to live. She looked well-fed and well-groomed to be someone who needed a place to live. Something else caught my attention. This girl looked like my husband’s ex-girlfriend, the lady he left for me. She’s plump and curvy with heavy buttocks. My mind started wandering in the gutters, I must admit. When she greeted me, I only nodded. My husband introduced her; “The lady I’ve been telling you about is here. She’s Akos. She completed SHS not too long ago. She’s hardworking and would be a great help to us.” Again, I nodded.
He took the lady to her room and later came back. I looked at him and how happy he looked to have succeeded in bringing the lady home. His eyes dazzled as if he had accomplished a task he had failed for a very long time. I asked, “And you said this lady needed a place to live? What about her shows that she needs a place? And what have you seen about her that gave you the impression that she’s hardworking? You know her already?” He shrugged his shoulder. He said, “He’s here now. If we later find out that she’s lazy, we can send her packing, there are no two ways about that.”
I woke up the following day and this lady had already swept the house and was cooking something that smelled like breakfast. We don’t eat breakfast in our home. We wake up, bathe and go to work. We eat breakfast when we get to work. I was surprised when I saw her cooking as early as that time. I didn’t ask her any questions. I went back in and asked my husband all the questions. “How did she know what to cook? You told her?” And why this early?” He replied, “Is there anything wrong with cooking as early as this time? That’s what she’s here for—to do what we haven’t been able to do for ourselves. Now we can eat breakfast before work because of her.”
My husband had never told me about breakfast before work. If he did, I would have put it into my schedule. Come to think of it, he’s not even a breakfast person. On weekends when we don’t go anywhere, he’ll walk around the house doing one thing after the other. When food is ready and I call him, he’ll continue doing what he wants to do before he later comes to the food. The change was new to me and I couldn’t take it. I didn’t eat breakfast that day but he waited and ate before leaving for work. A lot of things didn’t make sense. It was like all of a sudden, the man I married was turning into something different right before my eyes. I had to train myself to relax and give this new change a chance and see how far it goes.
And then one day I bumped into my husband staring lastingly at this girl from a meter away while the girl works around. The girl hadn’t noticed his presence so she went around doing her work innocently. Immediately he saw me coming, he stooped trying to pick something from the floor. Unfortunately for him, there was nothing to pick. He got back up and looked at me embarrassingly and then walked away. I was too heavy to spend time arguing with him but I made a decision that day there was no way I’m going to leave both of them in the house all alone. So that very day, I told him, “My mom is coming. Akos doesn’t look like someone who can take care of a nursing mother. I asked her and she hadn’t done it before. My mom has to come and help for a while so she can learn.”
His face changed. In the evening when we were going to sleep he asked where my mom would be sleeping when she comes. “The only room available is where Akos is occupying. Do you think is that necessary?” I told him, “My mom knows the situation and she doesn’t mind sharing a room with her. She will be fine.” He retorted, “Left to me alone, it wouldn’t be necessary for her to come. We’ll be fine.”
I gave birth. My mom was here before I went to the labour room. There was no room for the two of them to be alone. When I came back home, everything was fine.
A week after delivery, I was alone with my mom when she told me, “I don’t intend to interfere in your marriage but if I were you, I would send this girl away before trouble comes. Have you seen the way your husband looks at her? He doesn’t even hide it. It starts from the mind before it descends to the waist. I’ve seen its kind before so act before you put your home on fire.” I laughed it off. I told her, “My husband looks at things like that and I don’t believe he would stoop that low. All the same, I will put my eyes on the ground and act on it.” She said, “Don’t go and be silly about it. Use tact and patience, that’s the only way you can remove the intestines of the ant.”
I laughed in front of my mom but my heart was on fire. The mere fact that my mom had noticed it meant that it was that bad. In the evening, I told him, “I think Akos has to go away for a while. My mom is around so she has very little to do. She has been here for a while now. Allow her to go and visit her family and come back when my mom is gone.” He didn’t like it. He started throwing excuses on her behalf; “She has nowhere to go that’s why she’s here. What if she goes and decides not to come back again? You think we are the only people who need her?”
I wasn’t listening to him. He went to work one day and came to meet the absence of Akos. I told him, “She was happy when I asked her to visit her family. She understands the presence of my mom and she agreed to come when she’s gone. You don’t have to worry.” Come and see my husband that day. He didn’t care that my mother was around. “Who gave you that right to send her away? Were you the one who brought her here? What sort of embarrassment is that? You think you can do whatever you want without telling me?”.
My mom saw the fire brewing and left the house for us. He picked up his phone and called the girl. After talking for a while, she asked the girl to give the phone to her mother. They spoke and I heard him apologizing to them. He said, “I wasn’t around when my wife told her to leave. But Akos, why didn’t you call to tell me everything? Get ready and come over the weekend.” I felt he was disrespecting me so I told him, “I’m not worried. When she gets here, I will leave with my mother. Obviously, you like to be with her more than to be with us. You can do whatever you want with her.”
A week later, Akos was back in the house. My baby was only two and a half months old but my mother told me, “You don’t have to leave with me. Remember what I told you about tact and patience? When you leave, you leave them with a big house to explore. After everything, he’ll come back for you and you may forgive him but then the harm had been done. Be patience. Wives have a way of winning without a fight. Just be patient.”
My mom left and since then, it had been just the three of us and the baby. To make matters worse, this girl listens to only what my husband says. If the instruction is not coming from my husband, she doesn’t listen. She has become very disrespectful to me and my husband blames me for making her disrespectful. He thinks I disrespected her first that’s why she also disrespects me. I don’t require anything from her. I just want her to get out of my way.
One dawn I woke up and my husband wasn’t there. I went out only to see him sitting in the hall. No TV and he wasn’t even having his phone to say that he was on his phone. I looked at the door of Akos and it was ajar with the curtains shaking as if someone just came from there. I asked what he was doing there and he told me, “I’m tired so I decided to come and sit outside.” Who gets tired whiles sleeping? When I probed, he angrily got up and walked over me to the bedroom. While he was going, Akos got up and closed the door.
I’m sick and tired of playing the mouse in my own house but I’m not ready to leave and give them victory. Something is going on and I can feel it though I don’t have concrete evidence yet. I want the girl out of my house. Already, my husband had painted me as the villain in front of his parents so they don’t believe me. I don’t want to go there. I want to do something internally to push the girl away. When she’s gone, I can take charge of my house and run it the way I want.
