I usually don’t like talking about my marriage but I am forced to talk maybe I can get help from outsiders.
Four years ago, my husband stopped having sex with me. Why? His twin sister died and when I saw how shattered he was I decided to comfort him by making love, but he turned away from me as if I was an abomination, like I had done something sinful and since then, four years now, we have not been man and wife in the true sense.
The only thing he said to me that day concerning the issue was to tell me I was callous, a wicked woman, he asked how I could want sex when he was still mourning his sister.
My sister, biko was I wrong?
Let me start from the beginning. My husband is well educated; so don’t think he is some illiterate. He is also well travelled, so in that sense, you can understand that he is no bush man. Yes, I know some people can travel all over the world and still be bush but not this man. He is much older than me and he was born a twin.
He and his twin sister were the first set of children to survive after his parents had buried quite a few. I don’t know why, but his mother had lost three children previously before my husband and his twin sister came to stay. They were already three years old when they finally gave them real names. They were simply called bomboy and borngirl!
Their parents didn’t think they would live so instead of giving real names, they just threw something on them. But after three years, when their mother became pregnant again, they were named and she went on to have other children, five all together.
My husband was very close to his twin sister. In fact, when they were young, when she sported a low cut, you would think she was a boy, like my husband but as they grew older, the difference became quite obvious, boys will be boys and girls will be girls. A man cannot have curves or breasts like a woman, you know, that is what I mean.
They went to the same school. Ghey were very close and they looked out for each other, like close twins, you understand.
So I get that. Even when I met my husband, he told me he had a ‘wife’ o..He said that his twin sister is his first wife. I had no reason to think I would be a source of jealousy to her because I was prepared to have two ‘husbands,’ my husband and his twin sister.
How did I meet my husband?
I met my husband during one of those Easter holiday breaks from school. I attended university in the east, they were in UI but we were all home for the Easter break that year, that was how we met. I was invited to spend Easter with a friend who knows my husband’s family.
From the beginning, his sister, didn’t like me at all. She was very jealous of my relationship with her brother. She would have preferred her brother went out with someone else, someone from their side. I am also from the east but some people think they are better than others. That’s the truth. Anyway, I won’t name names here but things between my sister –in-law and I were not good.
My sister, did I not try to win her over? I tried but no way. Meanwhilw by the time I married my husband, she was already married with two children at that time but she did not face her marriage. She was the third member of our marriage.
Me and my husband would agree on something then he will change it suddenlywith a simple: ha, my sister doesn’t think it will work o, my sister said this, my sister said that.
At the beginning, I let it go. Ngwanu, no bi me say I wan marry two husbands? But later, the thing began to pepper my body. I am a woman, too now? Why won’t she face her own marriage?
If I put my children in one school, she will say, that school is too expensive, change them to so and so school. If I buy one material, she will say, it is her brother’s money I am using to do fashion, biko helep me, na your husband money I for use?
My house was never clean enough, my soup was
too watery, in short, after a while, I began to show my resentment. One day, I told her that I really don’t know who I married in this house, she or my husband maybe I should come and be asking her what soup to cook instead of my husband. That day, my husband came back from work and wiped my face!
Do what? What was I supposed to do? No bi me want marriage? I rubbed my cheeks and swallowed my tongue! I just gave up, whatever she said, I would do biko my children are still young. I didn’t want to die in the marriage and my children would suffer.
Then sister-in-law died; stupid accident o. She was going to see their mother in the east, tyre burst, motor somersaulted, all passengers died!
For all of my anger against her, I didn’t want her dead, so when we heard the news and my husband went into mourning for days, I didn’t know how to comfort him. I felt his pain, I felt his loneliness and I wanted to be there for him. And the best way, I thought was to wrap myself around him as a wife and coax him to make love.
See me see trouble eee!
He just sprang up from the bed, called me names, called me callous, called me wicked. He said, so sex is what is on my mind even as my twin sister is lying cold in the mortuary! This was about two weeks or so after she died.
Four years now, he hasn’t touched me. I am still paying for my sin, o. I have begged, I have apologized, I have explained that I was only trying to comfort him…maybe he will hear me tomorrow.
Meanwhile, he performs every other function as father of our children and husband to me o but enter between my legs, mba!
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)
photo credit