I want a divorce and I want it now. This man that I married more than ten years ago, this man named Ayomide is an evil man. I have three children for him and all I have enjoyed these years is being beaten like a common criminal, over what?
I sell bread in Ibadan. That is what I do to keep body and soul together and my husband is a butcher at the main market. He was a kind man when we got married many years ago. He said he wanted just two children, even if they were both boys or girls. He said he didn’t mind. And in all the years we have been together, he would always ask me if I have used my pills before we begin to have sex but you know how pills can disappoint, sometimes, me sef, I forget whether I have taken it or not, my mind plays tricks on me. So many times when he asks if I have taken it, I will say yes, I have, then later, I will take it. I used to forget but in those days, I never even got pregnant.
But the thing was that the pills were worrying me. They were making me feel sick. Many times, I will feel like vomiting and that is not good for someone who sells bread from street to street, that is number one trouble for my market.
My friend told me I should go for the injection type to be taken every three months and I started going for that one. But even that, it will be as if there is a worm running through my body. I just didn’t like it and I asked my husband to be using condom until I find the right method that works with my body.
He refused, he said he cannot use condom for his own wife that I should go and ask other women what they use. But I have asked and the ones they asked me to do is not working well for me. It was during that period that I became pregnant again for our third child. When I told him I had become pregnant, that was when he began to beat me. He said he told me he did not want more than two children.
Egba mi! Did I pregnant myself? Was he not the one who got me pregnant? Why can’t he use condom, why must I be the only one to use something?
He beat me one day my nose was bleeding, my head and eyes were swollen. I would have died that day if not for God, and if not for my landlord who came to my rescue that day and took me to the hospital and paid for treatment. And that time, I was already 6 months pregnant.
After I gave birth, Ayomide refused to do naming ceremony for the child, he also refused to give me money to take care of the child and the other two children. He said I was the one who brought the burden on myself, so he won’t pay anything for their food or school. He would beat me and send me out of the house every time I ask him and again and again, it will be my landlord who will come to my rescue.
In fact my landlord has warned him several times not to beat me or he will send him out of the house but he never listened. But i would go and beg the landlord, ‘if you send him out, where will I go with my children?’
Landlord began to pity me and sometimes sef he will give me ‘small something’ for me and the children so that we will not starve.
The man is in his late fifties, I think, his wife died a long time ago and his children are in Lagos. So whenever he gives me money, I will cook something for him because I know he doesn’t have anybody to cook for him. After all, he is the one who has been helping me, cooking for him is not a problem.
Anyway, that’s how we started o. I will cook for him and when my husband’s madness starts and he kicks me out and locks the door, my landlord will open his door for me.
haba, you are an adult na, I don’t need to open the whole of my mouth to talk before you understand.
So, this pregnancy I am carrying is not for my husband, it belongs to my landlord and as for my husband who is now claiming the pregnancy, tell him I said he is joking.
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories.)