I am making a shopping list. It’s not a long one. It doesn’t include an exotic holiday in the Bahamas or things a lot of people say are beyond their wildest dreams.
I am a young woman. I should be happy. I have love, everything I want, everything I have ever dreamed of and I am only 30.
My name is Philippa, while I was growing up I thought that all that a woman needs is a caring husband; add rich to that; a house full of every joy giving thing in life.
I learnt fast that I got life all wrong. It all started during my service year when I met William. He’d just returned from the United States of America where he had studied aeronautic engineering.
“I have always wanted to come back to this country. The service scheme was my opportunity so I took it. My dad is of course mad at me. My mum is furious. But I got to serve this country, my true country that I never have been able to come to terms with,” he told me when I was curious to know why he had come back home from what I felt was a comfortable life in the USA.
I was swayed by his sweet talk and danced to the rhythm of the unceasing cadence. Before he came along I was a hunter’s dog lost in the forest of many evils, his whistle had called me back. I recognised his song and joy filled my heart. But joy has a thin and brittle body that breaks too soon.
My joy began to break when Willy, that is how I referred to him from the beginning, took me home to his parents in the US of A.
“We already have a bride for you, chosen among the best in this part of the world. How could you go to Nigeria and do exactly as we had feared? How can you even hope to marry her?”
I had not been eavesdropping but I heard the message clearly, spoken not at the rooftops by his parents but no less deafening. Here was I thinking such things were the stuff of backward parents in the backwaters of Nigeria. I should have found the nearest exit and walked away in defeat. I should have gone in search of another prince charming. I’m after all, pretty with the slow beauty of youth. I would have found someone else or he would have found me, but fear and the juicy promise of assurance flowing from Willy’s mouth kept me rooted where I stood. And this is not a regret.
“You are my queen and there is no other for me in the whole wide world. I shall stick to you like loyal bees to nectar. Nothing and no one can keep us apart,” his voice was a lullaby that lured me to forgetfulness, made me refuse to pay attention to the fact that there are no queens without kings, bees sting, and separation is a human phenomenon.
Two years were enough for Willy to chew his words and swallow his resolve. His excuse was simply that I could not bear him a child.
His change was more remarkable than the chameleon’s. It didn’t matter to him that the doctors gave me a clean bill of health. It didn’t even matter to him that there was a God up in heaven we both claimed to worship. Willy, who had taken a job in Nigeria ahead of many juicy offers in the United States and disapproval from his parents, had become a different person all together.
It began with the bottle. He’d come home as drunk as a fish and smell no differently. Then he quit eating my food. That could not have fazed me any but he went as far as adopting sarcasm to water down our hitherto happy union.
“I have all the money I need but have no one to spend it on. No one.” He’d make statements like this to the hearing of even his friends who had suddenly become many and all of them people of questionable character. Willy turned my life into a living hell on earth. He became my personal Lucifer and I carried him like Jesus carried His cross, but I had no help from any quarters. My parents were putting pressure on me to leave the only man that I had falling in love with. (Yeah, I still loved him even if we now were just roommates occupying separate bedrooms in our huge house). His parents were not left out of the mudslinging. Don’t forget that they were not crazy about the union in the first place even up to the eve of our wedding. But there was really nothing they could do then. Now they had a reason.
“That witch who has sold her womb to the devil,” was what his mum said to me not once, not twice, countless times.
I must give Willy credit though. Although things had become the way they were he still loved me and showed he cared no matter how small that feeling had thinned out to become. He still provided me with my allowance and did not ask me to move out of his house. Although I had to share his heart with dozens of women and his other excesses. The fact that he didn’t send me out is probably why I am still here four years after what has become a pathetic excuse for marriage. Maybe it is because I never really cast myself as one who will take the divorce alternative to life.
People come to me and tell me what Willy has been up to lately. Even some of those who call themselves his friends. They tell me everything. Sometimes I am sure that they even exaggerate so as to get me to take an action that will see us go our separate ways. The same people go back to him and tell him to send me away. I hold my tears in my heart when I hear them talking to me about my husband’s escapades. Whenever he chooses to come home, I sit him down and ask him if what I hear is true. His reply is often a furious “don’t go listening to what people say, form your own opinion,” then I tell him like a man of God preaching a sermon of the good times that we have had in the past. I beg him to reconsider his stand on our matter (anything to get us back will do, I assure him). Then he tells me to give him children. It is the refrain that bridges the verses of our sad song. And yet, he won’t touch me. I hold dear his touch as no one has ever touched me like he used to. The thought of it tingles my very being. His lips all over me, mapping my every contour, outlining my nipples, my thighs, my lips, engorging my insides, taking me to lands unknown. No one has ever made love to me like Willy; methodical, painstaking, perfect.
Just when I think everything will be all right my nightmare begins anew. I go back into the distorted shell of my marriage and pray. God has not answered my prayers yet but I know that he has not turned his back on me that is the simple reason why Willy has not sent me out of my matrimonial home or brought someone else in there. I will not stop praying even though it gets very difficult to remain steadfast with each passing day. Oh, Willy, that name is beginning to taste like bile in my mouth, has not come to the bed where we consummated our marriage some four years before for two years now. What is more, he does not find anything wrong with that.
“Why should I when I know that nothing will come out of it?”
“But we’ve got to keep trying. If we do not try at all how can we even hope to have our prayers answered?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about woman.”
“Are you asking me to go outside to get what you will not give me from another man?”
Jealousy is a weapon and it seems to work for me when I say that and see the expression on his face. But it disappears like clouds that register in the sky but do not bring rain. But I celebrate all the same because I know that my risk is going to pay off some day, Willy will find his way to my matrimonial bed soon enough. I will wait. I have waited two years I will wait a little more.
But I cannot wait forever. One of these days I am going to ask Willy to sleep with me, if he has not done it before then. I am going to ask, nay beg him to make that a present wrapped with love and dripping with affection to wash all the pain away. I have begun to cherish that day already. I believe in my heart that he will give me that one present. It is easier for him to give it than to give any other item. All he needs to do is come to our matrimonial bed. I am leaving the rest in the hands of God and I need everyone’s prayer, pray that God will put a baby in my womb when Willy does eventually come to my bed. You must join me in this prayer if you want the only meaningful thing to happen to me this year. This is all I want. But if my prayers are not granted there is no telling what I would be forced to do.
