My mother-in-law is not good. She is not good from here to there. I have other sisters –in-law, I mean, women who also married her sons and they all agree that mama was poison!
What happened?
I am the youngest of the wives, I mean my mother-in-law’s wives. There are four of us, I am the one married to her last son. When I met my husband, he painted a picture of his mother like she was Queen of Sheba, like his mother was royalty. She didn’t like to eat this food, she didn’t like her water to be this cold, she liked her eggs fried like this, she liked her bed laid like that. I silently thanked God that his mother lived in their village and would not be living with us when we got married.
Ok, so, I already have a son from a previous relationship. The father of my son did not marry me, not because he didn’t want to; he was in the army and he died fighting against Boko Haram. We had plans, that when he came back from leave, we would start our traditional engagement thing; but he went to report for duty and never came back.
I was already pregnant…that is why I have this boy, my son. So after three years, I met my present husband and we’ve now been married for four years.
Ok, now, he promised me he would take care of me and my son and he was doing that. What else can a woman ask for?
So when he was saying this and that about his mother, I didn’t worry myself too much because, mama would be in the village and if i had to deal with her, it won’t be forever, I would tolerate her, that was what I told myself.
Then one time, they said mama was sick and my husband’s brothers said he should bring her here to live with us until she got better. What really happened was, my other sisters-in-law told their husbands to tell my own husband to care for mama after all, they had been the ones taking care of her all these years. That’s how mama ended up with us.
But Mama was not sick!
She was just looking for an excuse to come and spoil my house!
I swear to God!
See, even before she came to live with us, when my husband took me home to meet her before we got married. When she was told I already had a son; she hated me immediately. I swear!
She kept making noise about the fact that her son married a ‘second hand woman’ ‘somebody’s leftover’.
Please what does that mean?
That I am not good enough for her son. That I have used the good part of my body to service another man…I mean, she was saying these things to my hearing, so it’s not like somebody came and told me.
My husband just said I should ignore her. I said, ‘ok, if I ignore, her, you too tell her to stop saying these things.’ He kept saying. “Be patient, be patient, mama is an old woman, just ignore her.”
He was too afraid to tell her, so she didn’t stop.
When mama came, if you made garri for mama, she would complain that it is too soft and relate it to the fact that I have been used up and can’t make garri…why are people so mean?
Please eat your food and shut up!
If you fried eggs for her, she would say, it was burnt and that I have no more eggs to give her son a child, please, am I God that gives children?
So, that day when she said that thing, I replied her, I said, “You are not God, when God is ready, he would give me a child, moreover, I already have a son from a previous relationship, maybe it is your son that you should examine.”
Ok, I regret saying that because when my husband came home that night, mama told him I said he was impotent.
That isn’t what I said. I was tired of mama giving me wahala, so I gave her back, I didn’t plan that it would come out like that!
When I was trying to explain to my husband, Mama was just shouting that he should beat me and teach me how to talk to a husband, that I am a useless woman, that is why I had a child for someone who didn’t marry me.
That day, I was so angry, I just didn’t care anymore and that day, my husband slapped me, he slapped me twice, because of his mother!
I told my husband, ‘your mother doesn’t want me in this house, that is the bottomline, o.’
When my other sisters- in-law heard, they told me, that was how mama was to them too, I said, ok. If she didn’t succeed at driving them away from their husband’s homes, then she won’t succeed with me, too.
After that episode, I told her one day, ‘Mama, you met me here, you will be the one to leave, not me!’ And I did not say a word again anytime she said something bad to me, I did not reply her a word!
Then mama, developed a kind of sickness that no one knew what it was. She was just complaining of body heat, body heat, all the time. We took her to the General Hospital, they tested her, gave her drugs, after sometime, she was complaining again. I took her back…all these hospital thing, it was me taking her, o. My husband always had excuses about work, so I always ended up taking her.
Before she stopped talking, she told her son that I poisoned her!
I was the one who was helping her bathe, feed her, do everything, yet she had told her son I poisoned her!
At the hospital, they said they didn’t know what was wrong with her; and indeed, even me, I was baffled by the sickness, though inside me, I was glad because finally, she had shut her mouth, abi?
My husband didn’t tell me what his mother said, it was after she died, he asked me point blank, “Did you poison my mother?”
I was shocked, true I was no fan of mama but to poison her? God is my witness, I did all I could for mama despite her poisonous mouth; I treated her like my own mother. Why would I poison a woman who was 77 years old already and on the way to her grave?
Okay, so now they want me to go and swear by their family gods that I had no hand in their mother’s death. That is my issue now. These so called ‘family god’s are blind and deaf and vengeful, what do I do now?
If I run away, they would say, ha, true she killed our mother. If I go to swear, what if the jazz catches me? Who will defend me? I don’t believe in them.
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)