Even Gloria did not know when she became a mad woman.

Three years ago, she had two boutiques at Ikoyi and travelled to Dubai and Cotonou and London and Italy on a whim. She was personally responsible for dressing the first lady of Lagos state in her infamously lavish aso-okes, and the wives and daughters and lovers and sisters of the movers and shakers of the state called her to personally advice them on what to wear to their owambes. Her laces were the toast of the town, the latest, hottest styles. Sometimes, on leisurely Saturdays, she used to cruise around the hot spots in Ikoyi and Ikeja just to admire her materials on the backs and swinging hips of women celebrating the birth of her children, their marriages, their graduation parties.

So, yes, maybe she’d been a little mad then, but it was an indulgent malady that did no one harm. Olu used to shake his head in amusement as he drove her, too courteous to voice his disapproval but comfortable enough in his employment to raise his brows at her eccentricity.

Well, the water has spilled from the calabash. There was no going back from this one.

She glanced with fierce pride at the faces of her children, the greatest things she had ever done. She smiled as she saw Amarachukwu’s thoughtfully furrowed brows, the small scar just above her eye she’d gotten the day she fell from her bicycle-the first day that Gloria knew that one’s heart could take flight out of their chest and their whole world condense into little pinpricks of light. Her cautious one, always quick to forgive and soft-spoken. Or was it Uchenna, brash and stubborn, the one that should have been the son Madu wanted. The one that made her almost breathless with pride. Nineteen and already so sure of herself, of her place in the world.

What had she known at nineteen apart from Madu’s insistently wandering hands and heated kisses? She remembered almost nothing of that year.

It was Uchenna who had brought the news that morning, two days ago. The girls were at home with her in their tiny flat in Ijaniki, even though the university strike had ended. She despaired, she despaired everyday as the months passed and Barrister Rowland had no good news for her.

‘Nne, you will not believe what I just heard.’

She called her Nne, the technically correct term for ‘mother’ in their native tongue. A few years ago, Uchenna had rediscovered her Igbo heritage between the pages of an Ngozi Adichie book, and since then, she had clung to it with a fierce passion was enough to make Gloria feel ashamed-she who had dropped her native name Nkechi and had not returned to Ogwashi-Ukwu since she’d run away with Madu. Neither of them had been too keen on her returning to a family that had not wanted them to be together.

Now see. Just see. Suddenly, she fiercely missed her stepmother.

‘Nne,’ she had sat beside her mother in her exasperatingly heedless way, her jeans crinkling, dark eyes flashing indignantly, ‘he is getting married. I cannot believe he has the audacity to be getting married!’

They all knew who ‘he’ was. His name, or his position in their lives, was now a taboo word in their small house. Even here, away from him, the mention of him sucked up all the air from their lungs.

It was a leap and a jump from there, and then here she was. At Madu’s wedding party. On the brink of madness.

She felt good; better than she had in years. Better than in the two years since he’d stopped coming home, since she’d had to close up her business to feed her children and make sure Amarachukwu didn’t die from that terrible, terrible crisis and the hip-replacement surgery that followed. Two years since…

Hmmm. Maybe a trip down memory lane wasn’t the best tack now.

‘Nne, let’s do this.’ She turned to her elder daughter, who had started smiling, inexplicably. Amarachukwu was radiant, beautiful, looking at her through eyes that always reminded her of her own father’s kind, brown gaze. She drew strength from those eyes, and chuckled at the honorific. Amara only called her ‘Nne’ when she was trying to be sarcastic or funny.

Uchenna hefted the length of wood she was holding and crinkled her neck with a series of loud pops. Agu nwanyi, thought Gloria, as her younger daughter jumped out of the taxi and right into the fray. They hadn’t been noticed yet, but that changed fast with the first series of crashes. The girl had a good head on her shoulders. She went straight for the beautiful clay pots and dishes that were in a neat pile, and the cacophony was deeply satisfying.

Shocked gazes, gasps, fingers pointing. The live band leader ‘s voice spluttered and died in a shocked screech of the microphone. She ignored them all and went straight for her prize even as her daughters wrecked havoc in her wake.

He was open-mouthed, looking strangely small in his voluminous, richly embroidered agbada as he watched his ex-wife stride towards him. She stopped at the table where he sat with a nauseatingly fair-skinned girl who couldn’t be more than two years older than Amarachukwu, and without even a glance at him, turned the contents of the bowl of monetary gifts into the bag she was carrying. She swiped the car keys on the table too, and at a signal from her, the area boys she had brought as backup started packing wrapped gifts into the parked car.

He’d bought a car for his new wife as a wedding gift, but couldn’t care less when his daughter was sick to the point of death. Or when they had to drop out of school because she couldn’t keep up with the payments. ‘Ife esika, there’s no money! The economy is affecting everybody! I need you to be patient!’ Those were his token responses to her lawyer. A lawyer she’d had to let go, because by the end, she could not afford him.

‘Gloria, are you mad? Ala apubago i?’ The voice cut through her like a knife.

Oh, not you, this bitch. You I will devour.

She turned to Ezinne, Madu’s elder sister. The one who had personally thrown her out.

Her hand flashed and she heard a sound, felt the satisfying impact of her palm connecting with jowly flesh. Ezinne’s eyes were wide with disbelief. ‘Ezinne Ekwusigo, don’t you dare open that your flea-infested mouth to talk to me! You, you that two of your sons grew up in my house, you that your daughter met her husband right in my shop! You that I saved from kidney failure when Madu wasn’t even giving you face! You that I hid from Ofili when he was beating you like a rat, you that I took to Cotonou to start your business when he died. Hei, Nkechi ifu si a! A tago m nsi! I have suffered! Just because this useless excuse of a man you called brother didn’t plant sons in my womb, you came in the night, Ezinne, and you bodily threw my children and me in the streets. Did this idiot,’ she pointed a shaky finger at Madu, who was spluttering in outrage but keeping it down as one of her boys glared at him almost daringly, ‘give me sons and I refused to bear them?’

Finally, he gathered up a spark of courage and opened his mouth, but she cut him off. She wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t descend into the waiting arms of insanity and murder him with her bare hands if he ever spoke to her again. He’d almost broken her before, and she needed to keep it together. For her children.

‘Otolo n’enweghi ikwu n’ibe gbagbu kwaa gi dia, anu ofia nwuru anwu. Ezi Bida. I swear eh, if you even dare to open that your smelling mouth, I will make sure you never shut it again.’

It was amazing, but he shut up. He was seeing a side of her he’d never seen before, and suddenly, she realised that this should have been the woman Madu met all those years ago at Onitsha. This woman, he wouldn’t push around, or take for granted.

This woman he wouldn’t ignore.

There was something to be said for madness, she thought, as Amarachukwu sped along the roads in their newly acquired car. It would get her daughters back in school. It would give her hope for their future, these women that God had blessed her with.

She had almost let them down, staying sane.

She felt tears on her cheeks, and did nothing to wipe them. She’d never felt so powerful.

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Wow.
Thanks a whole lot.

Nyc read

Nice Read!!!

Captivating!

Lovely, powerful..