Hole in the heart

(Ok, not literarily; but this is a moving true life story that once more underlines the selfishness and insensitivity of some people, especially in romantic relationships. It’s one of the true life stories I did after an interview with one of the parties. I’ll be bringing to you similar stories and then later, excerpts from my books, ‘Bukky and Friends’ and ‘Agu, the son of the gods.’ Read on…)

I have so many marriage proposals, but I just can’t accept any of them. Even if by ‘a slip of tongue’ I say ‘’Yes” to anyone probably because I am in one of my rare good moods, I usually dump the guy after two months.

One of my suitors got so serious that he lasted six months in courtship with me. A date was fixed for introduction and he came with his family, friends and loads of gifts, but I didn’t turn up. My sisters begged me, but all the pleas bounced off my ears like rubber against a wall. I wish I could help myself too; but I couldn’t. I still can’t.

Maybe it’s because anytime the words ‘love,’ ‘marriage’ or any related is mentioned, my mind switches off and my heart loses the capacity to feel.

There’s nothing wrong with me. I am not crazy, deformed or too young or old to marry. On the contrary, I think I’m everything a man would wish for in a spouse and I believe that’s why the proposals keep pouring in and piling up. What’s more? I’m educated, have a well-paid job and live comfortably in a three-bedroom apartment.

I wish the men hovering about and pestering me knew their chances are next to nothing. But the weird thing is that I’m not sure what these men can do to change the situation, no matter how hard they try. The only thing I know is that I just can’t love any man again. Truth is, I hold a grudge against a particular man, and I’m taking it out on all men. I simply can’t love again after Femi’s episode. In fact, the word ‘love’ in itself sounds alien to me.

I’m not stuck on Femi; and every atom of emotion I once had for him are all dead and buried. Actually, it will almost be ‘sinful’ to still nurse any shred of feeling for him and almost ‘righteous’ to wish him dead. But I’m through all the deep ill feelings because I’ve now given myself entirely to God. I have handed everything to God; all the unimaginable human cruelty Femi and his mother made me go through for seven years, leaving me in the worst kind of depression for eight months!

I carry about in my purse the picture of my son and me as a vicarious consolation from the hell hole of Femi’s betrayal and his sadist mum. My son’s name was Dayo. He died two years ago. He’s always been the love of my life and will remain the love of my life.

Walking To My Albatross

I’d met my son’s father, Femi while I was a 300 Level Sociology student at the Lagos State University. He was a graduate assistant lecturer in the university. Femi was from a poor home and was always looking shabby and unkempt. I knew that repelled some people, particularly girls, but it didn’t stop me. I was attracted to him because he was very intelligent. So I felt I could change every unappealing thing about him and make him more presentable. I changed his wardrobe and took him to the dentist to get his brown teeth cleaned and treated.

To avoid disturbances by a strange lady who claimed to be his wife, Femi left his off-campus home to live with me. I stayed off-campus too, but in a more decent apartment. It was a three bedroom flat which I shared with my sister. She had her room to herself and I had mine, where Femi moved in with me.

After about a year of co-habiting with Femi, I found out I was pregnant. I was in 400 Levels and I remember I was writing my final exams then. I got scared and told Femi I wanted an abortion, but he objected. I didn’t want the baby because I knew my dad would bring the roof down on Femi and me if he found I was pregnant out of wedlock.

One day, I decided to go to the hospital to see the doctor, but Femi caught up with me on the way and took me to a herbalist instead. After some incantations and some concoctions he gave me to drink, the herbalist told me not to worry and said that as no one knows how water gets inside the coconut, that’s how no one would know about my pregnancy until I’ve given birth. True to the herbalist’s words, till I was six months gone, my dad never knew I was pregnant.

But my dad’s curiosity was stirred one day by a female visitor who told him she had a feeling I was pregnant. My dad laughed it off and bragged that none of his kids could come home with pregnancy without being married. But because the woman gently kept prodding him, my father heeded her advice and asked his three grown daughters for a medical report from the family doctor. It was at this point that I ran away from the house to stay with Femi. That was how my dad got to find out I was pregnant.

My father finally sent for me to come home. When I did with Femi, he prostrated and begged my father. Femi was a Muslim from Lagos State, but I was from a Christian family from Cross River State. My father objected because of the religious difference in particular. I pleaded with him and told him if he did not accept Femi, I would never come back to his house. I even pleaded with so many family relations and elders to intervene for me, and in the end he grudgingly accepted Femi.

My dad didn’t like the place Femi live, because it was in a backstreet part of Lagos and looked more like a slum. So he rented a three bedroom apartment for us, bought Femi a car, stocked the house with food and made us comfortable. Because of all of these, I couldn’t conclude my final year examination in the university or go for NYSC.

I was cooking in the kitchen one day in my new ‘home’ with Femi when I started throwing up and purging. I thought I had lost the baby and was rushed to the hospital. The doctors gave me drugs and attended to me, but they couldn’t diagnose the problem. I was scared and flustered. But one of the doctors told my mum (she also came with me) to take me to a traditional doctor. He said he suspected my condition had something to do with it. My mum had to call Femi and ask him if he had ever taken me to a herbalist. He confessed he had. When we got there (a different herbalist), the ‘baba’ gave me some smelly concoctions in a box to drink and the stooling and vomiting stopped.

A Live-In Monster-In-Law…

I got much better, but then Femi’s mum moved in with us. She never wanted me and had sworn that if his son ever married me, I would never see happiness. Each time I opened my wardrobe in the house, I would notice some tiny fetish gourds at the top. Anytime I asked her what that was, she would harshly hush me and warn me not to ever touch them.

Then it got to a point that whenever I woke up to prepare breakfast, she would start cussing and complaining that I didn’t get the meal ready on time. I don’t know what he would go in to tell Femi, and he would come out and start hitting me. Everything changed all of a sudden and Femi would hit me even at the slightest excuse.

My parents soon began to suspect Femi and his mum were maltreating me (he once slapped me while we were visiting them and drove off before my mum came out from the kitchen), but I would pretend that everything was ok. I always begged them not to get involved in my marital issues.

I really wanted my marriage to work because I had put in everything. Many times while I was in the university, I would lie to my dad that the school fees had been increased just so I can give Femi some of it. I could tell my dad the school fee was now N150, 000 because my parents were rich and my siblings and I had everything at our beck and call. We had drivers to take us to school and bring us back until I had to plead with my dad to rent a flat for me and my sister close to the university. My father just wanted me to be happy, but he never stopped worrying about my fate with Femi.

Dayo’s Birth

I delivered my child more out of duress. Two days before I put to bed, Femi had given me the beating of my life and I was in the hospital for three days before I gave birth to my son. That day, he was lecturing in school. When he was told his wife was in labour, he replied that whenever I put to bed they should call him. My dad, mum, sisters and uncles all came to the hospital; but Femi never did. But once he heard it was a boy, he came finally.

A year after Dayo’s birth, Femi secretly began to plan to leave the country. During that period, I got pregnant again. But because Femi and his mum were making life unbearable for me in every way they could, I aborted the baby without even letting Femi know I was pregnant in the first place.

Femi and I never had a real wedding. Sometimes my dad would bother me about a traditional wedding. I had even taken Femi to my village and gave him the list so he could prepare. But he just promised to come do the traditional rites after he’d returned from the UK.

The only thing he did was a fake court wedding. He called somebody that worked in a local government secretariat to tear out a piece of paper from the court booklet and sign as my mother and father while I wrote my name and signed, so he could travel. He never went to court and it was never officially documented.

Then Femi told me and my father he was traveling to the UK for further studies and would come back a year later to pick me and our son. He begged my dad for funding; and my father had to empty his foreign account to help him out.

Before he finally left the country, my father called a meeting between his family and mine and asked me if I still wanted to be with Femi for the rest of my life. I said yes, not minding all I was going through. I just wanted to make it work. I had a kid for goodness sake! And I’ve never known what it’s like to be in a broken home. I’ve seen my parents go through a lot, but they were never separated.

Femi’s Betrayal

After Femi left the country, his mum made life hard for me, forcing me to relocate to their shanty and dirty family house in the village, washing pit toilets and doing some other odd and gross chores. Other women in the family would come together too, but they gave me more of the work to do and threw dirty clothes at me to wash all day.

Dayo began to fall sick every now and then. The doctor was always diagnosing typhoid or malaria. Then one day when he was five, he fell really, really sick that I thought he was going to die. Strangely, the doctor said I should take Dayo back to his father’s village. I said ‘for what?’ But he said ‘when you get there you will know.’ So without my father’s knowledge, I left for Femi’s village. Even more strangely, when I got there, I was frozen with shock when Femi’s mum told me if I hadn’t come with Dayo that day, he would have died. At midnight, she took me and my son to a weird place in the bush where we met with a shaggy old man. The herbalist gave Dayo some things to drink and said some incantations. Suddenly, Dayo began to vomit some hairy things and other repulsive substances. We did that for five days before he finally got better.

Later I heard Femi was married to another Nigerian woman in the UK. When I queried him about it, he called me a liability. Finally feeling that I’ve completely lost out and with my son as my only solace, I left the house Femi and I shared and moved to another part of Lagos where Femi’s mum could not locate us.

I sold some of the properties, including the car so I could start life all over again and protect my child. I went back to the university to complete my extra year, while holding two jobs at a time to become who I am today. I had to prove to Femi that I was not and will never be a liability.

…And My Son Died

But Dayo didn’t survive his constant illnesses for long, as he finally died on January 3. Again, it was in strange circumstances as it was from a little fall while on school holiday with my mum. The doctors sweated and tried all they could.

For the next eight months, I was barely living as I sank into total depression. Alcohol and Red Lable wine became my food and water and I lost interest in everything around me. My sisters were always with me and begged me not to loose my sanity.

But I felt I needed to find out more. So someone introduced me to a very powerful herbalist in Ilorin, who invoked Dayo’s spirit in the dead of the night. With my back to him, I asked him what killed him, and he told me it was Femi’s mum. He said she had meant to kill me, but he had to take my place because of his love for me.

My eyes lost all moist and my body cried for vengeance! The herbalist then asked what I wanted. All of me bayed for blood and I said I wanted Femi’s mum dead. A few days later, one of her neighbours called me to say she had died.

Everything’s in the past now. I was deeply hurt, but I also regret some things I did. Unto God I have given myself now and, like Whitney Houston sang, I look to Him.

(kelvinkeshi..com)