Victor wasn’t expecting her to have a comeback for him. And if he were expecting a comeback, it wasn’t what he envisaged. Before he knew what was happening, she hit him on the back with the pestle.

He fell to the floor in a heap. This didn’t stop her. In fact, it added fire to her guts. She raised the pestle the way she did when she pounded yams and hit his thigh. She didn’t even pause. She picked his belt from the bed. With the pestle in one hand and the belt on the other, she beat him.

There on the bedroom floor, this bedroom they had had steamy sex in he was reduced to a whimpering, snivelling mass. He was in the foetal position and at that moment she hoped he would just meet his ancestors. She needed to get rid of him. He was like a cancer to her. She had lost her favourite aunt to that disease last year. She vented on him: the pain of losing Aunty Tumi, the pain of being in an abusive marriage relationship, and the pain of not being fulfilled.

Despite his cries and pleas for mercy, nobody came to ask what was happening with them. In the estate, it was one man to his compound. Everyone minded his or her business. Yet, the next day when they saw themselves, they gave themselves saccharine smiles. No one came to his rescue. She was angry at everything. She kept on beating every part of his body. When he made to stand up, she stomped him in the nuts*. This made him shriek in pain. Moyo was merciless. She kept on pounding and pummelling and lashing and whooping him.

She beat him to the point he passed out.

When she realised what she had done, she stopped. She checked if he still had a pulse. She was panic-stricken. She quickly called the gate man and they took him to a clinic fie streets away from their house. She didn’t have any explanation to give the nurses and doctor on duty that night. The funny thing was that when she saw the marks were on his body, she felt liberated in a twisted way. If there were to be a soundtrack for her at that moment, it would have been Eva Alordiah’s I Done Did It.

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