THE first place my husband went to after the beating of that day was his friend’s house (my adviser’s husband). My friend said she was laughing in the room when she heard my husband telling her own husband that his wife had gone mad. He said the shock of what I did could not allow him raise a finger and that I beat him mercilessly.
My friend said her husband was so surprised that he kept on repeating `ha, ha, ha’. He asked my husband what he wanted to do next, but reminded him that he must have pushed me to the wall. He told him that he had always warned him to stop treating me like a maid, and that someone must have taught me to react that way from outside. He said this, not realising that the brain behind the beating was his own wife.
He promised to invite me for a talk, but my friend said my husband insisted that he did not want him or any other friend to wade in. He said he only came to inform him about the development so that they would understand him when he finally took his decision.
My friend could not, however, disclose to her husband that the beating was a planned job between both of us.
Immediately my husband left their house, he went straight to see his parents outside Lagos. Though his mother had forced him to accept responsibility for my unborn child when his friends went to tell her about our long relationship and how I had been made to abort two previous pregnancies, she made it clear from day one, that we could not be friends.
I tried hard to please her in everyway, and kept my husband’s cruel behaviour away from her so that she would not know that we were having problems with our marriage, but she kept her distance and complained about everything whenever she came around.
Even on the day we welcomed our second child, when everyone rebuked my husband for slapping me in the presence of guests, she kept on blaming me for “getting my husband angry and spoiling the day for everyone.” So, when my husband told her about the incident, she came home with full force and said, categorically, that I would have to leave her son’s house. She started shouting, calling me names, and saying she should have never allowed her son to bring me into the family in the first place.
She practically moved in with us but I endured all her insults and managed to be focused at work.
One evening, while my mother-in-law was shouting at me to leave her son’s house and not kill him for her, my husband attempted to beat me again. This was when I told his mother that she had a daughter and would not be happy if she was being treated the way she was treating me in her husband’s house.
Immediately I said this, my husband moved close and raised his hand high to slap me. Without thinking for a minute, I held it with all my strength, warning him that if he tried it, I would give him marks that he would not forget in a hurry.
His mother went wild and started throwing my things out.
My father-in-law sent for me, in between the crisis, to hear my side of the story. When I finished narrating what I had suffered in his son’s house, he said he had no cause to disbelieve me because he knew what his son could do. But he said “you don’t correct a wrong with an abominable wrong”, that I should have alerted him, instead of his mother, when he was treating me so badly.
He believed that he would have been able to solve the problem. He went with me to the house to settle the quarrel, but my mother-in-law would not let that happen. She insulted her husband and said he could marry me for his younger brother.
In all of this, I noticed that my husband had stopped being aggressive. He never tried to raise his hand to beat me again even when I did things that should have earned me the beating of my life. He also spoke softly to me, especially when we were with his friends.
I remember when one of the three friends celebrated his 45th birthday; and I went on my own because he would not want to go with me. He was avoiding me and everyone noticed. But when I forced myself to stay beside him, he behaved himself unlike before, and was answering all my questions promptly and in a cultured way.
I asked him if he wanted to go back to the office or would be able to take me home with him. Before then, he would have hissed and warned me never to try asking him that kind of question again. But my husband simply said, “I’m going home if you’re going home.” My friend, the one who knew about the plan, noticed also and called me after we left the party.
She said after thinking of the whole situation, and how my mother-in-law had taken the whole issue, she regretted advising me to do what I did. But she also pointed out that everyone had noticed that my husband was now calm with me. She said her husband said he (my husband) was afraid of being disgraced outside by his wife.
I told my friend not to feel bad, reminding her that I could have been dead if I did not take that step. I was always in and out of the hospital, when I was playing the gentle wife.
Eventually, my mother-in-law went back to her husband’s house; when I refused to leave the house. My husband also moved gradually out of the house without me noticing. After about six months, he just stopped coming home. He still takes his calls and speaks to his children. But for two years, the children and I have not set our eyes on him.
We know that he is in Nigeria, though he changed his job. But we do not know where he is. His father told me to get along with my life, that he would come back if it was God’s will.
I have peace now, though I wish the marriage worked. Looking back, however, I would choose staying alive over a problematic union.
(Concluded)
