📝: BEAUTIFUL BETRAYAL
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CHAPTER FIVE
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I watched them walking into the backyard, with sticks in their hands. From the look of things, these women weren’t visiting me for peace neither were they coming to sympathize with me. But I kept quiet and since I couldn’t stand on one leg, I just had to sit and let fate decide how they would end the thing they came for.
“Good afternoon, my sisters.” I greeted, swallowing saliva and praying for someone to come to my aid before they succeeded in changing my condition from worst to critical.
“And what’s good about this afternoon?” Grace asked staring directly at me.
“Don’t mind her. See how ugly she is?” Queen added to her cohort.
I looked at them and them and then I began to pity myself and my hopeless condition and I prayed and hoped that that man’s treatment works. So before I knew what was happening, Queen pushed me to the ground and made me lay down with my butt facing the air. I did everything I could do to move but it wasn’t working at all. They all began wiping on my back regardless of my condition.
“Since you have forgotten that Emeka is now married, this one will help you remember.” Queen said, still trashing me like a small child who had stolen from her mummy’s purse.
“Queen, make sure you don’t forget her laps too, wipe her there very well. If that place hurts her for a day or two, she will coordinate well.” Grace advised.
Help didn’t come quickly until my stepsister returned back from where she went to get something. She rushed inside and quickly came and stood at my front and began warning those two évil people. Even with the fact that she was covering me, they didn’t respect that and began looking for other means whereby they could get the cane to hít me.
“Mercy, see you better warn your sister because the next time we will come here. I bet you it won’t end so easily.” Grace threatened before she asked her second to follow so that they could go home.
My sister raised me from the ground and placed me on the mat where I was lying down, my knees become sore from the pressure it was being mounted on. My back, legs, all over my body was feeling the pain of the fresh cut water cane they used on me.
“Are you happy now? They would have even kílled you sef. Because an ordinary man, someone that’s still living in his father’s house. ” My step sister, mercy vented.
“Have you come to help me or you come to apportion blame?” I fired her back and then she angrily stormed her feet on the ground, hissed and left me to my fate. Honestly I know people won’t understand the kind of bond me and Emeka shared. I’ve loved other men but not like I did with him, Emeka meant everything to me and if not for my incapacity to give birth, I would have been his wife by now.
I smiled as I remember that time when we were young and where in the house we played and shared a memorial, as of now I remember someone has built the building and is living there. I could remember the day Emeka promised to stand by me in the rain, sun and through fire and coal. And that was what he was doing, to me marrying someone else doesn’t mean he wasn’t allowed to have a friend outside.
“You look so beautiful.” He confessed while he drew me closer in his arms.
“Awwwn, thank you dear.” I appreciated, blushing and smiling foolishly like someone who just won a 1 million naira lottery.
“You know I love you and would do anything for you.” He said with his fingers caressing my hair.
“I know you love me but promise me you won’t leave me.” I told him, looking at him with a
him to do whatever he wanted and then he turned me around and made my back to face him. And then I could feel something on my neck, what it what I was thinking? He then asked me to open my eyes and then when I did, I saw a beautiful necklace hanged around my neck with a love shape on it.
All the butterflies in my stomach began rumbling like they Arsenal and Chelsea were having a football match, I looked at him with so much love in my eyes and then I kissed him and we promised each other forever and then we swore using a stone as our witness, it was something close to a blood oath but don’t fear, we didn’t go that far.
Emeka was obsessively in love with me, I loved him equally. We had gone through thick and thin together. So the man finally started with the treatment and gradually I was getting better by the day. Little by little as time was going I was finally feeling the left parts of my body. This was really a dream come true for me.
A month after, I had already fully recovered and I had resumed my work of tailoring. As a tailor I only went to Éke markets and on rest days I did my work at home. So that day while I was inside, I could hear voices coming out from the next compound and it was that of Emeka. His sister, Grace had traveled for an important meeting because according to Emeka, her husband to be, David asked her to come and see their house in the city and also have a brief discussion about their fast approaching wedding.
I was happy for her, unlike before when I felt that Emeka had used my head and made his sister contact someone he asked me to leave but after I confronted him, he ended up telling lots of stories of how David and his sister were best of friends back in those days. I agreed with him without even giving it a second thought.
Queen was furiously packing her bags and all other belongings that were hers, Emeka was trying to get hold of her but she wasn’t in the right frame of mind and so she kept hítting his hands off. His father’s sister, Aunty Veronica also was trying to get the lady to calm down but Queen was already at her limit. She was fed up with everything that was happening between her and her husband’s and his concubine–Zarachi and that’s me by the way.
She complained bitterly about how Emeka preferred my foods, sense of fashion and others to hers. How sometimes she would stress herself and prepare food for them only for him to come back home and compared with mine. This woman was really not happy about it, even though I was happy she was leaving him. I still felt a little bit of pity for her. She stopped a bike man and placed her loads on the front and then her little sister sat at the back with her baby wrapped around her back.
Emeka wasn’t himself for almost 3 days and I refused going to see him, but the thought of him harmíng himself came into my mind. So I had to go and see him only for me to find him taking solace in alcohol, this man had become a baby right before my eyes and then I became weak that instant, the last time I was this weak after seeing him in this condition was when he lost his civil defense job.
That period was hard for Emeka and so now, I quickly took him inside the bedroom. He took off his clothes and used a towel to dab his head and then I gave him pain relief so that it could ease the stress he must have undergone. After all that being done, I left for my house before his people (Aunty Veronica) would return and get another thing to report me for.
The main reason why I was in pain with Aunty Veronica was that this woman would be the one to steal others’ reputation when she came around and wanted to help her amend her clothes which eventually she wouldn’t pay a dime for it. I used to believe at first not until Emeka warned me to stop because according to him she was a snake in green grass. But I didn’t pay attention to it not until that day when I overheard her asking Queen why she was on good terms with me.
Aunty Veronica still went as far as telling the girl about how long I and Emeka had dated and still I wasn’t incapable of giving birth. She told her a lot about me, both the ones which were true and lies. I listened with all my full concentration, since it was late in the night, some one would hardly notice my presence. And from that day onwards I feared the woman like how I feared going to héll.
So unknowingly to her, I had found out about her chameleon colors. She came with a bag full of clothes that needed amendments but I was ready for her and began the work and listen to her as she began saying what I didn’t ask her for, this woman talks was getting me slightly provoked and I needed her to stop urgently, so I removed the wrapper I was sticking and placed the jean of her son and then I allowed the needle to break.
With that alone, I pleaded with her to excuse that I wanted to go to the market and get another needle from the market and then she weñt home. Instead of going to the market I went to my friend’s house and rested for a while before I went back to my own house.
Months later, rumors of Emeka dating another girl came to my ears but I refused to believe it. I had this believe within me that it was just a coly to get my mind off him or rather make me hàte him.
The gossip came from different people and some that came to inform me about the secret affair included the woman’s name and where she was staying. I listened with rapt attention and showed zero concern about it. As far as I was concerned, Emeka would never follow another woman without even informing me about it.
Not too long after a week, I began believing what he was actually seeing another woman because I was obviously seeing the signs. From coming back home late and buying gifts I taught were mine. I resorted within myself to confront him by myself but this man looked so innocent and then I trashed it off my mind.
“So you think they are lying? Don’t worry one day you will find out.” My friend said one day, while she was at my house helping me pick beans.
“Just forget about it. Emeka is not married to me and even though he was, I don’t care about it.” I answered her so that she could keep quiet and change the topic which eventually she did and continued with what she was doing.
I was sad after I heard it from my best friend again, after what Monica the village gossip had told me. But what’s my concern? But then I still felt sad and refused to take it to heart. I believed within that before Emeka would embark on getting another wife, I must know .
Not until I witnessed it with my own eyes, that day I was on my way for our church’s weekly bible study service which we normally had on Thursdays and then I felt like passing through the shortcut that led to the church. That road wasn’t frequently used by people and so barely almost everyone knew about it.
Then while passing on my own then I saw something that drew my attention. At the “lugu” was Emeka and the supposed new girl he was now secretly dating. I was speechless and taken aback.
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TBC
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#kiononiawrites
