📝: BEAUTIFUL BETRAYAL
.
.
.
CHAPTER SIX
.
.
.
I was awestruck and used my hands to wipe my face maybe it could be that I was imagining or something of that nature, but I thought he told me he had a job offer from one woman whom he needed to attend to urgently. Honestly the urge to stop him came but I couldn’t just barge into their midst like that. So I bowed my head and went to church, maybe I could find solace there when praying to God.
“I’m seeing another woman.” Emeka confessed while he was watching a movie in my room.
“Oh! Wow! That’s nice. I’m happy for you dear.” I answered pretending to be happy even until the point of wearing on a fake smile and even bringing bottle of wine I had in my fridge for us to celebrate.
Emeka was not fully convinced that I had agreed and that all was well but he had no other choice than to play along with me since I was showing to be happy about everything. I poured the wine into the two cups of glass I brought and then we made a toast to the newly founded love of Emeka’s.
What even came as a complete and unmerited shocker was that his brothers had payed for the girl’s hand in marriage and that she would soon be moving into the house. The way they rushed to support their brother was faster than that time when he was getting wedded to Queen. Sorry about his father’s house. Yes, Emeka was still living or let’s just say he’s the one looking over the house with his gossip Anuty Veronica.
We both drank and after a while he left, immediately he left I began crying. “God! What have I done that made you think I deserve barrenness as a punishment?”. I asked, looking at the heaven añd swallowing myself in pity. I wept bitterly as I knew that if not for my condition we could have been happily married by now.
And as everyone would have it, Emeka finally married her. Her name was Chima. She was tall, fair and well endowed and also was a petty business woman. So I guess her attributes endeared her to Emeka. Chima wasn’t from our side of the village, she lived in a distant place but oftentimes she came around to see her finances and now finally they would be getting married. When Emeka told her that they didn’t need a large crowd of people for their wedding she kicked against.
Emeka wasn’t a fan of large crowds or socal activities, he liked withdrawing himself from such things that would involve him standing publicly. But since Chima wasn’t agreeing to the “No or low wedding” kind of thing. They had no choice but to make the wedding a large one. On that day, the amount of people that flooded in was indescribable, the market women union, the village chief and the cultural choreographers. Name them! People came out with their trope. I was asked by Emeka to join his sister in the cooking department.
At first I could remember vividly that I didn’t want to but he wouldn’t allow me and then he would come up with the reason for me being jealous and envious. Sometimes, he would say it was because I was against his progress, with everything he said he never for once used my condition to make jest of me.
“You know my sisters, Grace and the other three wouldn’t be able to handle everything. Please, I know how betrayed you might feel but just bear in mind that I badly need a male child.” He said very emotionally on his knees while asking to help him out.
“Emeka, please don’t get me wrong! What I’m doing now is for our good. You know it’s better that I avoid them to go there than rather become a laughing stock for everyone.” I protested with my reasons and my face elsewhere. I was trying very hard not to get shaken by his face and emotional breakdown.
“I promise you, no one would do such a thing.” He promised.
After much deliberation and consideration, I finally agreed and went to help that day. It was peaceful at first not knowing I was in for a surprise at the end. I help in washing the rice and frying the meat. Not too long after we were done with the cooking of the food. Only that the jollof rice and the packaging wasted our time but we conquered. While everyone who cooked was eating, a woman who came to help stood up and went behind to get something we all weren’t aware of.
The woman who went behind had successfully stolen some big chunks of meat and a large amount of the cooked rice because she was among those who were in charge of packing the rice. So in the attempt to bring the stolen items down from the fence that she placed them in, she mistakenly touched the toilet zinc which three days back the electric cables were being cut by the heavy wind.
The wires fell on top of the zinc and though I’m sure she wasn’t aware because it wasn’t after she left that we too were being informed. And as innocent as NEPA people were at that time, they brought the light. The kind of scream that had drawn all of us to the backyard where the toilet. The thing that saved thàt woman’s life was when one turned the change over to GEN.
On the ground was the woman with the polythene bag she stuffed her stolen items inside, this woman was vibrating on the ground like someone that was suffering from epilepsy, with saliva foaming out mouth. Frankly speaking, I thought that after my parents death I wouldn’t be afraid of death again but her condition proved me wrong, Mehn! I was damn frightened. They had to rush and get peak milk for her and other things were being done till they were able to revive the woman. Whom I’m sure wouldn’t surface herself in public for sometime because she had just created a new name for herself and family.
After her own event we were all prepared to go back to our various houses, then Chima came out and complained of not seeing the jewelry she was supposed to wear together with her clothes. We all helped her to search her room and it amounted to nothing because we couldn’t find it anywhere. The parlor and almost everything was turned upside down but no solution.
“I haté this kind of embarrassment honestly! Why don’t we search for ourselves.” A woman suggested after lamenting.
“Yes, I succumbed to that.” Another said and then all the women agreed to it.
The two people appointed to search began with our bags but luckily for me I wasn’t with a bag, I only came with a purse and in that purse was only my phone and roomkey and nothing more than that. They at first didn’t want to search my purse but I felt they would later say things behind me so I told them that they hadn’t searched mine and then some of their faces brightened up immediately.
Only for the woman to open my purse and bring out a box of the jewelries inside them, I was as shocked as the whole women there was. I tried thinking about how to put it there but I wasn’t getting anything. I had not left the kitchen I came expect for when I went to get inside to get water to drink, I had no idea of going het room to get any of her belongings let alone her box of jewelries.
A lot of things were in their minds to say and then suddenly they didn’t want to because they were still in shock about what happened. I bowed my head in utter shame and disappointment, they went inside and called the attention of the wife to the scene and that was where everything scattered. This woman hijacked me as if I came to her store and stole something from her, before I could say a word this woman gave me a sounding slap.
I lost count of how disdainful names she called me, we began talking and then everyone outside too. Gradually that of the woman who stole at first was being forgotten and now I was the topic in their mouths.
“This is how she always behaves.” One woman said.
“Always fond of chasing all these innocent men’s wives.”
“So she can be this wícked, no wonder even the devil can’t be trusted.”
These and many other words came out of their mouths, I was kept hostage in one of their pending marriages when they would finish the wedding, by then most of the men weren’t home and the news was already gone far.
I was there until they finished the wedding and almost everyone refused to go home, so they took me to the chief’s house where they planned for me to be punished for stealing. I tried to tell them how innocent I was but no one believed me at all. How will they? Even if you were there, you wouldn’t be among them. .
The village Chief came out and met the large crowd of people who were in his compound, he was startled and then asked why they were all there. That was when I was being brought forth to the chief and the tale of what has transpired since early in the morning. The speaker narrated how everything happened and how I was caught with the stolen material and then I was completely taken aback when I heard that the woman who stole earlier on accused me of giving her the stolen items to keep in her house for me.
This wasn’t fair, I looked up and saw the woman crying and pointing at me that I was responsible for all that she went through. The shouts and expression from the people’s faces weren’t welcoming at all. As I felt as if the ground should just open and just swallow me up. There I was thinking that Emeka would play a super man kind of game and save me but that was a vile imagination.
The chief heard the whole thing that happened and then he couldn’t judge anything there, the whole thing was crystal clear even a màd man would know that I was guilty and then me explaining would be a complete waste of time. Anyways I still tried to bait myself out but it wasn’t working. The people wanted the chief to have me flogged but the chief refused because I had grown old in age and rather he asked them to parade me around the village and meet them at the village square where he would address us all.
These people took me out to parade me and that was how I was paying the penalty for what I didn’t know, the way Grace took the matter seriously shocked me. I knew Emeka must be disappointed in me because I couldn’t find him there. Some spat at me and others laughed while others used baboon sticks to taunt me. But I cared less about it, I was only pained because one I wasn’t the one who stole and secondly Emeka and his wife must be having the time of their lives back at home.
They successfully carried out the humiliation process and then we landed at the village square, the chief was already there waiting for us to arrive and then he asked me to kneel down and then he sent for Emeka and his wife so that I could publicly apologize to them. So someone was sent to call them and they all came. Chima and Emeka still had their traditional wedding attire on them, while I moved to where they were standing on my knees.
Immediately I was about to open my mouth and apologize, two young girls who were supposed to be the make-up artists came rushing inside…
.
.
.
TBC
.
.
.
#kiononiawrites
