CURSED DESIRES 5
I didn’t like the turn out of things. We were dancing out tone. We had come to the village to find Joy and ask for her forgiveness so that she broke the curses she had heaped on Uche and not to go up to some witch doctor!
Men hear me; no power or force can undo the curse laid on a man by an agonized woman. You don’t step on a viper and expect it to kiss your heels. What goes around comes around!
I tried talking senses into my friend’s head but my words were like a rain wasted in the forest. He was dancing to the misterous drum being played in the bush. He was buying his mother’s wicked ideas. This is where I had to draw the line. I had to make it clear to him that I was never going with him to any woeful gamble occasioned by a quack orator.
I was raised a devoted Catholic and could never condescend to such an untoward religious way of solving issues.
While his mother took him to Oketa the acclaimed mouth piece of the gods, I spent time with my kinsmen. Uche was worth anyone’s pity. But I tried enquiring about Joy from my kinsmen and Eme was the only person who claimed to have seen her about three years past at a certain location. I gave up tracing her as the culprits were already doing things their own way.
After a day, I reunited with Uche who had then become a new man to himself. He boldily claimed that the witch doctor had ousted the curses and all absurdities attached to them. We left for the City. I only hoped that he was free indeed.
But how could a man who had wronged a woman to such extent be free? There could be no better judge than this thing called conscience. Joy was left to face the complexities and stigmatization that aggrandized premarital or what they call unwanted pregnancy!
When I got to my place in the City, I was so disturbed that I finally had to tell my wife the secret story. Uche and I had agreed on phone to keep our wives out of this whole thing but I was so mad that I decided to let the grey cat out of the box.
I ran down the long story for my wife, making sure I laid emphasis on Uche’s most atrocious acts. Of course, I’d skipped the part where I laid Joy so that Uche was left on a clean layout for condemnation. My wife was however indifferent to my easy flowing narrations.
She asked if I was sure I didn’t have a hand in this whole jam. Birds of a feather they say, flock together. What is good for the goose is also good for the gander. My wife had studied my personality over the years.
I frantically tried to brush the hot coals off myself. I infact told her that in my family, premarital affairs with women was a taboo. Anyone who ventured into it automatically went mad!
My wife kept gazing at me. Her face was as clammy as clay. She seemed to know better than I did. Her sudden coldness gave me a strange feeling…
