Hell on Earth 3
(based on a true story)
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I laid on the floor for a long time hoping to regain even the tiniest amount of my strength. But it wasn’t coming back. It seemed I became weaker rather. I couldn’t move a finger and my premature stillborn stared right back at me. Tears of agony flowed freely down my cheeks as I watched my ‘abomination’ looking like an alien on the floor.
In my tiredness, I slept off. I didn’t pass out this time. I slept. I continued sleeping until I felt someone tapping me gently on the arm. I opened my eyes and beheld a woman who I later found out to be our neighbor.
My stepdaughter stood at a distance peeping to know what had become of me. She had gone to call the woman when she thought I was dead. That was the first good thing she did for me.
When I woke up with a little strength regained, the woman attended to me. She washed me up with warm water, helped me bury my ‘abomination’ and fed me some pepperish soup-like food. When she felt I was strong enough to talk. She asked to hear my story. I told her the little I could remember about my ordeal at the time and she felt so bad.
But she didn’t do anything. I found out she was afraid of my husband. The only advice she gave me was to leave the marriage if I wanted to live. She left later in the evening after leaving me with the instructions on how to take care of my postnatal self. That was the first time someone treated me with care since I got married.
My husband came home four days after I lost the baby. I expected him to ask what happened to the pregnancy, but he didn’t. I guessed his daughter already told him. When I went to tell him what happened, he seemed not to be interested. He only told me that if I sleep with his son again, he would kill me with his bare hands and nobody would do anything about it. I knew he meant it, and he could do it.
Gradually, my body recuperated. I didn’t became entirely healthy, but I was much better than I was in my pregnancy. Things gradually returned to normal. My type of normal, I meant. The type of normal where I still served as a housemaid in my husband’s house. The type of normal where I still washed and cooked for my grown up step children. It was my normal because this time, I didn’t have my ‘abomination’ in my belly.
A little over one month after the loss of my ‘abomination’, my husband let me back into his bedroom. He started having sex with me again and nothing changed. It was still the rape type of sex. But I discovered that it didn’t hurt my vagina as it used to. The friction was way less painful and I was grateful. I told myself that was because I became stronger.
But I was wrong. My vagina had widened and it never closed up again. It remains like that even until now. I later went to look for the woman who helped me when I had my ‘abomination’. She was a widow. She was happy that I’d become better than she left me. I told her I came to thank her for the help she rendered. I also begged her to allow me to come to her whenever I need someone to talk to.
But she declined. She said she didn’t want any problems with my husband. She said she didn’t want a repeat of what happened with my husband’s second wife. That was when I learned that I was the third wife. I begged her to consider me as her daughter and reconsider her stand. But she insisted on her resolve. She only repeated the advice she gave me earlier. She asked me to flee from the marriage as soon as I can.
I’d have taken her advice if I had anywhere to flee to. But I knew I was sold out and my parents wouldn’t want me back in their house. I went back to my cage.
Immediately I came back from the woman’s place, the police stormed our house. They were looking for my husband’s son. He and his gang robbed an electronics shop and the owner recognized him. I learned that later.
They arrested him smoking weed in the backyard. He was whisked away immediately. I was happy that happened to him and I prayed he never came back. Don’t call me a bad person. I don’t rejoice over people’s hardship, but his was what I had prayed for. His absence in the house also gave me a certain kind of peace.
But it became my husband’s crisis. The case was way bigger than he could influence and that made him restless. I bore the brunt again. He would come home angry, looking for reasons to blame me. The first time, he said I served him cold food. Before I could explain why the food wasn’t hot, he started hitting me. From then on, hitting me at will became his method of dealing with his frustration.
I endured and hoped it would get better, but it didn’t. His son stayed in detention while I served as his destressing sandbag. Some months later, his son was sentenced to many years behind bars. I don’t know how many years it was, but I knew the magnitude from my husband’s reaction. That night, he stayed up, drinking and talking to himself. When he eventually came back into the room, he ordered me to leave his house that instant and never come back.
It was past 1 am. I didn’t know why he made the decision, but I was happy that to be leaving my hell. Then, he changed his mind.
Join me on the next episode of ‘Hell on Earth’.
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TOCHUKWU ANOZIE
