Looser Of Everything

Priscilla! Priscilla !Priscilla! and his voice intensified, it was like he was screaming at the top of his voice and when he almost lost his voice he made an horrible sound with his throat like he had accumulated thick saliva and the sound of spit followed. I could have answered but i was far away in the visitor's room down stairs and if you knew the way our house was built you wouldn't be surprised at my silence and race towards his voice. I slipped on the stairs but i picked myself up quickly and made for the Veranda upstairs, didn't even bother pausing just made my way in like a pursued person.

' you called me'

‘yes i did’ he answered quiet rudely and supported his response with a clap on my right cheek, before i could rub it another landed on my left.'You must be stupid, how dare you make me stress my voice'

'I'm sorry, was cleaning the visitor's room'

'Shut up' he screamed, molesting my cheek again with another slap, tears came down my eyes in a slow movement and my voice trembled. I couldn't say anything again, I would rather keep quiet than say something and get a slap consolation.

'Now go inside and pick those clothes, and get them washed and ironed before I get back tonight'

I turned and left, not minding the stirring gaze of onlookers who were walking up or down the street. I started thinking of what might have been going through the minds of those onlookers.

Five years ago, when I accepted his proposal to marry him, mom had warned against jumping into marriage, I was just 23 then and Donkey had been my best suitor, he had everything a girl could ask for, a house of his own, fleet of cars, a thriving business and he had gotten all these just at the age of 28.Many times mom would call me into her bedroom and talked to me for hours, to buttress her point she would say sarcastically 'what sort of man goes by Donkey' but I was always less worried or moved by that because I had worried about that too initially until he told me it was his baptismal name, that he chose it because Donkeys are honourable animals and that was why Jesus asked for a Donkey to be brought to the gate of Jerusalem on his entrance to the city. I thought it was stupid but I never questioned him, instead I spent many times flattering him as the most honourable man in the world. He was a sweet man till we got married and he was also religious, we never had sex prior to our wedding on the ground that it was unholy, 'a desecration of the human body called God's temple' he would say. I thought that was orthodox but I never questioned him, so I slept a lot of my nights away from him and when we got together, the highest we would go was a kiss and we would spend the whole day or weekend talking about relevant and irrelevant things. Sometimes I would fantasise on how lovely it would be to have him kiss the back of my neck, or caress me, or just make me feel warm but it was never going to be.

On the night of our wedding, we spent the whole night in bed and in the morning, I thought he had the greatest fun of his life but he turned to me and called me a whore. I felt bad and when I questioned him he just turned his back and slept off. The next morning he woke me up with a spank and when I told him never to do it again he responded with a slap which I was quick enough to cover with my hand but I wasn't fast enough to escape the second attempt. I was stuck in trauma and quietly left the room. During breakfast he said we wouldn't be going on honey moon and that I should move my things away from his room, down to the room downstairs beside the visitors room, he kept the room upstairs for our unborn kids. I left the dinning table immediately and went to the kitchen to place a call to his sister and told her about all that was happening. In response, she said I should just heed to him that Donkey has always had a bad temper, 'a bad temper?' I thought aloud, that was the first time I was hearing that,he had pretended so well all through our courting days and his family had said so many beautiful things about him before our wedding but to hear that strange couple of words really broke my heart. I cut the phone without making further comments and made my way back upstairs, thinking in my head, those heart breaking couple of words....Bad Temper.

So that morning, a day after our second wedding anniversary, when I got the regular routine slaps and I left for his room to pack his clothes for laundry, I thought to myself, this must end somehow, someday. So I picked his clothes up and made my way out of the house to wash them. He left the house not quite long and I had enough time to think about my plan of action, it wasn't an easy thing to do as I was already carrying his third baby after losing two pregnancies to his usual animalistic brutality.

Two weeks after, I was lying helplessly on the hospital bed, though much better than the previous day when I was bleeding furiously. I had travelled to Jos from Lagos after my atrocity and had come to flush out the baby in my womb, the last memory of Donkey. The doctor had told me that morning that I suffered complications during the termination and they had to remove my womb. I had been in comma all night and just when I woke up I saw a couple of thin looking men dressed in tattered black uniform beside my bed and one of them said:

"Mrs Priscilla Duncan, you are hereby arrested for the murder of Mr. Donkey Duncan who was stabbed to death in his apartment last week Tuesday, you have the right to remain silent or anything you say here might be used against you in the court of Law".

I sobbed



WebRep

currentVote

noRating

noWeight