Unknown

I stare out of the window. It is raining heavily. Not as if I have an appointment or something. I am a full time housewife. What you’d call a kept woman. I am kept, how well ‘kept' you wouldn’t want to know.

I walk away, slowly from the window. I will not call my walk a waddle.....but it is a waddle to be frank, for I am quite heavy now. Heavy with a child I really do not want. A child I really should not be having.

He kicks ferociously. I can almost hear him reading my murky thoughts. He knows I do not want him and is angry with me,hence the kick, I can only presume. It’s all good. God knows, I shouldn’t even be here, in Lagos with a husband I also do not want…better yet a husband I so urgently dislike.

We must make the best of every situation we find ourselves, I can almost hear my mother saying. Poor, helpless mother!

My mother was also a ‘kept’ woman. So kept, she had not worked a single day in her life. Father was comfortable, we had all we needed until he upped and died. At work, we were told. People whispered he was killed with ‘jazz’. I was barely seventeen. The first child and the one saddled with making the greatest of all sacrifices.

My greedy uncles quickly took over my father's possessions. They said we were girls and had no claim to father's company, houses and lands. Eventually, they said I had to get married, that they could not afford to cater for us!

Mother tearfully agreed. My weak, hapless mother. I had to be married to a man willing to take care of my mother and four younger sisters. A man of means, by all means.

His picture was sent to me and mine sent to him. I remember my breath quickening as I laid my eyes on his pictorial frame. He looked so very handsome. Every girls dream, I thought dreamily, my head still in the Mills and Boon clouds.

A date was fixed for my traditional marriage. I was dressed gorgeously and quite expensively, my suitor, it was obvious was not one to stint. My mother whispered to me that he wanted to see before the ceremony. I was most anxious to see the darkly handsome six footer who was my groom. 

I looked up most expectantly as the door opened and looked in disbelief at the monster before me, for a monster he was!

To be continued….