Unknown 2

 

I could not just believe my eyes as it was an ogre that stared right back at me. The smile plastered on his face, just made him…..more beastly!

He moved into the room and sat beside me on the four poster bed, the last time I would be sitting on the bed as a spinster in my late father's house. I could not cry. He laid his hand…better yet, his great paw, on my lap, for he was a large man. I cringed at his touch, revulsion rising. My bridesmaid looked at my bowed head, with sympathy, she later told me. Hatred rose up betwist my breasts at the same time. This was an imposter! This was completely, totally disimilar to the fine pictures I had been shown by my…..very wicked and heartless uncles! May thunder and brimstone fall on their heads!

At last he was done talking and took his leave. I raised my head at Chinonso, my bridesmaid, my face bathed with tears of rage and helplessness. Chinonso silently took me in her arms and wiped my face as best as she could. My make up had to be re done.

Could I insist on backing out of this arrangement? I could not. My family's welfare depended on it.

The wedding day, the supposedly happiest day of my life was a day of heartbreak and great sadness in my life. The smiling face I showed was just a façade. The effort it took to put up the smile gave me a great headache at the end of the day. So great a headache that I was uncaring when it time for consummation. My head was afire what did it matter if my loins were also afire?

Thankfully my very drunk husband failed to realise I didn’t pass the lily white test. I had had a high school sweet heart, my first love and we had experimented….broadly. 

I submitted thereafter without complaint almost every night. Mother had lectured me on the ultimate sacrifice every married woman makes, I looked on as demurely as possible as you cannot tell your mother you already have some experience, at that supposedly tender age. I didn’t think it was a sacrifice back then, but in my marriage? It was the greatest sacrifice as revulsion was all I felt whenever he laid those….paws upon me to draw closer. I devised a means of going through the ordeal of sex making. I would separate my body from my mind. Allow my mind drift away to happy things, remember my childhood, think of my first love, Jude who had emigrated with his family after secondary school to Canada. My husband apparently didn’t find it strange he was making love to an unresponsive woman which made me hate him, even more. At last, exactly after five minutes spent grunting in great drafts upon my face, he would slide away only to start snoring immediately! Oh well! Welcome to the ‘ultimate sacrifice, Somtochukwu!’, I always told myself as I slipped away to give myself a scrub, scrubbing away his touch and liquid. Whilst I tried to remove his presence from my skin, his presence grew in my womb, unwelcome.

To be continued….