Chapter 3 : The unsightly sight of his appalling wife

In a quaint neighbourhood, just before the clock struck one O'clock in the night, a white Honda CRV drove along a brightly lit street and turned down a driveway two houses before the end of the street. The driver, Gershom lost in his thoughts, did not realize that he was the only house that had no power, as opposed to his neighbours’ brightly lit yards. After hooting for a while and still not getting any response, he picked up his phone and made a call.

A few meters from him, in their matrimonial bed, his wife, Feggy Chomba lay on top of the bed, snoring loudly. She wore a large grey t-shirt, pulled up on one side exposing her large breast and in the crook of her arm, a baby of a few weeks old and clad in pink lay fast asleep.

The persistent vibration of her phone against her thigh in the pocket of the unflattering, black broomstick skirt she wore woke her up. It was then that she realized she had fallen asleep while breastfeeding her daughter. Peeking at the screen of her phone with sleepy eyes, she frowned at the name.

HEAVEN SENT, the LED screen flashed the name adorned with heart emoticons.

‘Gershom,’ she said simply, closed her eyes and moved into a comfortable position hoping he wouldn’t take long so she could go back to sleep. She had had a long day. With hardly anything to eat in the house, her two eldest kids had been fussy.

‘Are you deaf? Did you not hear me hooting at the gate? How long do you expect me to wait out here? What type of wife are you?

In the dark, a doleful smile tugged the corners of Feggy’s mouth at the tail end of his tirade. Expecting her husband to speak to her kindly equalled to drawing blood from a stone. ‘You are outside the gate? Why?’

‘What type of a stupid question is that? Open the gate already.’ He barked the order into the phone and hang up.

Feggy stared at the screen puzzled. Had he not told her he would not be coming home earlier in the evening when she had called him at work to find out what time he would be getting home? Moreover, what was he so upset about? Had he been expecting her to be keeping watch at the gate?

Carefully lifting the baby off her arm, she placed her back on the bed and pulled the blanket over her. ‘Daddy is home Baby B.’ she whispered brushing her lips against her daughter’s chubby cheeks; however, her voice was laced with sadness. Bertha, their third child was conceived as an act of desperate attempt on Feggy's part to try to win back her husband who was shameless enough to flaunt his affair with the college girl; she had deliberately gone off the pill.

She had foolishly thought and naively believed the baby would bring them closer, only the opposite had happened. The day she had confirmed her pregnancy suspicion was the very night he had come home and told her he wanted out.

For as long as she shall live, Feggy would never forget the look of disgust on her husband’s face when she had told him she was expecting their third child. She had wanted to die in shame at that very moment when he had accused her of trying to tie him down while looking at her as if she was something hideous and disgusting. He had stormed out only to return after his family summoned him and gave him a verbal beat down.

Since then, she could count on her hand the number of times he had spoken to her as a husband should to his wife or the number of times he had touched her. He might have physically been there in the house with them but his mind and thoughts were always with his other woman. Whenever he was home, his eyes always glued to the screen of his phone and laptop with a goofy smile on his face, his family became a second priority. Moreover, when he was not chatting with her on the laptop, he would be talking to her in the gentlest and sweetest voice Feggy had ever heard him speak in, not even when he had been courting her had she heard him speak in such a voice.

On the day Bertha was born, while everyone around him had celebrated the good news, Gershom had looked like a cow on its way to the abattoir.

In the present, Feggy sighed, what was the use of reliving the painful past when all it did was bring her more pain? Planting another kiss on the baby’s cheek, she promised the barely two months old sleeping baby that she would give her, hundred and ten per cent of her love so that if a day ever came when she realized she was loathed by her father, her mother’s love would be compensation enough.

Lifting herself off the bed, Feggy went to the window and pulled the curtain aside to check the gate. Light seeping under the closed gate confirmed Gershom’s statement.

Grabbing her chitenge off the chair near the wardrobe, she wrapped it around her waist. She reached for her phone, switched on the phone's flashlight, and used it to light her way.

The moment she pushed the gate, her eyes locked with Gershom’s scorching glare. To Gershom, she was not a woman but rather something unsightly and appalling. Compared to his Yolie, coming home to the sight of his unkempt wife was akin to torture.

Seeing the disgusted look on her husband’s face was nothing new to Feggy. She had become accustomed to it over the past year. At first, it had hurt but with time, her skin had thickened and she bore it all with a smile. Even on the days, he touched her to satisfy his manly needs like earlier in the morning, she already knew it was another woman on his mind.

Forcing a smile on her face and pushing the hurt aside, she greeted him respectfully as was expected of her. ‘Honey, welcome home.’

Gershom hit on the hooter demanding she opens the gate wider as he poked his head out of the window. ‘What took you so long to open the gate? How many times have I cautioned you about being security conscious?’

Feggy wanted to call his BS to his face. Between the two of them, who was lax when it came to security? Was it not he who came home at witching hours? Who among them had turned the other into a gateman and put the others life at risk? If he cared enough about their security, he would come home on time.

Feggy could only curse herself as she guiltily averted her eyes from him when all she wanted was to throw the keys to his face and yell at him to open the gate for himself the next time if he found her to be so lacking and if he could not show even the slightest traces of appreciation.

As she proceeded to open the gate wider, Feggy sighed, wondering what could have upset him this much to lead to the sour mood he was in. She wondered if he had fought with his mistress. If so, how long would they be at odds? Should she be glad that at least her children would get to spend a few days with their father? On the other hand, was it something to be wary about? For all she knew, he would probably take out his anger on her.

Once the car had passed through, she pulled the gate back and locked it up.

Gershom stepped out, locked up the car, and headed towards the house without waiting for her. Feggy was used to this type of treatment; it would have been shocking if he had acted any other way.

Where a normal husband would spare a smile for his wife no matter how tired he was, and a quick kiss on the forehead or lips, all she got from him were looks of contempt. Once he had asked her who he had wronged in his previous life to be stuck with her.

Feggy hurried up to catch up with him but he abruptly stopped walking at the same time as he had just realized with the lights from the car off, the house was shrouded in darkness.

‘Why is it so dark? Are we experiencing load shedding?’ But even as he asked that his eyes had already roved to his neighbour’s houses and he could see that they had power.

‘We ran out of units.’ And everything else, she said to herself but didn’t have the guts to voice it out.

Standing this close to him, the soft whiff of another woman’s expensive perfume, left on her husband’s clothes carried to her making her heartache. Taking a closer look at him, she realized he wasn’t wearing the shirt he had left home with earlier in the day. She ought to be used to things like this but there just was no teaching your heart to be accustomed to betrayal.

‘Why should we be out of power? Didn’t we just buy power a few days back?’

‘…’ in her mind, she thought; I already reminded you this morning that the units were not enough to last till the end of the day but you were too busy flirting with your mistress on the phone!!!

Feggy wanted to laugh at his question. What power had he bought that he was boasting about? Since he had started seeing the other woman, Feggy couldn’t remember the last time that he had bought enough power to last them for the month. He expected the power of fewer than a hundred kwacha to last them for the whole month, forgetting that they had to cook on the stove as he already slashed the household budget in half and had already stopped giving her money for her upkeep and the house.

‘Would you like me to prepare you a bath? There is no hot water though.’ she asked instead.

Gershom mumbled something and went into the house.

When Feggy later joined him in the bedroom after checking on their other two kids, he had already slipped into the blankets and had turned his back to her his eyes glued to the screen of his phone even though their daughter beside him was crying.

Feggy checked on Bertha’s diaper; however, Bertha’s diaper was dry. Assuming she was hungry, Feggy sat on the edge of the bed and pulled up her shirt to breastfeed her. Baby B sucked hungrily on her mother’s milk. As Feggy breastfeed and sung a lullaby to her daughter, she subtly lifted her head to look over at her husband. She scoffed and chided herself for her naiveté. What else had she expected? He was already on the phone looking at the photos of the other woman.

To avoid answering questions and hearing his wife’s nagging voice, Gershom had inserted headsets in his ears and continued to browse.

In the pictures, dressed in a sexy, coral pink lounge hoodie and ripped jeans that hugged her butt and legs in all the right places, Yolanda played one on one basketball with a very good-looking young man causing Gershom’s already sour mood to take a deep dive. Yolanda's coy look as she stared at the young man made Gershom want to snap the neck of the other man. How dare he look at his woman like that. How dare she act all coquettish with another man when she was involved with him. He couldn’t believe after purposefully leaving him with blue balls, she was out there having fun as if nothing had happened.

Seething with anger and jealousy, Gershom’s fingers flew off the screen as he texted her.

Messenger - seen. No reply.

WhatsApp - blue ticks. No reply.

Text message. Delivered, No reply.

Frustrated, he kicked off the blankets and walked out to the lounge trying to get through to her phone. For an hour, he waited for her to pick up his calls. He could see that she was online but she did not bother to answer his call. In the end, he gave up, went back to bed, and had a fitful night.

***