6.
If the ring on my finger doesn't make me a slave,
The appetite beneath his stomach will
If my loyalty to myself dares to stare at the burning sun without flinching,
My children's cry will melt my heart
For all I have seen, and all that I have felt,
If marriage doesn't make you a happy person, it makes you a better slave.
Marriage was not what the young couple had envisioned. Both were new at so many things and so alike in Ignorance. Ofure, being a woman, was not given the privilege of an education. Her mother always said that she would end up in a man's home, so there was no need for her to climb ladders if she would end up helping others climb. The Pastor of Fire and Light ministries that Ofure attended, did not let her celebrate her marriage in his church because of the way she had gotten pregnant.
'It is shameful' he had said and pointed at the young couple, permitting spittle to drop in their faces.
And so, Collins went to the magistrate court and bribed the clerk so that he could marry that weekend. Ofure sisters and the conductor acquaintances that Collins had made in his journey to success flocked behind them as they danced at the bar that they had picked as the reception. Everyone danced, prayed and laughed. Before three in the afternoon, the celebration was over. The conductors quickly changed their clothes and started looking for buses to jump on. Ofure sisters accompanied their mother home so that they could prepare food for the restaurant.
Collins was in love. After the visitors left, he bolted the door and undressed his wife. Slowly, he rocked and held her just like he had done before, and together, under the blanket of their new situation, they kissed and moaned with exaggerated pleasures. After Collins had unburdened his desires, he stared through his torn bed spread at his sleeping wife. He did not feel the excitement that had built up in him earlier in the day. It felt like scales had fallen from his eyes and it was the first time looking at the fair fat lady that sold Pap and akara in the dirty gutters in the garage. The power that desires held over sight stunned him and he moaned regretfully about his actions. There was nothing he could do. He had spent a lot of money, furnishing his apartment with an extra chair and paying the neighbours to cook for his wedding ceremony. Like a leopard, he pounced on her again, reawakening drifting desires.
That December, when a neighbour of his ran to the park and told Collins that his wife had had twins. He jumped and danced in the park, buying a carton of beer for his fellow acquaintances. In the safety of his thoughts that night, Collins thought gravely about this new route that life had led him. It was time for his wife to get a job. His wages alone could not afford the children's care. Yes. He would tell her the next morning. Tonight was a moon of peace and desires sponged within him, slithering through his eyes and waist until eventually he drew his wife closer and let them take over. That evening, Collins and Ofure rocked the bed and the neighbours wondered how deep the couples were sleeping that they let their children cry intensely into the night.
Are we not a people of Destiny?
Did we not walk on seas, underneath bedrocks and fishes?
Did our heels not glide on serpents?
Did we not sit on burning horses that flew towards the face beneath the skies?
Did we not swallow poison and rise from the ashes?
Did we not eat with the unclean and sleep with the leprous?
Under the mask of terror,
With death in the guise of hunger,
With sacrilege becoming sacrifice,
With faith impotent against fate,
Have we forgotten that we are a people of destiny?
Collins woke up before Ofure. In the space before his wife joined him, he summoned courage to thrust his resolve in the sleepy eyes of his wife. After taking enough time, he leaned on her and breathe behind her earlobe. An act that he had seen on television once, it had worked then. But in his own case, Ofure swapped behind her ears, mistaking his breath for a mosquito and continued snoring. Collins brushed her aggressively and called her name until she sat up facing him. He thought about the night before as he stared into her eyes and memories of vanished desires resurfaced and once again, he noticed flaws that he had been blinded to. Ofure had no special skills, and just like him, she was a poor and illiterate lot.
‘Ofure, I have decided that it is time that you looked for a job. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but when the kids are old enough to sit without crying, I feel you should start up something and support me. You know you have no special skill and you didn’t attend any school, so maybe you can work as a cleaner or maybe sell something somewhere’.
Ofure was now fully awake and the audacity of her husband, throwing this insult in her face a day after she had given birth made her bit so hard till her head hurt. Who was this miserable man and how did they treat women where he came from? Of course, she knew about his salary and his lifestyle. She knew that before she decided to lay with him and marry him. She also knew that at a point, she had to start something to support the household, but it is one thing knowing what to do and it is another being ordered to do what you are supposed to do. The former is gratifying and the latter always sounds like an insult. Ofure wanted to ask if his father had told the mother, two days after having him to search for a job, but she remembered that Collins had told her that he was an orphan. Her better judgment told her not to prolong the matter any further. After all, her mother once told her that It is a man’s world. A world where the man shits and the woman wipes, because the man’s ego isn’t long enough to clean up his mistakes. The woman doesn’t have ego. She has hands long enough to wipe the man’s ass. Ofure nodded to her husband, which brought a smile to his face. Few minutes after they had agreed and went back to sleep, Collins’s hands began to search for another round of desires beneath Ofure’s skirt.
The naming ceremony was as grand as the wedding. The men congratulated Collins and gave him football sobriquet for giving birth to twins and the women surrounded Ofure and gave her unsolicited motherly advice.
A woman whom she recognized as her mother’s childhood friend said ‘Now you must focus on your children, they are your everything now. Your children come first and then your husband comes second’
Ofure wondered where her name in the list was. She didn’t know that motherhood denied the mother the ability to offer loyalty to herself. The advice came rolling in. Some were warm and some came ridiculous and left her ears stinging with shock.
‘Even if your husband beats you, you must bear for the sake of your children’.
‘She should have given birth to two boys, so that when they grow up, they will buy her wrapper and build houses’.
‘Start your son in school first. School fees are ridiculously expensive now. The girl can catch up later’.
And so, one after the other, the guests left, leaving Ofure and Collins with tons of advice and refuse in their small living room.
Seven months after the naming ceremony, Ofure enrolled her twins in a local daycare that wasn’t far from their home. The woman had a wide room with pictures of alphabets and lot of old worn out toys that she let the children play with. Comforted with the level of comfort that her children were going to have, Ofure began her job hunt. But being a woman of no education or skill in Lagos, she suffered setbacks and disappointments. The long trek she pursued left her dead as a door nail in the night and she became too tired to attend to her children and succumb to her husband’s desires. One day, she forgot herself while bathing her children in front of the compound and cried. So devastated was she that she unburdened herself to the first woman that gave her attention. This woman, her neighbor, was called Mary. It was this woman that took Ofure to Brighter days college, where Ofure began her job as a cleaner.