THE NEXT DAY, SUNDAY.
"I don't see what is still keeping you children upstairs in your rooms. We are almost late for church. Do I need to drag you both down here so that we can be on our way?" Righteous called out to her children from the bottom of the stairs.
Just like always, Righteous Green, a no-nonsense woman, a woman who was constantly time-conscious, had finished dressing up for Sunday service and was the first to go downstairs to the living room as she waited for her children to join her.
Having inculcated the same time consciousness in her children, they shouldn't have taken this long to join their mother who had been waiting for almost ten minutes, but today was one of the occasion they did the contrary for a change.
Righteous loved arriving at the church premises twenty to twenty-five minutes prior to the start of the program.
Today, her spotless punctuality record was about to be soiled, thanks to her children who were dragging their feet this morning. It was beginning to irk her. Her taut patience was rapidly wearing thin as she glanced multiple times both at the wall clock and her wristwatch.
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Like a typical African mother, she yelled and yelled at the top of her lungs for the children to get downstairs.
Unable to endure their mother's shouts, Ayanate and Preye burst out from their rooms into the hallway that led downstairs almost at the same time.
"Mum, it is barely 5:30 a.m. Keep your voice down, or else you are gonna wake up the entire estate," Preye said as he raced down the stairs to greet his mother with a kiss on her cheek.
"Don't touch me!" Righteous replied with a slap which he dodged just in time. Preye thanked his stars as he stylishly turned it into a joke. He would have been sporting a swollen purple face to church today.
Behind him, Righteous could see Ayanate hurriedly moving towards them with her makeup kit on one hand, her handbag and shoes on the other.
"I wasn't going to touch you. I was only going to give you a kiss on your cheek, but your behavior has made you miss my buenas tardes," Preye said to his fuming mother, chuckling.
"Hey, 'buenas tardes' is the Spanish word for saying good afternoon. You can't fool Mum while I'm here,"
Ayanate shouted a few inches away.
"Yeah, yeah. I know. Busy body," Preye mumbled in response with a sheepish grin.
"Whatever," his sister replied, unaffected by his words.
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"And what was keeping you children so long. I thought you would never come down," Righteous said, staring hard and somewhat suspiciously at both children.
"Well, we are here, Mum. Shall we?" asked Preye
"Where do you think you are going with that makeup bag?" Righteous asked, pointing towards her blind daughter even though she couldn't see her.
"Is that how you want to comment on how stunning I look?" asked Ayanate, twirling around flirtatiously, oblivious to her mother's glare.
But Preye was seeing the expression on their mother's face. He willed himself not to burst into spontaneous laughter. To him, that look of annoyance was priceless for his entertainment and amusement, so he decided to pull his mother's legs more.
"Also look at me, Mum. Don't I look like the perfect gentleman?" He asked, wiggling his eyebrows, licking his lips, adjusting his tie and stylishly displaying his Rolex.
Beside him, Ayanate was still twirling as she waited for a word of approval from Righteous.
Righteous gave them one last deadly look through her squinted eyes that could pierce through a rock-solid surface, then she huffed and stormed out of the living room.
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Apparently giving up on wearing makeup, Ayanate tossed her makeup kit to one side, quickly putting on her shoes as she and her brother scrambled to catch up with their mother, giggling as they did.
Outside, Righteous sat down, with her arms angrily folded around her chest, in the driver's seat of her car and waited for her children to get into the backseat. But she watched, not surprisingly, as Preye held his sister's hand and gently guided her to his car with a smug smile on his face.
"I thought you children were coming with me?" she asked her children when they were a few inches away from the car.
"Of course we're coming with you," they replied almost in unison.
"So, why are you not entering the car?"
Ayanate took that one. "That's what we are about to do? Do you need a pair of good glasses too, Mum?"
Her brother laughed. What a contrast! His blind sister was asking his perfectly sighted mother if she needed a pair of glasses.
Righteous just watched her children in amazement for a while.
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"Of course we are coming with you, Mum. We just didn't say we would drive in the same car," Preye continued.
"Now, mum, if you don't mind, please be on your way. We would be happy to become your escort or make up your motorcade."
Righteous wanted to give a retort, but she just shook her head instead and hissed as she inserted her key into the ignition.
"Indomie generation." Righteous finally said, her voice barely above a whisper.
"No, mum, it's pizza. Pizza generation," Preye, who had heard his mother, corrected, laughing.
Breaking away from her brother, Ayanate successfully made it to the passenger's side of her brother's car, opened the passenger door, climbed in and secured her seat belt.
But before her brother could get the chance to do the same, Righteous fired up her car engine and zoomed off, not giving them the chance to be her escort or one small motorcade.
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The man wakes in a daze.
He is expecting to wake up to another mundane day, in the monotonous environment that he has gotten so used to in the past few years, but to his utter bewilderment, something is different.
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Instead of waking up on the hard, rough floor in Kirikiri maximum prison with a bruised and battered body filled with mosquito bite marks, he wakes up on a big, soft, feathered bed. His head is on a fluffy pillow. An electric blanket has even been draped over him to keep him warm throughout the night.
The whole thing isn't making sense. One minute he is sleeping and waking up in the prison and the next, he is waking up in a bedroom that he was also familiar with.
The man is obviously dumbfounded but he wouldn't do anything irrational about it. The unexpected but much-needed change brings warmth to his bruised and battered body and soul, and it makes him smile happily for the first time in a long while.
Wow! Wonders shall never cease. Did he just actually smile? He can't even remember the last time he did so.
How long has it been? A century? A millennium? Well, it doesn't matter anymore. What matters is that at the moment, he is smiling and he will savor each moment of it as though it would be his last.
Slowly, ever so slowly, as if he is handling a delicate moment that he doesn't want to break out from, he sweeps his gaze around the room to take in the environment.
That's when all the sweet and pleasant memories come rushing like a waterfall.
To his pleasant surprise, he is really not in the biggest prison in West Africa serving a life sentence.
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His eyes recognize the bed sheets, the electric blankets that kept him warm, the wardrobe, lamp stand, antiques and the exquisite decor that is Alexandria's brainchild.
Yes, this is Alex's and his bedroom. This is their house.
No, this is not their house; it's Alex's property, solely under her name. But it doesn't matter, as long as they live together, under one roof. It doesn't matter because anything that belongs to Alex also belongs to him. That's it.
Full stop.
The man is not related to Alex by blood. They are just boyfriend and girlfriend who are currently cohabiting.
But it hardly makes any difference, because in their minds, he technically has joint ownership with Alex.
This is why he freely uses her car, resides in her four room bungalow apartment, eats her food and extravagantly spends her cash.
To all who are busy bodies, Alexandria is not complaining because she has made him the next of kin to all her estates. This includes her money in the bank and all her investments.
All this she has done and continues to do, all in a bit to impress him and make him pop that question a lot of women desire to hear.
In The Man's opinion, he rightfully owns everything, including her body because he is a man and Alex is simply a woman.
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Also in his own opinion, in this side of the world, for a woman to own a property is a bad omen. And he can also put up a strong argument centering around the feminist controversy. Should women be independent and own properties or should that be strictly a right exclusively reserved for the male species? He supports the latter motion.
Because as far as he is concerned, the woman is, and will always belong to her father or to her husband. As it was in the beginning, so shall it be till the end, thank you very much.
Not too surprising, a majority of African men agree with his concept, deferring to some ancient, archaic tradition that ought to have been wiped off the face of God's green earth.
Talking about marriage, he is not Alex's husband. At least, not in the sense that he has paid her bride price, but with the way they are living together, he and Alex are practically husband and wife. That's the way he sees it.
Not just him, for even outsiders who do not know that they are cohabiting calls them Mr. and Mrs.
And Alex is comfortable to be seen and known as his wife even though he has yet to legally and officially give her his name.
Well, the time for all that will come. That's what he keeps telling Alex each time she begins to pressure him to go meet her parents and do the necessary things.
"I'm not asking for too much. We could just start with introduction and all the necessary rights, organize a little bride price ceremony for our families and a few friends to officially inform people that we are legally married.
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"I'm not asking for a traditional marriage and a white wedding, we will let go of those ones. They might be too expensive for you and I understand. It's not like I don't have enough money to organize a traditional and white wedding if you give me the go-ahead. But forget it, the most important thing is that we get officially married.
"You know I love you so much, and you have also said it several times that you love me. So what still separates us from being together the way we should be?"
But after all these carefully planned and well-rehearsed speeches, he will still tell her to cool off, that there is still enough time and he is not running away. And indeed, he isn't running. After all, where will he go and leave behind all that he has been enjoying.
He isn't making ends meet. In fact, all he does is to make ends part. Alex gives him everything he wants, including her body. This is a rare opportunity that he never wants to pass.
There's only one thing she has not given him though. Something very important to him. Something he believes is one of the most important things for every man on earth.
She has not given him a child. This is the major reason he is holding back from going to her parents to inform them of his interest to marry their daughter.
The Man is sure that nothing is medically wrong with him, and even though Alex is also claiming the same thing, he isn't sure she is telling him the truth. As a matter of fact, he thinks she is lying to him. After all, she is not getting any younger and she is desperate to get married. The Man will not be coerced into marriage.
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The Man has not always been honest over the years, dating from the start of their relationship, which is to say that it is not the same for Alex. She doesn't have the kind of character that could be attributed to a good and virtuous woman, so...
He has been planning to sneak up on her medical files one of these days to discover the truth for himself. But until then, he will continue to drag his foot and slow things down. Once again, he reminds himself that he is the man and Alex is simply the woman. All the cards are in his hands, this is reason enough for her to dutifully bow down to his every whim.
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