CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Obi paused before the door to his mother’s room, hesitant to invade the plush interior. Then, summoning his will, he knocked on the door, turned the knob gently, and then he walked into the room.
The tall, upright figure who was seated in a chair before the stained glass windows was staring at him warily through kohl-darkened eyes, her lips compressed in a grim line. Hope’s hair hung loosely around her slender shoulders, and she’d crossed one long limb over the other, the skin fair against the black sheen of her nightgown.
‘Adamma visited you a week ago, didn’t she,’ she said, and her words were a statement and not a question. She’d travelled down to the country to visit her relations, so she’d not been able to confront him with her words until now.
Obi regarded the tall woman languidly. ‘You were the reason why my wife pounded her way down to my hotel and tried to bring the entire structure down with her anger; you sent her those derogatory pictures that mirrored what she’d been.’
Anger flashed in the woman’s dark eyes. ‘I only wanted to remind the silly girl of her station in life; that was why I sent her those pictures. Now, I realize the insult that went with it and I should not have done it. What did you say to her?’
‘Nothing out of the ordinary,’ he replied quietly, shrugging indifferently. He then folded his arms across his chest and waited, knowing that there would more.
Hope leaned forward in her chair, her eyes flashing with anger. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary?’ she echoed. ‘You said nothing?’ Her voice had risen in anger. ‘How could you be so stupid? Why did you choose to call her parents into your fight with her? You fool! You should have said nothing!’
‘Said nothing?’ A muscle in Obi’s face tensed but he stilled it. ‘The silly girl was making an exhibition of herself, and I also could not just let her slip away from my arms. Besides that, there was nothing I said to her that she didn’t know already. I merely told her what she’d known all her life.’
Hope opened her mouth to say something scathing, but she thought better of it and leaned back into her chair. She said, ‘Every man and woman is responsible for his or her actions. If a man were to decide to bring up a part of you that you wanted to remain buried, what would you do to that person? What would your reaction be?’
Obi’s brows knitted as he contemplated what answer to proffer to his mother’s question. ‘Look for ways to get rid of the bastard, I guess,’ he finally said after a lengthy pause.
‘Isn’t that what that woman should be doing to you? Looking for ways to get rid of you? Look here, son; I had thought that I hated Adamma, but then I cannot punish her for what her parents and I went through with each other. That girl deserves some kindness after all she’d been through. Even now, I blame myself for being so harsh on her, but I had been so filled with shock and anger at her for what I’d found out, that when she was crying, asking me to understand her plight and the horrid decisions she’d had to make in her life, I was only too willing to see her go. Now, son, I’m asking you to look for ways to get her back into your life and into your heart. She is your wife, not your whore.’
Dazed and confused by the seemingly contradictory actions of his mother and this new side of her which he was surprised existed, Obi contemplated on the most plausible course of action for him to take. Should he go to his wife and ask his wife to come back to him? If he ever went to her to grovel on his knees before her, then whatever respect she must have had for him would vanish. He had tasted a rebellious woman who could smile so easily when she chose to and then pout with fury when annoyed, a woman who was a sex goddess and knew how to please. She was a woman of strong will and steely determination; she’d branded herself to be his opponent and fight him till he crumbled with frustration. Her actions were telltale indications of the fact that she wanted to have nothing to do with him.
Smiling mischievously to himself because he intended to play her game with her, he said, ‘Don’t expect me to go and grovel in front of her; I won’t do it.’
‘Then don’t, you fool,’ Hope said acidly. ‘You are just like your father; he was a fool who was a useless man; he treated me like an insignificant fish in a sea of many. Death was the only salvation he had, and so shall it be yours.’
‘Damn you, mother!’ Obi thundered, his fingers jabbing at the air for emphasis. ‘Damn you and damn your conspiring soul! My father was a good man who loved you more than anything else in the world.’
Hope’s lips twisted into a snare as she stood up and faced her son squarely, her eyes boring into his. ‘Loved?’ she scoffed. ‘Did you just say that he loved me? No. Your father never loved me like you claim he did; he merely used me to acquire the son he needed so much. But then, you were right; he did love me in his own twisted way. I was never the top priority in his life, and when he died, it meant that I was free of him. Do you want Adamma to have such feelings?’
Obi grabbed her cheeks and looked into the cold eyes that were glaring at him as he trembled with indignation at her callous words of condemnation over his father’s memory. Could she really be so beastly?
‘You are a cruel woman, mother,’ he said. ‘You might even be worse than that woman I got married to. You’re as cruel as she is.’
Hope’s hand flew across his face in a slap that was delivered with all the strength her outraged body could muster. ‘How dare you say such things to me?’ she snapped in a deadly voice that was loaded with venom. ‘And how dare you act like a stupid child? You say that I’m cruel and that your wife is cruel too, but you are the despicable one!’ She pulled away from his grip and her eyes were loaded with contempt. ‘You accuse your wife of being cruel, but she isn’t; she loves you too much to be cruel to you. She loves you so much, it hurts.’
Obi stepped back, shocked at the intensity of Hope’s words. ‘What?’ he said, shaking his head in wonder? ‘Did you just say that my wife loves me? And why didn’t she profess that love to me? Why has she thwarted all my efforts to get her beck into my life?’
Hope waved impatiently in annoyance. ‘No woman in her right mind will dare to tell a man who treats her in such an off-handed manner, that she loves him. Go back to your wife, and if you cannot make her come back to you because you’re too much of a coward to tell her what you truly feel for her, and then I suggest you let her go her separate way. It means that you do not deserve her. Do something for her that will show her how much you love her, and if you can’t, or prove to be too hot-headed and arrogant to do so, then I hope she kills you.’ She pointed towards the door. ‘Now get out of here.’
The stony look on his mother’s face nearly twisted his heart as he left the room, his mind reeling from what she’d told him. Did his wife really love him? If so, why hadn’t she told him? And why was his mother choosing this particular moment to tell him of her love?
No . . .
He did not believe it at all. He remembered Adamma’s stony face and the look of sheer anger she’d bestowed upon him. Was that love? No, he didn’t think so.
ADAMMA WENT TO THE DOROTHY swift house for the Music Awards like so many other musicians. They were all hoping to win something for their contributions to the industry, but she’d not been interested in any of the activities that were going on around her; she’d only gone there because an invitation had been sent to her and it would be an unpardonable breach of etiquette if she had refused to attend. It was true that she’d turned out in a fashionable gown like the other well-scented, sculpted women who were there to be ogled by the men who had turned out in attendance, but she was not interested in what was being done there.
The throng of security guards and paparazzi who were there to maintain law and order was great, and the celebrity women and men, even more so. There was great chatter and excitement, and it was at that moment that Adamma saw Della, the woman she’d easily bested at the Hilton club. The noxious woman was dressed in a blue gown that hugged her carefully-preserved figure like a second skin, revealing an unholy amount of cleavage at one end and a great deal of long legs at the other end; expensive diamond earrings hung on her lobes, and even more dripped from her throat, encircling it like a ribbon of white fire. Her long hair extension was swept back from her face, and Adamma felt her stomach roil with distaste; she turned away so that the horrible woman would not see her. But it was already too late.
‘Well, if it isn’t the glamorous woman who has been the main dish on TV,’ Della drawled, and Adamma had to stop and wait for the woman to catch up with her.
Adamma forced a frosty smile at the woman who emitted sensuality and radiated elegance from every pore. ‘Hi, Della,’ she managed to say as she flashed a smile at a man she’d known briefly when she was still new in the industry. ‘You came here.’
Della smiled with smug arrogance. ‘Yes, I came. But that’s not why I called you. I’m so glad that you’re now estranged with your rich, handsome husband. I know that must be bad news for you. But it’s good news for me because now, I have a chance to win him for myself. Isn’t it great; how one person’s bad news will turn out to be the good news of another?’
Adamma looked at her contemptuously, revulsion coursing through her. ‘You’ll never belong to Obi,’ she said, and she meant it. ‘He despises women like you and he can never feel comfortable having you fawning all over him.’ And it was true; her husband would never really be comfortable with this woman, with her cloud of expensive perfumes, her acrylic nails which were so long, Adamma wondered if she could do anything for herself; her long, false eyelashes; her exaggerated femininity. Then she turned away from the reprehensible creature.
That night, she won the Best Female Dancer award for her exotic belle dancing in her music video, Be Me If You Can, but she wasn’t really in the right frame of mind to celebrate, so that when she got home, she dived straight into her bed after she’d relieved the sitter she’d hired to take care of the kids.
Early the next morning, when it was still dark, she got up from her bed, dressed up in white running pants and a tank top, with white tennis shoes. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a ponytail, and, as the red disk of the sun was still trying to rise above the horizon, she ran. She lived on Victoria Island and so had access to the beach. She ran faster and faster along the coastline, staying on the wet sand as the cold water of the ocean washed over her feet. She had to clear her head. She could not allow Della and her husband to beat her at the game they were playing. She had worked too hard and too long. And he would destroy her if she was not careful. But now he was still toying with her, using everything he could find about her to torment her senses and make her feel less than human. And then he might possibly destroy her if she allowed him to do so; he could make her go crazy with his relentless torture of her mind and her psyche.
She thought of Obi: she had the feeling that the man was crazy, and there was nothing that crazy people would not do, no length they would not go to in order to achieve their aims. Her eyes filled with tears but she pressed on with grim determination along the beach, the cold water from the sea slapping against her body. She managed to swallow past the lump that rose in her throat, and then she forced a smile to her lips, a crooked, wry smile as she remembered how she’d thought that everything was possible . . . love was possible. She was loved and admired by so many people, so adored, but so what? She felt more empty now than she’d ever felt when she was still a whore, struggling for survival. Sometimes, when she passed an ordinary woman and her husband and kids who loved her very much, she felt such longing in her heart; she wished that her life with Obi would be the same.
She’d been running hard for forty minutes, and now she felt completely out of breath. She stopped, and then she closed her eyes as the cold water washed over her feet and the breeze caressed her skin. She savored the coolness and serenity of the beach and welcomed the feel of the water on her feet.
This is a good feeling, she thought; it was a taste of what it felt like to be free from sorrow and the disappointments of everyday living. But she was not free, she reminded herself as the waves tumbled backwards into the sea. She was a slave of her past and a prey to her husband’s arrogance and authoritarian ways.
Whore . . .
The arrogant devil wanted her to come back into his arms for more nights of heated sex and flaming passion between them, and she knew that she had no choice but to obey him. She had to succumb to Fate’s manipulation of her life once again, and what choice did she have? What could she do to be able to avert the disaster that was planted in her way? And she knew that she had to make a plan and try to stick to it_ her salvation lay in her hands.
The sea rushed towards her once again as she stood there, and she saw an object floating on the waves. The waves broke and the water surged forward, tumbling a rusted knife up the beach, depositing it on her feet as if was some peace offering which the sea was giving to her to compensate for the chaos in her life.
She gazed down at the knife, her eyes absorbing every detail of it. And then she felt ideas tumbling into her mind as she thought of what the object could be used for. She bent forward and picked up the object, cradling it in her arm as thoughts churned in her mind. This is a weapon of elimination, one used to cut down animals that are either too helpless or too destructive for their own good.
Animals . . .
Obi . . .
In her mind, she considered him to be an animal, one with no sense of morality and an unwavering urge to dominate and manipulate her into submission to his dictates. First, he’d forced her to marry him, and then he’d treated with a ruthlessness that had made her want to kill him. He was the perfect model for the enemy of womanhood.
The knife . . .
Adamma fixed her eyes on the object once again, a frown creasing her brows. Where was the idea that was floating around her mind, hovering around the edges of her consciousness, beckoning to her? What did she want to do? What did she wish for?
Out of nowhere, like a flash of lightning on a black night, she had the insight to what she wanted to do. She really loved Obi, more than she’d ever loved another man_ she’d never loved any man, except perhaps for Dan who had been so kind to her. She wanted and desired him more than she’d ever desired or wanted another man, and her love for him for him which he’d not reciprocated, had made her mad with fury. That was why she’d left when Hope had ordered her to leave; if she hadn’t come to that realization, she would never have left. Her husband ridiculed her and wanted no other man to look at her, but yet, he had not made her feel special. Now, since she couldn’t have him to herself, and he wouldn’t want another man to touch her bit yet he refused to make her feel special, she was going to kill him.
She summoned a smile that was devoid of the habitual warmth she often displayed; it lighted her face up with vivid images of what she could do to Obi. The man had bullied her; the Lord knew he had! But this time, by thinking that he could use her parentage and hold her to him, he would pay for it. He had crossed the bounds, and so he would pay for it.
The sun had already rose fully by the time she ran back home. She walked straight into her room, her head clear, and her hands were steady. She reached for her nearest phone and then speed-dialed Amanda.
‘Amanda,’ she said quietly when her friend answered the call. ‘There is something I’d like to tell you; guess what.’ But she was too impatient to let Amanda say anything. She continued. ‘I am going to punish Obi for what he’s been doing to me because I am sick and tired of him and everything he stands for. He calls me a whore_ can you imagine that?’
‘Ada, no, you cannot do this! You cannot resort to doing anything so stupid simply because of your ego. I can’t believe you’re saying this. He is your husband!’
Adamma smiled to herself. If only her friend knew what she was thinking of doing? Then the woman would really run for dear life. ‘The man is blackmailing me,’ she blurted out. ‘He wants to ruin me, so I’ll strike first, and then he’ll rot in hell before he finally destroys me. I have had enough of him, and I want my freedom. He is holding the key to my past, and so, he has to go.’
‘No!’
‘Yes, my dear friend,’ Adamma rasped coldly. ‘You’re as aware as I am of the fact that he’s a man without scruples. And please do not try to warn him, because you have absolutely no idea of what is going to happen to him.’
‘Are you threatening me?’ Amanda asked, and the ring of incredulity in her voice was obvious.
Adamma laughed, though the sound came out harshly. ‘No, my dear, I wasn’t threatening you; I’m just warning you. Just bear it in mind that he’s a dead man to me. I’ll make sure of that.’
And then she hung up and stood there, sweat trickling down her armpits in rivulets. Tears misted her eyes, and then they dropped down her cheeks.