Battered Wife

4

In front of a burning house stood a man in a swaying trench coat. Like a play on light and a mirage, the man's back which was turned toward me kept blurring in and out.

"You, why are you here?" I asked, recognizing the man despite his blurry figure.

Even though I just met him today, I instinctively knew that this man was the strange man I met today in my car. The man that genuinely wanted to make a total stranger feel better.

My question didn't make the mysterious man turn to face me but it increased the strange glow attached to his figure from head to toe.

A chilly wind blew my way and the man with his back to me finally turned.

His light brown eyes had a strange glow to thrm like the glow around his body and I watched to my amazement as he created a long glowing rope out of nowhere like some funny fantasy movie with funny after effects. Except this wasn't a movie, this was real life and I could see it with my two eyes.

Suddenly, I felt a dark penetrating gaze on my back that suddenly made me shiver. That gaze felt burned like I would have expected the feeling of someone coating my back with lava to feel.

Something was urging me to turn and face that gaze while another thing was screaming for me not to turn.

Before I could make a decision of my own, the man that tried to help me, suddenly flung his weapon right toward me. I was screaming in fear when I woke up just after that glowing rope had penetrated through my chest.

Thankfully, my scream was inaudible as I woke up, sitting up and ready to run while gasping for air. The changed atmosphere, the dark room with a single soft golden light on the table side which I'd been using to read a book before I slept reassured me that I'd just been dreaming the weirdest dream I'd ever had.

Once my breathing returned to normal, I turned to stare down at the outline of my husband's figure. His back was turned to me and because his side of the room was dark, I could only see the faint shadow of his outline.

As I stared in his direction, I couldn't help feeling a little discomfitted that I'd woken up from such an awful nightmare breathing so hard and he hadn't even woken up.

Remembering that I wanted to talk to him and hadn't gotten a chance to because he was still in the living room speaking to his mother when I fell asleep, I hesitated on whether to wake him up or not.

However, this conversation was long overdue and I really needed to have it or I would explode.

"Remi? Remi? Wake up." I said, shaking him away as quietly as I could.

After a few seconds he turned to me with groggy eyes, "What do you want Lola? Why are you waking me up now?"

His irritated tone irritated me and my gentle taps became a tad bit harder.

"Oya, oya, stop beating me, I'll wake up."

Sure enough, less hesitation got him to finally wake up and I watched him sit up, fluffing his pillow behind him and resting his head on the bed's headboard before he gave me a sullen look. "What do you want?"

"Why was Busayo with you in Dubai?" I went straight to the point.

"Oh, oh, is it because of this that you now woke me up? What's wrong with you now Omolola? I..."

I glanced at him as he complained and our gazes inevitably locked.

Whatever he saw in my gaze made him go quiet.

He moved his gaze away from mine. "It's not a big deal. She had business in Dubai too so we just took the same flight there and then we met up at a couple of places."

"Mm-hmmm. I bet you even slept in the same hotel." I commented.

As expected, he flared up, almost yelling. "Yes, in separate rooms!"

I was quiet so he continued talking, "How did you even find out? Are you monitoring me? Lola, mind yourself ooo. Why are you behaving like my friends' jealous wives now? Don't you trust me?"

"Well, how can I trust a man who travelled out of the country with his childhood sweetheart and spent his entire 'business' trip in the same hotel as her but didn't consider it sensible to even tell his wife."

He shot me a disgruntled look, "Lola, you're just overthinking this. I did that because I knew you had nothing to worry about."

"Oh, I see. Maybe next time, when I'm traveling, I'll go with my childhood sweetheart and we'll book hotel rooms in the same hotel. Let me now see what you will say then."

A light derisive chuckle echoed in the room. "Your childhood sweetheart. Forget childhood sweetheart self. Which of your childhood friends in that your tiny village can even afford a flight? No problem na. If you and your 'childhood sweetheart' want, you can do the same, I won't complain."

His derisive chuckle and tone made a sliver of hurt and pain to lance through my heart as he once again alluded to the fact that I grew up in the village and my parents had only moved to town after I graduated from the university.

When I married him, he hadn't informed me that he, his friends and his family would always hold it over my head that I'd grown up in the village.

In fact, before he proposed to me and during our year of courting, he never ever hinted at the possibility that he would think I was less than him because I'd been brought up in the village. Until we got married.

After we got married, it became prevalent that that tiny unmentioned fact was a river-wide gamut in our relationship that would always spell out my unequality to him.

Ignoring him, I turned away, turned my back to him and cradled my own arm with my head placed on the pillow.

As I reached to turn off the lamp, he jeered, "Are you angry? Don't be angry now? I thought you wanted to have a serious conversation about this."

I ignored him and turned off the lamp.

He placed his arm over and scooted closer to me, pressing the front of his body to my back.

When he pressed a kiss to the back of my neck, I scooted away like an insect had stung me.

I sat up and got off the bed, pulling off the blanket and turning on the lamp. "I'm not angry. I just don't think I can sleep in the same bed as your graceful self, your majesty the city master. I'll go and sleep with my daughter. She doesn't think I'm lower than her because I grew up in the village."

"Wait, that's not what I said now. I just said_"

Without waiting for his response, I walked out of our room to my daughter's room and slid into her bed with her, kissing her on the forehead as I once again considered divorcing Aderemi Aina.

Almost immediately, my mother's voice echoes in my head, "Lola, just endure it now. I've already tols you that marriage is full of ups and downs. Besides, what do you want to do about Adesewa. This is yorubaland oooo. Men like Aderemi don't leave their children with their ex-wives. They'll take her away and you'll never see her again."

I squeezed my eyes shut as if that would shut out the rest of my conversation with my mother, I kissed my daughter on the forehead.

Then I struggled to shut my eyes and fall asleep.