Battered Wife

9

I nodded my head to the song on the radio as I drove back home after work because this sudden break at work couldn't have come at a better time than now. After my exhausting weekend dealing with Remi, his pretentious mistress and his family, I had only managed to come to the office and not call in sick because I had used all my sick days for the last time Adesewa got sick.

I was also glad that due to the unplanned paid holiday, I would be able to spend my daughter's mid-term break with her. It had been a while since we had time so I happily planned out a few girl's only trip for her. Now that I knew that my company could provide lawyers to help me fight a legal battle to keep custody of my daughter, I was considering sitting her down and asking for her opinion indirectly on whether she wanted us to stay with her shitty father or not.

Since I planned to go out with her later in the day, I didn't drive my car into our compound like I usually did when I got back from work. Instead, I found a good spot along the walls of the house and parked carefully there. I took out my handbag and locked up my car before walking into the house after nodding at Ali at the gate.

Unfortunately, as soon as I moved closer to the door, I could hear my mother-in-law blabbing away at someone and a feeling of annoyance and frustration over having to listen to her bullshit made me pause in my tracks and made my hold on my handbag clench for several seconds.

By the time I recovered and was ready to continue moving into the house, I couldn't because the words she was saying and the person she was saying them to, sunk into my head and made me see red.

"Hey, see this useless girl. Just as useless as her mother. Oya sit there."

"Grandma, can I have my book back?" Adesewa asked and I could hear the shakiness and fear in her voice.

"I said sit there! Stupid, useless girl! I don't blame you. Isn't it that infertile crow of a mother that is making you have no respect? I'm in the same house as you and other than greeting me in the morning, you stayed in your room all day reading these stupid books? What are you reading books for? So you can be going to work everyday like your useless mother instead of focusing on doing the one thing your husband married you for?!"

With each word my mother-in-law said, my determination to divorce Remi grew stronger. No child should have to endure the kind of cruelty my daughter was facing. And as her mother, it was my duty to protect her, no matter the cost.

Halfway through my mother-in-law's rant, I quietly reached into my handbag and activated the recording app on my phone. I needed evidence to support my decision to divorce my husband and fight for custody of my daughter. There was no better evidence than this.

"Why are you looking at me like that? Ki lo n se eleyi to n wo mi bi aje? Oh, has your mother already recruited you into her bloodsucking coven? That's why you have the guts to stare at me? In Yoruba culture, when your elders are speaking to you, you don't look them in the eyes. What kind of nonsense has your mother taught you gan? Oya kneel there for me. Kemi bring the cane let me teach this useless girl a lesson."

I took in a deep breath at the thought that she was just going to use corporal punishment to deal with my daughter for simply existing. No wonder Adesewa was so afraid of her grandmother. Had she been subjected to this much cruelty all this while that she'd gone to visit her grandmother or I'd left her at home with her grandmother, I thought as my heart soured.

"I'm sorry ma." Adesewa's quiet apology broke my heart.

She hadn't done anything other than reading a book and she still had to apologize not just for reading but also for existing.

I was about to walk in to rescue my daughter from a possible caning when Remi's mother continued speaking, "Sorry for what? Sorry for being a waste of space that simply exists to suck all of Remi's money for your mother? Don't worry, I don't blame you too much. I blame your useless, infertile mother. I already told Remi not to marry her but he kept saying she was the one for him back then. If he had just waited a little bit, wouldn't he have married Busayo instead, ehn? Then our family will not have the bad karma of you and your mother existing in our genealogy. Ehn ehn, Kemi, give her ten strokes of the cane. Next time, when your grandmother is around, you will come and sit with her, okay?"