Battered Wife

12

To complete my mission for the day, I snuck into the house during my afternoon break at work after taking the rest of the afternoon off. Once I got home, I made sure to look everywhere to make sure that the house was empty.

Two days after meeting Elijah at Della's restaurant, I'd acquired some pinhole cameras at quite the cost through a colleague of mine and secretly installed them in the house. I placed one in Remi and I's bedroom, one in the living room, one in the corridor leading to Adesewa's room, and one in her room in case Remi's mother came to disturb her in the room when I wasn't home.

Once I was sure that the house was empty, I crept around retrieving the pinhole cameras so I could look through the captured footage. Then I crept to Adesewa's room to look through the footage.

After I returned from my parent's house, I'd been staying in Adesewa's room so my work desk and chair were in Adesewa's room beside Adesewa's tiny table and chair. I settled on that chair and while I set up my computer, my mind wandered to what had happened in the past few weeks.

After I returned from my parent's home, Remi and I had launched a kind of cold war and weren't speaking to each other. His mother was also nowhere to be found by the time I returned so I simply assumed that she had finally gone to her own house instead of wandering around in my home like an evil ghost. I didn't intend to stay long at Remi's house as I had applied for an apartment with my company for Adesewa and myself to move into and they were currently searching for a good residence for me.

Whatever illusions I'd had about my marriage had long faded when Remi did not call me to ask where I'd gone after I left for almost an entire week with our only daughter to my parent's place. That showed just how much he couldn't care less what happened to both of us.

I started flipping through the camera's footage as fast as I could using the skills I'd developed from my job that involved me looking through CCTV footage for suspicious activity and assessing the company's algorithm for errors. While speeding through the videos, I deleted the irrelevant ones as I went.

When I was about One-third through the video, I came across something weird — a clip of my housemaid, Kemi and Adesewa.

This clip was an eye-opener to another reason why Adesewa was so withdrawn.

"Didn't I say you should go to your room?" Kemi asked, walking into the living room on the Saturday I'd left Adesewa home because I didn't want to take her with me to a church member's traditional wedding.

As soon as she saw her, Adesewa scrambled off the couch as if Kemi was holding a gun, standing longingly beside the couch and staring at the cartoon playing on the TV.

"My mum said I can watch TV." Adesewa tried to defend her right.

"So what? Is your mother at home? Or do you want me to remind you of what will happen to you if you don't get out of my face now?" Kemi threatened, looking at my daughter with a sneer.

My daughter sighed and then turned towards the staircase, walking back to her room with drooping shoulders.

As if the fact that she was bullying my daughter wasn't bad enough, Kemi still had things to say as she flipped through TV stations. "Stupid girl, you don't know that your mom is about to become history in this house. Just wait for me to get pregnant with a boy. By then, I'll be your step mother and your eyes will see weeen. That your mother that is always doing like there's more to her than a fine face will want to see you but I will make sure you guys don't meet again. Shaybe it's only her that has had a daughter right?"

It shouldn't have come as a surprise to me that Remi was cheating on me with my housemaid but it did. I just never expected that he would stoop so low.

The next few clips were videos of Kemi watching TV and yelling at the characters on TV.

Around 3pm, Adesewa walked down the staircase, growing slower as she moved closer to the living room.

When she finally stood before the stairway, she asked in a tiny voice while holding her belly. "Aunty Kemi, I'm hungry."

Kemi ignored her at first but when she increased her voice, she finally lashed out, throwing a slipper that hit Adesewa, who had turned away to avoid it, in the back. "Will you get out of here! Can't you see I'm watching TV? You're hungry so what? Do you think I have time to give you food now? My friend get away and go and sleep with your hunger. Ode oshi."

And as my daughter walked up the stairs, pressing her tiny fingers on her hurting lower back, Kemi rained insults and cusses of all kinds on her. "Oponu oshi. O ri gbo se ri ni? Bi eja stockfish. You have guts ooo. I just don't want to beat you because your mother is the one bathing you now. If not, I would have completely decimated you today. Stupid girl. You and your mother are the same uncultured crows. Do you even know who I am? In my village, I'm the most desirable spinster! If not because Mama Remi promised to give me your mother's place after I have a son, would I have been listening to your mother's nonsense all these years?"

Her words made me realize that this maid that my mother-in-law had sent to me when I'd wanted to go back to work after my maternity was actually my replacement and had probably been mistreating my daughter for quite a long while, possible from when she was still a little girl.

I stared at the clip and all the subsequent clip of Kemi sharing reports about how my relationship with Remi was going with Remi's mother and Kemi sleeping with Remi. There was even a clip of the worthless Remi sneaking in Busayo into the house yesterday which was when Kemi went to her village to visit her family for a week.

I saved the clips and deleted irrelevant once while swallowing around the lump in my throat over and over again. And after a while, I couldn't help myself. I broke down and cried, thinking about my daughter's secret pain that she'd hidden from me all these years.

Regret filled me that I hadn't personally found a maid on my own. I didn't even mind if she slept with Remi, what was important was that she didn't hurt my daughter and make her so afraid in her own home.

Regret also filled me as I watched Remi sleep with all these women. I regretted not dumping his worthless ass the second time I caught him cheating on me. Because of my cowardice, my daughter had had to endure more than four years of unwarranted abuse just for being my daughter.