Silent Wives 21- Get the bleep out

Temwani walks into the room nonchalantly and throws his jacket over the kitchen table. I have not brought myself to say anything but I follow him into the kitchen. My eyes are red from crying but are protected by the dim light of the candles. The only other thing that may expose me before I get the chance to get the truth from him is my voice.

He sits heavily in the chair in front of him and tosses his head back to relax then almost immediately sits back upright again and looks directly at me.

‘What?’ he asks with a look of frustration on his face. I barely recognise the man that used to bring euphoria in my life. The Temwani that I was sure would give me a happy ever after. He smelt my vulnerability and did not waste time to swoop in for the carcass left over by Charlie. I shake my head and say nothing because I do not know where to start.

Yes I know I said I would tell him immediately I get the chance but it is not as easy as you think it is. It is easy to dream up all sorts of things that you will say to someone when they are not there but then when you are face to face with them it is as good as someone cutting out your tongue. I settle myself in the chair opposite him and try to make small talk. It is like he can sense something is up so soon as I open my mouth, he begins with the accusations.

‘Why do you not just come out and say what it is you want to say Lara?’

‘I am just asking how your day was. Is that so wrong? Honestly it is like I don’t know you anymore!’

‘Oh here we go again with this shit!’ I walked right into that trap as usual. I start to weaken and watch every fibre in my body start to wither away. It is a pathetic sight if you ask me.

‘Listen if you do not want to talk about it then it is fine too’ I say in a pathetic little voice. I am aware that I am letting him off the hook easily and the little supposed to be goddess in my head is furious at me as I wither shamefully into my chair. Temwani gets up and is about to walk to the door. He has me hooked on stupid. He knows that I really want this to work and I watch him flex his muscles at the added advantage he has over me. He stops and turns around to look at me before he begins to speak again.

‘You know what, you really bore me! I find you so tedious! I have been trying to make this work but all you do is complain. What am I supposed to do when all we do is fight?’

‘Temwani, when was the last time we fought? Can I not just ask you a simple question without getting third degree burns from you?’

‘Well, I just cannot bear it! No wonder I am getting more and more distant! You do this to yourself! You hurt yourself all the time!’ I drop my jaw at the mention of this ridiculous notion. Nowadays an argument can ensue between us for no reason at all and all because of that temper of his! Like seriously is he going to try and transfer his faults onto me? ‘You always put the blame on me for everything!’ now he has pissed me off so I go straight to the kitchen door and shut the door so Passy is out of sight. I turn and face Temwani with fire in my eyes.

‘You want to make me out to be the bad person here? You are cheating on me and I have to hear it from people that you are seen with that Gertrude of a character and I am just supposed to sit back and keep quiet?’

‘Oh so you choose to believe those people over me? Do I not live with you? Where the hell do you even get these stories from anyway?’

‘Everyone knows it Temwani! Everyone! You think you are sleek huh! After everything I do for you? What have I done to deserve this?’ I am aware that I am whining but I have no other option when the female in me decides she wants to come out. She should probably just shut up. Why do I need to confront him when the whole world can see exactly what he is doing? It is because I feel so stupid for having moved in with him and this is something that I have to make work isn’t it? For all I have tried to sacrifice for him including the love of my family. It just has to work. It must work. My inner goddess is beyond mad at me for this type of thinking. She shakes her head at me and tells me to leave his ass and walk away.

‘Baby this is too much for much. Drama everyday!’ Aaaargh! Why do guys  do this? They do it on purpose I swear to god. They put you in an awkward situation knowing full well it will piss you off and then when you do get mad about it, they turn around and call you the irrational one!

‘Temwani do you know what, I am tired as well of your bullshit….’ He can barely believe that the words just came out of my mouth but screw it. I have been unhappy for so long and this crap does not get any better. Why simply because I have not given him a baby yet? On what basis does he deserve one anyway? My inner goddess begins to jump up and down at this revelation. She pats me on the back to egg me on. I agree with her and high five her then carry one dishing Temwani what he has been waiting for all along. The biggest dump of his life.

‘Get out! I want you to pack your shit and go and find peace with Gertrude. Take your crap before you turn me into your punching bag or something. I do not have time for this foolishness Temwani. How long am I supposed to wait for your ass to propose? You are just going to continue living in my house and eat my food whilst you use your money for that whore? Well pardon my French but I don’t fucking think so. Pack your shit now and get out!’ I say pointing to the door. Seriously enough is enough. How dare he calls me boring after he is the one who has just been a dickhead!! No thanks. He has got to go. I need me a man I can count on. A man I can trust. The prince I have always dreamt of and I am going to wait to get him until the day I die.

‘Baby, stop being irrational. Let us sit and talk about this? Where do you think I am going to go at this hour and I am not seeing anyone!’

‘Listen Mr Macho! You were so strong when you came in. You stood there and called me all sorts of names and for what? For what? For asking how your day was? For calling you out on you hurting me? Do you really see me as that much of a doormat that you can have me use the very best of me to try and make a life for us and you just sit there and call me boring! Well if I am so boring, go and find someone who has time to entertain you, you ungrateful piece of shit! It is men like you that make women become bitches! You are not moving?.....OK wait for me. Pascalina! Come in here!’ Passy waddles in sheepishly.

‘Do not bother with his food. Get me the black bag.’ Passy gets the bin liner and I instruct her to follow me to the room with a candle. I don’t care if he is seeing Gertrude or not but he cannot call me boring and think that is OK. Two years of my life down the drain and he has the audacity to call me boring! Chakuti chako. Passy and I stuff a few stuff in the bin liner and head towards the kitchen. My lips are pursed in fury and I do not acknowledge him when he tries to talk to me. I simply walk out to the car and chuck stuff outside the gate.

I walk back to the house the sound of my flipflops announcing my determination. He sees me and stays put in the kitchen.

‘Temwani, you think I am joking? You think I am joking?’ I pick up the pot with boiling and threaten to pour it on him. ‘If you do not move out of my house in the next few minutes I will pour this soup over you. Don’t dare me Temwani!’ My hand is quite unstable and it is probably this that causes him to dash out shouting that I am a crazy bitch. ‘You better drive out fast before I kicked you so hard in your ujeni you will taste it for breakfast! Call me the newest bitch in town! Better recognise! Nonsense!’ My inner goddess does a little somersault when she sees him leave and lands a big kiss on my cheek. I feel good but I break down and cry. I cry for the lost time and for the way I allowed myself to be the biggest idiot on planet earth! Passy does not hesitate. She hugs me and squeezes me tight.  

 

All copyrights of image reserved for original artist.

Silent Wives- Chapter 20- Gertrude

Passy’s tears begin to wind me up. She is trembling and like a leaf. The chitenge she has on rises and falls every two seconds. She picks up the edges and begins to tie a knot whilst her shoulder attempts to wipe the snot streamlining watery trails down her nose. I grab the stick from her and note the reading that she is just as I feared. She is pregnant.

‘Passy, who is the father?’

‘Awe aunty-y if I tell you, the person will be in trouble’

‘So help me God! Who is he? Is it Temwani?’ I shout? Passy is genuinely frightened but shakes her head no. her constant denial makes me feel guilty and humiliated for having to compete with my maid for a man. My standards are officially non-existent.

‘It is not ba Uncle. It- it- it is the gate man next door oo….’ Her voice trails off into a whimper. I should not be surprised but I am. I coax her to tell me more. She reveals that the pair of them are the ones who left the condom in my room and have been doing it at his work place since then. I feel nauseated. I should fire her for defacing my room. I feel really dirty. I really have been living in the dark for so long that I cannot even put two and two together when it comes to my maid. I sit quietly lost for words. Passy is a damn good maid and aside the fact that she is pregnant and this might affect her job, I still want to keep her on.

‘OK but do you know if he is going to want the baby?’

‘Oh aunty! He said that we should not even try to get pregnant. I tried but I think that the condom broku!’ she wails aloud like a hungry child. This is an awkward moment. I do not know whether to put my arm around her or to wait until she finishes crying. Diana and I have never really been strong when it comes to such situations. We are always so awkward!

‘Passy, you will still have to talk to him and tell him. Maybe he will change his mind. Men can say one thing and then be completely different about it the next minute. Just try and tell him….’

‘Oh Aunty I cannot! He is married.’

‘Oh great Passy you just get more complex as the day goes by don’t you?’

‘Aunty, I just thought we would have fun. His wife is in mpatamato and even works there.’ She says coaxing her head to one side as if this information makes it OK for her to creep. She has this innocence about her that makes you want to care for her scandalous self.

‘Well come in the kitchen and sit down and let us figure this out. You know Temwani is almost here and he will be demanding his food as usual.’ Passy follows me down the dark hall way and into the kitchen. We have no electricity today because of load shedding so I ask her to take the brazier for the food. I go into the pantry and fetch the candles to illuminate the room. She steps outside and shakes the brazier of the previous ashy residues before loading it with new charcoal. When the light is ready she sits on the small stool and gathers the chitenge between her legs and fans the fire with a plate. The smoke gathers for a while and you can hear the fire begin to crackle under the load of charcoal. Passy flinches to avoid the smoke stinging her eyes but it is too late. She is an emotional wreck probably because of the hormones.

‘Here you go. Put the meat on from the previous night and I will help you to do the vegetables.’

I take a second stool and place it opposite her. The child in me misses the times when we used to sit by the fire and with the help and listen to stories derived from a radio station that had a programme called ‘ilyashi lya pano isonde’ which translates to something like stories of this world. Anyway all I remember is that those stories were addictive but had me wide eyed when it was time for bed. Yet despite this I still listened to them religiously. I place the bowl with vegetables in it on the floor and another empty one on my lap and begin cutting.

‘Aunty my own mother is going to be very angry with me when she finds out that I am pregnant.’

‘Passy you will have to face her. What else are you going to do? You knew what you were doing te?’

‘Yes but it was just for fun-y’

‘OK so now it is time to be a grown up and do face the music especially with your baby daddy. I am just glad it did not turn out to be my Temwani’ I say shaking the knife so that the little pointed tip is in her direction.

‘Aunty I need to tell you something’

‘What is it Passy’

‘Aunty I don’t know if I should say anything but you are very good to me-e ah’ I look up from what I am cutting and momentarily stare at her. A girl knows when that news that we all dread is about to strike. It comes all disguised and what not and you try not to hear it, in fact you do everything to wish it away but this heart of ours a tenacity to confirm this particular fear. It is like a disease amongst us women. A code that will start to prepare for the minute you hear these fatal words.

‘Tell me Passy….’

She hesitates a moment but not long enough. ‘Aunty ba uncle has been seen with a ka girl from your skulu’ There she said it. She dropped the bomb on my little heart blowing it into smithereens. I continue cutting the vegetables and don’t say anything.

‘We have seen him a few times with this light skinned girl and they were even holding amaboko-hands. Sometimes on our way home na ba beat-y, we see them near the tuma shops talking by his car. It is that girl they call Gertrude’

‘Thank you for telling Passy you did the right thing’ I was hoping this would be a sign to her that she needs to stop talking now but she is on a roll now.

‘People have been talking saying she has been telling them that it is because….’ She stops talking and starts stirring the food instead of completing her sentence. I look up and notice that she is stalling. Trying to hold back some information.

‘What do they say Passy…’ she takes a deep sigh and explains that everyone says it is because I have not given him a child and that he is planning on marrying this Gertrude of a character. I should scream. I should pour this very sauce on his face but goodness I do not want to cause a scene in front of Passy.

Shortly afterwards, we hear Temwani’s car pull up and that’s when my blood truly begins to boil……

 

Silent Wives- Chapter 19- Tell me now!

I took the rubbish outside and cleaned up the mess in the kitchen. Passy was taking a bath and I told her I did not want her to do anything until she we had been to see the doctor. The day was no longer young so we had to hurry the hell up. Tying the plastic bags up, I lifted two in one hand and the licking one in the other hand and hoped it would not make too much of a mess. Since it was not too far to the nearest door, I decided whatever mess was coming was worth the risk.

Passy heaves again. She is obviously pregnant even though she claims that she feels ‘malaria -malaria so…’ she said this with a downcast miserable expression on her face that made her look younger than she was. I had called back Diana and heard the terrible news about Jeff. It is indeed a shame that he thinks he and her are the same size. My mind floats back to the days when Claire was so strong that she would not let any man tell her what to do or who she would be. In her place now was a shadow of Claire. There was no life left in her not even as much as banter. It was all gone. We lost Claire the day she said ‘I do’. I feel guilty that we did not put enough pressure on her not to marry into that family. Even my own mother said to her “you cannot marry a man whose umbilical cord has not been cut off”. She told her this during one of the times that Claire visited me to come and see the tailor in our street. She wanted to have a dress made for her mother. Her mother likes the traditional outfits very much so Claire said it was fine for her to wear one. Mummy sat her down in one of those sermons that she likes to administer to me about marriage whenever the occasion called for one. Claire had rolled her eyes at mummy as though she was an interfering cow. Not to my mother’s face of course. She did this when mum turned her back and started stirring the beef stew that was boiling on my stove. The smell of ginger filled the room with an intoxicating ambiance.

None of us had ever really dared say much apart from Diana. Diana had said that Jeff was a boy with a manhood he could not handle. She had said that if burglars came into the house, that Jeff would gladly sacrifice his own woman to save his life for he was like a snail with no vertebrae… Claire shook her head and said was it not her own mother who had advised her that she was not marrying his family? As it turns out, she married the family and adopted the mother as well. Mohammed Ali had also decided there was room for him and his boxing gloves in the house. It had turned into a fist of fury instead of a nest in paradise. I dash the bin bags into the bin and head back into the kitchen to wipe the mess off the floor. Temwani should be here soon and it would be better for both of us if he did not find us home. For someone who was not my husband he sure was demanding!

‘Passy! Let’s go we are going to be late. We need to make sure we get there before the sun takes its leave.’

Passy emanates looking rough. Her hair looks rough. You can see the lines of the comb through it. It looks like the yard when she has freshly swept it. I grab hold of her jacket and let her out of the door. I still take the house keys and head out with Passy.

‘Passy, are you pregnant?’

‘Aunty awe!-I don’t know’ she says keeping her head down. I have to ask her the necessary evil. It has been two years now and I have not had any concrete evidence as to whether she is doing it with my man. I have just never had the concrete evidence so bringing the case to Temwani, or even suggesting it has been futile. I have had nothing else to lean on since the condom incidence. It has been a nightmare time for me but I have decided to start making some changes. Walking into the unknown. A territory that I have feared in the past. I cannot turn out to be like Claire. She was my idol once but I have been slapped by women before, been in a bitch fight but never ever have I been hit by a man. Tem Tem has become so comfortable that he is not even pulling his weight in the house anymore. The last time he bought any food, I still believed in Father Christmas! Screw the beliefs of aunty cause they don’t work anyway! I have to start living by own standards and God help this girl if that seed is Temwani’s!

‘No I don’t think I am pregnant-y’ she has improved vastly with her English but still chooses to sing her words. I get bold and ask her the forbidden question. Screw aunty and all her crazy notions! She does not have to live with this mess and if she does it in her home, I do not know how to handle it! I have to start living my life the way I want to. If I want to live in a fantasy land I will bloody well do so!

‘Passy are you carrying my man’s baby?’ Passy stops in her tracks and looks up at me disbelief registered on her face at the audacity of my question. I feel the same anger that I felt that night with Taonga and Charlie except this time it would register on the Richter scale! ‘Are you sleeping with Temwani!?’ I look at her directly with my lip curled at the corner biting back any humiliation that threatens to surface. The sky announces the swift change over in time with sounds of crickets in the grass. They croak at every corner but one can never seem to discover their hiding place. Soon mosquitos will join the party and we will be the barbeque but I don’t care. Something has got to give and it is about time people started talking. I tap my foot ferociously and that is when her weary eyes notice that this mama right here is ready to give her a thrashing!

‘No I am not carrying his baby aunty-yy. I am not!-’

‘If we get to the clinic and I find out it is not malaria but a baby you will see what I will do to you. It better come out positive!’

‘Aunty- me I would never do that to you! I would never do that to you!’ she is beginning to cry and I feel even more empowered by her display of weakness. I am enjoying this. I have never been in such a spot before. Not really anyway! I turn and start walking really fast then call back to her to keep it up. The whole way I summon every ounce of saliva I have to make the loudest kissing my teeth sounds I can make. I do this about every three minutes. It works to intimidate Passy but and she keeps sobbing. When we get to the chemist, I ask the guy at the counter for the pregnancy kit and tell him to hurry up.

‘Which one is it that you are after madam?’

‘Give me the most accurate one that you have! The devil is expecting a relative to join him soon!’ the guy at the counter looks at me a little confused but he knows better than to ask any questions. His eyes move and discover the sobbing Passy. It does not take a genius to figure out that she is the relative to whom I refer.

‘Come on quickly let’s go home!’ I say shoving the test in my handbag. Passy wants to ask if we are going to the clinic but I figure she can do that in her own damn time. I think about my mother telling me that I am a free cow. The various attempts I have had at having a baby to no avail! I suppose it is God’s way of punishing me for the abortion yet my body has a bad habit of sinning. Living in sin, attempting to get pregnant outside marriage, the whole furore is a mess! It is not a long way to the chemist from the house but it would be in our best interests to walk fast before the rain finds us. You can already smell the soil announcing its arrival.

When we reach the house I tell Passy to go straight to the toilet and pee on the stick. She does as she is told and whilst I wait I think of what I will do exactly if she is pregnant but more so if it is Temwani’s baby she is carrying. Of course she thinks I can tell just by her peeing on the stick since I am a nurse but she does not know the complexity of DNA and all that jargon. Ignorance is bliss. This should be enough to get a confession out of her. I smirk at my genius mind. Passy opens the door and looks at me. Her face is wet with tears…..

Painters copyrights reserved. I do not own the rights to this art.