SORROWS OF MOTHERHOOD/THE IRONY OF MARRIAGE - The case of Tade

in #story6 years ago

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She had walked into my eyes one breezy Wednesday in the June of 1974, clad in a blouse that showed more cleavage than she would have loved to, and a skirt fitted enough to boast of what it had in it. I fell in lust with her that very moment, watching her soft jugs fight futilely for freedom they were denied like my suffering brothers in Biafra. This lady had a beauty that swooped all over her; I lost myself swooning over her womanishness - from the oranges fighting in her blouse, to the half-sliced watermelons glued to each of her sides to the full ones on the back of her skirt. That I would grow to love her wasn't a part of the script; being the gardener I was then, we were many pages away from having a future together.
"Fine Aunty, na so so fine fine wan kill you. My kind of woman," I had managed to chatter, both of my eyes marking both of the breasts on her chest closely.
She had ignored me completely, walking the whole length of the lawn with its many flowers tracking the pathway on each side of the grass that decorated the hospital, the very same pathway I would rush her through three years later with my child fighting in her tummy.
"Hold on Tade, you can do this."
"I'm losing it...do something,"she shrieked.
The nurses I met had let their eyes embark on journeys from the crown of my oil-deprived scalp to the ruins of my cracked heels which must have reminded them of the tribal marks on Tade's father's face which on its own reminded me of the abandoned roads government had begun where I lived, as he stood watching, perplexed. I was given the alien treatment by everyone I knew in there, who could never understand how and why Tade had chosen me from the many other wealthier suitors.
Three years earlier I had wooed her with my confidence she would later tell me nine months ago, as we made love after a marriage her father swore to never bless.
"You know I didn't know what to think of a mere gardener looking at me the way you..."
"Am I supposed to be the mere gardener?" I cut in, burying myself deeper, faster, steadily into the softness of her insides.
Her voice shook, " Ouch...You're a gardener of course, planting his potent seed inside of me...Aiyo...It'd grow into a baby boy, our prince," she managed to complete in between her breaths.
Her little words carried too much sweetness like a piece of meat offered a little boy by his grandmother, and I would pour into her something different from the tears that leaked from my eyes and trickled off the contours of my face on to her bosom as she lay writhing on the hospital bed.
"Sir, we would have to operate on her, the child is not coming," a nurse broke the silence that had seized the air looking Tade's father in the face.
"Tell it to her husband not me woman!" he shouted almost immediately, the tribal marks on his face a likely twin of the wavy beach in Ibeno as it danced to the rhythm of his words.
"How much do you require for the operation?" the words fought their way out of my lips.
"Hundred naira plus drugs," the words fell off the nurse's lips.
My eyes scurried before me towards Tade's father who had left the ward, my voice scampering into his ears before my feet got to him, "Help us Sir, please. I would refund when I can. Please Daddy."
"Calabar dog! I warned Tade these men from Calabar only know how to shake their waist. She wouldn't listen, she wouldn't..."
"I'm sorry Sir, we're sorry. I have only twenty naira of the hundred required, " I muttered taking the insult.
"But you could go hundred rounds a day on my daughter? The fowl that lays eggs must be prepared to hatch them or stand at a loss. Good for nothing...useless dog!"
I felt my heart heave, my fist nothing but willing to scratch wider the tracks on Tade's father's face; somehow, I held back, walking through the flower-marked pathway where it all started towards the enclave I called home to get the twenty naira which was quite something in 1977.
The money was there intact, coins tied up in a piece of cloth that lay peacefully on the inside of my rubber boot, the same boot I had worn three years earlier when I met Tade - it now served as our bank.
"Cring cring cring..." the coins cried in freedom as I counted them, the one in hand falling on the growing heap made by its predecessors on the floor, some running into the holes dug by Tade's church shoes.
"Eighteen naira, fifty kobo," I said indifferently - a naira and some kobo had gone for my tobacco and snuff I remembered.
My knees jerked me into a standing position, then out on to the footpath as I made for the hospital. The clouds had shut fully an eye on the sun, opening the other halfway for the moon . There were fireflies filed towards the edges of the many paths as I strutted on with a head the heaviness of Mama Tunde's backside, swaying from a side to the other in synchronism with the movement of the legendary backside which magnetized all eyes to its wondrousness as it replayed in my head. There was a darkness to this night which the moon couldn't help; it made the stone seen in the day a coiled snake, and the plants farther into the bushes ghosts seeking the lives of passersby.
At the hospital's gate, a Peugeot 504 parked beside one of the many moringa trees welcomed me first, a familiar sight - Tade's father's. My heart raced.
"You can go back with your bones dog, your plan has worked," a voice startled me, "go now Son-in-luck, go away!"
"How is she Sir?" I threw the question at him right before slipping past him towards the ward Tade lay.


Forty years later I would lie on a corner of the bed with Tade on the other, clad in nothing. No! Clad in something? Yes! She's robed by rolls of fat overlapping the other on her sides crowned by inflated balloons on her chest flatter at their tops and bigger at their bottoms resting on a belly whose only competition is Mama Tunde's 'bakasi', flaunting unashamedly a long line of thread much more like her late father's tribal marks that had been wired into the flesh of her stomach at the birth of our son, a testimony of the 1977 saga when her late father had surprisingly paid her bills. He had handed us all he had before passing away in 1994, Tade being his only seed.
That didn't matter this night, no not a bit. There was only a thing to worry about this night, the mass of fat which lay noiselessly on the other corner of the bed illuminated faintly by dim silvery rays of light from the moon fighting their way through the window panes and blinds with only her face a confirmation she was the same woman I had fallen for forty three years ago.
"What's keeping you awake?" she whispers from where I watch her.
"Nothing honey, just office work that wouldn't let me sleep."
"You should rest baby," she consoles rubbing my equally bulged tummy, " the company is yours, your workers should do most of the work not you."
Her soft fleshy hand lingers on my tummy but I don't counter, though there are demons in my head fighting me to, waving off the heaviness of her hand. Perhaps there are reasons to detest her hand, it had lost the magic of the other younger hands that caress me hard as she tries.
"You're right," I lift her hands off me, then kiss the back of the palm - a subtle ploy to get rid of the thing, "there's nothing to worry about."
But, there are things to worry about she would probably never know. She would never know, that thirty five years ago I had humped and rode on Mama Tunde's legend-of-a-backside when she had remained in the hospital during much of the conception and birth of our daughter, and rode on it whenever a chance there was to spanning into the birth of our second son. She would never know that twenty two years earlier from this night I had my secretary whenever I wanted in between office hours, hiking her skirt up to her waist while my hands roamed inside of her shirt digging away my lust. She would also never know of my trip with alluring Anita our daughter's friend to Johannesburg,and of my many 'sexcapades' with her likes. No, Tade would never know of my affairs, my latest being having the maid days ago on this bed she now lay on when she'd left for her place deep in the slums of Lagos. Her late father's money had turned me into 'big man' and the dog he would have loved to call me a time and again had he learnt of my flings. Sleep grasped my consciousness away from the penis-pleasing thoughts I was having of my women, when it should have been just Tade. No, Tade would never know, never, ever, and you're not telling her either.


There's a 'Tade' somewhere not far from where you are.
I hope this gets to the married men who detest and cheat on the many 'Tades' scattered here and there on the hills and valleys and plains beyond the mountains and seas and oceans of the earth. I hope this gets to the 'Mama Tundes' and 'Anitas' and ladies whose 'caves' itch for, and welcome nonchalantly 'rocks' which should know only their wives. I hope this soothes the many 'Tades' hurt and broken and dejected and rejected by a marriage they sacrificed their all for; I hope we feel their pain. Most importantly, I hope man and woman would think about Tade and all she's given but lost in the end to infidelity when giving his 'rock' or receiving into her 'cave'. Save Tade the pain and hurt and trauma that comes with this drama we act in hidden huts! Tell the tale of Tade to any who cares to listen. Tade deserves to reap what she's sown where she'd sown.

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