The World's Bitterest Wife
Once again, she eyed at her Now Number One Enemy nearly forty years ago holding her bridal hand in their wedding picture snapped shortly after their joining at the Anthony's Church. Pastor David Bold, who had officiated the ceremony, was granted a space beside them He also was part of the picture and, like them, was brandishing a disarming smile. Pastor David Bold began slowly to seem too an enemy — a crook—because it was his spiritual job to see in visions and trances marriages that wouldn't work and he didn't, rather foolishly or wickedly preferring to solemnize one.
Just then, the woman's barely eaten sandwich of one or two bites fell on the floor from her now disinterested hands. She didn't think she needed it any longer. Perhaps, her dustbin should continue from where she had stopped: partake in the superb taste of sandwiches wrought by Master Baker Ben and his Gloria wife. She had to put up with a lot of things, because she thought that marriages which conquered two decades of shocking trials saw a Silver Jubilee commemoration and continued to head for the Golden One would most certainly triumph - certainly eat up new problems or dwarf the problems, or never get dissolved. Ironically, hers was beginning to spot a wear, tear, yawning crack in many places and show disturbing lines of a sure, final collapse.
“Then, collapse it shall “Mama Eddie recklessly uttered “Let it- The Stupid Thing- somersault and crash”
She might have to bring the stuff to an end herself. What would it cost beyond answering a sixty-six year-old divorcee and making short-lived gossips in near-by far-off houses? Perhaps, too she would drop a brief, ugly headline in a nosy local newspaper! Her septuagenarian husband, Cyril, had without her consent contracted a second marriage and gone ahead to rent and decorate a three bedroom apartment for new mistress.
Far away from my reach! From my kicks in her kidney”
Mama Eddie was nearly on the brink of torrential tears.
They were all tattered lies: his claims that the woman had saved his life during the Nigerian Civil War and later, while in prison, fed him, clothed him, comforted him and finally braved an unbolting of the doors of his cell, whereupon he slipped out into the World of Freedom and a cocoon that would make him assuredly unreachable to savage enemies. In effect, his marriage to her was both a compensation for her troubles and recognition of her rare bravado.
"But how shameful! A woman still in her early thirties, gasping for the lacklustre company and dying organ of an already married septuagenarian”.
Embittered Mama Eddie, teeth clenched, eyes flashing, hitting a nearby table with her fist, vowed to deal with this new rival, dying to answer her husband's second wife. "One thing I know too well is that she's not going to enjoy the second half of this Now Exciting Game!"
A year later, Mama Edwin found herself in fresh pains. She had become the butt of a not-funny accusation of diabolical responsibility for the tragic still-birth of the first child of her husband's mistress. The baby stayed back in her womb for an extra two or three months after completing its cycle, and nearly every goddamned lip on the subject who knew about the raging feud would swear that she, Mama Edwin had a hand in the nasty incident. Meanwhile, her husband's mistress had phoned her to immensely thank her for her 'gracious' deed and promise her a befitting reciprocation of the gesture.
“Mama Edwin”
“Yes, who am I speaking with”
“Oh! Just the woman who had delivered her baby exactly the way you’d arranged”
Mistress Bernice, before ominously aborting the call, did not forget to assure Mama Edwin that she would still hear from her but not through phone calls.
"Oh Christ! You alone know I'm innocent of the blood of that baby.... And its mother wants to do something awful to me.
Mama Edwin promptly remembered in her musing to ask God to not desert her.
George himself, her handsomest son of cherubic appearance, was already prepared not to desert her at this time of great yearning for security. Off he went to confront The Father - Genesis of his mother’s woes and explode his cheeks with ultra-modern slaps. But when Son met Father, hands raised to wire the ultra-modern thing to his left cheek, he became confused, completely forgot to do so, entirely lost his mind and, when it came back, was lower than that of an idiot.
Hospital? Hospital! It’s an emergency for The Intensive Care…
Still, George did not survive the saga. He was to drop a week after, beside his numerous emptied packets of sweet Benson and Hedges Cigarette.
Inexorably, George's death became a reason for sympathizers to flock round Mama Edwin and try contain in some measure her anguish. Yet, a couple of months later, her son Edwin, by which she was known and addressed, could not make it back home after collecting his Doctorate Certificate. En route to The East from The University of Lagos, he was forever silenced in a miserable accident involving their forty-two sitter bus and a heavy truck.
“No! this thing has to stop?”
Practically, all Mama Edwin’s co-parishioners were of this commiserating opinion. To a section, she was even a more active church member than their newly brought Vicar – Most Reverend Hyacinth Good-fruit. Hyacinth himself had reserved all for her the names: “My Best Clutch” “My Better Brake”, “Safety-Assuring Side Mirror” and “Sincerest Well Wisher”.
But in truth, The Vicar equally knew that Mama Edwin could metamorphose into his Crucifier, if he dared involve her less in prestigious church programmes or for that matter,another front-seat occupying St. Anthony Christian Mother friend.
Come to think of it, Mama Edwin had a way of knowing ahead of time the Punitive Transfers of Seedy Clerics and Careless Cassocks as well as their estimated longevity in the job – if you like, Jesus Approved Retirement!
On the whole, Mama Edwin was more of a Hyperactive Christian than her Husband Cyril. Come time for Thanksgiving to go beyond tuberous yarns and sleek rams: The Chosen Bus Stops of Christian Fathers, accommodating the mind-blowing sweat of Scientists, for example, A Fairly New Forty-Two Sitter Bus from China…
“And it was a forty-two Sitter that had stolen her most brilliant son”
Vicar Goodfruit nearly wanted to believe the thin whispers that Mama Edwin, before the stillbirth of Bernice’s Baby, had twice or thrice casually stopped “to enquire” after the health of an Unconventional Man of God, whose Divine Supplications singularly rested on The Destruction of Enemies or Their Seeds!
Perhaps if it had stopped there, Mama Edwin would've still gone to the altar to offer testimony of Christ's protection of her interest. Unfortunately, it didn't. There was, yet, another miserable accident: this time his last son recklessly hitting and killing a pedestrian, while both of them were returning from the traditional wedding of his immediate elder sister. Her son, Clement, just narrowly escaped lynching and, later spent a fortune trying to wriggle out of the mess.
But that was then. He too, is no longer with us here on earth.
All of a sudden, A Dragging Smoker of Cannabis, first cracked, then double-cracked, soon began to fly in his walks and almost as soon decided that it was time he joined his late brothers, George and Edwin —purportedly at their commentary socializing and commercializing with their Fellow Dead at nights.
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