UNTITLED

Three or four months into their marriage, her mate had declared that they were moving to the state capital. The villagers thought he had gone insane. What about his fertile farmland and barns of yam? He sold them off and with his young wife, he travelled out of his hometown to see the world and trade like his uncle, Nwodo, had done. He had heard that the real money, the true success was in the city. But the emigration multiplied his wife's sorrows. It wasn't only those dark nights or the sudden evolution from a child to a wife and the other things in between she had to endure. Now, there was the separation from her family and everything home-like to bear. It crushed her already broken spirit. Her mother cried the day they left. She was inconsolable as though her child had died from a debilitating illness.

So, Nwosu moved into the city with Chinelo, who for him was an acquired property. They settled into a modest house, a 2-bedroom apartment. It was quite different from the village huts Chinelo was used to. Everything was strange: electricity, tap water, the brick walls and even the people who seemed not to notice one another and walked past without a word of greeting. Back in Umuazi, women who met each other on the way to the stream would greet excitedly as though they were twins who lived in separate houses; the men, when they ran into each other on the way to the farm or the village square, would salute one another like brothers from the same mother. And it was almost bizarre to find that she would ease her bowels in a room right inside the flat, and not in one of those outhouses constructed with bamboo sticks and red sand.
'Chinelo!' she had heard him call one evening. His tone was fierce. His voice was naturally forbidding but this time it was even spine-chilling, somewhat hair-raising.
'My husband,' she called back, as she scurried out of the kitchen.
'Get me my food now.' He was obviously drunk, the smell of cheap beer was all over him.
'Nnanyi, food is not ready yet. It's almost done.'
'Hmm,' he growled deeply, before taking her by the waist. She tried to wriggle free from his grip but his energy over her was overwhelming, he succeeded in taking her clothes off and eating another kind of food.
By the time he had had his fill, she rushed to the kitchen in a bid to save her food: yam- that she intended to pound- and egusi soup. It was there, burnt black by the heat of the flames from the stove. That was only the beginning. Nwosu took to coming home dead drunk. There were times, though, when he was sober and acted like a kind stranger or a considerate master. He wasn't always severe. There were the fairly good days.

Nwosu was once a child himself. His mother died before he was weaned, and he was left with a callous father. Uchenna, the callous father, soon got himself a new wife. She was a pretty face, but her heart was evil. She made life torturous for young Nwosu.
'I am not your mother, you rat!' she would say to the toddler and he would cry as though he could see the hatred bubbling inside her. Soon, she had her own children, and he became even more insignificant in the eyes of his father.

Culled From A Larger Piece.
©Elect Alenkhe