This Deity they call Husband……..

You lay alone on your big, lonely bed and asked yourself the same questions that have been troubling your mind for months. Young, beautiful, with a good job, an equally very good car, a doting boyfriend and wonderful friends, you should be satisfied but it is not to be. Your weekends are never boring, from candle lit dinners at some of the most expensive restaurants in town, late night movies at the cinema to weekends spent in some of the most exotic countries of the world. So why do you feel this dissatisfaction? Why do you feel incomplete, like there is something missing in your life? There is an emptiness in the pit of your stomach, the things you have achieved seem to be inconsequential, there is that void in your spirit and it depresses you. Nobody but you knows, you have told no one, not even the one you avow to be your one true love.

 

 

You alone know why the dark cloud hovers over you, no one else knows why you toss and turn in your bed at night. Most people would be shocked to know how sick and tired you are of your father’s name. You can’t wait to replace it with his surname. The name has been scribbled on your notebook a thousand times; you even tried out the new signature you would use once married, it was so perfect, you however ensure no one can access the secret notebook, you would feel so embarrassed if anyone were to see it. You are convinced its time to move on to the next level, trouble is he has refused to take the necessary steps.

 

These days you avoid your family members as much as you can, they seem to have nothing more to say to you other than ask when they will finally wear aso ebi on your behalf. Attending wedding ceremonies of family members has become one big chore. Everybody has the same line;

Pele, Stella. A ku inawo, tie naa a de oo, Olorun a yan fun e. yours will soon come oh

 

 Your birthdays are to be dreaded no thanks to your mum, she will call at exactly 12.00 am and start the plenty prayers all of which start and end with petitions to God asking him to assist you in finding a husband. For the past five years her calls to on your birthdays has always ended with;

Iwoyi odun to n’bo ile oko ni wa wa o. This time next year, you’d be in your husband’s house.

You always made sure the Amen was very loud, or else she’d say your spirit husband needs to be appeased again. You have lost count of how any times she has taken you to her Aladura, all in a bid to appease the spirit husband she is certain is stopping you from getting married.

 

A day to never be forgotten was the day your cousin got married, the one that lived with your family since she was five; the one that calls you Aunty Stella. Your mother almost killed you with ’’corner corner’’ looks. The one time you caught her eye while on the dance floor swinging your waist and spraying the musician as he sang your praises, the look she gave you could have melted ice. The excitement was deflated immediately and you didn’t even wait for the end of the ceremony
before leaving. The only thing she didn’t do when you bought your car was beat you; she made it clear that now that you have a car, you were never going to get married because no man marries a woman that has a car.

 

But still as you lay on your bed in your darkened room on the eve of your third anniversary with Dimeji thinking about all these things, you couldn’t help wondering if you were being unreasonable. You asked yourself why not being married at twenty-seven affected you so much. Apart from the stress and pressure from your relatives, you asked yourself if the desperation you feel didn’t also have something to do with the things they have been drumming in your head since you were born.
They here refers to your mum, dad, uncles, aunties, cousins, neighbors and in fact the whole world. From the time you were born, they joked about the neighbor’s son being your husband, from the time you could walk and your dad could see the beauty etched on your face, he joked about how he will stress any man that comes for your hand in marriage. When you were just five, you eavesdropped on conversations between the adults in your extended family and Sister Maria, the one who was unmarried at twenty-eight years. You heard how they all quizzed her about when she would bring a man home. You heard her sobs as she explained that she was trying her best. You determined in your spirit that you
would never allow that to happen to you.

From the time you were seven, your mother nagged you about how you would die an old maid if you don’t learn how to do house chores. They taught you that your life was all about the man, and you had to learn to cook his food, wash his clothes and do other housework so he could be happy with you. They told you to read your books so the man that will marry you will be proud of you. By the time you were fifteen, you were convinced that the main goal of your life was to find that man and be a good wife to him all your life, giving birth to his children and keeping the house for him until you die. You saw how the unmarried ladies in your community were referred to as ‘’Odoko’’. You saw how they gossiped about the separated and divorced ones; they said these women were not properly brought up and so didn’t take care of their husband well which in turn made the men leave them for other women.

You promised yourself not to ever be like those women and you decided to start preparing for this deity- the one they called husband- the one they said was so important for you to be complete as a woman. You learnt how to grind pepper with the milling stone, you learnt how to make smooth and lump free ’’Amala’’ and Pounded Yam, you learnt how to cook your Rice such that the grains stood independently and not mashed, by the time you entered university you were ready for him, you could make most foods perfectly, iron a shirt, trouser or Agbada till the edges could cut a person’s head off, you were a master at keeping a house clean,  your mother  was proud, confident that any man that came across you would  consider himself lucky.

The first boy you dated, you took care of him, just like his mother would have done, he came to your hostel room every evening and you made sure there was food for him on arrival. Your weekends were spent washing his clothes; you ironed them and personally delivered them to his room in the boy’s Hostel. He told you how good you were and how he couldn’t wait to marry you. He later said he wanted to sleep with you, it was so hard for you to disobey him, not when you were already building your dreams around him, and you eventually allowed him after making him promise to marry you. You soon learnt it was a foolish thing to do, when you both graduated and he stopped calling you. You called his mum, the one that always called your line when she couldn’t reach him on the phone, the one that called you ‘’iyawo mi’’

She assured you she has given him a piece of her mind, she told you how she made him realize that the only person he is marrying as far as she is concerned is you. You felt better after that call confident
everything would be okay, until you saw his wedding pictures on a wedding blog two weeks later. You could see the bulging stomach of his wife, she couldn’t have been less than seven months pregnant, and you think back and count on your fingers how many months it was since he broke up with you. It was exactly three months to the day of the wedding. You opened your jaws in surprise, you were so hurt you couldn’t sleep for days but you got over it, you went for youth service and that was where you met Toju.

You decided Toju was a good enough candidate for the husband and so you started doing everything you did for his predecessor, cooking and cleaning, being just the perfect wife material but that ended abruptly too the day he told you tearfully he couldn’t marry you because you are an Ijebu girl. This time you wept uncontrollably and begged him with everything he held dear, but he assured you it wasn’t his decision, that his family mandated him to break up with you and there was nothing he could do
about it. He told you how much he still loved you but insisted he had to let you go. It was two weeks to your passing out, you were devastated, you had already started planning the wedding in your mind, you had even picked the aso ebi in your mind, you were already sure of what you want the  wedding colours to be.

You got over that too and two more boyfriends after, here you are with Dimeji, the one you call your one and true love, you had made up your mind before you met Dimeji that, no more clothes washing, no more cooking and cleaning, no more wife-acting, you simply want to be a girlfriend, your friends who you thought were so ill mannered that no man would ever marry them, they are all married, their children were even old enough to talk, they call you Aunty Stella.

Lying there on your bed that afternoon, the eve of your third anniversary with Dimeji, you realize that you have probably gotten it wrong all along, you realize that you have been too desperate to get married that the men that came into your life could smell it miles away. You realized that all the washing and cooking you did was not out of love but of the burning desire you had to be seen as a wife material. It became clear that you might never have any control on when you will get married and you might as well relax and enjoy your singleness while it lasts.

You thought of all the other things you could do with your life, the things that might be easier to achieve now that you are still single, the professional examinations you could write, your unfulfilled dreams that can be set in motion and a host of other things that a girl doesn’t have to be married to do. You know definitely that you won’t be single forever, you are sure it would happen soon enough, it was only a matter of time. With that realization filling your mind and replacing the bitterness with contentment,
you stood up from your bed and prepared to leave for the market, you intend to cook Dimeji his favorite dish for your anniversary, it will be the first time he will ever taste anything you cooked. There won’t be any restaurant food tomorrow you said aloud chuckling as you splashed on your body spray.

*****

  

 

 

Foot note:

In the end, whether at 18 or 36 most ladies will eventually get
married. Your friends might be already married and even have kids that call you
Aunty; that should not make you feel like God has forgotten you. A journey that
doesn’t have a return date should not be planned lightly. If you know you don’t
have a return date in mind, don’t say YES to just any man that comes your way.
Be sure it’s someone whose face you will still want to see in the next ten
years. Be sure you will be able to tolerate his shortcomings for the rest of
your life.

 

The reality is the people (Parents, Aunties, Uncles, Family friends
etc.) that keep bugging you to get married won’t live with you in your
husband’s house, when you allow them to pressure and push you into marrying
wrong, you will be on your own when the chips are down. They won’t be there
when you start soaking your pillow in tears, it will be your face that gets
punched when the maniac you married needs some boxing practice.

My submission: Allow them to talk; at the same time make it clear
that you intend to get married; but you are not in a hurry, you plan to take
your time. They will get tired of bugging you soon enough when they realize you
are not receptive to such talks. Enough said.