Osman stood over me. He reached down and seized my arm, tried to haul me to my feet. I let myself go limp. My weight was almost beyond his strength. Above me I could feel his rage massing, but I didn’t care any more. Who was this man? Not the one I had married. Osman continued to tug at me as I sprawled on the floor.
An image leaped unbidden into my mind. Of the two of us in the middle of the night, fighting like children. Maybe I was on the verge of hysteria. I think probably I was. I couldn’t help it. I laughed. A short, high-pitched shriek. The sound of the laugh sounded funny to my ears. I laughed again. I found I couldn’t stop. Osman let go of me. Good, I thought. I started up from the floor. Then he kicked me. The blow landed on my buttock and set my whole body quivering. I fell forward on to my knees. Now I was on all fours. Before I could get up, he kicked me again at the base of my spine.
At first I was too angry and my anger made me stubborn. I clamped my mouth shut and held on to my screams. Osman grasped my hair, swung my head around and slapped me. I tried to crawl away from him, naked on my hands and knees. There was nowhere to go. Instead I crawled around the room as he aimed blows at me. His panting grew hoarse as he wore himself out on me. In the end I allowed him to win.
I let the tears flow. I begged him to stop.
And I opened my eyes.
And when they were finally open I learned a lot about my husband in a short time.
Osman Iscandari. Only son of his mother, a woman with a cat’s cry for a voice who wore two strings of prayer beads wrapped in her headdress, a third looped around her wrist. Always sick. Always complaining her body was too warm or too cold. When she came to visit I saw the way she watched her son’s face all day, waiting for his expression to change so she could jump up and fetch him a bowl of roasted groundnuts or a sweet potato cake or offer to rub his head. When we gathered to eat in the evening she picked out all the best pieces of meat from the stew and gave them to Osman. At night she sat on the verandah with his head in her lap, braiding his hair.
My husband had three sisters who were married and lived nearby, but in the time I had lived in that house rarely did I see them come to visit their brother. And when the youngest one of the sisters did call, I noticed the way she spoke little, only answering: ‘Yes, brother,’ and did not look Osman in the eye or stay to eat.
And I saw how Balia flinched when Osman raised his arm just as she bent to place a footstool underneath his feet. And I saw the way Osman smirked when he looked at her and reached slowly across himself to scratch his armpit.
Finally I noticed the way the little bitch who came to beg for scraps disappeared every time our husband was at home.
* * *
Ngadie brushed her mouth with the back of her hand and stepped back on to the path, casually — as though she had just been wandering around in the bush, in whatever ordinary way a person might wander about in the bush. She started when I called her name. I ran to catch her up. Not so easy, I held my belly with one arm and my breasts with the other.
‘Wait!’ I caught her arm and swung her around to face me. She glared at me.
‘Let go! What’s wrong with you?’ She sucked her teeth: a slow, sliding sound of scorn. I did not reply. Instead I reached out and touched her face. Ngadie reared back, but I had hold of her arm. I stretched out as if to wipe a fleck of froth from the corner of her mouth. There was nothing there, but only I knew that. She was close enough for me to smell the palm wine on her breath. Her eyes held mine, yet I could see she was scanning the edges of her vision, like a dog with a stolen chicken in its jaws.
I paused. What to do next? I hadn’t thought this far. I had waylaid Ngadie without knowing what it was I wanted to ask. What had I done in marrying Osman? I searched for the words and while I did so I saw the thoughts cross Ngadie’s face like clouds drifting across the sky while she made up her mind what to do.
In the event Ngadie spoke first: ‘So now you know. And you want to know what else there is? Isn’t it?’
I nodded. I let go of her arm.
Ngadie rubbed at the place in an exaggerated sort of way. Still, she made no move to go: ‘When you first arrived I looked at you. So pleased with yourself. I wondered how long it would take.’ I dipped my head. ‘Every time he brings one into our house he tells Balia how he is tired of us, we have no fire. Though only God and the three of us know how we came to be that way. Osman despises us. But he doesn’t understand anything, he doesn’t even understand the kind of man he is.’
I learned that I was not the first. There had been others.
Listening to Ngadie was like gazing at a landscape you have grown accustomed to. Only when you look at it properly you see something you had not noticed before: a termite mound like a silent sentry, a tree slowly dying, an abandoned colony of birds’ nests. Ngadie and Balia, so much older. Many years had passed since the youngest of their children had been weaned.
‘One of them he complained was disobedient. Told her family to come and collect her. Another one he claimed was not a virgin and that he had paid such and such amount for her bride price. Said the family let him believe it was the case. I don’t know. They were quick to settle with him. The shame.’ She waved a hand. Her voice was gentler now.
I was silent. Almost as an afterthought Ngadie added that she was sure Osman had other women upline who cooked for him. Otherwise there was really no reason to stay away so long.
‘What am I to do?’ I asked her.
Ngadie frowned and peered at me as if seeing me properly for the first time. She shrugged, her voice was brisk once more: ‘What you do is up to you.’ And she turned and walked away slowly down the path towards the big, empty house. Not once did she turn or look back at me.
Oh, what a fool I had been! I had stuffed my ears with straw. I had closed my eyes, refusing to see what a bad husband I was choosing for myself. I thought about my mother. What might she say? That I had been deceived by nobody but myself. The anger between us ran cold and it sprang from a place far, far back. I could not bring myself to go to her and beg.
Even in my despair I was not ready to own my mistake, I was caught in a swirling eddy, drowning, with nothing to clutch on to except my pride. I determined I would deal with Osman in my own way.
I pondered these matters as I sat on the back step. In front of me Balia’s daughter caught a chicken and prepared to slit its throat with a knife. The bird was squawking, feathers fluttering. I remembered how in the village we used to wring their necks — something that had to be learned. You had to exercise a little patience, let the bird be lulled while you got a good grip. Outside the town, in a place known only as Slaughter, I had seen a Fula slay a great bull, slicing its throat with the blade as gently as if he was caressing his sweetheart.
This house I was living in contained more than one kind of hell, and I had just thought of a way to deal with one of them.
Several weeks passed. Osman came and went. When he was at home he would enter my room as he pleased and force me to play my part in his monstrous game. I offered no resistance. As the days passed Osman gradually relaxed, believing he had mastered me.
One night he fell asleep on my bed. I crept in next to him and we stayed that way until dawn.
A few days later, in the early hours of the morning, I lay awake and watched Osman. Behind the lids I could see the bulge of his eyeball, the iris trembling as he dreamed. At the corner of his mouth a bubble of spit swelled and subsided. His chest rose as he drew in shuddering breaths. In his sleep his lips curved upwards.