C1: Not Deserving of My Son

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“Ysabelle! Ysabelle!”

A slightly rotund woman in her late forties yelled angrily as she roughly pushed the wire mesh gate.

As the rickety gate was pushed, it made a creaking sound.

The panting woman stood in the yard, glaring at the door of the unkempt house.

“Ysabelle!”

“Ma!” a soft voice replied from inside. Seconds later, a slender and beautiful light-skinned girl came out.

Half of her Afro hair was styled into Bantu knots while the other half was still undone, and a comb was sticking out.

She was dressed in an unflattering Martine olive gypsy skirt and an oversized black T-shirt. Both seemed to have been washed one too many times.

In her hands, she held a cheap phone that had seen better days. A talk show program on the stereo played at low volume.

Ysabelle squinted against the light.

“Ma, welcome back,” her tone was respectful. “I will lay out the mat for you.”

The woman cast a disdainful look at the girl and sneered. She stalked toward her, hatred pouring from her eyes.

“You wretched woman. Where did you get the guts to do what you did?”

“Ma?”

Mrs. Joyce Miti raised her hand and slapped her hard across the face. The sound of the slap echoed in the yard.

Before she could recover from the slap, Mrs. Joyce’s palm connected with her other cheek. Ysabelle stumbled back a few steps.

Both of her cheeks were printed with the woman’s fingerprints.

Seeing Ysabelle’s cheeks swell, the woman felt at ease.

Ysabelle looked up at the woman, confused.

“Next time you go anywhere near Jordan, I will skin you alive!”

“Ma!” Ysabelle cried out, feeling wronged as it became clear why the woman was so riled up.

Jordan was her husband’s mistress and the mother of his two kids.

Earlier, when she had gone to the market to buy vegetables, she had run into the mistress with her friends.

Though Ysabelle had tried to avoid her, Jordan had been the one to seek her out and taunt her.

Jordan had taunted her and made her the laughing stock of everyone, yet behind her back she went and twisted everything.

“Why?” Mrs. Joyce Miti questioned Ysabelle. “Did you think that I gave birth to my son just for a pathetic nobody like you?”

Tears stung at the back of Ysabelle’s eyes. She quickly blinked them away. She couldn’t cry now, especially in front of her.

“I’m his wife. Shouldn’t that count for something? Shouldn’t you be on my side?” she asked in a strong voice, her head bowed. Even though she spoke in a firm voice, it was strength she did not feel but felt compelled to show.

Mrs. Joyce scoffed and merely looked her up and down like a used tissue someone suddenly found stuck to the bottom of their new shoe.

“Wife? What wife? Do you think you are deserving of being his wife?” she said, waving her hand up and down over her body. “Surely, you are still not deluding yourself into thinking that you are, right? Wife? Ha, please. Let me tell you something, I would rather have a mad woman for a daughter-in-law than you. My son can do a much better job of finding a worthwhile wife.”

“You are being a mean and cruel mother,” Ysabelle said, her voice barely audible.

“No, you cursed woman. Cruelty is when you trapped my son into this joke of a marriage and mediocre life.”

“That’s not fair…” she whispered.

“You were just a common little slut who seduced my son with your charms,” Mrs. Joyce continued. “If you had kept your legs shut, my son would have gone on to do great things. If your mother had taken the time to teach you the right ways of the world, my son wouldn’t be stuck with you. He can’t even marry the woman he is destined for because you have him trapped.”

Tears streamed down Ysabelle’s cheeks, her heart aching from the cruel words.

Mrs. Joyce poked the young woman’s forehead with her finger. “Get this through your thick skull. There is only one daughter-in-law for the Miti family, and that is Jordan.”

Long after her mother-in-law had left, tears continued to roll. As soon as she sat on the old single spring bed that served as her marital bed, it squeaked noisily. She was glad to have the house all to herself as it gave her the space she needed to think.

The room had little in terms of material worth. A makeshift dressing table stood in the corner with a few bottles of cheap cosmetics and a worn-out shoe rack next to the wooden clothes rack.

The floor was covered in a floral mat that not only served to beautify the place but also to hide the holes in the floor. However, even the mat itself had seen better days.

A few nails here and there on the plastered but unpainted walls served to hold different bags.

It lacked material wealth, but this was the one place that held memories that were dear to her. It was in this very room and on this very bed that she had lost her virginity at sixteen to her husband, Vernon.

She had just been an innocent schoolgirl in her last year of school when she had fallen for the charms of Vernon Miti, a nineteen-year-old school dropout and danker boy.

He was a builder’s assistant who had been at it for years since his preteens. The tall and dark teenager had a charm about him and drop-dead gorgeous looks that the studious Ysabelle could not resist.

Every morning, as she trekked to school by taking a shortcut through the new compound, she would walk past his house, which she later came to know he was the caretaker of.

The first time she had seen him, he had been standing outside half-naked, covered in just a towel as he brushed his teeth. She had never in her young life seen a half-naked man before. She had stared, mesmerized, from behind the hedge. All day that day and the days that followed, she had fantasized about nothing but him.

It wasn’t long before their paths met and he swept her off her feet. He had been her first everything.

A few months into the relationship, she found out she was pregnant. She had been participating in the two-kilometer cross-country race when she fainted at the end of the race after winning first place.

The school’s Red Cross team had tried to resuscitate her but had failed. She had then been rushed to the nearest health center. When she came to, her whole family was there.

The doctor had asked to speak to her alone, but her father had refused. Then the news had been delivered. Out of shock, her father had collapsed and died on the spot beside her hospital bed.

It was a shock to everyone. Nobody knew that she had been dating, let alone been involved in sexual escapades.

They had mourned and buried her father without her mother, Aliness Jere, ever uttering a word to her. All through the funeral, she had lamented how Ysabelle had finished her and turned her into a widow and her siblings fatherless.

“Ysabelle, you have finished me… you have killed me… what do I do without him? What do your siblings do without him? You have ruined this family, you have finished me, Ysabelle. Lord… Manase, Manase, your father…he’s gone, my son…Chikondi… Chiko… Lindiwe… Caleb, my husband…your daughter has finished me… she has ruined me… Caleb, what do I do? What will I do? Your daughter has killed you and finished this family…”

It had hurt, but she had taken the blame in silence. Mourners whispered behind her back. Those bold enough taunted her. Her siblings ignored her.

As per tradition, when a funeral was announced, the furniture from the sitting room was taken out to create space for mourners. The sofas were put outside where a tent was erected. The men, after paying their respects to the grieving family inside, would go out and converge there. At night, a fire would be built to keep them warm regardless of the season. The women sat on the floor or mattresses that were brought from the bedrooms and spread in the living room.

Neighbors and friends would come to sleep over at the funeral house. Ysabelle had been preparing her place to sleep when one of the neighbors who had been by her mother’s side had come over and asked her to go sleep in the bedroom.

Ysabelle had turned to look at the stout woman in shock. The blanket she had been unfolding fell to the floor.

“Your sister and cousins will join you, huh?” she had continued. “Come on. I will help you carry these.”

But they had not come. She had spent the night in the room alone with her thoughts and guilt.

Ysabelle had been the youngest, brightest, and better-looking of them all and a favorite of her father.

My sunshine, he used to call her fondly. It was his pet name because of her light complexion. He always teased her that she had been a step away from being an albino. People always assumed she was mixed-race.

She had been the only one out of the three children to take his light complexion, something he had inherited from his late mother, whom he had named her after, except Ysabelle was three shades lighter, so she was told.

“She will go places, you will see. My sunshine will be someone great in life, just you wait and see,” he would say. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her. She was his pride.

He boasted about her to his friends and family. During school events, be it sports or academics, he never missed a single one; his clap was always the loudest.

But now he was gone. Her greatest supporter had taken his last breath. She had killed him, and with his deathg, a part of her soul died too.