In a quiet neighbourhood, just before the clock struck midnight, a white Honda CRV turned down a driveway two houses from the end of a brightly lit street. The driver, Gershom, lost in his own thoughts, did not notice that his was the only house without power, while his neighbours’ yards glowed on either side.
After hooting for a while with no response, he picked up his phone and made a call.
A few metres away, in their matrimonial bed, his wife Feggy Chomba lay on top of the covers, snoring softly. She wore a large grey t-shirt, pulled up on one side and exposing her breast, and in the crook of her arm, a baby of a few weeks old, clad in pink, lay fast asleep.
The persistent vibration of her phone against her thigh woke her. It was then that she realised she had fallen asleep while breastfeeding her daughter. Peering at the screen with sleepy eyes, she frowned at the name.
HEAVEN SENT-the screen flashed the name, adorned with heart emoticons.
‘Bashi Joe,’ she said simply, closed her eyes, and shifted into a comfortable position, hoping he wouldn’t take long so she could go back to sleep. She had had a long day. With hardly anything to eat in the house, her two eldest children had been fussy all evening.
‘Are you deaf? How long do you expect me to wait out here? Did you you not hear me hooting? So irresponsible, what type of wife are you?’
In the dark, a doleful smile tugged at the corners of Feggy’s mouth. Expecting her husband to speak to her kindly was like drawing blood from a stone.
‘You are outside the gate? Why?’
‘What kind of stupid question is that? Open the gate already.’ He barked the order and hung up.
Feggy stared at the screen, puzzled. Had he not told her he would not be coming home tonight — just that very evening when she had called him at work to ask what time to expect him? And what was he so upset about?
Carefully lifting the baby from the crook of her arm, she placed her back on the bed and pulled the blanket over her. ‘Daddy is home, Baby B,’ she whispered, brushing her lips against her daughter’s chubby cheek. Her voice, however, was laced with sadness.
Bertha-their third child-had been conceived as a desperate attempt on Feggy’s part to win back a husband who was shameless enough to flaunt his affair with a college girl. She had deliberately gone off the pill.
She had foolishly believed a baby would bring them closer. The opposite had happened. The very night she confirmed her pregnancy, he had come home and told her he wanted out.
For as long as she lived, Feggy would never forget the look of disgust on her husband’s face when she told him she was expecting their third child. She had wanted to die of shame at that moment – when he accused her of trying to tie him down, looking at her as though she were something hideous. He had stormed out, only returning after his family summoned him and gave him a verbal beatdown.
Since then, she could count on one hand the number of times he had spoken to her as a husband speaks to his wife, or the number of times he had touched her with any warmth.
He might have been physically present in the house, but his mind was always elsewhere — always with her. Whenever he was home, his eyes were glued to his phone or laptop, a goofy smile on his face, his family reduced to background noise.
And when he wasn’t chatting with her, he would be on the phone speaking in the gentlest, sweetest voice Feggy had ever heard from him – softer even than when he had been courting her.
On the day Bertha was born, while everyone around him celebrated, Gershom had worn the look of a cow on its way to the abattoir.
Feggy sighed.
What was the use of reliving the painful past when all it brought was more pain? Planting another kiss on the baby’s cheek, she made her a quiet promise – that she would give her a hundred and ten percent of her love, so that if the day ever came when her daughter realised she was loathed by her own father, her mother’s love would be more than enough compensation.
Lifting herself off the bed, Feggy went to the window and drew back the curtain. Light seeping under the gate confirmed he was there.
She grabbed her chitenge from the chair near the wardrobe and wrapped it around her waist, then switched on her phone’s flashlight to light the way.
The moment she pushed the gate open, her eyes met Gershom’s scorching glare. To him, she was not a woman – she was something unsightly. Coming home to the sight of his unkempt wife, compared to his Yolie, was akin to punishment.
The look of disgust on his face was nothing new to Feggy. She had grown accustomed to it over the past year. At first it had hurt deeply, but with time her skin had thickened and she bore it with a smile. Even on the mornings he reached for her to satisfy himself- like earlier that day-she already knew it was another woman’s face he saw.
Forcing a smile and pushing the hurt aside, she greeted him as she always did. ‘Bashi Joseph, welcome home.’
Gershom leaned out of the window and hit the hooter. ‘What took you so long? How many times have I told you to be security conscious?’
Feggy wanted to call his bluff to his face. Between the two of them, who was the real security risk – the wife who slept at home, or the husband who crept in at witching hour? If he truly cared about their safety, he would come home at a decent time.
She said none of this. She only averted her eyes and quietly pushed the gate open wider, cursing herself for wanting to hurl the keys at his face, for wanting to tell him to open his own gate next time if he found her so lacking.
For wanting, just once, a trace of appreciation.
As she held the gate, Feggy found herself wondering what had put him in this mood.
Had he fought with his mistress? If so, how long would the rift between them last? Should she be glad – that the children might have a few days of their father’s presence? Or should she be wary? Knowing him, he would likely take it out on her.
Once the car had passed through, she pulled the gate shut and locked it.
Gershom stepped out, locked the car, and walked towards the house without waiting for her. Feggy was used to this. It would have actually been surprising if he had acted otherwise.
Where a normal husband might spare a tired smile, a quick kiss on the forehead, something — all she received were looks of contempt. He had once asked her, quite seriously, who he had wronged in a past life to be stuck with her.
She hurried to catch up with him, but he had already stopped in his tracks. With the car’s lights off, the house sat in complete darkness.
‘Why is it so dark? Load shedding?’ Even as he asked, his eyes had already swept to the neighbouring houses – all of them lit.
‘We ran out of units,’ Feggy said.
And everything else, she added silently, but didn’t have the courage to say aloud.
Standing this close to him, she caught the soft drift of another woman’s expensive perfume clinging to his clothes. Her heart contracted.
Taking a closer look, she noticed he was not wearing the shirt he had left home in that morning. She ought to have been used to things like this. But there was simply no teaching your heart to make peace with betrayal.
‘Why should we be out of power? Didn’t we just buy units a few days ago?’
In her mind: ‘I reminded you this morning that the units wouldn’t last the day -but you were too busy flirting on your phone to hear a word I said.’
Out loud, she said nothing.
What power was he boasting about, anyway? Since the other woman came along, Feggy couldn’t remember the last time he had bought enough units to last the month.
He expected less than a hundred kwacha of electricity to stretch for four weeks, while simultaneously cutting the household budget in half and stopping her upkeep money altogether.
‘Would you like me to prepare your bath? There’s no hot water, though,’ she said instead.
Gershom muttered something and went inside.
When Feggy joined him in the bedroom later, after checking on the other two children, he had already slipped under the blankets with his back to her -eyes on his phone – even though their daughter lay beside him, crying.
Feggy checked Bertha’s nappy. It was dry. Assuming she was hungry, she sat on the edge of the bed, lifted her shirt, and began to breastfeed her. Baby B latched on hungrily. As Feggy nursed her and hummed a soft lullaby, she glanced over at her husband.
She scoffed quietly and chided herself for her own foolishness. What had she expected?
He was already scrolling through photos of the other woman.
To block out his wife’s world entirely, Gershom had plugged in his headphones and continued to browse. In the pictures, dressed in a coral pink lounge hoodie and ripped jeans that hugged her in all the right places, Yolanda was playing one-on-one basketball with a very good-looking young man. Her coy smile as she looked up at him sent Gershom’s already sour mood into a nosedive.5oú
How dare he look at her like that. How dare she act all coquettish with another man when she was with him. After deliberately leaving him with blue balls, she was out there laughing and carrying on as if nothing had happened.
Seething, Gershom’s fingers flew across the screen.
Messenger – Seen.
No reply.
WhatsApp – Blue ticks.
No reply.
Text message – Delivered.
No reply.
Frustrated, he threw off the blankets and moved to the lounge, trying to get through on a call. For a full hour he waited, watching her come and go online, never once picking up.
In the end, he gave up, went back to bed, and spent a fitful, restless night.
INKED IMAGINATION
