An Evening with Mrs. Eugenia Nwafor:
Mrs. Eugenia Nwafor was in the kitchen. She was in a flurry of activity, as she always was in the evening, on arriving from her offices at the Department of Agriculture. On this evening in particular, her face appeared irritated, and there was heaviness in her step, as she twirled from the chopping board to the stove top.
She was dressed in her wrapper and a green scarf. It was a relief to have put aside her girdle and the western skirt and blouse, which somehow never seemed to fit her properly; if it had once done so, then that must have been a long time ago. The skirt rode up on her bulging abdomen, and the blouse which buttoned up the front always displayed undue tension at the buttons, ready to give way at the slightest provocation. As best she could she tried to disguise all this with a large black jacket. She wore it over her bulky frame every day. Wrappers could fit anybody, in so far as the material was long enough.
In a corner of the kitchen Donatus the houseboy cowered sheepishly on a chair by the kitchen table, and watched the familiar activity which by now he had long since become accustomed to. His own part in the performance had already been played out much earlier when he had spent the better part of the afternoon prepping the ingredients for Oga’s chop.
“Frrrresh soup, frrrresh soup, everrrry day” were the now famous watchwords of Christian Nwafor, and as he said this he would roll his r’s really loud so as to emphasize to all, that in this house no substitute would be acceptable.
“What did I marry a wife for, if she cannot provide fresh food every day?”
He was often quoted as lamenting to his friends at the bar.
And then, there was what he had proclaimed so brazenly to his wife during the first week
of their marriage, as she had unwisely attempted to serve him the previous day’s leftovers.
“Fresh soup, Madam, please.” He had told her. “I only eat frrresh soup everyday.”
And the rest is history. For the next nineteen years of their marriage, she may have failed him in many regards. But in that regard she had wisely complied, and had never failed to produce a bowl of steaming soup directly from the pot to the table; with a mound of pounded yam, always on its own plate beside it.
As such, although Donatus could assist in the prepping of the ingredients, the unwritten rule was that it was the hand of Mrs. Eugenia which had to throw these ingredients into the pot. It was, however, acceptable for Donatus to stir the pot, until more ingredients needed to be added.
Later on, emanating from the kitchen was the “Kthow kthow” as the yam was pounded in the wooden mortar into a paste.
By the time Mr Christian ate his dinner it was usually quite late and as such he ate alone and in complete silence.
“Many a day I have wondered,” Mrs. Eugenia would think to herself.
“What if one day, I was not here when he came back, or I served him old food?
“Or, if Donatus put the ingredients in the pot, and not me? Would he really know the difference?”
But all these were distant thoughts, which were indulged in rarely.
There had been a time when she had cared very much about what or how Christian felt. With time she had discovered, that unlike what happened in the Mills and Boons novels of her youth, her feelings did not seem to carry any significant weight with her spouse. Indeed it would not be entirely wrong to assert that they were blatantly ignored.
After years of this neglect she had come to face what mattered to her truly, and that was the fate of her four children.
There were four of them and she duly obsessed about their welfare. What they did or did not do; and what they ate or did not eat. She worried about what they would one day become. With the same diligence she tried to predict their every need and desire, and fulfill them all in so far as it was within her power and her limited means to. Somehow, they made her life livable and had become her one and only raison d’être.
Every salary she received from the Department of Agriculture as office manager for the permanent secretary went into shoes, clothing, school fees and sundry expenditures on their behalf. During the school year they were all boarders, and after dinner she would retreat into her room by herself and obsess over them, one by one.
Chinedu was the first born and her oldest son, followed by Afam also a boy, then the two little girls Henrietta and Christiana.
For three years Chinedu had been the only issue, and he had seemed to have been teetering on deaths door. As a consequence of this she had always had an undue partiality towards him.
She had nearly despaired of having any further children when in the fourth year of her marriage, just as Christian was getting “serious” with his mistress Henrietta, seemingly by divine providence, she became taken in. It was only the arrival in quick succession of Afam, and then the two girls that had saved her marriage.
To add insult to injury, despite the violent opposition of his wife, when his first daughter had been born he had given her the name of his mistress. Her relatives had calmed her down with:
“Put up a fight, and he’ll throw you out for sure... and bring Henri in…”
In consequence of this she had decided to suffer in silence.
Not even the births of all the children had put a damper on his affair with his mistress, whom he unfailingly visited every night.
All this Mrs. Eugenia had faced with great courage and resilience; she had tried to look at the positive things in her life, and not at all the things which were glaringly absent. At times she had regretted not having had a soul mate for a husband, instead of this distant figure, or gestalt that came and left at will. But when she compared her life with the life of her friends she realized it was not so bad at all; in so far as she lacked for none of the basic necessities of daily living, she was doing very well.
Most people, she thought, put on a front about how rosy their lives were; when in fact no one really knew what was going on behind those walls of the home.
“Show me,” she had addressed her dear sister Margaret “The husband who can stay in love with his wife and you have shown me a saint.”
This was barely an excuse for Christian’s behavior which could only be described as despicable. Try as Margaret might to point this out to her older sister, her sister had adamantly refused to acknowledge any irregularity in her precarious home situation. The last thing in the world she intended to do was to deliver Christian into the arms of Henri. They would have to wait until she died, literally.
Christian himself was well aware of his wife’s attitude. Fully recognizant of her helplessness in the present ongoing situation he made no effort to hide his nefarious activities. He would even have discussed his mistress with her, if she would give him audience, which she wisely would not.
Hence, the two made great effort to avoid each other, at all times, and under all circumstances. Messages were sent back and forth with the children or with Donatus and even these, only when absolutely necessary.
“When we married at first I had truly been in love,” she had explained to her sister,
“But see what has happened now, he never seeks me out anymore. He never bothers with my feelings or if I have all I need. It is hard to stay in such a marriage without feeling victimized and abused.”
Such a mindset never helped to instill harmony in a home that lacked it in the first place. And Christian went about his own business in total disregard for her. He was a religious man of sorts, and did not consider the taking of a mistress to be good in and of it self. Yet, he now found himself increasingly powerless over the control of this emotion and the affair. It had become as much a part of him as his leg or his arm. And how can a man cut off his arm?
Over the ensuing years the desire to regularize his mistress’s situation became more intense, mainly at her behest. Henrietta felt that as long as he went home to his wife every evening, he did not truly belong to her.
The first step was the traditional wedding which was presently in the offing.
Although great care had been taken to keep the matter from his wife, this little piece of information had been leaked to her. Initially, she had decided to ignore this, in the belief that opposition on her part would only serve the purpose of driving the errant spouse deeper into the arms of her rival. Thus, on this evening in question she had decided to wait in the living room until her husband’s return, and to make an attempt at a connection.
She sat herself on the sofa with her Bible in her lap and with the green scarf neatly tied and retied nervously around her head she awaited the arrival of Christian. On the table sat a large dish of soup. The soup was his favorite ogbonno soup. .
A little after he walked in with his shirt rumpled and his tie off.
He was surprised to see her waiting for him and realized immediately that something was very wrong.
“Good evening,” He greeted her. With more of the tone one would use on a stranger than on one’s own wife. “How are you today?” He asked.
Eugenia forced a smile as she looked up from her Bible
“Good evening. How was your day?” She said with the most pleasant tone she could muster.
He did not answer the question but instead sat down and started to wash his hands in the bowl of water left on the table for him to wash in, and started to eat his food unceremoniously.
“I asked you how was your day?” She repeated still in a soft tone.
He looked up from his bowl of soup with a puzzled look on his face.
“Oh sorry, I missed that; yes I had a very good day, I try to always have a good day”. He replied dryly.
“Or, are you able to make a bad day good? “ She asked.
He shrugged and went back to eating.
She obviously had an agenda, and he had no intentions of playing it out her way. If she wanted to play it out she would have to do this unprompted by him.
“I always try myself to make a bad day good myself…” She said.
And he still did not answer.
She continued,
“ Lately, everyday has been bad but I try to say nothing; thinking it will all sooner or later turn out alright, but so far nothing has changed :”
“Are you referring to your work or are you referring to me?” He finally answered.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand the purpose of this conversation, Eugenia. You never wait up for me. What do you want?”
“That is not true; I always wait up for you.” She cried out, “Maybe not physically in this living room but I hear all your comings and your goings. I know when and how late you come back, and I know where you come from.”
He laughed, and continued with a sneer,
“How can you know where I come from? Where I go is no secret. If I come from anywhere, it is not a secret. And maybe if you had been more of a caring wife, all this would have never happened.”
“Would have never happened?” she said with agitation. “Christian, was it I who drove you? Or was it you who drove yourself? How dare you to blame me for your own weaknesses!”
Without a further word he rose from his chair at the dining table. He walked past her and closing the door firmly behind him vanished into his bedroom.
She broke down in tears right where she was seated on the sofa in the living room. Unable to control her emotions, she buried her face in the sofa cushion and wept, muffling her cries with the cushioning.
She had never really thought that any attempts on her part to repair the broken relationship would have any effect on her husband. But nevertheless, she had decided that she would try. Even if only to assuage her conscience, that she had done all possible to diminish the rift that separated them. As she wept her heart out, it became unclear to her what she was weeping for. It could just have well been for the pain of rejection or for the pain of loss, which had never felt as acute as now on the day before the eve of his traditional wedding.
After the passage of a fair amount of time she got up from the sofa and straightened out her wrapper and pulling her shoulders back she stood upright and went quietly into her room.
The next step had been rehearsed in her mind countless times. In the event of failure, rather than stay with a man who had taken on a new wife, she had decided to take what little there was left of her self esteem and leave while she still could. That night she stayed up until the early hours of the morning. Her trunk of wrappers was packed. In the old brown suitcase her father had given her when she had started university she had packed the remainder of her clothes. In a little cardboard box she had packed up the few mementoes of her children, little photos and trivia.
By dawn a Taxi had been called. Before her husband could even awaken she had left, leaving behind her the little room as neat as she had met it.
Donatus had cried and begged her not to go; he also begged to know where she was going. Being intent on leaving behind as little information about herself as possible she whispered a word into Donatus ear at which point he managed to stop from further crying and seemed reassured that his dear madam would be fine.
As she drove in the Taxi the driver took her to Asata to her sister’s house. She watched as the little houses flashed by and here and there some early risers were already on their way to market. It had been nineteen years of misery, and she could hardly believe that it was all over. Sixteen years it had taken her to pick up the courage and to leave, to finally capitulate to Henri.
“Let her win.” She said to herself, “nothing is quite worth this sorrow.”
There was no need to be sitting and waiting for a situation to turn itself around when obviously it was over. Sheer persistence had not been enough. It was not that she lacked love for this her dear husband, more that SHE DID NOT KNOW HOW TO EXPRESS IT. AND WAS NEVER GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO THE SAME.
.
Life in Asata:
Comfort lived in Asata with her family in a small flat in a house of larger size. The house was built to surround a central courtyard. There were kitchens on the outside of the courtyard where food could be prepared using firewood and some cement blocks placed to form a base. The building itself was of shabby construction with walls some straight and others not quite so. The exterior which was made of a layer of cement belied the fact that the walls were made of native construction with red mud, and merely reinforced by an exterior layer of cement. The layer of cement was itself stained in many places with reddish brown dust. In this part of the town the houses were built close in a haphazard manner with no real roads only dirt paths which served as roads.
Comfort was startled to see her sister approaching their modest apartment with a trunk, a big suitcase and the brown cardboard box. Her initial thought was that perhaps something drastic had happened; as perhaps Mr. Nwafor had died or had had a stroke, etc.
She dropped the grinding stone she was using to grind beans for akara, and ran to meet her older sister and to assist her with the load.
“Sister, it is early for you to be on the road with so many luggages.” She said, too frightened to ask directly the reason for this.
Mrs. Nwafor nodded in assent.
“Eh”. she answered , “I have had enough. I have left. Today is the day before his marriage to Henrietta and I have decided to make it on my own”
.
Her sister moaned, “Sister, that IS THE WORST THING YOU COULD EVER DO! Do you know what the society thinks of divorced women? You will never remarry!”
Mrs. Eugenia was aghast in disbelief and responded:
“Hum, I am not looking to remarry. I am not trying to please a world that has no knowledge of the sorrows that I bear. All this while, I stayed for the sake of my children. But now that my children are big enough it is okay for me to leave. No need to sit and wait for a man who has gone”.
At this juncture they had reached the backdoor, and they proceeded to drag the suitcase in and place it in the middle of the one room that Comfort shared with her entire family. It was in this one room they ate and slept and read their books. One window was shuttered with burglar proofing.
The room was stuffy after the long night and all who had slept in there.
“How long will you stay?” Comfort asked trying not to seem too concerned.
Her sister answered:
“I will only be here for one night. I hope to stay with my friend Mrs. Chijioke. She is widowed. Right now she is out of town, she will not be back until tomorrow and then I can leave you.”
She continued,“I must go to work now, and I will look for you in the evening At the Market place”
Being in danger of running late to work, she quickly assembled her hand bag and fixed herself up by applying a small dab of white powder to conceal the shininess of her face. With a small rag she dusted off her shoes which had become dusty after the walk and left for her office.
Comfort was looking after her with a puzzled look. Although she had said nothing, it was peculiar that after sixteen years of dating his mistress that only now should Mrs. Eugenia decide to leave. Nevertheless, Comfort was not one to spend much of her time worrying about the misfortunes of others. She was consumed by her own fate, and the fact that misfortune was always on the horizon in her own home in some form or the other. Being the mother of five children there was always enough sickness to go around. Near misses with death were as real as life itself. How many times had they not been in with fever or malaria or diarrhea? Sometimes the food was not enough if her husband had had a bad day at work. Sometimes there was no money for school fees and the children had to take a little note to school appealing to the principal to ‘please let them stay’, as they would ‘pay the next week’... And when this had failed they had often relied on the kindness of Mrs. Eugenia herself who would pay the school fees in the event that all else had failed.
Mrs. Eugenia was a firm believer in education.
“Whatever happens, do not let the children drop out of school.” She had begged Comfort, who had frequently been tempted to just give up on the idea of educating her children.
At one point she had wanted her eldest daughter Regina Regina
“This life, Oh!” Comfort said, to herself. “Sometimes I do not understand it at all… The trouble between a man and wife, that, no one can ever understand.”
She put away the beans she was grinding and gathered her little bag and put on her rubber slippers. Tied her wrapper and her scarf and set out for her stall. She was the poorest of all the sisters, “But dear me!” she said to herself, and thought, her husband still loved her; and her children were obedient, and all were at present in good health. There were some things that money could not buy.
“For all the money in the world and all the things that Mrs. Eugenia has… She does not have a husband who loves her; in fact, she may not even have a husband at all right now.” She mumbled to herself.
“After all, they will say that she is the one who left. And after you have left there is no saying that if you change your mind that you will be able to get back in. So why leave in the first place?” She went on thinking to herself, “Unless you are absolutely sure that you’re not going back.”
There was little or no room for any other thought on this matter to the mind of Comfort. So firmly did she believe in the institution of marriage, and so poorly did she think of the alternative of the lack of it that she could not even imagine life without a husband.
The same evening that Mrs. Eugenia left, Henrietta moved her belongings in unceremoniously.
The pictures left behind on the wall of Mrs. Eugenia and her husband, remembrances of better days were swiftly removed. And indeed it would have been impossible to ascertain without prior knowledge that Mrs. Eugenia Nwafor had ever lived there at all, for so thoroughly were all traces of her removed from the house.
“They change the wives like they are changing the cloth”. Comfort grumbled to herself, as she arranged her wares for the day in her little stall at Ogbete Market
. “No loyalty in this world. What has this world become? And the women where do they come from? Surely they too must know that these men are taken. But to them all this counts for nothing. No religion!”
Comfort was nervous about the evening. To say the least, her accommodations were hardly adequate for her immediate family, and there really was no space for any additional person.
Later that evening, the sight of Mrs. Eugenia approaching her stall in the market was enough to bring her to tears. Her ungainly form waddled her way forward in her usual manner, but her head which was usually upright and stood tall was now stooped over and
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