Marital Vice – Episode 1
Copyright � KizzyKeziah 2015
All Rights Reserved:
This work exclusively belongs to the Author(KizzyKeziah) and is protected under copyright laws.
The title, thoughts, plot, characters, settings, and all its contents are properties of the author.
No part of this work, either in parts or in whole should be reproduced in any format, electronic or otherwise without permission from the author.
DISCLAIMER: This story is a nonfiction but names of characters have been changed, some little details have also been altered to make it fit for public reading. Any similitude in the characters to anyone is purely coincidental and should not be inferred.
Prologue
The day could have been the brightest in that year for the family save for the dull weather outside . The singular cause for a smile in the household. Their only daughter was getting married. She wasn’t exactly a kid any longer. A twenty-four year old was very well an adult who could make valid decisions. Especially on obtaining a degree in Pharmacy from a renowned university. But that did little to get a smile on the face of the bride’s mother. Her husband had died two weeks to the wedding as a result of sudden heart attack which he couldn’t survive. They couldn’t have called off the wedding then. At least the girl needed a source of joy in her life then.
” Mummy, the husband’s family have arrived,” Tomi, a short teenager and Deola’s cousin told Adeola’s mother as she peeked through the door to see the lady fully dressed and standing in front of the full length mirror.
She heaved and waved her off, ” Alright. I would be out now,” she told her and reached for her flat sandals. The one Tumise had sent to her from France two months before, when the wedding date was fixed. If only she had known Daddy Remi would have gone to the great beyond before he saw what should have been his happiest day. Marrying his favorite daughter off. She was the apple of her dad’s eyes. The cynosure of every eye. Took after her father in every little aspect but they say man can only propose and the ultimate disposer of all things is the Almighty.
” E kaabo o,” one could hear greetings downstairs as the groom’s family trooped into the compound. They had brought two eighteen-seater buses with them alongside a few more cars for the ceremony which wasn’t planned to be so expensive. It was a modest party to the core. The groom had been around since the previous night with his immediate younger brother and best friend. They had been around before the arrival of his parents which didn’t seem like it went on well with the groom’s mother.
She beckoned to her son on hearing a conversation about the couple going to the local registry earlier that morning and already signing the dotted lines,
” Tolu, you come here,” she called him to the balcony at the back of the one-storey building that belonged to the bride’s parents and where the wedding ceremony was also scheduled to take place.
” What is it, Mummy?” Tolu asked as he adjusted his traditional cap trying to get a good fit.
” Tolu, what am I hearing about a court marriage? Didn’t we agree on just the regular ceremony? Why did you have to sign with her, Tolu?” She began questioning in a hushed tone to avoid being overheard by guests around.
” Mummy, it’s no big deal. We went to court and did a regular thing. You guys were running late, so Gbenga and Tayo came with me and we just signed. Don’t worry so much,” he explained to her trying to get her to get off him. She could nag.
” I will worry, Tolulope,” she raised her voice catching the attention of some around them including the bride’s best friend who was about to call him in but paused just at the entrance to the balcony listening, ” She is just another of these women. Only that she’s pregnant. So why would you sign ‘for better for worse’ with her ehn?! What do you think you are doing, Tolu?” She nearly yelled at him notwithstanding the attention they were already getting.
” Mummy….” Tolu started trying to calm her and looking around. This woman was really going to get him in trouble someday.
” Okay, Waa ba mi ni be…..we would clear this later,” she tapped her thumb and middle finger together and hissed before turning away.
Tolu sighed. This was the exact reason he never told her about the court registry. God knows what she would do now, he thought and watched her as she went to meet her guests with an all-smiling face. That was just how she was. A real chameleon.
Chapter one
Tolu held the steering wheel fast as he tried to stay in control. He was on a bridge and had to focus on driving. Now wasn’t the time to recall the family’s verdict to him. He had to focus on driving.
‘Adeola is not your wife, Tolulope. Listen clearly, the next time I’m at your house and I meet her there, Tolu you will regret that you defied me. You have defied me once when you married her then but I let it go because she was six months pregnant already. But now, Tolu you will show her the way to her mother. I have said my own,” those had been his mother’s exact words to him right in front if the whole extended family in what they had termed an emergency meeting. He still couldn’t believe his dad had just watched her rant on, unable to keep her in a noose.
And what had left him most confounded was that he couldn’t exactly pin one offence of Adeola’s to his mother. She had been a great wife all the while and he really loved her. So what would he tell to her now that would happen. His mum didn’t like her? The family had made a decision? Or he had simply lost it? As it was he couldn’t think clearly and couldn’t dare taking a step he would regret all his life.
Didn’t his mum go to church or was she just running on cheap drugs? He was wondering why the only thing his mother could want from him was to kick his wife out. What about their son and the unborn child too? He couldn’t even mention that Deola was pregnant in that gathering. They had made up their mind already and so had he. He stepped on the accelerator and breathed out, his mind in a thousand places.
———————
Deola watched the clock hands tick away slowly. It was moving like some deformed snail or something. She angrily got off the bed and went into the living room.
When was Tolu going to come home now? It was almost twelve a.m already and there was still no trace of her dear husband. Did he have an accident on the way or what? Her pessimistic intuitions began to surface now. He probably got kidnapped or something, she thought as she paced around the living room.
” I should go out after him,” she finally said to herself and went to get her flat slippers to go out and search for her husband.
Just as she was about to pull the front door open without exactly having a destination in mind, she saw the lights from the headlamps of Tolu’s car reflect on the wall of the living room,
” Thank God, ” she muttered and unlocked the door but didn’t go out. She would rather wait for him to come explain whatever had happened so she went to sit on the three seat leather sofa and waited for him to walk in.
” Tolu, what happened?” Deola asked immediately her husband walked in.
Tolu was an average heighted dark-skinned young man of twenty nine years and was usually skinny but beefing up thanks to his wife’s great cooking skills and her never missing to serve him three meals a day even when he had lost his job three months after the wedding but only recently got another job with a steel rolling company as marketing manager. He looked at his wife who was wearing a worried look. If only she knew what was going on within him right that minute, he stared at her and said nothing to her question.
” Tolu, you really won’t talk to me now. I couldn’t sleep all this time thinking you had gotten kidnapped or had an accident. I was already going out to look for you anywhere but… ,” Deola had already burst into tears seeing his indifferent look.
Tolu sighed. One thing that made him seemingly weak was making her cry and it looked like he was going to do that for much longer. He glanced at the dining table where Deola had had his dinner set and hesitated, turning away to their bedroom of the two bedroom flat they occupied.
” Tolu! What is going on that you can’t tell me, eh?” Deola called after him but he simply walked on and into the bedroom. He could hear her sobs as she sank into the sofa. He couldn’t do it after all. Kick her out, that is.
Deola watched him walk off and became more worried. This had been on for three days now and she really didn’t understand anymore. They hadn’t even had their second year anniversary yet and this was already happening,
” Tolu, what is going…. on?” She muttered slowly and clutched a pillow to her chest.
———-
The little boy rolled over in the bed he occupied probably expecting his mum to be there but only fell off the six feet bed on to the rugged floor. He began to wail as he felt his head hurt and no one was there to comfort him,
” Mummy….Mummy…..,” he kept crying as he staggered up and went to the door. His hand couldn’t reach the handle which he kept trying to reach to no avail. Seeing he was stuck in the bedroom and his mum was not coming for him, he sat there on the floor and cried more.
” Oh my baby,” Deola said as she opened the door to the bedroom on finally hearing Niyi crying. She had been outside spreading clothes on the cloth line and didn’t hear a thing.
Maybe because her mind wasn’t anywhere in the right place. She picked him up and patted his back gently, shooing him into silence as his sobs died down.
” I still have cloths to wash and plenty things to do so you would keep quiet now and be a really good boy, mhmm?” She told him and put him on her back, reaching for a wrapper on the bed and holding him fast to her back with the wrapper.
She heard her phone ringing in the living room. Hurrying, she went to get the call which happened to come from her big brother in France. Smiling to herself, she answered, ” Hello, I thought you had forgotten your only sister,” she said into the phone and heard a short laughter at the other end.
Him calling was just great and now she could tell him how unhappy she had been the past few days. He was her closest sibling of the three of them mostly because he was next in line to her being the second born and she the third.
The last born was Tobi who was much younger than her and had made her treat him like a kid anytime he tried to claim being a male could make him dominate over her even with the seven-year gap between them.
But, Tumise was her favorite among her brothers not that she exactly had a favorite, just that he had always been there, notwithstanding the distance. Now she was going to ask him to scold his brother in-law big time for making her cry a lot. Little did she know that her ocean of tears was about to experience a real tsunami sooner than later.
… to be continued
