One Hell Of A Wife! ( 3)
PAPA Jesse was very happy, very excited indeed. Such is the mood and feeling when one is drunk. You forget your sorrows and tribulations. Joy takes over, even if it is for a short and temporary time. He started humming an old song he remembered not so long.
About 30 minutes later, he was back at home. He knocked and staggered in. Instantly, his wife knew he was drunk. She was boiling with rage. She was as hot as the volcanic lava.
“And where are you coming from?” she asked annoyingly.
“Why are you… hic… hic… asking me… stupid question?” he boldly answered, throwing back a nasty question at her.
“Me, ask you stupid question?” Mama Jesse said in furious anger, her eyes dilating with morbid and bitter annoyance.
“He! Hee!! Heee!!! Almighty God! Dem don dey teach you! You’re drunk! Dead drunk! They’ve been teaching you how to fight and rebel against me! You’ll see hell and thunder today, wait for me!” She turned and rushed inside the kitchen.
She was rampaging like a bull.
“You can do nothing… hic… hic… you can do just nothing, like a dead rat!” Papa Jesse replied with all his strength.
In a twinkling of an eye, Mama Jesse was back with a pestle in her right hand. She waved it wildly, aiming at her husband, but he dodged it and ran towards the balcony. Mama Jesse followed behind trying to hit her husband’s skull him with all her might.
“I’ll kill you today!” she roared. “You’ve been taught very bad things recently, you stupid, nasty and rebellious man!” Holy Moses! She had now got him cornered at the balcony; she raised the pestle up angrily, and was about bringing it down on her husband’s head when he moved swiftly and dodged it. Mama Jesse mistakenly lost her balance and fell down from the second floor of the threestorey building they were occupying. She went down like a felled tree. She screamed with pains and agony. She had a broken arm; her right arm was twisted in the great fall. She bled profusely. She was rushed to the Orthopaedic Hospital. She spent one whole month at the hospital before she was discharged. She walked on crutches while a plaster of Paris ( POP) supported her right arm.
When Mama Jesse got back home after being discharged from the hospital she became a totally changed woman. She became quiet and gentle; never quarreling with her husband or anybody in the neighbourhood. Surprisingly, the erstwhile cantankerous, boisterous, and quarrelsome woman had turned a new leaf. She was now as gentle and peace- loving as a lamb.
One Monday morning, Jesse walked towards his mother while she was picking condiments to cook the breakfast meal and asked her: “Mama, you don’t beat Paba again? Why?” She took a long look at the boy.
“Hmmmn… Jesse… I am tired, please…” she said gently and quietly, shook her head and minded her business. May be some questions are better left unanswered.
Husband and wife should live their lives with love, peace and understanding, and the fear of God. These noble virtues should be the foundation of a happy marital life.