My mama taught me never to complain or talk back to a man. She didn’t teach me just in words but also in action. For the nineteen years that I lived with them, I never saw her complain when my dad raised his voice at her or called her mean names. She didn’t argue when he said something she knew wasn’t true or accused her of things she hadn’t said or done. When I was younger, before I understood how women were raised to behave, I would ask her about some of the injustices I witnessed when we were alone. “Mama, why didn’t you defend yourself? You didn’t give Papa just one meat yesterday. I was there when you dished his food. It was three.”
Each time something like that happened and I questioned her, she would tell me, “You cannot argue with your husband, my daughter. He is the head of the house. If he said it was just one, maybe it was one.”
I would shake my head in confusion and insist, “But it was three. I remember that it was three. Don’t you remember yourself, Mama?”
She would stare at me with a “don’t argue” look in her eyes and say firmly, “Your father would not lie. You must remember wrongly.”
By the time I was fourteen, I understood the rules and swallowed my objections. By sixteen, I no longer saw them as objections but simply the way things were meant to be. I was afraid of my father and my older brothers, and I was relieved when they both got married and left home to start their families elsewhere.
Many times, I witnessed or heard my mother get beaten for perceived transgressions and false accusations. Sometimes, when it was very bad, she would have me take care of her and tend to her wounds. She always defended him when I complained, maintaining that she had provoked him. I knew she hadn’t because she was the most agreeable person I had ever seen, and she always did what he wanted without complaint. But somehow, it still wasn’t enough, and she got beaten anyway.
I was married at nineteen. I didn’t want to get married, but I was not given a choice. I was not consulted, nor were my feelings considered. One day I was performing chores at home, and the next morning, I was told to prepare to be sent off with a husband I had never met before. My husband was a 33-year-old widower who had previously buried two wives. When I asked how his wives died, I was told that it didn’t matter.
“Obey your husband always, Ramatu,” my mother advised while she helped me pack my clothes. “He is the head of the house and the leader of your household. Never talk back to him. Whatever he wants you to do, do it and thank him. Do not provoke or give him any reason to correct you by his hand. No matter what you think you know, he will always know better. A good wife should be seen and not heard unless spoken to. A good wife is submissive to her husband and never gives him cause to be angry. Ramatu, be a good wife and do not bring shame to your father and his household.”
At that point, I felt my eyes prick with tears, and my heart filled with dread. I had heard many of those things in the past few years, but I didn’t expect to have to apply them so soon. I was used to the way of life of a woman, but there was still a small part of me that was rebellious of what my lot as a woman looked like, and I didn’t want to leave the dubious comfort of my current life for another that was filled with even more uncertainty. My mother had been doing all the things she was advising me to do for 30 years, and she is still with a man who doesn’t like her.
“But Mama, do I have to get married now? I don’t want to get married. At least, not yet,” I cried, scared and distraught.
For a second, there was a flash of something in her eyes. Perhaps pity, but it was gone so quickly that I thought I may have imagined it.
“You’ll be fine, Ramatu. Your father knows best,” she said, not meeting my eyes. I wondered if she sometimes doubted the words she kept parroting. Did she really believe that my father knew best?
Mama never argued or objected to any of the decisions he made. After living with him for thirty years, she had stopped thinking for herself or having an opinion on most things. She had become a sad mirror of my father. She had no likes or dislikes of her own and no mind to make decisions by herself. And as I watched her close my bag, I wondered if this was what I was going to become. Most of the fiery spirit I was born with had been snuffed out, but there was still enough left to make me feel that this was not the life I wanted for myself, but I had no choice. I was born without a choice when I was born a woman. My lot was to move from the bondage of my father’s house to the bondage of my husband’s home. I didn’t particularly enjoy my current life, but it was familiar, and there was some perverse comfort in what I knew.
Everybody involved in the marriage rites had known about my impending nuptials but me. My uncles and two of my aunties arrived just before my future husband did, and when my mother and I finally stepped out of my room, they were all seated in the living room with my older brothers and their wives.
The first time I set my eyes on my husband-to-be, I felt a pang of fear in my chest. I was a petite girl, barely five feet three inches tall, and he was an intimidating man with a stocky build and shaved head. His face was neither handsome nor ugly, just a normal face, but what made me swallow hard were his eyes. He had eyes that looked unkind, and they ran over me the way Mama would look at produce she was purchasing at the market.
The first words he said to me were, “Turn around and let me see you properly.”
I was fixed in my spot by surprise and a bit of fear, but a quick prompting from my mother got me into action, and with a deep breath to calm my nerves, I turned around slowly to be inspected by the man who was going to own me for the rest of my life.
When I faced him again, he nodded in approval. “She’ll do. She is on the small side, but her hips are wide enough. We can get on with the rites.”
I felt deep shame and embarrassment, and a little sadness that nobody saw anything wrong with the way I was being treated. Not my parents, my uncles or aunties, nor my brothers. I didn’t expect anything different from any of them because I had learned in nineteen years that the men were allowed to do what they wanted and the women were to accept it. None of the women in my family looked happy. My mother was definitely not a happy woman, and I could count the number of times I had seen her genuinely smile or laugh in nineteen years. There was something about marriage that sucked the little joy the women were allowed to have dry and left them soulless and always exhausted. The only women I felt some happiness being around were my young, unmarried cousins.
The idea of becoming like these women scared me, but I didn’t have a choice.
My wedding was uneventful, and I went through the whole process as if in a trance. I don’t remember anything that was said or what I said in reply, but I must have done the needful because I was soon being driven to my husband’s house, which was about 1 km away. He did not speak to me throughout the journey, and I was grateful. I needed the quiet to order my thoughts and think about how to navigate the unexpected turn of my life.
His home was a nice but modest two-bedroom house with a small compound. I was relieved when he opened one of the bedrooms and told me, “This will be your room.”
The idea of still having my own space was a very appealing surprise, because my strategy to endure this marriage was to avoid my husband as much as possible, and this room was going to be a very good haven. Or so I thought.
It was a confusing experience and a little painful. I remember his heavy body panting over me, a few tugs on my breasts, a finger sliding down to touch my vagina, and then the slight pain when he entered me. That night, and every night after that, I would go blank mentally and dream of a different life while he did his thing. Sometimes, it was painful, other times it wasn’t. I just learned to take it as my mother had told me to, and I tried not to think too much about how much more I could take. Four months later, I got pregnant.
