Written by Rejoice A.
Deborah sat with her legs crossed at the ankles, using the ballpoint pen in her left hand to draw circles on the jotter placed on her lap.
Her head swam with a myriad of thoughts, which started with who invented this?, ventured into why did I agree to this?, and ending at this is just silly.
“Sister, did you hear what I asked?” a male voice interrupted her train of thought.
“Yes, you said…” She smiled at the man seated a few metres opposite her. Her sentence sent a signal across to him that she was tired of the conversation.
Still, he tried again.
“I asked how many children you’d like to have. In my note, I wrote eight down—four boys and four girls, if the Lord chooses to bless us so. What about you, Sister?”
“The most I can have is two. It doesn’t matter if they are both girls or both boys. Children are children, and they are God’s blessings. I’ll take them as they come.”
He shook his head vehemently as he opposed her idea.
“No, Sister, don’t say that. A child is not a child. A woman can never replace a man. That is why I said eight children. There’s no way you will give birth eight times and all will be girls, nau”.
He smiled in order to elicit a similar emotion from her, but she refused to yield.
This cannot be my lot, God abeg.
Deborah decided to try again.
“If there’s a situation where I need to get a caesarean section because I can’t give birth normally, would you consent to it?”
“God forbid!”
“What?” Deborah blinked rapidly to process his sudden outburst.
“I said God forbid. The Lord promised his chosen people divine birth like the Hebrew women—no surgery, no pain, if money no dey sef, no hospital.”
“So,” she paused, and then continued after some seconds, “you’re saying if I need to get CS done, you won’t approve it because it’s not Biblical? You do realise it’s the husband that signs the forms for that procedure, right?”
“I will not sign it. The Lord will prove himself worthy in the labour room. There is nothing impossible for the God of the eleventh hour.”
He smiled to himself as though he had unearthed a great secret.
“My God of the eleventh hour.”
She grimaced and tried not to frown. Her fingers tightly squeezed the folds of the voluminous gown she wore, specially chosen by her mother to wear to the courtship meeting. Her fingers were sweaty and that was her only solution to making it stop.
“Brother Peniel,” she began, selecting her words carefully, “I am not the right person for you.” She thought about this sentence over and over in her head before saying it out loud, and this was the most polite version of the wild responses her mind conjured up earlier.
His face remained stoic, and if he heard the words she said, he made no attempt to persuade her otherwise. Instead, he burst into a monologue about how the Holy Spirit revealed her to be his wife in a burst of bright colours in a vivid dream—that she was his helpmate and mother of kids; no one else would take her esteemed place in his life; he would not permit it; they could never.
Deborah got up abruptly and the plastic chair she sat on toppled over in the process, causing other people in the church hall seated in similar arrangements to throw curious glances their way. The man stopped talking and got up, clutching his textbook-sized Bible and multi-coloured writing note to his chest.
“You can tell the pastor I am leaving. Thank you for your time.”
He wiped his brow with the cuff of his long-sleeved shirt, worn out from too many laundry sessions. The shirt was originally blue, but the shirt’s cuff would inform the viewer it was white.
“Let me walk you to the junction. It’s getting late and it’s not safe for women to walk alone. What’s happening in Abuja these days isn’t funny.”
She laughed at the irony of the situation. He’d be willing to endanger her life during childbirth, but her journey home was suddenly of utmost importance.
“I can take care of myself,” she stated curtly and walked away rapidly before he mustered up his reply.
***
“I don’t see a future with Brother Peniel,” Deborah announced at the dining table, interrupting the small talk about the dangers of excess salt in food.
She lowered her head and focused on shoving several spoons of jollof rice into her mouth. She felt the silence in the room thicken.
Her parents exchanged glances and the table clattered with the cutlery dropped noisily onto it. Thankfully her siblings were all in their respective boarding schools, so there was no need to censor her speech.
“What’s wrong with Mr. Peniel?” her mother asked, dabbing at the corners of her mouth lightly with a napkin.
Her father looked on, keen to hear her response. Deborah stopped chewing and sipped some water from the flower-patterned ceramic cup placed at her right side.
“My food is getting cold,” her father stated.
“The man is a total bore. Do you know that he read out all his courtship questions from that fat rainbow note he carries about? I bet if you take it away from him, he won’t know what to say to me. How am I expected to live with that?”
Her mother’s mouth crinkled at the sides, and she held the napkin against her mouth, an obvious attempt to stifle laughter. Her father, however, performed the exact opposite. He laughed so hard his belly bobbed and shook the table. Deborah couldn’t understand the reason for their laughter.
“It’s not funny,” she said.
“You’re right, it’s not,” her mother asserted, and she glanced quickly over at her husband to get him on board with the current mood in the room. He smirked and took a sip of water from the large cup directly in front of his plate and muttered, “Women.”
Both mother and daughter gave him a smouldering stare and he shifted his gaze immediately to the clock on the wall, observing it as though it had become an interesting art piece just five seconds ago.
Deborah cleared her throat and tugged at the sleeves of her dress. She had to convince her parents this night that Peniel was the bane of her existence; if not, she’d be stuck in a loveless marriage. She’d heard whispers in the church about people from the youth section in similar situations and shuddered at their experiences. She did not want to be like that.
“So,” her mother started, “the problem with Mr. Peniel is that he reads from a book all the time.”
“As if that’s not what lawyers do. They are stuck with books!” her father quipped, with a mouthful of rice. He swallowed and then added as an afterthought, “If you ask me, the man is too humble for his own good, a whole lawyer going by the simple title of Mister. And your problem is the way he reads.”
“Daddy, it’s not just that. For someone who says he is a lawyer, why is he so shabbily dressed? He wears one shirt over and over and over. His shoes look like they don’t know polish exists, and his breath always makes me grateful for the existence of catarrh. Is it just me or do you people don’t see these things?”
Both parents fell silent. She saw it as her chance to conquer and kept going.
“When he talks to people, they make sure to give him some space so the bad breath doesn’t kill them. During bible study today, when it was announced that he’d be the teacher, everybody vacated the front row. I can’t marry someone like that.”
“All these things you are saying,” her father stated in a placating tone, “will change when you marry. You observed all these from five courtship meetings. Within six months of marriage, Peniel will be a changed man. You will change him faster than he flips a book. Many brothers in the church will be jealous of him.”
“Daddy, I want to marry a husband, not a child. If I’m going to babysit an adult, I’d rather just stay here and carry a child instead.”
“My house will never accommodate a spinster,” his voice lost its playful tone.
“Get ready to have one less daughter then,” she huffed.
“Stop it both of you!” her mother slammed the table.
“Mummy, did you hear what Daddy said? He can’t possibly mean…”
“I said that’s enough! Clear this table and meet me in your room in ten minutes.”
Her father got up from the table and walked in the direction of the living room. Her mother followed suit. Deborah got up and stomped towards the kitchen, vexed at the turn of events. She needed to get rid of this awful marriage prospect, and all her attempts were failing.
***
Deborah opened the door to her bedroom to see her mother seated on the bed, smoothing ripples out of her nightdress. For someone who gave birth to six children and miscarried two, her mother was ageing well.
“Come and sit,” her mother patted the space next to her on the bed. Deborah obliged her request.
“All that talk of Peniel being smelly and dirty—I know that’s not your problem. Tell me, what is it?”
Deborah sighed deeply.
“That man does not care for me. He said that I’d give birth to eight children for him. With the way he said it, I’ll keep giving birth until he gets male children.”
“And I can tell there’s more.”
She sighed deeply again.
“I can’t imagine myself making even one baby with that man! And the nasty things he’s said to me? I just can’t. I can’t marry him, please,” she blurted out, sniffing in a bid to hold back tears.
She turned this way and that on the bed in search of a tissue roll. It had been placed on the bedstand, and she scooted over a bit to reach it. As she unrolled some of it and blew her nose noisily, she could sense her mother had more questions for her. She was already tearing up at the first question; how was she to survive the rest?
“What are the nasty things he said to you?” her mother asked. Her attention had been drawn to that line since she heard it, but she waited for her daughter to regain composure.
“Oh, that. It’s nothing,” Deborah attempted to bypass it.
“It is everything. Start talking, or else I’ll call your father in here and he’ll have you put everything in writing.”
Deborah winced at the thought of that and cleared her throat in readiness to speak.
“During the last courtship meeting, he said he wanted to show me some interesting videos on his phone. It was raining and my Uber was delayed. What he showed me, I wasn’t prepared for.”
A pause.
“Go on,” her mother said impatiently.
“All the videos were of him having sex with different women wearing nurse uniforms. He used his belt to whip them and made them call him ‘My Lord’. They were all on their hands and knees, like dogs. They all cried so much. I recognised one of the girls in church today. She’s in the choir. I asked about the swelling on her leg and she said she fell in the gutter in front of their house.”
Deborah twiddled her fingers, unsure of her mother’s reaction to all that she said. The older woman hadn’t shown any outward emotion.
“Is that all?” she finally asked.
“He was very excited when he showed those videos to me. He said that he is finally going to marry an actual nurse, a light-skinned one, and a virgin at that, unlike the women in the videos. He said the Holy Spirit was making sure he’d live out his years in bliss.
Mummy, I can’t marry that man. I don’t care if he’s a lawyer or a SAN. He’s sick in the head. If he flogs me with that heavy belt, I will die.”
She was on her knees now, rubbing her palms together, tears pooling in her eyes.
Her mother got up and headed for the door without saying a word.
“Mummy?”
Deborah choked on the phlegm in her throat.
Her mother pressed the power button of her phone and turned around to face her daughter.
“It’s just 9:30. I’m sure the head pastor hasn’t slept. I’m going to send this recording to him on WhatsApp. And I am going to call him immediately. Let me speak with your father.”
With that, she opened the door and left.
Deborah was still on her knees when the door opened a few minutes later. It was her father.
“What are you still doing there? There will be no more talk about marrying Peniel in this house. Get up and wash your face this instant! Make sure you don’t wake up with your face all swollen tomorrow.”
Deborah smiled at her father through the tears on her face.
“It’s a good thing you take after your mother. You still look like a human being after crying like that,” her father’s voice softened.
“Go and wash your face,” the stern voice returned.
