My husband left the day before our fifth anniversary. No, it’s not what you are thinking. He still loves me deeply; he just went away for a few days, 364 to be exact. It has been a year now. So, I should be celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary instead of lamenting his one-year absence, while impatiently waiting for him to come home.
His departure has changed my daily routine a little. I don’t leave my bed. This is to the dismay of my family that seems to want to fuss and fumble about me now. They never used to. They were never there before. But now, I constantly have one or two of them parading in and out of my room with this or that, trying to get me to eat or to take a bath. It is all so exhausting actually. Can’t they just leave me alone until he comes back?
Rumbi, my elder sister, fusses the most. She is the ‘rock’ of the family; she is strong and dependable. Rumbi is the rock, Ruvarashe is the river whose vastness of love contains us all, and I am the water that flows aimlessly, following its own will and disrupting everything. That was according to my father the great army leader vaShumba. My father insisted we called him Commander, even at home. I don’t think he ever left the war. At times, I saw him fondly cleaning his rifle which he will never fire again. Commander was a single father to three daughters; our mother had died giving birth to me. On the day I was born, he had been asked to make a choice between saving her life or mine. He chose me. I felt like the most special woman in the world around my father, until I met my husband.
My husband was charming from day one. He wore a gorgeous, flirtatious white-teeth smile that warmed each room he walked into. We instantly connected when we met. We were both filling in college application forms at an internet café when he approached me. We spent the rest of the day together, chatting, laughing, and kissing. It was destiny. I knew I was going to be his wife. I got accepted into colleges in the UK, but he was only accepted into one, the University of Zimbabwe. I was very proud of him.
“Ruveneko, marry me.” My stomach fluttered. I rejected all the university offers and accepted the one role I knew was mine forever.
There is a knock on the door. It is probably that time again when Rumbi or Ruva come and pitter patter around my room, denying me the little joy I have reminiscing about precious memories of him. I will not answer. They will come in anyway.
“Should we tell her the truth?” They are murmurings outside.
“No, she would lose it,” Rumbi whispers. “She is not strong enough.”
“I am scared we are losing her each day,” Ruva responds.
The door swings open. I am curled up in my bed, my knitted blanket pulled up to my neck. It is only Ruva who walks. She looks like a flower, as her name means. She is incredibly attractive, slender and everything about her is gentile, down to the way she sits down and gingerly places a plate of food beside me. We go through the routine of our usual conversation. I brought you food, will you eat? No. I am not hungry. Please sis, just a little. I will try. Then she normally leaves. But this time, she does not leave. She stops by the door on her way out and asks, “I know we have talked about this before, but where do you think he has gone?”
Where has he gone actually? It slips my mind sometimes. I don’t like to focus on that day. We had had a fight about Jessica again and he left. Yes, the she-witch that worked with him. The first fight about Jessica had been four Christmases ago at his company’s end-of-year function. I saw the glances she gave him, and the way she touched his arm. She thought I was dumb, but I saw it all. And then, I saw him. The way he intimately whispered into her ear and laughed at her jokes. And don’t get me started on the kiss. He kissed her in a way that I had never seen, tucked his hand under her braids and pulled her in. Like they did in the telenovelas I loved to watch. When we got home, I told him I didn’t like that. He apologised and explained what had happened. It was all for show to his new work colleagues, a game. Relief washed over me and we made up, passionately.
I got pregnant soon after. I was twenty-two at the time. My husband was overjoyed but then, I lost the baby. The joy swiftly turned into rage. I was heartbroken. He was inconsolable. I forgave him the first time he laid his hands on me. It was my fault I had lost the baby, something about trauma to my womb caused by the complications during my birth. I could never give him a child, so I allowed him to take his anger out on me. I deserved it.
Ruva discovers that she isn’t getting an answer. She continues to say, “Ruveneko, I love you so much. I need to tell you something that no one wants you to know.”
I push my back to sit up against the headboard. Is he back and here to surprise me?
“Your husband isn’t coming back.”
“You all keep saying that,” I laugh and slid back down into the bed.
“No. I mean that… Commander took care of him.”
My brows crease in confusion. But I know what ‘took care of him’ means when we are speaking about my father. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
“Commander took care of him,” she repeats with a murky mixture of pain and love evident in her eyes.
“So, he isn’t coming back,” the words finally pour out of my mouth. “Ever?”
Ruva shakes her head. Silence ping pongs between us until she speaks.
“You need to get up. You need to bath. You need to take control, or he has won again.” She pulls the door to a quiet close and it clicks into place behind her. My sister’s words plague my mind. He is not coming back. You need to take control, or he has won again. Won what?
The routine continues in the weeks that follow. My sisters would bring me food that I would never eat, and I would give them the same response, “I am not hungry.”
Twice a week, they take turns to force me to shower. I do it mechanically. I never even feel the water or smell the soap. I dry up and go back to bed, waiting for him. Until one day the waiting stops.
I start to feel the bruises on my skin as though his fists on them are fresh. It is painful. I could see the marks. I reach for a photo of him under my pillow and analyse his broad flirtatious smile. The same smile he had given to Jessica that night and then over the years to Yeukai, Colleen, Rachel, Chido, Gwen, Matii, Mutsa, Maruva, Chenai… A smile he had long-stopped giving me. I remember the nights I blacked out from a beating, and woke up in the hospital alone, because he had forbidden me from seeing my family and slowly, they stopped seeing me.
Commander took care of him. He is gone.
I feel a flutter in my stomach, a feeling I have not experienced in a while. It spreads through my body and bursts out from my lips which curl upwards, ever so slightly but it feels like a momentous feat to me. Slowly I instruct my feet to move and they fall with a thud onto the floor. I am able to get to the shower and let the water flow down my body. Although the water is hot, it feels like icy needles crashing onto my tender flesh. Then it soothes. I feel my feet against the ground, the droplets on my face, and smell the berry scented shower gel.
If you don’t get up, he would have won.
He would not win, not again. This is not his victory.
I wear my favourite bright yellow dress and powder my face. I brush my hair and wear a jersey. The family chatter is audible downstairs. They are having Sunday brunch after church. With steady steps, I reach for the handle and with great effort, I open the door to the start of the rest of my life.
Read – May 20th – A Short Story by Kingsley Aaron Onuigbo, Nigeria
Powerful. Did her father actually shoot her husband? The line which says that he cleaned his rifle everyday that he would never fire.