‘I’m calling off my engagement with Maxwell’ (2)

This is the continuation  of Josephine’s story which  started last week. She was taken abroad to serve Alfred and his wife Rose until something tragic happened and she came back to the country and was based in Lagos.

Though the couple were the “cynosure of my eyes, but I noticed that Uncle Alfred had a particular short coming in him. He was extremely jealous of his wife, dreaded having her secretly cheating on him, nursed some fears of losing her, hence he was regularly tempted into hitting her at the slightest provocation because he had  anger hidden in him . Whenever his wife annoyed him, he would be destroying things in his house. There was a night he punched the wall mirror in his living room so hard that it gotten broken and pierced into his right hand.  But he avoided laying a finger on his wife because he would be dealt with over there,” she said.

But, there was an incident that happened one night that brought the marriage to a sudden end. “It was same incident that brought me back to Nigeria unprepared and I started scampering for how to eke out a living for myself in Lagos. The only good thing was that I didn’t go back to my village. I was determined not to go back there until I hit it big. Hence, I remained in Lagos and opened a hair weaving centre where customers who paid my bills came in droves to patronize me. What brought me back home had been in my memory and somehow haunts me,” she said.

The problem of Alfred and his wife became skin deep when they came back from a night club. “They were good at going to night club every Friday night. That was their own way of catching fun. I was used to having them returned early hours of the morning, chatting and laughing heartily. I would always be up from the sleep to welcome them and then retire back to my room. But that very night, I woke up when I heard the door of the living room swung open and they walked in. That night, they were not chatting but were arguing on top of their voices. I couldn’t come out to greet them. I knew they needed some privacy and I didn’t want to interfere in their arguments. So, I laid still on my bed and listened. It was Uncle Alfred that was talking to her angrily and from his accusations I was able to know why they were having a shouting match. Auntie Rose was being accused of dancing with another man in the club for a long time. And she reminded him that the man took permission from him and that he obliged him. So, she had to join him to the dance floor. Suddenly I heard a loud slap and I sprang up from my bed and started peeping at them. I saw Uncle Alfred slapping his wife. He accused her of allowing the man touch her body while dancing. Auntie Rose was short of words maybe because she wasn’t given the time to respond or perhaps apologise. He forcefully took away the glass of wine she was sipping from and threw the glass on the wall which shattered to pieces. He then bounced on her, held her throat so tight and started strangling her. I was watching and that time I was shaking that he might kill her. While Auntie Rose struggled to wriggle out of his tight grip, he then held her high and threw her hard on the floor. She remained still and couldn’t move. It dawned on him that he might have killed her. He called her, shook her body and when she didn’t respond, she brought his ears to her bosom and noticed that her heart was still pumping, he then looked toward my room. I ran into my bathroom pretended to be using the toilet. He knocked on my door and lied to me that Auntie Rose tripped and landed so hard on the tiled floor. That he needed to rush her to the hospital. He didn’t know I saw all that happened. When I heard that, I played along with him.  I then ran out of my room to help him carry his wife into his car. As we were carrying her, he was busying explaining himself to me. He lied that her wine glass mistaken dropped from her hand and spilled her wine on the floor which tripped her and she landed on her head. I was nodding and crying at the same time. I knew he was lying but that wasn’t important at that time. What was very important was for her to regain consciousness. When we managed to stretch her on the seat of his car, he screeched off to the hospital. I didn’t clean the mess in the living room according to his instruction. Later in the day, he brought some men home and he was showing them the pieces of the wine glass and how his wife fell. I knew he was lying but I couldn’t say it because he may kill me too,” she recalled.

While Rose was in coma in the hospital, Josephine left her house. “I didn’t want to remain there. I noticed that Uncle Alfred was mentally sick. I observed this a few months I arrived his house in Chicago but I wasn’t sure. I packed my stuff and ran to Angela, one of Auntie’s Rose friends. She agreed to harbor me pending when Auntie Rose would be discharged. She was the one that told me that Uncle Alfred used to have seasonal madness. And that Auntie Rose was aware. But she kept saying that her man was okay when she took him to a prayer house in Nigeria where his madness manifested on their honeymoon. She had to take him to a prophetess where they stayed for three months.  Auntie Angela said they spent their honeymoon in a prayer house before they came back to Chicago together,” she said.

 To be continued