‘I’m calling off my engagement with Maxwell’ (3)

This is the continuation of Josephine’s story started penultimate week. She was flown abroad to serve Alfred and his wife Rose until something tragic happened and she had to come back to the country and was based in Lagos because she vowed never to return to Ikeduru her home town.

When Alfred hit Auntie Rose his wife hard, held her throat up and threw her forcefully on the tiled floor, she landed on her head and remained still. He lied that she tripped. But Josephine who was peeping at them through the door knob of the guest room where she was staying saw all that happened. She was the one he called to help him carry his wife into his car and she was rushed to the hospital. “I was jittery and packed my stuff and ran to Angela, one of Auntie’s Rose friends. I told her what happened and she too was shocked. She agreed to harbor me pending the time Auntie Rose would be discharged from the hospital. 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. That she had taken him to a prayer house owned by Sister Happy, a popular prophetess in Owerri, Imo state, Nigeria, when his madness manifested on their honeymoon. They stayed in the prayer house for three months.  Auntie Angela said they spent their honeymoon in a prayer house before they came back to Chicago together,” she said.

“I still didn’t know why Auntie Rose didn’t notice  that her husband’s fierce anger wasn’t just ordinary. I never knew why she didn’t see the danger of living with such a man. The way he used to slap me at the slightest provocation showed me he was sick. At times he would look at me sternly for no just cause but I endured. I was determined to stay because they were nice to me aside,” she enthused.

“When I heard that Auntie Rose didn’t come round, that she died after all, I refused to see Uncle Alfred, refused to go back to his house not even to carry my stuff in his guest room. Auntie Angela who was harboring me understood my predicament and gave me so many clothes and advised me to stay with her. I agreed. Even when Auntie Rose body was brought home to her parents who suspected foul play with regards to the way their daughter died, I didn’t travel home. I couldn’t face them. A few weeks after the burial, Uncle Alfred came back to America and continued living as if nothing happened. He even asked me to come back and live with him but I vehemently refused. That was when I insisted returning back to Nigeria. Auntie Angela helped me a lot. She told her mum who was residing in Surulere, Lagos to accommodate me and she did. I was living with the old woman and I took my time to weave her hair every Saturday to make her happy. That was my own little way of showing appreciation aside from cleaning her house and helping her cook.

“When I had my hair-weaving-centre opened in Ogba, Lagos, I was going from her house. I started picking the pieces of my shattered life due to the shock I had from Uncle Alfred. I was able to save up some money to enroll myself in the school of journalism,  Ogba, Lagos.  I would still come back to my weaving centre after my lectures. I had so many clients and I loved doing more of home service because that was fetching me more money,” she said.

Josephine later met Maxwell. “We were attending same school. He had graduated from University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University before coming to school of journalism because according to him he had the interest of specializing in broadcasting and had the plans of starting a talk show of his own. Though he was doing well in his career, he had a recording studio of his own, because he read music in the university but he still wanted to have a talk show. We got talking and we became close. He helped me to pay for a hair shop where my customers loved to come. I started having more psychedelic customers who didn’t want to come into my shack to have their hair done,” she stressed.

When Maxwell and Josephine dated for two years, he proposed marriage to her. “I told him to give me more time to pray. I believe so much in the efficacy of prayers and the fact that prayers sure can shield one from evil and can avert the intensions of the enemy. Prayer has been my strength even back then in Ikeduru village when there was nothing to eat, I would convert it to fasting. I prayed and asked God to use me to bring light to my poor family. And He answered! The way I was flown abroad was a miracle and since that time God has never left me. Even when I came back to Nigeria, I never stopped sending money to my poor parents and siblings in the village. I knew too that for me to succeed in marriage that I needed divine guidance first. All these I was telling Auntie Rose that she needed more prayers than night clubbing for her to succeed in marriage but she never harkened to my advice,” she recalled.

Each time Josephine prayed about getting married to Maxwell, “I would be having dreams where he would slap me, hold my throat just as Uncle Alfred held Auntie Rose and I would wake up in cold sweat. I was confused the more but I waved my dreams off, never took my dreams serious; believing that Chicago memories were still haunting me. But come to think of it, I knew that Maxwel had anger problem, he was highly temperamental. He is the type that wouldn’t mind fighting on the road if you bash his car. There was a day a commercial bus driver scratched his car mistakenly, he stopped and hurried out of his car and slapped the driver who was even pleading to be forgiven. He held his throat and suddenly the memory of Uncle Alfred and his late wife flashed back. In my inner eyes, I saw my Auntie Rose wriggling on the floor trying to remove his tight grip from her throat. When he hopped back to his car and drove off, he noticed I was cold to him. I never said a word to him until I alighted,” she said.  

To be continued