I CHOSE TO LIVE

I had gotten used to the traces of his fingers on my skin. Red and black like the edges of a ripe palm fruit. The little dots of pain that came together to form the shape of a single finger. All in five places or ten or twenty. I lost count.  I had gotten used to the sound of his yelling that echoed in my ear at night and deprived me of sleep. Or maybe it was the fear that kept me up. The fear of what he could do. The fear of his need for a physical contact. The fear that he could decide he wanted sex. The roughness of his hands as he tore up my silk night gown at night and entered me from behind. Thrusting so hard. In and out, fast, never slow. If only he worked as hard. If only he loved me as hard. The smell of vodka from his mouth against my throat as he moaned like an animal on heat. Mumbling words that I’m sure didn’t make sense to him either. The occasional moan of pleasure he made, ‘hee!’, ‘haa!’ as though he was riding a horse. The coldness of his hands against my skin which sent tears down my face as I tightened my fingers around the white sheets of our matrimonial bed. I had started taking some pills to avoid getting pregnant. To avoid having to look at an innocent face that looked like him. And as I washed his clothes in the corridor of our bungalow, I slowly squeezed life out of each of them, his head had become the cloth and I dipped it so long inside the water, soaking it, drowning him. I thought of Ifeyinwa’s words,
‘Ozioma, you need to see my Pastor, Pastor Paul, a very powerful man of God. This is a spiritual case; the devil has sown a seed of discord in your marriage but he has failed because Pastor Paul would send him packing.’
She said as she gestured with her hands as if talking wasn’t enough to drive her point home. She seemed to have more faith in Pastor Paul than she did in God and was definitely convinced that it was the work of the devil. She lived next door and I knew she always had a lot to say about everybody and everything. She had a passion for gossip. So, I simply listened, knowing that I couldn’t tell her much. I couldn’t tell her about all the prayers I had said. All the prayers I still said. The countless Novenas, the anonymous masses I booked every week that read
‘For God’s intervention on my marriage and for the spirit of perseverance’.
I couldn’t tell her about Fr. Andrew’s counseling sessions that usually ended with him consoling me and reminding me of my vows. The part about how marriage is ‘For better, for worse’. I remember thinking how the saint that made up that line (God bless his soul) must not have had a real understanding of the concept of ‘worse’ or it wouldn’t have been incorporated in the vow. The words of my vow were not the reason I stayed with Chike.  So many times I had packed my bags and watched them unpacked by fear and shame all coated in a little glimmer of hope. Hope, that maybe one day, it was going to be alright. When actually, fear and shame were the real reasons I found myself still chained to a different version of the man I married. They were the reasons I had taped my mouth and feet and watched my heart bleed. I remembered the years before the pain. Before the unexpected taste of salt on my lips from the tears I wasn’t aware had escaped my eyes. I remembered how we had shared souvenirs after our wedding to some of our friends with ‘Chike weds Ozioma’ written on them and a picture of the both of us smiling and totally oblivious of the tornado that was yet to hit our marriage. Or maybe we thought our love could weather any storm and that together we could withstand the miscarriages, the loss of his job, the financial in balance which led to his lack of trust in me, excessive drinking, built up insecurities and a rapidly deflating ego. I stayed through all of it, took in all of it, prayed through all of it until his drunk and sad self nearly choked the life out of me on a sad Sunday afternoon. I packed and never unpacked. There was light. I could breathe. I stopped tasting salt. The air was fresher and I was alive. There was no shame or fear as I started a movement against domestic violence. I helped a lot of women understand that not everyone can be saved and there is no shame in walking away. I did all these because I left and never looked back. I chose to LIVE.