Married But Available

by B. Nyamnjoh

  “Eventually, his wife got all information and decided to act. One day, she met him in his concubine’s house. She asked her husband: ‘Can you tell me who this woman is to you?’

  “Her husband replied: ‘She is your mate.’

  “Mrs George asked: ‘You prefer her to me? Because her breasts are bigger?’

  “‘Well, come to think of it, so are her buttocks.’

  “Mrs George stormed out of the room saying, ‘Why don’t you go ahead and measure her heart too, and find out just how big her empty heart is.’

  “After this, Mrs George started to insult her husband’s concubine by saying, ‘So, you’re the one depriving me of my husband?’ The concubine retorted: ‘Aren’t you happy I’m helping you to care for him? There is something you never offered him that I did, so what is your problem?’

  “Mrs George immediately caught the concubine and got her well beaten in front of the husband, whose reaction was to go home immediately, search for his wife’s academic certificates and set them on fire. When Mrs George arrived home, she saw some papers on fire from a distance. Little did she know that these were her certificates on fire. When she realised, she collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. Discharged, she took the matter to court and eventually left the house. The case has not yet been judged, but given that courts of justice across Mimboland have yet to be acknowledged as bastions of justice for the strong of spirit, how can we be sure that things will go her way? Meanwhile, Mr George and the concubine are still going out, neither married officially nor living together.”

  “Can you imagine,” said Lilly Loveless. “That was pretty vicious of him.”

  “Sure was,” agreed Britney. “After I learned about it, I took my certificates to date to a cybercafé and had them all scanned, and then stored them on Gmail.”

  “R-r-really?” asked Lilly Loveless, a bit surprised by her creative appropriation of new technologies.

  “Haven’t you heard of the bird which says that since men have learnt to shoot without missing, I have learnt to fly without perching?”

  “Where does it say that?”

  “In Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God, I think.”

  “So you are taking advantage of new technologies to be a step ahead of everyone in a society where steps are increasingly unpredictable?”

  “I couldn’t have said it better.”

  “That’s smart, very smart.”

  “Let me tell you about another couple,” said Britney.

  ***

  “Mr and Mrs Williams were sort of married. It wasn’t a formal marriage in the strict sense of the word, as there was no marriage certificate. It was a ‘come-we-stay’ sort of marriage, which to Mrs Williams was better than nothing, as it saved her the embarrassment of questions such as: ‘Why aren’t you married? Why don’t you have children? Was it a choice you made?’ In this process of cohabitation, they were blessed with five children after eleven years. Whenever Mrs Williams talked about establishing a marriage certificate, Mr Williams would say ‘a certificate is just a paper that can be destroyed at any moment, so it is not important. The essential thing to keep in mind is that you are mine forever.’

  “She waited to no avail.

  “Suddenly one day, Mr Williams fell in love with a nurse. He started spending most of his time with the nurse and neglected his partner at home with the children. It was rather fortunate that Mrs Williams was a civil servant, so she was able to manage her home to her possible best with her salary.

  “Two years ago, Mr Williams became seriously sick and it was alleged that he had AIDS. He would cough a terrible cough that made people advise him to write his will. A majority of the people were convinced he would die. During this period, his girlfriend was pregnant. It was his wife who took care of him from hospital to hospital and from one traditional healer to another. It came to a point when he was incontinent. His partner was beside him. This went on for six months. The girlfriend did not make any attempt to cater for him. Instead, she did not want people at that time to identify her with the man, because of his alleged AIDS.

  “Fortunately for the man, he was treated or at least his situation improved in the Sawang General Hospital.

  “When he was discharged, instead of reconciling with his partner who took care of him, he went back to the nurse and their love became even stronger than before.”

  “Wow” said Lilly Loveless under her breath, continuing to take notes. “What ingratitude!”

  “After the first child with his girlfriend,” Britney went on, “they’re now on the second. Rumour is circulating that they are officially married since the nurse has presented a marriage certificate at her jobsite to benefit from the allowances and tax exemptions due to those who are married. Mrs Williams is aware of this and has been so shocked by it that she has now become a street drunkard. According to her, drinking is her only consolation and she has also decided to bleach her skin and become what is known locally as ‘Fanta-Coke’, meaning light in patches, dark in others.

  “Sad situation,” mentioned Lilly Loveless. She found the reaction somewhat extreme, given the fact the man was wayward from the outset. Didn’t she see it coming? If they were deeply in love maybe this would make sense. Not wanting to set Britney on a speculation trajectory, Lilly Loveless simply noted her concerns in her notebook. She glanced at the young woman who had served them, who had nothing better to do than stare over at them suspiciously.

  The young woman was distracted thankfully when she had to take payment from a gentleman who had just arrived with a deep black beauty, about half his age – he looked in his 50s. As he headed up the stairs, Lilly and Britney heard him say, ‘Inter-resting,’ and out of the corners of their eyes saw him fondling already the beauty’s derriere as he added, ‘Can’t wait to rest inside your resting place.’

  ***

  “I’ve one last one for you today, about a couple pulled together in the beginning, but who now are poles apart” insisted Britney. “Maurice, a married man, had struggled in life to be what he is. As starting and parting go, he had a string of girlfriends and children before he got married. Everybody who knew him was surprised when he got married, and doubted if the union would last. The girl he married was very beautiful, calm and reserved. She was a civil servant. Before marriage, he proved to be a very faithful and loving partner. On the same day the marriage was contracted, he slept out.

  “Really?!” exclaimed Lilly Loveless.

  “When he discovered that his wife was pregnant he told her to her face: ‘You don’t expect me to eat plantains daily, moreover, I don’t want to disturb you.’ This must have taken his wife quite by surprise, as she didn’t even know he loved plantains. He has never really demonstrated any particular appetite when she serves him her plantains.”

  “What manner of husband was he then?” asked Lilly Loveless.

  “He always entered his house from midnight and the first thing he would do was to get into the bathroom and wash his male organ without caring if his wife was seeing him.”

  Why didn’t the fool wash at his girlfriend’s house? Lilly Loveless grimaced and continued taking notes.

  “He would invite his girlfriends to his house and would tell his wife that they were relatives. Then at night, he would quietly open the girl’s room and sleep there, without his wife being aware. Whenever his wife complained he would say: ‘I have made love to more than 3000 girls, so what manner of woman is there that I am yet to see for you to keep suspecting me?’ He managed to have three children with his wife but did not know that these children needed clothing, and medication, or whatever, not to mention school books. Whenever this woman complained, the answer was a severe beating. At times he would tell her: ‘Are you not happy that you are in a house where there is television and a satellite dish? Does your father have one?’”

  “Oh, that’s low,” said Lilly Loveless. “I hate domestic violence. No man who brutalizes women is worth a man in my eyes.”

  Britney wet her
lips with the Pamplemouse pop and continued. “Whenever this man received his salary, his wife only knew because he would always come home drunk. He once told his wife: ‘You have no right to know what I earn and how I spend my money.’ When he entered a bar, he kicked everybody’s drink and asked the barman or lady to give each of them two or three rounds on him. This earned him the name ‘papa yeye Mimboman.’”

  “Unfortunately for him, he was thrown out of his job for repeatedly coming drunk to work, sexually harassing female colleagues, and for reckless drinking at lunch breaks. The little money he was paid, instead of taking it home to meet his wife and chill her heart, he lavished it on girlfriends and fellow drunks, and when this money got finished, that is when his wife knew that her husband had lost his job.

  “Now he has no friend, he is very wretched and frustrated. When his former girlfriends see him passing they hide because of the miserable condition in which this man is. They can’t believe he once was close enough to touch and feel them.”

  “I bet he could write a bestseller on fair-weather friendship,” Lilly Loveless interjected.

  “His wife says that her husband now calls her ‘ma Cherie,’”, words she last heard when they were newly married, and he was still able to stand her plantains.”

  It was already 5pm and activity at Lilies of the Valley had picked up remarkably. Scores had come, come and left, and many more were on their way coming. That was the real business of Lilies of the Valley, not the flowers which appeared to be resting themselves, as few of the clients even noticed them, let alone disturb them by making an offer to the gardener who never tired of expecting what seldom came.

  “They are coming to rest,” remarked Lilly Loveless, referring to a man and girl who had just walked straight in to the reception.

  “Yes, they look very tired. I think they should go and lie down,” replied Britney.

  The man and the girl seemed to have started their love game way back in the car or wherever they were coming from, and were in dying need to quench their thirst of desire. The receptionist, who was not fast enough, was scolded by the man who screamed: “Just give me the bloody key and do the paper work later.”

  Lilly Loveless and Britney decided to call it a day. On the way out, Lilly Loveless bought freshly cut dahlias by the gardener who had been so kind, and who couldn’t believe his luck that someone should actually buy some flowers. It was his experience with Mimbolanders, that everyone who came by either did not see flowers as something special or claimed to have a hedge or garden of flowers of their own. It needed a Muzungu woman, he thought, to appreciate and reward, however modest, his job and work as nature’s gardener.

  “I hope your aunt gets to feeling better soon,” said Lilly Loveless as she was about to take her taxi. She gave Britney a kiss on the lips: “That’s how we say ‘see you again’ in Muzunguland,” she said, got into her taxi and drove off.

  Britney took a taxi to her favourite Internet café. There was no mail for her, but she had one to send. “Providence, my dear,” she wrote. “I have been down for almost 5 days now. I consulted at the Mount Rebecca Hospital, did some lab tests and the results showed that I had malaria and typhoid. I was given a bottle of drip and lots of tablets that I am on now. Added to this my gastritis got worse and I have become very nauseated, have no appetite and serious headache. If you were around, I could think perhaps I’m pregnant, but you are not, so I can’t be. There is so much to talk about but I have no strength to write a long letter. I will when I recover. I love you so much and miss you even more. Kisses, Britney.”

  14

  Britney had to travel to a town near Zintgraffstown for an urgent family matter which Providence, her fiancé in Muzunguland had asked her to do for him. She had received a parcel which Providence sent through a bushfaller returning home. In the parcel was a cell phone and some money which Providence wanted her to deliver to his mom. She was also instructed to use some of the money to buy a sim card and airtime for the phone, and to teach Providence’s mother, who was marginally literate, how to operate the phone. Britney saw in this mission a good opportunity to endear herself further with her mother-in-law to be. She knew only well enough that the way to a peaceful life with your husband is through his mother.

  It was a long journey but a short stay, as she had to be back the next day. Lilly Loveless decided to go along for the ride and the work they could accomplish on the way there. They left early for the Puttkamerstown central bus station, and were fortunate to have seats in the first bus with Dreamland Express Voyages. Even then, it took some two hours before the bus could take off, during which time Britney and Lilly Loveless, together with the other passengers already in the bus, were subjected to a frenzy of salesmanship from hawkers. There was one selling ‘Super Clean International’ which she claimed could take out even the most stubborn of stains, but with which she failed woefully to take chewing gum off one of the seats. The funniest of them introduced himself: ‘If you no di ever buy foolish you no fit ever buy sense’. He was selling roots, herbs, the back of trees, and many other traditional medicines. He started by condemning Muzungu medicine as ‘high quality nonsense’ and called on the passengers to sample his medicines: kanda for planti to cure migrating anus; king seed to say farewell to tonsillitis which he termed Hausa sick; shiny-shiny for discoloured teeth; swaa- pepe to bring typhoid, bele-bite and shit-hole-blok to their knees; and finally dis-man-na-hélélé, which he claimed had found the ultimate solution to the embarrassment felt by men when asked by a woman: ‘Na all you dis?’ Many passengers bought different medicines.

  Lilly Loveless and Britney remained indifferent until the man suggested pointedly: “Don’t you two beautiful ladies want your men to stop apologising all the time: ‘na all me dat’?”

  Laughing, Lilly Loveless said, “Give us two packets.”

  “What do you want it for?” Britney eyed her curiously.

  “For Bobinga Iroko, as a present,” Lilly Loveless laughed even louder.

  Just then, the driver mounted the bus, and the same funny hawker led a prayer for a safe journey, before leaving the bus in peace.

  Britney and Lilly Loveless were seated in the middle of the bus. Britney was happy to see that people around them after only an hour into the journey were already falling asleep or engrossed in the Jackie Chan movie being projected from the small screen at the front of the bus. She and Lilly Loveless could do some work without anyone raising their eyebrows. “Just two women chatting away the way only women like to do,” they’d think.

  Elbowing Lilly Loveless who seemed ready to join the sleepers, Britney asked her for the recorder. Lilly Loveless found it after a few minutes of fumbling through her bag – that seemed oversized compared to the flat brown leather shoulder bag Britney had packed with all she’d need for a day.

  ***

  Pressing record, Britney began, “I had a friend with whom I attended secondary school. When she failed the GCE A Levels for the first time, her father abandoned her. Her mother could not sponsor her because she was doing nothing to earn an income. Her elder brother and sister who were already working were also very irresponsible.

  “This friend turned to me and said: ‘Britney, I have decided to go back to school on my own.’ When I asked how she would manage that, she replied: ‘After all, I am a woman and above all, I am beautiful, so I will ask a few boyfriends I have around to take care of me.’”

  Britney glanced at Lilly Loveless and realized she didn’t have her notebook out. When prompted, Lilly Loveless pulled it from her bag along with a pen and opened the notebook to the first blank page. Feeling reassured, Britney continued.

  “Since I knew that such behaviour is characteristic of their family, I told her to decide for herself and that she should at least consult her mother.

  “She had now decided to have boyfriends all over the country and consequently became a tourist. Come the start of the academic year in September, she would tour all the eleven regions of Mimboland to look
for these men for each of them to give his quota of the fee and maintenance allowance she needed for school. The problem here was that each of these men thought he was her only boyfriend. On the other hand she knew within her that none of these men possessed her.”

  Britney glanced at Lilly Loveless again. Was she listening or looking out the window at the forest? Upon seeing a few notes scribbled, she continued.

  “This friend played around like that for seven years. She attended all evening classes but to no avail. One year she decided to attend an evening school in Puttkamerstown. Unfortunately for her, eight of her boyfriends were transferred to Puttkamerstown. Since each of them thought he was the patron, they looked for her place and found it.” Britney paused. She had the feeling she was talking to herself.

  “Don’t you want to know what is going to happen next?” Britney asked Lilly Loveless, who nodded unconvincingly.

  Britney continued all the same. “Well, now problems started. Every day there was ‘traffic jam’ in her place and most of the time this friend was given serious beatings by the men who felt entitled to her.

  “I advised her to send away all these men but she said: ‘Friend, if you give me such advice then how do you expect me to live? What I’m planning to do is to look for a new house in a hidden corner and show it only to one boyfriend who cares the most.’ But before she could realise her plans, all of them had disappeared. This is because most of them were members of the Puttkamerstown club and whenever they met, each of them talked about his beautiful friend. Before long, they all discovered that they were talking about the same girl and they all realised that whenever they invited this girl out for a drink she turned down the request, probably for fear of meeting another boyfriend somewhere.”