The First Wife

by Paulina Chiziane

  Then we went on to talk about men, our favorite topic of conversation. I told them I go through all my business accounts with my husband. I told them how much I earn and how much I spend. Our colleagues laughed. One should never provide men with the exact details of our earnings. Men were made to control, and women to work.

  None of these women gave their companions exact details of what they earned. Instead, they told them hard-luck stories: They didn’t make any money that day, there’s a lot of competition in the market, there are thieves on the street, and all my goods were stolen, I didn’t make any money.

  This was when I began to see things. My rivals were making progress in their businesses while I wasn’t. Don’t tell him the truth, Rami, they advised me, tell him lies. Never tell him the whole truth. Keep your money hidden away in a corner. Money in a man’s pocket is for all his women. In a woman’s hands, it’s bread and food. The money you make is safer with you than it is with him.

  We talked about love, and they whispered a few secrets in my ear. Get yourself a fisherman lover if your business is fish. A baker if your business is bread. A customs officer if you’re in the import-export business. A dockworker if your line of business is loading and unloading. I stifled a laugh and exclaimed:

  “Can I give myself to anyone just for love?”

  “So what’s love except for an agreement to defend one’s interests?”

  “If I ever get myself a lover, I’ll find a man with a degree, like my Tony, who can talk about life,” I answered.

  “Educated men? They talk a lot about philosophy. They can say things like: The lower orifice of the digestive canal responsible for expelling human excreta. So many words to describe an asshole. They offer you flowers, dinners, lights, music, poems, just so that they can get to that place a few millimeters away. They waste a lot of time on trivia. They get in the way of business.”

  “How unfair you are! Listen, a lover who’s a minister improves your status and can solve lots of problems.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong … ministers, politicians, directors, and all that race of refined folk are damaging for business. They make you dress expensively to be in their company. They eat well and talk pretty. They frequent palatial houses and are profligate. They sign documents with a gold pen. They glitter on the surface, but they’re no good at managing money. They’re poor.”

  “You people are exaggerating!”

  “Where’s the exaggeration? You have to make an appointment with them to discuss a problem, and when they agree to help, they flash their credit card or write a check. It’s better to be the lover of the black marketeer on the corner of the street because at least he’s got money in his pocket and is always available.”

  I died laughing at the secrets more experienced women passed on to me.

  “Rami, use xitique, our own credit and savings system. Join xitique. You’ll see how quickly your life improves.”

  I joined xitique under pressure from my market women friends. And, my God, did it make things better! Xitique is a form of compulsory savings. It’s a traditional credit system that has operated for centuries, and is far better than bank credit.

  We sold used clothes for six months. We built up some capital. Then Lu and I each opened a little shop for selling new clothes, and business began to blossom. Saly built a shop. She sells drink in bulk. She’s got a café and tearoom. Ju managed to get herself a small warehouse and sells drink wholesale. Mauá opened a downtown hairdressing salon, but still does some work out of her garage. She’s got countless customers.

  We’ve managed to get ourselves a minimum amount of security to buy bread, salt, and soap without having to put up with the humiliation of begging for crumbs. My rivals are ecstatic, and regret the way they once gave me a beating, but I tell them: It doesn’t matter. That’s how things were done in those days. What did you expect?

  17

  My mother-in-law has been dashing between houses and along different routes. She visits her new daughters-in-law, her grandchildren, showering them with candy and chocolates. She has been winning them over. She visits brothers, sons, their families. She seeks alliances and treaties. She spreads news by word of mouth. She seeks votes of confidence. She embarks on a campaign in favor of the extended family, her daughters-in-law should be subject to a bride price. I’m not speaking for myself, she told me. She speaks on behalf of those children who grow up abandoned, ignorant of their origins. She speaks in the name of those women caught in the desert of life, and who produce souls that enhance our family but who live outside the shadow that is rightfully theirs. They are called single mothers, confused with divorcées and adulteresses because they live far from the shadow of their man. She shouts “down with monogamy,” that inhuman system that marginalizes some women while privileging others, that gives a roof, love, and sense of belonging to some children, while others are rejected and left to run around in the streets. She shouts “down with” the new custom of having a spouse for all to see, and various concubines, with children hidden away. My grandchildren, marginalized by the law, are clamoring for recognition. The blood of the enlarged family should be reunited in the shade of our ancestors’ great tree. My son is beautiful, she said. Women cannot resist his charms. My son’s blood is strong, every time he makes love, he produces a child. My son is a spreading root. He’s bamboo. He spreads through fields, creeping over the ground, multiplying himself. My son is destined to be a king, a patriarch. His father only had three children, but God has given us Tony to regain our family’s fertility and extend our great name to the four corners of the world. She went and confronted her priest brother. Because of your doctrine our African families are no more than isolated mountaintops floating in the clouds. You, Father, are a product of polygamy, the son of a third wife. How can you condemn polygamy, which brought you into the world? Keep your bad influences away from my son. Leave him in peace with his wives and children, we Africans are happy like that. All those women should have their bride price paid.

  My mother-in-law turned herself into an arrow. She projected herself against good Christian family customs and became a spokesperson for the return to roots. She met no resistance.

  The bride-price cycle began with Ju. It was paid in money rather than cattle. The mother was paid a lot of money in a bride price wedding ceremony. The children were legally recognized, but hadn’t been presented to the family spirits. They needed to be brought from their mother’s house into the protection of the patriarch’s shadow in an act of bride-price profiling, a way of giving them legitimacy given that they’d been born outside the rules of the game for a polygamous family. After this, Lu had her bride price paid and her children were acknowledged. The northern women were astounded. This bride-price story was new to them. They wanted to say no to it given that it was against their cultural norms. But it involved a large amount of money. Money for their parents, money for them, and money for their children. Money that was needed to be able to eat, live, and invest. When it’s a question of a lucky break, any culture will do. They forgot matriarchy and said yes to the patriarchal tradition. We spent three months going from one party to another. It was important to get the bride-price payments out of the way in one fell swoop before Tony changed his mind. In all the bride-price ceremonies, we introduced a novelty feature: the bride-price certificate, including all the contractual clauses but without the bit that talks about conjugal assistants in the event of the husband’s incapacity. That would look a bit immoral, don’t you think? All on officially stamped foolscap paper, typed and signed by all parties present at the ceremonies. With so many signatures, it looked like more than just a certificate, and more like a petition. Well, we’re in the age of the written word, aren’t we?

  I was left depressed. My husband had been cut up into little pieces and shared around. All my assets had been shared around, our social security, our retirement savings, our comfort that was being tossed to the ground like a handful of salt into a saucepan of water. I share
bread and wine in communion. I share my husband among five, while Lu and I share a lover. Ah, how deep love is! It cuts up my heart and destroys me with each breath. Life, you force me to accept a few crumbs of love that belong to me alone. You make me die little by little, cell by cell, and you bleed me dry, one drop at a time. Farewell, my only complete husband, my love and intimacy. Ah, life! You make me wear this muzzle just to keep Tony near me. If I were to refuse this muddled state of affairs, my love would be scared off and run away.

  We had our first formal meeting of the conjugal parliament, summoned by my mother-in-law and the old aunties in order to give us lessons and to tell us everything we might wish to know about polygamous love.

  “By formally marrying five wives, my Tony has reached the top of the mountain,” my mother-in-law declares. “He is the star that shines on high, and should be treated as such. And you, Rami, are the first wife. You are the pillar of this family. All these women revolve around you and owe you allegiance. Give them orders. Punish them if necessary. You are the keeper of the throne and the scepter. Exercise your power over them, submit them to your command. You are the queen of this household.”

  I felt I had been promoted within the hierarchy of this tyranny. I’ve been given a whip they call a scepter, to beat any unfortunate women who cross my path. But I’m not going to whip anyone. I’m going to lock this piece of insignia in a trunk and chuck it into the sea where it’s nice and deep.

  “To start with, you should plan a conjugal rota. Your husband should stay with each of you for one week at a time on a rotational basis. Whoever is menstruating when it’s their turn should inform him immediately. You mustn’t soil Tony’s body with the impurities of your menstrual blood. This could make him fall ill with the type of illness that causes a man’s testicles to swell to the size of pumpkins.”

  Those old ladies have nightingales in their throat, but twitter morbidly like slave women. Their toothless old mouths have been sucked dry by all the blows they’ve received in life. Their lips have never known kisses, only lamentations.

  “You must serve your husband on your knees, as the law demands. Never serve him from the pot, but only on dishes. He can’t touch china or go into the kitchen. When you serve him chicken, don’t forget the rules. Men should be served the best pieces: the thighs, breast, and gizzard. When you serve beef, the best steaks are for him, the biggest bones full of marrow. You need to invest in him, not only with your love but with his food. His dish should be the fullest and most brimming with food, so that he may have the strength to produce healthy children, for without him, the family doesn’t exist.”

  We didn’t burst out laughing, but we certainly felt like it. Faced with this litany that has sent women to sleep down the ages, we kept our silence.

  “You modern women are in the habit of feeding men any old way. You keep food in the fridge for days on end. A man should be fed fresh food. The stove needs to be lit every day. Don’t give them potatoes that have been cooked the previous day, because this swells men’s testicles, especially those of growing boys. Never eat a fish head, or that of a cow or of a goat, because that is man’s food. The head of an animal represents the head of the family. The head of the family is the man.”

  “In the father’s absence, the eldest male child takes command of the family, even if he’s a baby, he’s a leader, he’s the head of the family by substitution.”

  “Organize a conjugal rota. One week in each house is enough for living life together. It’s healthy to go to sleep and wake up in the same place. The man shouldn’t have to travel around the city each day, because it’s tiring and can lead to an early death. There are many advantages to this system: in times of affliction, you will all know where to find him.”

  Their voices are like salt on the breeze, gradually gnawing away at us like niter. They only know about what pain has taught them. They know of no other world except that of darkness itself. And they see darkness in front of them as the only source of their wisdom.

  Ah, Tony! I’m not the only one on your trail now. There are five of us. Let’s see if you can escape us now, you cunning little rat!

  18

  The weeks pass. We nourish our bodies with dreams and memories of loves that only last a week. Good things don’t fill our belly, what’s good doesn’t last long. Polygamy is precisely this. Filling our soul with a tiny grain of love. Holding back our body’s fire with hands of straw. Proffering our lips to the passing breeze and harvesting kisses from the dust-laden wind. Waiting. Listening to your man’s sighs in another woman’s arms and hiding your jealous feelings. Feeling you miss him while not suffering. Feeling pain without crying.

  We draw up the conjugal rota just as we were taught, and we’ve even become experts in the matter. Tony has been with Mauá, but the end of his stay with her has arrived. Here we are together to take delivery of the baton. Passing the man from one set of hands to the next with the care of people carrying an egg. I, as the first lady, always ask some questions as part of the handover ritual.

  “Mauá,” I ask, “how is Tony?”

  “In terms of health, he’s been good, he ate well.”

  “And how did you serve him?”

  “On my knees.”

  “Did you make chicken?”

  “Yes.”

  “What bits did you give him?”

  “The thighs, the breast, and the gizzard.”

  “Excellent. Now tell us about the other matter.”

  “He was all right, he sang and whistled while he was having his bath, as if he were completely happy, but when the time came for it, all he did was sleep! And how he slept! He’d snore like a trumpeter at the gates of paradise, and that would be that.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “Nothing!”

  Mauá’s face has lost its recent sheen and her words tumble loosely like leaves when winter announces its arrival. Her eyes are misty. A couple of teardrops fall. Love’s like that. One day it sets you soaring as high as a church steeple, the next it sends you plummeting to the ground, making you wallow like a worm in the fetid waters of a bog.

  “They say this sort of thing sometimes happens,” Ju explains, “it’s probably due to stress, too much work, depression, whatever!”

  “I also thought it might be that and tried everything. I put aphrodisiacs in his soup, his stew, his curry, his tea. Nothing worked!”

  “Nothing?”

  “That’s right. At first I thought he was ill. But one day, I found a thread of hair in his clothes. A long, thick hair, not one of those artificial hairs. I got suspicious, I got on his trail and found him out. He’s got another woman.”

  “Another?”

  “Yes, another.”

  She speaks of betrayal and her pained words spill out like javelins. She sobs convulsively like a kettle on the boil. On her moistened face, the different colors of her makeup mingle to form black, blue, red tears, and she turns into a multihued smudge.

  “I’d just like to meet this woman who’s been capable of competing with me, Mauá Salé. I’d like to see the face of this woman who has affronted me. I’ve wasted my time preparing Makua love potions so that he can live it up with some other woman.”

  Love’s thorns open up wounds, gashes, cancers, and no one knows the cure, for if we did, we would certainly administer it to Mauá to heal her pain. She’s like a poisoned flower, fading, dying.

  “Why are you crying?” Ju asks in an ironic tone, taking advantage of the moment to wash her dirty laundry. “What you’re feeling, we’ve all felt, Mauá. We’ve suffered betrayals, one after the other. You chose a polygamist, so what are you complaining about?”

  “Are you hurt?” Saly asks sarcastically. “Weren’t you aware this is how things are? Are you sad? Who told you Tony was only for you? Did he by any chance tell you that you were his be-all and end-all? Oh dear, Mauá! For a man who’s had five women, you might as well add a zero and call it fifty. Tony will have fifty, you’ll see. When it comes to po
lygamy, passion has no limits, Mauá.”

  The other three take the opportunity to get even. Any woman who’s been rejected gets some consolation from another woman’s misfortune. The cowards gang up together to hurl stones at Mauá – beating the shadow without touching the tree.

  I’m the only one not to say a word. What for? I’ve got four massive betrayals on my conjugal curriculum. One more, one less, what difference does it make? Polygamy is man’s destiny and chastity is that of women. A man kills to save his honor and is applauded. A woman expresses her jealousy and she’s condemned. In this thing of creating man in his own likeness, God failed in one aspect of the formula: He’s still a bachelor and men are polygamous.

  To be honest, I’ve no bone to pick with polygamy. I’ve already explained my problem: If I complain too much, I lose my husband completely. If I play his game, I remain quietly in my own little corner in the knowledge that he’s not straying too far. For the rest, in our traditions, polygamy depends on each man’s power. The king of our land possessed the power to have more than twenty women, and Aunt Maria was the twenty-fifth. Ministers, governors, and all the nobility had sufficient power for between five and ten women. The poor, with few assets, were limited to three. In fact, three is the ideal number. A man with one wife is a kind of senior bachelor, the chief of the bachelors, he’s insignificant, he can’t elect or be elected because he belongs to the class of those who lack experience. A man with two wives is almost a man. He can give an opinion but doesn’t have the power of decision. He can’t be a king or a regent or a local ruler. A man with three wives is a true man, he can mediate in disputes, and conduct the affairs of his family. In our traditions, women don’t have a right to vote; apart from this, there’s no voting among the aristocracy, but women acquire some status. A woman only gains status if she agrees to share her husband, if she overcomes her jealousy, if she preserves the values enshrined in tradition, and carries out all that the law prescribes. The wife who suggests to her husband he should marry again and who helps him choose a new wife gains a considerable amount of prestige.