Kaka was driving as fast as she possibly could in spite of the pouring rain.
She glanced into the rearview mirror at her one year old baby girl fast asleep in her child seat. She was in her cute Barney pyjamas and her face was as peaceful as an angel.
“Evil angel,” she muttered under her breath as she cursed DNA for giving her all her father’s facial features. She glanced at the sleeping child again. She could almost see the crimson red trickle over the right eye moving towards the right nostril. She shook her head to get the image out and concentrated on what she could make of the road in the heavy downpour. She saw bright red tail lights a few kilometers ahead and thought to herself to follow them. She was going to drive tonight as long as there was a road underneath her tyres. She had money in her bag and fuel in her tank and she was going to go as far as they could take her.
She glanced at her baby once more and suddenly felt pity for the innocent child. What on earth was she going to tell her when she asked why she couldn’t go back home? What was she going to say when she asked for her daddy?
Her mind went back to the Jide, her husband, lying almost lifeless on the living room floor. She was certain that their expensive Persian rug would be soaked in his blood by now. May be he was dead, she thought almost emotionless, or maybe he was just unconscious.
She too had been in that same position, almost a year ago. She recalled that she had just had the baby and they had been arguing about his mother coming to live with them after her first stroke. Her stand was that it would be difficult for her to take care of the baby, go to work and still cater to an invalid. He felt insulted that his mother would be called an invalid instead of believing in faith that she was “strong”. She had emphasized that truly his mother was an invalid since the stroke had left the right side of her body paralyzed and so needed constant attention. She had barely finished her statement when he had given her a resounding slap. It wasn’t one of those slaps that gave you the opportunity to stand and be shocked, it was the kind of slap that sent her spinning across the living room and over the sofa.
She smirked sarcastically as she remembered trying to fight back with all the strength she could muster. That was another mistake because he took that to mean disrespecting his position as head of the house. After a while she pulled her thighs to her chest and curled up into a ball on the floor assuming the only defensive posture she had learnt from her childhood karate lessons. He kicked and punched for a while but when he saw it was impossible to hit her hard enough in that position, he reached for his belt. He had gotten a couple of lashes in before he lost grip of the steel buckle. Amidst her baby’s wailing, she had heard the clang of the metal as it broke into her skull.
She had awoken the next morning in the hospital with short term memory loss and six stitches over her left ear. She recalled there were flowers all over her hospital room and Jide was as apologetic as ever. She had sworn to leave him after that incident but when he got family and friends to plead with her, she decided to stay.
The rain was starting to stop and she breathed a sigh of relief. She looked into the rearview mirror at the face of her baby. The same face had brought her so much pain and unhappiness. Now she only wished she had seen the signs. She wished she had seen something that would make her suspicious before she married him. But there had been nothing, nothing at all.
When Jide proposed to her a year after they started dating, he had just started working in one of the prominent commercial banks. However, after their wedding, the CBN consolidation exercise took place and his bank had to merge with another bank and in the process, Jide lost his job. Shortly after that, he became born again and started spending more time in their neighborhood church than he did at home. They were both hopeful for a new job while she was managing a small business centre within the area. When business was good, she was able to provide for both of them. The real problem started when Jide had a disagreement with the Senior Pastor of the church which led to him leaving the church to establish his own. At first, she had been unsure of the idea of starting a church in their home but she had prayed about it and decided to play the supportive wife.
...to be continued
