The shoes don’t fit III: Whose life am I living?
Sundays were my favorite in my past life. I’d spend my mornings and afternoons in bed, thinking about almost nothing, and sometimes reading. I’d have junk food and drink wine and do just nothing. My Sundays have become the worst days now. They remind me of the life I used to live, a life that was taken away from me. These days I lie here and today in particular, overcome by thoughts of the husband. He is hardly here most of the time, especially during the day, and at night he gets home very late. It’s not his absence that I mind, but his presence. I pretend to be asleep many times just to avoid sleeping with him. Even then, he’d shake me so hard that I’d be forced to ‘wake up’. And then his aggressive thing rubs against my thighs, his hard cold hands on my arms, pressings me against the bed to make sure that I hardly move. And while the stench of his stale underarms suffocates my nostrils, his movement on top of me makes me numb. “Weni o mosadi waka. Ke go filwe ke badimo”- he would say in between his forceful invasion of my physical and emotional being. I hate him. I hate my parents. I hate my grandmother. I hate tradition.
I day dream of the day his life, like mine, gets discarded. I desperately want him to be erased out of the earth’s surface. Maybe have his face defaced before, and his body dismembered. In that way I will feel I have power, even if it’s just a little bit of it. I long to be in control of my life again, and that would only happen if the husband disappears from the surface of the earth. Cold body, shut eyes, slit throat and dismembered body. These make up the best picture I have in mind of his body when it is discovered. Slit the throat that lets out the groans when he forcefully invade me, destroy the face that house the eyes that glistens with terror, and cut into pieces the body that carry the mind of oppression and enables his body parts to pin me down. Perfect.
“Koko’o”- the husband’s sister’s voice calls from the door.
She opens the door immediately and enters before I could tell her to do so. I don’t like her and I avoid her as much as I can. The fact that we both stay in two different houses in the same yard makes it difficult for me to avoid her altogether. But my wish is that when the brother dies, and I leave this place, I’ll never see her, her mother and her aunt again.
“Weni mogadibo, wa tseba ke tshwenywa ke toro”- she says, looking like she’s deep in thoughts.
“Wa tseba mašego a mararo ke lora toro e tee man. Mo torong ya gona, ke bona weni o emi o hlatswa diaparo ka gare ga meetsi a makhubedu okare ke madi. Sefahlego sa gago se phadima se bontšha ona le khutšo mo moyeng. Namile ge ke tsena ka moraleng ke hwetša monna a robetši mo fatse, efela sefahlego sa gagwe se nkgakile, ga ke kgone go bona gore ke mang ka ge a ripa ripilwe ka thipa”.
“Ele gore why toro ya gona e go bontšha nna fela? Goba ge le dutše le phela le nagana gore nna ke mmolai to an extent ya gore when you go to sleep the only face you see is me with blood soaked clothes? Ke gore botse le ntlišitše mo ka kgapeletšo, ke rwala boima bošego pele ke robala, ebile le mpona ke le mmolai. Le nnyaka eng because already you have taken my life away? I raged at her, without swallowing saliva.
“Aowa mogadibo, ke be ke sare o mmolai. Ke be ke no re ke go sherele seo ke se bonego ge ke robetši ka ge ke se bone makga a mararo. O nswarele hle, ke be ke sare ke ya o kgopiša”
“Tsamaya motho wa Modimo, leave this house at once and go and have more dreams of me killing people. I am sure soon you will be establishing sehlaka sa consultation ya batho ba go lala ba lora babolai. Etšwa. Out!” – I led her out of my bedroom and immediately locked the door.
The reason she was looking at me with piercing eyes yesterday has now become clear. Her dreams do not mean much to me. If anyone dies, I will not be there and will not be responsible. And as a matter of fact, I will be happy because the door that leads to freedom that I desperately want to open is shut by this family, with the help of mine. Maybe they should all die, his family and mine, since their friendship is built on the pain that has folded me for the past eight months. I want them dead, and will not be fazed by a dream. They should all suffer for this pain that is bogging me down, for the pain holding me back, and for the constant absence of the answer I keep on asking myself; whose life am I living?
The story continues in the next segment of #StorytellingThursday