10 DAYS - Episode 6

Edisemi Thompson

I stand staring at Butch with astonishment, anger, and an entirely different kind of emotion I can’t fully explain. It’s like a cross between dismay and agony, an emotion that only fuels my anger. It hurts that while I was busy ignoring his calls and expecting him to be penitent, he had discarded me and was routing for his alternative. As I stand watching his smile spread wider, as if this moment of painful discovery and truth meant nothing, I begin to wonder how many alternatives he has. First, there was Julie, now it’s Njideka. In barely two days, I’ve discovered that the man I’m going to get married to has two sidechics. What should I expect tomorrow?

I browse through my mind for any of my girlfriends who could be his next target or who already is a sidechic. With Njideka eliminated, there’s none other. This does nothing to relieve me. Julie was never my girlfriend, she’s always been Butch’s, and with the speed of these discoveries, I should expect to uncover more and more of his girlfriends. My heart sinks just as Butch’s smile stretches to its limit, disclosing dentition so perfect and white it could win a Close-Up advert contract. I bunch my hands into fist, already imagining knocking off two teeth. Hell, he needs more than two missing teeth. He needs his face disfigured beyond recognition and repair.

Njideka takes me by the hand – by my clenched fist – and drags me away from Butch. I let myself be taken away. I’m close now to transferring the aggression to Njideka, the sly bitch who’s had my man behind my back for God knows how long.

She takes me to her mother and the look I see on the woman’s face erases most of the feelings I’ve been building. She wears on her the look of a mother when her daughter sneaks into the house by 2 am, wearing a provokingly skimpy dress and carrying her stilettoes in her hands. A cane in hand to restore sense back to this foolish daughter is the only thing Njideka’s mother has missing.

“I’m sorry, ma.” I genuflect.

“It’s alright my daughter.” She responds, unsmiling. “There’s work to be done in the kitchen.”

I watch her leave. I watch Njideka close in on her and springs up a chat on catching up with her. I watch Butch retreat to a corner where an elderly man, who must be Njideka’s dad, sits watchful with a glass of beer in hand. I feel like a real human in a virtual game – activities speeding on and around me like I’m non-existent and nonessential. I’m torn between walking over to Butch and the elderly man – to greet him, if not to reprimand Butch – and running up to Njideka and her mom on their way to the kitchen.

I nod the elderly man’s way and hurry towards the kitchen, not minding if he acknowledges my greeting. At the kitchen, Njideka is already grating carrots. There’s cabbage in a bowl, green peas in their pods, green pepper and cucumbers in another. Njidka’s mom is stirring something on the stove. She pulls out the spoon and hit the round edge of it onto her palm. She brings the hand to her tongue, closes her eyes to savour the taste, then opens them with a radiant smile washing her face.

“Good.” She says and catches me staring at her.

Even here, I feel out of place. I shuffle legs that have no interest in movement and look from mother to daughter, as if by looking I could be relieved of this moment, asked to leave the kitchen and the house entirely. It’s my biggest wish at this point to be far away from the cheater and his concubine, far far away from this madness encircling me. Hate spreads in me, it’s black liquid pumping at high pressure into my system, corrupting my good thoughts. I feel like an overripe tomato with a detonator planted inside it, ticking down to explosion.

“Young lady, why not help with the cabbage?” Njideka’s mom asks.

I hear the request but it seems to be coming from a very far place in my mind. I stand gazing at her until her mouth begins to move again. I blink twice and somehow the action does the job. I’m transported back to this reality and dimly I think, Njideka the cheating bitch.

“I’m sorry, ma.” I smile.

“It’s the second time you’re saying that. Are you alright?”

“Yes, ma.”

“Oh please, leave out the ma.”

“She prefers to be called ‘mommy’.” Njideka chips in and giggles.

Bitch, Bitch, Cheating Bitch!

“Oh, forgive me, mommy.” I say.

“Just get busy. This is a women’s territory, you can’t stand like a stranger in here unless there are balls between your legs.”

That must be funny because Njideka is barking with laughter. I feel like crossing the distance to her and slapping the laughter from her mouth, slapping her crazy. I walk with a forced smile to the cabbage, which is, right beside the bitch, Njideka. There’s water in the bowl, I dip my hands in it and sprinkle some on the ball of fleshy leaves. I lift the washed cabbage from the bowl and turn to Njideka.

“I need a knife and tray.” But I really don’t need any of these.

I know what a cabbage should look like after shredding, coleslaw is something I don’t joke about, but how to turn this cabbage into coleslaw is something I can’t figure out. Something in my look hints Njikdeka of the difficulty of the task. She drops her carrots and takes the cabbage from me.

“Let me do this. There’s a chopping board over there.” She directs a finger between the cutlery rack and a pile of pots. “Use it chop the green peas and pepper.”

“How about the carrots?”

“I’m done with it.”

I look into the bowl and discover with dismay that she’s done with the carrot. It’s the only thing I can manage to do in here. I get the chopping board and knife and Njideka, being nice, picks a pepper and a pod of green pea and shows me how it’s chopped. I take cue and soon pick a chop-chop-chop rhythm. This seem to occupy my mind, but not enough to prevent the radical thought of how to deal with the cheating bastards – Butch, Julie and Njideka. I analyse my love for Butch at this point, weigh it on a percentile scale, and discover it stands at a pulsing ninety percent. I bare my teeth in annoyance. I wish to get rid of him and his whores in a savage manner they’ll never forget, in a way that would form the underlying basis of how they perceive relationships before they encroach into it with their cheating ways. Just how am I going to do this when I’m still deeply in love with him?

“What’s your name, young lady? I don’t want to have to call you young lady again.”

It takes a couple of seconds for my brain to shut down my current train of thought and interpret the question thrown my way. As much as I don’t want to appear dislodged, I can’t help it. I’d been down the dark, greasy, mechanical world of the engine house of my thoughts and once there, you can’t just snap back into reality.

“Pardon?”

If Njdeka’s mom was a smiley, she’d be that frustrated one with a palm covering the face. My question washes away the cheer whatever question she’d asked had left on her face. She looks drained and tired, the face of a woman trying to speak to a wall to open up so she can access the treasure that lies beyond it.

“Mommy, your memory is getting shorter oh. I introduced her to you nau. I told you her name is Edisemi, the one…”

“Shhh, I needed her to tell me herself.”

“Edisemi is my name.” I manage to smile.

Njideka’s mom takes down the pot from the stove and places another on it. From the way she hefts it onto the stove, I can tell it’s heavy. I attempt to guess what’s in it then conclude almost instantly that it’s none of my business. Whatever we’re doing in here is none of my business. My time here, I realise with some sense of relief, is short and growing shorter at each passing second.

“I saw the way you were looking at our husband. You seemed to be completely lost in his magnificence.”

“Magnificence, ah ahn?” Njideka asks and bursts into laughter.

“Yes oh, abi Edisemi is there a better word to describe a man that hot?”

What?

Njideka turns a smiling face at me, expecting to burst into nonsensical bray of laughter at any word that comes out of my mouth. Yes, that’s how dumb the chic is at this moment. She knows what shock I had to cushion right there at the door at the discovery that my man has never been my man but ‘our man’, a shared man, yet there they stand, joking about this bitter truth.

“I have nothing to say, mommy.” The last word comes out feeling vinegary and disjointed from the other words.

Surprisingly, Njideka doesn’t laugh. God must’ve advised her against it.

“You surely can’t find anything to say about it.” The mom says as she gets bottles of malt from the fridge. “You’re still lost for words even when free from his overwhelming presence.”

“Uh huh?” Njideka urges her on, shredding the cabbage and smiling the way a teenage girl would at the silly things her crush tells her.

I say nothing but chop-chop-chop. I’m getting slow on this.

“Yes. A man like Buchi has that effect on any woman. From the very first day Njideka brought him home, I felt it and I was proud of her. She had just brought home a man that made me feel the way I felt at meeting her dad

I’m not listening to this, am I?

“That’s the man for you, I told her. In her eyes, she fought me, but in her heart, she accepted it. I was once a young girl. I’ve had my fair share of men and dicks, but in the end, you always choose a man over a good dick.”

Njideka bursts into laugher and as I see tears roll down her cheeks, I wish they were from the pain of my revenge – the consequence of her being a cheat. I drop the knife.

“So, which is Buchi, a man or a good dick?” Njideka asks between laughs.

“He’s a good man. Now I’ve taken the good out of the dick and added to man to show you how much he’s worth, but you can tell me about his dick.” Njideka’s mom places the three bottles on the table.

“No way!” Njideka giggles. “Maybe Edisemi can tell you about that.”

“Really?” Her mom turns to me. “What don’t I know? Tell me, girl.”

“What you don’t know is that you’re a filthy, stupid, mother-of-a-whore. An old cunt that revels in silly dirty jokes with her bastard daughter!”

Pin drop silence spreads throughout the kitchen. Only the sound of the gas stove fire and the steady low hum of the fridge is heard. Njideka’s mouth hangs ajar and I imagine a trail of spittle coursing down it. The shocked expression on her face is comical. Her mother holds a bottle and stares at me expressionless. It stabs my heart to think that those words haven’t reached her core yet.

“Yes. Look at you, greying and almost senile with thoughts and talks of good dick. How much of it has your husband withheld from you lately?”

“Is there a misunderstanding here?” She asks, turning to her daughter as if for support.

I see the first flicker of emotion pass fleetingly across her face, I feel more of it in the tremor of her voice. I need more.

“Oh, how about we discuss your husband and his retarding bed skills? Does his dick still get hard enough to journey into your dry well, or you don’t mind him dry-humping you? You’re getting tired of the dry-humps, right? You certainly need a good dick in you to feel young. You---

“Oh God!” She wails. “Sweety, please make her stop.”

Njideka finally reaches the switch to the doorway of her mouth. She toggles it and her mouth snaps shut. She opens it again and words doesn’t come out of it. She closes it and steps forward.

“Edisemi, please…” She finally manages to say.

I turn to her.

“How dare you?”

“We didn’t mean in any way to mock you, or anything…”

Cheating Bitch Cheating Bitch Cheating Bitch Cheating…

“Fuck you and whatever you mean and don’t mean. All this is a game to you, right? I was fooled into thinking you were a nice person, a friend who understands the plight I’m facing. This was why you needed to leave me alone in the house. To run into Butch’s arms and laugh at me. To come here afterwards and discuss with your slutty mom how the era of two women sharing a dick just ended today. Oh, there’s Julie, have you told her about her?”

“Stop this, Edisemi. These things you’re saying are not nice.”

“But the ones your mom says are nice, right? Go ahead, bitch, tell her about Julie. Tell her how good Butch’s dick is. Come on, tell her. We’re three sharing the damn dick. She’ll strategize a way to get rid of Julie for you and maybe you both can share him.”

I emit a high-pitched laughter. That’s a cackle, right? It hurts my heart to produce such ugly sound. It sounds totally unlike me, but in a situation like this, I have to become a witch if it’s what it takes to drive the message home to the cheaters club.

“Here’s something you all have to know. I’ll have to be dead before any of your further plans will work. You hear me?” I bark into Njideka’s mom’s face.

She retreats backwards, loses her grip on the drink and almost loses her footing. The bottle of malt falls sideways on the table and gurgles out dark liquid. Njideka rushes to it and stands it back on the table.

“You better start planning to kill me. You better, because over my dead body will I watch any of you take my man away from me.”

Now, how’s that for a final remark. Classic, right?

I turn to the door and am not surprised to see Butch and the elderly man crowding the entrance. I’d raised my voice at some point while driving the message home to the bitches. I’m not surprised that the men are as nosy as their women.

I march up to them and slam Butch’s face with a thunderous slap. They clear from the door instantly like bugs fleeing an insecticide scene. I make my way through the door without turning back. I feel elated. I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time.

Now, how’s that for an exit? You tell me, friends, you better do.


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