This is the second of a two-part series. Link to the previous part is at the end of the story.
I was too tired to cry, too exhausted to be sad. I just had enough strength to care for myself and my baby. In 2009, I had my sixth child. Like clockwork, in late 2010, I had my seventh. I’d had enough then. I told Kabiru I was tired of having children.
I wanted to be more than a baby-producing factory.
We talked for a long time. He agreed we had enough children for now. On the surface, I agreed, but in my heart, I knew I was done having children forever.
The children went to school. Kabiru traveled far, making money, and life was good. I became so relaxed and comfortable that when he suggested I return to tailoring school, I was not ready.
I only went back in 2017. My first son had just finished secondary school and gotten into university. We were still in a rented apartment. Kabiru had finished his house, but it still needed paint and furnishings.
I finished tailoring school in 2018. In 2019, Kabiru said he wanted to stop driving. He had buses and people who drove them; he wanted to settle as a businessman in the market. He was getting older and needed to retire from the wheel.
Two weeks before Eid, he told me he got a big deal. He wouldn’t say what it was, but he said that if he drove to Lagos and back for the deal, he would make enough money to start his business without touching his savings.
Kabiru traveled a week before Eid and was supposed to return three days later. He came back four days later, dead and wrapped in a cloth. He had an accident; a trailer fell on the bus and crushed him inside.
They rushed him to the hospital, where he passed away the next day.
Everything happened so fast. After his death, I kept feeling like a bad dream trapped me. Sometimes I sit down and stare at the door, feeling like he will push it open and walk in.
After his death, I realized I knew so little about him. When they asked me for his accounts and personal details, I didn’t know. My family and his brothers came. They buried him there in Abuja.
On the seventh day, a woman came to the house with three children and her older brother. I knew who she was even before she said it.
She was Kabiru’s second wife. They had been married for ten years and had three children together. There was no denying it; they looked exactly like him, like my sons. His family, everyone in Yola, and even my sister knew about her.
I was the only one who didn’t. It had been a while since I went to Yola, and somehow she, the outsider, had become his family’s favorite.
It was a shocking revelation. His family kept it hidden from me for ten years. My own family, even my sister, our matchmaker, knew. I felt so betrayed and hurt.
She had the papers to his buses, which he had registered in her children’s names. They were hers to keep. His bikes were also in her name. I had nothing, and my children had nothing, except for the house he had built and given me the papers for.
His family seized the lands and cows he had in the village. I felt naked and abandoned. His wife left, and our families soon did, too. They asked me to return to Yola with them, but I refused. Abuja was my home now.
Even if it wasn’t, I couldn’t go back to the people who helped my husband keep his wife hidden from me. I felt like a stranger to my family.
The bus drivers’ union came to pay their condolences. After a talk with the landlord, they bought the apartment we were living in. It was hard for me to feel grateful for their help. They, too, knew about the second wife. I was the only one who didn’t.
I didn’t have to worry about accommodation anymore, but my children were in school. My sister came over and spent some time with me, but we weren’t the same. She was awkward around me, and I found it hard to forgive her.
When she left, she bought me a sewing machine with some money and said I could call her anytime I needed help. I never did.
It has been five years now since Kabiru passed away. I haven’t gone back to Yola even once. My sister and even my mother have called many times, but I refuse to go. Kabiru’s family tried to take the kids away, but I displayed some madness to them. They relented and left me with my kids; more like they abandoned me.
I sew. I’ve sent all my children to learn handiwork and skills. Sometimes, some of their father’s friends or acquaintances come over, giving me money and foodstuff. One of them helped me rent out the house Kabiru built before he died after I used the money from my sister to paint it.
It has been hard, but I’ve been coping. My three oldest are done with university now. My oldest is the only one who has a job. His younger brother also learned tailoring, and he does most of the sewing now.
My oldest daughter is to be married by the end of this year. As much as I didn’t want to, I had to send her husband’s family to Yola to meet her father’s people.
One must never trust a man, I learnt that the hard way.
The End.
This is the second and last part of this story. Read part one here.
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