Chapter 10: Old Patterns, New Choices

Tunde had once punished house helps for my sake too.

That time, I’d just married him, and the house helps looked down on my trader background, making things hard for me behind my back.

Some were dowry girls from Tunde’s late mother.

Some were his nanny.

All were big names in the Chief’s house.

I planned to endure for now, then sort them out later.

But when Tunde found out, he sent all of them out to the family’s farm in the village.

The old Chief was angry.

He loved Tunde’s mother deeply and pampered the girls she left behind.

My aunty was just a stand-in for his late wife.

Those house helps, in a way, were also stand-ins for the late wife.

In the end, Tunde was punished to kneel in the family shrine for seven days and nights, to reflect on his actions.

I sneaked to the shrine at midnight to kneel with him.

Tunde wanted to chase me away, but I squeezed in beside him and held on tight.

"I’m not going. This trouble started because of me. Besides, we’re husband and wife—we should share our suffering."

Tunde’s voice was cold and distant.

"It’s not about you. They’ve been arrogant for too long and needed to be dealt with."

Every word was like drawing a boundary between us.

But I just smiled quietly, feeling secretly happy.

After all, Tunde didn’t deal with them until they offended me, and even then he insisted it wasn’t because of me. I didn’t believe him.

I knelt willingly, but soon my legs went numb, like ants biting.

I quietly shifted from kneeling to sitting, then to lying down, and finally curled up on the mat and slept off.

I slept until morning.

When I woke up, I found Tunde’s outer agbada covering me, smelling faintly of ink.

But Tunde was only wearing thin inner clothes.

He was still kneeling, his back straight like iroko, proper and elegant.

It was early harmattan. The shrine was cold and damp. Tunde gave me his coat, caught cold, and fell seriously sick.

I watched him burning up with fever and almost hated myself for falling asleep in the shrine.

I cried bitterly by his bedside.

He looked at me calmly.

"If one of us must get sick, let it be me. After all, I’m your husband."

I kept repeating those words in my heart.

And somehow, I found them sweet.

My tears were still wet on my cheeks, but I was thinking vaguely—

Tunde must have felt something for me, right?

If not, why drive away his mother’s girls for my sake?

If not, why give me his coat and get sick himself rather than wake me up?

...

It took me most of my life to realize—

Tunde’s actions toward me were never out of love, just out of his good character.

He was a good man.

He just didn’t love me.

Maybe his heart was a locked room, and I never found the key. But at least, I was cherished—even if it was only from the front porch, not the inner chambers.