“I’m not hungry, you’re the one who is hungry, go and cook.”
“Ha! Why will you be here and I’ll be cooking?”
“That’s a sin, abi?” She asked with disdain. “If I didn’t come, nko?”
“But you told me you were coming, that’s why I was waiting for you. If you aren’t coming, I know where to get food from but I cannot be cooking for myself when I have a wife.”
“No, David, you don’t have a wife, you have a girlfriend.”
“What’s the difference, you just like complaining all the time as if you don’t know the duties of a wife. Your aunt is a woman, why don’t you ask her to teach you? Come here, cook, you’ll say no, see my clothes, wash, you’ll say you are tired. Let’s play in the bedroom, you’ll say no, what’s your usefulness, why do you bother coming at all?!” He shouted aggrieved.
“You are right, I don’t know why I bothered.”
Femi said even as she promised herself she would not cry. “Did you once ask me how my trip went? What I went to do? Who I stayed with? You never give me one word of appreciation, ever. Imagine you asking me about my usefulness, me, David? Let me leave you for your conscience. You want a footstool, a traditional woman abi? I wish you all the best.
Me, I am too tired of this relationship, it’s not equal, all you want is a slave and a complaint loader and I have spent enough of my life with other people judging me, no more! I won’t come back here again, goodbye.”
She grabbed her bag and left his house even as he shouted her name. When she got to the gate of the compound, she turned around and wasn’t surprised to see he hadn’t followed her.
**************
That night as Fiyin slept, he wasn’t surprised when his dreams were of over 100 Femis dressed in different attires and chasing him about. Femis in bikini, Femis in Ankara, Femis in skirts, Femis in undies, Femis in suits and Femis in wedding gowns. At the end of the dream, he saw the Femi that could save him from all the other Femis. The Femi in orange lipstick and cornrows, wearing a purple shapeless gown. As they ran from the other Femis, her sandals cut and he had to carry her and keep running.
He woke up from his dream, sweating, his heart beating too fast and he acknowledged that he was in trouble.
*****************
That night as Femi lay on her bed, she tried hard to reawaken the feelings of happiness and pleasure that had taken her through the day but she couldn’t. She realised David had completely eclipsed the entire day with a few short words and she had let him.
She tried to remember a time David had been a worthwhile boyfriend but she couldn’t. She realised that in their 15 months long relationship, he had always been shallow, selfish, demeaning and lazy. She couldn’t remember him saying a good word to her, just complaining all the time. She wanted to be really angry with him but she couldn’t because in her own way, like with Tiwa, she had empowered him to think he could always trample on her feelings.
She knew when she met David at Ronke and Ben’s wedding that he wasn’t her spec. Usually, she liked competent men who knew how to handle themselves but David had been a whiner almost from the beginning. She had agreed to date him because she knew his family, he was Ronke’s cousin and because she was scared of being alone. She had wanted badly to have someone else around when Ronke went to Abuja but David had never filled that role. It seemed like it was when she needed a friend that he needed to rant.
He was always complaining about work, about being broke, about how unfairly he was treated by others because he was short. She realised now that with her low self-esteem, the last person she should have chosen to be with was someone with a chip on his shoulders.
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