THE EXCHANGE
Episode 26
My mum did not like the situation in my house. Even though I tried to smile & my husband behaved like a loving husband & father, she could still read between the lines. She finally said that our marriage looked like somebody else had the remote control to it. I told her my husband was going through some spiritual issues but God was already at work & I needed her prayers to see us through the rough patch. She stopped fussing about it & said she would continue to pray for me.
Things actually started to get better maybe bcos I started to see it as a marital crisis & I should learn how to live with it. I decided to make the most of it & enjoy my husband whenever he was physically and emotionally available. I focused my attention more on my children & sought for joy in motherhood. I would tell myself that they were my husbands. I had to roll think of the pregnancy, which for a change did not stress me.
When I was seven months, we left for London & stayed for 4 months before coming back to Nigeria. My mother in-law was overjoyed bcos it was a girl. She called her several names before we finally settled for Omolabake Olufunmike.
After almost 9 years of marriage to Baba T & 3 children (2 boys & 1 girl) to show for it, my father-in-law died. It was fully unexpected as we saw him the night before he died. The doctor said he had a heart attack triggered by stress & exhaustion. He was supposed to travel for medical checkup some months earlier, but he had to reschedule the appointment. Baba T was shattered, that was the first time I saw him cry, he cried like a baby. My mother-in-law was devastated too; she kept saying “Ta ló máa bá mi to gbogbo nkan to wa ni le yii? (Who will help me carry all these responsibilities?)”.
We buried my father-in-law in grand style, in spite of the grief & pain. It was really a tough time for the whole family. My mother-in-law’s just went to pieces and her health took a down turn.
Most of the people that cam, kept encouraging Baba T to be strong for the family & to step up to the responsibility that fate had thrust upon him, so he went back to work almost immediately; the company was in the thick of a rebranding process, with the purpose of wooing some foreign investors, when his dad died. Though the company had foreign investment, it had not really gone international. A lot of
money was involved & there had been talks back & forth. The company needed to make some changes in the management & he had been working late in the office & he sometimes brought work home & worked late into the night. BabaT only worked with him in the office but was not over laboured so that he would not have a relapse. That was why he had to reschedule his medical appointment abroad that led to my father in-law’s state of exhaustion.
Coming home late, working even in the middle of the night…I could tell that Baba T was really stressed. I did my best to support him but he never liked to be disturbed when working. Unfortunately, when the foreign investors finally showed up, the deal fell through bcos there was a huge discrepancy in the financials of the company & it was a downward spiral for Baba T from there on, he just couldn’t handle it, he felt he had disappointed his father, who never really trusted him to head the company. This had brought some disagreement between his mother & father in the past, where she had told him that his friends were all putting their children in positions of authority in their companies, why should BabaT’s own be different? But BabaT’s dad had looked at her & said “Your son has to earn that kind of trust by being responsible.” Now he had proven that his father was right.
He was getting to that point in his state of depression that I thought I should do something before his attitude got out of hand. So I reminded him that his family had done this business successfully before the foreign investors showed interest & it wasn’t doing badly; all he had to do was to return to the drawing board & look for another strategy that would catch the attention of some other investors. That was the first time he insulted my intelligence “What do u know? Your common hairdresser brain cannot even begin to comprehend what happened here… Do you know how much money went down the drain? Do you know how much manpower went into this deal? My father died working this deal & I couldn’t even honor him by sealing it”. He said, looking at me with disdain.
“I’m I’m sorry, I was just trying to help…” I responded, but he cut me off “Please don’t…this is not your fault. We are talking about acumen, business intelligence & lots of money here”. He made me feel so stupid & hurt but I decided to let him be. He started acting very irritable in the house, everything pissed him off. He would go to work, come back in the evening and just go to bed (in the guest room).
I didn’t have my mother in-law to talk to, bcos she was out of the country for medical reasons, so I talked to Bola about this.
He said he was aware of Baba T’s emotional state & was already encouraging him to get over the failed deal and move on. He advised that my support was all my husband needed & I should not let his attitude stop me from encouraging him.
So that night, I had made one of his favourite meal which I learned from his mom & went to the guest room to ‘support’ my husband as advised. I wore a s*xy short nightgown & I knew I looked good,
since my plan was to surprise him with the meal & later crawl into his bed to show my love but guess what I saw? My husband had some kind of bubbling brown substance in a spoon with a lighter under it; he was so engrossed that he didn’t notice that I had come in. He pulled the content of the spoon into a syringe, tied one of his ties around his left arm & injected himself. I didn’t know what to say or do I just froze in one spot. I knew it was hard drugs & as I turned to hurry out of the room, I tripped & crash on the floor, food, plates & all. Boy, did I get the beating of my life; he was so mad that he picked me up & slammed my head in the door. He boasted that he would kill me & nothing would happen, I curled up on one side of the room with blood dripping from a cut on my head. He got out of the room, yelling & cursing, not considering the sleeping children or the domestic staff in the Boys’ Quarter.
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