“Come and stay with me” was the first thing he said when I broke the news that I was pregnant. I was taken aback, shocked. Like he had planned this for a long time, and it was his full intention.
We barely had a sure thing going between us when he mentioned that he wanted to have a baby with me. I looked at him cautiously and asked what he meant. He said, “I like you, you like me, why not have an extension of our love?” I disagreed. Usually when men say these things, they have ulterior motives. Get you pregnant and leave you at that, baby mama.
But all my fears of being a single mother vanished slowly into thin air when he didn’t leave or start giving me attitude after the announcement and I started thinking about his offer.
Staying with my boyfriend’s family wasn’t the plan, but after so much back and forth with him, with my auntie who is my caretaker, I folded.
In November I walked to his house with my bags and my stomach almost protruding forward.
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They took to me faster than I expected, faster than any kumawood movie prepared me for, and I made sure to bask in every bit of it. His mother would cook and before she did, she’d ask me, “What is my grandbaby craving?” “What protein would the baby prefer?” His sisters didn’t hide their joy either when I came in.
We became a force, and when he returned home, the smile that formed on his face, I never missed it. Finally I understood what he meant when he said, “There is too much love in my home and our baby needs to grow in it.” He ate with that one.
Then time did its magic and turned the odds against me. Because suddenly I have become the villain in their story. The ant eating up their sugar. They have their reasons, reasons that if you ask me are childish, because they are just people who feel so entitled to everything their brother owns, and my existence is getting in the way of that.
When I first stepped into the house, I was quietly outraged at the way they wasted food. The first time I emptied the bin I was genuinely surprised to find a fresh set of meals going straight to the trash. I called one of his sisters and asked why. She answered, “Oh, it’s from yesterday,” and passed by cheerfully, like that was a full explanation. I went mute.
That is why such a large sum of money is spent on food, I thought. I didn’t know how to broach the topic. I didn’t want to sound intrusive. After all, it was their brother who was funding it, but it troubled me very much about their way of life in this house.
You see how the minority in parliament is working so hard to prove that NDC governance is terrible. Like them, I also got working.
Almost everyday, I came up with demands. I want this, I want that. The baby is craving a bank account, the baby wants to eat this and that. I take the money, I keep it in the account. Then I am forcing him, being on his case to buy us a home like he promised. I have been working hard to ensure that he spent less money on his family’s unnecessary spending.
Later, I overheard that they receive grant money every month, and everything clicked into place.
We woke up one morning and they started acting up. They answered my questions in a low tone, they cooked without serving me. His sisters didn’t come up to my room just to chat. I thought it was just people being people.
It turns out that is not the case, they are fighting me because of their brother’s money. They believe Sammy should be catering to them while they use their grant money for their low-cut extravagant lifestyle: phones, accessories, clothes, and their responsibilities offloaded onto him. One of his sisters is a baby mama to some loser. The other is a school dropout with a long list of demands and no interest in changing that. Her favorite line is, “I’m Barbie, I don’t work, men look after me.” Men may look after you, but not my man.
Going forward, he is focused on me and his baby. My presence has greatly disrupted that arrangement, so now they are frustrating me.
I am slowly being turned into their house help. I cook meals for them while heavily pregnant because I also need to feed myself and this baby, and after they stopped showering me with love, they still expect me to heat food up for them when they return from their roaming activities. I warned one of the sisters, the one who carries herself like she’s older than me. I told her I was not her mate, and that pregnant or not, I would beat her hands down. It was a bluff of course, but she didn’t need to know that. She isn’t speaking to me now. Actually none of them are.
I am being ignored in this house and everything he said about love being here is looking more and more like a lie. I am lonely. Too lonely for a pregnant woman. My mind is roaming, my heart is beating faster. I am scared of being here. The stares I receive are unsettling, but they are not enough to push me out of this house. If anything, they are making me more determined to put everyone in their place.
I Left Him Because He Didn’t Help In The Kitchen
Sammy is normally at work and comes home on weekends. By the time he arrives we are too engrossed in each other, talking about the house we want to buy, the life we are building, talking to the baby in the womb. But he knows. He knows about the massacre going on in this house. When he wants to intervene, I ask him to take the back seat. I don’t like stress. Now that I am seven months gone I hate it even more. And what do you do with stress? You do everything to remove it. That is exactly what I am doing with my time.
But my real problem is this: this war cannot go on forever. I am a pregnant woman, I would give birth soon and I need every help I can get. They are family. As much as it is advisable to dispose family far away when they are troubling you, they are going to be aunties and grandmother to my child. They are important to my boyfriend. From the look of it, we may do life together. Can I keep malice forever? Should my children grow in this kind of family? How do I navigate this and turn out to be the winner and let everyone have their win??
—Wale
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