Her kids used the door on her that very day. She said, “You have to choose: me or your father.” Their answer was not the reality she anticipated. Her two boys, Jason and Lance, turned their backs on her, stepped outside the house, and started for the gate. Their father; her ex husband; was waiting in the car outside. Last week, the final process for the divorce was made and she felt a great victory and also a great loss.

She was wearing her victory colour; white, throughout the entire week as a slur to everyone who knew about Victor and her.

During her university days, Victor was a really great guy. With his slouchy buzz cut, his signature oversized beige jacket, half-dead sandals, and his bright brown eyes. Those eyes were all she could think about back in the day. She would blank out from the Banking and Finance textbook before her and picture his face barely inches away from hers. She would bite her lower lip and imagine Victor’s lips on hers, wondering what it would taste like. She had not kissed before. It wasn’t something she projected as a must-do. But since Victor popped into her life it was all she could think about.

He was a Mechanical Engineering major when they met but he later changed his course due to his low examination scores. Victor wasn’t as smart as he talked and she never cared to realise that at the time. He was her first. She gave him her all without a worry in her heart, and he trained, harnessed, caressed, and nurtured her nakedness in ways she don’t think anybody would understand. Her friends and her parents knew when she started coitus because it showed in her body and in her grades. She worshipped Victor enough to not give a damn about her parent’s warnings when she decided to leave the school hostel and start living with Victor in his off-campus apartment. To her, it was the best adult decision she ever made at that point. To be with the man she cherished to the death of her everyday and have amazing body splooges was nothing more than a fantasy. But here she was, though in a heat with her parents and cut-off from her social circle, with HER man. She wouldn’t leave Victor for the world.

To everyone’s greatest surprise, they lived quite well; She and Victor. The power couple; The talk of the campus; the loquaciously obnoxious phony and the love-struck and clueless geek. They worked the remaining two years out and they graduated. She landed a job immediately after her graduation. It was the jump-start she needed to help her and the man she was still very much in love with and who, she doubted at the time, could do no wrong in her eyes. Victor graduated with a pass. He wasn’t as excited about the real world as she was; it was easy to read from his eyes and body. She knew these things.

Time ran so fast and she didn’t know when she missed her period, lost the baby, grieved, got pregnant again, lost her job, took online classes and got a better job, bought a house, moved in, put to bed, and was celebrating Jason’s fifth birthday in their front yard with all of Victor’s Real Estate colleagues and her social media advertisers. She and Victor decided that Jason’s birthday was the perfect opportunity to reveal the coming of the new baby. The crowd cheered for them. Their parents were happy for them. Victor was doing well for himself in Real Estate. She was living the dream.

After a lot of persuasion from both Victor’s parents and hers, they finally tied the knot. She, as a feminist, never believed in marriage solidifying the love between two people. In her opinion it was a cloaked cage; marriage caged the love. She had always been so afraid of getting married to Victor who very well knew her stand on the topic, and respected her opinion. It was a small celebration, with all the ‘right rites’ performed. She was still scared when she said those two words. But it had to be done for peace to reign. She has never been the type of person to conform no matter how concrete the penalties stand. But for this one time, in her entire life, she wanted to do it for her parents and Victor’s.

At first, nothing changed after they made it official. Lance came around and he was a beautiful child. Not as beautiful as Jason however. She groomed them as time passed and they grew from her adorable little noisemakers to responsible, enlightened, and handsome teens. The opposite occurred in the flame between her and Victor’s love; the communication dwindled. The sex wasn’t as it used to be. Her body was changing. She spoke to him a couple of times about it but he wasn’t responsive. He waved it off.

Then came the text message from an unknown number. ‘Leave my man alone!’ it read. It was starting to feel like a nightmare in the span of seconds. She needn’t logic or rational thought here. Her woman intuitive had done all the research before the text came. The text was merely a confirmation. But as a human being, she called the number and inquired who the person was.

The person behind the text message was Victor’s mistress and gave her name as Jennifer. She searched Jennifer on Facebook and found out that she had two children. Scrolling through Jennifer’s facebook gallery with a heavy and angry heart, she found a picture with the two ‘bundle of joy’ as Jennifer captioned, in it. They resembled Victor.

How long has this been going on? She confronted him when he came home that evening. He was stiff like a person with stroke. She watched the her loquacious husband’s words fail him. That proved a lot. She felt her entire universe of butterflies and fireflies replaced with wasps and bees. She had no one to talk to. She had no friends. She turned her back on everyone because of Victor. All of him! She hurted for months and months until she decided to get a divorce.

The last straw that broke the camel’s back was Jennifer’s baby bump in her recent facebook post. She’s been following the woman for a while and had engaged interaction. She found out that Jennifer and Victor have been seeing each other since the undergraduate days. Jennifer visited Victor whenever she went for lectures. Jennifer told her that there was a time she came back earlier than expected that she had to hide inside the bathroom while Victor cajoled her into going to get Suya while she escaped. Victor still visited her after their wedding and he also told Jennifer to relocate to the state for their meetings to be easier which she did. He even got Jennifer a job as a personal assistant to one of his Real Estate colleagues to erase all trace of suspicion.

It was a well thought-out plan to fuck. And Victor has fucked her up. The family she taught was perfect wasn’t. Victor!

In a matter of time she lost the perfect husband image of him. He meant nothing. The love died. Her children shouldn’t suffer this — she thought. So she filed for a divorce. During the cause of the process Victor bewailed and after a while he showed great acrimony towards her. He poisoned the minds of their children and she did not know.

Earlier that day she sat the boys down and told them everything that has been going on between her and dad. She didn’t know how they were going to process all of the information being thrown at them. She watched Jason’s eyes; no reaction. Lance’s too. When she was done talking she said, “I hope you understand. I’m here for you.” They both stared at the floor. They avoided eye contact. Then Jason spoke, “Dad’s coming to pick us up soon, mom. We can’t deal with all of this…and you. There’s no truth in you. I’m sorry to say.”

She blanked out. It was like the universe wore itself inside out. Her son just spoke to her that way. She didn’t know whether to cry or hit him with the back of her hand. It was disrespectful but it came from somewhere. Jason has never spoke to her in such a manner. Even when he was furious. She loved his self-control.

“What are you talking about, Jace?”

“Dad told us everything,” Lance said with trembling lips, “the real story. The real truth. Mom, we know that you cheated first, before he did.”

She watched her shy second son insult her and she couldn’t slap the black out of him. It was then and there that she understood the possibility of hating the person you once selflessly loved. A familiar honk came from outside. It was Victor’s car. He had moved his things out of the house the moment she filed the divorce. She knew he was staying with Jennifer and their children.

“Is that what he told you?” She asked both of them.

“Yes mom, and we are going to live with him there. We can’t stay with you mom. How could you do this to us and to dad?”

She heard the hurt in Jason’s voice. How in the world was she going to convince someone as uptight and as unflinching as her first son? She knew them to understand that any further explanation that contradicts to the one they conceded would infuriate them.

They had bags packed. “That’s dad calling us. We’re going mom.” They stood up, her two boys, towering over her. Jason’s growing broad chest and Lance’s slender frame. They walked out on her.

© Kessy Agwam