No portion for the butcher's wife

Mum sat staring at the window. Her eyes swollen, tears rolling down her cheeks like oceans. She would constantly shove a way flies playing a dirty game on her face but they would relentlessly come back zooming to and fro like a throng of hyenas. With each beat of her heart she would sigh painfully and then smack her lips in a silent prayer. She would then glance sorrowful at Anita,my younger sister lying down on a mat few metres a way. As she stared into the dark oblivion, my sister would occasionally cringe in pain and mum would be stirred back to her senses.

Things hadn't been going on well with mum recently. Well,things hadn't been good for a while but recently they had gone from worse to the worst. I wish things would have been better but there wasn't anyway they would be soon and they wouldn't change even after a long time.

Things had not been this way in a distant past. I remember us being a happy family. We had some possessions then and my father a respectable butcher would always ensure that we were well fed. He didn't earn much from his butcher shop but he would always ensure that we had few bones to spice our evening vegetables . Mum a dutiful wife will till our small portion of land to ensure constant supply of potatoes and yams. That was a long time ago before Anita was born. I remember how much joy was in our home. As she tilled her small farm she would burst into melodious hymns that would make our neighbours jealous of her happy life but she never bothered even when she passed them whispering behind her back about her lucky charm. Her being married to a butcher in a village where few men managed to earn an honest living made her be regarded as a queen. Majority of the men in the tiny village were potters and the the rest of the men were idlers and low lives who mugged people in the cool of the night. Who wouldn't be jealous of the woman that had got married to the only butcher in the village. So mum lived without a care in the world for she considered herself a luck woman . Was she not the only owner of a permanently roofed house in the village ?As she strolled through the village,her elevated gaiety walk will inspire ululations and whistling from the men idly sitting on road stones and ledges of their poorly constructed houses. This had been her daily routine for her entire life until that fateful day leading to Anita's birth.

I remember that fateful day with a bowlful of sorrow.Father always came home very late at night because after closing his butcher shop ,he would go for his daily dose of local beer few miles from the village. He would come back few minutes to the next day and mum would be waiting for him because he would have to eat before going to bed. Sometimes he would slump at the dining table before eating because of heavy drinking. He was a very burly man with a heavyset potbelly. Despite his heavy built physique ,whenever he slumped down ,mum would be forced to carry him to bed. A dutiful wife, she had carried the brunt of father's drinking for almost a decade. Well ,on that fateful day , father had gone drinking. Deep in the night, our door was forced open and she had bore the pain of being the butcher's wife. Nothing was spoken of what had transpired during that night. Father didn't mention it and through my innocence eyes I didn't understand the extent of what had happened but seeing the pain in her eyes , I had known that I wasn't supposed to mention it . Never in my life. Everything at first had continued as normal but as days passed mum had grown cold and distant. She could no longer walk through the village and never wanted to be identified as the butcher's wife.My father too had grown distant and rarely came home. He would spent the night in his butcher shop. Few months later mum began swelling. Nine months later Anita was born. Frail and sickly.

When Anita was born, dad came home. Well, atleast for sometime. He tried as much as he could to be loving to her and even stopped drinking. Things would have become better but then she had begun whispering in his ears. Constantly she would pester him. The pestering had all been attributed to him not being there when dark clouds had descended upon her. The more he pestered him the farther their love grew apart. With time he closed his butcher business and picked up full time drinking of beer. Everything had became worse and the worst was to come.

The worst of it had come when father had in anger set ablaze his presumed enemy's house on fire in retribution to what had happened to his wife. Unknowingly, his means of inflicting justice on his enemy had come carrying a heavy price as the house that had been set ablaze still had its occupants in it ;most of whom had been saved by the villagers except one, a daughter to the presumed enemy. Father had disapproved into thin air and the village had given its verdict;we were to leave the village carrying nothing but ourselves. As mum sat at the window,staring into the oblivion, she had only one wish; her daughter Anita to get well.Anita was in frail and in pain,her navel had refused to heal. Since her birth,she still had an open wound and mother had grown impatient waiting for it to heal . The midwife that had delivered her had told mum that it was just a matter of time before Anita breathes her last and this had been made worse by father's disappearance.

She stares,counting the time she still has before the villagers come knocking with machetes to inflict revenge on anything living in her compound .The elders' instructions to her still ring in her ears; " there is no portion for the butcher's wife in this village ."