Grace held the shirt to her chest and collapsed on the floor next to the washing machine. She was suffocating. The walls were closing in on her now and the floor was running towards the ceiling. She felt dizzy and nauseated. She couldn’t take another look at the evidence in her hands. This mark was not faint, it was so visible as if someone had purposely put it there. Bright red lipstick at the color of a white shirt was not a mistake, it was intended. Someone wanted to make known of her existence. It hurt from the depths of her heart. Her mind was in a turmoil and the heartbeat was resounding. She fought tears but her throat hurt, so she let them flow.
She had previously suspected a strange scent on her husband’s clothes, then later brushed off the thought as a probable change of cologne. She has seen a faint lipstick stain the previous month, but she couldn’t bring herself to consider her husband a cheat. He had been a God-fearing man before then. He had been the best husband any woman could ever wish for. He had been the best daddy to their two children. Then he had lost his job and the drinking had started. It was for the fun of it at first but it had slowly grown into a habbit. He was on the verge of becoming violent. He didn’t want to be there to help the kids do their homework like he used to. He had developed the habbit of demanding rather than asking politely for things like he used to. Whenever he got into the house, change was felt, not the positive kind, the kind of change that makes one wish he would go back to who he had been.
It was now evident Grace was just simply the mother to his children, the woman that did laundry, washed dishes and made his meals. The woman that maintained a clean house. She was simply a voluntary househelp, who deserved nothing close to love and respect. She was an object. She was property he had acquired after paying the bride price. He now had eyes for other women. Maybe younger, prettier and roudy women. He didn’t even bother keeping it a secret.
She had to face him. Nasty as he would be, enough was enough. She wouldn’t sit back and wait for STDs or HIV. She had done everything a supportive wife ought to have done. She had even paid the bills when he lost his job. But that had meant she had no right to repremand him when he didn’t do things right. He would get angry and claim that she was disrespecting him because he didn’t have money, or because he did not have a job. They no longer discussed problems because he would end up walking out on her and coming back drunk. The cheap beer had a stench but she still shared a bed with him like the good wife she was. She still woke up at wee hours to open doors for him and warm his food. She still washed his mud- drenched clothes. She still performed her conjugal duties even with tears in her eyes.
But it had come to this! She had to face him. She mastered all the energy and will she had left to finish doing laundry. It was difficult maintaining a smiling face for the children when they came running playfully to her in the kitchen. She hoped they would never find out she was breaking from the inside. She hoped they would be sleeping when their dad came home, because she suspected a possible rise in voices. And it was so.
“It is your fault that i cheated,” her husband had said that night when he finally got home. She had done everything for him. She had been the pillar when he sought solace in bars. And now he blamed her for his unfathomable acts. She was blazing mad. He was not even sorry. He felt because he was a man, he was allowed to project his frustration on sex outside marriage. She had a duty to understand him. She had a duty to wash lipstick off his shirts. She had a duty to clean him up for other women to see. Because she was a woman. Because she, like other women, was an object. Because she had been bought for a price.
Then they say women have devalued men. That women have overstepped their limits. That is a totally barbaric and backward view. It is an uncivilized social ignorance. A woman is a being that is many things beyond a beautiful face. She is an intelligent being, capable of love, care and compassion. A woman is not just the physical, she has a mind and a soul. She has feelings and she gets hurt. She is a flower that ought to be tended with tender love and affection, not have petals plucked over and over until the flower withers . A woman is so many things not just beautiful.
Inspired by Carol, my Pep talk mate