“You lied to me Mike,” she started. “You told me you were on a business trip. Guess what? I called your workplace and they told me that you were on vacation.”
I folded my arms across my chest, discovering quite suddenly that I wasn’t ashamed that I’d lied to her. In fact, I was kind of glad that she had discovered the truth. I reasoned she’d come to realize that I wasn’t happy in our marriage and perhaps, would be willing to work with me on how we could resolve our situation.
“Yes, I lied to you,” I replied. “I needed some alone time to reflect on the state of our relationship.”
“And what conclusion did you come to?” she asked scornfully.
“Chichi,” I began, “I think we should talk about this when I come back home.”
“No. I demand to know what decision you’ve arrived at,” she shouted, her body language speaking of an aggression that was well familiar to me.
I turned away, refusing to dialogue anymore. That was when she pulled my shirt and tore the material in a single split. I shrugged her off, but that action only plummeted any form of control that was left in her 5 foot 4 inches body.
“Get off me,” I said, warding her off again, knowing that if the squabble worsened, the Police wouldn’t believe me if I told them she had hit me. I’m a black man with a strong Nigerian accent so it’s only going to be natural for them to believe that I had been the abuser. Forcing myself to calm down, I turned to plead with her only to accidentally hit her elbow with my hand. That was the cue she needed to let her anger seep out like a broken dam. She screamed, ran to the kitchenette and brought out a table knife.
Pointing the knife at me, she screeched, “You want to leave me, right? You want to end our marriage, right? After I lost our only child to your indiscretions and had my tummy warped, you now want to end our marriage? I promise you, I won’t make it easy for you. I’ll kill you first, then I’ll kill myself.”
And all I could think to myself was “Dis woman don craze finish.”
I backed up against the wall, wishing I could somehow reach the phone to call for help. Never had I seen Chichi look so unstable. The beauty I once thought she had, pulled off her face like a mask, as she screamed vengeance.
“Chichi, calm down.”
But she was past caring. With eyes filled with the hot energy of retaliation, she reached for me. I ran. She chased. I ran some more. She chased even more, and as we did our cat and mouse dance, our yells became louder. It wasn’t long before insistent knocks rapped on the door of my hotel room, with voices demanding that I open the door. After what seemed to be like several minutes, the door came crashing down. The Security men ran to me first, holding me down. But when Chichi came charging at me as they held me in their tight grip, they realized that the perpetrator in this dance of terror was Chichi. They held her, demanding that she quiet down. Unfortunately, Chichi was too far crazed to listen to them and she charged at them, intending to do them physical harm.
It’s been a year since the vicious event in Houston. Chichi was arrested and sentenced. I divorced her, while she continued receiving therapy in her anger management class – as that was what the Judge demanded at trial in lieu of jail time. I am still in the process of picking my life’s pieces, but it’s not been easy. My friends have been sensitive enough not to bother me with words of “I told you so”, but deep down, I still beat myself for falling for charm, forgetting that charm, like they say is fleeting, and that beauty, as they say, is vain. The most important lesson I have learned in all this is that I see the concept of beauty far different from most people’s view. For me, beauty runs skin deep, because I’ve come to understand that a beautiful woman without any form of control is like placing an expensive gold ring in a pig’s nose.
And you may judge me for all I care, but God knows, I’m so done with pigs.
***Originally posted December 7, 2011
Get my latest book, Lessons in Love, now available at Amazon and in Nigeria, exclusively at Takada Books.
Lara Daniels 