When you vowed on that altar some years ago, didn’t you say it was for better or worse? Didn’t you agree wholeheartedly to love him in sickness and health? To tolerate him for richer, for poorer? Till death do you part?
That afternoon he walked in a suit, down the long aisle of the church with you by his side brimming with smiles. Did you not promise before the congregation to support your husband, the newly ordained minister in every way you can? To travel the different locations he was sent to?
Did you not?
When he skyrocketed the ranks and became a bishop in less than ten years. Were you not there feeling fly with your shoulders padded to the brim? Were your white gown and straight head-tie not shining in all its majesty? Were you not the envy of the other Minister’s wife who you met along the way? Did you not shake your luscious waist to spite them? Making sure you danced more than David danced?
So why did I see you today there? Where people who hold such high offices in churches are not supposed to be. Where music blasts through the stereo in reckless abandon. And ladies walk with skimpy gowns, shaking their buttocks, licking their lips and calling out clients through seduction.
A place where guys with flashy cars grab and rock hips of different sizes, where they smoke cigarettes, Indian helm and shisha. And gulp different kinds of liquor, blowing kisses to the waitress that served them drinks.
Why did I find you there? Were you strictly there for evangelism? Or, Were you on an errand for your husband to grace a wedding reception? I would have bought that idea but I had looked around, checked the environment to see if there was a reception and saw none.
And before you ask what I was doing there. Let me clear you. I came to deliver goods bought by the MD of the company. I could have left without seeing you but that idiot of a receptionist kept me delayed. He kept speaking on the telephone and saying his boss was coming. I had called the boss myself. He picked and apologized amidst laboured breaths and faint chuckles from a female.
Accepting my fate, I decided to zoom out of the world, since it wasn’t my home anyways, plugging in my earpiece and listening to Coldplay’s album. That was when I caught a figure of you. The light in which I saw you descending the stairs left me in stitches. I was sure you pretended not to know me but I also didn’t want you to know me at that time.
But how can a Bishop’s wife be found in a spaghetti gown, your fleshy but fallen cleavages out in the open? your eyes covered with dark shades? Why did you quickly swing your jacket around your shoulders when you saw me? Why? Who were you kidding? You didn’t think your nemesis would catch up with you, did you? How did you feel letting him grope your buttocks like it’s a cushion?
I hadn’t seen the face of the man who played with your waist till he looked up and my heart sank. Mr Olalekan! Of all people. The MD of Zatems Hotel and suites. A womanizer who ticks women like dates off his calendar. The man who wasted my precious time because he was strafing and straddling you.
I would have given you a benefit of the doubt but Mr Olalekan was a man I knew like the back of my palm. He changes your type like his underwear.
As you sighted me, you flinched, I saw through you but acted like I didn’t. Turning away, you decided not to say a word but I was a pervert. Was this how you were standing behind and beside your husband? Was this the vow you made?
Shaking my head, I stopped and had to say, “Good afternoon mummy Bishop. How was the women’s meeting today?”
© Stephen Toochi
