Today, I met the girl who is sleeping with my husband. I do not know if I should call her
woman or girl. She is so tiny. She is a tall tiny thing. But she is so beautiful. She has very
long flowing hair. I ran my hands through it, just to be sure. It was all real. I wanted to pull
out my human hair weave right then. But quickly remembered why I was there in the first
place! She thought she would be meeting my husband or so I assumed. When she saw me
walk to her table she did not flinch even a second. She looked into my eyes and smiled. There
was no fear in her eyes. Only calm and her face shone with compassion, or was that pity I
saw? She stood up and pulled back my seat for me.
I slowly slid into it. She stood before me, longer that she should have, to allow me to actually
LOOK at her. I sized her up my mouth curved into the perfect sneer, my eyes looking
daggers at her skin. She was the most flawless dark I had seen in person. Her black face had
an almost evil glow to it. Her eyes were big and round like ripe oranges. There was a hint of
lipstick on her thin lips, I didn’t look long enough it could have been their natural color as she
had no makeup on. She looked as she was intended to be. She was alluringly beautiful this
girl. Her waist reminded me of the wasps on the rotting wood behind grandma’s house back
in the village. For a moment I saw my husband’s arms circling it and I struggled with the
urge to break her into two, at her tiny fragile wasp like waist.
The two steps to her seat revealed a set of legs that had never known struggle or pain. Her
knees were not darker. There were no marks there or anywhere else to her heel. I would break
my back thrice if I walked in her shoes. They must have presented such a dent in my
husband’s wallet I imagined. Her dress, the deepest shade of purple, hugged this tiny thin in
all the right ways and places. She knew what a little Jezebel she was and she didn’t even try
to cover it with modesty. She finally sat. Back straight, chin high and her lips parted
gradually revealing the toothpaste advert that hid behind them.
This is not exactly how I had figured our little meeting would start. You see I had made all
plans for this meeting pretending to be my husband using his phone. I had thereafter deleted
all the texts and cleared the text log. She started the conversation. My anger faded and I was
so confused, I did not feel hatred. For a moment there I caught myself admiring her gut. Even
at her age back then, over twenty years ago when my dear husband was head over heels in
love with me, I did not look half as good or as confident as this young lady who was making
all my fore-planned thoroughly rehearsed speech slip away so easily through my fingers. She
had an amazing easiness about her. She listened without a tinge of expression on her beautiful
long face, as I hissed insults at her and her generation not forgetting whoever just sat around
and watched her grow instead of raising her.
When I could not continue because I fell into a bout of dry unending coughing, she politely
asked the waiter to bring me water. When I was back to my thoroughly scorned woman self, I
continued where I had left. Never in my life had I imagine the reserve of insults I harboured
for a fellow woman. The names kept pouring out of my mouth as if I had no control over my
speech. She sat there, respectfully.
Same as she had been before. Who on earth taught her to
do that? I would have gorged out the eyes of anyone who even dared to utter any one of the
things I was telling her. When I felt lighter and better about myself, I stopped. Then she
asked, “Ma’am, would you like to order now? I am really hungry.” The audacity! I wanted to
spread her tiny self across the table and whip her as I would my daughters when they were
young and nobody frowned upon corporal punishment.
She opened her mouth, the third time that whole time. It was an hour and half of my livid
monologue. She spoke fluent English, calmly. Her voice was devoid of emotion. Her face
was convincing. Her eyes were genuine. This girl, my daughter’s age, was acting as if she
were my age mate and she was doing nothing wrong having a clandestine affair with a
married family man. She had known it was I she was going to meet for that was never how
they had been making plans. She asserted.
She had been with my husband for the past four
years. She claimed that that was not how my husband texted if he ever did. That, supposedly
wasn’t also a place my husband would pick. She did not agree with me about how I felt she
was wasting her life.
She claimed her man had never in the four years going five asked her to go wait at a
restaurant. I did not want more. I wanted her to stop. She did not. She wondered how I had
just now found out. They had always been careful. She keeps his family diary and makes sure
he does not miss out on any important days or events. It dawned on me how well she knew
him. This stranger knew my family like the back of her clean hands. She spoke about them
with love in her face and voice. The way my husband would. She would stop and wait for me
to finish my rude interruption. Then she would continue as though she had just taken a water
break and was going on.
This girl was good. You probably think very little of me at this point but at that moment,
looking at her, I understood why my husband had picked her. Actually they hadn’t made a
mistake. I had for the first time in my twenty-six years of a happy marriage decided to snoop.
The father of my children and I had never felt the need to monitor another’s phone activities
or any other activities for that matter. The trending sponsor debate on social media pushed me
there. She had a two-year old son, the spitting image of his handsome father. She was not
interested in marriage.
She was happy and comfortable. Before her, my husband had never
strayed. When he met her he did. My husband is a sponsor. I said that to her. She smiled took
my hand into hers and said she was not breaking my family.
She claimed she actually helps his man and baby daddy to be a better husband and father of
all his children. When I look back, these five years have been nothing but wonderful. My
husband has been involved in our lives more than ever.
He is always happy at home and
spends more time with us. Our last born is in high school now and unlike our older children;
she has fully enjoyed having her dad around. He has not objected to a single one of my
demands for so long. I have been so happy even my ulcers disappeared. I asked her, to stay
wherever hidden place she had been all along.
As if I wasn’t the one who had smoked her
out. I made her promise to keep our little adventure to herself. I went home and made my
husband his favorite meal. Then I sat and waited for him to get back home to me…