My brother abroad needed some kaftans. He needed them as soon as possible, but all the guys I knew told me they were busy and couldn’t do them within the time I needed them, so I walked to this small corner shop and spoke to the guy there. I didn’t know his work. I didn’t even know if he could do a good job, but I was desperate to meet a deadline.

When I narrated my story to him, he told me he could do it in three days. When I closed from work the next day, I drove by to check on the progress. I got there and he asked me to give him a few minutes to iron them.

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“You’ve finished sewing the four kaftans already?” He smiled and answered, “I want to win this client for life. I can’t disappoint.”

My brother was so happy he asked me to go there so he could talk with him. I went there after work, and the two of them talked on the phone for several minutes.

Soon, he was sewing for my brother’s friends, both locally and abroad. He would give me a tip even when I said no. He would call me on the phone just to say thank you. I was moved by his thankfulness and slowly built a friendship with him. He shared his dreams and his past with me.

I gave him tips on how he could expand, but later, when our friendship grew into a love story, I decided to invest in him instead of always giving him motivation. He was that good, and I believed with a little push, he would blow in no time.

I rented a bigger space for him. We bought two new machines so he could have apprentices. Two years after dating, we got married.

People are at their truest selves when they get to where they want to be in life. I started seeing the signs of possessiveness very early, but I ignored them. He used my car and didn’t want to give it back because we were married. He didn’t say it out loud, but he did everything for me to know that he deserved to use my car more than I deserved to.

One day, my car developed a fault and he parked it as if he didn’t know about the fault. He didn’t pay a penny to repair it. I did everything, so I held the keys. Our first fight was because I wouldn’t give him my own car to attend a client’s wedding.

It got to a time when he felt too big and stopped sewing for my brother. He would take forever with his clothes, though my brother wasn’t sewing for free. I told him, “Have you forgotten so soon where you were before my brother came in? Today you’re doing this to him?”

He was so angry he nearly hit me. “How dare you talk to me like that? Was I in the gutter when you found me?”

Because he tried to hit me, I called him abusive, and he warned, “Next time, I won’t try. I will actually do it, so you better not say that to me again ever.”

He had a child before we got married. I knew about that child. He told me about it from the beginning and said the mother had run away with the child and he hadn’t heard from them since the child was one. He said he suspected the mother had travelled abroad with the baby. Before our marriage turned a year, I went to his shop to see him and saw this little boy seated on a chair next to him. The resemblance was so striking I didn’t need to ask whose child it was.

He told me, “He’s going to live with us. His mother came to throw him on me just this afternoon.”

“The mother you told me could be abroad?” I asked.

He answered, “I thought so, but she’s here and she brought the boy.”

I told him to send the boy back because I wasn’t ready to take care of a child. He said I wasn’t the one going to take care of him, but he would do everything himself. I said no. This is not a decision that gets dumped on you without preparing for it. He insisted. I resisted. He came home with him after work. He told me he would send him to his mom, so I should give him time to discuss it with his mother.

A month later, this boy was still with us, and he had started looking for a school for him. I didn’t fight it this time. I was too tired to fight again. Our marriage was less than two years old, but if it was a human being, it would have aged with wrinkles. He said he was going to be the one to do everything, but that boy was too innocent to allow him to suffer because of our disagreement, so I took over his care and, being a man as he was, left everything to me.

He would be in the shop and come home around 12 a.m. and tell me he had a lot to do. He wouldn’t eat from home. He would travel without telling me and come back without informing me. He was treating me like I didn’t matter, so one day when he returned from this trip, I told him I wanted a divorce. I said it out of frustration, thinking my husband would ask what the problem was or even apologize for not telling me he was travelling.

The next day, he went straight to my parents’ home to tell them he was tired of me and wanted a divorce. They asked him what I had done, and the only thing he said was I didn’t give him peace. My parents called. I didn’t explain myself. I told them to allow him to divorce me. When he came back, he told me, “You think you’re the only one tired of this marriage? I will divorce you even before you think of it.”

Our families tried to settle the issue, so they called both of us. He agreed not to go on with the divorce. I told them, “He can marry himself and not me. I want the divorce no matter what.”

Guess who is now begging to be taken back? Of course, not me. Him!

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Where we live is my place. To tell him I’m serious about the divorce, he came home one evening to meet his things, including his boy, outside the room. I locked myself in while he stood outside begging me to open the door so we could talk. I don’t know where he lives now, but he comes around often, trying to have a conversation I never had the chance to have with him when things were right.

My brother abroad has called. Pastors have called. His father’s best friend, who’s a minister in this country, called me to his office to ask me to forgive my husband. I said no. I’m already in court. He was the one who initiated the divorce, and I will give him just that. When a man becomes something, he easily forgets the feminine hands that took him from nothing.

—Mayjoy     

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