I Thought I Was Punishing My Wife. I Was Punishing Myself

After thirty-five years of marriage, I sacked my wife from the house we’ve lived in all these years. To me, the marriage had come to an end because my wife sold my property without telling me.

She had a son before we got married. I loved her and loved her son, so after marriage, I brought them in to begin life together. I treated her son as my own. Douglas was one smart kid. He was first in school every term. I liked him because of that and was determined to push him as far as he could go.

As he grew up, he developed the stubbornness of a goat. He would steal from me and steal from anyone he had access to. All the kids who came after him were not like that. They listened when I talked, but not Douglas. He went to steal when he was in secondary school and was sacked. At that time, I was too tired to help. I’d exhausted all the help left in me, so I told my wife, “I won’t waste another dime on that boy, and he’s not going to stay in this house too. He’ll be a bad influence on the other kids.”

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So my wife sent Douglas away to live with her elder sister. There, he grew up to become a man. He was arrested many times, and calls came through to my wife. She was frustrated, and that frustration got to me.

Douglas was almost thirty when I called him home and asked him what he wanted to do with his life. He said he wanted a shop of his own. I helped set the shop up in their hometown, where he said he wanted it. A year later, he ran the shop down, left it empty, and later sold it.

He automatically knew I was done.

Years later, a caretaker of a piece of land I owned called me. He said some people were building on my land. I rushed there to find them busily building. They said it was my wife who sold the land to them. They’d had the land for two years.

I laughed. I thought they were joking. I asked my wife, and she confessed. She sold the land to pay a debt Douglas owed because he was going to end up in jail. I screamed, “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

I knew why she didn’t, and that got me angrier.

I threw her things out and asked her to follow her son. “Go and come no more. I’m not going to die because of you two. What sins did I commit to have you two traumatise me this way?”

After a series of apologies that I didn’t listen to, my wife left. For days, I didn’t know where she went. She was twenty-five when I married her. Most of the elders present during our marriage were dead and gone, including her own parents. I didn’t know who to call to inform them that I’d divorced her.

I called her elder sister, and she told me my wife was with her. I told her, “It’s over between us. Show me who I should see to make the divorce official.”

She responded, “Let us know when you’re ready. We’ll take you home to see them.”

Our kids were grown up and living their lives. The elder child called me. “Dad, what am I hearing? Are you serious?”

I responded, “She sold my land. She’ll sell all my properties because of that good-for-nothing stepbrother of yours.”

He asked, “At your age, what do you need a piece of land for? You’ll throw a lifetime of companionship away because of a piece of land?”

I brushed him off, but the days ahead were very tough. I was very lonely. I went out often to be with friends, but in the evening, they all went home while I had no home to return to. There was only a house.

For the first time in thirty-five years, I woke up in the morning to ask myself what I would eat. I walked around the house, and all I could hear was the voice of my wife.

A little over a month later, I called my wife’s elder sister. “So she came to tell you what happened. As an elder sister, you couldn’t send her back to come and apologise? You’re happy her marriage is destroyed?”

She replied, “She said she wouldn’t come for you to hurt her the way you did again.”

“Don’t worry. I know what to do.” I responded and ended the call.

A week after that conversation, I went there. My wife was out. I asked her elder sister to pack all her things and give them to me.

“I’m taking her back home. I can see you have no good intentions about her.”

While we were at it, my wife walked in.

I said, “We are going back home. Follow me.”

She didn’t say a word. She grabbed what she could carry, and we drove back home. On our way, we sat quietly for so long until she asked, “What happened? Why did you come for me?”

I responded, “Your parents left you in my hands. They are not here for me to hand you over to them. It’s the only reason I’m taking you away.”

We got home, and a few minutes later, food was ready. She didn’t even ask what I would eat. She knew. We watched TV as we ate. We talked as though we hadn’t separated for over a month. She settled in seamlessly, and we took it from there.

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My elder son called. He asked, “Dad, so what changed?”

I chuckled and ended the call.

“Who’s this one too that’s asking me questions?”

It wasn’t only loneliness that drove me back. I realised my life had been built around her, and without her, I was just a pale shadow on the wall. And what my son said was very true. A lifetime of companionship is not a currency that goes out of use just because she committed one offence. I blame that boy. Douglas. My wife was just being a mother.

A year after she returned, we renewed our vows in church. They had become old and faded. We needed to rewrite them and deepen the ink where it said, “Until death do us part.”

—Arthur  

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