When we got married, I lived in a bigger space, so my husband moved in with me. We had dreams of renting a much bigger space when situations were good, but then my husband was working on a scholarship to travel abroad to study, so we put all the dreams aside and supported him until the dream became a reality.

When the time came for him to travel, I wiped my account clean to support him. But a few days before he travelled, we discovered I was pregnant. We had been married for eighteen months.

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He felt I was going to be lonely, so he made his younger sister come and live with me before he travelled. It’s a two-bedroom house. When my sister-in-law came, she occupied one room. My mother-in-law came to visit once, and she didn’t go back again.

I didn’t have much money to support the three of us. My husband was also not working, so he hadn’t started sending money. When I talked to him on the phone, I begged him to speak to his mother to leave. He saw it in a different way. He thought I didn’t like his mother. I explained we had an exceptional relationship, but I didn’t have enough money to cater for the three of us.

I don’t know what my husband told his mother. All of a sudden, this woman started hating on me. I would greet her, and she would shun my greetings. I would cook, and she would not eat what I’d cooked but waste gas and foodstuff to cook something only she could eat. I spoke to my sister-in-law about it, and she retorted, “What did my mom do to you that you hate her this much? You’re always complaining about her.”

I was eight months pregnant, but my mother-in-law called my husband and told him I was seeing another man who brought me home after work every day. It was only once that a colleague at work brought me home because I complained to him that my back was hurting badly. Right in front of me, my mother-in-law asked my husband on the phone, “Are you sure this pregnancy belongs to you? A woman who’s sleeping around even while heavily pregnant?”

I screamed so my husband could hear me. I said she was lying and I didn’t know why she hated me this much. When my husband called, he wouldn’t listen to my side of the story. He screamed, “You called my mother a liar? No wonder you don’t have a mother. How can you have such a blessing if you’d call mine a liar? How dare you?”

My mom died early in life. Dad followed a year before I got married. I cried that day like a baby. My husband made me apologize to his mom. He wasn’t sending money for months when he travelled. Because of that incident, he started sending money through his sister and asked his sister to share the money between me and his mother.

Just a hundred dollars a month, but these two didn’t give me my share of the money. I complained to my husband. He told me it was because of my bad character that they were treating me that way, so I should change and align with them.

My sister-in-law started coming to the house with her boyfriend. My mother-in-law would leave the room for them and sleep in the hall while the guy spent the night in the house with us. One day, I told her I would never tolerate that in my house. “That guy should never come here again. Get a house or get a hotel.”

The two of them, mom and daughter, descended on me and insulted me properly, questioning my power to say that. A few days later, I was in labour. It was around 10 p.m. My mother-in-law ignored me while I was shouting for her. My sister-in-law wasn’t home yet. I called a driver friend of mine who came to take me to the hospital. My mother-in-law told my husband that the man who got me pregnant had come to carry me to the hospital.

I missed all his calls that night. On our way to the hospital, I called my father’s sister, whom I hadn’t spoken to in a long while. I begged her to come to my aid. I narrated half of the situation to her, and the next day, she came to the hospital. I’d already delivered when she came. She was with me until I was discharged, and I went home with her. My mother-in-law and my sister-in-law didn’t bother. My husband called, and all he did was ask who came to take me to the hospital and later insinuated that he believed his mom.

In the house, they tried to fight my aunt, but that woman is a lion you don’t teach how to roar. Just one week in the house, and the two of them went quiet. My mother-in-law took photos of the baby and sent them to my husband, something I’d already done, and asked him, “You believe this is your child?”

My husband was on the phone with me, telling me about it and saying he was beginning to doubt everything. I was crying when my aunt walked in. She snatched the phone from me and screamed on the phone, “Ato, we are tired of you and your mother. If the child is not yours, fine. Send your family to divorce her and stop making a new mother cry. Are you a man at all?”

Early the next morning, I was in the room when I heard a commotion outside. It was between my aunt and my sister-in-law. I got out and saw my aunt throwing their things out of the house. “Witches and destroyers of good things, leave. Go and rent your own place. Leave my daughter alone.”

My mother-in-law was looking at me to say something. I just turned back and went into my room. Several minutes later, my aunt came in. She said, “You didn’t ask me, but I’ve done it. It’s your house. They can’t grow bigger than you.” I responded, “Thank you for doing what I should have done long ago.”

My husband called, shouting on the phone. I said calmly, “If you were here, your things would be out also. If you love them that much, rent a mansion for them.”

Then I cut the line. He called over and over again and later texted to insult me, calling me ashawo for bringing him another man’s child. I read it, but I didn’t respond. When I cried, my aunt told me I was wasting my tears on things that shouldn’t matter. I stopped crying and stopped picking up his calls too.

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His course has ended, and I think he’s thinking of coming back home. He’s now on the phone asking me how his child is and acting as if nothing has happened. My aunt says if his apology is genuine, I should forgive him. He has never sent a dime since I gave birth. He was fighting with me and calling my child not his. What else can he do to wipe away all the pain he’s caused me?

She says I shouldn’t make a decision until he returns. So I’m waiting, but I don’t think he can change anything. I’m no longer in pain. I’m too far gone.

—Peace    

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