To Revenge Or Not To Revenge?

‘Choosing to let go is not a sign of weakness, but a mark of divine wisdom’ — Ima Akpan Udoh Akpan Amaeto (my mother)

Paying her daughter’s university tuition was not the only occasion I did right to my uncle’s wife, nor was it the only time I was chastised for doing so.

It also happened when I was getting married.

I’d gone back to Lagos after my studies because it was the only place I figured I could find the kind of job I needed to make my dreams come true. Again, I went through rough times, trying to make ends meet. While I waited to find a job, I slept on the sitting room floors of relatives when they were kind enough to let me. When I ran out of favour with them, a friend living with her big sister begged her to let me stay with them for a while. When the senior sister got tired of helping this homeless girl, she didn’t know. She asked me to leave. I slept rough (often in empty churches and uncompleted buildings, being careful not to let anyone observe me going in either place at night for fear of being molested, ridiculed, or worse). During the day, I would hang around my friend sister’s home. By the way, when her big sister refused to accommodate me in their home, this fantastic friend secretly brought me food and helped washed the few clothes I had when her sister was out or at work. Till today I haven’t forgotten her or all the good she did me. When things turned out well for me years later, I sought her out and gave her money to start a business for herself. I did this a few times actually and have made her my responsibility till today.

I eventually found a job sometime later as the assistant secretary to the Project Manager of British Telconsult (the consultancy service of British Telecom). I was barely eighteen years old. A little over a year later, I was promoted from assistant to full secretary to the same Manager. This post was held until then by a British lady some years my senior.

Three years into the job and I met the man who was to become my husband, an Austrian working with one of the many foreign oil companies in the country. When he proposed, I went to inform my uncle. As a senior member of our family living in the same city, custom dictated that I invite him during the wedding and ensure he was the first to receive news of the proposal. It was the first time Aunty and her family thoroughly learned the extent to which things had changed for me since they last saw me.

Although my uncle did not turn up, his wife attended the wedding. Before their arrival, and being quite mindful of some family members’ attitude, I’d instructed one of my cousins to give them a place of honour and make sure they were well cared for. And so as the wedding was underway, I was surprised when this cousin came up to where my groom and I were seated and indicated, earnestly, that she wanted me to get up and go with her. I stood up and followed her. She took me to a secluded corner, well away from the main hall where the reception was taking place, and pointed. And, as God bears me witness, there was my Aunty, by herself, weeping.

I went to her and asked what the matter was. ‘Nothing. This is such a great day. I am very happy for you; I am thankful to God for you, she said.’

‘Then why are you standing here by yourself crying,’ I asked and led her gently back into the hall. She wanted to sit in some obscure place at the back when we got in. But I wouldn’t let her. I led her instead to the position of honour I had designated for her and my uncle and instructed one of the waiters to serve her with special care. ‘She is my senior, Aunty,’ I told him.

Even though Aunty said she was crying because she was happy for me, we both knew better. You see, when my husband-to-be first decided to take me to Austria to introduce me to his family, I’d observed our customs’ mandatory show of respect and gone to inform my uncle. Before the words’ travel abroad’ were barely out of my mouth, my uncle’s wife had pursed her lips, given a long hiss of derogation. Then in between scornful laughter, she’d said. ‘You, travel abroad? Who dash monkey banana! Do you think travelling abroad is with teeth? Probably some dirty old man lying to you so you can open your legs for him.’ Those were her exact words, no kidding.

I can’t begin to imagine the height of her level of shame when she walked into the reception hall of my wedding ceremony in Victoria Island — purported to be one of the high-brow-areas of Lagos.

Also, I will never know if Aunty’s attendance of the wedding itself was merely to see whether the man I was marrying was indeed ‘wretched and old’ as she had predicted; because the first words that came out of my uncle’s wife’s mouth when she saw my husband were ‘He is so young! Your husband is so young and handsome. He can’t be much older than you!’ My husband was ten years older than me, but he looked a lot younger than his age.