“The first time he hit me was the last, it had to be. It was really, really bad. I don’t like to go back to it. It was 10 years ago and I’m in a better place now – in a good relationship. But I force myself to bring it up whenever I see young women being ill-treated. I feel like I have to warn them.”
She is nearly 40 and the mother of one, a 7-year-old son from her current relationship. She said Covid-19 killed her wedding plans, but she and her partner are waiting to do it when things are back to normal. They want a big party.
“I got married young. I had finished high school and was to start university, but I became pregnant. As soon as I told him, he wanted to get married. I was happy because I didn’t want to bring shame to my family,” she related.
She had been seeing the man for about a year at that time. He was older and she knew her mother would not have approved so she kept the relationship secret. Her family found out when she told them she was pregnant and was getting married. They had no opportunity to get to know her husband or his family.
“We rented a little place to live. My mom had offered us the downstairs, but he didn’t want to live there. He said it was too far from his workplace,” she continued.
“At the time, I thought that everything was going okay. I knew how to cook and keep house and he provided for us. I was not working. When I was 8 months I took in and was admitted to hospital. Our daughter was born dead. There had been no movement for a few days, but I did not realise what was happening. I took it hard, but this man was like stone, like okay, whatever. That was a warning sign to me, but I did not see it.”
About 6 months later, she said, she got a clerical job thinking she could contribute to them saving for their own home, but her husband was not pleased. She later realised that the only reason he did not stop her from starting the job was because she had secured it through her mother’s connections and he probably did not want her mother to ask questions.
“He carried on for hours about how little the pay was and what I think it could do. I was shocked and at one point I started to cry and said I would not go. Then he finally said no I should go, and we would save all of the money because we didn’t need it to live on,” she recalled.
“But he would always find fault with me after that. I couldn’t go to work with my hair down. The first time I did, he accused me of looking for man. I couldn’t wear lipstick or any makeup. I had to keep my nails short. He criticized my clothes and my shoes. I am telling you, girl, it was total domination and I could not see it.
“I kept changing what he didn’t like and trying to please him. I was falling over myself trying to make him happy and could not see that I was very unhappy. One night, after I had prepared things to cook the next morning I went to the bedroom. He was lying on the bed. As soon as I lay down next to him, he got up and started cursing at me. He told me I smelled bad and why I didn’t bathe.
“I had bathed as soon as I got home from work but then I made dinner, cleaned up, and seasoned meat and so to cook in the morning. I had to cook every day, twice a day, morning, and night. I could not give him leftovers. I made that mistake once and never again.
“But that night I was so down and so exhausted that I could only burst into tears and once I started crying, I could not stop. Eventually, he said sorry. Maybe he was feeling bad, or maybe he had his satisfaction and just wanted me to stop. I don’t know. I got up to go and bathe, but he stopped me. He brought me water and he hugged me and calmed me down. I felt better, but I still felt like such a failure, you know.
“After that, I had a bath every night when I finished my work before I went anywhere near him.”
This sister was unaware of it at the time, but she was being emotionally and psychologically abused. She was also being raped as she often did not want sex with her husband but was forced to endure it. She was living with a manipulative abuser who was breaking her spirit. But she was not completely broken. What happened next caused her both pain and salvation.
“The secretary at work was a nice older lady. She was kind to me. I used to offer her my food, particularly when I cooked something nice. We would eat lunch together. As things at home got worse, many days I would just take a bite or two and then feel full. Finally, she asked me about it one day. She told me I had gotten very thin and I was going to get sick if didn’t eat. She picked up my spoon and tried to feed me and I started to cry,” she recalled, her eyes watering as she remembered.
Over the next few weeks, she said, she told the secretary maybe a quarter of what she was dealing with at home and the woman was shocked. The secretary kept urging her to stand up for herself, to talk to him and not let him bully her.
“One night he came in after 8. I had already finished my work and was bathing,” she said. “When I came out of the bathroom, he called me in the kitchen. He had a big parcel of fresh meat on the table and he said I should cook some of it the next day for lunch. It was mutton. I had already seasoned up chicken and I had bathed. I didn’t want to handle meat again so I told him to put it in the freezer and I would do it when I came home from work the next day because I was cooking curry chicken in the morning.
“Girl he picked up that meat like if he was going to do what I said and then he pelt me with it, in my face. I went down on the ground. I was in shock because this man had never raised his hand to me. Then he was shouting at me to pick it up and do what he said. I scrambled up, ran in the bedroom, and locked the door. He knocked a few times, but I didn’t open. I could hear him walking about and then after a while there was silence.
“I think I waited more than an hour and then I opened the door and went out. I was going to apologise and season the meat. Big mistake. He was waiting in the front room in the dark. He dragged me back in the bedroom and beat me like a punching bag. He wasn’t saying anything, just cuffing me all over. I think he gave me a few kicks as well. Then he lay down on the bed and went to sleep. I stayed on the floor all night.
“The next morning there wasn’t a part of me that was not black and blue and hurting, but I got up and made breakfast and lunch. Then I dragged myself into the front room, so he didn’t have to see me. When he left for work, I called my mother and she came and got me. When she saw me, she cried, and she told me I was not going back to him no matter what.
“I was so grateful for my mother and her strength. She got me away from him. We had been married for 3 years. It took me twice that long to be okay.”
With the support of her relatives this sister managed to escape her abusive husband and has now moved on. Her ex-husband has remarried and she sometimes thinks about what his current wife is enduring. She prays it is nothing close to what she endured.
