LIFE WILL TELL

In the South-south riverine area where the Nun River joins the Atlantic Ocean,  somewhere in a coastal town called Akassa, a house was. A young man in that household disowned his father. The old man, about seventy, had a wife who was not the biological mother of the young man. The young man, about fifteen years old then, had grown up under this stepmother until he was ready to make his own family. 

Meanwhile, all the while this young man lived with his father and stepmother, his own mother was alive. She had first lived alone and then with another man. The young man was used to visiting her without restriction. Through the years, he could not truly comprehend why his mother should be separated from his father; why his father should have another woman and his mother another man like the Orashi and Ogbuide rivers and he, lost in the connubial disjunction. 

Consequently, the young man became hostile to his father. He said madly to him one day when they had an altercation, "You are wicked and a fool, Dad! Why do you have to treat my mum badly and send her away from her matrimonial home?" The father was taken aback but subduedly he bowed his head. He had always wanted to explain this to his son but perhaps, guilt made him desist. "You have no excuse for all your evils against her. God will judge you and you will rot in hell. Hence, you must never count on or think of me as your son. Go to hell!" He blared in wrath. The young man took his leave from the house and was no longer seen. So, the father lived pining. 

Nine years later, the young man returned to the house and his father. He was himself subdued. His sunken eyes stared into abstraction. His scraggy beard and visible veins numbered his travails. The father grieved to see the son this way and wondered what could have happened to him. The son could not speak but managed to stutter after his father prodded him. He told his father what he had been through.

He married a beautiful woman to whom he offered the acme of love. He gave her all of himself and worked heaven and hell to please her and keep the union. They seemed to be a replica of Romeo and Juliet, at first. When fortune left him and life's smile faded, he struggled to survive. He needed her most dearly by his side then. But her behaviour changed with the times. She was no longer comforting, caring, or submissive. From squabbles to scuffles to denials to loneliness to long estrangement, he could no longer contain her. She frustrated every attempt at reconciliation and nagged his peace until he lost it. Then one day, he returned to find her gone. Not just with his belongings but their only child. He went through legal means to claim his daughter from his wife. But he lost the daughter to her. 

"She took everything from me... Everything... My only child and daughter... !" He cried on his father's shoulder who held him to himself. "That's how your mother left. She took everything but I fought not to lose you, my son. I fought to keep you," said the father, weeping. "I wanted you to be ready so that I could explain how your mother left. I wanted to tell you how not to marry someone who would steal your peace and happiness and abandon you to the abyss."