The Dowry
"When will you pay my dowry?”
That was more of mumbling than a statement. She leaned on her right arm, eased her muscles, allowed the remonstrating blood rippled through the yenning veins.
Her husband posed opposite the berth she was Lain. That question should definitely prod an answer from him, but he wouldn’t proffer a riposte so soon. Many incentives were knotted at the tail of his holding back: She twiddling to face him tossed an insinuation with resplendent implications: the idea of she-would-say-more caveated his glottis from percolating.
“Dede is done saying this over and over. Even Nene hadn’t held back.”
That was veracious. Her parents had champed it in their mouths like cud overtime, yet, all he would say was,
“I would do that soon”
He said again, waving assorted thoughts off His licentious heart: tainted numerous celibate thoughts.
“ I promise, get well soon, I promise “
The grandeur of the tone of seriousness in that one transcended any word he’d ever divulged. If twouldn't be imputed to devaluing, twould have been said that, that was the first forthright communiqué he’d ever made in four decades of his life.
She accessed him convinced, to be unconvinced by death. She strived a smile sketch on her physiognomy, tightened her grip of his hand. She looked away,
“ Maybe you would pay it”
She thrust him the last gaze, the pressure sustained by the incessant blood mitigated in her clutch. Her ghost had departed.
The burden of this ease soon dawned at him as her parent demanded yet that he pay her dowry, organize nuptials shin-dig, engage her legitimately and get her corpse married. That was fucking nauseating, but little did he realize how serious they were until three soldiers caught him on a foggy day in the street and let go off him with :
“ Comply or die”
Absurdly, the wedding day was fixed and the Bridegroom was embalmed and dainty dressed, awaiting her thrilled lord. Seated were heads hanging in the coziness of the torturing occasion. Many had resolved to be there to corroborate their perhaps: some to awe the insanity of the culture. Yet, irrespective of what brought the heads together, all were confined to nursing the injury birthed by the farcical wedding party.
“You may kiss your bride”
The voice of the priest ignited the motion of the thoughts of the congregation. The enjoining priest had knitted the lethal and immortal: Impossibility to common sense twitched possible.
Recalling his order, he shilly-shallied in the first place, but being under the pressures of eyes and guns, he tilted his head, lifted her congealed hand where the ring he’d fixed earlier in her finger perched and kissed her hand with breath held. But the Friar ate him up with the ‘Her lips, her lips” kind of gaze: Everyone had borrowed the priest’s look: the kiss-her-in-the-lips-and-not-on-the -hand look.
He’d rued ever getting acquainted with the matriarch over and over during all these. He traversed the 1, 000 capacity hall with his gaze, consciously opting for her mother, father, his relatives, the friar and irreversibly at her. He would have- if twere possible- reviled his body frame, stampede out and see what he’d become, standing before such inexorable turnouts.
His eyes were dilated like the streetlights, he sloped his head once more, drew closer, but recoiled precipitately cursing he won’t, he couldn’t. But the pressure was routing, everyone present were his foe, then, he knuckled under the fact that life’s girded in crazy things and imbalanced folks inhabit mad world, engaging themselves in deranged things to survive impudently. He made the final move, felt the indifference of her lips with his, her lips weren’t responding, not as he used to know them. He thrust his tongue further but the indifference lingered. Then, he jerked to sanity: He was fucking kissing a dead woman. He loosed his tongue free, recouping his sentience fully by the congregations’ jostling acclamations.
The party was over, the proceedings of The Dowry were taken away, with the groom left at the altar, knelt, preying over his future.
19:01:21:18:35
Note: An adaptation of a culture of some cities in the eastern part of Nigeria.
Ancestor . Ancestral Pen. Short story. The Dowry
