Chapter 1
"It is with regret that I am saying this to you." Sighed Abdul to his wife. Much to my regret I am letting go of you because I am bored. But do not know how to state the facts.
Facts spoke volumes.
Zeks had been married since eight and was now told to go. She thought it not fair.
"What is it, my love?" But it was not Abdul it was my man called James and they were confused inside my head. I had become his wife of Abdul because I had nothing. James just said it out loud as if the echoes from the past.
Drugged and confused and then let go into this void.
"I am going to dump you." He added, " I see no future in us."
what was it?
"You do not want me." He replied.
Life is insane. I thought. I thought and thinking led to me being insane. I got lost somehow in the world of madness. With people drifting in and out speaking their parts and then taking what they had to get and leave. I was somehow this shadow. Lifeless I did not matter.
It is nothing to do with being badly behaved but with seeing that we are all as bad as each other. We must learn to live with the consequences.
When the consequences were ripped from me. I had been dumped. I cried all the time. I was a dumping ground. All hands on deck she is about to sink.
"Let us go and make and see if we can make it worse." Said the single-minded family they were enjoying the joke so much.
"She did not think we loved her to let her suffocate."
What went on inside her head? Nothing she ate her pastry quietly and then went on to settle the score. The thing was she did not mind him he had been her male. But he said and sighed he no longer wanted or asked for her. She did mind.
"No longer to sleep in the same bed?"
"Not even to sleep in the same house."
"I will see about that." She roared and then went into action.
Quiet as a mouse she told me as if the hurt so deep.
"I am your mother and that man is about to throw me out."
I am most cornered and even concerned by her and did not like her proximity to disaster. When she left I would have to follow. Who would take care of dad?
"You remained a girl too long. Now get lost." Said James taking the world by storm. A star was born.
I did ache.
What had started like that then turned nasty. Because we cannot break the chains of the past. We can try but the pain is too painful.
It was in the early 1950s or was it late 50s because my mother said I was alive. Then she gave a shrug and sat down and told me this story. It was not a story suited to someone under age but that did not stop her.
What we do to the child inside us is when we share such a wicked deed but the mother said she did not have much time. She was about to die because she no longer young.
Bloody-minded the minefield happened. I was told stores of information. Now I am passing it onto you.
Because now I am no longer young.
I did not understand. Smiled and listened because there was no television and no radio at that time. The room was bleak except for the nice chair with the cozy red colors which I was not allowed to sit on. Only one person sits on that chair and he is not coming here anymore.
She said she came from a good family better than her husband the berk Fidel.
"What happened?" I shouted listening with interest as my mother's sober-sounding voice swept along as if running for space. She appealed to me to stop as she going to tell me. All of the gory bits.
Then she said it.
"What?" I said staggered and fell to the things on the floor the clothes and the fine skirts.
"Well get up from there. Going to ruin the clothes."
"You'll ruin the clothes."
"Of course. You did just say that the woman chopped her husband's head off?"
"Well yes, she did."
"Who were these people?"
"Okay, mother."
Then mother went on. I did not like that woman but my mother said she was normal.
So I did not want to be normal after that.
That was who Zeks was. So she was spiteful and revengeful so what? Most people were worse and if she did not dare touch me that was because we had an understanding.
Her family came back and forth seeking her out trying to find out if she okay. But then realized that they had families too and crept left and fled.
Mother was not normal.
But I had something far more valuable something worth every penny. I had the witless woman sharing a story that she knew she should not be telling me.
But somehow I did not care. In fragments, it is sobering that when the household disagrees they dissolve.
"They disagreed."
"Their lives went so nasty after that."
"It was so exciting."
The glee in her eyes and the alertness in her sent shivers up my spine.
"His mistress wanted more."
"She did ?"
"So he could not be annulled?"
"Of course not."
Mother got ready for the full throttle of the story.
"No, the wife did she chopped his head off."
"Why?"
"Because she got jealous."
"Well, she had not been for all that time how suddenly she got jealous for?"
"Do not interrupt do not know ." She never knew the answers to anything. I was mutining.
"How come?"
"Where is she now?"
"In hospital."
"What a sad story."
The way things were and are should be one wife per man. But he brought the old ways back.
"But he could choose which bedroom to sleep in?"
"He was choosing her more than his wife."
"Why?"
"He had more children with her eight or nine." Said mother.
She machined away as if speed gathering.
I went to make some tea and began to play with a ball. The noise distracted her and she called me in. After a couple of minutes she called again and sighing I went to do as I was told.
"He married now to two women both sisters. He was a man almost like a laughing stock."
"Where did they live?"
"In the same house, he was not a rich man."
