When It refuses to stand
Marriage, you all know how the story goes. Man meets woman, man woos woman, woman takes man to meet her parents, man marries woman, and man on the first night of sex has erectile dysfunction, woman laughs, and man files for divorce; It’s a story as old as time. And that’s why Hyginus was here seating on a chair that made him feel oddly uncomfortable and comfortable at the same time. The space in front of Hyginus was unobstructed by an office desk, and the walls around were coated with what was best described as a neutral shade of grey. If he listened very well, Hyginus fancied that he could hear whispers of the wind bounce against the walls, he knew this was a recording because all the windows were closed. He must be one of the modern kinds, Hyginus thought to himself. With an affirming smile, the man on the other chair asked, “what can I do you for?”
After different unsuccessful attempts at trying to get his masthead sailing, he had begrudgingly discussed it with his close friend, and his friend in turn, after several minutes of uncontrollable laughter had suggested that he should take a bottle of manpower. Hyginus might have been desperate, but he was educated enough to know that that wasn’t a good idea — at least that was the reply he gave. So after struggling with the decision, he did the next best thing; he went to see a doctor. Fortunately… or unfortunately, the doctor had been a man.
Hyginus related his woes to the doctor, and the doctor after listening to Hyginus’ complaints directed him to the adjoining room. The doctor closed the door behind them and turned back to look at Hyginus with a face that made Hyginus feel more uncomfortable about the situation.
The doctor sat down on the stool and turned his back to Hyginus so he could jot down a few things on the table close to the wall. The Doctor turned over the page and penned something else down. That is when he said something that caused Hyginus’ brain to stutter.
“I need you to pull down your trouser for me.”
It took a full minute before Hyginus could speak, and when he did, his voice cracked. “I don’t understand, my trouser? This trouser?” he said as he pointed down.
“Yes,” the doctor answered unapologetically.
Hyginus fiddled with his belt without making any progress in removing it, “No Oh,” he shook his head vigorously. “I won’t, I can’t, I just ca — ”
After the examination, Hyginus sat in the waiting room. On the bench right across, there was a woman with a child on her lap. The baby looked at him almost too seriously, as though the baby was trying to say that it knew what had happened inside the doctor’s office. Hyginus frowned his face in an attempt to deter the baby from looking at him but the baby just doubled down and furrowed its eyebrows more. Hyginus stood up and decided to move to another seat where the baby’s knowing eyes couldn’t find him.
After hours of waiting, his results were ready. The doctor concluded that there was nothing wrong with him, at least not physically. “It was probably something psychological,” the doctor said.
“So what do I do now?”
The doctor insisted that Hyginus should try alternative measures first before they resorted to medication. He advised Hyginus to go see a therapist; he wrote some numbers and addresses of therapists he thought best suited for this type of case. He assured Hyginus that therapy could fix the problem.
And that’s why he was here, in this strange man’s office looking at the Rorschach pictures that hung on the wall and the home-like-setting approach the man had taken in organizing his office.
“Do I love her?” Hyginus repeated the man’s question while he stared at the wall behind the man. Hyginus was struggling with the question because he was lost in the not so pleasant memory of his gonads being fondled with by the doctor.
“Wait” the man cut in. “Let me ask you this question. Have you considered divorce?
“That is why I am here, I don’t know how to approach the matter.”
“I see this all the time. Two people who love each other decide that they can no longer live together, it’s a very tough decision, I know. My question concerning the marriage… and I need you to think deeply about this before you answer. Do you still want it? Because you have to want it for it to work… you have to wan — ” He was temporarily cut-off by the gong-like sound the clock on the wall made. He shook his head and continued. “You have to work hard for it to work… The divorce, that is,” He paused and looked at the clock again, “it appears my time with you is up. If you are still unsure about the union, you could bring your wife the next time you come, there is much work to be done”
“Thank you very much,” Hyginus said as he stood up to take his leave. The doctor was right, going to see someone actually helped. He closed the door then took the elevator down; the tag on the door he closed read Barr. Edward Ajo (Divorce Lawyer) — because which hot-blooded male will sit down and talk about his feelings with a stranger especially when it had to deal with matters of the south and its inability to start a revolution.
He got into the car and drove. There were no moluwes on the street causing holdups with their incessant dropping and picking of passengers, neither were there agberos on the street telling him to park well. Everything was good and calm; all signs indicating that this was not Lagos — only mad people lived in that state. He parked his car by the side of the road after driving aimlessly for a long time.
Hyginus’ mind wandered to a time when his father was still alive. His father was a portrait of an ideal man — everyone said so. His father did not endure any slight to his name, he couldn’t overlook anything that would bring his manhood into question. He remembered what his father had once told him after aggressively closing a business deal with a competitor.
“Hyginus, don’t ever let people disrespect you. You see that man that just walked out of here, if I was a weaker man, he would have had the best of me… but you know who your father is. I am a man and that is what you are too.”
The nostalgia made him miss home, so he decided to drive to his mother’s house. The giant black gate closed behind him as he parked his car under the tree that had now grown so long that its bulk was resting on the fence. He got out of the car and climbed the slanted walkway to meet his mother who was already waiting for him with a smile on her face. She hugged him and ushered him in before she went into the kitchen to prepare a meal for him. Hyginus’ mother had house-maids who could have done that, but she believed that it was a wife’s duty to cook for the man of the house and since her husband had passed, the position now fell on Hyginus.
After an hour or so the food was served. From a distance with her head angled with reverence, she watched her first son eat — it had been a while she cooked for anyone.
“How is your wife?” she asked.
“She is fine,”
“This tone you used to answer my question, is everything alright? In fact, when will I get news of my grandchildren?”
Hyginus choked.
“Sorry,” she said as she rushed to pour water into the empty glass that was beside the stool. She resumed her line of questioning after the immediate emergency had passed. “I know it has just been a couple of months but I am not getting any younger, I just want to see all my grandchildren before I go and join your father. It has just been a couple of months, but I was already pregnant with your elder sister just a month after marriage. I don’t need to tell you whose loins you come from, you know your father was a lion…” She looked up wistfully before she continued, “That man was a lion everywhere, even in the bed
“Stop,” Hyginus protested.
“What? You are a grown man, we can talk about these things now. You see those pictures?”
Hyginus looked at the framed picture above the TV; his father was in the center, flanked on both sides by his seven children. The smile on his father’s face was so pronounced that it almost took one’s attention away from his protruded midsection.
“You are your father’s son, I know the machinery you people have”
“If you don’t stop now, I won’t eat this again.” Hyginus threatened.
“Okay, I will stop, just tell your wife to give me my grandchildren.”
After the visit to his mother’s house, Hyginus only grew continuously irritated by his wife especially with her recent habit of talking and laughing loudly over the phone. Every laughter traumatized him, it reminded him of the one thing he was trying to forget. One day, after the end of the second forty-five minutes, Hyginus called out for his food. It was brought to him and laid out on the stool in front of him then she went into the kitchen and continued her call. Hyginus surfed through the channels to find something loud and interesting enough to drown out her incessant laughter; when he found nothing, he resorted to eating the food. Taking the lid of the plates, he washed his hand and was about to dig in when he barged into the kitchen with the plate. He complained at the top of his voice about the lack of meat in the food, he only kept quiet when she pointed out the two obvious pieces of meat in the plate. She apologized and added a third one. He wasn’t out of the kitchen before she continued her call.
To Hyginus it was almost as if her laughter grew worse with every bite that he took. He was about to down a piece of meat before she let out her biggest laughter yet. He rushed into the kitchen and asked her if she had gone mad.
“Why are you disturbing my peace? And who are you even talking to on this never-ending call?”
She ended the call and apologized with a smile on her face.
“What does that mean?”
“What does what mean?”
“The smile on your face, what does it mean?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“You’ve been telling your friends about my condition right? Using me as comedy material.” Before she could deny the fresh wave of accusation, his palm made contact with her face. She first heard the sound before she felt the sound — in reality, it wouldn’t have made any difference because it had happened too fast for her brain to process the information. The slap was so fast and powerful that it brought her to the ground.
The punches he was throwing didn’t feel wrong, it just felt strange; Hyginus wasn’t an expert wife beater but he at least thought there would be begging and crying from the person being beaten. Hyginus got off her and went straight for his car. He drove to a bar but not before calling his friend to join him there.
After five large bottles, the alcohol began to impair his speech and his brain didn’t quite register that there was no need to shout.
“She deserves it, why would she joke around with such a thing,” Hyginus’ friend said.
Hyginus nodded in agreement. Maybe if Hyginus wasn’t so drunk, he would have remembered that the same person had laughed for an extended period after he had told him.
“So what do you want to do?”
“I don’t think I will go through with this divorce. What will people say?” Somehow his brain decided to whisper the next bit of information. “I can’t even let it get back to my mother, that… That I divorced my wife because I couldn’t erect?” Although he had talked lowly, it wasn’t low enough because the woman who had been exchanging sultry glances with him, stood up as she failed to stifle her laughter.
He was in a testy mood the next day when he arrived at the hospital; haunted by both the memory of his testes being fondled with and his wife’s face as he beat her. He rejected the doctor’s attempt to get him to see a therapist. “I just want the medicine” he insisted.
When Hyginus got home that day, he could hear his mother-in-law’s voice on the other side of the closed door. She was telling her daughter to endure, “sometimes men get angry, and it is your job to deal with… to manage it.” She reminded her daughter to respect her husband. After all, women are the neck which in this case, the flaccid head rests on.
As they were about to step out from the room, Hyginus moved away from the door as quickly as he could before they discovered him. After a long apology from both his wife and her mother, he forgave her; they began talking and laughing again after an hour. While they were talking Hyginus’ wife stood up to put away his jacket and briefcase, she had barely turned to leave when Hyginus dragged it back from her. Having failed at subtlety, he laughed and gave an excuse that was so generic that he couldn’t remember it after it had left his tongue. The truth was that Hyginus didn’t want any of them to see the drug, he couldn’t stand another wave of mockery from his wife.
The eagle soared that night and many nights after that. Hyginus was back to his old self; and as long as no one knew the steps he was taking to solve his problem, they couldn’t call his manhood into question, so he didn’t feel threatened. The one thing that kept him up at night was his wife’s face when he was beating her. It didn’t express pain as it should have, it just looked like she was tolerating a disturbance. He cast it out of his mind and enjoyed the happy times.
The happy times all came to an end when he couldn’t find his medicine inside his bedside drawer that was usually locked. He searched for it everywhere but he couldn’t find it, the more he searched the more agitated he got. Everything was coming back to him again — his wife’s laughter on the first night, and that look on her face.
Perhaps Hyginus had called her to the bedroom to inquire of the whereabouts of his missing drug, but deep down Hyginus knew he just wanted to hit his anxiety away.
“Where is it?” He asked.
“Where is what? I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Hyginus was about to say something before he thought better of it and quickly closed the space between both of them with his hands poised to hit her
You all know how the story goes when it refuses to stand, man is dejected, man wants to prove that he is still a man despite his failure to rise to the occasion, man raises a hand to strike woman, but something holds man’s hand midair, man immediately realizes the secret behind woman’s tolerating face, but before man can react and free himself from her grip, man finds himself on the ground; after all, it is woman’s job to manage and deal with man, so she does.
