The Woman

He was always quiet and appeared very nice and easy going. He worked with a priest and was ordinarily considered to be as holy as the person he served. He usually kept to himself and often had a smile for any friendly face.

He appeared like he was a special breed; how else would a full-fledged man who had not taken an oath of celibacy function without a companion? He worked as a priest’s steward and took his job very seriously. The few times he spoke he did so very gently and in a low tone, it was certain that this guy who is a named after a day of the week (choose any you like) couldn’t hurt a fly.

Everything was peaceful between him and his employer for years until a pregnant lady showed up in his place of work calling him out to come and take care of his responsibility. At first, those present thought the woman was calling out the security man because the steward was the last person on anyone’s mind.

As the woman screamed and created a scene, he remained inside oblivious or pretending to be of what was going on outside. The middle-aged lady was calmed down and interrogated and she confirmed to all that the culprit was the steward.

What?! So, he does have a tortilla and even knows how to use it? That came as a huge shock to everyone present and all I could think of was how he even got to doing it and what he said to the woman to get her to give her punani freely.

Then the story started to unfold; it turned out the woman in question was a well known mentally unstable woman in the neighbourhood where he lived. She had her sane days and the very bad days when she has a very bad mental breakdown. She also confirmed that they had been lovers for a while.

She revealed to the priest that she was married to her lover and the wedding took place in a church. 

This was a big shock to all who knew this quiet steward; he was human after all and had needs like every other man. All those days people looked at him and felt he was lonely, he wasn’t. He had an easy lay and always had his groove on with the crazy woman. She insisted on leaving with him on that day; she was pregnant and needed to be taken care of by her man in every way possible.

He lost his job on that day because his employer could not stand his deceit, he made no mention of his marriage and acted normal even though he had a heavily pregnant wife. Further investigations revealed that the lady in question was previously married and also had grown up children. The church wouldn’t wed them without a letter of identification from their own church.

The supposedly ‘mad’ woman forged the needed documents and so they were wedded in error. Legally the marriage should be null and void because the steward claims not to have known that her secret lover was mentally challenged. Spiritually there is no marriage since it was based on lies and deceit but what does that mean to two half-baked adults?

Personally, I probed him on why he decided to settle with a woman who is obviously a pain in the ass in his life. As usual he found it hard to respond, finally he admitted that she loaned him a huge amount of money and the only way he could get her to forgive the debt was to marry her. He also feared that she would kill her because she threatened to if he ever left her.

This young man was having the best of both worlds till the smart mad woman trapped him with a pregnancy. He was visiting her shrine and also spending her money; now I know why he always had that sheepish smile on his face on those days.

I asked if he was happy and he quickly said no, he says he is trapped. She controls his life, makes him look after her other children and now that she has birthed their child, he has become a baby nurse. He calls her ‘the woman’ which I find funny, was she ‘the woman’ when you were secretly warming her mattress, drinking from her milk fountain and ooh la la-ing as adrenalin rushed up and down your body?

‘The woman’ who is definitely older and smarter despite her madness makes him run errands like a child; an older child of hers who is also mentally unstable has been missing for months and guess who has to go back and forth the police station?

His life is a hot mess right now; he wanted a cheap punani but the consequences have been damn too expensive.