Cowrie husband
Noun: cowrie husband
Plural noun: cowrie husbands
"A man whose love has no value; a man whose affections bring death"
There was a cautionary tale my mother liked to tell.
A warning to hold God close, for beings existed that could not be explained. All hunting, seeking to put a woman’s happiness in a noose. But it was nothing but a story. An entertaining tale about a spirit who loved a human girl and how for a moment the girl loved the spirit back. In that momentary blush of love, without thinking, the girl promised it her heart and that is when it all began to fall apart.
The girl promised to love it till her body could no longer hold her bones. To keep it by her side with no man to steal it's throne. But before she could do all that, she wanted to know if it would do the same for her. Forsake it's kind and only speak my her name.
Those are the words the girl spoke to the spirit and in response, it reached within itself and pulled out a cowry. Pure and smooth, the stark white shell glistened in the light. It put it in her palm and closed her fingers around it tight.
“In this cowrie, my immortality resides. In your hands, you now hold my life”
Upon its sacrifice, the girl followed, leaving earthly things behind.
But she was young and her love did not last long. It was a fantasy with no real roots and what is love if it cannot grow. So she ran away. Found a secret place, crushed the cowrie to dust and buried her sin deep in the earth. Free, she found love with a mortal man, had his babies and built a life. The Spirit, nothing more than a fast fading memory.
Until one night, long after she had forgotten, she awoke to find a stranger with cold eyes watching her in the dark. In her mind there was no hesitation, she knew. The spirit had found a way without the cowrie that it gave. Still alive, possessing men’s souls to find her and collect on the promise that she made. She glanced at her husband asleep at her side. "Wake him!", screamed her mind. But she was afraid of the look in the spirit’s eyes. She feared that tonight they might all die. So listening to her heart, she rose to meet it and said...
“My love you have come for me at last. I thought I had lost you to the past.”
But it just stared at her, the deadly silence sending words rushing forth from her lips. Lies about cowries lost and a life of despair. Lies about her love for it and the longing to return to its care. The words would not stop. They flowed like a raging river. All the while, its eyes never wavered. Words spent like a hasty lover, she fell to her knees and wept. Knowing that for her evil deed she had no way to repent.
Finally, the spirit spoke...“
“Our kind has always said Man was weak. That your bodies, your beauty, nothing but deceit. Beneath it all, only evil speaks. But I loved you... without reason, without sense. The cowrie nothing but a test. A way to lay my doubts to rest. Yet here we stand, a murderess and the fool that gave her its heart.
As you crushed mine without care, I will take away what your kind holds dear. The very love you betrayed me for will now be your constant thorn. Your daughter, her daughter, every woman with your blood in her veins shall roam the world seeking love in vain. When they sleep, I will come for them. Put my mark on them. Beauty not enough to mask their shame. Constantly questioning, doubting their worth, as in their arms mortal men cease to find peace. And when it all becomes too much, when they realise that love’s warmth can only be found in deaths cold clutch. Then they will beg me to take them in my arms and only then will my anger rest. That is the price of failing love’s test.”
As a little girl, the story scared me. Older, I knew it was nothing but words spun together by women of a long-forgotten generation trying to make sense of bad luck and failed love.
Yet my mother, sensible in all other matters except spirituality and money, would constantly blame my broken relationships on THE CURSE. Demanding to know if I lay with faceless forms, ate food offered by floating hands in dreams. Sprinkling holy water over me even as I laughed at her whims.
“I can’t understand it…” she would say.
“How can the whole world be getting married and yet my own flesh sits on the shelf getting dusty? Who have I offended? Which spirits have you befriended? Do they call you wife as you sleep, only for you to wake up alone and weep?”
“Maybe marriage is not for me…”
I would answer, rolling my eyes at her constantly dramatic tone.
“…maybe I was meant to be wild and free.”
I would say, laughing as she kissed her teeth at my pretense at indifference.
She would rebuke my words, begging passing evil spirits not to take heed of careless thoughts spoken out loud. She was right though. Behind the jovial facade, I too sometimes wondered the same. Questioning my worth as another man disappeared without a trace. Never stopping long enough to tell what action had altered their decision to make me their mate. I wanted to share her enthusiasm, continue the race toward happily ever after, but I was weary. Breathing is hard with a heart so broken it no longer beats the same. Held together by sheer will, in its cracks and crevices only fear and the niggling doubts that kill love remain.
So, one day I told her to let me be…to let me live.
To unburden me of her dreams and beliefs. I was tired of trying to read the future after every date. Looking for signs in melting ice at the bottom of cocktail glasses. Of praying and fasting over every “It’s me, not you” text that pinged in middle of the night. Of being dragged to her “Man of God” and “Men of gods”. In desperation, even she no longer knew who to serve. So fixated was my mother on this single goal, that she let the devil take hold. Worshiping things that claimed to be, when she knew only one true way was right.
She’s gone now…angry words our parting song. The Bibles, jars of anointing oil and unsavory trinkets that spoke in a different tongue, now packed away. Coexisting in cardboard boxes as they once did in her mind. Her departure was sudden. A weak heart they said, but they were wrong. It wasn’t weak, it was broken. Shattered to pieces by a knock on the door and a 20-year-old secret that wore shiny snakeskin shoes and smelt of poverty. Even before the words of my father’s betrayal reached her ears, her eyes had already deciphered what this familiar stranger’s lips would say. He looked just like him. The dashing man who had swept her off her feet and introduced her to love’s first kiss.
There was only him, she had known no other. And yet here stood living proof that after her, after me…he had loved another. My father was the reason why she fretted over me so much because in her world they had loved each other so much. She wanted me to have what they had…a true love…a faithful love. Yet here stood the hammer that would break it all. Her life nothing but an illusion. Sweet dreams turned nightmare…awake with nowhere to run.
I was angry with her that day, so I pretended not to hear the knock on the door when it came. Passive-aggressive childishness…listening to the voices in my head that whispered
“Since this is her husband’s house, let her get her own damn door.”
"If only…" the lyrics of regret.
If only I had stood in her place, maybe I could have kept a father’s secret and saved a mother’s heart. Maybe I could have found a way to soften the blow. But I was angry with her for being her and I didn’t even turn around the first time she called my name. I didn’t know anything was wrong until she spoke again and then the tremble in her voice filled my heart with fear. I turned to meet her face, ashen and pale. Her last words like now an annoying jingle…disliked but forever imprinted on my mind...
“It is true what our mothers said. The spirit comes for us all, no matter how late in life’s game. Shows us that every man is a cowrie. None worth the love we gave.”
Beneath her, legs give way. Cold Italian tiles, the final caress on her tear-stained face.
He followed soon after. My father, breaker of a mother’s heart. Guilt and loneliness sent him to her. Hoping to make amends as he treads eternal life’s path. Numb, I could not even be angry. None of us perfect, a moment of weakness, and look at what we all reaped. Now an orphan, what was the point of anger? At whom could I unleash the thunder that bellowed within? The one who claimed to be my brother by a father’s misdeed or dead parents who had no voice to speak. No one was left who was truly a part of me, so maybe that was why I became even more desperate to fill in the cracks with something real. That was why I tried once more to let “love” in.
Hello Mother, How long has it been? Two years, three months, and so many minutes in between. I’m sorry that I have pushed your memory away, but I’ve been afraid of what your ghostly face would say. Of the words that would spring forth from your lips if you were alive to see the way, I have lived. Look, Mother...look at my ring! See how in the light the rock on it gleams. Rainbow-coloured beams bouncing in every direction. Bright enough to distract the world and hide my tears as they stream. I hoped when the time came, when someone asked me to change my last name, all I would feel was happy relief. The only sadness, that you weren’t here to share my joy. That you would never get the chance to “Show them” with your glittering lace and a head tie big enough to hide the moon. Washing yourself clean of past sins, as you tell the mothers of single daughters, “Don’t fret…God’s time is the best”
But all I feel today is dread. A voice screaming in my head, asking why I said “Yes.” I want to blame you...pressure from beyond the grave. But I know even you would have told me to walk away. Something is wrong with his love. It’s not the kind we talked about. The affection we sought on bended knee. It is angry, mother. Always looking for something, someone to maim. But after the storm the calm returns. A sweetness tinged with fear. A time when I pretend things will change, and my brain doesn’t whisper, “Maybe this is what you deserve”
Hello Mother, no, I haven’t been hiding from you. I’ve been busy. Life gets in the way of memories. No, I haven’t been praying. Is that what you came to say? Black and blue, it hurts to kneel…lips too bruised to praise. Remember the story you used to tell me? The spirit and the girl? I think the spirit has come for me, mother. It stole my husband’s soul to woo me and now I am his.
I can hear you rebuking my thoughts, telling me power exists in the words we confess. But I needed to tell you…I have no one else. His family forms a wall around him. Pretend not to see the blood on the floor. His mother says love is bittersweet, that with the good I must carry the burden of the bad. She says it is worse because I fight back…because I talk back…because I am too proud. She tells me to make myself small, so my presence does not offend. She shows me her back, decades of violence written in scars, laughing at the look of shock on my face.
“Violence begets violence…” she says
“…your apple did not fall far from its tree.”
Mother, she speaks to me as if we are in a secret society together. But her eyes are dead, her attempts at life a pretense. No voice…no hope…no more love to give. Mother, will that be me? Why don’t you ever answer when I speak?
Four years and a billion minutes since you’ve been gone now. I was going to tell you that you were going to be grandmother, but it turns out babies and fists don’t mix. Why won’t you come for me mother? I’m too scared to come and find you on my own. I sinned today…kissed lips that have never called me wife. So desperate for kindness in a man’s touch, I laid
myself bare to lustful stares. Grateful that someone looked at my body without first searching for place that wouldn’t scar. He made me laugh mother. See how cheap your daughter has become. Ready to lie on her back for a few minutes of mirth. I bet you’re pulling off your head tie and tossing it to the ground, as you bellow out my name. Still dramatic even in death I see.
He says he sees my pain, all the bruises that are slow to fade away. That he can save me from all this, take me away. What do you think mother? Should I go? Start anew with someone that calls me “Beautiful?”
Father used to call you beautiful. He would twirl you around the room to Sunny Ade tunes, and you would giggle as if he were tickling your soul. Never caring at the way I rolled my eyes at the pair of you. Always telling me to wait until I found love…how nothing felt better than to truly see and be seen by another human being.
I know he wasn’t perfect, mother…which one of us is? But he loved you so much so that he couldn’t live without you. Calling out your name even as he slept; asking for forgiveness, for you to take him to be with you. When he didn’t wake up the day after we buried you, I smiled as others wept. I wanted to believe that even in death you couldn’t stay angry with him for long. That you forgave him his wrongs and that wherever you are, you’re together twirling away to your song. If you are, oh how I must spoil the mood.
But is this down to you? Did you give me a template I could never follow? Lost in tradition…marriage the goal. Never stopping to tell me that what you had was love, and marriage was simply your name for it. Too quick to blame unseen forces when things didn’t happen for me the way they happened for you. Unaware that you were filling my head with fear until I was simply happy for whatever I could get.
I can see you trying to defend your ways, but wait…listen. I already know what you will say. That you did it out of love. That you wanted the best for me. That you didn’t want the world to laugh at me. Well, no one is laughing now mother, especially not me. They shake their heads in pity. Whisper behind cupped hands, grateful that you are not alive to see the marriage you wanted above all things. Don’t cry, Mother. I forgive you. I just need to learn to forgive me.
Mother, I had a dream last night. Five years to the day since you’ve been gone and I found myself at a crossroads surrounded by lost souls, no one able to tell me which way to go. I cried out, scared and alone, and beside me, a spirit appeared. It held out a cowry, so pure…so white, I wanted to close my hands around it tight. All the lost souls told me to take it, that it would make everything right. That I could leave all the pain behind…follow the spirit, make it my life.
I reached out, but out of nowhere a hand held me back.
It was you, Mother…you held me close and you said “No.”
You spoke…so long I have wanted to hear your voice, and it ripped through me like wind in the rain. I fell to my knees, and I wept. My tears made a river that the spirit could not cross. It raged and the earth shook but you did not tremble or move. You held me close and whispered in my ear, blocking out the sound of it and the wailing of lost souls that filled the air.
“My child…” you said.
“My beautiful, beautiful child. I thought you knew what you were worth. I thought I taught you that you were enough. But I can see now that I failed, I did not do enough. I did not listen, hear the fear in your voice when you said ‘Enough!’ I was blinded by love, by wanting you to have it all. I was distracted by the world and its whispers. I became foolish, dabbling in things that only concern God.
Now I know my journey is not yours. Each life different, a million paths to follow. Wipe your tears and see the light. The only spirits that exist are the ones we give life. Take my hand, together we will cross your despair and fight the thing that we have allowed to take all you hold dear. The monster we have fed with careless words and broken dreams. A cowry husband was never your portion…never your burden to keep.”
You took my hand and for the first time in the longest time, I was no longer afraid.
Mother, how long has it been? Time no longer seems to hold meaning when joy bubbles within. I ran, Mother, from everything that sought to break me. Don’t look at me like that…there was no other man. I saved myself…no genitals required. Stop pretending to be offended by anatomical words. Look at me…no ring but see how I beam. I miss you…miss the fact that you’re not here to see me fall in love with the woman I am supposed to be. But I know now that you’re never far away. I don’t know if I will ever find a love like you but of being alone, I’m no longer afraid. When loneliness knocks, I simply play your song and let Father take your hand and mine, twirling us around the room. Forever his girls, forever loved...giggling along to life’s tune.
A love that begets violence (physical or mental) is no love at all...RUN!
Comments