Chapter Two

Salisu took his time to gain his breath, he'd shaken so hard after Halima's question. 

"No oo. I've just been masturbating." Halima shook her head and pulled down her lower facial muscles in a sneer. 

"Masturbating? Do you do it at work or at home?" Salisu clocked his tongue and Halima knew the conversation was over. His mother would take over. 

"Babbana, why can't you tell Halima to stop working so she can take care of you very well. How much does that her work pay her sef." Halima bit her top lip and drew in breaths to feel better. 

"I've been thinking about it, I'll decide soon." Halima's mouth dropped open as she watched them talk as though she didn't just ask an important question, or she plainly just wasn't there. 

"Decide quickly fa, it's not good to see her in all those her yeye skirt and white blouse like lawyer own." Halima turned to look at her mother-in-law but swallowed her anger. She could say categorically that she had had enough. Enough. 

"Go and collect the prescription from the doctor and stop standing there." Halima picked her hijab from the chair she'd lain it over and slid it over her beautiful cornrows that reached her nape. She pulled the hijab over her face a little more to hide the fact that tears had gathered in the rims of her eyes. 

"Stop shuffling your feet you this ungrateful idiot." Once Halima shut the door behind her, she spied a corner far away and burst into tears when she reached it. Her mother-in-law was used to using her predicament against her. And at opportune moments like this one. 

She knew that Salisu had covered her shame when she might have been slaughtered by society's Haram police, when she might have destroyed her so called family name, but sometimes she wished She'd not told anyone of the incident, she wouldn't be here now. 

"Ma'am. What is wrong?" Halima wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her hijab and turned to look at the nurse who had shown them Salisu's room. 

"Nothing. Thank you sister." The nurse cocked her head in question. Halima saw she wouldn't back down and told the first lie that came to her. 

"I'm worried about my husband wallahi. I don't want to be a widow this early." Actually, to be honest, she wished she could be a widow so she could go on with life. But Astagafurullahi.

"In Sha Allah, he won't die. Allah brought him far, The All-Knowing won't let him go now. Put faith in His words and everything will be fine. I mean it." Halima nodded and applied it to her real situation. 

"And Sabr. Have Sabr, you'll be fine." Halima nodded again and stretched the prescription paper to her. The nurse showed her the way to the dispensary and went her own way. 

At the dispensary, she paid with her own money since both mother and son didn't deem it fit to pay for drugs. 

****

"Careful with the door." 

Halima held unto the basket that they had stored Salisu's things in during his hospital stay, wrinkling her nose at her over-loving mother-in-law who never seemed to stop hovering over her son. 

Halima couldn't even blame her, due to the way she overly hovered and got agitated, her other two girls held back in their relationship with her. 

"Can't you hear, he needs more throw pillows. You're deep in thought again abi? What are you thinking of? Children you don't have, what in the world is making you feel in thought." Halima smiled picked some extra throw pillows from a brown sofa and passed it to Salisu's mother who gingerly put it behind her son. 

"Goan cook or will you keep standing there like a fool. Ya Allah, I wish I married Salisu a better woman, imagine that at my age, I still have to come here to take care of my son." Halima picked up the basket she'd set on the coffee table and whirled around to go to the small kitchen situated in their self-contained apartment. 

She pushed the door and saw plates lying around, her pot of chicken stew she'd warmed this morning was there empty. A pot of warm rice was there on the stove and a portion of it was already gone. So, the individual ate a little rice and lots of chicken stew. Good!

Halima re-entered the small parlor and asked who ate the chicken stew. "What do you expect? I had no food at home, what would I eat? It's just a pot of tasteless chicken stew and dirty rice, so why are you breathing as though I stole your child." Halima narrowed her eyes at her mother-in-law's words and turned around to go back to the kitchen. 

Now, she'd have to cook couscous or miyan taushe and semo. She looked in the empty paint bucket where she stored her semo and found it empty. Cous cous it was then. 

Other people would ask why she swallowed all the nonsense her husband's family handed to her on a platter, but the she wasn't one of those women who could walk out if a marriage whenever she liked or didn't like what treatment was meted out to her. She just couldn't. 

Still deep in thought, she didn't notice when her husband's mother walked in and snatched a dried meat she'd scrubbed the body off the table. Halima pursed her lips and continued to wash the remaining meat in the bowl she held. 

"The meat isn't even sweet. And I wonder why you should eat meet if my Salisu can't eat meat. You should be in solidarity with him, such a wife." Her mother-in-law chewed some of the so called not sweet meat. 

"This place is too small or I'd have moved in." Halima began cutting the meat into small sized cubes, not paying heed to the word spoken. 

"If people wouldn't talk, I'd have asked you both to move in with me. That big house is there for nothing." Halima still didn't talk, didn't say a word. 

"Keh! Are you not the one I'm referring to? Are you deaf?" Halima who had not taken off her hijab whirled around, the heavy material slapped her mother-in-law on the face, knocking the meat to the ground. 

"Mama, I have nothing to say. If you want to move in, why not? At least you'll be able to eat all the stew I make and watch over your son." The recipient of her words watched her in shock. Not even able to speak. 

**********

"Good Morning Ma" 

Her boss greeted her and let go of the attachment she was adding to a client's hair. 

"Please go back home to your husband. I don't want an employee that will leave work for a week and not call. You've done that three times in the past one month. Please don't come again after today." 

Halima knew it was fruitless to beg, knowing how she'd begged for others and had been refused. 

It was all over. 

Now, they'd really have to move back in with Salisu's mother.