Hurdles - Cindy (Book 2)

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The violence became the order of the day in our house and there was nothing I did in the eyes of Elias that he saw okay.

And what’s even worse was that the people around me even if I explained would never believe that a man like him would do such a thing.

My friend from work would ask me on numerous occasions if I was swollen or I was just gaining more weight and we would both burst out laughing as I told her that they were beatings and after that we would brush it off. She never took me seriously, maybe it was the way I said it or the kind of man my husband portrayed himself to be to the world that made her take it as a joke.

But at this point my self worth and esteem had been crushed, I was practically living in one dress with no strength to change nor did I have a reason to do that. Elias had lost all the respect he had for me and he would bluntly tell me that I looked foolish and worthless, all this while I would just look at him with nothing but figments of how much we were once in love and day in and out I kept hoping that things would get back to the way we once were.

Each time he hit me in front of the kids they would be shaken and after a while they got used, I really pray that no child ever goes through that because my children seeing me like that was the worst kind of torture. After a while Hope; the eldest would gather the younger ones and keep them in the bedroom as he beat me up and when done, she would come and cry with me asking what wrong I had done to her father. When this continued she learnt to take it as a normal thing, which shouldn’t be the case considering she would grow up thinking that being beaten by a man and keeping quiet is okay. The only way I could protect her was sending her away to a boarding school after she wrote her grade seven exams, my only prayer was that she found a way of forgetting about everything.

After she left for school, my young sister came to visit and it was during this time that she witnessed an episode of me being beaten.

I had stopped waiting up for Elias to come home because he always stayed out late, this particular day after getting home passed midnight he came to wake me up because he wanted his food. I obediently did that and started warming his food but I was shocked to see that he had come with a bottle of men’s lotion and I was so sure it was bought by his girlfriend. She was the first of his many rendezvous activities, I had seen his change in behavior and even the way he smiled as he texted along on the phone.

The wife in me had snooped through his phone and gotten her number, foolishly I called her to inform her that he was married but I was shocked to learn that he told her I didn’t love him enough and she wouldn’t stay away from him because he is the one that went crawling at her.

The lotion was in a gift bag with a card signed H, I didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out after all her name was Hailey. The fact that he had brought it home made me feel belittled and of less value, I knew we had our bad days but was it that bad that he had to disrespect me like that? Without thinking twice I took the lotion bottle and squeezed the contents on the table, in that moment I wasn’t thinking straight. I just needed to do something that would ease the pain.

When he came from the bedroom and saw what I had done he started beating me, I remember him pinching me in the nose and I bled so much. There was blood all over and my only escape was the kids bedroom. Even though I hated that they had to see me like that, that’s the only place I could go to. That night for the first time I slept in their room with my clothes covered in blood, my sister cleaned me up without a word and in the morning she decided to clean the blood stains in the passage before the children woke up and to her surprise Elias had woken up and cleaned all the blood. It’s like I was lying.

‘This man will murder you one day and clean up all the evidence if you don’t do something anytime soon, I honestly foresee your death.’ She had said sympathetically that morning

I couldn’t respond because I knew everything she was saying was the truth.

When she went back home; she told mum everything she had witnessed and mum went on to explain to his mother. As a parent she was concerned about my well being and even when narrating she didn’t leave out any details. But again his mother responded saying her son was not a violent man and if she wanted she could ask everyone in the neighborhood he grew up in. She went on to defend that all his life he had never been in a fight and she called me a liar and if at all what mother was saying was the truth then I had brought it upon myself for bringing out the worst in him.

Shocked at the answer, mum tried to make her understand how people change over time but his mother was so stuck on saying that I was the problem and I had to learn to understand him because if I did all this wouldn’t be happening.

With that said she left but promised to report her son if ever he laid a hand on me again.

That was the beginning of the death of their relationship, yes it had never been good but I had hoped that things would change but that day set precedent to how the future played out.

‘You need to divorce him Cindy.’ She told me with a serious face after I had visited her

‘Mum I am sorry but I don’t want to end up like you, I will fight for my house to be in order no matter what it takes.’ I had responded without looking at her

We stopped talking for a while, I understood her treatment but all I was trying to do was shield my daughters from growing without a father. I didn’t want them to go through the same roller coaster I did.

He had a good relationship with the girls, I don’t know what it is with fathers and daughters but that is something I wasn’t going to take away from my girls. Elias was a good father, a strict disciplinarian, a careful teacher. He is intelligent and gifted at reading people and knowing what to do, and it’s this gift he used to manipulate everyone around us. Because not many people believed our home was broken, to them I was just a bad wife.

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Winnie

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