I nodded my head to the song on the radio as I drove back home after work because this sudden break at work couldn't have come at a better time than now. After my exhausting weekend dealing with Remi, his pretentious mistress and his family, I had only managed to come to the office and not call in sick because I had used all my sick days for the last time Adesewa got sick.
I was also glad that due to the unplanned paid holiday, I would be able to spend my daughter's mid-term break with her. It had been a while since we had time so I happily planned out a few girl's only trip for her. Now that I knew that my company could provide lawyers to help me fight a legal battle to keep custody of my daughter, I was considering sitting her down and asking for her opinion indirectly on whether she wanted us to stay with her shitty father or not.
Since I planned to go out with her later in the day, I didn't drive my car into our compound like I usually did when I got back from work. Instead, I found a good spot along the walls of the house and parked carefully there. I took out my handbag and locked up my car before walking into the house after nodding at Ali at the gate.
Unfortunately, as soon as I moved closer to the door, I could hear my mother-in-law blabbing away at someone and a feeling of annoyance and frustration over having to listen to her bullshit made me pause in my tracks and made my hold on my handbag clench for several seconds.
By the time I recovered and was ready to continue moving into the house, I couldn't because the words she was saying and the person she was saying them to, sunk into my head and made me see red.
"Hey, see this useless girl. Just as useless as her mother. Oya sit there."
"Grandma, can I have my book back?" Adesewa asked and I could hear the shakiness and fear in her voice.
"I said sit there! Stupid, useless girl! I don't blame you. Isn't it that infertile crow of a mother that is making you have no respect? I'm in the same house as you and other than greeting me in the morning, you stayed in your room all day reading these stupid books? What are you reading books for? So you can be going to work everyday like your useless mother instead of focusing on doing the one thing your husband married you for?!"
With each word my mother-in-law said, my determination to divorce Remi grew stronger. No child should have to endure the kind of cruelty my daughter was facing. And as her mother, it was my duty to protect her, no matter the cost.
Halfway through my mother-in-law's rant, I quietly reached into my handbag and activated the recording app on my phone. I needed evidence to support my decision to divorce my husband and fight for custody of my daughter. There was no better evidence than this.
"Why are you looking at me like that? Ki lo n se eleyi to n wo mi bi aje? Oh, has your mother already recruited you into her bloodsucking coven? That's why you have the guts to stare at me? In Yoruba culture, when your elders are speaking to you, you don't look them in the eyes. What kind of nonsense has your mother taught you gan? Oya kneel there for me. Kemi bring the cane let me teach this useless girl a lesson."
I took in a deep breath at the thought that she was just going to use corporal punishment to deal with my daughter for simply existing. No wonder Adesewa was so afraid of her grandmother. Had she been subjected to this much cruelty all this while that she'd gone to visit her grandmother or I'd left her at home with her grandmother, I thought as my heart soured.
"I'm sorry ma." Adesewa's quiet apology broke my heart.
She hadn't done anything other than reading a book and she still had to apologize not just for reading but also for existing.
I was about to walk in to rescue my daughter from a possible caning when Remi's mother continued speaking, "Sorry for what? Sorry for being a waste of space that simply exists to suck all of Remi's money for your mother? Don't worry, I don't blame you too much. I blame your useless, infertile mother. I already told Remi not to marry her but he kept saying she was the one for him back then. If he had just waited a little bit, wouldn't he have married Busayo instead, ehn? Then our family will not have the bad karma of you and your mother existing in our genealogy. Ehn ehn, Kemi, give her ten strokes of the cane. Next time, when your grandmother is around, you will come and sit with her, okay?"
"Yes ma," I heard Kemi respond.
I slid my phone into my open handbag and strode into the house without pausing my recording.
"Kemi, don't you dare! Or so help me God, I'll find someone to strip you naked on the street and beat you until there's nothing left of you." My angry look stopped Kemi right in her tracks.
"Madam, why are you back so early?" She mumbled as she looked down at the ground, still holding the long and fat cane in her hand.
I sneered and eyed her for the traitor she was. She had been in this house all this while whenever I left my daughter with her 'grandmother' and she'd never thought of telling me about Remi's mother treating my daughter like this. Didn't that mean she was a traitor that had obviously been bought over by Remi's mother?
"Kemi, I said you should do something? How dare you stop? In fact, flog this stupid woman and her daughter together." Remi's mother yelled.
I shot Kemi a warning glare that told her just what would happen if she dared.
Then I pulled my daughter off her knees and moved her to sit down on the couch with my handbag. "Sit here and don't move."
Then I stood to my fullest height and stood in front of Remi's mother, glaring at her, right into her eyes. "You should be ashamed of yourself. A grandmother who is more like a wench from the gutters than an actual grandmother. All this while, you're always complaining that I'm a girl from the village but the funny thing is that you also grew up in the slums of Lagos. You're not a special rich 'city girl' like you think. You're just an idiotic woman with a Primary school leaving certificate who thinks you're all that just because you struck gold by marrying Remi's father. That's all your accomplishment in this life. Marrying Remi's father and having a male heir for him. But I'm more than an heir-bearing hen and I can see that you just can't stand that, which is why you keep trying to expose me and my daughter to your vitriol."
"Emi? Me? Omolola! Do you know who I am?" She asked, staring at me in disbelief.
"What are you other than a rich man's uneducated widow going around everywhere flaunting your stupidity. It's no wonder your own daughter wants to have nothing to do with you. Who would want a mother like you—"
Her eyes were red with rage by the time I finished speaking and like a short steam train, I could almost see the smoke shooting out of her ears as the sound of a slap rang in the room.
After the slap landed on my cheek, a sudden numbness engulfed me, accompanied by a temporary loss of hearing that seemed to stretch on for endless seconds.
Despite knowing how physical she could get, I'd been so occupied with expressing my opinion on her behavior this past few years that I forgot to dodge her slap.
However, I was no longer the Lola who took as much nonsense as she wanted to dish out to me. As soon as I registered that she'd slapped me, I slapped her right back.
Staring into her eyes that were wide in disbelief.
However, before I could speak, a hand pulled me back by my arm and a very hard slap knocked me to the floor.
Because the slap had been a sneak attack from an unknown opponent, I fell to the ground and sat there for a few second, my numb ear that was just recovering was no longer just numb but had started ringing with a very jarring tone like several crickets had gathered in my ears for a choir rehearsal.
I held my face and looked up to Remi's face to see him glaring down at me.
"Remi, you slapped me?" I was so dumbfounded that I asked an obviously ridiculous question.
"Yes, how dare you slap my mother?!" He said.
"Didn't you see her slapping me? Do you know what she said to our daughter?" I asked.
His dark coffee brown eyes that I'd once thought were charming were filled with unmoved disdain as he said, "So what?"
Suddenly, like some kind of epiphany, I finally realized why Remi had had the audacity to cheat on me with Busayo so publicly. At some point, while I was unaware, he'd completely lost all regard for me.
For him, I'd become a 'So what?' at some point. I'd become nothing to him.
I stood up from the ground, stared at Remi and his mother and Kemi.
Then I pulled my daughter off the couch into my arms and carried her upstairs. When we got to her room, I shakily turned off my recording app and sent a recording to my friend and another to my cloud storage.
I forced a smile and kneeled down beside my quiet daughter, staring at her face and into her eyes. Her face was still as calm as ever, she wasn't sobbing or crying profusely but I knew she was crying in her heart. She'd just gotten so good at hiding her pain and discomfort, while me, her mother, had been looking everywhere but at her. It was no wonder that she barely spoke.
A bitter taste filled my mouth at the thought that she'd probably been secretly exposed to her grandmother's vitriol from a young age while I wasn't looking.
"It's going to be okay." I reassured her wiping the tear stains on her face.
A more genuine smile covered my face as I kissed her on the forehead. I stood up and went to the part of her wardrobe where I kept her books and gave her one to read before I started packing a bag for her and another for myself.