William wasn’t a Christian – he was a patchwork she put together.
By Lechi Eke
William loved something about Miss Wesmor Bukky Jack – she was kind of reserved and had not been passed around. They rode on the same office bus every day to work: the one from Ogba through Opebi to Maryland, down to Town Planning Way, up to Gbagada Expressway, then joining the Third Mainland Bridge to Victoria Island where the Corporate Headquarters of the conglomerate they worked for was situated.
Miss Wesmor joined at Opebi, just by the Opebi end of the Opebi By-pass. William rode from Ogba. So, he studied her every morning as the long cream and blue 24-seater Mercedes bus with the LGI logo standing for Liquefied Gas Industry pulled up beside her to take her in.
Always, she stood tall and svelte, a lone figure in clean and expensive clothing. Her age could be anything from mid-Twenties to mid-Thirties. Miss Wesmor was always bright, shaming the early morning fog, shining through its hazy light, bright and alert, as if she had been awake for six hours instead of for one.
A single ‘Good Morning!’ thrown into the chilled bus was her usual entry signature. Her greeting typically circulated around sleepy heads nodding perhaps not in response to the greeting but from half slumber, looking for where to land, it usually landed on William who often caught it and replied without waking the chilled sleepy bus that smelled of sophistication and great wealth.
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William had checked her out with his female cousin who worked at the front desk; she connected calls and siphoned info from different departments. Her verdict – ‘Miss Wesmor Bukky Jack has a long pedigree of ‘datelessness!’ This excited William who watched her every morning as her head bent over a book almost all through the ride. He thought she wasn’t sociable, although he had seen her smile once, a broad smile that lit up her face, the day the driver said something about May Day and how welcomed it was to him – he knew she was human too and would love some time off work like every other person.
They worked in different departments, he in Accounts, and she in Personnel. After work, they rode home differently – she rode with her boss who lived in her area but came to work late, he rode back with the office bus. He had had five failed relationships in the workplace; his fact-finding mission showed she had had none. His interest was more than kindled; non-dating girls set him on fire.
One morning, he splashed more cologne than was necessary and sat on one of the two seats she usually preferred. She hesitated when she came in. He encouraged her to sit with him and she inclined. Two three times after that, it became a routine. He found out that she read a devotional book every morning and bent her head in prayer for the rest of the ride. He also found out that she was from a more organised society than he; she was a member of a church. Prior to this time, he had hated the iconoclastic attitude of fanatical church goers, it stifled him – he stayed away from them. However, with Miss Wesmor, it was different – her kind of Christianity fascinated him. Actually, what really fascinated or intrigued him was the sheer feat of a grown human going on week after week, month after month, year after year without sex! It intrigued him. He made a pass at her.
Now, Miss Wesmor was in a backslidden state when William made a pass at her. She was flattered; she accepted.
“I’m a Christian though,” she said, “although, there’s nothing wrong with having a guy as a friend, just a friend.”
“No, nothing wrong,” he agreed. “I love broad-minded people,” he said and added softly almost in a whisper, “and narrow-‘waist-ed’ ladies.”
He thought it would offend her, but to his relief she laughed. He knew it was safe to joke with her then. She was really sociable and laughed a lot.
As the days went by, he made references to her physical features – her slanted up eyes, her athletically built legs, her rounded hips, her slim waist, and so forth; he complimented her on them and watched her face pucker into beautiful smiles.
Sis Wesmor’s problem was that she waited a long time for God to show up – but He did not. So, she decided to help herself. The guys in her church were afraid of her class or, so it seemed – she was a jet-setter, a fashionista, a seven-digit earner and a snob. The brothers had no balls. They were too afraid to approach her. Their whole month’s salary could not pay for her time at the spa or maintain her ‘a million braids.’
William was different from the brothers in church – he had class and possessed style. She checked him out – not with God but at the company’s database for workers’ bio data. She found out that he was five years younger than she was and that he was related to the MD. He was an urban boy who knew his way around; classy but no religion. He had no idea what the Bible said; which was not a problem, at all. He was an educated man and everything was about Information Technology, so, she had the Bible downloaded into his system for his personal perusal. He paused over a few verses when he had the time which was rare and at long intervals. He was a free thinker and hated what he called the authoritative voice of the author of the Bible. He believed not in chastity but in the right of individuals to express themselves. He persuaded Miss Wesmor of the need to express herself and not kill herself with bottled up feelings. Miss Wesmor’s resistances were weak and her Nos were feeble. They slept together a few times and she understood how the Bible is true that sin has pleasures.
They went to church together for that was her life and she pulled him into it. He was fascinated by church lifestyle, how multiplied hundreds of people who seemed to know one another would come together two three times a week to sit down like people in a theatre to watch a solo actor, more like an orator, perform on stage while they cheered. Some days he made them happy; some days he made them sad by making them feel they were not working hard enough towards a heavenly eternal rest. Fools, he thought, how could they refuse to enjoy the world they lived in, hoping and pining for a utopian place unseen by physical eyes? But he suffered the services gladly as long as the end of them ushered in a blissful time of pure heaven on earth at his place or hers as the ‘spirit’ led them.
This they did for a while until Miss Wesmor, driven by conscience requested that they made it permanent which he accepted. Being very attached to her organised society, she insisted he became a member. He shrugged his acceptance – what did have to lose? He was comfortable with Bukky. She was a well-behaved girl, five years younger than he or so he was led to believe, who agreed to most things he said and treated him like a prince.
One thing William loved about the church was that they teach girls how to take care of their guys. That could be the reason why his relationship with Bukky had lasted longer than others because girls seldom held his interest for long. He answered the altar call, said the sinner’s prayer, went to Holy Ghost class, got baptised again, this time by immersion in water because Bukky advised him not to mention to the pastor that he had infant baptism – ‘It’s so not Christianity,’ she said. ‘It’s not found in the Bible.’ So, he kept silent on that to please her because he had protested in private. At the Holy Ghost classes, she had told him what to do – ‘Just repeat one syllable several times and you’ve passed.’ He did. He also passed out of New Believers’ Class and got received into Miss Wesmor’s organised society.
Shortly after, he met the Marriage Council, professed his desire to marry Sis. Wesmor Bukky Jack.
“Yes, yes, yes! God has spoken to me about him,” Sis. Wesmor said to the Marriage Council.
They went through The Intending Couples’ Classes and learnt nothing. A Saturday came when they stood at the altar facing each other saying, “I, William Tijani Aremu, take thee Miss Bukola Jacqueline Wesmor to be my lawfully wedded wife…”
As Mrs Bukola William Aremu, she was perfectly happy for three months. Then her husband suggested that they begin to watch pornography on Sunday evenings. He needed something to kick-start him for the week ahead for he found life with her a little boring. He loved clubbing, she loved church-related activities; he loved drinking but she would not touch alcohol with a long spoon. Parties were his turf; she would not move her body to any secular rhythm but loved jiggling in church. So, they adjusted on so many things.
In his own way, he loved her, only he was becoming frightened with the monotony their life together was sliding into. Sunday evenings were exceptionally boring – what with the choir singing drowsy songs and the preacher’s sermon so sleep-inducing.
Sis. Bukky vehemently objected at first to the issue of pornography as private entertainment for the family, but then she had a rethink. He was her husband after all and had given in to her on so many issues.
“Okay,” she said, “let’s do it.”
They began to watch. He always was instantly thrilled and took her on afterwards. But she saw no thrills in the X-rated movies and was mostly bored and often repulsed. Nevertheless, since it made him happy, she obliged him.
Now, he looked forward to Sunday evenings and even hummed and tapped his foot to the choir ministration and said the benediction loudly – anything to move the Sunday service on and bring it to a close so that they could go home, entertain guests Sunday afternoon; settle down in the evening to watch their secret movies and act them out.
He brought different blue films, some even with good storylines. Then, one Sunday night, he slotted in a dangerous one, one with a little bit of violence and he instantly enacted it out in front of the television set! More dangerous ones followed; non-violent ones were abandoned. Soon, she began to use foundation powder to cover bruises sustained during the dramatic enactment of the X-rated movies. For him, the excitement just begun, but the glint in his eyes worried her. She protested, he pleaded.
Bukky became pregnant. She doubted if he understood the implications of his insane demands on her in her condition for he began to demand strange things of her – tie her hands and legs and have her spread-eagled on the bed; whip her silly with a horse whip; whip and knock her about wearing knuckle-length iron-studded leather gloves before the act. After the act, he would kneel beside her and weep louder than she, pleading all the time that it would never happen again – which he kept his word until the next Sunday evening.
Her health became endangered and so were her face and her limbs and her back which stopped the horse whips. She began to take time off work, not from morning sickness, but because of the bruises. Not long after, she began to feel some creeping motions in her body as if some slimy living things were slithering about on the inside of her. All the tests she underwent in the best hospitals in Nigeria came out negative! She had nightmares of snakes and knew not what she had contracted that could not be diagnosed. She suspected that it was from what she and William were doing. Who would she talk to about them? Who would she turn to? She was ashamed to tell anyone. William wasn’t a Christian – he was a patchwork she put together. She bore it bravely praying that God would change him, but heaven seemed brass.
The violent adult films continued, accompanied by the beatings and the tears; the pleadings and the regrets at the end. After two lost pregnancies, chronic terrible aches and pains and bruises that could no longer be concealed, Bukky needed no prophet to tell her that William was a sex pervert – a pervert in an Italian suit, an executive pervert with a fat paycheque, a ritzy apartment and a sleek ride.
She sought for an escape, but feared he might kill her. He had bought some dangerous weapons for the enactment of the porno – once he licked the blood that dripped down her arm from the whip lash!
Colleagues asked questions; brethren asked questions – lies upon lies, pretence upon pretence followed one another in hot pursuit. Make-up could no longer hide the blue-black bruises anymore.
Bukky lost another pregnancy and barely escaped with her life. She woke up one morning in the hospital and half her face was gone! William was on his knees by her bedside, weeping and saying how much he loved her and how he would be more careful next time. She nodded her agreement and said they would give it another shot. When he left, she called the police and had him arrested lest she went home and poison his food.
They kept him there while he ranted and raved saying how church people were hypocrites and how they could renege on their promises – didn’t they vow that until death would they part? Why was his wife talking divorce now? Was one not supposed to enjoy one’s wife the way one deemed fit? When he ran out of steam and reality sank into him, he signed the paper that he would never go near his wife; he also agreed to the dissolution of the marriage.
Sis. Wesmor is a different sister now. She loves the Lord and treats His saints differently. She agrees that God’s gifts make rich and brings no sorrow. She has acquired in a painful trip, that fruit of the spirit called patience. She realises that all that glitters is not gold. Now, she prays for a God-fearing man and waits for God to give her such a man. She waits and has no plan B!
The end.
