This is why all men should have mistresses

From my early years of watching Nigerian home videos in the conviviality of our Lagos home and reading Ifeoma Okoye’s Behind the Clouds, I had consequently come to realise that the mistress was the malicious one when placed on scale with the wife, that she was the home breaker, the one to watch out for and above all “The witch”.

I have listened to my Aunts detail experiences as we watched home videos on African magic about a man who had a beautiful wife like an Ogbanje they said and still chose to totter after other women, or another who married a second wife contrary to his religious credence’s. I have watched them consign this other women as a witch, watched them open their palms like one receiving a gift as they said “Why are men like this?”

I have listened to them say loud enough for my comfort “Hope you don’t treat your wife like this O” before shaking their heads and snapping their fingers at the quandary of the poor wives they see on television.

But this is the mistress my Aunt’s do not know about.

This mistress is not too beautiful at first. She is from Osumenyi, born into the traditional middle class Nigerian family that ate rice on Saturday afternoons and bread and tea most mornings. She has towering hopes; wants to be a Nurse like the Rev Sisters, meek as Angels who attended to her when she caught yellow fever.

She is one of those girls who have matured to understand their delicacy, those girls with Aunts who tug at their breasts when they first start to sprout and say “Men will soon start coming for you”.

This certainty of men coming like swarms of locusts or an army of soldiers makes her initiate oiling her lips on Sundays and perming her hair for Morning mass “Because I do not want to be unprepared when he comes” she says.

She doesn’t see him nonetheless, not like they said anyway. Besides the men at the motor park who slap at her behind on her way from school or the ones who dub her Nkechi or Chioma or Ijeoma or any female name at the main market, she knows no man with palpable concern in her. Besides her best friend who exclaims “Nwa! Milk and honey, Ne ri so gi, keep eating alone” when she dresses in her new denim, she has no indication she is beautiful.

And when she gets admission to the University, it’s not to read Nursing, her JAMB score is not high enough. “But I will read it like that” she says, shrugging her shoulders and resigning to fate “For half bread is better than none”

In the University, this mistress encounters girls from Lagos and Port Harcourt and those big cities that had once been like fairy tales. She meets girls who grew up eating meat pies as snacks and not Okpa, girls whose chief obligation was trying to outshine the other.

Her first Boyfriend is Chika, he is one of those Igbo boys to whom business is focal than schooling. He tells her about the lands he owns in Onitsha, and the government project he had been awarded to construct a major road to obtain her attention. He tells her later that he is just a sheer cloth trader whose Uncle brings stock from Dubai which he sells at the main market.

At this time she already loves him enough, she already loves the way he says “Babeyy!” when he visits her lodge, already loves the fine fine blouses he selects from his stock for her saying “Asa Nwa, I just knew it would suit your shape”. She loves that he is from Amichi which is a neighbour to Osumenyi and that he joins her to pray the decades.

She is with him till her University days are over, loving him with the submissiveness reserved for wives. She does not bother that her friends tell her “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, what happens if Chika does not marry you?”

Of course Chika would marry her; they have talked about marriage, about the colours they would use for the Igba Nkwu and about who would bake the cake. They have argued about which of Chika’s uncles would lead the procession to the introduction, if it was the one in Dubai or the other in nearby Lagos.

But when Chika receives the list for the Bride price, he coughs, only coughs like one who catches the flu and the next day he flees Osumenyi, never again to be seen.

This mistress is now approaching thirty. Her mother has started those conversations of anxiety, her father takes longer to reply her greetings. Her job as a secretary pays just enough to transport her to work, little to feed and even littler to make her hair.

She meets your husband at a friend’s wedding. He slips his ring finger under the table when he starts to talk to her. He says he works in an Oil company and tells her he is from nearby. He excuses her to take your calls and when he returns, he requests for her number. She gives him, despondency blatant in the little shakara she does as if somewhat scared he might depart.

When he starts to call, she finds him amusing. It is puzzling that he is always driving when he calls, that he cannot make calls at night for asinine excuses and that the one time he had, his voice had sounded hoarse, like one speaking from within a cupboard or wardrobe.

She finds out he is married somehow, the walls have ears and she tells him “I don’t want again”. He is obstinate his calls augment, he makes them at night even as if to show his desolation.

She is now thirty five, he is still calling.

One day, you see her lounging in the back seat of his range rover at the mall, the next you see the same range rover in your yard.

“She is the new wife, treat her well” your husband says.

This is the mistress my Aunts do not know about.

And so perhaps, if they do know that the wife is a woman who wants to be loved, appreciated at whatsoever cost and that this sadly is who the mistress is as well, if they do know that the mistress too has moral values just as the wife, then they wouldn’t snap their fingers in distaste, then they would conclude that mistresses are eventually not so bad anyway.

In this novel light and in mint condition understanding, hello wife to be!

This is ultimately why all men should have mistresses. I mean there are many, too many shattered women to help, are there not? Sincerely, don’t you think so too?


Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

cool good eh love2 cute confused notgood numb disgusting fail