Mrs. Unmarried: Ice for Series, #1

By Chinelo Mgbeadichie

Ezinne is an abused, battered and broken wife whose husband is murdered in their home, she is the prime suspect and the world is looking at her because she had motive and opportunity but will her lawyer be successful in saving her life or is she doomed because of his death? Suspense, Intrigue, Drama, Mystery, Crime, Sizzling and Sensational! You dont want miss this!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ciscadichie
• Release date: May 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781521333280

Chinelo Mgbeadichie

Chinelo Mgbeadichie was born to Nigerian Parents in 1989, she became a legal practitioner in 2013 after which she travelled to the United Kingdom to obtain a Masters Degree. She is ever thrilled by the idea of creating stories.  She finds particular pleasure in weaving twists and has been named a natural storyteller. As a compliment she has been tagged as a woman with a lot of unimaginable ideas swirling through her head. And her books...called page turners.

Book preview

1

EZINNE GASPED AS SHE looked down at her creamy dark skin, the beads of sweat that had formed on her chest and face had turned into torrents and were now pouring down her body, soaking the Ankara she draped around herself. The wrapper was clammy enough to send any normal human being outside to allow herself some fresh air outside the burning heat in her kitchen but not Ezinne, she had gotten so accustomed to suffering that little reliefs such as this felt like too much luxury.

The chicken pepper soup on the kerosene stove was fast boiling and she could see the steam bubbling away, causing the lid of the pot to rise and fall like a heavily sleeping soldier. Its aroma blended well with the yam and plantain porridge she was cooking on the second stove and hunger gnawed at her now empty stomach.

Other than her rumbling stomach nothing around her seemed to have any life or meaning. She was completely numb to her emotions and confusion was the order of her day.

How many times had she asked herself this morning what she was doing wrong? Or whether there was something she could do to make her marriage work? Yet there was no answer, all she could hear was the silence, well at least there was the noise of the children playing in the compound but in her heart there was an ice-cold silence.

Yesterday night had gone all wrong; she had been lying on the bed with her chest to the bed when her husband came in. She had waited silently, hoping that he would pretend like she didn’t exist but no, he grabbed her already short thick hair, yanked her out of the bed, and flung her roughly to one side of the room.

Gladly she crumpled herself into one corner and hid her face so as not to look at him, barely managing to keep the tears at bay. Within 10 minutes he was out of his work clothes, she could almost feel him as he moved from one end of the room to the other, putting aside his clothes and shoes. She held her breath when she felt him stare in her direction. Her head was securely hidden between her knees yet she could feel the hate oozing from him.

Despite the heat dredging the oxygen out of her kitchen, Ezinne shuddered as she coasted between the present and the memory of her sorely horrible yesterday night. She was transported back to that moment when she felt him walk toward her, heard him toss his belt and heard as his belt hit the tiles. She wasn’t sure if she was crumpled besides the wardrobe or by the table but from the position she was sitting she hoped it was the table or at least closer to the table than to the wardrobe.

Ezinne prayed it was the table so she wouldn’t be sitting in his way. She dared not raise her head otherwise that might provoke him even more. She prayed and waited, but could prayer save her from all of this? She wondered beneath her now pounding heart, certain that God had abandoned her; her own father had so why wouldn’t God do the same? After all she had disappointed and disobeyed them both.

She tried to think of what her late mother would have advised, of course, with regards to God the answer came quickly she heard her mother’s voice in her own head as she admonished her to pray unceasingly.

How about with regards to my husband? She asked silently, instead of a response guilt tugged at her conscience. ‘Is he your husband?’ Came the subtle yet loud response in form of a question.

But we got married in a church, she argued.

‘Under whose authority did you follow him to the altar?’ Came the next question, she stifled a groan. The discussion between Jesus and the Samaritan woman came flooding her mind.

Subconsciously Ezinne opened the pot of porridge, her mind was still lost in the events of yesterday night only to be jolted back to the present as the heat from the lid caused her to drop the lid abruptly. She winced in pain because the heat scalded the fingers on her right hand. The yam looked like they were soft and ready to be eaten so she picked up the wooden cooking spoon and gave it a firm stir being careful to ensure that the remaining water mixed soberly with the broken pieces of the yam, as well as the plantain, mostly the plantain until it formed the porridge, she sprinkled the sliced pieced of Ugu leaves which was already sliced and prepared on the chopping board into the mix and further stirred it before returning the lid over the pot and allowing it to simmer. While she waited her thoughts returned to yesterday night.

She sat there communing with her spirit when she felt her husband bend over her, muttering and cursing, he reeked of alcohol, and she knew he was drunk.

He pulled her up while cursing her and flung her back to the bed, his broken piece of rag doll. Ezinne shielded her head from hitting the bedpost before scuttling to a sitting position; all her senses were spiked with curiosity, fear and a little pinch of hatred. She saw him fiddling with his zipper and knew what he wanted; she eased herself into a lying position and started taking off her clothes. He was going to have his way with her anyway so no point fighting or resisting him and getting punched first.

Within a few minutes he was on top of her getting his pleasure, no preambles. When he was done he rolled off her to his side of the bed and in a few seconds he was snoring away. She sighed in relief and got up quickly to wash herself of his filth. She already had one child from this broken relationship and couldn’t risk bringing another one into this world.

She sighed in despair, why was her own life this messed up? Samantha was happily married with 2 kids, there was not a day she didn’t post a cute picture of her family on Instagram and to think Samantha had rounding up her program in school. Her husband obviously treated her like a queen with so much respect. She took her phone to check the last post by Samantha expecting something new, and true to her thoughts Samantha had just posted a picture of herself and her daughter dressed in the same polo top with a pink inscription and blue jean trousers, on Samantha’s clothes she had the word ‘Ray’s Queen’ imprinted on it while her daughter’s white polo had ‘Ray’s Princess’ on it.

She pitied herself all over, hadn’t it been because Samantha had gotten married to a cute young football player that she had been on the edge and in a haste to get married to a young cute guy too and somehow she had disregarded every virtuous requirement her father had told her had to be present in the man she was to take as husband.

Who wouldn’t desire marriage so badly after what Samantha told her of how magical and beautiful her own marriage was? Samantha had gone on and on about how the man treated her, how he took care of her and all the muscles and money. Practically he was a die for, if care had not been taken Ezinne would have snatched the man for herself but she feared ‘karma’ so much that she would rather cut her own fingers than date another woman’s husband or boyfriend. She had heard rumors of her father’s younger sister, her aunt Uchenna who had snatched another woman’s husband and after 5 years of marriage the man suddenly walked away to marry a much younger woman and till today, her aunt never got another man to marry her. Of course it was probably true what some of her friends who dated married men said that her aunt couldn’t remarry because she remained in the village where the stigma stayed with her. That if she had just moved to the city, someone else who knew nothing of the stereotype would have quickly married her for she had still remained beautiful even after the man left her coupled with the fact that she hadn’t had any child with him.

So asides from her fear of karma, Ezinne wanted her own man, a man she wouldn’t have to share with another woman nor fight over. So when Chukwuma came along, without prayer or counsel she let herself be swept off her feet. She refused every voice of reasoning including her inner voice. Well why wouldn’t she, he wasn’t exactly a tall man, no, but he was of average height, clean suit, clean shoes, well-combed hair, and that smile that could send any woman dancing in the sky. It was as if she saw the entirety of his teeth when he smiled and it was beautiful.

Their meeting was magical and as she had then believed ‘orchestrated by the father of lights himself.’ He was everything she dreamt of, strong, smart, rich, astute, and of course generous. Until now she kept wondering if those things she had seen were ever there or whether they had been in her imagination or if he had covered his evil man so well that she hadn't identified him.

She shrugged, perhaps he is just going through a rough time and couldn’t share his troubles with her, but 5 years was a hell of time to still be going through a rough time.

She opened the pot of porridge again, the water had dried and in its place was the thick porridge. She put out the fire in the stove before opening the pot of chicken, the steam which oozed out hit her with its tantalizing aroma that she would have burst into a rhythm and a dance if she was in a beautiful mood. Instead she took out a piece, her tongue longing to have a taste; the hunger had risen beyond endurance level. She would have had a taste had it not been that her husband had strictly warned her never to eat while cooking as that would determine if she was honest or not. Stupid as that sounded she obeyed, or maybe it was just because she didn’t long for it as much as she longed for this chicken.

The chicken she had taken out was tender when she cut a tiny piece from a corner. After eyeing the meat for a while she cut a much larger chunk of it and tasted it then chewed on it until she had finished the chunk she cut out. She bit at the other piece just for the satisfaction of disobeying her husband, at least she wasn't exactly eating, it was all part of the process of knowing if the chicken was ready for consumption.

There was never a place except from him where she had heard that a woman who ate from the food she was cooking would be dishonest. It was the most absurd superstition she had ever heard and coming from a presumed educated man, it was appalling to her.

2

EZINNE GINGERLY EASED the pot off the stove unto the tabletop gas cooker; it had been 3 months since she last used the cooker. The gas in the cylinder was exhausted and she hadn’t gotten the courage to ask her husband for money for a refill, at least he had been kind enough to give her money weekly for food and other household necessities. She sighed and reminded herself that he was going through a rough time.

Their travails had begun exactly a year after their wedding when his mother suddenly passed away the night before her delivery. It was strange and scary to her, because she couldn’t understand why his mother would die the night before she put to bed. So while for her it was scary, her husband and his relatives found it unacceptable. As far as they were concerned Ezinne was the witch that took the woman’s life in place of hers’ so that she would not die at childbirth.

She had overheard her husband’s younger sister, Osisioma telling her husband that at the hospital and sincerely she didn’t want to believe he would consider it let alone believe it but then everything he did, every word he spoke, every action he projected, every glare at her since she had their child, Chizaram, showed that he believed it just as his sister did. She would have confronted Osisioma but that would only confirm that she was a witch otherwise how could she have heard what they were saying standing by the door of her ward in the hospital when she was supposedly asleep, but she hadn’t been sleeping. Her body had been tired from the travails of childbirth but her mind had been active, taking in her environment taking pleasure in the fact that those whom she thought were her family and loved her the most were right there with her.

Her husband, his sister Osisioma and her husband were there throughout the delivery period despite that they were grieving. So also were Samantha and her husband, as well as her husband’s younger brother Ikechukwu. In the few minutes after she closed her eyes to sleep the clan went out to give her space to sleep leaving behind her husband and his sister who pretended to watch over her before Osisioma spilled out the bitter gall that was burning in her bosom.

Ezinne was sure that it was the news of her mother-in-law’s death that had caused her to go into early labour but none of them was any wiser to give that any consideration. The woman had treated her the same way she would treat her own daughter so why would she want her dead, her death had given her the creeps. Her mother-in-law had gone to bed in good health but didn’t find the strength to wake up the next morning. Three months after her death, her mother, Chukwuma’s grandmother passed on as well and that was when Chukwuma lost it completely, it was then that the everyday shouting and insults graduated into everyday slapping, punching and raping. Now there was no one to help her, hadn’t she gone against her father’s direction not to marry the man rather to finish her education and become the artist she had always loved to be.

She strolled to the balcony to take some fresh air, the cool air felt good on her skin, it caressed her, the palm trees hummed silently, she could hear their silent hum despite all the noise in the street adjacent to their building, her fingers longed to paint, it longed for her spatula and colours but it was gloom that filled her heart.

She saw Chizaram run across the yard followed closely by Adesanya, the son of a neighbor. Subconsciously her eyes wandered to the front of Adesanya’s house and she could see his father and mother playing chess and laughing. In her mind she could hear the woman’s strong voice, the voice of a woman with confidence. Why wouldn’t she be confident? When her husband carried her like she was an egg. The woman worked in a bank yet had her husband’s loyalty. It reminded her of her father.

She smiled sadly, if only she had listened to him. He was one man filled with the Wisdom of Solomon, even after his wife’s death, he remained single, no scandal. It wasn’t as if she or her siblings would have objected to his taking another wife, he chose to serve God the rest of his days. She didn’t think such men still existed in her generation.

Her eyes returned to the couple playing chess, the woman moved a Bishop and laughed throwing her head backwards and punched her husband slightly on his right shoulder, he held her hand on his shoulder with his left hand. It was probably because the man was a pastor that he stayed faithful to his wife, otherwise why else would he love her so much? Ok, maybe she was being sentimental because her relationship with her own husband had gone sour, after all Samantha’s husband was good too. She headed into the house to get a stool, she was definitely going to enjoy this afternoon breeze before her detractor returned.

When she walked into the room, a past flashed in her eyes, she saw herself being slammed against the wall beside her box, the day she had packed her cloth and threaten to leave. Chukwuma assured her that day that if she dared it he was going to find her and make her life useless. He reminded her that she was his and he had paid her bride price in full. She heard his voice ring out in uncautioned rage, the last and only words that kept ringing in her mind that day was the name of Jesus. How she managed that day was beyond her, she was sure she would have died had it not been for His name on her lips.

Quickly she picked up a piece of paper and a pencil, if she couldn’t paint at lease she could draw. Then strolled to the kitchen to get the stool, unconsciously she massaged the back of her head where he had hit her against the wall and let the tears drop afresh.

She chided herself for being so weak, she needed to be strong for her daughter, no child deserved to grow up with so much violence. Chizaram was her own little princess and it didn’t matter whether her father saw her as a princess or not. She had to have a plan, she had no money otherwise leaving would have been easier, a day like this when he wasn’t home she would have taken off. She came out with the chair and dropped it on the floor before adjusting her wrapper.

I should wear proper clothes, it is bad enough that I am being battered from outside. I shouldn’t be battered in my mind too with that said to herself, she went in to take a shower.

She came out of the bathroom with tears running down her cheek, the pain seemed to flow out to the surface as the water poured down her body. If only she could wash it off with her bath. She needed healing and she knew it but where was she going to get it? Definitely not here, her home would be the best choice, somewhere within her she knew that her father would still welcome her with open arms, of course he was disappointed in her but she was sure of his love.

She walked up to the mirror, it seemed like ages since she took a good look at herself. Chukwuma made use of the mirror more often than she did.

Her naked image stared back at her, a part of her felt ashamed as she stared back at herself. This was her in her unguarded moment. The weakling Chukwuma found joy in pummeling. It was no wonder he hated her, she was completely subdued, no light in her eyes, her hair was unkempt and she was very thin. Her usually rounded breast was flattened. She pitied herself, when did she degenerate into this? She merely existed not living exactly. She dabbed the tears and water off her face, moisturized her skin before putting on a little make-up. It didn’t matter what her husband thought of her, it was what she thought of herself that mattered. She angled her head, where had she heard or read that? She couldn’t quite place it, but she was sure it must have been during one of those marriage seminars she had attended back in school.

She walked with a new confidence as she returned to the veranda. She could see Chizaram, the girl had 2 boys playing with her now, Ezinne smiled sadly at the childish innocence, gone were the day she could laugh and smile easily like her world was perfect.

Adesanya’s mother looked up at her at that moment, smiled and waved to her, she responded to the woman’s greeting with a bow of her head. The Pastor followed his wife’s greeting and greeted her too. What was that she saw in his eyes? She was sure it was compassion for her, more like pity. She was sure the entire compound knew that her husband had turned her to his punching bag but none of them had ever come to her rescue. A part of her loathed them, no it wasn’t just loathing, she hated them. It was true that it wasn’t their fault that her husband was destroying everything that she ever was but at the same time it wouldn’t kill them to help