The Meadow 73 hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. Earlier that day, before he went to work, I had told him that I wanted to go back to working as a nurse at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH). He had convinced me, months ago, to stop working because he earned enough for the both of us. Initially, I hadn’t agreed, but eventually I did when he talked about how it would be a good idea for me to rest at home while we tried for a baby. I became bored and restless. And so that morning, I told him firmly that I wanted to go back to work. Tobi didn’t take it well. He called me an ungrateful wife and said that I cared more about work than giving him children. I didn’t have a chance to throw some insults his way before he stormed off to work. Not cooking dinner was my way of dishing back the insults I had received. I also thought, imagined that that single act would show him how serious I was about returning to work. Instead, my insolent act was met with a slap across my cheek that soon transitioned into my husband pulling me across the bedroom floor and throwing punches repeatedly at my face and body. The first beating was settled between us and my mother who chided me for disrespecting my husband. Tobi, on the other hand, received a smaller reprimand. “Omode lo n se,” my mother had said in a bid to excuse my behavior. She is being childish. She knelt in front of my husband and pleaded with him to not be angry with me. That day I wanted to slap her across the face. I wanted her to defend me, to tell my husband that it wasn’t right for a man to hit his wife but instead I got on my knees as well and pleaded with him. “I’m too tired, maami. I want to sleep,” I answer in response to her question. I stand up and walk towards the door.
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