The Woman With the Artistic Brush: A Life History of Yoruba Batik Artist Nike Davies (Foremother Legacies) by Kim Marie Vaz

Author:Kim Marie Vaz [Vaz, Kim Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781563245077
Google: _7m5CAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 1620509
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1995-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

6

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Co-Wife: My Friend and My Enemy

We were taught that it was a very shameful thing for a girl not to be a virgin when she went to her husband’s house. Our custom required that the mother of the bride hide by the small house where her daughter was having sex with her husband. She would listen to see whether her daughter cried. If she did cry, the mother would know that her daughter was a virgin. Afterward, the mother collected the bride’s soiled cloth to show to the other women in the house. If the girl was a virgin, the mother and other women would be very happy. The mother would give her daughter’s friends a full packet of biscuits and a full case of soft drinks. If the girl was not a virgin, she would give her friends only half the refreshments. Her friends would be ashamed and say that their friend had disappointed them. The girl herself would not receive all of the money and presents a new wife usually gets. She would be given only half.1

But the day before a new bride goes to her husband’s house, she has to spend the day crying. I always said that I did not like the crying. If you are crying, it means you are lazy. When you live with your mother, you can get away with everything, but when you go to your husband’s house, you are entering a totally new life. You have to work hard. The first two weeks of your marriage, his family does everything for you. After that no one does your washing for you. In your parents’ house you can tell your mother that you cannot wash the dishes, and she will get someone else to do it. In your husband’s house, you work for many of his relatives. I brought this thinking to my marriage.

Although I had lived in my uncle’s polygynous compound, I never expected when I was growing up that I would be in a polygamous marriage. After my mother died, my father never remarried. He also was a devout Catholic. Men who belonged to the Catholic Church in Ogidi did not have more than one wife. The few who did were not allowed to receive Holy Communion.

I did not really agree to marry my first husband. He had a certain way of using “voodoo” if he wanted to marry a woman.2 It seemed that he could marry her whether she liked it or not. We believed in his power to make things happen to people. He had one room in his house that women could not enter. That is where he kept his “voodoo” medicines.

People use to call my first husband crazy. When he dressed, he would put a can opener strung on a rope around his neck. Anywhere he went he was full of this and other junk. These things made noise when he walked. People always told him to change his style; he would change to something even wilder.

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