The First Wife by Paulina Chiziane

Author:Paulina Chiziane [Chiziane, Paulina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-914671-49-7
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2017-02-14T05:00:00+00:00

23

I’m on the edge of a precipice. One step and I’m gone. Ah, my heedless love. I accepted everything from you, put up with it all: illnesses, desires, problems, complaints, shame, dirty tricks, squabbling. Now you’re breaking free, getting rid of me, exchanging me, humiliating me, in favor of other, younger, more beautiful women. I wish you happiness, my love.

I go to my bedroom and engage my mirror in conversation.

“Mirror, oh, mirror, what’s going to become of me?”

The mirror rewards me with an image of tenderness and the clearest answer it has ever provided.

“You won’t be the first woman to get a divorce, nor the last. Divorces happen every day, like births and deaths, but relax. There’s a big difference between the will of man and the will of God. What God proposes, man doesn’t dispose.”

“And what is God’s will, dear mirror?”

“And what is your will, dear twin?”

If men and women had been made to die together, they would have been born together, from the same womb and at the same time. But each one of us is born on our day and at our own hour. Only love has the strength to bring people to union. Tony and I, two rivers, two parallel lines, become one during the course of our journey. Now, we’ve arrived at the estuary, and our paths have divided. Once again, we are two, each one flowing freely toward the ocean’s deep waters.

“Dear mirror, I’m an earthenware basin with a crack in the middle and I can’t retain water anymore. I’m a shoe with a sole worn through that’s no longer any good for walking. I’m a failure. I’m defeated. I’m a woman abandoned because of conjugal incompetence. An old woman. Dross. Worthless.”

“But the world doesn’t begin with you, my dear twin. Nor does it end with you. There are women suffering much more than you in this world. If the divorce goes ahead, it’ll be because it was written in the book of life that you and Tony were not to die together.”

The image I see is my certainty, my subconscious mind, reclaiming sayings and knowledge hidden away in my memory. Within me there’s a deep sense of emptiness. An endless ache.

I go back to my bedroom and lie down for a bit. In this bed I had dreams, I bore children, I wept over the long absences, the jealousy, the disappointments. The end of it all has arrived and the bed will be no more than a stretcher, on which to rest from my weariness. Me and no one else. The bed has now grown in size and seems different. There’s a cool breeze and I close my eyes. The doorbell rings.

I open the door. It’s my four rivals. The news of our divorce has left them in a state of complete shock, as if it were some seismic shift. They come with a whole list of questions. I answer them.

“It wasn’t I who took the decision to seek a divorce. I’m leaving the road ahead clear, my post vacant.

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