He Can't Forgive Her

He has never forgiven her. Her sin? She wrote to inform the woman he truly wanted to marry that he had a child by another woman. A beautiful daughter, slightly deformed. He was not exactly sure which he hated the most, that she told about the child or that she told about her deformity.

He blamed his daughter's mother for that deformity. She was a nurse and God knows what they imbibe to prevent themselves from getting pregnant. As far as he was concerned, all nurses are promiscuous. He thought he made himself clear from the very start that there could never be marriage between them. He was happy to dump his wild oats between her thighs occasionally without a single thought to paternal responsibility as a consequence.

She did not mind, she loved him well enough to have given up her virginity to him, in spite of being a real princess whose very life was forfeit for succumbing to carnal pleasure. Her father would kill her if she ever set foot back in the Eghor Kingdom, from where she came to Lagos to study to be a nurse. She could have gone anywhere she wanted, been anything, her father could afford it. But Nursing was her first love, that was until she met him.

She was beautiful enough to be desired by any man, but she chose him. She heard the rumours, she even knew his nickname - activity Y front - in recognition of his prowess with women and his near insatiable sexual appetite. Yet her allure was not enough to hold him and she committed the a grievous sin. Against his desire, she kept the pregnancy that resulted in the beautiful but deformed child. Their daughter was born with a right hand missing.

She gave up all she had to their love, money sent from home for her upkeep, anything extra that she could make. As soon as it became apparent that she would be having the baby, he stopped making love to her, but that did not stop him from taking her money still. He came late at night and left as soon as he wheedled something out of her, even if it was everything she had left, it did not matter he still took it. She was lucky school was only a short walking distance away. The pregnancy soon became a stigma that attracted derision from colleagues and superiors alike. Even strangers who did not know her had something uncomplimentary to say about her morals. She soon stopped going to school but could not get up the courage to let her father know so she stayed alone in Lagos, this alien town with its high-life and noisy streets.

From her apartment window, she watched garishly dressed women vie for attention of men passing by. Most angled for the ones who appeared to be rich enough to pay for the night or even a short while after that. Many of the women could not stay in long term relationships, were averse to marriages and the one she had become friendly with confessed that she could not do without the excitement of the night life, the variety of partners that add spice to her life. She loved Lagos and did not imagine anything like it when she was running away from her own village in Mkpat Enin. This was the friend that offered the only help she got with terminating the pregnancy. The tablets she brought only made her sicker. They caused some bleeding, nothing more. Those tablets may be responsible for the missing hand. Nurse that she was, she had never really learnt about the workings of reproduction, when and how to stop unwanted pregnancies.

She had been given the insulting tag of Lagos girl by the matron at the hsopital, even though she did not have the street wisdom that came with it. Lagos girls knew how, they knew their way just like her friend. They were not foolish enough to get pregnant and they got paid to get laid. Not that he would ever pay to sleep with anyone, he was too selfish. Even she could see that through the haze of love.

He truly was selfish and revelled in the attention he received from the female of the species, all of whom fell over each other to provide for his every need. All he wanted to do though was go to London to study law. He even knew which temple he wanted to belong to and practised his social skills in preparation. He spoke English with a distinct British accent, thanks to his father, who insisted on the perfect diction for all his children from when they were very young. His father had no money, could not keep down a job even, but believed that a person that speaks well will open doors. So he 'polished' his children, taught them table manners and how to say please and thank you just as he imagined the queen would like to hear it. They had the BBC as their guide and could write off for any catalogue they wanted. It was taken for granted that all his children would eventually live in England but no thought was given to where the fares for the crossing by boat would come from. Nobody travelled by air in those days.

He flunked his University of London Examinations and sent off for Cambridge, O' and A' Levels. He was determined to pass both at the same sitting. He did, he made the requisite grades to get into law school, but only just. He spent six months on his belly swotting. It was in that time that he got her pregnant. She was all moony eyed over him and simply asked for it. Since his mother refused to feed him after he failed his London examinations, insisting that he go out to find work like his mates, he had to survive somehow. He met her through a girl from his neighbourhood who lived in the nurses’ hostel. He went to visit in the hope of some light supper and found a source of food that kept him going for more than six months. She even gave more than food. He told her from the onset that there would be no question of marriage between them. She was simply not his type. To think she gave it up to him so easily. All the respect a woman had to hang on to, her sole bargaining chip for marriage, she gave it up. He suspected that she would try to snare him into marrying her, and that in the end was what she did. Never trust a woman, no matter how gullible they appear. He felt a twinge of guilt now and then for treating her in the way he did. He still remembered the night she bled and bled and he refused to take her to the hospital because he did not want to be implicated and arrested for an abortion. He also hoped that it would work or even that she would die and he could put the whole sordid episode behind him. He left her eventually writhing in a pool of her blood. When he came back the following day the cramps had subsided and the bleeding stopped and she said she felt lighter so he believed that the abortion worked. he did not know that he had been fooled, royally.

His travel papers came through the following week and in the frenzy of making travel arrangements, convincing his rich uncle to give a loan to cover his crossing and a few days lodging in London, he completely forgot about her. He rushed around on his last morning in Lagos to bid her a final goodbye but when he was told she had travelled, he put out of his mind believing she had gone back to whatever bush spawned her.

His mother's letter two months after his arrival in England jolted him back to reality. She wrote to inform him about his pregnant wife who as now staying with his family. Her father, the Ogi Eghor accompanied her to find him and hopefully persuade him to take responsibility for the pregnancy. When he was not there, his parents were easily persuaded and his father even found enough money to pay a bride price and carry out preliminary wedding ceremonies. They all took her word for it that he was responsible for the pregnancy. Such traitors, as if they did not know about Lagos girls and their tricks. Nurses were particularly notorious, yet they believed her without asking him.

He was waiting for Marie, the love of his life to join him in the next month or so. Her father was rich and could help him through school if he married his daughter. But that was only an added bonus, he loved Marie already. What could that nobody of a nurse do for him? She spoke of a father in a town in the Midwestern Region, as though there were towns in Nigeria outside Lagos, and that he was wealthy. how much money could a villager have? Marie's father was an agent for John Holt and UAC and God knows what other shipping company. they owned a house in Ikoyi, where the white people live.

He wrote back a scathing letter to his parents expressing his disappointment and informing them that his father was welcome to his second wife. Apart from a court response from his mother he heard nothing again from them, until Marie told him about the letter from his mother.

That is why he has never forgiven his mother. She contrived with a perfect stranger to ruin his very life. She wrote to let Marie know about the child and the deformity - the first time he heard about it it - and sent a photo. A grainy black and white photo that showed a child who was easily a miniature of himself. That the right hand ended in a stump was evident from the photo. It was obvious that it was posed deliberately to show the deformity.

Marie moved out immediately. He regretted letting her put off marriage until she finished her course at the university. She had said she wanted her father's name on her certificate, because it was her father who paid for her education. He had been willing to wait since they lived as man and wife in everything but name. But she had moved out leaving him with bills to pay.
Before she left she let him know quite clearly that she would not be coming back and that he should not bother to find her. She saw him as callous and selfish for leaving a woman in the lurch for no better reason than that she bore him a deformed child. Marie got all that from the tearjerker of a letter that his mother wrote to her. Marie would not be persuaded to listen to his own side of the story. All she could see was the ogre who took advantage of an innocent village girl and then left her holding a deformed baby. His frantic explanations simply made matters worse.

His own mother did that to him, she drove away the woman he loved and wanted to spend the rest of his life with. She destroyed his future to please a waif, a wayward waif of unknown origins.

[Auspicious]

+

Ati Bobo, ati Girl-Banged-Up,

Both of them, dem gat issues.

Life Choices = Life Realities.

Auspicious.

[Count1]

Originally Posted by agbonizuanghwe

He has never forgiven her. Her sin? She wrote to inform the woman he truly wanted to marry that he had a child by another woman. A beautiful daughter, slightly deformed. He was not exactly sure which he hated the most, that she told about the child or that she told about her deformity.

He blamed his daughter's mother for that deformity. She was a nurse and God knows what they imbibe to prevent themselves from getting pregnant. As far as he was concerned, all nurses are promiscuous. He thought he made himself clear from the very start that there could never be marriage between them. He was happy to dump his wild oats between her thighs occasionally without a single thought to paternal responsibility as a consequence.

She did not mind, she loved him well enough to have given up her virginity to him, in spite of being a real princess whose very life was forfeit for succumbing to carnal pleasure. Her father would kill her if she ever set foot back in the Eghor Kingdom, from where she came to Lagos to study to be a nurse. She could have gone anywhere she wanted, been anything, her father could afford it. But Nursing was her first love, that was until she met him.

She was beautiful enough to be desired by any man, but she chose him. She heard the rumours, she even knew his nickname - activity Y front - in recognition of his prowess with women and his near insatiable sexual appetite. Yet her allure was not enough to hold him and she committed the a grievous sin. Against his desire, she kept the pregnancy that resulted in the beautiful but deformed child. Their daughter was born with a right hand missing.

She gave up all she had to their love, money sent from home for her upkeep, anything extra that she could make. As soon as it became apparent that she would be having the baby, he stopped making love to her, but that did not stop him from taking her money still. He came late at night and left as soon as he wheedled something out of her, even if it was everything she had left, it did not matter he still took it. She was lucky school was only a short walking distance away. The pregnancy soon became a stigma that attracted derision from colleagues and superiors alike. Even strangers who did not know her had something uncomplimentary to say about her morals. She soon stopped going to school but could not get up the courage to let her father know so she stayed alone in Lagos, this alien town with its high-life and noisy streets.

From her apartment window, she watched garishly dressed women vie for attention of men passing by. Most angled for the ones who appeared to be rich enough to pay for the night or even a short while after that. Many of the women could not stay in long term relationships, were averse to marriages and the one she had become friendly with confessed that she could not do without the excitement of the night life, the variety of partners that add spice to her life. She loved Lagos and did not imagine anything like it when she was running away from her own village in Mkpat Enin. This was the friend that offered the only help she got with terminating the pregnancy. The tablets she brought only made her sicker. They caused some bleeding, nothing more. Those tablets may be responsible for the missing hand. Nurse that she was, she had never really learnt about the workings of reproduction, when and how to stop unwanted pregnancies.

She had been given the insulting tag of Lagos girl by the matron at the hsopital, even though she did not have the street wisdom that came with it. Lagos girls knew how, they knew their way just like her friend. They were not foolish enough to get pregnant and they got paid to get laid. Not that he would ever pay to sleep with anyone, he was too selfish. Even she could see that through the haze of love.

He truly was selfish and revelled in the attention he received from the female of the species, all of whom fell over each other to provide for his every need. All he wanted to do though was go to London to study law. He even knew which temple he wanted to belong to and practised his social skills in preparation. He spoke English with a distinct British accent, thanks to his father, who insisted on the perfect diction for all his children from when they were very young. His father had no money, could not keep down a job even, but believed that a person that speaks well will open doors. So he 'polished' his children, taught them table manners and how to say please and thank you just as he imagined the queen would like to hear it. They had the BBC as their guide and could write off for any catalogue they wanted. It was taken for granted that all his children would eventually live in England but no thought was given to where the fares for the crossing by boat would come from. Nobody travelled by air in those days.

He flunked his University of London Examinations and sent off for Cambridge, O' and A' Levels. He was determined to pass both at the same sitting. He did, he made the requisite grades to get into law school, but only just. He spent six months on his belly swotting. It was in that time that he got her pregnant. She was all moony eyed over him and simply asked for it. Since his mother refused to feed him after he failed his London examinations, insisting that he go out to find work like his mates, he had to survive somehow. He met her through a girl from his neighbourhood who lived in the nurses’ hostel. He went to visit in the hope of some light supper and found a source of food that kept him going for more than six months. She even gave more than food. He told her from the onset that there would be no question of marriage between them. She was simply not his type. To think she gave it up to him so easily. All the respect a woman had to hang on to, her sole bargaining chip for marriage, she gave it up. He suspected that she would try to snare him into marrying her, and that in the end was what she did. Never trust a woman, no matter how gullible they appear. He felt a twinge of guilt now and then for treating her in the way he did. He still remembered the night she bled and bled and he refused to take her to the hospital because he did not want to be implicated and arrested for an abortion. He also hoped that it would work or even that she would die and he could put the whole sordid episode behind him. He left her eventually writhing in a pool of her blood. When he came back the following day the cramps had subsided and the bleeding stopped and she said she felt lighter so he believed that the abortion worked. he did not know that he had been fooled, royally.

His travel papers came through the following week and in the frenzy of making travel arrangements, convincing his rich uncle to give a loan to cover his crossing and a few days lodging in London, he completely forgot about her. He rushed around on his last morning in Lagos to bid her a final goodbye but when he was told she had travelled, he put out of his mind believing she had gone back to whatever bush spawned her.

His mother's letter two months after his arrival in England jolted him back to reality. She wrote to inform him about his pregnant wife who as now staying with his family. Her father, the Ogi Eghor accompanied her to find him and hopefully persuade him to take responsibility for the pregnancy. When he was not there, his parents were easily persuaded and his father even found enough money to pay a bride price and carry out preliminary wedding ceremonies. They all took her word for it that he was responsible for the pregnancy. Such traitors, as if they did not know about Lagos girls and their tricks. Nurses were particularly notorious, yet they believed her without asking him.

He was waiting for Marie, the love of his life to join him in the next month or so. Her father was rich and could help him through school if he married his daughter. But that was only an added bonus, he loved Marie already. What could that nobody of a nurse do for him? She spoke of a father in a town in the Midwestern Region, as though there were towns in Nigeria outside Lagos, and that he was wealthy. how much money could a villager have? Marie's father was an agent for John Holt and UAC and God knows what other shipping company. they owned a house in Ikoyi, where the white people live.

He wrote back a scathing letter to his parents expressing his disappointment and informing them that his father was welcome to his second wife. Apart from a court response from his mother he heard nothing again from them, until Marie told him about the letter from his mother.

That is why he has never forgiven his mother. She contrived with a perfect stranger to ruin his very life. She wrote to let Marie know about the child and the deformity - the first time he heard about it it - and sent a photo. A grainy black and white photo that showed a child who was easily a miniature of himself. That the right hand ended in a stump was evident from the photo. It was obvious that it was posed deliberately to show the deformity.

Marie moved out immediately. He regretted letting her put off marriage until she finished her course at the university. She had said she wanted her father's name on her certificate, because it was her father who paid for her education. He had been willing to wait since they lived as man and wife in everything but name. But she had moved out leaving him with bills to pay.
Before she left she let him know quite clearly that she would not be coming back and that he should not bother to find her. She saw him as callous and selfish for leaving a woman in the lurch for no better reason than that she bore him a deformed child. Marie got all that from the tearjerker of a letter that his mother wrote to her. Marie would not be persuaded to listen to his own side of the story. All she could see was the ogre who took advantage of an innocent village girl and then left her holding a deformed baby. His frantic explanations simply made matters worse.

His own mother did that to him, she drove away the woman he loved and wanted to spend the rest of his life with. She destroyed his future to please a waif, a wayward waif of unknown origins.

Agbo,

Interesting and arresting. So which one you dey?

Count 1

[katampe]

Here, in this emotional, searing and well written story,we see a main character, not really shaped by self, but by a father's vision and ambition of high culture for his children.The high culture, its demanding schedule, creates an impatience to succeed concealing from the character disturbing attributes such as carelessness, recklessness and conceitedness.

Contrasting these attributes with the low culture of a woman that is beautiful yet naive, of noble birth yet self sacrificial, it illuminates the vanity of ambition in a caustic denial of love and compassion in a hail of worn societal stereotypes of promiscuity that has come to define the female nurses.

Not sure what this is about, yet it is corrosive and packed full of meaning, the sarcasm of the author barely concealed, her choice of expressions barely comforting, for example, when she writes," he was happy to dump his wild oats between her thighs occasionally without a single thought to paternal responsibility as a consequence," it gives one an imagery of waste left on a garbage heap.

All in all, there is one moral lesson for women, your goods are as good, I mean valuable, as the markup you put on it.Some men can be narrowly fixated, ambition drives their passion, in their world, naive women are play things.They use them, ruin them, dump them, and move on.

A woman's ignorance is no excuse, educating oneself is key !

Retards should not be sexually active without medical clearance.

Psychological evaluations/treatment should be so ordered.

Life becomes way too complicated with in-breeding.

Forgiveness is the least of concerns in this case.

My condolences to all parties involved.

YouTube - Faze - Kolo mental - talkofnaija.com

[shinycoin]

A sad but all too familiar story.

such stories make the rounds on a daily basis, from coast to coast, has happened in the past and will continue to happen into the future.

so, who is the loser and who is the winner?

hhmm, a sad, sad story indeed.

me wish them all the luck in the world.

[agbonizuanghwe]

Originally Posted by Count1

Agbo,

Interesting and arresting. So which one you dey?

Count 1

Thanks Count. I am in the story teling mode o.

[agbonizuanghwe]

Katamps Baba! How you take deduce all that from this small story?

That man in my opinion is as you describe him, selfish, reckless, conceited, greedy sef. And his father is not to blame. All his father desired was that his children be well presented and which parent does not desire that?

[katampe]

agbonizuanghwe,

Yours was one reading, mine another. The story is out of your hands now. There is a lot to take away from silence not to talk of a small story.While the story may be yours, you equally are playing out a script, and the interpretation is the audience's.

There is an idea in behavioral psychology that positive and negative reinforcements shape individuals behaviour. If that that is the case, then human beings are not necessarily free moral agents . One can go from that premise to conclude that human beings are shaped outside of self through nurture and experience.

To the extent that this is true, it is safe to assume that father provided a script (road map) using positive and negative reinforcements to condition his boy for his future . Mind you his career was out of his hands in a sense, it was father's wish.He was never free to choose his own cause in life because he needed to be well presented.

Father was poor, and boy became needy, hence he resorted to using people to acquire the taste that was already predetermined. As narrated, he was impatient to succeed and equally marry someone that fitted perfectly with his father's conception of life in a sense.

Yes, most fathers do have good intentions, but when they decide children must be well presented they might in the process be creating a Frankenstein monster that at a point would be out of their hands.

My reading of your story was that of a boy fiercely determined to succeed, yet he had to make choices given the limited options he had and used any willing tool to quench his thirst, hunger and lust in other to achieve his father's scripted ambition.Remember father always wanted him well presented.

agbon mama! Let me see what you have to say on my reading. I suppose get A+ for this one.

Originally Posted by agbonizuanghwe

Katamps Baba! How you take deduce all that from this small story?

That man in my opinion is as you describe him, selfish, reckless, conceited, greedy sef. And his father is not to blame. All his father desired was that his children be well presented and which parent does not desire that?

[agbonizuanghwe]

Oga Katamps,

Actually this your second post gave me a new perspective. Fiercely determined to succeed is certainly right on the money. The father's role in shaping the negative traits I had never considered much less acknowledged, yet it is a thought.

If you are not a psychologist, you certainly have a calling. An A* is definitely in the pipeline. I'll see what you make of another part of the story if I ever get to write it

Originally Posted by katampe

agbonizuanghwe,

Yours was one reading, mine another. The story is out of your hands now. There is a lot to take away from silence not to talk of a small story.While the story may be yours, you equally are playing out a script, and the interpretation is the audience's.

There is an idea in behavioral psychology that positive and negative reinforcements shape individuals behaviour. If that that is the case, then human beings are not necessarily free moral agents . One can go from that premise to conclude that human beings are shaped outside of self through nurture and experience.

To the extent that this is true, it is safe to assume that father provided a script (road map) using positive and negative reinforcements to condition his boy for his future . Mind you his career was out of his hands in a sense, it was father's wish.He was never free to choose his own cause in life because he needed to be well presented.

Father was poor, and boy became needy, hence he resorted to using people to acquire the taste that was already predetermined. As narrated, he was impatient to succeed and equally marry someone that fitted perfectly with his father's conception of life in a sense.

Yes, most fathers do have good intentions, but when they decide children must be well presented they might in the process be creating a Frankenstein monster that at a point would be out of their hands.

My reading of your story was that of a boy fiercely determined to succeed, yet he had to make choices given the limited options he had and used any willing tool to quench his thirst, hunger and lust in other to achieve his father's scripted ambition.Remember father always wanted him well presented.

agbon mama! Let me see what you have to say on my reading. I suppose get A+ for this one.