SON OF THUNDER

Angela was a very difficult young woman. She was so difficult that no house help could live with her for more than two months before being fed up with her intolerable behavior. She was mildly, wicked and mean. Her husband on the other hand was a perfect gentleman. He loved kids very much and would treat anyone that comes to live with them as if they were his own kids. Children gave him the best kind of happiness. His affection for little children was a palpable and expectedly, his wife never liked this. She believed that they should reserve such love only on their own biological children. She believed it was a waste of affection to give such love to children of other parentage. What irked her most was that unfortunately, they did not have a child of their own. On the two occasions that Angela that Angela was supposed to delivered babies, she almost died in the process. On one of the occasions, the doctor had the option of either saving the child and let Angela die or saving Angela’s life and giving up the child. Michael asked the doctor to save his wife because he believed that a child that was meant to stay would not cost the life of his/her mother. Since that unfortunate incident, Angela did not give birth and the couple had remained childless ever since. Angela therefore, vented her venom on anybody employed as house help in the family.Michael took the situation with equanimity and was no longer desperately looking for child. He had been assured that all was well with them and that a child would come at the appointed time. But his wife was not only desperate but also mean about it. And that was why she never treated any person that came to live with them kindly. She vowed that she would never treat anybody kindly until God blessed them with their own child. All the efforts by Michael to change her perception about life were futile as Angela was stubborn and unyielding. Any time Michael tried to make her have a change of attitude, Angela would say “imagine me treating those idiots like my own children. No way. If God wants me to do that, let him give me my own child so that I will be like other women”.So Michael stopped bothering himself about Angela’s perception about their inability to have their own child. His only worry was the fact that Angela could not live without a house help, yet none would stay for more than two months with her because of the evil ways she treated them. She had even gone a step further by stopping all Michael’s relations from visiting them just by being unnecessarily rude and unkind to them. Michael was a very busy person and the nature of his job demanded that he could only be at home during weekends. He always travelled out of town on the account of his job. Because of this, he was not always around to curb Angela’s excesses when she was on the warpath.Michael had a nephew called James. James’s father trained Michael in school and ensured he lack nothing while in school. But as fate would have it, he died in mysterious circumstances shortly after the birth of James. Because the man was good to Michael, he in turn promised to take care of James the same way James’s father took care of him. So immediately James entered college, Michael took over the responsibility. He went to the village and took James away to live with them. He made it clear to his unruly wife that James must live with them and should not maltreat him the way she did to other people that had come to live with them. But that statement was like Michael is just shouting: ineffectual Angela had made a vow to maltreat anybody that came to live with until she had her own child and James would not be an exception; even if Michael would kill her for doing so.So instead of obeying Michael’s instruction not to maltreat James, Angela actually gave him the worst kind of maltreatment and dared Michael to do his worst. James got unprintable dosage of Angela’s spleen especially each time Michael was away. Each time James complained to Michael about the way that Angela maltreats him. Angela would glare furiously at him and wait till Michael traveled. Then she would ruthlessly deal with him and threaten to maltreat him more. James quickly learns that the more he tells Michael about how Angela maltreats him the more he gets punished by Angela. So he endure the pain with manly determination and never report to Michael about Angela again. When James thought of his poor mother living alone in the village and how Michael sent her money from time to time for her to keep up, he resolve to face Angela’s challenges. To him, Michael was an angel sent to put smile on his face and that of his poor mother.Angela was not only mean to people that lived with her, she also extended her pugnacious attitude to her neighbors and indeed, anyone that came in contact with her. Everyone in the neighborhood knew her and avoided her troubles. This causes Michael much embarrassment and concern. Not knowing how to stop her unbecoming attitude, Michal kept calm and prayed. One day, Angela was coming back from a supermarket and she saw two ladies gossiping along their street. Her instincts told her that they were discussing about her. She decided to hide and eavesdrop on them. “That woman is a witch. I am sure she is behind their inability to bear children,” said Luna unsuspectingly.“Who doesn’t know that her, I pity that gentleman that fell victim of her witchcraft. Of all the women in this world, he chose that witch of a woman to marry,” charlotte chipped in sarcastically.“One day, the man will vomit whatever portion she must have given him to eat and his eyes will open. Then, the man will drive her out of his house with cutlass,” Luna said looking mean.“I even heard that her families have banned her from coming back to their house because of how she insulted them after she got married,” charlotte added.As they were insulting Angela more and more, Angela’s head was banging almost to a breaking point. What annoyed her most was that some of the things they said about her were lies. Normally, she would have fought them but because they were two in numbers, she refrained from making trouble with them.“I can’t fight these people but I can’t allow them to go scot-free after tarnishing my image like this. Who knows how many people they have said this to and how those people reacted,” she asked herself.At this point, she could not hold her anger any more. So she burst out of where she was hiding and confronted the ladies.“So this is all you do, gossiping around like parrot without mouth control, you witch and enemies of progress” she abused them heatedly.“See who is calling us witches when everyone around knows who the real witch is. You better liberate that innocent man from your witch kingdom. He doesn’t deserve you and your wickedness at all,” charlotte abused her openly. Angela literally went mad.She put down the load from her head and pushed charlotte and a fight broke out between them. Luna joined the fray. They beat Angela up mercilessly. In fact, they beat her to a pulp. Before the market people could come to separate them, they had already blacken her eyes, bruised her face and torn her clothes to shreds.Angela’s numerous enemies who had gathered and watched with glee as the two ladies dealt with her were happy and mocked her. The shame was too much for her to take. So she went to the police station and lodged a complaint against Luna and charlotte. When her husband came back from his trip and heard about the police case, he went straight to the police station to find out the gist of the matter. The police had looked into the case critically and discovered that Angela was actually the guilty party. But because she had given them money, they decided not to embarrass her in publicly. So they simply asked the two ladies to go and advised Angela to sue them if she was not satisfied. Michael was more embarrassed than angry but Angela was more still interested in the case.“What? You are asking them to go after collecting money from me” she asked the police.“Mister, please take your troublesome wife out of this place or we will have no choice than to detain her,” the police men told Michael.Michael apologized to the ladies and the police. He gave the police some money and dragged Angela out of the police station. They got home and Michael talks to her like he had never done before. He warned her never to get involved in any police case never again.“I am sick and tired of all this embarrassment you cause me. How dared you embarrass me in this way? Let this be the first and last time you would get involved in a police case or lodged a police case for some stupid reason. Try it again and you would see the worst side of me,” he warned her seriously.She wanted to talk but Michael shouted her down. “I don’t want you to say a word about the case again” Michael fumed. The anger in Michael’s voice warned her that he was not in the mood to brook any lousy talk from her. She cleverly took the hint and kept quiet boiling inside like hot water. She was watching out for where to upload her anger when suddenly she caught James laughing quietly. James was watching the drama going on between the husband and wife and could not hold back himself and mistakenly laughed the time Michael was berating Angela for her quarrelsome behavior. Unfortunately for him, Angela saw him laugh before he could stop himself. The way she glared at him told James that he was in for a rough time when Michael travelled again.