Marriage that never worked

*Marriage That Never Worked* We married on a Saturday in June. It rained that morning and my mother said it was a blessing. The old women in our family say rain on a wedding day means the marriage will be washed clean of bad luck. Our marriage was washed clean of everything, including love, but that came later. His name was Silas. My name is Miriam. We were twenty two and twenty three. He had just finished his diploma in electrical engineering. I had just finished my certificate in early childhood education. We had been dating since we were in secondary school. Seven years. In our village, seven years of dating means you are already married, you just haven't done the ceremony yet. Our wedding was small. Seventy people in the church compound in Chuka. My dress was hired. It was too tight around the chest. His suit was borrowed from his cousin who was taller than him, so the trousers folded at the bottom. We laughed about it. We laughed a lot that day. The photographer told us to kiss and we did and everyone ululated and my father cried because I was his firstborn daughter. We moved into a single room in Chuka town. One room with a curtain dividing the bedroom from the sitting room. A small gas cooker. One plastic table. Two plastic chairs. A mattress on the floor for the first three months until we could afford a bed frame. We were happy. Or at least, we thought happiness was not having to ask permission to touch each other. The first year of marriage is supposed to be honeymoon. Ours was honey and stones. We both were looking for work. He did casual wiring jobs. I volunteered at a private nursery for two thousand shillings a month that was never paid on time. We fought about money every night. Not shouting fights. Small, tired fights. "You bought airtime again." "We need airtime to look for jobs." "We need flour." We learned to fight quietly so the neighbors through the thin wall wouldn't hear. Then I got pregnant. We had not planned it. We had planned to wait two years. But the body does not follow plans. I found out in the clinic behind the market. The nurse said, "Congratulations," and I started crying because I did not know if it was congratulations. I told Silas that evening. He was fixing a socket for a client. He put down his screwdriver and stared at me. "Are you sure?" he asked. I nodded. He came and hugged me. His hands were sweaty. He said, "It will be okay. We will be okay." For two months after that, he tried harder than I had ever seen him try. He woke at five to go to the construction sites. He took jobs that paid five hundred shillings a day carrying sand. He came home with his back aching and still smiled. I loved him more in those two months than I had in the previous year. Our daughter was born in March. We named her Blessing, because that is what everyone names a child born when there is no money, to convince God to bless you. She was small and loud and perfect. The single room suddenly became too small. The curtain divider became a necessity, not a decoration. Blessing cried at night. Silas started sleeping on the sitting room side of the curtain because he had to wake early. I started sleeping alone with a baby on my chest. That was the first crack. Not a loud crack. A small one, like a hairline crack in a glass that you don't notice until water starts leaking. After Blessing, my body changed. I was tired all the time. I had no desire to be touched. Silas tried to be understanding. For a month. Then two months. Then he stopped trying. "You don't love me anymore," he said one night. "I love you. I'm just tired," I said, with Blessing crying on my breast. "You love Blessing more than me," he said. It was true. I did. I didn't know how to say that without breaking him, so I said nothing. He started coming home late. At first, he said it was work. The foreman made them work overtime. Then he stopped explaining. He would come at nine, at ten. He would smell of beer. Not a lot. Just enough. We stopped eating together. I would feed Blessing and eat her leftover porridge. He would buy chips on the way home. One night, my mother visited. She looked at our room, at the curtain, at Silas not home, at me with dark circles. "Miriam," she said, "this is marriage. It is not like dating. Dating is eating meat. Marriage is cooking the meat, washing the pot, looking for firewood when there is no firewood." "I know, Mama," I said. "You don't know. You think marriage should make you happy every day. It should not. It should make you responsible. Happiness comes sometimes, like a visitor." I wanted to tell her I was not happy at all anymore. But I was her daughter who had a church wedding. So I nodded. In the second year, Silas got a better job in Meru, as an electrician for a lodge. It paid eighteen thousand shillings. We were rich. He moved to Meru. I stayed in Chuka with Blessing because my job at the nursery had finally become permanent with a salary of eight thousand. We became a weekend marriage. Friday evenings, he would come on the matatu, tired but smiling. We would be a family for two days. Sunday evening, he would leave. Every Sunday evening I cried after the matatu left, not because I missed him, but because I was relieved. During the week, alone, I discovered I was better alone. I could plan my money. I could sleep when Blessing slept. I could watch what I wanted on my small phone. I could breathe. He discovered he was better alone too. In Meru, he had friends. He played football. He drank without me looking. We started fighting on the phone. About money again. He sent less and less. He said things were hard in Meru. I heard from a friend that he had bought a new phone. "Are you with someone in Meru?" I asked him one night on the phone. I had never asked before. There was silence. Then he said, "Miriam, don't start." "Is that a yes?" "It's not a yes. It's that you are always accusing." I was not always accusing. That was the first time. In December, he came home for Christmas and we fought properly for the first time, with shouting. Blessing was two. She hid behind the curtain. "You are not my wife anymore! You are my mother! You are always complaining!" he shouted. "And you are not my husband! You are a visitor who brings condoms and lies!" I shouted back. I had found condoms in his bag. We did not use condoms. He slapped me. Not hard. A push that landed on my cheek. It was the first time anyone had ever hit me. The room went silent. Blessing started wailing. He immediately knelt down. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." I touched my cheek. It was hot. I said, "Go back to Meru." He left that night. After that, he did not come for three weeks. When he came, he brought his mother. His mother sat on our plastic chair and told me that marriage is perseverance. That men are children. That I should forgive because Blessing needs a father. I forgave because I had no money for rent alone. But the marriage that never worked had already stopped working long before the slap. The slap was just the confirmation. Year three and four were the worst because we were trying to fix something that we both knew was broken but we were too ashamed to tell people it was broken. In Chuka, a divorced woman is a failed woman. A divorced man is a man who is free. So I stayed. We tried a second child, thinking a child would fix us. It is stupid when I think about it now, but many people do it. A pastor told us a second child would bind us. I got pregnant again. I miscarried at three months. I bled in the clinic alone because Silas was in Meru and his phone was off. I walked home alone with cotton between my legs. After the miscarriage, something in me died. Not my baby. My willingness to try. I stopped cooking his favorite food when he came on weekends. I stopped asking about Meru. I stopped washing his clothes. I washed only mine and Blessing's. He noticed. He said nothing. He started staying in Meru two weekends a month, then three. One day, I went to Meru without telling him. I took Blessing. I found the lodge. I asked for Silas. The watchman said, "Silas? He doesn't stay here anymore. He stays in town with his wife." Wife. I did not make a scene. I took Blessing and took the matatu back to Chuka. That night, I packed his remaining clothes in a sack and placed it outside our door. When he came on Friday, he saw the sack. "What is this?" he asked. "Your wife in Meru forgot to give you these," I said. He did not deny it. He sat on the plastic chair for a long time. Blessing was playing with a bottle top on the floor. "Her name is Carol," he said finally. "She is not my wife. She is... she got pregnant." I felt nothing. I expected to feel pain. I felt nothing, which was more frightening. "How many months?" I asked. "Four." I nodded. "So you will marry her?" "I don't know." "You will," I said. "Because you are afraid to be alone, and I am no longer afraid to be alone." He left with the sack. We did not go to court immediately. We did not have money for court. We just separated. People in the estate said, "Miriam's husband left her." People in Meru said, "Silas's wife in Chuka is difficult." Both stories were true and not true. One year passed. Blessing started baby class. I got a small promotion to head teacher, twelve thousand shillings. I moved from the single room to a bedsitter with its own bathroom. I painted it light blue. I bought a small TV. Blessing and I danced to music on Saturday mornings. I realized I was happy. Not every day. But many days. Silas married Carol. He sent me a message: "Please forgive me. I will send for Blessing sometimes." He sends two thousand sometimes. Sometimes he doesn't. Last month, I saw him in town. He was with Carol and a baby boy on his back. He looked tired. He had gained weight. He saw me. We both stopped. Blessing was holding my hand. He said, "Miriam." I said, "Silas." Blessing hid behind my leg. Carol looked at me, then at Blessing, then away. "How are you?" he asked. "We are fine," I said. And we were. We are fine. My mother came last week and said, "You should get married again. You are still young." I told her, "Mama, I already married. It was a marriage that never worked. Not because we didn't love each other. At the beginning, we did. It never worked because we married the idea of each other. I married the boy who walked me home from school. He married the girl who laughed at his jokes. We grew up, but our idea of each other didn't. We kept trying to fit into clothes we outgrew when we were seventeen." She didn't understand. She said, "But marriage is supposed to work." "Not all marriages," I said. "Some marriages teach you how to leave. Some marriages teach you how to stay alone without being lonely. Mine taught me that." Tonight, Blessing asked me, "Mama, where is Baba?" I told her, "Baba lives in Meru. He loves you but he lives far." "Do you have a husband?" she asked. "No," I said. "Will you get one?" "Maybe. If I meet someone who knows how to work on a marriage, not just how to have a wedding." She fell asleep on my chest, like when she was a baby. I sat in my blue bedsitter, with my own bathroom, with my TV playing quietly, with my daughter breathing on me, and I felt something I had not felt in that single room with the curtain. I felt peace. And peace, I have learned, is better than a marriage that never worked trying to pretend that it did. We married on a Saturday in June. It rained. Everyone said it was a blessing. They were right, but not in the way they thought. The rain washed it all away eventually, and what was left was me, and Blessing, and a small blue room that is ours, and that is enough.