I got married to my husband Ashura because I believed he had potentials. He seemed like a good man at the time and I saw a future with him. He had brilliant ideas and I knew that it was only a matter of time before he breaks even but things didn’t quite turn out the way I expected. I became the bread winner of the house and and my take home from work couldn’t even take me anywhere. We struggled to survive. We had a growing family and dependants (mostly in-laws). It was tough to get by each day. Things were hard.
Inspite of our tight financial situation, I never failed in my responsibilities towards Nana, she is my grandma and the only family I know. She was comfortable in her own little way and didn’t need much from me but I felt like I owed it to her to take care of her because she was the only person that was willing to take me in after the death of my parents. I knew what to do to get Ashura and I out of the hand to mouth situation but I was somewhat reluctant. Things got from bad to worse and I knew that it was time to drop my fears and reach out to Nana for assistance.
Actually, Nana is a witch. She always prided herself as a good witch. She went to church on Sundays and was a committed member of the Christian Elders’ Forum. As far as she was concerned, what she did during the week did not in any way affect her faith and her Sunday worship. Nana’s favorite past time was to help people out of difficult situations. I knew this very well but I didn’t want to have anything to do with witchcraft until push came to shove and I realized that this was my last resort out of poverty.
I visited Nana and poured out my heart to her about things she already knew and she gave me a beautiful gold ring which I was expected to wear all the time. As long as I wore the ring, Asharu was going to be very rich but if I took it off, he would experience a decline in his fortune. The terms and conditions were easy peasy. It was absolutely doable as long as it did not require spilling of blood or some weird sacrifice. This was going to be a secret between Nana and I, no need telling Asharu about it.
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True to Nana’s words, the tide turned in our favor. Within a space of six months Asharu’s business experienced an incredible leap that turned his finance around. In ways we could not even understand, foreign investors became interested in his ideas and he was traveling all over the world for business. In less than three years, we were living comfortably in our own home. I was grateful to Nana.
Every thing else was going on well except for my marriage. With the new found wealth, I noticed traits in Asharu that I didn’t know he had. There were the long and unnecessary trips out of the country, clubbing, partying and keeping late nights, cheating on me without hiding it. He flaunted his infidelity in my face without any respect for me or the sanctity of our marriage. It was unbelievable the things he said and did. Time and space will not let me say it all. Asharu was misbehaving. If only he knew that I could make or break him at the snap of a finger. I smiled as he constantly boasted about being a self made man and how he got his wealth from his hard work, sweat and blood. I was tempted to show him who the real boss was but this was supposed to be a secret remember!.
I tolerated his excesses even when I knew that he was buying houses and cars for his girlfriends. The last straw was when one of them had a child for him. He wasn’t remorseful about it. All he said was that, “children are a blessing from God”. It is true what they say about money, it makes you know the real color of a man.
I was losing my mind and had to tell Nana what was going on. She instructed me on what to do. That night, I waited for Asharu to return… late as usual. I told about the ring but he didn’t believe me, he laughed at me, called me a filthy liar and reminded me about his ‘self made man nonsense’. I threatened to take off the ring and he called my bluff.
I did exactly that, I took off the ring. It didn’t take long for his business to nosedive, all his friends left him, the girls stopped flocking around him, everything that could go wrong went wrong and for ten months Asharu suffered. His savings were fast depleting and he was a shadow of himself. After massaging his pride for a while, he came to me cap in hand begging for forgiveness. He asked for a second and also promised to be a better person but he lied.
Just as I put on the ring again, Asharu also put on his arrogance. He was an egoistic and unrepentant man. The money got into his head so much that he’d pay people to have sex while he watched. On two occasions I found Asharu on our matrimonial bed with different women. He had no regards for me or the sanctity of our marriage. He once asked me what I had done for him that no other person has done before. He even suggested that my timing for taking off the ring and wearing it back was a mere coincidence with the time his business had hiccups. Imagine his insolence.
Asharu was becoming a huge burden to me. I was still contemplating what to do when I walked into my kitchen one night and caught him making out with my housekeeper. He was stark raving mad and was taking his madness to whole new level. He needed to be taught a lesson. They say, “once beaten twice shy” right? Well, maybe not Asharu. He obviously needed to be beaten more than once.
Its been almost two years since I took off the ring and he’s been begging me.
The sad thing however is that, I can’t remember where I dropped the ring so there’s nothing I can do to help him feed his madness.
