My neighbour and I are very different.
She is extremely extroverted and I’m introverted.
She is married with kids and I’m not; I have a boyfriend though.
She is a housewife or semi-housewife if you are fussy, and I have a job; I’m a remote worker.
But perhaps, the greatest difference between us is that she is very clueless and I’m nothing if not aware.
Her husband cheats on her unabashedly and she doesn’t know it. I know you might be wondering how I know this but trust me, I know.
She is very loud. If she knew, I’d have known; so would everybody in our neighbourhood.
And for someone very loud, her ignorance irritates me.
I’d have forgiven her cluelessness if her husband did not bring his infidelity home, but he does.
Every morning during the weekdays, my neighbour walks her husband and 2 kids out and kisses them goodbye at the gate. I know this because my room is directly in front of the gate, not because I’m spying on them or anything.
The husband owns a spare parts shop at Ladipo Market and since we live at Papa Ajao, he drops the kids off at school on the way to work.
She, on the other hand, is learning tailoring somewhere before Daleko Market. She leaves the house about an hour after them to come back with the kids around 5.
I know all these because she told me some of them, and some, from observation.
No, we are not close. She just happens to talk a lot – whether you are interested in talking to her or not.
Every Wednesday unfailingly, at about 1pm, her husband comes back home with a girl. Or more accurately, 3 girls on rotation.
Why they are exactly 3 or if the 3 girls know about each other, unfortunately, I’d be unable to confirm.
What I do know is that the husband leaves at about 2:30 – 3:00pm; they never exceed that time.
Everybody in the neighbourhood knows or at least, those of us who make it our business to know these things.
Why my neighbour hasn’t observed it beats me. He is her husband, surely she knows how he smells. Has she seriously never noticed another smell on him before?
Or has one of the ladies never forgotten something? Like underwear?
Something … just something should have called her attention to the cheating going on under her nose.
I wonder why she never noticed and I find that level of ignorance unforgivable.
The day things are to change is the day I decide to make braids. I have been on weaves for a while now and I’m pretty sure my hair stinks beneath the weaves.
Unfortunately, my usual hairdresser is terrible with braids. I initially tried to tolerate the imperfection because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. But I figure why do I need to do that when I’m paying for a service?
So, I reached out to another neighbour who had on the most perfect braids I have seen in a while and she hooked me up with her hairdresser, somewhere close to Daleko Market.
I have been here for close to 2 hours and I’m already grateful for my decision. The hair is coming along nicely.
We are doing the finishing touches when they walk in; a man and a woman. The woman, completely unrecognisable, the man, very familiar.
I mean, he has to be. He is my boyfriend.
He doesn’t notice me as they exchange pleasantries with the hairdresser because I was completely covered up with hair.
I stay quiet throughout the exchange because I am wondering what’s going on and I don’t want to be forward.
But then, after the greetings, they move to the settee directly behind me and cuddle up.
What the hell?
But surprisingly, that’s not what did my head in. It is the, “babe, have you decided on the hairdo?”
I move to stand up forcefully and unintentionally push the hairdresser away.
Poor her. But she is not my problem right now.
“Fancy seeing you here, Mr. Tajudeen,” I say in my most ridiculous British accent but I don’t think a Nigerian accent would cut it.
His eyes widen at the sight of me while side chick looks between us in confusion.
“What are you doing calling a woman that is not me, babe?”
“Babe,” he says shamelessly, standing up with arms stretched towards me.
“What is going on here?” Side chick finds her voice. Shockingly, she doesn’t look worried or pissed, only confused.
But then again, I probably mirror her expression at the moment. What is going on?
“What’s going on, Tajudeen?” I ask the only person who can answer that right now.
He prefers to go by Taj but I guess he’d have to make do at the moment.
“Babe, let me explain,” he started. “I…”
“What the f**k?” Mistress cuts in. “Which one of us are you calling babe? Do you even know my name at this point?”
That’s what I’d like to know.
“Or hers?” she added, sparing me a glance.
Oh, wow. Attagirl! I guess we are not fighting each other but him. Love it for us, women supporting women. He is the cheat anyway, we have done nothing wrong.
So, I lend my voice to help my co-girlfriend, “exactly. What is my name, Tajudeen?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he tries to calm us down. And never in the history of “calm down” has anyone calmed down in the heat of the moment.
So, his attempt further riles us up.
“Don’t you effing tell us to calm down?” My co-girlfriend raises her voice. “I can’t believe this. I have been dating you for 5 years. At what point did you start cheating?”
Oh my God! The realisation knocked me off my feet; I’m the side chick! I have only been dating him for 2.
Never in my life would I have imagined I was the other woman. How did I end up the other woman without noticing? I thought I knew him, I had met everybody in Taj’s family and he, mine. How was I completely clueless? What hint did I miss?
For some reason, that seems to hurt me even more than the cheating as I feel my eyes water.
Suddenly, this is no longer fun. I don’t want to do “women supporting women” anymore. I just want to look for the nearest hole, crawl in and bawl my eyes out.
My co-girlfriend doesn’t seem to have that problem. She is reeling into him and her voice is beginning to carry, drawing attention from nearby shops.
“How could you do this? Why are men so despicable? After everything we have been through? Why were you cheating? What did you want that I didn’t offer?” she continues, without inflection while Tajudeen looks on defeated, begging her with his eyes to keep it down.
I agree with him.
The number of people watching us is gradually increasing and I have lost all steam. The new-found information has weakened me. I don’t have any fighting power left in me.
I really need her to keep it down. But she doesn’t seem to hear my secret cries. She goes on yelling obscenities at him while we both watch on.
By we, I mean I and Taj as well as the gradually-increasing crowd.
There was a pause from her, giving Taj the opportunity to say something and he whispers the wrongest thing he probably could have said at the moment.
“This is why I found someone else. This is exactly why; you are so uncouth.”
Wow! What he said probably would have made an unwise woman happy, but it just makes me feel pathetic.
And the tears I’d been trying to hold in since I found out I was the other woman slip out.
Perhaps, that’s why I didn’t see it coming. She slaps him… Hard, drawing a collective gasp from our audience.
But there was one gasp I recognise. For reasons beyond my ability to communicate, I recognise that gasp … Not out of familiarity or any form of intimacy, there is no logical reason that I do, but I do.
Without meaning to, I turn to the subject of the gasp and I see the pitying eyes of my neighbour, shaking her head, wondering how I got myself into this situation.
And even though she didn’t voice it out, I could hear it loud and clear.
Poor girl! She must have been so clueless.
Also Read: The Monster of Ewelewe
