“You said this thing is easy. You said I do nothing. Remember?”
The baby would not stop crying. The food was burning on the stove. His phone kept ringing from the office. And for the first time in his life, Frank understood, truly understood, what his wife meant when she said she was tired. Frank and Olivia had been married for four years. They lived in a two-bedroom flat in Lekki, Lagos.
Nothing too big, nothing too small. Frank worked as a senior analyst at a firm on Victoria Island. Olivia was a marketing executive at a firm in Ikeja. They were building something together, steady and real. Sunday mornings, they went to church at the chapel near the estate. Olivia cooked big pots of food on Saturdays. Frank paid the bills without drama. They were, by any measure, a normal Lagos couple doing okay.
When Olivia got pregnant, they were both happy. They went out for suya that evening to celebrate, sitting by the roadside on plastic chairs, laughing and planning names. This was her second pregnancy. But the pregnancy did not go the way they imagined. By the second trimester, the doctors called it high risk. Olivia’s blood pressure kept climbing. Her legs swelled badly. She was placed on complete bed rest.
No stress, no commuting, no work. The doctor was clear. Her life and the baby’s life depended on it. So Olivia resigned from work. She did not cry about it. She just packed her office things into a small bag, sent her farewell message on the company group chat, and came home. Frank was supportive at first. He came home early some evenings. He cooked food on Saturdays, not perfect, but edible.
He would sit beside her on the bed and rub her feet without being asked. He would say, “Don’t worry, I’ve got us.” And she believed him. Their daughter came in December, a small squirming thing with a full head of hair, born at Lagos Island General Hospital at 2:00 in the morning. Olivia cried when the nurse placed the baby in her arms. Frank stood by the bed, eyes wet, holding her hand.
That moment felt like a promise. Recovery was not easy. Olivia’s body had been through war. The stitches, the soreness, the nights when the baby cried every hour, and there was no option but to get up, no matter how the body ached. Their baby was fragile in those early months. Every attempt at daycare ended with a fever, a rash, or something worse. Two nannies came and went.
One stole from Olivia. The other disappeared after three weeks. So Olivia stayed home. She did not plan it to be permanent. She told herself it was just temporary, just until things settled. But things did not settle quickly. And somewhere between the sleepless nights and the endless feeding and the cooking and the cleaning and the soothing, Frank began to change.
It started with small things. A tone of voice, a sigh that lasted a second too long. Then it became words. “You’re always at home. What exactly do you do all day, woman?” Olivia would look at him. She had just finished bathing the baby, cooking eba and egusi for dinner, sweeping the sitting room, and washing baby clothes by hand because the washing machine was faulty again, and she had not eaten since noon.
She would look at him and simply say nothing because what was there to say? Then it became worse. “Frank likes fresh food,” he would say, speaking about himself in third person in a way that made her skin crawl. “Why is this soup from yesterday? Since you are now always at home doing nothing, make sure my food is always fresh.” She had barely slept. The baby had been up from midnight to 4:00.
She had warmed the soup at 5:30 in the morning before he woke up, changed the baby twice, and managed to sweep before he came downstairs. And he was talking about yesterday’s soup, asking for a fresh one. One morning, she asked him for money to buy groceries, rice, tomatoes, and the baby’s diapers. She needed at least 10,000 naira. He transferred 2,000 naira. “Manage it,” he said without looking up from his phone.
“You don’t earn anything anyway. It is not easy to make money, you know.” She stood in the kitchen holding her phone, staring at the alert. 2,000 naira for everything. She did not cry that day. She just stood there for a moment, then put the phone down and started cooking what little was in the house. Money became a weapon.
He stopped leaving anything in the house. She had to ask for everything. And asking felt like begging. If the baby cried too long while he was home, he would snap from the bedroom. “Can’t you even handle one child properly?” If the sitting room was not clean enough when he came back from work, his face would tighten.
If she sat down for even 20 minutes, he would make a comment. Some evenings, he would eat in silence, push the plate away, and say, “You contribute nothing. I am the one carrying this entire family. You should be appreciative.” And Olivia would nod, not because she agreed, but because she had no energy left to fight.
Olivia’s closest friend, Amelia, had known her since university. They had graduated the same year from Unilag, had been bridesmaids at each other’s weddings, and still spoke almost every day, even though Amelia now lived in Gbagada.
Late at night, when the baby was finally asleep and the flat was quiet, Olivia would call Amelia. She would sit on the bathroom floor so she would not wake anyone and speak in a low voice. “I am trying, Amelia. I’m really trying. But it’s like I’m invisible. Like everything I do doesn’t count because it doesn’t come with a salary.” Amelia would listen. She never rushed her. “Olivia,” she said one night, voice steady. “You are not lazy.
You are doing many jobs in one body. You are a nurse, a cook, a cleaner, and a mother. And you are doing all of it without rest and without thanks. Don’t lose yourself trying to prove your worth to someone who has decided not to see it.” Those words stayed with Olivia. She wrote them in the small notebook she kept in the bedside drawer. She would read them on the hard nights. Amelia also said something else. “Start applying quietly.
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