Something Beautiful

Chapter Three ♡ Soluife

I stretched out on my bed this beautiful Saturday morning and yawned, enjoying my solitude and the events of the previous day of freedom.

You see, last Thursday was the the day I removed my mourning regalia as a widow and I had traveled to the village the week before with my immediate elder sister while my kids and my sister's stayed with our eldest.
Chiege had acted as a body guard because my sisters didn't want any of my in laws to give me any stress while the ceremony of taking off the mourning clothes was going on. So we had all agreed that she would travel with me so that anybody who wanted to mess with me would have to go through her.
Just as they predicted,  seeing my sister stopped them from having any malicious ideas as immediately after the ceremony,  my sister took me away and we passed the night in our dead parents house before we departed for lagos yesterday. 
The funny part was that none of my late husband's people asked after his children, all they asked was if there was any other properties that they weren't aware of that their brother had confided in me. His brother threatened me that if i was concealing anything from him, it was a jailable office as he was the one named as his next of kin. On hearing this, my sister lashed out. She gave them the insult they deserved telling them that instead of asking about their brothers children,  they were busy thinking of ways to share his wealth. She told them to loot all they wanted as she and my elder sister was very much capable of raising their children for them.
After that none of them could look me on the eye again.

Now that, I realised, was the power of money. You see my sister is married to a very rich man who had contested for a gubernatorial election before and she constantly moved with two body guards so when she was angry and firing off at you then you damn well listened. You needed to see her yesterday when she went off at my in laws, it was a sight to behold, as she stood tall and talked abi shouted at them with two hefty guards standing behind her heavily armed. Who are you to talk back at her. You wan die?

Of all my siblings I seem to be the only one who doesn't like confrontation of any kind. Probably because I was born years after them and they gave me a sheltered life style or the fact that I don't have as much money as they do. I can't tell which is it but I don't do agreession, it's just not me. Anything that makes me get into a brawl with a person is a no no and that was why being married to Azuka was so difficult because he was a difficult fellow who preferred nagging all the time. And I just preferred peace and quiet to his constant yelling, nagging and talking.

We got back yesterday and instead of immediately going to pickup our kids, Chiege suggested she takes me to the spa to get a massage, facials, manicure and pedicure to celebrate my liberation from widowhood while our kids remain with our sister for one more day. When I complained saying we had burdened   'sister' so much, she said it was her idea in the first place.  At that I had no other excuse than to reluctantly agree. Reluctantly, I missed my kids and wanted to see them but my mothers had spoken and I had to comply. In their entire life, I have never slept apart from them, I often needed their small sweet body pressed against mine to feel grounded on this earth but now as I stretched again and grinned to myself, I realised that it was great I took her up on the offer as I felt refreshed and rejuvenated.
I even got a new hair cut with a wide side parting. You know as I shaved my hair to mourn my husband,  it was still just growing. My sister wanted me to spray it a gold colour and that was where I drew the curtain, the long side parting was crazy enough.
But all in all I looked good, if I must say so myself, I jumped out of bed and stretched again this time on the tip of my toes, really it's good to have some time to myself sometimes. I walked to the floor length mirror in my room, I had acquired it just last month when a young passers-by who happened to be a man looked at me lustfullly despite the fact that i was wearing mourning clothes. I had to get a mirror to see what all the fuse was about, I couldn't just about ask anybody if my ass was growing bigger. I would have been able to ask my sisters if they were my friends but like I had said before, they were more my parents than my siblings so I had to resort to using a mirror to see the changes in my body and believe me, what I saw didn't make sense to me at all because I didn't know what all the crave for a massive behind was in the first place.
I took a leisure bath taking time to sponge,  sing and tap dance a bit, something I warn my kids never to do in order to avoid a bathroom accident but since they were not here,  well, I have to be myself at least.