The things Literature was about: Love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God.” ― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
“God bids you not to commit lechery, that is, not to have sex with any woman except your wife. You ask of her that she should not have sex with anyone except you — yet you are not willing to observe the same restraint in return. Where you ought to be ahead of your wife in virtue, you collapse under the onset of lechery. … Complaints are always being made about men’s lechery, yet wives do not dare to find fault with their husbands for it. Male lechery is so brazen and so habitual that it is now sanctioned [= permitted], to the extent that men tell their wives that lechery and adultery are legitimate for men but not for women.” ― Augustine of Hippo, Sermons 1-19
You carried the pregnancy to full time. However, it was a taxing assignment. Your body reacted like a drug addict going through withdrawal spasms. The first four months of the pregnancy were horrible months and a period you thought you were going to die. They were days without food; periods of almost whole day vomiting and weeks when it seems your whole body had been turned into jelly. However, you went through all these. There were two factors that helped you through. One was your husband’s change towards you. He became more solicitous and a little more caring. The second factor was that in spite of the debilitating state of your body, there was a seed inside you. As the seed grows, you felt immense joy and a sense of fulfilment. Though there were times you felt like flushing this growing seed out of you, you did not do so because, your mother and your family had drilled into you the inappropriateness and the criminal nature of aborting. In addition, if you abort, it would have been succumbing to your husband’s wish and you do not want to do this because for once you want to be independent and be a decision maker in your own right. There were times when many thoughts conjugated and held conferences in your mind. Most especially when your conscience pricked you, making you realize that the pregnancy you are carrying is not your husband’s seed.
What if this child does not resemble my husband? Will there be DNA test? Would that not make me look like a slut? Would it not tar my integrity and make all my years of faithfulness nothing? How would my children and mother look at me? What would they think of me? Even if I decide to abort this foetus, which hospital would I go to? What do I tell my husband? What if I lose my life?
These thoughts created a quandary in your mind but there was nothing you did to terminate the pregnancy because a big part of you wanted to keep the baby and damn any consequence that may follow the child’s delivery. If you have only known what troubles the simple abortion of the seed would have saved you. You, however, were not clairvoyant and carried the baby to term. Surprisingly, after the first four traumatic months of pregnancy, there was no more trouble with the pregnancy. You ate well, exercised and was looking forward to a fulfilling labour day in spite all that you have read about pregnancy and delivery challenges of the over-forty-five. One of the pillars of your strength is the love you are now having in the hand of your new love. The love you are deriving from your illegitimate lover.
Your day of delivery came and surprisingly the labour was not as troublesome as you envisaged. You went into labour for less than two hours and you delivered a baby boy. As usual with your husband, he was not at the hospital for and with you. As you slipped into unconsciousness towards the tail end of your labour, the picture that was in your mind was HIM. If only you had realized the furore that will arise concerning your new born babe you would have asked the nurse and doctor to asphyxiate the child or inject so that you would not face the shame that came with the small new bundle. How would you have known the troubles that were waiting for you?
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