“Where have you been? How could you let me come here on my own after everything you promised me?” I hissed at him.

“What’s the use? The baby is dead. It’s not like we can bring him back.”

I thought maybe I was going mad. Those were the words that came out of my very own husband’s mouth. I stared at him in disbelief, hoping that it was just grief speaking in him, because I knew that my Timothy would never, in his entire life, say something as inconsiderate and ruthless as that.

“I’m on my way to the office. I will see you at home if they discharge you today.”

“But, what about our baby? Shouldn’t we organise a funeral? Timothy, my love, don’t let grief turn you into a bitter stranger, please,” I pleaded with him, tears shining in my eyes.

“Honestly, Makgotso! The child is dead! We never even knew him. Why waste money on a funeral! Let the hospital deal with that! They are the ones who delivered a dead baby.”

With every word uttered out of his mouth, it felt like someone was ripping my heart with a very sharp object. Something was just not right. The man who stood by my bedside was no husband of mine. I knew Timothy. He was loving, patient and God-fearing. He would never hurt me in such a way. I touched his hand, hoping that it was just a dream. It couldn’t be him. But just as I started to plead more, he removed his hand from mine and headed to the door.

“Oh, here is money for the taxi. Your aunty will come fetch you.” He placed a R50 bank note on my drawer and left. He didn’t kiss me on my forehead like he always did at home and he didn’t look back.

That is where all the nightmares started. Timothy started drinking. He would come home drunk every day, and, when he wasn’t drunk, he stared at me as if I was an infection or something contagious. Sometimes he would insist I sleep on the floor because I was too fat to share the bed with him.

He would throw food I cooked for him at me, claiming he doesn’t eat rubbish, but what surprised me was that the same food he called ‘rubbish’ was the very same food he used to call his favourites. He would say that I wanted to bewitch him, that I couldn’t even give him a child. I cried myself to sleep every night.

If only I knew the root of all the evil. It was a great miracle when I fell pregnant again. In my heart, I prayed that maybe the new baby would give him hope and he would go back to being my husband, the Timothy I used to love and adore.

Sis Gloria, our next door neighbour, looked very worried when I told her about my pregnancy.

“Makgotso, my child, I should be happy, but honestly, I’m not. The sudden change in your husband’s behaviour is very scary. Something is not right, and I suspect your Aunty Doris!”

I laughed. “But Aunty Doris has always been so good to me. She is like my own mother. She has been with me through thick and thin.”

“Maybe she is the cause of all those ‘thick and thins’. I don’t understand why she insisted on staying in your house when you were just a few months pregnant. Look around you. All the bad things started happening when she came to stay with you. Open your eyes, girly, don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

As desperate as I was for answers, I couldn’t blame my aunt. She was no witch. I knew her! She raised me. She had no reason to break up my marriage. Sis Gloria was just jealous that I wasn’t giving her attention like before Aunt Doris came to stay with us.

Telling Timothy about my new pregnancy was more like a torture. All he said was: “What’s the use? We are not sure if the bloody baby will live. Your babies die remember? Don’t get over excited!”

Just as he predicted, my second baby, a tiny little girl, was still born as well. Timothy insisted we leave her at the hospital like we did with our first child. He even got angry when I spoke to him about giving our child a name. He said, “What’s the use of naming a dead child? It’s not like the child needs a name or there will be someone to call her with it. The baby is dead for heaven’s sake!”

My husband was a total stranger, a ruthless one for that matter. When he didn’t hit me, he didn’t sleep at home, or he forced me to sleep on the floor when he did sleep at home. Life for me was like a nightmare. Actually, a nightmare was far better because one could wake up from it.

***

Tell us: Could Aunt Doris really have something to do with Makgotso’s situation? What should Makgotso do now?