The Wedding Clothes

“Mum, why are you wearing your wedding dress?” a baffled Ngozi asked me.

I looked at her, this child of mine who looked so much like her father with her chubby face and wide nose.

“You wouldn’t understand. Go wait outside. Aunty Nneka will soon come and take you to her house to spend the weekend.”

Ngozi tried to fake the excitement of seeing her Aunty again but she couldn’t. After all she was just six years old.

As I watched her run to open the balcony door, I knew she had already forgotten about my dress.

It was a good thing, I decided as I went back to the sink that I was cleaning.

She wouldn’t understand anyway.
She wouldn’t understand why I needed to wear the dress especially as I draw my last breath.

Her father and I have been such awful parents to her. We have neglected her so much that she preferred to stay with Aunty Nneka than with us.

It’s a good thing that way. She won’t grow up alone.

And even if her parents were messed up right from when they were born, maybe she will not hate us so much when she learned that her father and mother died together in their wedding clothes. Maybe she will be happy that our miserable lives have ended.

I only hope the police will not tell her that her mum killed her father, then wore his body his wedding clothes and as she lay by his side, slit her throat.

For her sake, I really hope so.