The first family outing after her marriage as second wife, she ensured she got to the car before the first wife and took a seat at the back. The husband who was already seated by the wheel and who had envisaged a brouhaha expressed a silent surprise. On arrival of the first wife, she opened the back door and asked her co-wife to use the front seat.
“Thank you, ma’am. I’m not taught like that. Kindly sit beside your husband,” she said. “Thank you for the honour. I’m also not taught to be unnecessarily domineering. Kindly sit beside your husband,” replied the first wife. None of them used the front seat to and fro the journey.
The next time — after about one or two months — the second wife pretended to assist the first wife with her bag. She hastened to get to the car, put the bag at the front seat, sat behind and locked up the two doors. When the first wife could not open any of the back doors, she smiled and used the front seat where her bag had already been placed. “But why again?” she probed. “It’s a signal that I’m not here to snatch your husband from you. I do as I want with my husband whenever I’m with him. But when we are together, courtesy demands that I accord you your deserved respect. This is because if I were in your shoes, I would not want my predecessor-ship ego watered down by any subsequent wife,” she responded.
On their return from the journey, the first wife had got the car keys from the husband to sit at the back and she got the doors locked up as earlier done the second wife. When it was time to leave and the second wife found her co-wife balanced behind, she laughed, used the front seat and said her a resounding “thank you”.
The funny thing about this story is that the husband told me he had had a serious fight with the first wife as regards who would be at the front whenever they all wanted to go out together. He said the wife refused when he told her it would be on rotation. The discussion, according to him, was deadlocked. “Seeing the matter pan out as it did made me elated beyond bounds,” he confessed.
The man said he gave the second wife kudos for the gesture when he got to her house. And as for the first wife, when they discussed the issue, she said she played along when she saw her co-wife do what she least expected. “You know the sisters of today, they don’t mind getting their predecessors off the way. But honestly, I was impressed by her disposition,” she reacted. “Who front seat epp sef? Na avoidable wàhálà go kill us women for polygyny,” she added.
………………
I hope subsequent wives would take a cue from this story and do away with the rubbish they teach one another in their problem-manufacturing circles. And this is one of the reasons they are hastily divorced by their husbands. Everything in marriage is not about rights. You may have right to something but leave it maturely to get it — or even more — honorably. You get to the house, and you want to grab the wheel from the driver just like that? You dey whine?
One lesson for men here is that whatever issues you may be having with one wife should be concealed from the other wife. Imagine the second wife knowing about the adamance of the first wife to sit at the front! She apparently might have acted otherwise to show her she wasn’t a second citizen. An unbridled man cannot hold polygyny beyond a second. He will practically ruin his marriage by himself.
Sanni Kay Yūsuf
