BULLY JONES
Sometimes ago, there was a man called Mr Jones and married to Mrs Abigail. As expected their love flourished at the beginning and Mr Jones tenderness was faultless.
No sooner did they get married that Mrs Abigail had to live with a different man. He was a beast who had to contain himself just enough to get her into the house.
He is the dominant figure. Strong, aggressive and outgoing. Making money was easy ride for him. He bought cars and built for the family palatial edifice.
Outwardly everything was OK. Abigail was the envy of every woman. But her home was hellish. She wished everything was a nightmare. But this was her reality.
Her husband was an unrepentant wife beater. He maltreated her to the point she lost her voice and cease resisting him. Left on her body was scares of his cruelty.
She found out that resisting Jones makes her suffering to double. So she suffers silently for years. Jones was so brash and unfettered that couples of times he brought women to his matrimonial home and brag about it – that his wife wouldn’t say a thing against his action.
The children began to come one after the other. They had three beautiful children. These children were the only consolation of Mrs Jones. Yet she wept silently without the knowledge of the kids.
The kids grew to know their dad as a bully. They knew no better home so they too were subservient and having to tolerate him. These children grew to learn to run hiding when their dad is coming home instead of running happily to meet him.
He was fearful but he was happy being a terror at home. His thought was that by so doing he was commanding authority and as a no-nonsense man. The home was festering under incommodious peace. Everybody was living and growing in spite of the terror at home.
There was money and Mr Jones was willing providing it. He believed that’s all a father does and he brag about it of how he meets all his family needs.
The kids one after the other got admission into foreign universities as if there was a gang up to do that. After their degree they refused to come back home.
As good children they were sending good things home though Mr Jones had no lack.
Mrs Abigail was now in her mid-fifties when Margaret her first daughter invited her to London during childbirth. For the first time, Abigail knew freedom in decades. It was time to go back, she began to cry asking Margaret reasons why she can no longer go back.
The love of mother and daughter. Abigail stayed back and began working herself, leaving Father Jones all alone at home.
At her vacation she travelled to other kids of hers. This is about fifteen years after her first travel abroad.
Mr Jones is in Nigeria being cared for by a house help and nurse. In his old age, he couldn’t harvest love he failed to plant in the growing years of his marriage.
What he sowed he got abundantly, he spent well on the kids. They grew up to become great in life with more than enough money to send home but his bully attitude caused him to lose his family outwardly. They were never comfortable staying around him so coming home was never enticing to them.
He is presently on the sick bed with stroke – all alone; waiting for death. The bully is left to struggle for survival by himself.
This is how the almighty Jones ended up a lonely person in his big mansion; all because he failed to tame the beast in him.
