Good For The Goose: Enough For The Gander

She simply conspired, lured and conned my wife into her world. She ensnared my wife into their acclaimed ‘Women’s world’!

  TETUMA: That is hardly the problem.

  MONICA: What is the problem then?

  TITI: I finally got a paying job outside our home.

  TETUMA: Ah, now that is the problem!

  ALEX: Nonsense.

  TETUMA: Far from it! I had to travel abroad for just over a month and I asked Titi; who you all know has been unemployed forever, to kindly represent me at a number of functions I wouldn’t be attending while I was away.

  ALEX: And I was conveniently kept in the dark.

  TETUMA: I only just got to know that he was unaware of all this!

  ALEX: Ah please. The marines are out and all ears.

  TETUMA: It is the truth!

  ALEX: (Chuckles) I hear you.

  TETUMA: But that is neither here nor there and the least of my concerns as I sit here before you right now.

  ALEX: Why am I not surprised?

  TETUMA: It turned out that Titi was personally and unanimously elected by my peers at a meeting of representatives of civil societies she had represented me in.

  ALEX: Just like that!

  TETUMA: She has already been formally sworn in by a federal commissioner as a councilor in our provincial branch of the Urban Development Council.

  DENISE: Just like that?!

  TETUMA: Believe me; I didn’t put in an ounce of influence into it.

  DENISE: I find that a little hard to accept.

  ALEX: Besides, she was representing you at this function. If that is not influential enough, what is?

  DENISE: I would agree.

  TETUMA: She is a fully trained civil engineer for crying out loud; obviously that was their instant attraction to her. She was just perfect for the role in the offering.

  ALEX: (Scoffs) Oh, I will accept that all too well with a huge bag of salt.

  TETUMA: Now husby Alex here will not have any of it!

  ALEX: Oh listen to how craftily she puts it.

  TETUMA: Your exact words. (Mimics Alex) “I’ll not have it!”

  ALEX: So I’m clearly the beastly husband that will not let his unemployed wife work at her chosen trained career.

  TETUMA: Those were your words as these are your words.

  DENISE: I’m sure he meant well.

  TETUMA: Don’t we all?

  DENISE: I mean his reason must be quite…honourable.

  TETUMA: Oh sure!

  ALEX: I know these women, man.

  TETUMA: That’s right, appeal to his masculine sentiments.

  ALEX: You forcibly invited the young man to hear this, not me.

  DENISE: Sorry madam but I strongly believe that Mr. Alex has to think of his family first and decide what the best is for his wife.

  MONICA: Like continuous unemployment?

  DENISE: Like the right kind of employment.

  ALEX: Honestly Monica, you will readily agree with me that the circumstances surrounding this whole thing and the suddenness of it all will make even the most optimistic and trusting of persons skeptical. I have to exercise caution. This is my wife, my family and our lives we are talking about, here.

  DENISE: See, very honourable intentions.

  TETUMA: But wait a minute, what were my earlier words again?

  ALEX: The beastly husby that won’t let his wife work?

  TETUMA: Those were your words, not mine.

  MONICA: Husby will not have it?

  TETUMA: No, not that!

  DENISE: This is very good coffee.

  b/g (Laughter all round)

  TETUMA: Very funny.

  DENISE: Sorry, I just wanted to ‘ice our heated drinks’.

  b/g (Another round of brief laughter)

  TETUMA: Yes, I said all that. But I was referring to my quote from the seminar.

  DENISE: The one about civilized men?

  TETUMA: Yes sir! These are men that understood. These are men who had brilliant suggestions for women willing to veer into active politics. These are enlightened men, a new generation of men who believe that women in active politics and public life, can still be good practical wives and ambitious mothers!

  DENISE: Circumstances could make principles jaded.

  TETUMA: In this case it is the old macho principles that had jaded the comfort of more realistic circumstances.

  DENISE: We are all conditioned by our prevailing circumstances.

  TETUMA: Believe me sir, all women live and breathe that fact all too well. That is why husby Alex here will not have his loyal wife practice her trade, even though she is not voluntarily unemployed.

  ALEX: Oh come on.

  TETUMA: There you go again.

  ALEX: I’m just being cautious!

  TITI: (Softly) It’s not so.

  ALEX: (Loudly) What do you know?!

  TETUMA: She knows the job she is engaged to do.

  ALEX: But does she know the politics involved in it?

  DENISE: That is a point to make.

  TETUMA: What of her own educated, trained, God given intuition, developed talent, very enlightened and professional judgment and informed decision?

  b/g (Silence)

  TITI: I mean… It is after all my career.

  TETUMA: How more eloquently stated does it get? I ask you? Do, please tell me?! (Pause) I’ll tell you this and you can take it to the bank of humanity any day, any where. Nothing speaks for these women as clearly as their silence.

  b/g (Dayo sneezes)

  MONICA: (Chuckles) And God bless you.

  TETUMA: I am sure you men hardly noticed that your wives aren’t fully contributing to our discussion here. If there is ever a respectful protest; this is it!

  b/g (Denise and Alex laugh)

  ALEX: Probably silence thrived when nemesis met and wedded patience.

  b/g (The men laugh even Louder and longer)

  DENISE: Moni, Répondre s’il vous plaĭt?

  MONICA: Very funny.

  TETUMA: Please, by all means. Let them jeer all they want my dear, it is their societal prerogative.

  MONICA: And ours is still lurking in our deliberate silence.

  TITI: Because we chose to let it.

  TETUMA: What is most disheartening about the issue at hand is all the enduring pretence. The epilogue appears to be for a completely different book.

  DENISE: My father was a traditionalist and my entire family lived by his simple rules and we all turned out well.

  MONICA: Time has changed and we must conform.

  DENISE: But nobody denies that fact.

  TETUMA: But are you men living your talk?

  ALEX: Here it comes. (Whispers audibly) She is just calling us hypocrites.

  TETUMA: What else can it be?

  DENISE: You said it!

  b/g (Both men laugh again)

  TETUMA: It is simply just a case of ‘Saying that and doing this.’ Or is it what I fear it really is; the latest popular type of gender warfare; ‘Filling them up with positive talk and not with the supportive work?’

  MONICA: Or both.

  b/g (Furniture movement)

  TETUMA: I have said my bit, I can leave now, satisfied that I’ve said my fill to my most reluctant listener. But my final words aren’t for Alex, they’re for Denise and Monica.

  MONICA: Yes?

  TETUMA: When you get into the private, quiet comfort of your bedroom, please put some time aside to discuss this like you probably didn’t before now.

  (Coughs slightly) It'll do two important things for you in your young cozy marriage; both as individuals and as a couple. Firstly, it'll serve as a declaration of intent. And secondly, it will secure the future for both of you, the same future that is the present for our own dear Alex and Titi here.

  b/g (Furniture movement)

  I will comply and leave now. Goodbye everyone.

  TITI, MONICA & DENISE: (Chorus) Goodbye.

  b/g (Loud footsteps, door creaks open and shuts, footsteps fade)


  ALEX: (Chuckles) That, I tell you people, is what was originally coined as 'Good riddance to bad rubbish.’

  TITI: The fact remains that she made a lot of sense.

  ALEX: Well what did you expect, she is after all trained to do just that; sell fantastic utopian feministic ideas to women folk.

  DENISE: And leave their families in disharmony.

  TITI: How can you say that Denise?

  MONICA: A working wife is an economic reality these days.

  ALEX: Nobody denies that fact and nobody wants unemployed housewives. It is this euphoria for dangerously flamboyant public life and its accompanying applied negativism on the family, which already rests on the pillar the wife and mother epitomizes, that is eroding the true essence of the family and the society at large.

  MONICA: Sir, I think you are not looking at the larger picture.

  DENISE: Which is?

  MONICA: The family and society is too much a burden for just the wife and mother. She has not been empowered enough to shoulder its quite cumbersome development in modern terms.

  ALEX: I think you should take another look again, my dear.

  MONICA: Really sir, the woman’s present attempts; though her best, are still not good enough to cope because her God given companion abandons the whole work to her, bullies her, cripples her and still faults her.

  TITI: She lives everybody else’s lives while hers is on hold.

  MONICA: Eternally sacrificing.

  b/g (Dayo coughs)

  TITI: Is he sleeping?

  MONICA: Yes ma.

  TITI: Let me take him in.

  b/g (Furniture movement, Dayo groans and sneezes)

  ALEX: I want my wife to work. God knows we could do with her earnings. It isn’t however fair to sideline the proper family values for just that flimsy superficial purpose.

  MONICA: And by proper family values you mean those values that adhere strictly to the married woman being a full time housewife. If she must work, then it must be at a job that allows her to continue being a fulltime housewife. Not so?

  b/g (Creaking door, door clicks shut)

  ALEX: You’ll agree with me that the recent emerging societal ills we complain so loudly and ceaselessly about today are direct offshoots of very core family originating problems?

  MONICA: