Tenant Tales: Do they think I want to snatch their husbands?
“Your skin looks like that of a twenty-one-year-old”.
That comment to a forty-year-old ‘mama’ like me should ordinarily be a compliment but coming from the lips of my neighbour it was more of an accusation. I knew what Sola was getting at: I was a woman of dubious means who had no children, no job, and no care in the world. I had time to go to the salon and the spa, pamper myself, and get my nails and hair done almost every other day. I could afford to look good and did.
I was used to petty female jealousy. I got it everywhere I went: the bank where the female teller hissed as she checked out my impressive balance, offices where I get attitude from the female staff, even in church! It was not my fault that I was not only extremely good-looking but was rich and appeared not to have any work to do.
Although I could manage the jealous hussies out there what was I to do with my three co-tenants who kept acting as if I was going to snatch their husbands at any minute? I had moved into the Maryland townhouse complex just like any other tenant. I paid my rent like the three other occupants and met my service charge as and when due. As a friendly person I greeted my co-tenants warmly but while the men responded in kind, the women: Sola, Iyabo, and Chinwe were very cold. I was surprised by their attitude because they were professionals just like their husbands. Surely their men who were bankers would meet beautiful desirable men at their workplaces? Is it their neighbour the men would sleep with? Did they fight with every beautiful successful woman their spouses came in contact with? One by one they started picking fights with me and before I knew it they had cautioned their men not to speak to me. The complex had turned into a compound of hate with me as the outcast.
I overheard Sola, my chief hater telling her husband that with all my money, I was a ‘money miss road’ by renting instead of living in my own house. I laughed out loud when I heard that. What she did not know was that I was actually the owner of the complex. My property company owned the complex as well as several others including a grand house in Ikoyi I had moved out from because it was too big for me and to move on after a traumatic romantic relationship ended.
Things really got to a head when it was decided to form a Whatsapp group as tenants so that we could communicate easily. To keep the group from becoming a chat group, it was agreed that only one representative from each unit will join the group. That’s how I came to be on a WhatsApp group with the men. Oh my! Things went from bad to worse. The women could not stand it and one after the other, they replaced their husbands in the group. What they did not know was that their sly husbands had created another group with me. They called the group ‘General Services’. We had serious discussions over the house issues there while the ones with their wives became redundant. Then one day, the wives discovered the other group and Sola finally came out and called me a ‘tramp’. Her husband apologised but I had enough. When the time comes to renew their tenancies, I will instruct the agent to decline. I know it will hit them hard but what else can I do?
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