[STORY] My Mother-in-Law Refused To Leave And Tried To Take Over My Marriage
My Mother-in-Law Refused To Leave And Tried To Take Over My Marriage
Chapter One: The Woman With the Remote Control
Bimpe Fashina had learned, in her first two weeks of marriage, that there were three remotes in her new husband’s house: one for the television, one for the air conditioner, and one — invisible, but somehow the most powerful of all — that her mother-in-law seemed to hold over the entire household.
It was a Tuesday evening, eleven weeks into what had been announced as a two-week visit, when Bimpe finally sat down beside Mrs. Fisayo Fashina on the sofa and asked, as gently as she could manage, “Mama, can I ask you something?”
Mrs. Fashina did not look up from the television. “What?”
“When are you going home?”
The remote lowered slowly, an inch at a time, the way a queen might lower a scepter she had not expected to need. “My home? I came to stay with my son.”
“Yes, ma. I know. But mama, you came for two weeks. It has been eleven.” Bimpe smiled the particular smile of a woman who had done the math many times over and was finally done pretending she hadn’t. “So I’m beginning to wonder if you came here for a visit, or if you are auditioning to become the second wife of this family.”
Across the room, Tunday, mid-sip of water, sprayed it directly onto the carpet.
To understand how they had arrived at this moment — a soft-spoken accusation delivered over a Tuesday evening drama series — one had to go back to the beginning, to the day Tunday Fashina, thirty-one years old, owner of a modestly successful logistics consultancy, still called his mother to ask whether he should wear the blue agbada or the white one to a business dinner.
Everyone who knew Tunday knew he was a mummy’s boy. Not the ordinary, forgivable kind — the extraordinary kind, the kind who consulted his mother on furniture, on friendships, on the correct temperature at which jollof rice should be served. Mrs. Fashina considered this a triumph of parenting.
“That is how I trained him,” she told anyone who would listen. “My son does not make important decisions without consulting me.”
Unfortunately, she considered everything important. His food was important. His clothes were important. His choice of friends was important. Most importantly — catastrophically — his choice of wife was important. It was, in fact, the single most important decision Tunday would ever make without her permission, and Mrs. Fashina had spent years ensuring it never happened.
Three women before Bimpe had discovered this the hard way. One relationship lasted four months. Another lasted seven weeks. The last woman disappeared entirely after Mrs. Fashina visited her flat, uninvited, three weekends in a row, each time arriving with a different complaint about the state of the curtains. When Tunday asked what had happened, the woman had said only, “Your mother is a very powerful woman.”
Tunday had nodded proudly. “I know.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “That was not a compliment.” Then she left.
So when Tunday brought Bimpe home for the first time, the family braced for the same familiar ending. But nobody in that family had met Bimpe yet.
Chapter Two: A Woman Who Did Not Know How to Be Intimidated
Bimpe was calm. Bimpe was confident. And most importantly, she possessed one strange quality that no one in the Fashina household had ever encountered in another human being: she did not know how to be intimidated.
The first time Mrs. Fashina met her, she looked her up and down slowly, the way a market woman inspects tomatoes she suspects have been overpriced.
“So, you’re Bimpe?”
“Yes, ma.”
“What do you do?”
“I run an event planning company.”
“Hm. Event planning?”
“Yes, ma.”
“Do you know how to cook?”
Bimpe smiled. “Yes, ma.”
“What can you cook?”
“Almost anything.”
Mrs. Fashina’s eyebrows rose a full centimeter. “Almost anything? What about my son’s favorite food?”
Bimpe glanced at Tunday. “What’s your favorite food?”
Tunday opened his mouth to answer. His mother answered first.
“Pounded yam and egusi soup.”
Tunday stared at his own mother. “Mommy, I have not eaten pounded yam since university.”
“Since when?”
“Since I said so.”
“Who told you that?”
“I told myself. Mommy, I am thirty-one.”
Bimpe covered her mouth to stop herself from laughing out loud in front of a woman she had known for exactly nine minutes. That, she would later say, was the moment she decided she could marry this family.
Three months later, Tunday proposed. Six months after that, they married. Two weeks after the wedding, Mrs. Fashina announced, with the confidence of a woman declaring a national holiday, that she would be coming to stay with them.
“Just for two weeks,” she said.
Bimpe smiled. “No problem, ma.”
Tunday hugged his mother. “Welcome, Mommy.”
Bimpe smiled again and had absolutely no idea that “two weeks,” in the private dialect of the Fashina family, was a phrase that meant an undefined length of time bordering on permanent residency.
Chapter Three: The Kitchen Wars
The first morning, Bimpe woke early to make breakfast for her husband. She had barely opened the refrigerator when a voice arrived behind her, fully assembled, without warning.
“What are you making?”
Bimpe turned. “Breakfast.”
“What breakfast?”
“Eggs and toast.”
Mrs. Fashina’s face performed several emotions in quick succession, landing finally on disappointment. “My son does not like toast.”
Bimpe looked at Tunday, seated innocently at the dining table. “Tunday, don’t you like toast?”
Tunday nodded. “I love toast.”
His mother turned on him like a woman who had just discovered a betrayal decades in the making. “Since when?”
Tunday sighed the sigh of a man who had made this exact calculation many times before and always lost. “Mommy, please.”
Bimpe simply continued making the eggs.
“You should add more pepper,” Mrs. Fashina said.
“Okay, ma.”
“Not that much.”
“Okay.”
“Actually, don’t add pepper at all.”
Bimpe set the pepper down without a word. “Okay, ma.”
“And Tunday doesn’t like his eggs like that.”
“How does he like them?”
“Soft.”
Tunday looked up from his phone. “Mommy, I like them however my wife prepares them.”
Silence fell over the kitchen like a curtain. Mrs. Fashina looked at her son, then at Bimpe, then back at her son.
“Okay,” she said, and walked away with the dignity of a general conceding a single insignificant battle in a war that had barely started.
By day three, Mama had begun inspecting the house the way customs officials inspect suspicious luggage. She entered the bedroom, examined the curtains, examined the wardrobe, examined the bed, and sighed with the weight of a woman disappointed by an entire generation.
“These girls of nowadays,” she muttered.
Bimpe looked up from folding laundry. “What happened, ma?”
“You people don’t know how to arrange a home.”
Bimpe looked around. Everything was clean, organized, and entirely reasonable. “Is there something wrong?”
“The bedspread.”
“What about it?”
“It doesn’t look like a married couple’s bedroom.”
Bimpe nodded slowly. “Okay, ma. How should it look?”
Mrs. Fashina paused, visibly caught off guard by the question. “You are asking me?”
“Yes, ma.”
“Are you trying to be sarcastic?”
“No, ma.” Bimpe smiled sweetly. “I genuinely thought you came with a professional certificate in bedspread arrangement.”
Tunday, sitting nearby with tea, choked so violently he had to be patted on the back by his own wife, mid-insult to his mother, without missing a beat.
Mrs. Fashina glared at him. “You are laughing.”
“No, mommy.”
“You are laughing.”
“I am coughing.”
“You have never coughed that way before in your life.”
Bimpe walked briskly out of the room before she disgraced herself completely.
Chapter Four: The Broom, the Sweep, and the Line That Was Almost Crossed
Mama was not finished. The next afternoon, Bimpe was sweeping the veranda when she felt a presence settle behind her like weather.
“Hm.”
“Yes, ma.”
“Stop. Girls of nowadays don’t know how to sweep.”
Bimpe looked at the broom, then at the impeccably clean floor, then at her mother-in-law. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know you were such an expert.” Mama’s face tightened. “If you don’t mind, ma,” Bimpe continued gently, “you can take the broom and teach me.”
“What? You want me to sweep?”
“No, ma. You said I don’t know how to do it, so I’m offering you the opportunity to demonstrate.”
“You are insulting me, Bimpe.”
Bimpe blinked, the very picture of innocence. “Insulting you? Ma, I can’t talk to you like that. My own mother taught me how to respect myself.” She paused exactly long enough for the sentence to land. “But if you decide not to respect yourself, ma, I can help you remember.”
Tunday, entering the room at the worst possible moment, froze completely. “Let me go and buy something,” he said quickly.
“Tunday.” His mother snapped. He stopped mid-turn. “You heard what your wife said?”
He looked between the two women slowly. “Mommy, honestly, I did not hear everything.”
“You were standing right there.”
“I just arrived.”
“You have changed.”
Tunday nodded solemnly. “Marriage changes people, Mommy.”
Mrs. Fashina stormed off in the specific way of a woman who has run out of comebacks but refuses to admit defeat verbally.
Bimpe turned to her husband. “You are enjoying this.”
Tunday smiled. “I am enjoying peace.”
“This is not peace.”
“It is, compared to what I’ve had before.”
They both laughed. But neither of them noticed that Mama had already begun planning her next move.
Chapter Five: The Comparison Campaign
Two weeks became a month. A month became six weeks. Six weeks became eleven, and Mrs. Fashina remained comfortably situated in her son’s house, holding the television remote like a scepter of state.
By week five, she had moved from direct confrontation to a subtler weapon: comparison.
“Tunday. Do you remember Ronke?”
Tunday frowned. “Which Ronke?”
“The one who used to cook very well.”
Bimpe, seated nearby with her breakfast, said nothing, only raised one eyebrow with surgical precision.
“Ah,” Mama continued, warming up. “She was very respectful.”
Tunday sighed. “Mommy, Ronke was respectful because she was terrified of you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“She told me herself.”
Bimpe nodded pleasantly. “Mama, if you liked Ronke so much, why didn’t you marry her?”
The room went completely silent. Tunday slowly set down his phone. Mrs. Fashina stared at her daughter-in-law with the expression of a woman recalculating an entire strategy in real time. “What did you say?”
Bimpe smiled with total innocence. “I said she must have been a very good daughter-in-law.”
Mama opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
Tunday stood up abruptly. “I need to go outside.”
“Why?”
“To laugh.”
He left. And for the first time since Bimpe had entered the family, Mrs. Fashina understood, with genuine terror, that this particular woman was not going anywhere.
By week seven, Mama had escalated into her most aggressive phase of operations: reproductive interrogation. One morning at breakfast, she studied Bimpe’s plate with narrowed eyes.
“You’re not throwing up?”
Bimpe looked up. “I’m eating, ma.”
“I mean pregnancy. No dizziness, no strange cravings, nothing?”
Mama frowned deeply. “Hm. Is something wrong, ma?”
“I’m just saying you people should be serious.”
“Serious about what? Children?”
Bimpe smiled patiently. “Mama, we just got married.”
“Exactly. I’m expecting grandchildren.”
“Then you should talk to Tunday.”
“Why?”
“Because last time I checked, ma, I am not married to myself.”
Tunday, sitting nearby, burst into laughter loud enough to startle the neighbor’s generator into silence. Mrs. Fashina turned on him instantly. “Is this funny to you?”
“No, mommy. You want children?”
“Yes, mommy.”
“Then talk to your wife.”
Tunday looked at his mother with the calm authority of a man who had finally, after thirty-one years, discovered the exit door. “Mommy, we will give you grandchildren when we are ready.”
Mrs. Fashina gasped audibly. “When you’re ready? You’re now talking to me like this?”
“Mommy, I’m thirty-one.”
“You will always be my child.”
“I know. But listening and obeying are two different subjects, mommy.”
Bimpe nearly fell off her chair. Mrs. Fashina stared at her son as though he had been possessed. “Your wife has corrupted you.”
Tunday smiled. “I think she has improved me.”
Mama stood up sharply. “I’m going to my room.”
“Don’t lock the door,” Bimpe called after her cheerfully. “You are still in our house.”
Chapter Six: A Husband’s Patience Runs Out
That evening, Mrs. Fashina’s own husband called from home.
“Woman, when are you coming back?”
“Why? Is something wrong?”
“Your food has finished.”
“I will send someone to bring food.”
“You will send somebody? Why can’t you come back yourself?”
“I am with my son.”
“Your son got married three months ago. Leave this young couple alone.”
Mama became instantly defensive. “Who is disturbing them?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Come home before you start fighting your daughter-in-law over who owns the kitchen.”
He hung up. Mama, furious, did not notice Bimpe standing quietly in the hallway, having absorbed every single word.
Bimpe walked in, smiling gently. “Mama?”
“What?”
“Your husband misses you.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
“He said your soup is finished. He can cook.” Mama glared. “You think you’re clever?”
“No, mama.” Bimpe smiled. “I’m just married to your son.”
By week nine, Mama had escalated to full psychological warfare. If Bimpe cooked, Mama complained. If Bimpe cleaned, Mama complained. If Bimpe dressed well, Mama complained. If Bimpe stayed silent, Mama complained about that too.
One morning, Bimpe wore a beautiful dress to work. Mama looked her up and down. “Where are you going, dressed like that?”
“Work.”
“You young girls like dressing anyhow.”
Bimpe looked down at herself, entirely reasonably dressed. “Mama, should I go and change?”
“Yes.”
“To what?”
Mama paused, clearly not having thought this far ahead. “Something more decent.”
“Okay.”
Bimpe went upstairs. Five minutes later, she returned wearing an even more stylish, more elegant outfit than the first. Mama stared at her, betrayed.
“What is this? You said more decent. This is worse.”
Bimpe smiled kindly. “Mama, at this point, I think the problem is not the clothes.”
Tunday walked in at that exact moment. “What happened?”
Mama pointed dramatically at Bimpe. “Your wife is deliberately provoking me.”
Tunday looked at Bimpe. “Are you provoking mommy?”
“No.” Bimpe paused thoughtfully. “I am just existing.”
Tunday nodded. “Continue.”
Mama nearly fainted on the spot.
Chapter Seven: The Question, and the Handbag
By week eleven, the question finally arrived — the one that had been building for two and a half months, delivered as calmly as a woman asking about the weather.
“Mama, when are you going home?”
The remote lowered slowly. That evening, her own husband called one final time, his patience fully depleted.
“When are you coming home?”
“I told you, I’m staying with my son.”
“For two months?”
“I know.”
“Then why are you still there?”
Mama did not answer.
“Come home.”
“I will come soon.”
“Your ‘soon’ is the reason we don’t have a functioning calendar in this house.”
Bimpe, passing nearby, heard it and burst out laughing. Mama glared. “Don’t laugh.”
“Sorry, ma.”
Her husband continued, his voice carrying clearly through the phone. “And please, when you come, bring yourself. Don’t send food. I don’t want food. I want my wife.”
Bimpe covered her mouth. Mama’s face changed completely, softening into something almost embarrassed. “Okay, I will come.” She ended the call.
Bimpe sat beside her gently. “Mama, I think daddy has finally won.”
“Won what?”
“The custody battle.”
Mama laughed despite herself — the first genuinely unguarded laugh Bimpe had heard from her in eleven weeks.
That evening, Mama entered the kitchen watching Bimpe cook. “What are you making?”
Bimpe smiled. “Your son’s favorite.”
“What is it?”
“Pounded yam and egusi soup.”
Mama’s face softened. “You remembered?”
“Of course.”
Mama watched her for a long moment. “You really love my son.”
“Yes, ma. Even though he’s stubborn.”
“He still listens to me sometimes.”
“I know. He can be a mommy’s boy.”
“I know.” Mama sighed. “And you’re not going to allow me to control your marriage.”
Bimpe smiled kindly. “No, ma.”
Mama nodded slowly, absorbing this without argument for the first time. “I don’t like that.”
“I know,” Bimpe added gently. “But you’re not a bad woman, mama.”
Something shifted in Mrs. Fashina’s expression, softening genuinely. “Thank you.” Then, immediately recovering her composure, she pointed a warning finger. “Don’t get too comfortable.”
Bimpe laughed. “Mama, don’t worry. I have already renewed my intimidation immunity.”
Mama laughed properly, loudly, for the first time in eleven weeks.
The following morning, Mama packed her bags. Tunday carried them downstairs. Bimpe stood at the door.
“Safe journey, mama.”
Mama hugged her, then whispered, “Take care of my son.”
“I will. And don’t allow him to forget his mother.”
Bimpe laughed. “I won’t.”
Mama nodded, then added, quieter this time, “But don’t allow him to forget you either.”
Bimpe’s smile softened genuinely. “Thank you, mama.”
Before entering the car, Mama turned to her son one final time. “My son?”
“Yes, mommy.”
“Don’t let this woman control you.”
Tunday looked between the two women. “Mommy, she doesn’t control me.”
“Good. She only controls the kitchen.”
“Tunday!” Bimpe shouted. Mama burst out laughing. “That’s my son.”
The car drove away. Bimpe watched it disappear down the road. Tunday came to stand beside her.
“Finally. Peace.”
Bimpe agreed. His phone rang immediately. He checked the screen. “Mommy.” Bimpe’s eyes widened in horror. “What does she want?”
Tunday answered. “Hello.”
His mother’s voice came through clearly. “I forgot my handbag.”
Bimpe closed her eyes. “No.”
Tunday laughed. “Mommy will send it, okay? And tell Bimpe something.”
“What?”
“Tell her I will come back next weekend.”
Bimpe shouted toward the sky. “God, please.”
Tunday laughed so hard he had to sit down on the front step.
Chapter Eight: What Bimpe Learned
That was how Bimpe discovered the single most important rule of marrying a mummy’s boy in her country: you can win the argument. You can win the kitchen. You can even send Mama home. But you will never completely defeat a mother who has decided, permanently and without appeal, that her son still belongs to her.
In the weeks that followed, life in the Fashina household settled into something Bimpe had not thought possible when the visit began — a genuine, if imperfect, peace. Tunday, having discovered a spine somewhere between the pounded yam incident and the grandchildren interrogation, remained noticeably more willing to say the word “no” to his mother, gently but firmly, whenever it was needed. Mrs. Fashina, for her part, called twice a week instead of showing up unannounced, and every phone call now began the same way.
“Bimpe, how is my son?”
“He is well, mama.”
“Is he eating?”
“Yes, mama.”
“Good. Don’t let him forget his mother.”
“I won’t, mama.”
A pause. Then, every single time, the same soft addition: “And don’t let him forget you either.”
It was, Bimpe came to understand, as close to an apology as Mrs. Fashina was ever going to give — and as close to a blessing, too. The two of them had not become friends exactly, not in eleven weeks of clashing over eggs and bedspreads and the correct amount of pepper. But they had become something more durable than friendship: two women who had tested each other thoroughly and found, on the other side of the testing, a kind of respect neither had expected to survive intact.
Because just when you think the battle is finally over, she will call to say she forgot her handbag. And you will answer the phone anyway — because that, in the end, is what family means.
— End —
