Have A Nice Life
Martins
The first memory I have of Amanda is her sitting on my lap at four years of age and declaring that she was my wife. She was a toddler of two and unaware of the entire wedding but I was so sure even then that she was mine. We were at my cousin’s birthday party and she had wandered away from her mother towards our group of ten toddlers playing in the middle of the room.
I remember her being soft and warm in my hand, her cheeks rounded and full. Few moments after she was mine, her mother was standing before us, reaching her arms out for the little girl but I wouldn’t let go.
“She’s my wife” I cried but the adults just laughed at me. They took her away and I wouldn’t see her again for ten full years. The next time we see, I am a tennis player(I say this because that was my biggest achievement at that time, my greatest pride) I was fourteen years old and muscular. Old enough to casually ask my parents if I could go over and talk with our neighbor’s daughter even if my heart was racing.
We were on the beach at another party. When we got there, my mother had pointed in the direction of Amanda’s family and said, those are your “wife’s” parents and she laughed. My heart went into overdrive immediately. I had never forgotten her. The feel of her was ever-present in my chest but I didn’t know why.
Walking towards her was tedious, my feet kept packing up sand and the sun was roasting and blinding me simultaneously. EVERY hair on my skin was standing at attention but I knew I couldn’t stop. I just had to keep going until she was there, right in front of me.
“Hey,” I said, “I am Martins.” I stretched out my hand to her and someone else took it. It was Amanda’s mom. She hugged me to her bosom and slapped me twice on the back.
“Look who is a man now!” She praised me. “Where are your parents?”
“Over there,” I said and saw her face light up when she saw them. We both watched her make her way through the sand to where my parents lay under large umbrellas. We were alone again. She was staring at me as though I was a stranger. I was still staring ahead but her confusion dragged at the skin of my neck.
“I am Amanda,” she said. I took her hand. It was as soft as I remembered it.
“It has been so long,” I said, swallowing to lubricate my suddenly dry throat.
“My mom seems to know you,” she said. “I don’t”
I smiled at her in what I hoped was a reassuring way. “You were quite young at that time”
“How young?” She asked. “Will you drink Chivita?” She asked, handing a bottle to me.
“Yes, I will. Two years old” I said. She choked on her drink and coughed.
“I was so young!”
Yes, you were” I replied.
“How did you recognize me?” She asked. I stared into her eyes and shook my head.
“I don’t know”
Six long years pass before we meet again on the streets of Lagos. I would love to say she ran down the road and hugged me to herself but it did not happen that way. She was standing by the roadside talking to an older guy, while I idled close by gathering resolve to walk up to her and introduce myself. When I grew bold enough, I appeared within her line of vision only to be greeted with curiosity. Again, I was a stranger to this girl who had been a very present part of my life for so long.
“Hi! I’m Martins, remember me?” I asked. I gave a cursory wave to the guy beside her and he nodded back in acknowledgment. Amanda was more beautiful than she had ever been, she was not a tall woman but she was gorgeous from the crown of her head to her feet.
“Nooo,” she said, still thinking. Her smile became frayed at the edges. I stood there before her, waiting for some kind of recognition, any kind of recognition but none came. Soon I began to feel like I was intruding. She threw a look at the guy she was with and I kicked myself.
“Okay bye. It was nice seeing you again” I said and walked away. That was one of the most painful moments in my entire life. To have someone be the center of your universe while you are simply a blip in hers is the most hurtful thing. I walked away with a part of me shattered that day but I wouldn’t stop meeting her, would I? She was my destiny.
***
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Amanda
In the Bible, Jesus said believers can only enter heaven if they have the heart of a child. The heart of forgiveness, the mind of forgetfulness. I grew up with that kind of forgetfulness, a curse inherited from my grandmother. My grandmother lives to this day in the safety she has created out of her mind. She was known to be so forgetful. The only things she remembered were her children and their names. As she aged, she was unable to remember important things like where she was going when she stepped out of the house fully dressed.
To me, memory is something that flies. A winged creature that flies. In my head, memory is a dragon, it not only flies, but it also breathes fire and burns off surrounding memories. This is how I forget things. I forget a piece of it, like the color of the dress I was wearing that day, and gradually other pieces begin to disappear like the conversation I had, who I was with.
As a child, this problem was not noticeable but it became obvious later when I would fail to recall what happened just days ago. I was playing on the grass with my cousin one day when a woman drove up to our house in a blue Mercedes. She stepped out of the car and walked up to us. I watched her curiously and when She tried to pick up my cousin who was a one-year-old baby, I began to yell out for my parents.
“What’s wrong?” My father asked when he came out to save me from the “monster”. The woman looked both amused and shocked.
“I don’t know what’s with her,” she said. She bent down to my level “Chimamanda, I am your auntie”
“No! No!” I yelled. I remember my dad coming to drag me into the house while I kicked and insisted the woman was a stranger. For some reason, I do not forget this day when my problem was exposed to the world. When I was seven, I had nightmares for weeks, dreaming about forgetting my parents and my siblings. When I turned twelve I began to research how to overcome my illness but I never found a way.
It was that same year I first met the boy who said he remembered me from when I was two years old. To me, he was the complete opposite of myself. He could remember someone who he only met as a baby ten years ago when I found it difficult to remember what I ate for breakfast the day before yesterday. He was the first person I painted on my canvas, willing him to continue being my reality with every toss of my brush.
Under the painting, I wrote his name in calligraphy Martins and kept it somewhere safe. On days when I felt so useless because of my illness, I would take it out and stare at it. As I got better at painting, I duplicated it many times. Updating it with the way I imagined him to be at that time.
In six years, he grew into a man. His shoulder solidifying and his face filling up with a beard. Yet he retained those kind eyes, those kind soulful eyes that seemed so wise for someone his age. So when I meet him in the streets I recognize him. His shoulders are not as broad and he doesn’t have so much beard but was truly him walking towards me with the uncertainty slowing his footsteps.
“Hi! I’m Martins, remember me?” He asks. I am supposed to say no but I don’t. I don’t because I am not ready to shatter the world I have created for the two of us. A world of colors and textures. A world of tears and rocking each other to sleep. I am so comfortable with the pictorial representation of him that he terrifies me in the flesh. What will I do with him? What will he do when he realizes I am ill like my grandmother?
I watch his shoulders slump as he waits for me to show a sign of recognition. Any sign. I leave him bereft to save him, knowing that one day he will understand. Maybe I will tell him. I have his mother’s number. Maybe I will pick up the phone one day and request to speak with him.
***
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Martins
I cried myself to sleep that night in the privacy of my room. I cried because I felt useless and used. For the first time, I blamed Amanda for the situation I was in. She should have at least pretended to know me? Collected my phone number? Anything but making me feel like a criminal and a destitute standing before her and begging to be known.
I made up my mind I would never walk up to her and say hi again. Even If we were in the same room together, I would walk past her as though she didn’t exist. I vowed to stand by my decision despite the heartbreak it would give me, and slept fitfully.
Four years later and I got a job at a tech company in VI. I had dated many women and broken countless hearts, living comfortably. So you will understand my shock when one day as I was walking into the company’s premises someone calls my name, I turn and see Amanda walking towards me.
“Hi! I am Tayo” she says and stretches out her hand to take mine. That is when I notice the differences.
“Hey Tayo,” I reply. She grins at me. With her mouth open, she looks nothing like Amanda.
“I am your new partner,” she said and roped her arm through mine “Let us go inside and talk more”
I followed her, the wound inside my heart torn open in a very painful spot. Amanda. my heart murmured once again. I squashed it with an angry fist.
That morning I ran into the elevator. I was fifteen minutes late for a general meeting with the directors. I had slept in after a night of partying and was praying that I didn’t look as hungover as I felt. Tayo came into the elevator after me. Her head down over her phone.
“You’re late!” I said playfully. She did not look up at me. “Tayo?” I asked.
The young woman raised her head and looked at me. “Martins!” She blurted. As soon as she said it, she put her hand over her mouth.
“Amanda!” I was stunned. “You recognize me!”
***
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Amanda
They say man proposes but God disposes. That was how God made me blurt out Martin’s name in that elevator. I was so shocked when I realized the mistake I had made. After the shock came the pain. Martins was so happy it hurt me to the bone. I knew I had done the wrong thing but I couldn’t pretend ignorance anymore.
He hugged me fiercely, kissing the top of my head while I stood like a plank in his arms.
The elevator stopped and we got out but he refused to let go of my hand.
“I fear you might run away again,” he said. “Can I have your phone number and your last name?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I laughed and he smiled at me with those kind eyes. I was in love with the picture of him, imagine how confused I became when I saw that he was even more beautiful in the flesh. I became selfish. I gave him my phone number and my house address. I went home, my insides shaking like a leaf caught in torrential rain.
That evening we heard a knock at our gate. My elder brother went to open the door. When my mother saw Martins, she leaped off the couch and went to hug him.
“My son! My son is a man now!” She shouted, beating his chest and displaying him for all of us. Martins looked amused as he stared at me. “How are your parents? Hope you are staying the night? Come with me to the kitchen.”
I didn’t see him until later. My mom had exhausted all her questions and finally allowed him to come to sit with us in the living room. He smelled like citrus and milk as he positioned himself beside me. I felt him shudder a little with an emotion I could not place.
“I can’t believe I am sitting here with you,” he whispered.
“Me neither” I whispered back. He smiled at me. I took his hand in mine and squeezed. The world went on around us but we were oblivious to it. At that moment and until now, he remains the center of my universe. With every new morning, his reflection never left my mind. I believed I had memorized the painting of him so much that I could not forget him like everything else but was I wrong.
The birds were chirping that morning. That was what woke me up. I was not used to such loud chirping of birds so my first thought was: where am I?. Everyone knows how the body goes into overdrive when a suitable answer to this question is not forthcoming. I leaped out of bed and pivoted until I was facing it.
A man sat there with his laptop in his lap. He looked surprised. He was light-skinned, handsome, and naked underneath the duvet. I freaked out. My worst fears owing to fruition. The pounding in my head alerted me to the fact that I must have drunk a lot the previous night. All the pieces fell into place.
After a night of booze, I had hooked up with a random guy. He could be an Aids patient or even a serial killer and I was still here in his room. I hoisted the lamp holder within my reach and faced him with it. With my remaining hand, I began to quickly pick up my things. My dress, my handbag, my shoes. Always keeping him in my line of sight. When I was done, I slowly backed out of the room and out of the house. He never said a word.
It was the paintings that reminded me who he was so when he came into my room, I didn’t scream. I just sat there staring into space. All those paintings of him arranged before me.
“Don’t” I said when he tried to touch me “You have to leave Martins.”
“I can’t leave you,” he said bitterly. He sounded like he was suffering. I laughed.
“My grandmother killed my grandfather. Threw him down the stairs because she thought he was a strange man in her house” I said. His eyes widened, further strengthening my resolve.
“Yes, I could have killed you today,” I said. He sat down beside me.
“You wouldn’t kill me,” he said.
“Have a nice life, Martins” I said. Then I walked up to the first painting, took it in my hand, and tore it to shreds. I did that until they were all lying like snow at my feet. When I looked up from my tears, he was gone. A wail tore through my throat and getting up I ran out the door. Eager to reach my mother. Only she could comfort me now.
Strong arms caught me before I could step far away from my room. It was Martins.
“I got you,” he cried, hugging my frail body in his.
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