To: My Forever
He called out my name. I could hear his voice echo through the empty hallway. “Bibanke!!!” I continued running without looking back once, tears in my eyes, all I could mutter coldly as I ran into the rain was “I still love you Ayomikun.”
Three days after my big fight with the love of my life, I felt like the world had already come to an end. Dark circles the size of oranges encompassed both my eyes. I walked around with my swollen and blackened eyes, looking like someone that had narrowly escaped death in a street fight. My friends were too worried to leave me all by myself so they slept over and ended up spending the entire weekend with me.
“Bibanke, why are you doing this to yourself? You look like you’re going to join your dear dad in the afterlife any minute from now, may his soul rest on in peace.” I looked at Sarah and shook my head. She didn’t know what I was going through. This feeling of betrayal I felt was something that none of them had experienced, at least not in the degree I had felt it. I looked at both of them again. There was so much I wanted to say but I didn’t have the strength or willpower to do so. I laid back down on my bed.
Frustrated, Obehi yanked the sheets away from my body, grunted heavily, marched to my curtains, and opened them wide for sunlight and fresh air to pour in.
“This place smells like a frigging morgue. Get yo ass up and out of that bed or I’mma get it for you!” She reminded me of the African American mothers in the 90s movies we watched every Friday night, they were always bursting with energy and threatening people into doing what they ordered. I didn’t need her to get started with me that afternoon so I obeyed sheepishly and sat up on my bed, my face bowed to my fair thighs.
“Now, listen to me, young lady. You are going to get out of them briefs, get showered, wash that stanky hair of yours, I mean, it smells like a rat died in that thing. Doesn’t it smell in your nose? It’s oozing ‘help I’m dying…’ from over there to here. You are a lady for Chriss’sake! Act like one! Hear me?”
I subconsciously yelped a “yes ma’am” and got down to fulfilling her orders. She followed my every move with her eyes until I eventually went into the bathroom to have a bath and wash my hair.
An hour later I was smelling clean and fresh, my hair wet and smelling like coconut mixed with lemon and carrots. Admittedly, I felt alive again but inside I still felt like a zombie. “I feel dead inside guys. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get over this. He bloody cheated on me! He cheated and he did it publicly with no regards whatsoever for me. I feel hurt beyond repair.”
“Girrrrl… you gotta move on! You. Got. To. Move. On.” She spaced each word with a clap of her hands, walking towards me a step at a time. “You’re bigger than this honey. You got that nice caramel half-caste shade o’ brown that got them boys turning their heads whenever you walk past them. You pretty. Big time. So don’t pay no attention to that skank. He cheated on you with Love. She got nothing on you. Hell, they got nothing on you.” She sounded like she was reprimanding me but I could see the love and warmth written all over her face. I smiled weakly.
“Yes, ma’am. I promise to try to take care of myself from now on. I will…” I knew she wasn’t going to accept the ‘try’ part so I half expected her next set of orders. “No, missy. You will not ‘try‘ to take care of yourself. You must take care of yourself. Get yourself together, eat well, drink lots of water, look fresh, dress well, smell nice. For God’s sake, look like you bloody don’t need that guy to survive!”
I looked at Obehi and then at Sarah. They were opposites of each other. While one was calm and reserved, keeping conversations at the barest minimum, the other was a chatterbox, vibrant and very vocal. She had this ‘yeah I walked into the room so you gotta notice me’ presence about her wherever she went.
“So, has he contacted you since the whole thing escalated?” Sarah asked ever so calmly. I nodded my head and handed her my phone to read the two hundred messages he had left for me in the past three days, he had also left me over a hundred missed calls. I didn’t know what to do, but as always, Sarah knew what to say and do in whatever situation she found herself in, so she told me what to do.
“This is what you’ll do sweetheart. Now, I know Ehi will want to bite my head off when she hears it but that is the sensible decision to take right now. Do you hear me?” I nodded in the affirmative. “Good. Call him back. Call him back and hear what he has to say. This isn’t about you being weak, clingy, or desperate. This is simply about you wanting to get to the root of the matter like the adult you are. No mature person makes a judgment based on one side of the story you know?”
I nodded. Crazy and demeaning as it would be, I knew Sarah was making sense with what she said, but the narcissist in me simply didn’t want to give in to do the calling. Obehi spoke up for me, I just knew she would not agree to that idea. While one rooted for women independence, equity of both sexes, and female empowerment, the other believed a woman needed a man to be complete.
“Sarah why you gon tell a grown-ass woman to call her man when he don fucked up big time cheating with that skank that be going ’round lookin’ like she could use a pound or two of meat on those bones she calling her body? Tell me, Sarah, why you gon be that way? That only gonna make him lose his value for her and give him more reasons to disrespect her. Don’t go telling her to do trash like that, she just might listen to you, the baby she is.”
“Great. All I needed was contradictory opinions from the only two people I could listen to when my head was under the water. Who do I listen to now? Whose voice will get me out and keep me afloat right now? I don’t know what to do right now.” I mused inwardly. I was still thinking when I received a call from the source of my dilemma.
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“H-hello? Babe i-is that you? Please say something, a-anything. Come on, I mean, you already picked the call. I’ve been dialing your number nonstop since Friday, please just let me explain. I swear it’ll all make sense after I explain. I swear, just please, don’t hang up on me. Let’s just talk honey.”
I heard the fear in his voice.
“He was scared. He was scared of losing me.”
I looked at Sarah and then at Obehi. Sarah nodded and urged me on with a motion of her hands, a gesture that looked like she was trying to splash water on someone. Obehi on the other hand shook her head vehemently, giving me the ‘don’t you dare do it’ look. I sighed. No hope there for me. I took in three deep breaths before I finally replied to him.
“Mikun, what is it? The entire school knows about your affair with Jane, why are you trying to reach out to me? Since your cover has been blown, there’s no need to pretend anymore. You honestly don’t need to go about your affairs in secret anymore.”
“You’re a free man now,” I added as an afterthought.
“Now listen to me carefully Bibanke, you are the woman I love and choose to spend my forever with. If dating, if marriage, if being in a relationship with you is bondage then I’ll gladly live in chains for the rest of my goddamn life.
I love you Bibanke. No woman, no argument, no friend, no setup, no scandal can change that. Hell, nothing in this world can change how I feel about you.”
I could feel my heart about to burst out of my chest. I could hear the bass sound of its drumming. The ‘da-dum da-dum’ of my heart slamming against my chest reverberated around my entire body, it was almost as if my body was trying to scream back “I love you too Ayomikun.”
My body was testifying its fidelity to its man, its owner. My heart never stopped trusting once, the issue was my mind. My mind kept building high walls to barricade his words from getting to me. I could see the high electric fence standing tall, daring any of his words to try to pass across. I wanted to break down those walls, I wanted to pull them down with my own hands so bad but I lacked the willpower to do so. After all, it was my willpower that set up the walls in the first place. I sighed.
Wait, set up? Did he actually say set up before?! What did that mean??
“Mikun, you mentioned a set up before. What did that mean?” I desperately wished it was all a setup. I was ready to forgive, forget, and move on as long as he didn’t intentionally cheat on me.
“Yeah, babe… the whole thing was a setup. The time you saw both of us going out. Kunle, my friend, you remember him right?” I nodded even though I knew he wasn’t seeing him. I remembered Kunle well, he was one of his best friends. “Kunle confided in me that he likes Jane and he asked me to take her out on a date so that it would look like he ran into us at the restaurant.
I guess Jane was overexcited and she thought something was budding between us. Then, the picture you saw of us kissing? It was honestly just a truth or dare game we played when I went to visit my guys and well the bed scene pictures were taken after the game when I was drunk. I guess she just compiled all the pictures, cooked up a funny story, and spread it about to make everyone think we were together but we are not. You are the woman I want Bibanke. I don’t ever want to see you sad or cry. I love you. Forever.”
Deep down I knew he wasn’t lying to me. I knew when Mikun was lying to me, we were that connected. I sighed, I knew if I accepted him there and then my girls would kill me, but I also knew that if I stayed away from him my life would lose all its color, light, and energy.
“I hear you, babe. I forgive you and yes, I’m taking you back.” I looked at my friends and nodded twice as if to reaffirm my decision. I was going to take him, I simply needed to trust him.
“Love without trust is simply a joke. I trust you Mikun and I love you too.” I looked at my friends and hugged them for comfort.
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The next day was Monday and everyone was still talking about our scandal because our affair was too intimate and expressive to be hidden. As my girls and I walked into the lecture hall for the Creative Writing class, I looked at Jane and her caucus. She looked at me, gave me a sly grin, looked at my man, winked at him, even blew a kiss, and turned back to dare me to utter a word. I simply walked past her and ignored her like the insignificant figure she was. Mikun on the other hand tried to come over to my side to talk to me but I stopped him with the raise of my left palm. We sat down quietly and waited for the lecturer to arrive.
Three minutes later, the Creative Writing lecturer came in, talked to us about short story writing, and gave us an exercise to write a very short story with a word count of over three hundred words but it should be less than five hundred words within thirty minutes. We all got down to writing and half an hour later, I was called upon to read my short story to the class.
I stood up, walked to the front of the class, looked around at the two hundred pairs of eyes that were staring back at me, cleared my throat, and started reading out what I had written:
To: My Forever
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Today I was asked to describe my lover so I blushed and asked them to take a seat on the beach sand because I had a lot to say.
I started by telling them he was the kind of man you held by the hands and took home to show your father. “Nice hair, edible skin. Not literally edible oh. You know what I mean na… he has that nice, dark chocolate skin you just wanna bite into.” They all laughed. I went on to describe his heart: robust, golden, accommodating, kind, caring, and loving.“
I was getting too excited describing my Heart, that I didn’t know when I had stood up and started walking around in swirls. I told them about how he completes my being. “You know about sets right?” I asked them. “Well, he’s my Complement”. I looked up at the starry sky and smiled from ear to ear. “He’s the man that’s going to be the father of my kids. The one I share gray hairs with. He’s my love, my life, my soulmate, my own. My one and only.”
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They looked at me, shocked at the weight of the words I uttered. I winked and went on. “He’s the type that gives you peace of mind, my happiness, the reason behind my smile, and even better, the reason behind my tear.”
At that point I looked towards Mikun and gave him a gentle smile, he looked like he wanted to stand up from his seat. The entire class was so enraptured with my story that I felt too embarrassed to continue. I coughed, turned to face my lecturer who looked like he wanted to hear the progression of my story, and decided not to delay him any further. I continued my story.
“He’s why I write, sing, eat, sleep, breathe, and think. No, don’t get me wrong. He’s not my God, but I am definitely a worshipper at his temple.”
They were starting to sit up in their seats, I looked around at them, necks leaning forward to hear the next outrageous atrocity I was going to utter as a description of my Forever but I wasn’t going to entertain them any longer. I flashed them a meaty grin and said, “his name is Ayomikun and indeed with him, my joy is full. He’s mine so none of you better try to take him from me.”
Then I laughed, “it’s not like you could actually do it even if you tried. He’s mine only and he knows it. That’s all girls.” I said with a smirk on my face.
I looked at Jane and flashed my brightest smile at her when I said “it’s not like you could do it even if you tried.” The entire class applauded me and the lecturer asked me to stand beside him until he finished the lecture.
He commended my use of language and imagery but also highlighted many things I could improve on in the story. He used my piece to teach the class further about short story writing and dismissed the class afterward. After the class, Mikun didn’t even wait for the lecturer to leave completely before running to my side to spin me around and kiss me in front of the whole class.
“I love you, Bibanke and I know your name means ‘when I’m crying’ but I promise to never again be the reason behind your tears.” I kissed him back and smiled. “Good, cos you dare not try that shit with me again, young man.”
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