I was very young when we fell in love. I was in my twenties. We swore to each other that nothing could ever separate us. He was the first man I ever knew, so everything I knew in life and in love, he taught me.

He taught me to kiss and how to kiss right. I followed his direction religiously as if I didn’t have my own head. Because of him, I was scared to even talk to another man. He said, “Even if you think of falling in love with another man, I will know it.”

So I allowed him to dictate what we could do as lovers and what we couldn’t do. We dated for over a year before our first intimacy. He was in school and I was home. When he completed university and came home fully, I had already gone to school, another university. We were far apart all that year.

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Before our first intimacy, he turned on the camera. He said he didn’t want to forget the day. The day he broke me and also the first day the two of us were getting intimate. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t confused. I knew what was happening, and I was happy to do it with him. He recorded it. I didn’t watch it, but he did. When we were apart and he missed me, he watched it and talked about it.

By the time I completed university, he had a whole library of us getting intimate at different places. I loved that a man loved me this much to want to keep a piece of me wherever he went, but as I was growing up and I was hearing of leaked tapes, I became concerned and protective of myself whenever he turned on the camera. I asked him not to show our faces. I asked what if someone got access to the phone. I told him I was scared.

He said, “Don’t forget I’m also in the video. I’ll protect it with my life.” I believed him, especially when it came to his life because he had used that life to love me through thick and thin, and for over five years that we had been together and taken a whole lot of them, none of the videos had leaked.

When he got his first salary, he sent everything to me and asked me to pray for him to earn more. Just a year later, he got a promotion at work. He called me his lucky charm. He said good things were happening in his life because he found me a virgin and I’d always remained true to him.

When I finally landed a job after my national service, he looked me deep in the eyes and said, “It’s time we got married.” That day, it happened in his kitchen and he recorded it. That day, I asked where he had been saving all the videos he had taken of us. He smiled. He asked why I wanted to know. I said, “I’m just wondering because you’ve been changing phones since.”

“Don’t worry. It’s safe. Very, very safe.”

A few months after he told me we needed to get married, he took me to meet his parents, who already knew me from the time when I was young. They were amazed to see me grown. They wondered how long we’d been together because they saw us from the beginning but didn’t take us seriously. He said, “I eyed her from a very young age and I never took my eyes off her.”

They gave us their blessings and asked us to continue flourishing in love. I took him home too. He was sick the very day we were going, but he was determined to meet my parents and tell them he wanted to marry me. My parents were divorced and were living in different towns. After visiting my mom, his sickness got serious.

We came back home, went to the hospital and he was admitted. He was discharged a week later, but a few days later, he was back on admission. Headache became a serious sore throat. Sore throat turned into a heart attack. That was when Sampson started fading away. He grew very lean. I was scared it was HIV. It wasn’t. His heart was failing and his body was failing with it.

For over a year, I never saw him smiling until one night, he slept and didn’t wake up. By then, his family had taken him back home and I was visiting every weekend. I would go to see him on Friday after work and leave Sunday night.

I’d returned on Sunday evening when, on Monday morning, they told me he died in his sleep. In my whole life, I’d never had someone this close die. I thought death was a rumor, something that happened to strangers. But my boyfriend died when we were this close to marriage. For days, my life was spinning. I couldn’t eat. My heart was constantly beating faster, but the day I realized his elder brother was using his phone, I nearly collapsed.

“How is he able to access his phone? Did he give him the password?” I asked myself. When I talked to him, I asked, in fact, I begged him if I could have the phone as a keepsake. He promised to give it to me when all was said and done, but he never did. The funeral came and went. I was with him at the graveside when the pastor threw the last soil and said, “From dust to dust.” When I was leaving town after the funeral, I went to his house to say goodbye. I didn’t ask for the phone, but I thought he would give it to me. He didn’t.

He called me days later and I asked for it. I asked how much of my boyfriend’s information was left on the phone. He said, “Everything. Including photos and videos.”

My heart skipped several beats. He called me every day and texted at odd hours. I wasn’t alright. Do you know this guy proposed to me, begging me to allow him to take his brother’s place? It wasn’t the proposal that worried me, but I asked myself what he saw that all of a sudden he was interested in me.

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I said no. I told him not to call me again because I didn’t want to disrespect the memory of his brother. He hadn’t called again, but I haven’t stopped thinking about the fact that he might have access to our library. It’s been over a year, but anytime I hear of leaked tapes, my heart stops beating for a while, and then I get to know it’s not me, then I breathe again.

I can’t move on totally because of this. What if someday it comes up to destroy everything I’ve built? Should I talk about it with my next boyfriend before things get serious? Where did he hide them? If his brother found them, where’s he keeping them?

Today is almost ending. My tape didn’t leak. Let’s see what tomorrow brings. Hmmm.

—Madeleine     

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