When I told her that I loved her, she said she wasn’t sure about her feelings for me. I wasn’t working. She said that was a problem for her. According to her, a man who wasn’t working shouldn’t use his time looking for love but instead looking for a job.

I didn’t have a place of my own. She said that was also a problem for her. “If I ask you to take me home, where would you take me? Your friend’s house?”

What she said was true, but a part of me hurt that a woman would look at my face and use my situation in life to mock me. I’d come to Accra to find a job after my national service. I was living with Joel, a friend who had also travelled from my hometown to settle in Accra to hustle. He was living in a tiny room that had only one window. When the power went off, we couldn’t sleep in there. Heat.

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All his life’s possessions were there, including mine. We lived with a few cockroaches and some little insects that bit through the mattress. Getty was right. A man like me didn’t deserve to look for love but a change in situation. But the heart wants what it wants, and in that moment, all my heart wanted was Getty, so I pursued her while I used the rest of my time looking for a job.

One day, I told her, “A job will come and go, but a woman like you comes only once.” She laughed, “Eiii, you have words in your mouth ooo. Keep flattering me wai.”

She didn’t say yes and also didn’t say no. She would call and check on me. She invited me to her place and cooked for me. She said I could come around anytime I wanted, and she would cook for me. “I love it when there’s someone to eat what I cook,” she said. “So do come by often.”

I was there every weekend, but she still didn’t say yes. Joel travelled to the village. He was going to be away for a week, but he ended up spending three weeks there. When I told Getty that Joel had travelled, she said, “Then I’ll come and look at where you live.” I said no. She insisted. I said no.

We had gone too far. I thought letting her see the room I lived in would derail everything, but she insisted, so I put the room together in the best shape I could afford and even bought fragrance and changed the light to blue to spice things up.

She came and relaxed on our corner bed. I was sitting next to her, and then she got up and initiated a kiss. My heart started beating wildly, but all of a sudden, she stopped and froze. “Is that a mouse I see in the corner there?”

I’d never seen a mouse in that room. Cockroaches, fine, but a mouse? I turned. She pointed at the place, but I didn’t see it. She said, “Oh, it’s gone. Wow. This lives here with you?”

I spent days looking for that mouse. I trapped it. I sang lullabies for it. I didn’t see it. She hadn’t accepted my proposal, yet we kissed and then she saw a mouse in my room. I thought it was the end of us. But we still talked. And then she called to say that she was around, so she would like to visit.

I asked that we go outside. She insisted she wanted to relax. She sat on the bed, and I sat next to her. She pointed at the wall and calmly said, “It’s on the wall. This is big!” I turned, and this time, live and coloured, the mouse was there. She hadn’t been in the room for even an hour, but this mouse I hadn’t seen all my life appeared. “Or you brought it?” She laughed while the mouse quickly ducked into the things. “You have interesting characters in this room,” she told me.

That was the last time Getty would visit me, but we talked. We met. She said that kiss was for nothing. She liked me in that moment, hence the kiss. I persisted, but all she did was give me food.

The day I got a job, which wasn’t going to pay a lot, she was the first person I called. She screamed, “Praise God. My boyfriend is now a man.” We talked all night, and then I asked, “I have a job now, so what…”

“I need 1K urgently,” she said. “My mom is sick. Can you send me Momo?”

Then we burst out laughing. Three months after I started working, she said she would give me a loan without interest. I should get myself a decent place to live, where there would be no interesting characters.

I got a place a little close to my workplace. I said goodbye to Joel and moved in. It was an empty room with a mattress. I lived with echoes until gradually I could afford to fill it up. Two years later, Getty said yes to a relationship. To me, we had been dating since the kiss and the mouse, but to her, we were just good friends. I told her no friend gives that much money for rent. She said it was a loan, and friends give loans all the time.

She said yes in October 2017. On August 18th, 2018, we got married. I was still not earning much. She was earning way better than me. Her bonuses were even bigger than my salary, but that didn’t matter to her, though it got me worried sometimes that I wasn’t doing much to give her the life she deserved. She said, “I have life now. What we deserve may come later. Let’s stay focused.”

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Seven years later, I’ve changed jobs twice, but she still earns better. We have two kids, but we also have grace and favour and love that seem stronger than our struggles and occasional fights. I count my blessings, and she comes first, and then everything we’ve been through follows.

I’m still waiting for that twist of fate that makes me richer one day so I can give her the life she deserves. Now, there are no more cockroaches and mice, so we give God the praise. This is progress, and we don’t take it for granted at all.

—Lawrence     

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