She ran to me whenever there was a problem in the house. Her husband was very abusive. She would show me the cut on her skin; the bruise under her eyes or the cut behind her back and say, “He did it again yesterday. He came at me with a belt. I will leave this man before he kills me.”

I would be a shoulder she would cry on. I would go deep inside of me to find some motivational words for her; “You’ll survive. Just hold on. Speak to family. Speak to someone he reveres, maybe he’ll change.”

Their marriage was ten years old with three kids. She was scared to leave, I could see it but I wasn’t the one to advise her to leave. I encouraged her to speak to someone, hoping the ones she spoke to would advise her to leave. She didn’t. She was told before marriage that whatever happens in the marriage should stay between them until it’s resolved. She talked about third parties but said, “I don’t want to bring people in. I’ll make my own decision.”

I was having feelings for her, feelings I couldn’t express because she was married. When I looked into her eyes, she had the same feelings too but both of us acted mature in the presence of each other so the fire between us wouldn’t turn to flames.

When she caught her husband cheating with one of her friends, she ran to me to rant; “It could have been any woman and I wouldn’t complain but my own bosom friend? No. I will leave the marriage for them. I should have left long ago but I’ve been foolish. This time, there’s no turning back.”

She never talked about divorce until that day. I didn’t take her seriously, you know women, especially the married ones. They don’t go easily. They say A and act B. You just have to watch them run back to their marriage in flames and they’ll tell you, “I’m only there to collect the ashes and nothing else.” She spoke about divorce but I knew she wasn’t going to carry it out.

But she did.

At some point, she told me she initiated the divorce but as the days went by, she changed the story and told me it was her husband who initiated the divorce. One day, her husband packed his things and left the house. She came to me in tears; “It’s over. The monster in my life is gone. I can breathe free from now onwards.”

A few weeks later, we let ourselves go. We started seeing each other in the dark. “When their marriage is finally over, I’ll take over and marry her. I’ve loved her for a very long time and this is my chance,” I told myself.

She made my home her home. Her junior sister came to live with her so she could leave her kids with her and spend some nights with me. Those were the best days of our lives. She wondered why she stayed for too long when I was waiting to show her the love she was born to experience. She blamed me. She told me if she died it would have been my loss. “You were not a man enough,” she said. “When you love a woman the way you did, you don’t watch her suffer in another man’s bed. You take her out of her trouble.”

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It wasn’t straightforward like that. She was married. I couldn’t break the walls of her marriage and enter just because I loved her. Love takes time but when the time is right, love rises and takes over. That was what I did.

I asked about their divorce sometime. She told me it was progressing. When both families met, she told me about it. She told me the heated argument that ensued between herself and her husband. She told me they were in tatters and couldn’t wait for the divorce process to come to an end.

We were in the dark for almost a year, waiting for their divorce to come to the finish line so ours could take the baton and continue from there. It tarried until colours began to fade. It was slow at first until they faded to black and white. She wasn’t coming around the way she used to. When I asked why she gave me black and white reasons, “The kids, they want me around.” Or “My mom came around. I had to keep her company.” A lot of reasons that didn’t put colour into our lives.

I asked, “Is it about your ex-husband?” She chuckled before telling me, “He’s a ghost. Don’t be jealous of a shadow on the floor.”

No matter what she told me and the excuses she gave me, something didn’t look right. I probed until I found out that it was indeed about her ex-husband. Things were looking good for them so he was coming back to the marriage. When I asked about it she laughed it off as hearsay but the day came when her ex-husband became the husband again. He moved back in. Their marriage got a face-lift and a restart. This time, she herself called to tell me that they were back together.

I was bitter. I felt lied to. I called her a liar on the phone and told her she deserved everything she went through and whatever that was yet to come her way. She responded, “I’ve already done ten with him. We have kids together. I should leave all that behind because of you? I’m sorry for everything but I can’t be sorry for this. I think I’m making the right choice, for my kids.”

We broke up. We were friends before love took over but the friendship died with the breakup.

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I saw her recently and she was pregnant. She was trying to hide her little bulge from me. Wherever the direction I moved, she turned her back towards me. I called her later and asked, “It’s the pregnancy mine?” She stuttered before saying, “How can you ask such a question?” I answered, “It’s mine I know. Confess now or we do a DNA test later. She told me she was having sex with her husband long before they finally came back together.

She’s lying. We’ll do a DNA when she delivers. When she fights it, beans would be spilt or milk rather?  Whichever that can’t be picked up again.

—Onuapa

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