I was sixteen when my heart started opening up to the things of love. I didn’t understand what love was but I could feel it in my heart. I saw boys and got this tingling feeling in my heart that they could be useful to me in a special way. I paid attention to words. I listened to a song and paid attention to the lyrics. I read a story and couldn’t wait to get to the part where the lovers kissed. I watched a movie and wanted the story in the movie to happen to me too. My emotions were all over the place. It was like a restless bird looking for a branch to hang on for a while.

It didn’t help when I realized Ebo was looking at me in a fancy way. We lived in the same compound house and spent most of our evenings under the street light, all the children in the compound house. But Ebo and I started seeking a hiding place, where the other children may not see us. One day we found a hiding place in the dark and we kissed. He said he loved me and I promised I loved him too. He asked, “So you’re my girlfriend?” I answered, “Yes.”

“Don’t love anyone else apart from me, OK?”

I nodded with the humility of a kid who has seen toffees.

I don’t remember how it felt to be kissed for the first time but my teenage heart held on to the memory of the kiss and wrote about it on every empty surface I found. I wrote about it in a song. I wrote about it in a story. I kept a music lyrics book. I wrote it in that one too.

My mom picked the book one day and asked me, “Who’s Ebelino?”

I knew I was in trouble. My mom had read about the kiss and she was going to slaughter me. For several seconds I didn’t answer her. She kept throwing the question at me in different forms; “Who’s Ebelino, the boy you kissed?”

I was shaking. She read a piece of what I’d written back to me; “His lips tastes like honey and his hands felt cold on my breast. I can’t forget that night….” Herh Rose, is that the life you’ve been living? I say who’s Ebelino?”

I was so in love with Ebo that I figured he needed a fictional name so instead of Ebo, I called him Ebelino. That was my saving grace. If my mom got to know it was Ebo, it would have been a different story. Maybe it would have become a family war or something. I lied to my mom. I didn’t give her all the details but she had read too much to be lied to so I confessed the kiss but couldn’t confess the name; “He’s a guy I met at extra classes during vacation. When school resumed, he travelled back to where he came from.”

“And you kissed him? At your age, you know about kissing? What else do you know? Where else did his cold hands go? Is it only his cold hands that went there? Speak the truth before I break your head into two.”

I was shivering. I stuttered while trying to tell her nothing of that sort happened. She didn’t touch me but by the time we went to church on Sunday, my Sunday school teacher has heard it. Our music teacher knew about Ebelino and the cold hands. My aunt called me on the side and started telling me about the kiss and advised me not to go closer to boys. In fact, everyone who mattered in my life heard that I’d kissed a boy and his lips tasted like honey and his hands felt cold on my breast.

It turned me inward. I lost my right to a speech among my peers, I lost confidence. I felt dirty, I felt used and desecrated. To make matters worse, Ebo shied away from me. He also thought I was cheating on him. I kissed him and also kissed Ebelino. I was not worth it so he stayed away from me. I became alone, a wallflower.

If I had a headache and I complained to my mom, she would tell me, “Why won’t you have a headache? That’s what happens when you go around kissing Ebelino.” If I was hungry and I asked for food, she would tell me, “Why won’t you be hungry when you go about kissing lips you should avoid.”

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We prayed together at night before sleeping. The kiss became the prayer topic. The devil’s name became Ebelino. My mom would shout; “We pray against the spirit of Ebelino. The spirit that comes to steal, kiss and destroy. Father Lord, kick that spirit away from my daughter.”

There was not a single day my mom didn’t remind me of that kiss and Ebelino. It followed me until I grew up.

My mom was a good mother. I appreciate what she made of me. The extent she went to put food on the table for me. My father died when I was ten. My senior brother died when I was fourteen. We became a two-woman band, me and my mom. She would sing the treble and I’ll back her up with alto. She was young enough to marry again but she didn’t. For the rest of her life, it was only me and her. She was good but she hurt me deeply with that Ebelino issue.

I was twenty-nine and was going through relationship problems. I knew my mom so I didn’t want to bring a man home today and bring another one tomorrow when the previous one leaves. I wanted to get it right once but fate said no. I don’t know what was wrong with me but I only attracted men who didn’t know how to love me right. At twenty-nine, I had dated quite a few men but they all walked away.

My cousin got married and I attended the wedding with my mom. When we were returning home, she told me, “The way you kissed very early in life, I thought by this time you’ll be raising a family of your own but look at your life. Akos is only twenty-five but look at her today. She’s married. What are you waiting for?”

I cried when I got home but it didn’t end there. One day she brought up the marriage topic again and I told her, “I don’t have a man. When I get one you’ll be the first person to know.” She responded, “You kissed a man when you were ten years old but you can’t find a man when you’re thirty? What happened to you? Or that kiss took your luck away.”

I got tired. I wanted to leave home. I was working and had the money to rent my own place so I started looking for a place. It was just around that time that she got sick. She was going in and out of the hospital every month and I thought it was a bad time to leave her. I visited her in the hospital one day and the patient next to her knew my story. The lip I kissed and my trouble finding a man. The woman told me, “Don’t worry, I’ll be praying for you  OK? You’ll find a man.”

A week later, my mom died at the hospital. It broke me into pieces. I didn’t only lose a mother. I lost a bandmate, a lifetime partner. What hurt me the most was the fact that I didn’t forgive her before she died. I was harbouring the pain of the embarrassment she caused me. I was planning to leave her life when she died. I’m crying as I write this. I forgave her when she died. I told her when she was laid in state; “I forgive you and I’m sorry I disappointed you with that kiss. I was too young. I’m sorry if it broke your heart.”

Three years after her death, I got married.

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I met my husband at my mom’s funeral. He came to the funeral with his friend who happened to be a relative. We talked that day and he became a friend. My mom has to die for me to get a husband. If she knew my husband would appear at her funeral, she would have gone earlier for me to find a husband. That’s how much she loved me but the thing is, it’s only the people you love that can hurt you. It’s your bandmate that can fight with you. We hardly fight with strangers. Friends and family are the people we fight because they are the ones closest to us. Mom was the closest thing in my life. Who will I hate and love at the same time?

Her.

#MyFirstRelationship

—Rose

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