From the very first day we met, he talked about marriage. He didn’t ask me to be his girlfriend or even talk about friendship. I was seated, waiting for somebody, when he walked in. He looked at me for a while and said, “Young woman, you’re beautiful. Please allow me to marry you.”

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I smiled and looked away. He sat down. He said he was serious and would do everything to marry me. He asked for my number. I hesitated. He pushed, and to get him off my neck, I gave it to him. He called and insisted that I should save his number too. He watched me do it before he left me alone.

It took him a week to call me. He said, “Wifee, when can I come and see your parents? My drinks are ready.”

When someone says one thing consistently, no matter how it sounds, at some point you may take it seriously. I asked, “Is that how your love is? You meet me today, and tomorrow you want to marry me. What if I’m a witch? What if I don’t have good character? What if I’m a bad person?”

He told me people with my face and calm demeanor couldn’t be bad, so I should allow him space in my life to get to know him. Day after day, as we talked, the bond became stronger. I was gradually growing to like him. I asked him what had taken him so long to think about marriage, considering his age. He responded, “It’s God’s doing. He was preparing me to meet you. It’s you who took so long to appear.”

It became a relationship, and this man proved to me that he wasn’t joking with my emotions. He met my dad. We traveled for hours to see him. He respectfully laid down his goals for our future. My dad liked him immediately and said he was ready when we were ready.

He rented a new place for me because my old place was too small and too far from my workplace. He helped me set up my new place and said, “Now, this is a home I want to belong to.” His house was bigger and nicer, but he always wanted to be with me at my place, saying my room was full of my fragrances and he loved to smell them.

We dated for a year, and I got pregnant. When I told him on the phone, he quickly drove to my place to see me. I said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t careful enough. If you don’t want it, we can let it go.” He replied almost immediately, “You’re crazy to think I don’t want it. What are you saying?”

He took me to the hospital to do a scan to confirm it. He told one nurse, “Please advise her on how to keep the baby safe.” He was more excited about the pregnancy than anything else, but I didn’t feel like I was doing the right thing. Why get pregnant before marriage? Honestly, my wish was to let it go so we could try again when we were married. I told him all that, and he got angry. “My child lives. Why would you think of something as crazy as that? That’s an abomination.”

This man spent his weekends with me and came straight to my place after work every evening before driving home late at night. He told me that when the pregnancy was six months old, I would relocate to his house so he could take proper care of me. The pregnancy became the most important thing to him. I was the vessel, so he did what he could to keep me in good condition, but everything he did showed that the pregnancy was the most sacred and important thing.

One day, he said he was traveling to the UK for his younger sister’s graduation, to visit his parents, and to do some business before coming back. He was going to be away for two months. He gave me money and told me who to call if I needed help. Ultimately, he charged me to take care of the child for him.

He had been gone for a week when I miscarried. I was three months pregnant. I had been in pain for days and had broken down at some point, but I thought it was all part of the pregnancy symptoms until that evening when it happened. At the hospital, he was the first person I called, even before I fully understood what was happening. When the doctor confirmed it, I called him again. I was in tears.

He cut the call and didn’t pick up again, no matter how many times I called. I texted, apologizing for my failure to keep it safe. I blamed my body. I told him I was ready to get pregnant again as soon as possible if that was what he wanted. All my messages were read, but no response came from him.

A few days later, I heard a knock on my door. It was a woman and a man in police attire. The woman was on the phone, speaking on loudspeaker. She said, “She’s here. We are in her house.” The person on the phone screamed, “Arrest her. She killed the baby intentionally.”

That was the voice of my boyfriend shouting. “Take her to the police station and question her. What she did was murder.” It felt like a crazy movie that had started out of nowhere. Before I could ask what was going on, the police officer was already in my room, searching for something. He then asked me to follow him. He wouldn’t let me call anyone.

They took me to a place that looked like an abandoned house. I answered questions about the miscarriage. I told them I could take them to the hospital to speak to the doctor. I was scared. I was crying. Eventually, they said, “You can go, but tomorrow you will take us to the hospital where it happened.”

I never saw them again. My boyfriend also didn’t call or pick up my calls. I went to stay with a friend, afraid they might come back at night to hurt me. Weeks later, I went to his house, thinking he might have returned from abroad. He wasn’t there.

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He had blocked me on WhatsApp and even on calls. All I wanted was to explain to him that it wasn’t my fault, but he didn’t give me the chance. I’m not even angry about how he treated me. He was right, but I don’t know why he wouldn’t give me the chance to explain.

So once in a while, I go to his house and knock to see if someone will answer. It’s been three months and eight days. I go there at least once every month and knock, but there’s no answer—just an empty house.

—Sandra 

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