Step Into Hell With Me

I could have sworn that I had already told her the story. She looks baffled, so I tell her, anyway.

“Aunt Joy, I am not yet married” she rolls her eyes at me “But I am seeing someone,” I continue ignoring the trouble that her eyes are having of returning to their rightful place. I wait a minute, allowing the sentence to marinade the last ingredient of melodramatic aunty Joy. She does not disappoint.

“Mwana Wangu, Mwana Wangu,” She pauses for dramatic effect as she clutches at her chest, chin meets chest, head swings side to side and “Oh! Child of mine,” she exclaims raising her arms in the air signalling that she gives up. Her pupils return to their station aiming a steady gaze my way. “Mwana Wangu you are stubborn. When are you going to own your own house? When are you going to wake up and realise that your parents are not getting any younger? Oh yea, I know you. You want to tell me how you do not want to get married for your parents. But child, sometimes we have to make sacrifices for the people we love.” A whistle from the pressure cooker calls her attention back to the stove. I follow. 

“So, you are saying I should just be an oven?”

“You create your world. Having a marriage is important. Do you want Bana Muntanga to keep shoving it in our faces that both her children have found husbands?” she kisses her teeth and tends to the pot. The steam eases her temper. 

“Yes aunty – but did you hear me say I was seeing someone?” her little face lights up. 

“I heard you, but I just wanted to be sure you meant it,” she says flashing her pearly whites. “Let me make us a cup of tea and you tell me all about it.” 

I tell her about Tyler and how he was behaving. 

“Uh uh – no no no” she says wagging her finger, “if he ain’t the right one then don’t risk it.”

“You will not believe what he got me for my birthday,”

“What?”

“A packet of tester perfumes,” the tea which did not want to enter her mouth, finds a forced way out and comfort on my face.

“Oh no child. You are not valuing yourself enough! Tester? And you are sitting here telling me you are seeing someone?” Perhaps it is better not to tell her about the baby situation. She will fly to England and locate Tyler in no time. 

“That is why I want to tell you about Damien?”

“That name sounds very white.” Glare.

“He is. Do you want to see a photo of him?”

“Have you broken up with Tyler? Ye show me a photo.”

“I dumped him when he sent me that stupid gift and I know he can afford it!”

“He was better off writing you a letter.” 

“That’s what I said! Anyway, we are not official yet and he is in a situation – a bit of an encumbrance really – he is living with this girl that he says is a friend with benefits. It is complicated.”

She grabs my phone as though I had ever shown resistance to her having it. I show her the photo of Damien and I at a company party. She does not approve of the hair but is smitten by those eyes and height. She pulls the phone closer to her face as she zooms the image. The seal of approval is obtained when a text comes through from Damien at that very minute:

“Missing you and hope you have a great time at your brothers wedding. Xx” Aunty Joy reads the text out blushing even after the third read. 

“I can never go out with him. The rest of the family may not be accepting of him and besides, he has that situation.” 

“Then rectify the situation. Your problem has a solution.”

A solution which only further compounds my situation. I can never bring him home I mean; he is younger than me for a start. He is a go getter, but unethical. He is confrontational, yet gentle with me. Why is it every box I ticked for a partner, came with complications and –

“Well, I am working on it. If I think of him, I feel – alive.” She expresses glee, the kind worn by those lost in fairy tales. Her glee knows not of the addiction growing within me. If he was not at work with me, his absence amputated a limb. The insatiable longing of his admiration and to hear him say “you just want someone to make you feel good don’t you?” and watch him ache as I walk away turning him down for the hundredth time. That thrill.

The chase. 

The game.

He claimed he knew me but was unaware that priors hailed me the queen of kings. I had a non recycling principle. Once you were out the door, you were out. We had debated this over lunch with Jenny at work one day. She argued that her fiancé who had her begging like a starved child after he had been unfaithful, still deserved a second chance. Damien argued that “during the relationship, a man who f’s up should be given a chance to make it up” and I confirmed that he was right.

However, once a relationship had gotten me to the point of severing it, I did not believe in acting no better than a “dog returning to its vomit” I concluded. Never recycle. End of. Yet, somehow, he had managed to worm his way into my essence. Like entering a hall of mirrors. With him I could be me, whatever that meant. Law school? He confirmed he would support me but would always express his disapproval of being kept in the friend zone. 

“You can be a cleaner or live in a hut and I will be there for you” he would say anytime I feared failure. 

And now – the queen of kings is plotting to get him. What happened to making men work for it. 

“You just have to make him think it is his idea,” aunty Joy says as though reading my thoughts.  “Make him think everything is his idea and let nature take its course.” 

I am not sure I want to. I am not sure how to handle his essence. For some reason, I fear the hall of mirrors has a lot of power. 

But who holds it?

XoXo PW