Dear Taram,
My love, how have you been? How is life over there? I hope you are fine and that they are treating you well? Yes, yes, I know you must be smiling as you are reading this and murmuring that I’m silly; I shouldn’t worry about your welfare because you are in the best place anyone could wish to be, but I miss you Taram. When they closed the shutters at night and the wind howled outside, daring me to come and stand in the mist, just the way you and I used to do when the rain was coming, all I could think of was the moments we shared under heavy torrents, oblivious of the angry roar of downpour as we danced like kids in the rain. I want to hold your hand soon, Taram, and sing sweet nonsense into your ears at night. I want to wake you up in the morning with the smell of my awfully made Chinese tea. I can’t wait again, baby, I have to come to you.
But the good news, my love, is that they came again yesterday, they came to tell me that I’ll be joining you soon. They said I’ll be seeing you in four or five days from now. You cannot believe how happy that made me feels. That I’ll soon behold my angel’s face, that I’ll soon hold you and never let go again. I promise you dear, once I join you, I’m never letting you go again. I will never make such a careless mistake that almost cost me the love of my life. I’m going to be counting the minutes from now on, the seconds, the minutes, the hours and the days standing between you and me.
God! Taram, why did you ever have to leave? I wake up every night searching the bed and under the blanket for that heavenly soft body of yours. I looked into the kitchen hoping I would find you in front of the gas cooker humming afro-beats as you cook. But my dear, our spacious white kitchen is deserted, plain and empty, just like my heart, ever since you left.
I remember how it all started, that rainy afternoon, exactly eleven years, three months and thirteen days ago. I was on my way to the gym, my every morning practice when it suddenly began to pour heavily. Colourless sky began shedding tears without warning. I was breathless from jogging and the sudden rain on my body didn’t help matters. My asthma came with a bang; I was breathless and was almost doubled over. I checked my pocket, my inhaler wasn’t there. I must have forgotten it while I was trying to leave the house and escape my mum and step dad’s usual early morning fights. I struggled to hold something but there was nothing in sight to hold. Then I gave up and lay quietly by the roadside, waiting for the grim reaper to come or for help which considering the crime rate in Yenagoa, I was seventy percent sure I’d be mugged while dying rather than be helped.
Suddenly, like the flash of rain on a famine land, I heard a voice that sounded like its coming from afar. “Are you okay, sir?” the soft angelic voice asked.
Of course, I’m dead! Where else but heaven amidst angels would such soothing voice exist? Not Yenagoa and certainly not the small towns around it, except my spirit had woken up in another state, where girls spoke good English and not the customary Pidgin English. I tried to open my eyes, but the angels must have glued it together. Then she was lifting me up, her hand around my waist, mine thrown over her shoulders.
The next time I opened my eyes, I was lying on a sofa in a strange room. My eyes strayed to an inhaler right beside me. Yeah, I just knew she was a witch. Wasn’t I looking for that inhaler before I blacked out? She must have seen where my eyes was fixed and read my mind. “That’s my father’s.” she said. Of course, it wasn’t mine, but I was just returning from that little place between Heaven and Earth, so I couldn’t really be blamed for not recognising my own inhaler. “Where are you going in this rain?” She asked, “You must have known you have asthma? How come you are out without your inhaler?”
Taram, my love, that day you sounded like an angry mother. I was just a stranger and you scolded me like a mother or sister would. I fell in love right there that moment with those sparkling burnt-chocolate-eyes and the soothing voice that seemed to drown me. I was lost forever; head over heels in love with you. But I couldn’t have said anything. I had never been into any relationship before. I was twenty-one and shy. But something in your eyes stuck to my soul. I was a goner where your love was concerned! Our love kicked off like the game of horse racing. I was a child of a broken home; you just lost your mother. You gave me the listening ears that my mother couldn’t afford. I became a watching hawk in your life, showing you the right and the wrong. You were the sister I never had, and I, the day-old brother you lost the day your mother died. Sweetheart, I know we went through a lot together; remember when I left for the university and your father’s relatives tried to marry you off to an old man after your father’s death. You ran away from home to join me in school in Port Harcourt. You were so small, so fragile, and so brave. You worked hard to get some money, and sat for JAMB. It was a red letter day the day you got admission into University of Port Harcourt to study Sociology.
I remember the day I proposed to you. It was two years, seven months and three days ago. It was the best day of my life, when you said yes you would marry me. Wedding preparations began in earnest. Our wedding was the talk of the town for years after. But something happened during the preparations for that wedding. Something I hope you will one day forgive me because I doubt if I will ever forgive myself. I am sorry baby; I don’t know how to start explaining it. I don’t know where to begin. It was a stupid thing to do. I just wanted to humour my friends. I wanted them to see me as a complete man. I guess I was stupid enough to place what others think above what you my love would feel.
It was our wedding eve. The little bachelor night you and my friends insisted I observed. You must have trusted me so much to willingly support a bachelor’s party, and I never wanted to break that trust. But at the party, something terrible went wrong. My friends - Douye, Ekine and Bibo - had all insisted that I picked a woman to celebrate my last day of freedom before marriage. I never wanted to; but all through my university days, friends had always made jest of me because I was hung up on you. They said I should prove myself. So, I decided to prove them wrong.
Her name was Ebitari, the one to haunt me forever. She was fair and quiet like you. They said she was not a prostitute, they said she was one of the receptionists at Ekine’s firm and was just there to have fun.
I’m sorry Taram, if you had waited that faithful night two years and four months ago, I would have told you how it all happened. How after three filled cups of wine, I had succumbed to my friends’ request and taken Ebitari to a room in the hotel. It was thirty minutes of pleasure; it was thirty minutes that cost me the most precious being that I was ever fortunate to call mine. It was thirty minutes that cost me you, Taram. If I could turn back the hand of time, my love, I would have looked my friends in the eyes and would have told them that I have chosen you and you alone I would have.
The destructive wind in my life started howling the day you fainted and I rushed you to the hospital. The doctor had told us that you were two months pregnant. I was the happiest man on earth that day. It was just three months after our wedding and I was already blessed! I took you back home. You were weak and coughing and the doctor had prescribed bed rest. He said he would run other tests on you, because you might be suffering from a serious case of cough. Two days later, Douye, my friend and family doctor had come visiting, and dropped the bombshell that you were suffering from tuberculosis but that tuberculosis was just the least of it. He said you tested positive to four HIV tests done at different laboratories. He said the pregnancy and the virus had weakened your strength to fight diseases and that was why your body had surrendered so easily to tuberculosis. You were in the bedroom resting and I never thought you could hear us. I was shocked. I had asked Douye what had happened, how you could have been HIV positive. Douye asked if I had used any protection the other time when I slept with Ebitari.
I replied, “No, the girl said she couldn’t get pregnant!”
But then Douye dropped the bombshell that ruined my life forever. “Stop sounding so ridiculously naive, Fred.” He snapped at me. “Unwanted Pregnancy is not the only risk attached to unsafe sex,” Douye lectured. “There are one thousand and one reasons why you should protect yourself when having sex with someone other than your legal partner. As a matter of fact, you should try to abstain as much as possible, which is what I was trying to tell our other friends on your wedding eve. I’m sorry, Fred, but the receptionist you took to bed that night came back to my office about two weeks ago for medical check up and among the tests carried out on her was the popular HIV test when malaria treatment failed to heal her. Fred, I don’t know how to say this.”
“Say what?” I had opened my mouth to scream at Douye but all I could manage was a croaked whisper.
“The girl, Ebitari, tested positive to HIV. If you had an unprotected sex with her that night then that explains where Taram got the virus from.”
It was like my world was sinking. Worse when I discovered you were not in your room but had been at the passage listening to everything Douye and I were saying. God! Taram dear, I never want to remember that look on your face when you walked into the living room and stared at me over again. The flame of accusation burning like fire in those pretty eyes that was once full of nothing but admiration for me. You never waited for me to explain, although at that moment whatever I said wouldn’t justify the fact that I’d managed to ruin your life along with mine, because I was trying to prove some stupid point to myself and my friends.
It will always be a thing of agony to me that the last time you raised that beautiful eyes to look at me, it was with tears and accusation because you didn’t wait to hear me out. You pushed me away from you when I tried to hold you and tell you to remember your condition. Before I or Douye could stop you, you had grabbed your car keys from the shelf and leapt out of the house in anger. It was raining cat and dog outside but that had not stopped you from driving with furry away toward the main street, by the time I got outside, all I could see was the tail of your car disappearing around the corner. Douye ran after me and gave me a lift and we drove after you, but the rain was heavy and so was the traffic. We couldn’t locate your car and by the time we checked everywhere I thought you could have gone and places no proper lady would imagine going in Yenagoa without success, Douye had returned me home and urged me to wait for you and hope for the best. By seven that evening you were still nowhere to be found. It had stopped raining outside but the weather was as dark and gloomy as my heart was. Then a call had come through on my phone and I had been called by the police to come and identify your body. The police had found out the car belonged to me and called. I died a thousand deaths that moment I saw your bloodied body and your surprisingly unscathed face looking as calm as always, even in death. That calm face is forever going to haunt me, unless I see you and ask for your forgiveness.
They buried me with you the day they covered you and our child with sand. I took to drinking after that; heavy drinking and smoking. There is this feeling of oblivion that often blanketed me each time I finished a bottle of wine. I was drinking away my sorrow and my life with it, but nothing could take away the memory of you. They said I should go for therapy, they said I should go for counselling. Oh, they even said having HIV is not the end of the world. Of course, I’m not stupid, I know you can use drugs and maintain a good diet and live a normal life even while the virus lives in one, but I also know having to live without you is the end of life. How will I wake up to the rising sun and face the day without that morning sun of mine by my side?
Now they came to me yesterday, Douye and his medical colleagues. They said the wine and the smoke had destroyed my liver and lungs. First, they said I had less than three months; now they said three days. I’m so happy, Taram. That means I’m seeing you soon, that lovely face, the soothing voice. I just can’t wait!
I hope you’ll forgive me dear. I just hope it isn’t too late yet, that I’ll be able to look upon that lovely face of yours again, and know that you are mine, and that nothing will take you away from me again. And that I could have a second chance with you. I’m coming soon Taram, I’m coming to make it all right.
-ADEOLA SALAU
Love,
Fred
