By Haron Wachira (from the book, Love in the Heart and Other Stories)
Mention of all names, and some facts, have been avoided deliberately, or altered slightly…for obvious reasons.
We became friends in a most unusual encounter. I was 16, a high school student, and I think she must have been 14, in class seven. Across the shop counter where she stood waiting for the fulfillment of her order, she represented the picture of perfection. White, penetrating eyes. Carefully manicured nails. A neck that fitted perfectly inside a white shirt with a high collar and a blossoming bust. That is all I could think of…yes and her reddish chocolate face, her wonderful eyes, and her bright red skirt.
“You forgot my…?” she said.
I must have been gazing at her. I felt stupid. But now, her voice! She would make a great musician, I thought, clearly ahead of myself. Perhaps it could turn out some day that I might have the honour of marrying this beautiful girl. All the things we could do together. I had an ambition to write, including writing country music, and she and I could make perfect partners…
“Ah, sorry, I didn’t… Ah… You wanted…,” I might have stammered more than I have represented.
“Sugar, Lux soap and …”
I don’t know whether my face showed it, but my heart was pounding inside my chest and my hands were sweating. Something about this girl had really grabbed me, and I could feel it. It was as if my whole body had been set aflame, as if her presence across the counter generated shock waves to disorient my vision.
I knew her name. In my village, everyone knew everyone else. I don’t know how it happened but we always got to know each other. G, her elder brother, two younger brothers and one sister, had recently moved to our village because her brother taught at our village primary school. She was my first encounter with whatever it was that people called love.
I touched her only briefly, when I was giving her change. A magical touch. I don’t know exactly how I reacted, but it showed, and I knew she knew it, and I thought she understood because she smiled at me when she was leaving. The scent of fresh soap and clean water was the only perfume around her. For me, it was the most enchanting aroma in the world.
Without thinking, I followed her out of the shop. Fortunately, the only customer at the time needed a few cigarettes and I supplied them as if driven, then dashed out, trying my best to keep my cool. I looked in the direction G had gone, towards the school. I was gazing at elegance at its best. The gait of majesty in her step. The radiance of her presence on the path she had favored with her steps. I could still smell the freshness of her clean body, even though I knew I was just imagining it.
But inside my heart, everything was different. There was yearning. It was hollow as if G’s presence had temporarily filled up a void I had not known to exist, but then her departure had yanked her out with violence, ripping apart my very being, and worse, leaving me desolate and void. She left behind turmoil, heartache, and pain.
It was something completely new for me; I had never yearned for someone the way I now yearned for G. No one in all of my life had ever stirred up so much feeling and emotion in my inner self. As if she had become somewhat a part of my inner being. And yet, I hardly knew her.
Long after she was gone, I stood there, transfixed, like a statue. She was gone physically, but with me in my heart. It was not her picture that remained in my mind; it was her presence. She moved. She breathed. She made me yearn and desire. All of a sudden, I was no longer complete. I needed to be with her. The experience of meeting G took me over, drove me. Until I made my decision. I had only one more week till high school re-opened…to rob me of the opportunity of being near G by taking me back to boarding school. I had to see her again. I had to be with her. I had to look at her eyes when she was not looking at me…And, more than anything else, I had to find out whether she felt the same about me!
No, I wasn’t what you might think. I had heard people talking about sexual desires. I was a normal boy myself and, at 16, understood those things. But my feelings toward G were different. I loved her, full stop. I was involved with her. I tried to sketch her face on paper. I thought about her for hours on end. Her sharp eyes. Her beautifully trimmed waistline, and her perfectly formed bust and her shapely legs. I could do anything for her. I wanted her to be mine. To have and to behold. That is the kind of love that had consumed me. For the first time in my life.
I don’t remember exactly how I did it, but, somehow, I managed to send G a message expressing my desire to see her. And I got back a confirmation that I could visit her at her home. Saturday morning. My mother would be relieving me at the shop then, and this particular Saturday, I would be on my way home to wash up and prepare to go back to boarding school in another two days.
Armed with little presents for G’s little brothers and sister-which I picked in our family shop-I made my way across the school compound from the shopping Centre in haste. And with great anticipation. This thing about love! All of a sudden, the desire to be with boys my age was replaced by this consuming obsession with a girl I had just met for barely two minutes. All over me, I was now aware of my manhood. I touched my chin and felt the tiny tufts of hair that were beginning to grow. My voice was in the process of breaking. And the pimples that had invaded me on turning 13. Yesterday, I had been a normal boy who thought about boyish things but today, I was a man pursuing a woman.
“It is nice seeing you again,” I would say.
She would smile at me and reply, “You are welcome.”
She would make me a cup of tea, of course. And we would sit and talk together while her brothers and sister played outside. I would try to tell her I loved her. I was sure I would gather the courage, though.
But what if she does not like you? An intruder ventured
That is nonsense; she likes me; it was obvious, I countered. She had smiled at me, and she hadn’t objected to my visiting today.
What if she isn’t at home today?
That is ridiculous. She knows I am coming.
She might have felt shy to say no, and found it easier to take off.
Yes, that could happen. My heart was pounding.
And then the worst fear struck. What if her brother was at home?
In my teenage days, boys and girls never visited each other – publicly, that is. It was a transition period between the past of the days when the Kikuyu people had elaborate initiation to manhood, courtship, and youth development processes to the present, in which everything old was taboo and no definition of what things should be like. And so, there were those who arranged to meet under the cover of darkness and practiced immorality. It wasn’t what I was after. I just wanted to be with G. But the thought that her brother might not understand my intentions unsettled me thoroughly, overshadowing the voice of the intruder.
Fortunately, I had come too far by now, for I was standing in front of her brother’s door when this thought struck. And there was no time to allow another thought for in that instant, the door opened without my having to knock, and G stood there in the same red skirt that she wore during our first encounter. And she sparked off the same emotions that had ignited in me: fire, fear, pain, and trouble in my heart. And the scent of fresh soap and bath water was even stronger now.
“How are you?” she said extending her hand for a greeting. Very formal. But warm and very tender.
“I am fine, thank you,” I answered.
And then I blanked out. I had no idea what to say next. I had trouble figuring what to do with my lanky hands; I could not keep them in one place. I folded them across my chest, then behind my back. And my chest. G seemed cool and confident, but my eyes must have showed me to be shaky and sore afraid. Of what, though, I could not tell.
The situation was saved by the appearance of the children, who greeted me in turns and I gave each the presents I had brought for them. G watched quietly, and she did not have to tell any of the children to say “Thank you” for they all did, and they retreated quietly with great order and respect.
I don’t remember G ever inviting me to come into the house. Nor did our meeting last more than a few minutes. At the moment, though, time seemed to have dragged to a crawl.
When at last I spoke, I only remember thanking her for allowing me to visit, and she acknowledged as expected and bid me goodbye. And I was on my way in no time, thinking, What a horrible performance.
All the way home I chastised myself for my cowardice. I went over the motions of what I had been so ready to do but I failed to do. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. Oh, and how I feared what she would say to her friends about me.
Well, I was gone, and soon after I was back in boarding school-away from G. I told myself I would forget her; erase her from my thoughts. But I also knew I was lying to myself.
I did not dare write to her in the following months because I knew the teachers in the primary school she attended read the pupils’ letters. I understood when she did not write; she would fear the possibility that I might reply, I told myself. Of course, I knew the real reason: she must have thought me a good-for-nothing, cumbersome coward. And I confirmed my fears and became extremely vexed when I learned from my sister-who was G’s classmate and friend-that G had gone to secondary school; that she was not coming over to her brother’s for the holidays and that she got saved; that she had become very religious. In my mind, I understood that to mean that she had become like the tukutendereza brethren I knew in my village, or like the students I knew in my school, who had literally nothing to do with the likes of those they called non-believers.
That was it, then. I would never see her again, let alone hear from her. A bad incident in my otherwise steady journey towards manhood. Which is what life is like, I thought. And, as it happened, life did go on, though, with the pain that comes from missing someone you love. And my heart was hollow for many days. We worked in the fields during each holiday and managed our little shop and I did my best to forget G….And, eventually, my mind was overtaken by the crowded excitements that normally characterize the life of a growing teenager…
But how was I to tell, then what a saga, what influence, this brief encounter was to become in my life? A 30-year drama that would color every major decision I was to make…But I am jumping ahead of myself. I must first tell you how we resumed contact.
G was the one who wrote first. I have to say the letter came as a momentous surprise, and it excited me greatly, because I thought saved Christians did not write such letters. No, it wasn’t dirty. But she spoke of love. And that she missed me. And, she said, she hoped someday we would see each other again. Nothing about God or the kind of things you associate with born again Christians.
And she sent me a picture. In the year that had ensued, she had only become lovelier. Taller, too. Her hair had grown long enough to enable her gather it behind her head in a pony tail. She was not wearing a completely red skirt, but it had streaks of red. And I could almost smell the freshness of soap and bath water that she must have had when she had the picture taken.
Well, you should have seen me. I read and reread the letter until I was absolutely sure it said what I thought it did: that G loved me. Because there were no secrets with boys my age at that time, I showed the letter to my friends- Jim and Steve – and I told them bits and pieces of my past encounter with G. Not everything, of course, and also with exaggeration.
Jim showed me how to dry natural flowers that had either great looks or wonderful fragrances- violets and roses. Using the inside pages of a heavy book. Waiting for three days for the flowers to dry up was so long I almost ran out of things to worry about. I reread the letter many times – just to be really sure it really said what I had understood in the first place. Mostly, I wondered how G might misread my delay. She might be thinking I don’t care.
At last, the flowers were ready. They smelled good, and they looked great. I pasted them carefully on the provided places in my letter- done on specially prepared heavy paper- and posted it in the school mailbox after I was sure the glue had dried up.
I sent her my picture, also. It took me a long time to choose that particular picture, and I was not satisfied with my final choice. I simply ran out of time after shuffling through my small bunch of portraits more times than I could keep count because, at the time, my teenage pimples were all over my face, and every picture I had either showed them or had been taken when I was much younger.
And so it was, that in the ensuing months, and school terms – two whole years- we wrote back and forth many times. G’s letters brought tremendous happiness to me. The knowledge that she was a Christian – although she did not talk about it in her letters, perhaps to avoid annoying me – greatly defined the contents of my correspondence. I had sworn to myself that I would never propose anything to her that could possibly distract her from her faith in God, and its attendant obligations. I had a responsibility to her. She was the noblest, gentlest, most beautiful, and invaluable treasure in my life. And she had said plainly in her letters that she loved me. I would wait for her. We would be done with school one day. We would meet…we would marry. We would have children and I would learn to play the guitar and we would sing together and live a very happy life.
None of us wrote about meeting, as we knew it was not practical. It was out of the question that I could visit her at home. She would have visited me because she was a friend of my sister, but I dismissed the thought as soon as it volunteered itself; it was too complicated to arrange because of family-related issues, which would distract you from our story.
One time, G mentioned in a letter that they would be closing the same day as our own school! In the days that followed, I could hardly sleep. I thought about all kinds of things. I was no longer afraid of mumbling things intelligibly like the first time; I was older now, almost 18. The pimples on my face were now gone. My voice was that of a man. And it was my last year in lower high school. We arranged to meet at the bus stop. I would know her, of course, but I don’t know why she thought it necessary to describe herself: she would have her hair tied in a pony tail, and she would be wearing a red skirt. And a white blouse.
But the day never came. An uncanny twist of events brought about a change in my school’s closing day. And that sealed it. By the time our school was closing she must have been home, away from reach, in a new place where her brother, the teacher, had been posted. But that was our relationship. Solid and wonderful and secure at a distance. Somehow, always different, fluid, and painful at a personal level.
Again time passed, and restored my heart, and I sort of forgot G.
What happened next is rather strange to narrate, but it is what happened. I became a born-again Christian. No, not because of G. Not once had she ever proposed it. But I did. Out of conviction when I came face to face with the truth of who Jesus Christ was and what He had done for dying for me. It was a lovely September evening. The sun had just set, and with it, many hopes that I had, for some time now, found out of reach: about my life, my family, lost opportunities. In a frank discussion with a friend. I was convinced of the reality of the person of Christ and responded to His gracious offer for salvation and would accept it through faith.
Anyhow, perhaps it was at the back of my mind, but I did not do it for G. But two days later, I was thinking about it, and I thought it would please her immensely to know what happened to me! So I wrote, and told her how happy I was that I was now a believer and that there would be no longer any conflict in our relationship.
“G will you marry me?” I asked in my letter.
But that was it. She never replied. I thought she did not get my letter and I wrote another one. I could have travelled to visit her in school, now that I was no longer a high school student but I thought, why complicate her life? If she wanted she would invite me. We were now separated physically by at least 300 kilometers, and my immediate circumstances had confined me to living on a rather tight budget.
Days went by. No word from G.
Then another tragedy befell me, through which I lost all my pictures- including G’s.
Weeks turned into months and into years. In time, I met another girl, a Christian, who reminded me of G. She wore a red skirt a lot, and I loved her and in time married her. The Lord blessed us with children and a wonderful home; our family, that is, not the building. And I got a good job after sometime and started making good money and progressing in life as people do, and things were normal in every way. But most importantly, we were happy, of course subject to the usual limits that the combined negating power of the human nature and the environment allows.
But, no, I did not forget G. And as usually as was polite to do, I kept tabs on her development.
“G moved to…” my sister told me one day, “and she is doing very well!”
“You meet often?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I inquired of G’s brother, and the boys I had taken presents to, and G’s younger sister. They were all well, she told me and I listened to all the details, allowing only such display of interest as would not make her think of the conversation more than was necessary.
Of course, I envied my sister, that all along she had kept in touch with G. But it wasn’t a thing one talked about. Neither was my desire obsessive. I had a family, you know, and we were happy. Really, if I had needed to pursue G, there had been time… I didn’t even know why I was thinking of these things.
“How is her own family?” I ventured, carefully.
“Well,” my sister returned, “as well as can be possible today?”
“What do you mean?” I was alarmed. It hope it did not show.
My sister said naturally, to my relief, “you know how it is these days…hard to find decent men.”
“Is he…a Christian?” I thought I knew the answer, and it worried me.
“Well no. Not to my knowledge. But she herself fell from the faith a long time back.”
I did not say a thing.
“Sad, huh?”
“Eh?”
“The part about her faith…she begun so well” That was it, then, I thought unnecessarily. We talked about other things, and life went back into a normal mode.
For years…
When thoughts about G thrust themselves into my mind from time to time, and I welcomed them the way one welcomes the past, like remembering a happy visit you paid to your auntie with your sister when you were small.
I did make the “mistake” one time under “interrogation” from my wife, to concede that there had been a girl in my life before I met her, and that I had been attracted to my wife because, in a way, she reminded me of G. I don’t know how, but somehow, I was really glad I told my wife this. I really loved her you see, and it bothered me that there was this other woman in my mind who I had never really known in any tangible way but who was nevertheless so real and present and a competitor of all sorts to my real partner in life.
Moreover, I suppose I had always wanted my wife to stand out in her own right, be her own person, and I loved her in a very different way than I had…even possibly still…loved G. G was a memory -though living-in my mind. My wife was real. I had a relationship with her. She had borne my children, and cleaned up their mess. I knew her in a way I had never known another person and- though our marriage was still young- we had weathered our storms and proved that we could pull through life together.
Anyhow, that was about all I had ever talked about G. My wife teased me about the girl once or twice, but I never really allowed the subject to become too involving. G lived in my mind. If I were a fine artist, I would have drawn her beautiful face, and showed the dimple on her cheek when she smiled, and the neat finish of her red skirt. If I were a sculptor, I could have shaped her lovely figure into a form and used it to create a little museum for my own appreciation. But I was none of those things, so G remained only in my mind…to the fateful day that initially prompted me to tell this story.
It was most unexpected, and when it happened, I was taken by surprise so much I thought I was behaving exactly as I did when I was sixteen but I pulled myself together before she realized, and I said with restraint: “Hi G. What a surprise!”
Remarkably, she did not seem surprised. It was as if she knew. As if it was all planned. Perhaps with some involvement with my sister, or some research. But here she was, anyhow, after so many years, by the pool, in all her beauty and wonder.
She had grown older, of course, and it showed. The dimple on her cheek was gone. Her face had become a bit rounder, and her body weight was no longer that of a 16 year old. But her beauty had remained. And her skin had become a bit silkier, and, I thought, lighter. Perhaps it was only in my mind, but that was the impression I got. She actually looked prettier and more, shall I say, appealing.
No, she wasn’t dressed in swimming clothes. Neither was I. and were not about to go into the pool together. It just happened that we met here. And we both recognized each other. And the void I had carried in my heart was filled somewhat. We were together. I knew, however, that the satisfaction I was experiencing was utterly vain because we both had other bonds….
“I have always wanted to see you,” she said.
“Same,” I said and it filled me with so much happiness I could have laughed out loudly. I didn’t, though, because it would have been unseemly. Instead, I said, “you still look very nice…very beautiful.”
I stretched out my hand as I spoke, and touched her arm-on the side of her left shoulder. Above the elbow. It was a deliberately downplayed action, in view of our positions and commitments in life; deep down I wanted to hug her and hold her tightly to myself. Anyhow, I grasped her arm, and felt her body, firm and strong. It was to me that the years had brought her into adulthood with some respect, and I was very happy for her that she had weathered the times so well.
The brief touch electrified me beyond measure, nonetheless. It sent a fiery shock wave up through my left hand to my irrational heart, and it throbbed and ached at the same time because even though G was so near, she was also very far.
She smiled. A broad, happy smile that made her look a bit silly, and for a moment, we both grinned sheepishly at each other, contented that we had met and had had this opportunity.
It was then that I saw it. Something had happened to G’s teeth. They were no longer white. They had turned a dark copper brown color, as if someone had painted them carelessly, leaving ugly streaks of white in them.
I thought, No, you were not like this. Or was she?
I was confused. I was sure G had smiled at me the first time. I would have noted the teeth. Or perhaps she hadn’t smiled. Something was wrong. My recollection was that her teeth had been a brilliant white. But it was so many years ago, and the teeth now looked so ugly I could only think of my bewilderment. And I could not ask, because that is not the kind of thing you go about asking. She sure looked different now, and it bothered me terribly…
I woke up suddenly and came to senses immediately to my wife’s voice, asking me to please check the watch on my side drawer to see if it was six a.m. yet. I opened my mouth to tell her I had a dream, but immediately thought better of it. It wasn’t the kind of dream you talked about casually; some things were better filed away into the mind, where they can do no harm.
Yet, even with the knowledge that it had been a dream, I still savoured the experience. I overlooked the colored teeth bit and I was blissful and upbeat that morning as I went to work. As usual, life became regular again except that I remembered the “encounter” many times, with nostalgia.
I did another thing, shall I say, in honour of G. The company I worked for was opening up new branches in various towns in the country. I suggested to my colleagues to open up a branch in the town that G lived in, where she managed a family business; where she had found a not so decent husband; where she was now bringing up a family. I did not give them these reasons, of course, and my colleagues thought it was an excellent location. Well, it had to be that G lived there!
Again, that was it. Days. Weeks. Months. A year….Another… until this day I have taken so long to tell you about…
I had just turned 40, and I had not met G again- that is, since I was 16. I was busy, though, and still happily married. G had, in my mind, always conducted herself properly, showing up as the special memory she had become and influencing me to do only things of noble nature.
My children were in their early years of their teenage, too, and they demanded every minute of my spare time. Today my eldest kid, a girl, had just turned 14, and I was going to buy her a new bike as her birthday gift…
“How about this one?” the shop assistant, a boy of about 16 but very proficient in business, was saying, “its cut out for a girl!”
It was a wonderful bike, the mountain kind with big tires. It was black and red, and had a pretty pink shopping bag at the front, between the handle bars. Just the thing for a 14 year old girl.
“Let me show you” the boy said.
Acting with speed, he walked across the shop floor, clearing an area of space. Back to my daughter, he expertly helped her on the bike, then stepped out of the way and walked backwards, facing her. And then he beckoned her to cycle towards him.
I followed her slowly, my hands thrust in my sports suit, a bit bored, but of course, not wanting to show it lest my daughter think I was not interested in her gift purchasing adventure.
“How do you like it?” I asked when I caught up with her. But she did not answer
I thought, oh no! what now?
And then it struck me, she was not in her normal mode. Something had happened. She stared blankly into the space, across the room, to a particular spot. But she was not looking there. And the boy, standing in front of her with his lanky hands (that would one day grow to be of massive strength) on the handle bars, was engrossed equally. His eyes darted from my daughter’s beautiful set hair, which was, it struck me suddenly, tied in a neat pony tail, to her still developing breasts, and then quickly away, as if he was afraid of being caught looking.
There was no mistake, it had happened to me once, and I knew it was happening to them now.
Perhaps it is the way the generations mark their beginning and end! I thought
“How do you like the bike, girl?” I said loudly, thinking that my voice must have sounded like a bomb.
My daughter replied with only a slight soft jolt, and her normal self said, “I love it dad, it’s perfect!”
“You can always come back,” the boy’s father explained as I was paying for the bike. “We stock all the parts and, we don’t charge for the first three repair jobs.”
For some reason, I felt an urge to turn at this point, and I caught my daughter’s eyes just looking down from….I am sure I knew where. And they were both smiling.
The boy helped us with the bike all the way to the car, where he lodged it carefully in the boot of our station wagon.
“What are you thinking about?” I said when we were safely away from the shop.
“Nothing, why?”
“Just thought of it.”
“Thought of what?” she said
“Of what?” I retorted laughing. “I don’t know. Life. I guess”
“Mhh…” my daughter said. She had a very peculiar but nice way of echoing back someone when she didn’t have anything better to say.
“It’s strange you know,” I went on, without knowing where I was taking the conversation. “Once in a while, you think about it”
“I know” she said
You do, really? But how do you discuss such things with your 14 year old daughter? No, not the deep matters of love. About love in the heart, and what it does to you, and how long it can last…we drove on in silence- for a while.
“Dad?” My daughter ventured.
And I thought, this is it, she would say, “how was it for you when you first fell in love?”
“Yeah?” I replied, waiting for it, my heart throbbing with the memory of G. I knew what I would tell her, don’t take it too seriously…sip it from the edge of a spoon-like something hot you needed to first check out.
“Thanks for the bike.”
“Oh…..” I said, relieved, “You are welcome.”
Curious about what happened to G? Why did she stop writing? Find out by reading the next installment: Love in an Old Heart!
Haron Wachira 