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All that we lost

Thursday March 26 2015
dennis

But this Sunday Joan is not here. Joan will never be here again. She has not been in his house for a month now and on Monday, they met and agreed they were no longer a couple. They were no longer dating. ILLUSTRATION | JOHN NYAGAH |

It is Sunday, the one day he dreads facing every week. He does not mean to but he is awake at 7:45am. He has been waking up at 7:45am on Sunday for the past two years. It is not by choice.

Joan always woke him at this time, “Time for church.” He would groan before opening his eyes to see her at the foot of the bed, arms akimbo, scowling and impatient. He would sit up in the bed, take her in and exclaim, “God himself will want to watch you make your entrance!”

She would giggle, “Don’t do that. Get up, Dennis!” She would be careful to stay out of his reach because when they first started living together, they had failed to make it to church because he would pull her back into bed and when they next checked the time, it would be past 10am and they were both hungry.

But this Sunday Joan is not here. Joan will never be here again. She has not been in his house for a month now and on Monday, they met and agreed they were no longer a couple. They were no longer dating.

He was not sure if their relationship was over or if they would order their lattes to go and cross the road to his flat. But when she walked into the Java cafe in Kamwokya, with her friend Angelina, he knew the relationship was over.

Angelina had sat two tables away, pulled out her Kindle, and he’d known she was the presiding angel of doom. Angelina had plonked her sunglasses on her table but Joan did not remove hers the whole time. He no longer had the right to reach out and take them off and they said their goodbyes without him looking into her eyes. Eyes that had once looked at him with fondness.

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On this Sunday, he is up at 7:45am but he is not going to St John’s Church in Kamwokya. His maid Eva is supposed to come at 11am to do his laundry and prepare his meals, and he wants to have already showered and dressed before she gets here from her own church service.

Joan had wanted him to sack Eva after they started living together. “I’m now here,” she said.

But he had refused, “She is the longest relationship I have had away from my parents.” Eva had worked for him the past eight years.

He had compromised and made sure Eva did not come in to clean when Joan was around. The two women hated each other.

He knows Eva will be surprised that he has called her in on a Sunday but she will not ask why. She had not asked about not seeing Joan around for many months.

He throws off the bed sheet and realises he slept in his Saturday clothes. Damn. The TV is still on as well. War in the Middle East on Aljazeera. Someone got beheaded but they won’t play the video. An angry, red-faced commentator from Washington calls for the complete annihilation of Islamic terrorists.

His thoughts turn to Joan.

“Why don’t you close the door when you’re in the bathroom? Nobody wants to see you like that,” she would tell him.

“Why don’t you close the door when you’re praying?” He would retort.

“How can you compare the two, Dennis?”

“How can I not? They are all about thanksgiving.”

“I don’t know what I’ll do to get you to church.”

“Leave me?” He would tease.

He enters his showers, letting the water flow on him.

The shower reminds him that he must go to Kabira Country Club in Bukoto for an afternoon swim. Joan was not into that, “I don’t like being naked in public.”

As soon as he opens his wardrobe for clean clothes, he sees Joan’s night dress, a gleaming, filmy blue. He unhooks the chemise from the plastic hanger, lays it on the bed and sits next to it.

He had bought it for her to wear during a three-day weekend at Kyaninga Lodge. She had said she liked it a lot, yet she had left it behind.

I was only after their stay in Kyaninga that she finally agreed to stay over at his flat in Bukoto, “I have never done this before. I prayed about it. God told me you’re the one for me.”

At Java, while discussing their break up, he had asked her, “What happened? I thought your God told you I was the one?”

“You are the one for me but I’m not the one for you,” she had replied. 

He folds the nightdress and places it on the carpet, near the door. He goes round to his side of the bed and finds his wallet, opens it and removes two small passport size photographs of Joan and drops them on the dress. Standing on the bed, he unhooks a colourful banner from the wall that reads in red lettering, “Jesus is the head of this house.” He drops it on the pile too.

She had once asked him, “Why don’t you like going to church?”

“I don’t like being told what to do,” he had said and she had thought he was joking.

“Will you come to church with me?” She would persistently ask him.

“Yes, because you’re my religion.”

She would smile, in spite of herself, “Don’t say that. I’m human. I’ll disappoint you.”

He comes out of his room to find Eva disappearing into the kitchen. He follows her there, asks her to help him open the dustbin and drops the folded pile in.

“Breakfast is on the table,” Eva tells him.

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