She wasn't sure if it was John Defterios's voice blaring from her neighbor's TV that first drew her attention to CNN that day or if she tuned in out of habit, having spent the last thirty-six months with Chuka, who loved the Middle East Emerging Markets series.
She was always excited to watch the show, especially because she was keen on stocking up her shop from the UAE. However, she resented the feeling that Chuka influenced this direction. Chuka had briefly dabbled in her potential business venture before moving on to a banking career.
This was her problem with Chuka. He was everything she dreamed of and also everything she didn't wish for, leaving no room for anything new. That, perhaps, was the real issue.
She wished she was still attracted to him. She tried to be but found it was never going to happen again.
Picking up her shoes from the corner of the sitting room where she had tiredly taken them off after work, she moved them to the rack in the entryway to the bedroom. There and then, the realization hit her: she was done with him.
So, when she replied with a 'Hello' to Digbari on Instagram and laughed at his "I thought you'd never ask" to her "Why have you hung around all these years of being social media friends?" she knew she was ready for what she had just started with her keypad.
She stared at the setting sun through her bedroom window. At this time, it always seemed close enough to touch.
In the three months of their online dating, she had formed a routine with Digbari of chatting online, overlooking this very scenery. She, when it was setting, or he, when it was rising. She realized that this was becoming an addiction. But, as addictions went, she was gratefulfor this one, for it offered her a touch of the sublime she had always craved.
With him, she could look forward to lounging in her bedroom for hours. Their conversations had a drug-like effect. They hadn't met, but his voice, his humor, his vast knowledge, and the humility with which he blended all three gave her a live experience of his personality.
Not in a hurry to commit fully, she looked forward to wrapping herself around Digbari whenever they would meet. He was South African but lived in Seychelles, which made achieving that reality a bit of a tall order.
She reluctantly continued with the things preoccupying her immediate surroundings. That mainly translated to Chuka and her 9 - 5 job, which had become a 9 - 7 because her boss, Mr. Alade, had been promoted to a more demanding office. To her irritation and subsequent annoyance, he had tagged her along as the secretary he was comfortable working with.
She had complained to Chuka a couple of times about the stress.
"Alade will work himself to death one day, not me. The man carries on as though the company is his family's heritage," she had said one Saturday morning.
"I like the man's sense of dedication," Chuka had replied, without looking up at her. He was fixing the broken door knob of the kitchen door. Yes, he was also a very handy man whose eyes caught every single minutiae of imperfection and sought to make right all things.
"These days it's difficult to find dedicated people in public service. Everyone carries on as though public duty should normally be neglected. That is why we find such rot in the system today."
She despised him in such moments because, typical Chuka, he never saw that some complaints were not made to be analyzed. With him, everything neededa proper response which meant a careful consideration of both sides. Even his thrusts seemed meticulously calculated, so that sex became mechanical. A duty; a chore. She chuckled at the last thought.
Chuka's work hours as a banker only allowed them to spend the weekends together. This weekend she didn't go to church. As always, he had wanted her to join him.
'I have cramps,' she had replied to his pleas and was surprised that he didn't argue with her cycle. She was thankful when he eventually left, humming a hymn to himself.
She thought he always did that to prepare himself mentally for God's presence.
"A fornicating maniac at night and a prayer warrior at dawn," she thought and chuckled. She berated herself almost immediately for being too hard on him lately. But she couldn't help it. Especially with everything that was happening with Digbari.
She sprang up from bed, sure that he had left when she heard the car engine sound dim in the distance. Her first need was to put a call through to Digbari. She had told him she would be at Vincent's place over the weekend.
Vincent was Chuka's other name. It was his idea that they should use their English names while referring to each other in the company of others. He preferred they called one another by their native names in private. She deduced that its aim was to achieve some form of bonding between them.
She wiped dust off her phone with the edge of her housecoat and made to turn on her data for WhatsApp calls. She thought against it, deciding instead to make breakfast first, then freshen up so as not to have any mental notes of chores that would distract them. She smiled at the thought with a mixture of guilt and adventure.
"Was this a normalcurve in old relationships? Did all women share this but put up an act to seem okay?" She wondered. When she eventually got into a proper relationship with Digbari, were they going to also get to this curve? Afraid of any possibility in the last question, she distracted herself by playing music from her Samsung S5 phone and headed for the kitchen.
She hated herself when she saw a tray containing a plate of toast, baked beans, and an omelette arranged side by side with a mug and some dry coffee in it. Chuka had made breakfast. He was such a nice man. This was partly why she thought she loved him until she saw in his niceties a routine, which was not exclusively for her but for everyone.
She had thought herself very special to Chuka until his sister came into the picture weeks into their relationship. A lady who, true to her name Amaka, was very pretty, as well as vain, rude, and bossy. The last three were her personalized character flaws.
Chuka never saw this, or if he did, he pretended not to. He explained whatever bad attributes in his sister as part of her being 'real,' a virtue lacking in the world. A virtue instilled by their mother's training for independent minds, which was paying off well in their adult lives as he said.
All crap. As far as she was concerned, thank heavens Amaka lived abroad as this was best for their relationship. Had she lived in Nigeria, Chuka would have known just what it meant to share his life with two strong-willed women; She also didn't mean that in a positive, benign way.
When she eventually turned on her data after breakfast and the phone ringing displayed an East African number, she had positioned herself to relax and talkwith the one man blessed with the art of blowing her mind away. She was about to say "Hey love" when Truecaller brought up the name Amaka.
"Hello," she said dryly.
"Chuka, Chuka, your sister is going crazy, Chuka!"
She was about to give Amaka a piece of her mind for calling her and then acting as if she had called her brother's phone. Who called somebody else's phone with the hopes of having another person pick it up? Just then, she caught the tears in the voice and sobs. So, instead, she said:
"Amaka, what is wrong? This is not Chuka. It is?"
"Please ask my brother to call me, will you? It is an urgent matter. His number has not been connecting."
And the phone went silent as Amaka disconnected while she, oblivious, tried to explain that Chuka was in church and must have turned off his phones.
"Hello? Hello?"
The power went off almost immediately, bringing an abrupt silence to the house. She looked at the time; 11:30 am. Chuka had another hour to return from church. That is, if he didn't go into any meeting with the numerous parish associations he was a member of.
"What could be wrong with the Iron Lady?" she wondered about Amaka. She called her Iron Lady in mock reference to the way Chuka always called his sister. When she explained some arrogant attitude of hers towards someone or another to him, "They all contributed in spoiling her," she thought.
She moved into the bedroom, still dialing Digbari's number. She had sent him a couple of messages, but they had not been delivered. Her calls were also not connecting. She felt a vague uneasy apprehension.
If she had known he wouldn't be up to talking with her that morning, she would have at least gone to church. She felt silly for lyingabout the cramps.
After two more tries, she let things be. She set about getting her things ready to leave for her apartment when Chuka came back.
She didn't hear from Digbari for the next three weeks.
She was worried. She missed him, and this clearly played out in the way she treated Chuka, who complained of her being aloof and cold.
"You are being so cold. We haven't had sex in ten days. If that was only it, I would be fine. You behave as if I am a pest to you and frown all the time. Your attitude is killing me," he said. "What have I done wrong?" When she did not reply, he decided to try another route.
"I thought you would be consoling me or supporting me as I try to help Amaka in this trying period of hers.
She had looked at him with a look reserved for mad men. Chuka kept his peace and walked away.
She also wondered what to do about Digbari's silence. Was he upset she had mentioned going over to Chuka's place that weekend? He had once told her that he was often a jealous man.
When he said this, she thought she liked to hear it, because she compared him to Chuka, who didn't betray any emotion in issues that ordinarily should make him jealous. "Jealousy can be reassuring," she had thought, and it made her love him more.
But if this was jealousy, it was being taken too far. Why couldn't he just ask her to stop seeing Chuka? She knew she would. She had already made up her mind to. Didn't Digbari know that the moment she could speak with him she would intimate him of her plans to leave Chuka for good?
In the days that followed, she looked up all social media platforms, endlessly hopingto get a glimpse of perhaps a pseudonym he may have adopted since it was obvious he was avoiding her.
She tried using his other names 'Steve' or 'Nthalo' but came up with nothing. She hated that she was trolling the entire cyberspace and dialing his number at least a hundred times every day.
Why was Digbari deliberately bent on making her suffer this much? She thought that perhaps if she had not opened up so much of herself to him, maybe she would not have felt that way. There wouldn't have been any emotions invested to be regretful about. But she had told him things. A lot of things. Before him, she was bare. So bare that now she felt swept clean, stolen.
It was therefore to the reluctant, self-defeated person she had become that Chuka came to ask if she would accompany him to Pretoria to support Amaka, who had suffered a setback on the eventful Sunday that she called.
"Look, I know you don't like her and you are not in good shape yourself, considering that your job is taking its toll on you, but I think it would do some good if we could be there for her at this time, and for you too, the week away could be therapeutic."
Though she had looked at him wondering how he always thought he could make a sister out of her for Amaka, she was thankfully surprised that, for once, he could admit his sister was unlikable.
She considered his proposal, especially for the sake of her taking a break, and agreed to it.
If she had been in the know of what was coming, she may have rehearsed her reaction. As this was not the case, upon arrival for the funeral service in Pretoria, she had slumped before everyone. It was surprising butthey understood. Grief had started taking its toll on everyone.
Indeed it had, for later, when she was resuscitated, she held tightly to a mug of hot tea, staring intently at the Order of Service for the funeral of Dr. Steve Digbarinama Nthalo.
Support Tonye Willie-Pepple
