And I guess I realized at that moment that I really
did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn’t matter.
S. Chbosky.
At that time, I had only wanted to hear her side of
the story. What she had to say for herself. It wasn’t like I cared if she
wanted to, or, was fucking the entire street. I did not care to judge her. That
was her life. What I did care to know was my right to know. If she told me, I
would live with it, be not bothered by it, but only because she was honest
enough to tell me. I could always say to myself; at least, you knew the terms.
The other night, some guy had walked in her apartment.
It was a face she knew by all accounts. When I knocked her door after a while and
came in, she was fidgety and insisted- quite urgently, I come around later.
When I did the next day and asked her about it, she would pretend no such thing
had happened. I do not know if she knows this but, she shot me that day, that late
afternoon she made that denial (?). She pointed a magnum at me and shot me.
I have tried to rationalise her reply or lack of, but,
it does not add up. Never did. The morality of the situation is not what
bothers me. This is not good or bad. Just the lingering feeling that one is
blind in this situation, and consequently, unable to chart one’s course; led on
by the suspicions of a denial or lack of it.
That was a
major pivot in our affairs. I remember quietly taking what little of my effects
I had at hers and walking out. Early next morning, as she came out her
building, her travel luggage dragging behind her, I was sitting with
friends doing the MG ritual. There was no hello between us, no friendly
chit-chat, not even for keeping up appearances. I only, briefly, looked up at
her once. That morning was deliberate. It was a morning for hurting and the
hurt.
I sent her a text recently, two nights ago to be
precise. In it, I said I was sorry for the incident. I was wrong and sorry-
those were my exact words. But before that, I had gone to visit at her new
apartment. Almost two years have passed since when we were neighbours,
intimately sneaking around...
We stood on her top floor balcony, looking down at
muffled figures in the street. It is the harmattan season and she has wrapped
herself in my denim jacket. The full moon shone brightly and very soon it was
all we talked about. We playfully pointed out what cluster of stars were its
groupies, which far ones were distant lovers or side chicks. She insisted the
North Star was the estranged first wife. We laughed. We huddled, close, but not
too close. We talked; past and future, our assumptions, our ambitions. Then it
came to ‘us’, and eventually, that incident. She asked, (I think her voice
broke once or twice) what exactly that coldness had been about that morning.
Apparently, she only saw or felt the effect and not the cause. To me, I could
only question the circumstances leading to the cause. Did she not shoot me at
point blank range or was that my insecurities behind the gun? And later, was
she leading me on again, reinforcing the darkness that one was smote in . . . .
?
March 28, 2011.
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