(Flash fiction)
The letters soaked in the rain, as I wept through the balmy London night.
London smelt of essential balm and papa's aboniki balm, I hated that smell, it was how pregnancy made me felt. Maybe it was because I was wearing papa's sweater, but I detested the feelings.
I sat on the pavement of the bar close to my house and watched hundreds of couples dressed in red, lost to the dreamy ballad swayed cheek to cheek in the parquet floor of the most beautiful dance bar in wood green.
It was going to be our fifth date with Usanga, we'd planned it to be on that valentine night. The day his wife was finally going to meet in court and sign the divorce papers. What a day to end a marriage, on valentines day! It was what he wanted, he wanted that night to be special for just the both of us, while Lizzy his would be ex wife would already be packing back to Nigeria, while I move in with him in Croydon.
She was barren, still at forty two.
And all what Usanga wanted was a child. They were married for twenty three years.
We met in a ship heading to Australia for war, a munition ship. As a female soldier, who had been in the British army for years before him, i'd saved his life uncountable times. We'd made love countless times, this love was like madness, uncontrollably sweet and amazing.
On the day I clocked forty, he'd put a ring on my finger. It was the day he told me of Lizzy and all her flaws, the day he'd opened his heart to me. I saw the love in his eyes when he spoke of marrying me. I was too special to him, so he wasn't going to make me a second wife.
"You will be my only one wife." He said boldly, under the warm duvet of the chilled hotel room. We were at the Travelodge Borehamwood hotel in Barnet.
And while I sat on that wet pavement, telling you of my amazing love life with Usanga, my eyes moved into the dance bar, where the red love light glittered. The singer waited for the clarinet to weep out the final bars of the bridge before stepping up to the microphone. Her golden snood glittering in the light like chandeliers.
She sang wholeheartedly, like it was her last time.
She reminded me of the last night I had with Usanga at the Karaoke bar. I sang 'I drove all night' by Celine Dion, while he watched me with all joy written on his face.
It was the night he'd made the decision of divorcing Lizzy. He'd called her all sorts of names, including a 'lazy bitch, who sat all night weeping for a child.'
I thought of Lizzy to be weak, I thought her to be stupid. It was the way Usanga described her that made me think this way of her.
**************************
I sat by that bar, on the pavement, the rain water splattering on me. I waited patiently in tears for it to stop, so that I could go home and cry the more.
And just after I took the handkerchief off my wet eyes, the wild look came back to my eyes. He was right there, in the arms of a woman.
I stood still to see clearly, if he was really the one, and indeed he was.
A cold breeze set the ends of my hair to dancing. I felt it bite as a series of shudders wracked me.
The shivers subsided when I saw a little girl run into his arms. She looked just like him, the kind of child I would have bore for him; beautiful, hairy and adorable little moppet.
The woman who stood by his side looked happy, like the world was on her feet. She was the woman who sang, the one who had golden snood on her hair. She was the woman with the beautiful voice, she was Lizzy. The woman I thought to be unhappy, the woman whom I thought was soon going to be my lover's ex wife. It was what he told me after the war in Australia, after I saved his life.
I opened the letter he'd dropped at my door post that evening again. He was a lie. He was all a trick and I wondered why he'd gone through all of those sweet moments just to hurt me. He'd condemned his own wife just to be with me for just a while.
I held my tummy for a while when I heard the first tap of the baby. it was soft. I'd wanted to tell him that baby was coming, and that he was going to be a father for the first time in his life. What a beautiful evening it would have been.
My head was turning, I wanted to just die. I wanted to kill him right there on that dance floor, in the midst of that crowd and walk away into the cold wet night.
But the woman in me had softened when I remembered I had his baby. I walked away into the lonely cold night, walking gently to my house. The sound of the romantic music followed me till I got home. It rang in my head, and the imagery of him and that woman kept coming into my head.
A fierce satisfaction hummed through me, I couldn't remember the last time I fell a prey into a man's hands so easily and conveniently. This was going to be the real last time.
And if I ever decide to have the baby, I would name him after papa. And on every valentine night, i would always remind myself of this love.
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