Five

Oghene

Egholo.

Love.

This was why I thought it wasn’t for me;
once upon a time, I believed in love. Sure, I’d been hurt before, but I learned from the pain and decided to move on, determining that the next time I would fall in love, it would be with a woman who would give me the real thing. One year later, I met her. One pastor pikin like that—A pastor’s daughter. Fine geh. I knew there was something special, and I thought, “Let me do everything I can to make it right this time.”

She looked legit, but some weeks after I met her and was seriously considering rolling with her, I had a conversation with my mother in my dream, and she said to me, “Calm down, not all are God’s children.” When I woke up, I had no doubt that it was God speaking, but me I no gree o. I ready to make baba Godeh see reasons with me and change his mind, so I kept praying while waiting for a divine leading, an urge, that kine sign wain go make me know say God don finally reason my mata. That didn’t happen.

Yet everything seemed perfect about her.
So, I moved in. After all, no be everything God go chook mouth.

I was brave around her, like...I gallant. I was also vulnerable, and free, and open because I bin wan make she know me in and out. I tried to do everything right for her—for us because I didn’t want to lose her. I thought we were happy, that she meant it when she said she loved me. Until I found out how much she hated that I wasn’t as educated as she was, or rather, as her parents wanted me to be. She hated my work too. A poor mechanic who’d caressed more car engines than he’d done women. She started pressuring me to consider a better job. Something more dignifying. When I couldn’t, she started avoiding being seen with me.

Me I no be saint o. I wasn’t without blame too. I made mistakes. But one thing was sure, love made me blind, My head bin no dey my neck that time, so I didn’t see when it was over until that sad day she shouted at me.

“I don’t love you! I never will! Not when you’re always dressed like this...going about with tools in your pockets...fingering cars more than you do me. You have never even touched me like a man should touch a woman.”

I would have told her that if touching her in her most intimate places would make her stay with me, I was ready to commit that one sin and ask God for mercy later.

But touching no be the koko. Getting intimate with her wasn’t the problem. Her love for me was dead; that was if she ever did love me. Maybe na me dey even love her with everything in me and she couldn’t love me back no matter what I said or did.

It was heartbreaking to let her go. More painful to hear she was getting married to another man four months after our breakup.

Sitting at the last row of her father’s church’s pews and watching her say ‘I do,’ to another man was a terrible blow I had to heal from if I was going to love again.

It wasn’t easy. I swear, I for no attend that wedding, but that was the problem with men like me. Men that would do anything to prove that they were not angry with the women who hurt them so deeply, men that would rather blame themselves for everything that went wrong instead of holding their exes accountable.

I healed eventually.

But then, something don already crack inside me. I didn’t think I could love again. I wouldn’t want to risk it. It was too dangerous for my fragile heart. I thought the best thing to do was to close my heart like an out-of-business motor garage regardless of what anyone was saying to me. The emotional shutdown was going to be for a long but temporary moment, so, I could cane my lane, under normal concentration levels na. I channeled my energy into making more money and getting back to the man who I really was; a guy who just wanted to lead a quiet life.

But attraction had another plan for me. I met Ifenkili, dreamt about her and woke up with this crazy excitement that felt like my soul just came back to my body. The next time I saw her at her favorite seating spot in church, I was like...
Hello...
You...

No, God, no, I wasn't not doing that again.

I wasn’t going to allow another woman to have me on a grip mode. But I didn’t stop my eyes from staring too much, or my legs from approaching her while pushing the camera that was balancing on the tripod. Just that day, I noticed she had a way with people...they just liked her. And she could be snobbish too. I also noticed how nice and classy she dressed.

When our eyes locked and I smiled at her and she didn’t return the gesture, I told myself I wasn’t going to come any closer to say ‘hello, how e be you?’ But I would accidentally bump into her the next Sunday. She wouldn’t even notice I walked by since I happened to be among those she easily ignored.

The first time we spoke, she started the conversation.

“Do you think that lady sings like a frog crying for help,” she asked. It was one of those church crusades and I was standing by her side with the camera, pretending to be covering the program from there while I simply wanted to be that close to her.

“I think the program should just come to an end make everybody go sleep abeg,” I replied, and she nodded in agreement.

I for borrow sense and kawa. I should have walked away immediately, but I couldn’t. I just stood there, breathing her in like one would the sweet scent of an aromatic incense that was being sampled at The Next Cash and Carry supermarket. The more I breathed the more she entered my head like the smell of my mama Ukhodo—a yam and unripe plantain dish which my mama always prepared with fowl and fish and garnished with lemon grass.

After that night, I couldn’t get over Ifenkili. No matter how much I tried to pem—hide the excitement that came with the thought of her.

Her scent was like rain, like a bird that would flee and come back when I wasn’t even ready. I still got sweet chills all over me when I remembered her perfume. But it wasn’t the perfume that invaded me like moto way jam person, but something else so difficult to describe. A scent that made me think about the times when someone held me close and made me safe, like a low tide; so held back, yet seducing and cool.

Like the feeling that just enveloped me now and made me swallow the words I was going to say to these ladies with me. This feeling, where was it coming from? I could not tell. I only knew it made me smack my lips, tasting its aroma. I watched guests brush by. Some I knew from back days in school, some were just total strangers. I smiled, waved, exchanged pleasantries while my eyes kept searching as if I was actually expecting to see something—someone.

It took me time to find the trigger of that sensation.

Her.

She was standing a little distance away from me, dressed in a green, shine-shine, off-shoulder long dress, looking like a beautiful warning sign;

Look but keep off...don’t come closer.

I wanted to do the exact opposite. To approach her and probably speak to her about our last WhatsApp chat, the one I asked he out out on a date. Yet, I was satisfied seeing her from afar. At least, for now. I was more than happy to look at her, to appreciate everything...the shape of her body, her long braids which she kept pushing away from her shoulders.

Ifenkili was a beautiful slim woman. She was slender with curves. There was no other words for her kind of figure. But at the same time, there was something indefinable about her. Was it an inner light? A sparkle in her eyes? The way she spoke and moved and made things move around her? I no fit point am out exactly. I didn’t have a bank of English words to describe things. Bank, a word my Open University’s Eng321 lecturer loved so much. I didn't know many words, but I knew the word “charisma.” It suited Ife perfectly. She had a personality that no layers of beauty could hide. She was impressive.

Impressive. A word I have learned to use frequently.

Oh my God, she was staring back at me. What should I do? Smile? Wave? Approach her? The more her eyes were fixed on me, the more that uncomfortable feeling spread over me. I felt it was because there was an ocean of silence between us… and I was drowning in it. Or I wasn’t man enough to arouse her interest and then ignore her completely like an Alpha male would.

I learned about being an alpha male from the social media and the description of how an alpha male should act towards women wasn’t me at all. All this “Don’t reply fast”, “don’t show you care”, “don’t be a homebody”, “don’t always be available” sounded like a conversation for kids trying to play games. I believe I was too grown to be acting like I didn't know what I wanted. What the social media described an alpha male as was just childish shenanigans that adults shouldn’t even be heard conversing about.

However, right now, I wish I had a little bit...a few drops of that attribute.

I smiled at her. Nervously. But the look in her eyes...was she...for a moment I been think say she dey feel me like dey feel her. Maybe I was wrong. She just dropped the plate she was holding and hurried away.

“Oghene,” One of the ladies that had kept me standing for close to thirty minutes said, pulling me out of my reverie. “You want to go somewhere cool after this party?”

I mentally hissed. Shukudi would do anything to tie me to a woman today. I knew he arranged these ladies. The way he would wink and smile at me every now and then from where he stood with his wife ehn, something not too pure for him side. The Ibo boy dey desperate to hook me up tonight. He’d once told me that he wouldn’t mind me dating his only sister, Juoshi, was she old enough. She was barely nineteen. But even if she was twenty-five, I would never look at her any other way than I would a little sister.

“So what do you say?”

“W-what?” Watin she been dey talk sef?
“Going out with me,” the lady said a little impatiently while stroking my arm. “I know this place you’d like so much. It cool and...”