His Scandalous Bride

4: Then

The days after her mother's demise were rather strange. It was a blur. One minute she was as healthy as a horse and the next, nothing. How were they supposed to accept such an absurdity -she had gone to her room to take a nap as she normally does between the hours of two to four in the afternoon and she never woke up. It was truly absurd and beyond insane.

"It was a heart attack but she didn't suffer," the doctor had consoled them. But how was that suppose to be comforting? Her mother's heart had stopped while she slept? What if she had given up on them and just swallowed all the heartaches and left? It was the most likely happening. If that wasn't the case why would a perfectly healthy person die in their sleep?. . .Just like that. No warning. No nothing. Even if that's how it was with all deaths; sudden, irreversible. . .finite. She couldn't understand how her mother had died. . .Just like that.

Grief, they say, is the best in bringing out the worst in a person. They were wrong. It cracks, and it breaks, and it yields but that's just it. Grief was just grief. An echo. An echoing hollow. Of pain. Of silence. Of hope. Of regret. Of nothing. It might have stomped her in ways she fears were irreparable but it was nothing she couldn't survive.

Maybe on the day her mother had died, or the next day, or the day after, or the day after that. . .but there came a moment when the pain didn't stagger even though it pinches; a moment when her stopped world had tripped. It didn't move but it didn't fall either. Grief might have made her live in an endless pool of pain but one day, something changed. She couldn't say what, but somehow the pain suddenly became bearable. It didn't go anywhere, her pain, but it wasn't anywhere either.

She blamed him, of course. Her father. She blamed him for her anger. She blamed him for her hate. She blamed him. . .Yet what she went through was nothing compared to what grief did to him. She'd never really understood the expression 'living dead' until she met her father in the wake of her mother's death.

Her father might be a monster but no one could deny that he was good looking; at almost six feet, he is a rather hulky man with unusually calm inky eyes like the face of the night, clear brown skin which always makes her think of the mixture of honey, olive oil and Shea butter her mother uses as cream and a stern yet, impressive face. He was. . .dark yet not gloomy, but in the dawn of her mother's death, the night lost its enigma.

Aisha is still yet to understand how he could have hurt her mother as much as he did when it was so painfully clear he couldn't live without her. He might have hated her mother in life but it would seem like he had hated himself more in the wake of her death. A happening she once thought as impossible -her father couldn't have hated anyone or anything as much as he hated her mother. Apparently not!

He was simply miserable. And then one day, he just fell.

Hissing softly, she shakes off these wanton thoughts and forced her mind back to her immediate environment. Laughter echoed in the ward as conversations rose and fell. She was surrounded, even if by strangers, by people but the reality of that only made her lonelier as she sat beside the sickly man sleeping on the bed. The voices made her feel smaller and perhaps even, most resentful. Hating herself for desperately coveting the barest of human connections-conversation. It made her miss not having a family.

Aisha had always admired people with large families. They seem like trees to her; deeply rooted, firm. . .strong. She would look at them and she would wonder, what would her life be like if there were others she shared the same roots with? Would things be any better? Would she have been comforted? Would her mother? Probably. . .it was no secret that a forest is bigger than a tree no matter how strong or deeply rooted.

Reluctantly, her eyes shift to the others in the ward. Ten beds. All occupied. All surrounded. Yet the difference was clear. Even in this government hospital open to everyone which smells like disinfectant and sickness with its washed up magnolia walls and crackly floor, there was a clear difference. She looks away fighting off tears she doesn't want to shed. It wouldn't comfort her nor would it solve anything. She needed to think. What has crying solved?

She'd spent all the money she had bringing her father, buying some of his drugs and getting him hospitalized. It was one less thing to worry about. She could worry less about finding a place for them to live now that he was safe. Now all she needs to worry about was money. Which, if she were honest, was freaking the hell out of her? How in God's name was she suppose to get enough money to feed, buy medicine and rent a room for them as soon as possible? Sighing deeply, her gaze fall on him once again. Should she ask him for help?

But who was she kidding? Her father hasn't said a word to her or anyone for a year now. The last time she heard his voice was the day her mother had died and he'd asked the doctor if she had suffered. He lost his job a month later and collapsed a week later. There was nothing he could do for her or anyone. He can't even help himself. The most she'd seen him do in the last months is pray, stare at ceilings and cry. There were some days she feared he had died even, with how still he becomes sometimes, as if he was holding his breath anticipating death.

What can she do? What was she suppose to do? Nobody had offered help. Not neighbors. Not her father's colleagues. Not even her so-called friends. What should she do? Life, it would seem, was quite as prickly as it were fickle.

Would it had helped if she had more stable relationships? Perhaps. But Aisha had never understood relationships. Her parents weren't exactly a model of relationship; to each other or to others-she's never, not once, seen anyone visiting her parents or them visiting, and she wasn't the kind to open easily to people. Not that people like her-the first time she'd thought she'd found her people, she'd heard them laughing behind her back at how pathetic she was; the town had gossiped of course about her family especially since they had appeared out of nowhere and none of their assumptions was flattering, and how they were only friends with her because of the things she bought for them. She was ten and they were in primary four.

She hadn't gotten angry or confronted them. She didn't think it would change anything. Besides, the devil you know. . . She had stuck with them instead, letting them think they were using her while she did the same exact thing to them. She bought the things they like for them with the money she would take from each of their purse as little as possible so as not to draw suspicion until they graduated two years ago from secondary school. Seven years she stole from them but they never noticed. Seven years.

It ended nonetheless.

Seven years of friendship, though built on lies and deception, ended with a text message of condolence when her mother had died. None of them had bothered to show.

She acted like it didn't matter. But it had. She used to think she was at her zero. She couldn't fall any harder. But she did. She fell, and fell, and fell until there was nothing left but ground-broken, empty and alone. She had needed someone, anyone, but all she had was herself.

It was like that yesterday.

It was like that today.

Would it be like that tomorrow? She wondered, and pondered, as she made her way out of the hospital and deciding not to think much of it, she just let herself walk, and walk, until she finds herself on the ground. . .again.