WILD CALM

Hello Hi,
Last week BellaNaija published another of my article, thank you guys for reading. If you missed it, please find the link below.
http://www.bellanaija.com/2014/08/19/bn-prose-the-work-place-by-ugochi-ukah/

I also had a previous article published by them about a month ago too (http://www.bellanaija.com/2014/07/17/ugochi-ukah-my-colloquial-mishap/).

Today I have a beautiful story by a talented writer who has chosen to remain anonymous (I do not understand why though :p). Anyway, please read and share your comments below. Don't forget to share with your friends too, cheers.

                                                                                

Her name was quite simple. Simple to remember and simple to pronounce. After all it was quite common in the western hemisphere. In truth her name meant: “Defender of men.” But everyone called her Anna. His name meant...she was ashamed to say that she could not remember what his name meant but unlike her, his name had been chosen for its meaning  more than anything else. She did not know much about him except that the difference in career between them could be summed up in this manner:  he sought to get into his client’s head in order to break them, while she sought to walk with hers in the hope of empowering them so that they could walk without her.

“Happy Easter, Happy Sunday!” he said,  she turned  with a smile, thinking what lovely low, husky and well rounded voice he had, the kind of voice every man should have, she added to herself before murmuring, “Thank you. Same to you!” and laying her hand on his arm she said “excuse me, will you?”She made a beeline for the glass door where the little muffin had just run through. She caught her just as she poised to exit the back door of the Church. She grabbed her beneath her arms and tickled her until the child was screaming “mummy, please stop, stop mummy!” “You love her with your life don’t you?” Her head snapped around at his voice and she found him standing behind them. Lowering the gleeful child to the floor, she again smiled but this time she lowered her eyes. As the child walked away and they turned to watch her, he said boldly:” I would like to have your number.” Once again her head snapped back up so that he could see the question in her eyes. He saw it and replied: “look, you stand out among all these women, you are a product of your own creation and every time I see you, I keep wishing that you were single.”

Shocked, flattered and intrigued she said: “Well I am single. I am a single married woman. And a mum.” As he smiled she countered: “Are you married?” He shook his head.” Do you have children?” she continued. He broke eye contact with her and turned to look at the child happily murdering a yellow flower that she had picked out from the arrangement by the door. “He was silent for so long that she feared she had trespassed on sacred ground. “ Are you okay?” she asked, concerned. He turned and smiled at her and finally said very quietly “No, I do not have children”. She smiled and got out her phone.....

That had been on their first meeting, Anna thought now as she lay awake in bed and sighed. She was tired; exhausted really and yet sleep still eluded her. She sighed again, turned over and reached out to pick up her diary from her bedside table. Reaching for her phone she switched it on before walking to the light switch to switch that on too. Then she came back and re-arranged the pillows on her bed so she could sit up. Comfortable, she reached for the pen case that she kept on the dressing table but eventually found it on the floor next to the prayer book she had been reading before sleep claimed her earlier. Slowly, with a soft smile, she picked it up and opened the case. “Wild Calm” she read as she traced a finger along the engraved letters.  Gently she placed the cool metal against her cheek, somehow the coolness warmed her and she pushed back the tears that for weeks now, never seemed too far away. Uncapping the pen as she sniffed she said aloud: “Where to start? What can I say?”

It had been very brief, six weeks from beginning to end - six enchanting weeks of laughter, “pure heaven” and “Adagio”; adult conversations and steamy moments. The weekend away stood out as one she will never forget. Their regular evening walks in the nearby park, the attention he had paid to her baby (in truth she had adopted the child mere weeks after her birth), the special way he talked to the child, the way he made her feel like a woman: sexy, wanted and cherished, the flowers he brought her “just because..”, the way he confided to her of his childhood memories. The surprising way they seemed to know what the other was thinking even before they said it...There was a dozen ways that they were good together. “How could something so “right” be so “wrong?!” She asked herself again as she had for the past month or so.

“We were too different,” she wrote. “His family would never have accepted me and he would never have fought them for me”.  As tears gathered and cascaded down her cheeks she put down the pen and allowed the memories to wash over her. She remembered the day he sang Bryan Adam’s “Please forgive me “to her. That had been after their second fight. Their first one had been just one week before the second one, when over the phone he told her that he had a girlfriend back in his native town. That night she cried herself to sleep, woke up and cried some more before finally deciding that she was going to show him. And perhaps that was where the origin of their third and final fight laid. It reduced them to two intelligent and God fearing people, with one professing his love, yet both of them unable to do the “right” thing as in that instant they disagreed on the definition of “right”. She had demanded that he come clean with his girlfriend or end it with her. He had been firmly reminding her at every opportunity that “I want to make love with you Anna.” And she had stalled. Apart from the existence of his girlfriend, he had been reluctant to undergo the HIV/AIDS test she had suggested they had. It had been sexual frustration and the desire for more and better that had pushed her into cornering him to take a stand. At that precise moment, Anna hated herself, for being so...so freaking principled!  If she had not, they would still be an item now, she thought as fresh tears raced down her cheeks and fell on her diary. “But you still would not have been able to receive Holy Host”, a small voice in her heart whispered.” Yeah, there is that” Anna thought now and grimaced as she looked up at the A3 photo of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the wall at the foot of her bed. “I did miss you Jesus”, she whispered to the photo but I loved him so! Even now, four weeks after we have gone our separate ways and two weeks after I came across him and his girlfriend walking arm in arm in the park. “Our” park! Why did he lie, Jesus, How could he love two women at the same time? How can any of this be right? Now that I am at it, why did you send him my way?!  I am so unhappy that I cannot even be happy that we did not do “it”! And I cannot even laugh at the fact that his girlfriend is twice my size and half my height!”

The tears were flowing so hot and fast now that Anna put the diary down and turned face down on the nearest pillow to muffle the sobs that she could no longer suppress. Once again her heart was in tatters. Once again she was the loser in the “game of love” or was it the “game of lies”? She thought sarcastically.

So profound was her self-pity that she failed to hear tiny feet walking across the corridor to her room, until a small voice finally penetrated the mist-like gloom around her.

“Mummy?  I cannot sleep. Mummy? Are you crying?”

Anna jumped and swiftly wiped her palm against her cheeks and she rubbed her face across her pillow to dry the tear tracks. Quickly she reached over the side of her bed with a smile curling her lips:  “Oh baby, she said, “come and give mummy a cuddle.” And plucked the child from the floor. With her face hidden by the innocent sweetness of her daughter’s selfless hug, Anna vowed that no man, no man will ever break her or her baby’s heart again.

From the author: I was up at 03:00 in the morning one Saturday morning with this story line playing chaos in my mind. It simply would not let me be. I not only wanted to write I had an unprecedented desire to have the story published. In those wee hours when most are in dreamland I got in touch with Ugochi and well as they say the rest is history.
By and large this is my first ever real story. The stories I wrote previous to "Wild Calm" were in my English language class or exams about 16 years ago. ( I have never mastered the fine art of writing summaries. Give me a 2000 word limit and I can usually do a decently entertaining piece.) Unfortunately I do not have much time to write these days except when I want a good emotional cleansing. God willing someday I will take some writing courses (then I will sit down to write the book that I have promised myself I will.) For you see I know that I have talent- the kind that comes naturally, I suppose the kind that one is born with) But I have no skill- skills , to my way of thinking, is taught and can be learnt and in order to do justice to the art, I need both. Your words of encouragement warmed my heart. Thank you! Someday I will write one and I will sign it. "Wild Calm" however is best left unsigned. Until then keep me in your prayers. I will do same.
I hope you enjoyed it. Have a blessed week.

Please follow me on twitter@vivio_gogo and IG: ugochiukah.