Lost & Found Innocence

by Agnes Musa

  Chapter 4

  We never talked about Trish’s child from her first marriage. Not that we really talked about children.

  There never is any time to do so when we meet for tea.

  Let’s face it, the reason we decided not to have tea at any of our houses was to avoid disruptions from any of our children.

  Last week, I needed Trish to escort me to Hugh’s school gala. That’s, after failing to convince David of the need to go, as usual.

  I’m sore with David. All he had to do was come and sit with me through the gala and the wagging tongues would have stopped asking after him, as if they don’t know that he left.

  Trish was not at her house so I followed to her parents’. You do understand that this was the first major school event after David left?

  A real emergency?

  I knew where Trish’s parents stayed, just had not gone around to the place yet.

  Trish was there.

  She had it, I mean him, in her hands. Said the name was Isaiah. Head lolling and saliva dripping from the open mouth and, and …. I left immediately.

  Better because I did throw up. The revulsion - you understand? Bernard, Trish’s first husband left when this, this Isaiah, was born.

  Trish is in her second marriage. Bernard left Trish extremely well off.

  Missed the school gala.

  You know how, on your birthday, you go over milestones, making yourself miserable about unfulfilled expectations, those set when you knew very well you would not do a thing about them?

  That’s me, today. It’s the day.

  I got a unique birthday cake decorated with spinach leaves and grated chocolate plus a beautiful red cherry.

  Hugh applied his mathematical and scientific theories to his budding culinary hobby.

  When he asked me how the cake tasted, I borrowed one of my mother’s very own smiles. They have their uses.

  My mind took a trip into the past. It does, when it’s your birthday and you’ve no spouse to look forward to getting angry at.

  Getting angry gives you something to do, planning just how much you’re going to hurt them on their very own birthday, when the time came for it, because they forgot yours, which resolve you almost always forgot to carry out.

  I can see Hugh on the lawn all those years ago. Hugh, all of sixteen months, undergoing toilet training.

  I taught Hugh to Velcro off the front portion of his short. Velcro off. Simple enough.

  Instead of doing that he, like his kind before and after him, stripped. Stripped!

  They do that, men, that’s. Tell him to unbutton his shirt and the next thing you see him standing in his birthday suit plus dangling antennae.

  Hugh stood on the lawn, naked. There, he proceeded to hunch his little pelvis, square his jaw and give it all he was worth.

  The boy had to see how long he could elongate the arc.

  They start very young, to be dominated by that particular part of their anatomies.

  Exactly the way they carry on when they’re older, same story. Leave one female for another, because the other lets them believe that what they have is the latest invention.

  They know it’s not, they have proved it themselves, but they believe hearing a different voice say it will make it so. Maybe.

  So in time, they too discover the lie they want to live and someone hands them the mop. Most of them taken to the cleaners in all senses of the word.

  Mr. Alexander handed Hugh the mop to clean up his mess. I still see the boy’s befuddled expression as he tried to remove evidence of his just enjoyed triumph of urinary prowess.

  I see him cleaning up the lawn with a mop.

  We do know that boys are little men, right?

  Talking of little men, one of them, Jacob, is sick. He asked me to marry him.

  Even sick people have to be spared especially when one knows the volatility of their temperament.

  After weighing the situation carefully, I decided the best way to respond to his proposal was via e-mail. A note. Jacob is hotmail, or hot male, as he likes to call it.

  Jacob,

  I enjoy your company. I like you. Of special note is the way you smile.

  That smile is a great asset, but so is your face, your teeth, your eyes, ears and the rest of your body. Thank you for apprising me of the fact at intervals that make it difficult for me ever to forget.

  You surprised me with your proposal.

  I feel I should be flattered but frankly I’m not. It’s nothing to do with you personally, that you must understand.

  It’s just that the period in my life at which the proposal comes – so soon after David - is too early for me to be considering marriage, something not likely to happen now or the foreseeable decades.

  I think you’re too young to be settling and you really, should give yourself time to seriously consider before taking such a huge decision.

  Yours truly.

  The letter looks callous but Jacob is the type that bounces back, every which way he’s kicked, whatever the circumstances or however long and hard the kick.

  The Jacobs of this world are born winners.

  They charm when they want it. They get it. They have it and they have it good.

  They start to imagine it to be theirs. The environment encourages them. They start to believe so. They totally forget themselves.

  They get cocky. And greedy. Or a combination of both. They get warned. They don’t listen. They get warned again. They don’t listen.

  They get kicked out.

  Then they listen.

  They’re at their best when they don’t have it at all, which rule basically applies to all humans, even those whose spouses have left them.

  My fleshly egotistical desire justified pursuing the travesty of a relationship with Jacob. To everything its price.

  If the mirror does not lie, if it indeed says what it says, what is it that Jacob sees in my flesh that the mirror is failing to tell me?

  Jacob never mentions my age.

  It’s because Jacob is the conscious, rising swiftly to become big, hard and present, like now.

  Please excuse me.

  I’m finding it impossible to ignore his insertion. It’s that deep. Entry is sudden and unannounced. Aim, dead accurate.

  Speed - unmerciful and relentless, the excavations greedy and wanton. That’s normal with Jacob, no matter how many positions or how frequent.

  Look and lust at Jacob’s posterior, beautiful stuff. Note the muscles, the way they contract and relax as the man delves.

  Check out the eyes, now dilated, the running sweat, the deft and automatic change of position, angling, frequency and size of thrust.

  Yes, there are times when physical satisfaction far outweighs sense. The determinant is availability.

  Jacob obliterates every reasoning sense when he’s imbedded. You know what they say, bad love and bad company are undesirables yet sampled, thoroughly delectable.

  That’s, until they become addictive.

  I’ve to pluck myself out of the quagmire. The feeling of release and relaxation afforded has immediately been replaced by odor, the stink of love gone bad.

  Jacob’s undoing is his belief that I cannot not do without him. I must own up to having wisely invested in entrenching that perception.

  One needs to be creative in moments of flagging passion.

  You see, I view the picture in its entirety, taking into account the mash-like appendages on yours truly that constitute a bosom.

  There are the other protuberances which only age bestows. Taking cognizance of all that, one has to be practical.

  Ego is not limited to the males of the world. It manifests itself in the power it gives a woman to make a man, any man, do whatever she pleases, at a price.

  One learns to do that.

  Only it rarely stops with the one person.

  Natalie: “Harvesters. They would queue up, one after the oth
er.”

  Me: “Nat, surely not queuing?”

  Natalie: “One after the other - at parties mostly.”

  Me: “How did you manage?”

  Natalie: “One would drink from the centre, the others simultaneously feed from the various branches of the tree.”

  Me: “How did it feel, doing it like that?”

  Natalie: “The first time - I thoroughly enjoyed myself.”

  Me: “And you would do it like that, I mean you did it again?”

  Natalie: “You always were a prude my Lisa. Of course I did do it like that, lots of times.”

  Me: “How did it feel, to have more than one?”

  Natalie: “Thrilling.”

  Me: “So how come you quit several times?”

  Natalie: “Even the most intense of thrills tires after some time. Familiarity breeds contempt.”

  Me: “Thought the whole point was to enjoy the fruit?”

  Natalie: “What is enjoyment without power? Power little Lisa. Power.”

  Me: “Come on Nat, what power could one possibly get from doing that?”

  Natalie: “You’ve them at your mercy, get them to do anything you want - during and after.”

  Me: “Did you ever grow tired of the whole thing?”

  Natalie: “It was a way of life. Besides, there were variations among the harvesters, a select group. ”

  Me: “Why could you not settle for one?”

  Natalie: “Whom among them? They were all spoken for.”

  Me: “There was Miles.”

  Natalie: “I’m surprised you remember that despicable old man!”

  Me: “He looked nice enough to me.”

  Natalie: “I was thirteen, thirteen years old my Lisa. Two years older than your Hugh is right now when Miles proposed to marry me.”

  Me: “You could have accepted seeing you had already been active for a while”.

  Natalie: “Her eyes, your Lisa not good! – Miles’ expression.”

  I remember Miles.

  Like I know the confusion, aloneness and disappointment after a spouse leaves.

  One needs to offload somewhere.

  For some it’s the bottle. Others religion. Others still, it’s the razor or bottle of pills.

  Me, my confessions were to the roulette table. I paid the price in real money.

  The losing spiraled out of control.

  First, I borrowed from the bank, then unsuspecting friends, excluding Ruth of course. Ruth says the fastest way to lose friends is to lend or borrow money.

  Few people, it seems, like to be on the giving end of friendship.

  So I moved on to pawning small things from the house. Vases, pictures, pendants, small electrical gadgets.

  I would have continued too, had it not been for the love of a man. Love does that.

  One day, into your life comes a person who is the reason why flowers bloom; why the air tastes sweet, why tomorrow must dawn.

  I love Graham, and Graham is married.

  I’m inebriated. I know.

  I saw Graham’s wife and children. He took me to see them, before he bedded me, a whole lifetime ago.

  I must sleep now. My eyes are seeing double. Without them, I cannot see to tell you a thing.

  Goodnight.

  I hope you already know that my eyes are big and beautiful, like Natalie’s. People say we look alike, her and me. We should, otherwise it might cast the parentage into question.

  Take one of my siblings, Joy. I love Joy.

  I wish she was here with me now but she’s far, far away. We grow up and break the bonds of childhood. We wear masks and become the ogres we are to each other.

  I tell you, our age pays a high price for opinion. Everyone has to be right. I do it too.

  Ask anyone why we don’t pay maternal and paternal dues. It’s something you don’t want to get into.

  Everything will be what it will be. Que s, hic, something, something, hic.

  Goodnight.

  Remember, hope, hic, like choice, hic, is a privilege. Is love an allusion?

  Is it not supposed to stand the rest of time? Differences of openings, hic, hic, of turgidity, of depths and orgasm.

  Not to consciously select from the lot, but to feel? I’m in the deep end. I forgot to say goodnight.

  Goodnight.

  The idiotic thing about getting drunk, or sleeping to nurse a hurt, is that you wake up.

  My head aches. It’s painful to think, or talk, or feel, or keep quiet.

  I do go on, don’t I? Like casual sex. You like and justify it when you’ve it but it rarely makes you feel good, content or fulfilled.

  There’s, sometimes, this waste; this questioning of the logic that made you bother in the first place.

  I suppose the same goes for wearing panties, eating and all routine human functions that man has not yet invented a machine for.

  Personally, I await the one for totally invalidating the need to visit the toilet with the utmost anticipation.

  In the meantime, the manual organs I find myself encumbered with demand I make the trip, with haste too. Will you excuse me please?

  Waiting for the phone to ring. Jacob has it bad. Phoned five times day before yesterday to say he misses me.

  He’s broke.

  A dozen times yesterday to say he loves me? Twenty times today and he says he will love me till the day he dies?

  He’s desperately broke.

  Nothing different from the rest of his sort, always broke no matter how much money they lay their hands on. And the blighter wants to marry me. Me!

  I hope David never finds out about Jacob. The shame and disgrace of it.

  Even if our marriage failed, our marriage, David and I. I feel insecure about the failure of that marriage.

  I know I’ve said it before but you’ve to understand that there was no logical reason why it happened, to me at least.

  The odds, when you compare it with the rest of what is passing for marriage in other homes, were highly tipped in our favor.

  Yet it did fail. That’s a fact.

  You can confirm it by the empty dressing room drawers and cupboards where David’s clothes and assorted paraphernalia, which passed for his toiletries, used to stay.

  While I welcome the extra cupboard space, for my books and music and all the stuff David didn’t allow in the bedroom, I feel that it’s not good to deprive a child who by right should enjoy a mother’s love and a father’s daily visual attention, no matter how cursory.

  My sense of worth as a woman has been revoked.

  My life unbalanced. I’ve lost my mood swings, my self-absorption and my aura.

  David, David, David, how could you?

  Could someone hand me the box of tissues please? Thank you, Mr. Simon.

  Oh dear. It’s Hope.

  She has a knack of visiting when you’re at your worst. Classy car, classy looks - the way she goes on?

  Every little thing in the house looks fine, beautiful even until Hope visits. Then everything takes on a sort of cheap, style-less, cramped look.

  This especially applies to the items I like and would have chosen myself for the house. So now, Hope tells me what to buy. She selected most of the items in our house. A great friend is our Hope.

  Do you know that if we go out together, Hope will either chose what I wear or lend me something from her own wardrobe?

  What more can one ask for in a friend?

  Of course, she’s always urging me to get a classier wardrobe, shoes, towels, mirrors, cushions. The more expensive and exclusive the shop, the more Hope rates the acquisition.

  Like the fancy loungers that I cannot make any visitor who has graced our home comfortable in.

  Or the hideously ugly picture decorating the wall above the fireplace.

  David’s opinion. What do men know about art?

  The numerous kitchen gadgets I’ve no idea what to do with were Hope’s idea. I ap
preciate her effort to make me a more presentable and worthier member of society.

  You hardly notice the mediocrity of taste and class you let yourself sink to when a man leaves you.

  Ordinarily, when I know that Hope will drop in I try. I supervise and help do the walls, the floors, doors, windows and under cupboards.

  Same as the times I knew Graham was coming. Everything had to be spotless, perfect.

  Of course one doesn’t expect people like Hope or Graham to notice the work involved in preparing for their visits. They live the lives most of us go to our utmost to create for their rare and brief visits.

  True, I had let standards drop after David left. The place was comfortable.

  To them, of course untidy.

  It was good sporting for both Hope and Graham not to say it to my face, though Hope did mention it to Ruth, who in turn let it slip out in the presence of one of my neighbors.

  Where it not for Mr. Alexander who heard it from the neighbors’ staff, I would not have managed to get the standards back to scratch again.

  The neighbors attributed the mess, as they put it, to David’s leaving. Neighbors whisper things about you with their friends and staff.

  They do that behind your back. Then they fix a plastic smile on their faces when you meet them in the street. They do that when they know that a man has left his home because of you.

  I must try not to get sidetracked again.

  Graham comes from good stock. With Hope it’s uncertain. Still, one cannot deny that they’re both people who know when to hold their peace and when to talk.

  Tact, that’s the word Graham used. Another was rationalize.

  Graham said I rationalized my feelings for him, the sincerity and honesty of my fingers when they touched his flesh.

  I rationalized the joy I felt at the sound of his voice, the pleasure his laughter gave me. I rationalized my desire to see him fly to the highest echelons man could ever know in feeling, devotion, respect, love and admiration.

  I rationalized the pain, the despair, the confusion of not knowing how it could be that when I told this man what he meant to me, all he had to say, after having had his fill of me in bed, was that I should move on.

  For a long time, I couldn’t differentiate between my words and his. My life was Graham. My breath was Graham. My eyes were Graham. My heart, my soul, everything.

  The more you love and want, the harder and cruel the kicks. Love? My foot!

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