SMITHEREENS OF DEATH

and rocks in my heart . . ."

– Billie Holiday

Without warning, the rain came down with a rush, a big deafening rush that washed away the rest of our argument, just swallowed up the hot words and doused the flaming tempers, so that we were just there mouthing empty things that no longer had any bite in them.

f.u.c.k, the sky had not even covered its face with dark clouds as it usually did, or growled down a threat; it had just opened its mouth wide and emptied this mighty water upon us, drowning the din of our madness out – it was as if the louder we screamed, the harder the rain came down . . . You can"t beat Nature, they say. So we shut up, and sat down, on the edge of the bed. And as if the rain had been watching us, it quieted down, gradually, until it was just a murmur above us – the patter of children"s feet on the roof.

We began laughing. She laughed first, the sound of her laughter prodding mine up out of the remnants of anger that still lingered in my heart, and both laughters bounced back and forth between us, the same way our boiling words had been colliding just a few minutes ago within that same s.p.a.ce.

She closed the s.p.a.ce with a thrust of her bosom and pulled me into the bed with her. "You"re f.u.c.king crazy, you know this."

"I do," I said.

"Then you may kiss the bride."

She didn"t wait for me to; she ate the laughter off my mouth. Yeah, that"s how she kissed – like she was f.u.c.king devouring your entire face; her mouth over your mouth, over your nose, eyes, even up to your f.u.c.king forehead and behind your ears! Just trying to take it all in.

"You"re going to swallow my head whole one day . . ."

She giggled, and closed her eyes, like a medium – "Hmmmm,

in the spirit of swallowing heads . . ." – and fingered my zip . . .

"Argh-f.u.c.k," I groaned. "Every time I"m about to leave, it starts raining, and when it starts raining it never stops, and the f.u.c.king streets are all flooded and you can"t go anywhere and . . ."

"Maybe it"s a sign."

"That?"

"That you should stop leaving."

"Babe, if I start living here, one day one of us will wind up dead."

"And the other would join him."

I snorted, "Romeo and Juliet did not happen, doll; it was written, imagined."

"Like your bible?" she smirked.

f.u.c.k-no, I was not going to get into that with her today; I rose, zipped up my trousers, and was putting my feet in socks, sitting on the edge of the bed, when she threw me a kick from her lying position – the top of her foot connecting with the back of my neck like a backhand slap. "Stop being f.u.c.king sensitive about that book! I don"t child up when you take my G.o.d of Small Things apart with an academic razor on your f.u.c.king tongue! I argue back. That"s the whole point of being an intellectual and having a rational mind, the whole f.u.c.king point of all your years of formal education . . . Prove to me that the contents of your book are not the products of somebody"s fecund imagination. . ."

f.u.c.k-yes, she was comparing a Holy Book – no, The Holy

Book – to a f.u.c.king c.r.a.p G.o.d of something book . . . Holiest-f.u.c.k save me . . . Yeah, and she"s the only girl I know that would use a word like fecund in an informal conversation . . . f.u.c.king fecund indeed . . .

I swallowed my response, and rose to buckle my belt.

"I told you I wanted to tell you something," she said, a little more quietly.

I couldn"t find my car keys in the pockets of my trousers where I usually left them. She must have hidden them.

I had to get back home, where there was some sanity; too much sanity, in fact.

I opened the door, and stopped. The rain had become something else; it was a grey curtain before me, hanging from the heavens to earth.

"You can"t go in that rain, without your car . . . Just– "

I parted the curtain and stepped into the grey world beyond, and her words were lost.

I don"t know why people run in the rain; run, walk, crawl,

fly, you"ll still get beaten to a soggy pulp . . .

I walked.

There was not a soul in sight.

A tropical downpour is a terror like that; men scamper for cover, animals cower in hiding, trees bow in obeisance, gutters and streams offer up offerings of urban rubbish, as the almighty rainstorm strides through empty streets, majestically; its watery train sweeping elegantly behind it, sweeping up everything in the path of its liquid wrath.

And the city remains a ghost town throughout this reign of

terror . . .

* * *

f.u.c.k, he had left his phone behind.

It was singing that Amy Winehouse"s Back to Black, that jaunty

dirge I hated so much; it made me feel there was a dead person in the room with me and that my heart was tear-logged, heavy with grief . . .

. . . with his same old safe bet me and my head held high and my tears dry get on without my guy you went back to what you knew so far removed from what we went through and I tr–

I looked at the green screen: Luv

I couldn"t hear what she was saying. The rain had grown angrier, shouting, threatening to break the door down, pounding the roof . . .

I hung up, and put the phone down.

She sent a text: Baby pls stay whervr u r, u cnt drive in ds rain n all d streets

here r flooded. U r coverd in d blood of JESUS, IJN. AMEN.

See? He should have listened to me and stayed, the obstinate b.a.s.t.a.r.d. It"s a good thing I had hidden his keys. I"m sure he"ll come back soon. You can"t go very far in this b.i.t.c.h of a rain, on foot. Luv did not stop calling . . .

. . . we only said Goodbye with words I died a hundred times you go back to her and I go back to . . .

Wives, they are f.u.c.king annoying like that, like houseflies, f.u.c.king persistent, keep buzzing around a particular subject until you can"t take their s.h.i.+t anymore and they get smashed to nothing. . .

That"s why their husbands always c . . .

The bellowing thunder shut my thoughts up.

At 23 Missed Calls I turned the phone off – ARGH – and went to the window. Where the f.u.c.k are you? There was nothing outside but the thick grey of the rain . . . The rain was a terror.

Just come back, for just one minute, so I can tell you! And

then you can go, go away forever if you like, and don"t come back . . . but just come now, just for a moment . . .

The rain was banging on the door now – that"s how close it had come.

The rain is many things: an insistent burglar, an authoritarian ruler, a fishwife woman, mocker of men . . .

There was a tug in the only corner of light left in my heart;

and for the first time in my life I felt an urge to pray . . .

I didn"t. I lit a cigarette, and went back to the bed to enjoy it.

There was something peeking out from under the pillow. His wallet. Oh s.h.i.+t.

* * *

I didn"t know if I was walking, or if it was the flood in the street nudging me along; but I was moving. And with every step, the water was swallowing my legs inch by inch; it was now at my upper s.h.i.+n.

I couldn"t see beyond my nose in the aluminium sheet of rain hanging in front of me. Through a little opening in the grey curtain, I sighted the form of a car in the distance. Thank You Jesus!

I tried to move faster. The car was coming closer, moving just

as I was, with a lot of difficulty; I couldn"t tell if it was moving on its own or being nudged along by the flood as well.

When it got close enough, I began to wade towards it, beckoning at the driver – I would pay him/her anything just to get me the f.u.c.k out of this b.l.o.o.d.y mess I had plunged myself into, I would pay anything . . . Even the wallet must be soaked by now. I checked my pockets . . . f.u.c.k, I had left it at her place! No, f.u.c.k-no.

I crossed the street and approached the bobbing car. I would

beg if I had to.

The car was a Volkswagen Beetle. You didn"t see them around anymore these days. Funny that it took a big rain to bring one along. I didn"t care if there were a hundred people in that small car; I would fold myself into the boot. I remembered that the boot was at the front of the car and . . .

The car was empty. n.o.body was driving it – it had been drifting along on the flood, carried by the heaving of the water as it gushed past in malevolent hurry, from an unknown location, to an unknown destination . . .

The Beetle had floated past me when the idea occurred to me...

The door on the pa.s.senger"s side was unlocked. It was warm inside, and dark. The car seemed to sink deeper under my weight; I saw the water around it rise a few inches, and the floating slowed. Then it picked up suddenly and I saw that we were going down that slope of Sakoba Hill – that deathly slope with its evil gravity that seized the brakes of laden oil tankers lumbering up the road and pulled them down until they crashed into cars at the bottom of the hill and burst into flames. It had taken about twenty of these explosions for the government to ban the tankers from using this road.

As the tiny Beetle hurtled downstream I shut my eyes and said a prayer. When I opened them, I was in this black s.p.a.ce, empty – no sound, no smell, no colour, no air . . .

* * *

With nothing else to do but watch and listen to the rain, I turned the phone back on. A new message jumped in: Am pregnant f.u.c.k.

How could his wife be pregnant? How? He had been certain she couldn"t be, even though she had been praying for years, and he had stopped believing that she could be . . . That was why I had held his seed inside me and let it grow . . . Yes, it grew inside me because I let it; because my womb is fertile soil. Not because I had prayed to some G.o.d to let me be pregnant, f.u.c.k-no.

* * *

I wouldn"t have taken his things to her (I didn"t want to meet her), but it was sad enough that there had been no body to bury (they could not find it, after the almighty rain had returned to its throne days later, and the floods in its wake had begun to recede).

Too many months had pa.s.sed. His people had agreed to bury an empty casket; as they said, "A dead person is better than a missing person," or something like that. But she told them, "My husband is not dead. I believe he will come back home, come back to me and our

child . . . I have this faith in the G.o.d I serve . . ."

So she did not go for the burial, or wear black.

I went for the burial. I wore black – a short black dress he had bought for Valentine"s, a week before his death. Yes, f.u.c.k that faith s.h.i.+t – he is dead. I know. If he wasn"t, he would have come back to me, even if he didn"t go back to her. I knew he loved me. And he was not the kind of man to run away from anything.

She was wearing a pink caftan and a smile when she opened the door. I was disgusted – what the f.u.c.k kind of widow was this? Such disrespect to the memory of . . .

She smiled down at my stomach, "Come in," and moved her own stomach out of the way.

f.u.c.k-no, I"m not going into a house where the man of it cannot be mourned properly because of some silly faith.

I handed her the bag I had packed his things into – his wallet,

his phone, his tie, car keys.

"The car is at his mechanic"s," I said.

I"d had Jelili come and take it away yesterday. I was tired of staring at it every morning, waiting for him to come and start it, rev it, and leave, like he always did . . . But he had left. I knew.

She looked into the bag, looked up at me, down at my stomach, opened her mouth, and closed it.

I turned my back on her, and left her there, tears beginning in

her eyes . . . f.u.c.kit.

* * *

I cried today. Not because he is dead (I know he is not); but because my husband had died a long time before this disappearance. Dead to me, dead in sin, fornication, lies, deceit . . .

I cried hard, and prayed for him, that G.o.d forgives him and

brings him back home, and takes care of his child . . . his children . . .

I cried because somewhere in the back of my faith I knew he was dead.

* * *

I cried that afternoon for the first time since that b.a.s.t.a.r.d died. I don"t know where the tears came from, but as soon as I started crying them another rain began to fall. Yes, another f.u.c.king rain. Right there on me, on my face; my tears became useless, crying in the rain is useless – you don"t even know if you"re crying . . . So I began to laugh. f.u.c.kit, this life is one h.e.l.l of a b.i.t.c.h.

He laughed with me.
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And our laughters bounced back and forth between us. He turned to me, "You"re f.u.c.king crazy, you know this." "I do," I snickered. I f.u.c.king do.

* * *

Life is about death; tiny pieces of dying . . . But when the last piece has been peeled away, the grief that remains is an open sore on the hearts of those left behind – you cannot cover it with anything, with living . . . It will not heal tomorrow, or the day after . . .