Broken | ✓

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE: DARK

                             Jide

Memories make up the parts of a person, they are the autobiography of a person’s life. Losing them means losing yourself. I caught a glimpse of what went on in the mind of an amnesia patient. Having people spell out parts of you, you should know and racking your brain trying to remember makes you feel lost and empty. I couldn’t imagine trying to recall how beautiful Ireti was, the curve of her smile and the taste of her lips and not have it spring up in my brain. I had only lost some of my memories, most from that night and I felt lost and void. Voider because Ireti left and there was no finding out what her next step would be. Charge me to court maybe, I would have done that if I were her and that would mean she would make an appearance which was what I wanted the most, to see her.

I had returned to the hospital four times after leaving because I was trying to remember that night. I never really knew how essential memories are to a being till I was faced with that challenge, partly because all I had were painful memories. Every time I landed in the hospital; the doctor warned me of brain damage with a stern look. The sterns grew intense with each visit.

Aunty Taiye tried to persuade me to move in with her but I refused the same way I declined changing my sheets, Ireti laid on them, it was something I wanted to keep. Frankly, it was the only thing that had her on it I could keep. When Aunty Taiye realized, I wasn’t going to give in, she decided to move in with me together with Dunnie.

“Stop sulking over someone who left you” Aunty Taiye scolded as she noticed me staring into space. Something she always caught me doing.

“She didn’t leave, I pushed her away” I defended Ireti.

“Same thing. Children of nowadays, small fight you people will say you are not doing again. You people like to run away. Cowards” she rolled her eyes.

I didn’t tell her what I did to Ireti, I wasn’t ready to be scarred by the horror that will befall her face when I told her, she looked a lot like my mother it would feel like my mother staring at me. Then, she would cry wondering what went wrong with me.

She liked Ireti, use to rather. Seeing how Ireti’s departure taunted me bred a dislike for her in Aunty Taiye. Aunty Taiye was like a mother hen, anybody who touched any of her chicks had her to contend with. Once, I got into a fight in school after my mother died. I was suspended but the other boy wasn’t, Aunty Taiye went to my school the next day and quarreled with the school authorities asking why they would leave the other boy out and calling me a nuisance when we both did the deed knowing that the school is against fights. She didn’t leave till he was suspended too.

“Ireti is not a terrible person” I was the terrible person, the rapist.

“I never said she was but you and I can’t deny the fact that she is the reason why you are like this. Why start the relationship if you know you are going to leave”?

“I hurt her; I am the terrible person!” I exclaimed.

“What did you do?”

My eyes fell to the floor and my lips clamped shut.

“What are you trying to remember?”

I maintained silence.

“Olajide” she called.

“Ma” I answered, raising my head slightly.

She closed the space between us and enveloped me in a warm embrace. I held onto her and cried. I had finally come out of a life of solitude to begin a new one with an amazing woman only to find out that I ruined her. That was what stung, me who wanted to give her the world was the one who crumbled her world. Maybe my father was right, I was a curse. Anybody who came in contact with me tapped into the curse