Dear Red

Eleven

Her hands went slack on the table with shredded pieces of napkin between them. Her eyes fastened on me. Like a distant echo, the words came slowly but surely and slammed into my brain with the force of a sledge hammer. I was jolted with the shock and then I went still. My mind went blank and everything within me seemed to empty out. each thought began to parade through my mind and I internally digested it before another came.

I drank too much....I lost control....I had unprotected sex with Eva....I don't remember the act and I had no after effect when I woke up at 11a.m the next day....Eva got pregnant...I had fathered a child...I am only 19 years old.

My hand went to the glass of water on the table. I hadn't noticed when it had gotten there. I brought it to my lips like automation and drank. The sparkling water was like lava as it went down my suddenly parched throat.

"Ken, you have to help me," she said, her eyes pleading.

I slammed down the empty glass and got up. I walked out of the pub to the world outside. The sun was too bright and the noise was too much. Yet the world seemed to have narrowed down. Desperate to escape, I fumbled for my car keys and got behind the wheel. I drove home, trembling and dizzy and parked the car. I went straight to my bedroom and fell on my bed. My body was no longer mine. My mind wasn't mine. Ken Rugamo couldn't have done that. Yet Ken Rugamo had done it. How could I have drunk so much? How could I have surrendered my precious mental faculties and body to the deadly beast called alcohol? How had I broken one of the most fundamental things in my existence-my purity-and gambled it away without even being aware? How had I impregnated a man's daughter so cluelessly? When I asked myself this, my thoughts turned to Eva. She became a human being in my mind's eye: someone's daughter, a sister, a niece, an aunt, a friend to countless people on earth. People who would judge her-and me- even after hearing the horrible story. However I felt or acted, this burden was heavier on her. She would swell with a child she hadn't wanted. She would have to explain her empty wedding ring finger. She would have to stop working and start eating consciously and going to doctors. She would suffer labor pains because of me and bring a child into this world.....A child. Her child. My child. Our child.

Then my heart honestly broke at the thought. That child was getting the worst of this; conceived because of substance overuse, born to underage and thoroughly unprepared people, shame and ridicule because people would sooner or later find out....

A tear slid down my cheek and shame washed over me until I couldn't stand myself. How had I let this happen? How had God let this happen? As I thought of God, my mind conjured an image of someone else who I had always linked to God. Reverend Paul Rugamo.

I reached for my phone and speed dialed number 3. He picked up on the second ring. It was 8o'clock now.

"Hello son." The familiar voice soothed me only fractionally. There was a mountain lodged in my stomach making it hard for me to think, breathe or speak.

"Reverend." The word was a whisper.

"Kenneth?" he asked, concerned.

"Reverend, I have greatly sinned. Pray for me. Ask God to pardon me," I said.

"Kenneth, what is the matter?"

"Pray for me. Ask God to spare us hell."

I switched off the phone and lay in the dark for a long time.

Night became day, day-night, day-night, day-night. 

On Wednesday, there was a knock at the door. I had spent 3 full days indoors, lying on my bed, eating very little and blasting music on my stereo. I didn't want to see anyone so I ignored the knock. It grew louder and more desperate. With a string of curses, I went to open the door.