When My Sorrow Was Born {COMPLETED}

CHAPTER 2

"Agnes, wake up." I said shaking her awake. Though I am reluctant to, I had no choice. She was a new resident in the shelter. She had lost her husband and kids in a car accident, and her sister thought it would be better for her to recuperate in a shelter full of women. "Come and take your bath."

The young woman grumbled and turned as her sleepy amber eyes opened and her lashes fluttered open and close a few times. My heart logged in my throat because I knew what was coming next. She rolled to the middle of the bed and traced the other other side of the bed murmuring softly, as though speaking to her lover.

I cringed as awareness dawned on her and she shot up on the bed in shock. Horror flooded her eyes as she stared around, her glance flitting over me then back to me. She jerked the blanket off her body and stared at me as though she did not know where she was. I knew the exact moment that her reality dawned upon her. Her pupils dilated and tears simmered in her eyes.  "It... I". She began with trembling lips but she said no more as sobs tore out of her lips, her entire body wracking with its intensity. She made a long, deafening sound which I was sure almost everyone in the shelter heard but I made no move to comfort her. I was accustomed to death and grief; to me it was an everyday thing. Maybe that's why the other women left the care of new residents to me.

She cried until she choked but I paid her no mind as I removed her clothes and helped her into the bathtub where I washed her body hoping that the cold water would calm her. Her throat closed and no more sound came out. And when I was sure that her grief had eased she began to weep all over again. She was still weeping when I lifted her out of the bathtub, her petite and weightless body lacked the ability to oppose my lifting her.

Even as I dressed and fed her, tears were still running down her face. Although I felt like slapping her when she vomited the food on the new blanket, I just removed the soiled blanket, added a sleeping pill to a glass of warm milk and fed her all over again. Thankfully, the therapist would be here soon and I can leave to my own room to wash off the stench of her vomit off my body.

Though sleepy, she was still crying when I left her.  If that was what grief was, I wanted no part of it. For exactly eight years and two months, I haven't cried. The therapist I saw when I first came here said I was in shock, that's why I didn't shed a tear when Usman died. But deep down I knew it was because I had lost connection with sorrow, we had severed our last ties the day that Usman died and then I crushed it under my foot.

The two pages I had scribbled down to Beatrice for the past one week and the account books kept staring at me as I slumped onto the chair in my room and I chose the letter over my work. I wrote until I could no longer write. I told Beatrice of all that has happened to me but I felt none of it. It was as though I was writing about a third party.

I sealed the finished letter in an envelope and gave it to one of the messengers in the shelter who would have it couriered to Lagos.

I quietly stood up and then lay down on the bed knowing that it was fruitless for me to try to do any work right now. My swollen wrists hurt too much from writing the twelve pages of that letter.

Isah and I had been dating for a year when he asked me to marry him. How romantic his proposal had been! He took me to my favourite confectionery joint, which also served ice cream and peppered chicken. I was busy devouring my ice cream when he placed in front of me, a beautiful rosebud with a diamond ring –which sparkled as it caught the light – nestled in its heart. He didn't fall on his knees but four waiters came out, with each holding a placard with just a word written on each. The four placards held the words "Will you marry me?" and I nodded unable to voice my response because my throat was clogged with tears. The people around clapped and congratulated us as he put the ring on my finger and then went back to their mini-meals.