A Look into My Life — Chapter Eight

I first fell in love in Grade Four of secondary school. Her name was T, and she joined our class a week after the term began. At first I considered her too short, too thin and not particularly beautiful. She showed none of the shyness expected of a new pupil. She spoke confidently, as though she already knew everyone.

Then I noticed her profile and her extraordinarily expressive eyebrows. She was sharp, intelligent and impossibly charming. Almost overnight, she became the most beautiful girl on Earth.

We discovered that we lived in the same area and began walking home together. I had never felt so connected to anyone before, except maybe my mother. I hopelessly fell in love. It seemed that we were the same person in different bodies, although I doubt she experienced it quite so dramatically. Still, I believe she liked me.

I hovered around her after class in the hope that we would walk together. Even in class, she caught me many times staring at her. When she was absent, life became dull. One afternoon she visited my home, and Mother gave her an icy reception. I was mortified. T was the first girl I had brought home, and I had expected warmth and sophistication from Mother.

I had hoped that T might provide an olive branch between my mother and I. If she had welcomed the girl I loved, perhaps I would have seen her differently and found a new way to appreciate her. Instead, T later described Mother as "méchante". The word can suggest strictness, but it can also mean wicked. I was never certain which she intended.

I wanted to impress T with my French, my wit, my mother and our house (although she also lived in a beautiful house, a few streets away). I often invited her at dusk, when all the cats are grey, as the saying goes. Because then, our neglected property still looked magnificent. The tall fir trees, overgrown garden and fading light concealed the peeling paint, thinning gravel in the driveway and untended hedge. Lovers in Lubumbashi seemed to emerge at dusk, and that was when I wanted her to see my world. When I was next to her, I paraded like a peacock and threw side glances at the neighbours, to make sure that they all saw me in this glorious light. When I walked back home, I made sure that I stopped by the tuckshop opposite our house, to hear what my friend Patient and his older brothers thought of my conquest. 

My crush became a one-sided love. I was too shy and proud to fight for her, and she ultimately chose an older boy who was already at university. Long afterwards, I compared other women I met to her. They seemed like pale, colourless copies of the lively, brilliant T.

One afternoon, drawn towards her like metal to a magnet, I put on my best clothes and set out to see her. When I arrived at her house, I knocked at the gate. She came to open herself, pretty as ever; she invited me in, and I immediately say Guy, my best friend at the time, seated on a bench in her garden, dressed in his Sunday clothes (I had two best friends, Guy and Patient). Animosity, quickly suppressed, flashed between us, but politeness forced us to be cordial. I also sat on the bench, T between us, and we proceeded to engage in a highly hypocritical, akward conversation. I marvelled at Guy's treason. Whenever he came to this area, he came to my house. Our mothers were very good friends, and we had developped our own friendship. Now, not only did he come to my side of town without seeing me, but he was also coming to steal my girl. I did not care that T had never said she was my girl. In my mind, she was, and Guy was the traitor-thief and I despised him.

At school, Guy and I competed for T's attention and manoeuvred to walk home with her. He claimed considerable experience with girls; I had none. In the end, we both lost to the older boy. I remained T's friend and saw her whenever I could, although she was as fleeting as a shooting star and her attention changed as quickly as the exchange rate. She was my first great love, and perhaps the only one I have known in that form. For years, my heart remained in Congo, in her hands. Yet perhaps another kind of love exists, one that grows gradually through time and shared experience. I remain willing to discover it, provided it does not become the unhappy union of my parents.

Mother's health deteriorated. One afternoon, she failed to return at her usual time. I watched the little white clock move from five to six. She was not due at church and rarely visited friends after work. Each passing minute lengthened my anxiety.

I repeatedly went to the gate and searched the darkening horizon. Then Aunt Yolande appeared at the gate. She opened it, and I saw her through the living room curtains walk on the gravelled driveway towards the house. At the time, I did not like her, and she avoided coming home as much as she could. I told you, I was a difficult child. So her arrival could only mean something bad had occured. I opened the door and went out. She greeted me, and sadly said that Mother had suffered another blood-pressure crisis, collapsed at work and been admitted to hospital. Then she said goodbye and left. I so appreciated my aunt Yolande. Despite my explosive behavior, she had walked all the way to my house to give me the news, knowing that no one else would.

I locked all the doors, put my shoes on and walked to the clinic in tears. Visiting hours had ended, but the guards and the nurses allowed me to go in. It was white, brightly lit and painfully clean, the kind of place where people died and left others grieving. I found my mother awake, comfortably sitting in a hospital bed. She shared the room with two other patients. The hospital room was spacious, nice and clean, situated in the parts reserved for Management (the hospital belonged to the Railroad company my mother worked at, SNCC).

We talked until she insisted that I return home. She gave me the hospital's loaf of white bread, which I did not have the heart to eat. I wanted to remain beside her all night, but the nurses wanted her to rest, and I had a Chemistry examination the following morning. So I said goodbye and left. It was 9 PM.

At home, alone in the big house, I attempted to study, but my heart was too heavy. The next morning, I dressed in my uniform and locked the house without deciding where I would go. My feet naturally carried me back to the hospital.

I understood the consequences. Missing the examination might make me repeat the year, but I could not go to school while Mother lay ill. When visiting time finally arrived, I was allowed in. She saw me and said nothing. This was the woman who normally threw a fit if I missed school. She understood my pain.

Mother remained in hospital for several nights and, I suspect, discharged herself before she had fully recovered because she worried about leaving me alone. I failed the year and had to repeat it. When our Physics teacher later learnt why my performance had collapsed, he rebuked me for not telling him about it. It was his way of expressing sympathy. Poor Mr B died the following year from an AIDS-related illness.

Mother never fully recovered. Her blood pressure rose and fell unpredictably, and we tried not to upset her. Relatives moved back into the house, adding noise, expense and tension. I believed she needed one gentle person to help her, not an entire family. The crowds made me feel that I had lost my space, yet I feared voicing my resentment as it might send her back to hospital. My anger remained trapped inside until it contributed to another explosion.

As the State Examinations, our equivalent of matric, approached, I began thinking seriously about my future. I still loved T and took every opportunity to spend time with her, even as a friend, although her relationship with her fiancé was strong. I am ashamed to admit that I hoped they would separate. Yet even then I wondered whether she would ever choose me. She was one of the most popular and interesting girls I knew; I was obscure and awkward. Her fiancé seemed decent and treated me kindly. Perhaps he understood everything. Perhaps he simply felt sorry for me. But I now know that he was the best man for her, more than I could ever be.