REDEMPTION ON A BUS

Sometimes catching feelings is not a choice. Time and chance arrange it. They meet at a corner and plot how your life will be turned upside down by that one encounter with that one person. The feelings are numerous and grow to become a being, a landmark of your life. Your landmark was grade 11. In that dirty classroom with bubble gum under every desk you discovered that your heart could beat fast for a person who wasn’t Usher. This person walked into the classroom casually unaware that they were walking into your life. You cannot remember what he wore or what he really looked like then but you remember the steady eye contact, the gaze that made him sit in the desk right behind yours. The days that followed strained your neck because you enjoyed looking back at his even when you had nothing to say. Your eyeballs just enjoyed him. You looked at his handwriting, you asked him what his name meant, you asked about his past, you asked and asked and asked. In grade 11 he was your favourite subject, he was unlike anything you had ever known and you were eager to know why. He left your school that very year because that is what he did; he hopped in and out of schools the way he hopped out of girls’ hearts. Eventually you stopped writing your name next to his at the back of your note book. He proved you were human and there was more to life than just Usher.

Time and chance orchestrated your meeting with Nkosi. You know because he never left your mind completely after your brief encounter. As a certified late bloomer your breasts came in after high school and brought with them a line of suitors. So you weren’t a boy! Boys looked at you, creepy men offered you a ride or asked for your number and nice guys looked at your face when you laughed. You ran into Nkosi one day at the Government Complex but you were ten minutes late and couldn’t stop to chat. He looked at you, he really looked at you. He took your sun dress in and inhaled the scent you left behind when you walked away. You knew in that moment that he knew you were not a boy. It’s his look that stayed with you. That memory resisted when other memories dared to wash it away.

There could have been a time when you could have met and had a wild one night stand and gotten over it unscathed. There could have been a time when you could have met to smoke weed and grind in the sweaty corners of Lusaka clubs. There could have been a time when you could have had a love affair marked by salacious sex, tequila shots and car rides to far off places. Instead, time and chance kept you apart, leaving your chance encounters as landmarks of the different phases of your lives. When you want to fill a cup with water but all that comes out is random drops, one gets anxious to fill the cup. The chance encounters with him filled you with anxiety, every single time you saw him you just wanted to see him again and again so that you could fill your cup. You have many mutual friends; it was surprising that you never met. He always arrived at a party when you left, once you got diarrhea and couldn’t make it to a dinner and when you saw the pictures afterwards he was there in every one of them. Time and chance kept you apart, preserving you from the stains of life. 

Life stained you. Your love life quickly compiled itself with men who had seen your lingerie collection but never the cotton briefs you wore when you were being yourself. You got stained by people who didn’t understand you, friends who didn’t know how to build you, so they helped in tearing you down. Life became a cycle of emptiness; missing classes, random vacations, short dresses, eager ugly men with handsome wallets. You felt like you were on a treadmill; moving fast and getting exhausted but staying stuck in the same place with the same view.

It is easy to remember the last time you felt alive. The irony lies in the occasion. It was your baby brother’s funeral and you hadn’t comprehended the exact magnitude of death. At only ten years old your father asked you to read the bible verse at the service. You didn’t want to stand in front of all those people but you wanted to please your father. You saw him cry the previous night and you wanted to do anything to make him happy again. The bible was massive with a huge font. You walked up to the pulpit and your hands trembled but when you started to read the verse you felt calm. Goosebumps quickly covered your smooth skin but they didn’t come because you were afraid; they came because you felt alive and rightly placed.

Time and chance are always meddling, always giving equal opportunity and silently steering you into your path. Firstly, they made sure your classmate invited you to church. Secondly, they made sure she bought you lunch so you couldn’t say no. Then they allowed you to drink your fill of vodka the day before. You were sitting in the pew feeling like everything was too bright, feeling like the choir was singing too loud and the air conditioning was broken. Every part of you was hang over and you wanted to smack your classmate for inviting you and yourself for not saying no. Your classmate was eager and chatty but your mouth was dry and you were scared to speak and wash her in your vodka breath. The preacher was younger than the rusty men from your family church. His suit was fashionable and he didn’t crack old people jokes. When the sermon ended you felt okay. So the next Sunday you went again. Church gave you somewhere to wear your fancy dresses and heels. On a normal Sunday you saw Nkosi. It took you a while to register because he seemed different. He looked you right in the eye and you felt it. You wanted to smile and walk up to him but a petite, gorgeous lady appeared on his right side and you still don’t know why but you gave him a tight lipped smile and walked passed them. You just knew that they were a couple.

From that Sunday you started to see him every Sunday. Your heart still beat hard against your rib cage but you kept your tight lipped smile and walked past him. The feeling became a part of you. You managed to live with it successfully. Having feelings for Nkosi was like having an emotional disability. You were able to do everything and feel everything except there was a small corner in your heart where the feelings for Nkosi sat and because they sat there nobody else could access that small corner. Everyone else could make you feel all kinds of things but only he could make you feel those things that sat at that corner of your heart. Time and chance allowed the feelings to develop and become a senseless mass of immature longing and yet they never gave you the chance to know why they existed. Having feelings for Nkosi was like cancer. The feelings just existed and grew with no real reason. Nkosi’s girlfriend is devoted, amazing and right. Even on days when you search for one thing that is wrong with her you wind up empty. Even if it ended, you doubt you’d make an apt replacement.

There was a church delivery to be made and Nkosi was supposed to go with her but she had a family emergency. They followed alphabetical order and picked the next name on the list; yours. Nzila. You heard your name and you couldn’t believe it. You spent the entire night wondering what you’d wear before you decided to be true to yourself. You always travelled in shorts and flip flops because your feet swell. When you arrived at the meeting spot he looked genuinely excited and he was also wearing shorts and flip flops. You got into the bus and anticipated awkwardness but it did not come. Instead conversation flowed seamlessly, one topic blending into another. Silence was marked with comfort and cute stares. It was like he was yours but he wasn’t. It was natural for him to make you laugh, for you to give him what he needed. The trip was long and you actually got to know each other. Your cup of him was filling and running over. The feelings you were sure would expire once your cup was full only got stronger.

Redemption comes in different forms. Sometimes it is the very thing that you want to steal that teaches you about ownership. He doesn’t have high walls guarding himself. He hasn’t forgotten how to love. In his vulnerability you see strength. He isn’t afraid to hug, to be hungry or to cry when he is hurt or moved. He plays with crying babies until they laugh. You sit in the bus and gossip then he is consumed with guilt because gossip is wrong. You laugh at everything and nothing. You can tell he aches to touch you in the way a man touches a woman. He consciously looks away when you accidentally show too much thigh or cleavage. He doesn’t lustfully feast on your feminine form with his eyes, instead he appreciates it. You listen when he talks about his girlfriend. He doesn’t say only the good things, he mixes the good and the bad and his words have the undertone of commitment and devotion. Maybe you have carried these feelings for him so that you’re positioned to see that not everyone breaks hearts and selfishly takes from love. You’re so exposed to the darkness, being around him shows you that there is light.

After the trip you ache. You ache everywhere. Your body aches from sitting on the bus for forty eight hours but it is your heart that aches even more for tasting something you can’t swallow. Why not? The voice in your head that says this is upbeat and hopeful. You are an expert at being alone. You know how to handle your battles, your everyday life and you know how to be a third wheel. It is those beautiful days that make you wonder what it would be like to have someone intricately woven into your life and beating with your pulse; someone to move with, someone who feels rightly placed.

Being with him creates an expectation within you. The kind of expectation that believes that all things are possible and tells you that all the things you wonder about will be a reality.