Simps Will See Dust 07

As I watched Brenda approach me, clad in her white satin lab coat, my heart raced in my chest. Try as I would, I had never quite gotten used to her beauty, her grace, or her mien. My eyes hurt, so did my heart. After the phone call we had had that night, she could not be the same beautiful Brenda I was in love with, not anymore, yet she was. I hoped I could blind myself from taking in the intensity of her womanly features, but I couldn’t. Her beauty was clearly meant to torture everyone of her acquaintances, especially those of us who desired her but clearly, would never have her. I couldn’t help but relish in her beauty, though I now knew that I despised her, or wanted to. When Brenda walked up to me yesterday evening, her requesting to have a phone call with me later that night was not something I would ever have envisioned. Just a few moments before that, I had never in my life asked any lady out, and when I finally did, I had misdirected the question and so asked the wrong lady out. When I told my wife about this incident years later, she said that I had done that to make Brenda jealous, for there was no sane man in the world who could ever, even if accidentally, ask the wrong lady out. But after all, I knew that I hadn’t been sane. You could not be in love as I was, and still be sane.

I wondered whatever it was that she wanted us to speak about on phone, the fact that I could not think about anything the phone call could be about made me shudder, but in its own strange way, also a little excited, only that afterwards I would have more of the former and less of the latter. Maybe my love for her was finally doing its thing; I was finally winning Brenda over bit by bit. But today, while I looked at her, I loathed her. There was something despicable about her beauty. How could she? How did it happen? When? It could not be this Brenda; it could not be the lady I loved, the lady I adored from my first encounter with her in first year, the lady I hoped everyday that one day would be mine. It had to be another Brenda; not this beautiful, kind, quick-witted and principled lady. This one knew what she wanted, she knew what she was working towards. This Brenda could not be pregnant! I could not accept it. I could not believe it.

“You are looking at my belly, Henry” she said pitifully, waking me from my reverie. Tears were welling up in the corners of her eyes, and she was clearly putting up a determined struggle to keep them from flowing down her cheeks. I didn’t know whether it was pity or rage I was supposed to feel at that moment. My life had been so simple until that moment when I came to that horrible awakening. I had lived simply, my life consisted of nothing aside my academics and Christian Union. I was a man in love, occasionally sick because of it. I was principled, or at least I thought I was, and then suddenly, I was an accomplice in a scandal. One I did not want to believe but had to anyway. Where was the world angling to? I knew I would never see any lady in the same light again. I hated that I would now always be suspicious, fearing that they were always up to something. If Brenda could get herself pregnant, every other lady might as well as have had. In that moment, I felt that misogynistic urge to punish every other lady for Brenda’s crime but I made every effort to stifle it.

“Does Ashley know about this?” I asked reaching into my pockets to get my handkerchief. Why was I even crying! I hated myself for all the pity I felt when it should have been rage. “She should never know.” “What!” I gasped, “Ashley is your closest friend, you have no secrets, you told me so yourself.” “Every lady has her secrets, Henry.” She was calm, but her eyes darted in distress. “What’s the meaning of that?” I asked struggling to keep it at a whisper. “I wouldn’t be able to look at her again, she can never know. Please Henry.” “For how long would it remain a secret?” “I don’t know Henry,” she was about to cry. I would have asked what her intentions were, whether she meant to keep the baby or not. Was there any other options other than keeping the baby? I couldn’t bear to think it! But then, soon her belly would start showing. She turned and walked towards the Pediatric wards, her steps were still confident, her strides graceful. No one would have thought she was a devil, that she could be so loose. But was she?

I bit my lower lip and sighed. I was in deep mire, and I couldn’t move lest I made a mess. For how long would I keep the secret? Njoroge would certainly find out, I couldn’t hide it from my roommate for long. I followed her briskly. “Brenda.”