Too Timid To Confess Love

Bundle Of Trauma

Bundle

Trau

Bundle of Trauma

Jones had a way of saying it to stir your emotion. But my upbringing never gave room for such emotion. Dear mom, I love you. And it's true.

Jones would say with naked naiveté. Like a little lad yet to wean. But he was twenty-six. Yes, Jones was that old. And yet he would address me as his mom when I could pass for his younger sister.

We had met at the botanical garden of the University of Ibadan where I read sociology.

Jones had called himself a sort of poet from the Department of Performing Arts. But he never allowed me to see his poems since, as he would indict me, I never believed him.

Not that I did not like Jones, I did. But, was it more than that? Jones had definitely wanted more.

Unfortunately I never believed in love. It existed for me only in marriage. You see, I was born rather a sick girl. And for that my mother hated me.

Unfortunately, I was an only formal child. I felt this filial hatred so much I never called her "Mum". But my father was Dad and the best Papa in the world.

Perhaps Papa was the only person I had loved in this world and, perhaps all the all love of my life had died when Dad had died. He had been literally nagged to a hypertensive end by my mother.

Dad had bequeathed everything he had to me alone. This had irked my mother so much that she had had to go back, finally, to Barbados her home, leaving me alone to whatever fate in the hands of fathers will and its executor.

You see, mother was a Nigerian who had married my mother way back, in the US.

The family had gone against this marriage, but my father must have loved my mother so much.

Now... Jones O Jones..That wintry Sunday morning. I was on this mound of rock in the botanical garden when suddenly the twangs of a box guitar broke the pervading silence.

The concomitant voice of the guitarist came along, cascading on a poetic terrain that was lamenting the loss of a beautiful child... instinctively my head moved to the rhythm of this unseen music.

But then it moved nearer and, the nearer it moved, the more involved I became suddenly I was on my feet, seized by this maddening paroxysm of an unknown, yet, telepathic lyric.

Then the music stopped at a dagger-point.

I froze, opened my eyes and confronted a shocked cherub, his practiced fingers stuck to the wires of his music box.

Why did you stop? I'd charged.

'I... I... don't know'.

'You've killed everything....'

'Sorry...but why ... you are extremely beautiful.'

Apart from my father nobody else had ever said that to me in the world it was the first time of hearing such a lovely statement from someone else.

I'd never viewed myself from the aesthetics. Not that I am ugly. But that phrase just didn't strike... the young man had moved closer and peered at my place as if to decipher some hieroglyphics... I felt like slapping him. But he'd asked:

'Is this pimple or a beauty spot?'

He was referring to the tiny mole on my face. In spite of my anger, I'd said:

'Daddy had called it the mark of God. I have another one on my body...'

'Really'! He'd burst into laughter. 'Wish I could see that one, too.' The tension had gone out of me.