...WHEN I WAS A LITTLE YOUNGER, A LITTLE SMALL, AND A LITTLE FOOLISH

...Mirth. Mirth. Uncontrollable mirth... from her. Amidst it all she says...

                “Why are you always attacking that one... always on that one?” Mirth. “You’re making this other one jealous...” Mirth. More hysterical laughter. She was enjoying our pillow-talk too much. As always.

                “Awwwh! It’s unintended,” I blurted to the other one. “It’s not my intention to make you jealous or anything... I jus’ love your sister more. She’s my favourite one.”

                Tess was lying on her back, still laughing wildly as I continued to gnaw at her left breast and nipple. It was my favourite one of the two.

                “Seriously,” she said, trying to stop laughing and talk serious, “why do you prefer that one? I’m perfectly made, the two are the same size and texture...” Her temporary seriousness gave way to fresh bouts of preposterous mirth. An amiable girl she was.

                “The two aren’t the same,” I argued, “that one’s funny... like there’s a stone inside it or something. It’s not very sweet to touch...”

How could I tell a girl that?!

                “Stone?” Tess suddenly grabbed her right breast, her face changing instantly. She squeezed it roughly.

I wanted to chide her for treating such a vital commodity as breast anyhow but found she wasn’t smiling anymore. She hit my hand off the left one, squeezed it. She shoved me aside and got up. She wore her shirt hurriedly, and her pants. Grabbed her keys from the table...

                My name is Farouk; I know you won’t believe it, but never mind. I was twenty-two years and two months old. Tess was twenty-three and seven months. To anyone who cared to listen, I was always eager to point out that age is just a number... Tess older than me didn’t mean anything; I was still the man! And I hated it when Tess attributed my little faults to my youth and inexperience... as if hundred-year old men are perfect.

                One day I hit her, so she’d know that, even though I was younger, I was the stronger. The best moments of my life, so far, were when Tess cried, and fell helplessly into my arms... I soothed her, and was generally her pillar of strength. But when she was all happy and gay she forgot how like a little child she was in my arms whiles ago.

                At twenty-two you don’t really know what love is all about. Nonetheless, I told Tess I loved her; many times. She always told me to shut up, that I didn’t know what I was saying. I felt like strangling her. I believed... she was fond of me... liked me... and was waiting for me to get older so she could love me. But that, before then, she had to keep me anyhow... She often said she owed me no explanations on how she lived her life, but she got jumpy whenever I hung out with Odinaka or other girls. Call her possessive and you mightn’t be wrong. Tess was confusing me. And the day she pushed me off her just before we’d had sex was another confusing scenario from our affiliation.

                She was a pampered child; but she wasn’t quite spoilt. She always boasted to me about that... that other girls in her position would go rotten before they were even eighteen, but that she had her head intact. The daughter of a business tycoon who was always out of town... she had a car; the only daughter of a woman who had died... she was special to her dad. She and her half-brother hadn’t spent up to a cumulative one year together in their entire lives. His mother made sure he avoided her. And their father could afford to situate both parties in separate opulent homes. The few times he was in town, he usually was at his living wife’s, leaving Tess with tons of domestic staff, and me.

                Tess had been teaching me to drive... I would face my biggest test on that day.

She walked hastily out of her room and I followed, wondering what the matter was. She went straight to her car and got in on the passenger’s side. I went to bend by the window... for some explanation maybe. She handed me the keys, and I went round sheepishly and got in on the driver’s side.

                “Drive!”

                “To where?”

                “I’ll show you. Just drive!”

I started the ignition.

                “Are you alright?” I asked her.

When she said nothing I added “You’re not wearing a bra o?!”

Nothing.

                I drove like the amateur that I was, but Tess was never ruffled by the fear that I might get us killed. She just wore a steady gaze and kept her eyes on the road. When I hit potholes I observed her breasts jumping under her shirt with the corner of my eye. She pointed out directions and we ended up in a hospital.

                She got out of the car and walked briskly into the building. Maybe it wasn’t obvious, but I was concerned her breasts were not sheathed. I stayed back in the car.

Thirty minutes went by, and there was no sign of her. I went after her, taking the direction she took. Not knowing where she entered, I couldn’t find her. I tried to call but her number was switched off. I hovered around the walkways for a while, staring at people... I saw a bunch of women with little babies... like twelve of them, so I thought they had a match or something. One of them had a baby and was heavily pregnant at the same time. I was like... Whoa! Cruel husby! Maybe when she was six months pregnant with the baby she was now carrying, her husband waylaid and rammed her with another bowl of spermatozoa. So a new foetus got hot on the heels of the advanced one. This one she was pregnant with now... could be eight months and there was another two months... in that same... womb. Baby tap; turn it on and you have babies flowing. What did I say? Cruel husby!

I loitered to another lobby and I saw a bunch of heavily pregnant women milling about the place. Then I knew for sure they had a match with the nursing mothers. The pregnant nursing mother would be the Ref.

I sat at the reception for a while. My eyes caught those of a pretty girl sitting a long way from me. We now wanted to see who was going to win the look game... who’d look away first. She won abeg! I didn’t want to hit anything off with no hospital patient. What if we were both terminally ill and had only months to live? What then? What if one or both of us had AIDS?

Gory sights. Gory sights. Gory sights. Anyone who came to the hospital must be sick. Even those who came healthy bringing sick ones, seeing all these gory sights, they’d be sicker than all.

I waited a little longer but saw no sign of Tess so I went back to sit in the car. It’d now been an hour since she went in.

                Soon I saw a nurse approaching. She’d looked around like she was searching for this car. She came to the car and asked if I was Farouk. With all the fear in the world I nodded. She handed me a note, scribbled in Tess’ handwriting... asking me to go drop the car at her house and go, that she would see me later.

                “Is she alright?” I asked the nurse in visible freight.

                “Oh, she’s very fine. There’s no cause for alarm,” she assured me. “Take care now!”

She left.

                Fear or anxiety immobilized me. I couldn’t move for a while. It took thirty minutes before I could. Then I started the car and left... to do Tess’ bidding. I dropped her car off and went home. One of the maids had asked me where she was....

                Everyday I tried to call Tess but her phone was switched off; so I was told. A week later I went to her house to look for her. That silly maid attacked me, saying I was the one she was last seen with... that I was the one took her away. They’d been looking for her. Fortunately for me, her dad came home that evening, and asked them to leave me alone... that Tess wasn’t missing. He entered the house slowly and I followed him. He didn’t know me. His strides were measured. I didn’t know if he walked slowly because he had a burden in his heart or if they were the natural steps of wealthy men.

                “You’re Tessy’s friend?” he asked, not turning to look at me.

                “Yes sir!

Where’s she sir?”

                “Don’t worry, she’ll be alright...” the man said tiredly; yawning even.

                “What’s wrong with her?” I asked him, deeply concerned.

He turned one-eighty degrees to face me...

                “Go home young man,” he said, with finality in his tired tone. Then he turned and slowly walked on upstairs.

I stood there and watched him disappear into his room. I knew where his room was. I walked slowly out of the living room, like one defeated in battle. When I got outside, I noticed the domestic staff were as confused as I was. They watched me as I walked, and watched the direction of the man’s room.

                As I left I thought many things... chief among them was HIV. I’d go get tested. If fear would let me.

                I kept trying to call Tess. One month... two... I thought she had died.

                I often went alone to the Lakeside where I’d shared priceless moments with Tess to just gaze at the water.

Water, Da Vinci said, never moves of its own volition, except when it falls. True. The surface of a water body is moved by winds, underneath, it’s stagnant. May be true too. These were Da Vinci’s postulations. This water was near black. We used to call this place our spot. We believed it held answers that we sought, because, when in our relationship we came to the sex question, we’d got our answer from this place. It was Tess suggested we came to the Lake to find out if we should ‘engage’. We’d come, and looked attentively within the water for the answer, but it was without we got it. Horses grazed solitarily on the lawns; but a supernatural wand commanded one male one to track down one female one, and the show began. Horse show! It was when they cried I saw them. I thought Tess’ eyes and mind were in the water, but they were up on a tree where two birds were making out. I had to follow the line of her sight to know. I smiled, remembering what I’d once read from a British poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley:

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the Ocean;
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things, by a law divine,
In one another's being mingle.
Why not I with thine?

Nudging Tess, I said...

                “Every creature in the world is making out in pairs... why not you and I?”

She laughed dryly and I didn’t know what that meant.

                We stayed at the Lakeside, silent for like another hour. Then we went in her car to her house. In her room, we fumbled to nudeness. I saw a smirk on her face and I knew she was ridiculing my JT... or maybe I was wrong. The thing was healthy as it should be. We pushed her packed luggage off the bed, and lay down; we were like... ‘Let’s do this!’. She was prepping for a trip soon.

                A friend of mine had taught me to, whenever I didn’t know what else to do with a nude woman, to just keep nibbling at her nipples. Said she’d keep moaning and I’d always be the man, even if I be spineless and ‘dickless’. For the most part, that was what I did that evening. And that was the night I fell in love with her left breast over her right. Sixteen months ago.

It’s a whole fourteen months later I’d say why I preferred her left breast. That’s one year and two months.

                In these two months of Tess’ disappearance I’ve been to the Lakeside seven times. Alone. I was always thinking about her... of what might have happened to her. Sometimes, I felt I was in her company and I conversed with the air. That was when I started to think I really loved her. But then again I was also thinking I was going insane. So the next time I was to go to the Lakeside I hoodwinked Odinaka into accompanying me. It just occurred that I wanted to go there sometimes, but now I didn’t want to go and behave like a lunatic to myself.

                After Tess, Odinaka was my next choice for a girl. But, Odinaka, as I sensed, wanted to be all or nothing to me. She was trying so hard to hate me and quit being my friend since I’d chosen Tess over her.

We were sitting on the grass. I was battling with Tessic thoughts in my head. Odinaka was restless, not seeing any sense in our queer picnic. It seemed she wanted to leave.

Then she nudged me...

                “Why did you bring me here?” she said angrily, and stood up. “You know, sometimes I really do think you’re sick!”

She started storming away. I called after her but she wouldn’t stop; until the voice of the one she’d seen called. I turned to the other direction. Tess was walking up to Odinaka... to tell her she wasn’t staying... that I was all hers... she could keep me... But the angry girl shrugged her off and went away, saying she had better things to do. And she swung her pretty hips from side to side.

                Through the drama, I was busy watching Tess. Where did she emanate from? And why was she dressed like... this? Baggy jacket; Tess of all people! It didn’t go with the pants she wore at all. Was she cold?

                Tess came and stood before me. I wanted to sit back down but her mysterious gaze held me up. So we just stood there, staring at each other. I with my raw eyes, she hidden behind her shades. Then I thought I saw her chin twitch... a smile or something. What nerve!

                It was minutes before any of us said anything. It was her.

                “I’m sorry for interrupting your happy time with your new girl.”

                “You really are a jerk,” I said sternly, “if a girl can be that!”

                “I’m sorry. And not just for this, but for everything...”

She was looking sullen, and I felt she wanted to cry; only her shades wouldn’t let me know for sure. But then it became very obvious. Tess bawled.

                “Oh... what’s the matter baby?”

She was my baby now; she usually was when she cried; but my boss when she was bright and sober. I held her but she moved away. She said she was sorry; that she only wanted to come and go on her own terms... rather than have me come over to the hospital or the house and ‘leave’ her there. That if I came, whenever I left, no matter the circumstance, it’d feel like ‘leaving’ her. She wanted to be the one to leave... if at all. (I would catch her drift soon)... if I was still game – if I really loved her – I’d come after her. Tess opened her jacket for me, and she had no other top covering. My favourite breast was standing alone – the only breast now. The right one had been evacuated. All there was now was a healing wound on a flat surface. It was ugly. I was dazed. I rushed to cover her up when I came to realisation. I held her to sit; then the story began...

                ...it had grown malignant and, to save her life, a surgical evacuation of her right breast was the only option. In those two months of her absence, Tess had been to the US, done the surgery, recuperated, and came back.

                She was only five when her mother died; and she’d heard it was breast cancer but she’d never really asked questions... in part because she had no one to ask; and in part because her dad’s new wife made it look like witchcraft. That same cancer was going to kill Tess too, cuz she’d heard nothing of self breast examination and all that. It had to take our carnal posturing to sin for her to learn something was amiss... And then it took a tad too long or the cancerous undergrowth would have been nipped in the bud, and all her breasts would be intact.

                Tess cried.

                I cried.

                “What comes easier to me is to hate you... for pointing out your observation so late. But then I know it’s gratitude I should feel: you didn’t point it out too late... you saved my life B. The doctors said two more weeks was all it would have taken for it to spread to my other breast and into the rest of my body. And to think that after that day we went to the hospital, I was to travel to the UK to see my aunt, planning to spend the entire Summer there... I might never have come back... alive.”

She sobbed some more, then said...

“You saved my life Farouk, you really did.”

Then she cried herself to her feet and started making her way to the parking lot about a hundred and fifty yards away. I watched her leave, too stunned to speak or move.

                Was I going to return to her? Maybe. Maybe not.

I wondered if Odinaka checked her breasts regularly; or if I had to go and also help her find out. I wonder if every girl practices self breast examination... taking all those steps... nude before a full-length mirror. If not, only when your breast is gone would you know its importance. Or when you die...

                In relating with me, Tess is easily on the defensive these days. Maybe that easier thought takes sway. She’s mad at me for pointing out so late that there was a lump in her breast.

If that’s the case, well, she can’t keep blaming me. It was three years ago... I was a little younger, a little small, and a little foolish. Not my fault; no; not at all!