Chapter Two

He had a knock and tried to repress his frustration.

Ms Iyebiye, the sister he met on his way back from school, entered and was different almost. She freely lay on his bed and was even thinking how his room was unkempt and needed urgent attention. Anyway, she would volunteer herself to get the room tidy and clean. It had the bed she was lying on as the only comfort furniture—except the wooden back-chair at his reading table.

“God knows how much ages you’ve worn that.” She jeered at the small short he was wearing on. “Dirty boy,” she joked.

But that satirical camaraderie wasn’t what SonOfMan needed. He wondered with some spasm of pity if Ms Iyebiye realized how deeply he cared about his love to MyAngel. Nevertheless, he moved to her; very close that her face was inches from his. Then he drew her suddenly and kissed her lips.

“Ah!” she breathed.

“And that’s a pleasant one?” he said daringly.

“I know you’re not indirectly pressurizing me for sex?” she rather accused.

“But if you’re going to love me, Sweetheart, you’re going to do it.” He tried her exorbitantly.

“The wisdom of relationship is first of all chaste,” she pointed.

Of course that was a situation congenial to the expression of his self-restraint, but he insisted; “Still we’re going to need to take it to some next level.”

“Next level…” she intoned; “sounds like manipulative words men use to pressurize ladies into having illicit sex.”

Impractical almost; yeah, when he thought of his on-ground case with his fiancée. “Then you’ll need a relationship that is morally clean and respects your envious chaste sexual boundaries.”

“Of course, I won’t settle for anything less.”

Gawd, this was unfair! Why couldn’t he settle with a good skirt like this sister? He saw his sincere effort to have a worthy relationship failing again? This was the second of his miserable snafu, and compellingly his mind dragged him to some wrench of fiasco of love he had been subjected to. There had been something about her—something about this paramour that was real different from any other. And he had dangerously believed in her.

Aye, the miserable tears had come when he had to face the truth that he would never see to it he married this lady he had so much loved. Her love had been such redemptive love that he had cried for something to be rescued from the wrecked of his dream. He had known that what struck was gruesome, because his heart was grievously bartered. Yeah, for Lady Telma, he had lamented—

Maybe SonOfMan knew what to do now. Maybe this was what he had to do now; leave this sister here and find some spot—some palliative rollicking spot.

En route to Akure, SonOfMan had allowed one cyclic thing; his troubled mind occupied it. It was the sorrowful mistakes of his youthful mischief—like the one he did to the intimate promise that was rendered to a tender heart of a defenceless sister. Jenifa was her name; a school girl who was his buddy. He had offered himself to her the day he still lost her. The unbelievable day she was expensively the fairy god-mother to his plight with the school authority. It was actually a touching issue of loss of a caring saviour of the day and tender love of the moonlight night.

Of course, moonlight night of sacrosanct promises. Inviolable promises not to be forgotten. But God should plead his case; there were mitigating circumstances. He was only thirteen, and had to lose her to far away town for years.

Then Madonna came up; she was cutesy, and loved him dearly. But they had to part their ways when they graduated from the school that brought them together.

Jenifa was still nowhere to be traced, so Madonna had come into the scene again. But now she was a chancer, and this and other things made him lose his humanitarian conscience about making her a miserable antagonist to another sister that he used to call Franz. Franciska was so fetching though she had deadpan attitude towards boyfriendship, because of her unsophisticated view about sex. But beyond her power, and against her ethics, Franciska fell in love with him and realized that she had all along loved him to take her there. Yeah, she had needed him for her well-preserved pricey virginity. He was highly worth it maybe, as he himself was yet to experience canal knowledge.

Franciska was Madonna’s significant rival, and though Madonna had unbeatable qualities, all he had cared was that Franz was equally graceful. She loved him and he knew she would make a good wife. He had measured the magnitude of his involvement into their relationship, it was a hell of a noose around his neck, yet he promised and kept her believing with every wish that he would keep up to it.

But did he actually? No! Another sister, who said her name was Chrixtabel, had distracted and disrupted this sincere pledge. She was the fanciable lady he met en route to Ibadan for his O’ level exams. She was the strange lady that had sprouted his natural tendency to behave in a particular way about her—with a certain sense of déjà vu that really gave him crazy calculating. She was discreet, reserved and sensible; because she was mysteriously phony.

Meanwhile, when they alighted at the terminal park, he had followed her in order to break her complication—and she was less enamoured with him pestering and tracing her. And she was going to charge him for stalking, and even signed the pledge of hitting his face as deterrence. Anyway, cupid—the god of love—favoured him and brought the opportunity he kissed her soft lips under happy circumstance.

Though that wasn’t enough; she took him to an inn where she had wanted to explain something that he didn’t know about her, and needed to know—but her excessive unwarranted green-eyed references to his past, made him to find her intolerably obdurate—and he critically closed her case.

Well, he said Chrixtabel was mysteriously phony—and she was this transcendentally. She was Chrixtabel by her name, but gracious Gawd, he found out incidentally she was Jenifa!

Jenifa—the tender school girl of sacred promises he had violated.