The Methodist

Part One

When it rains, it pours and it would be perfect (a cliché but perfect nonetheless) if this scene could be set at night in the pouring rain; except, in Ghana, the rains are not prone to just show up (or down) unannounced and more so because this scene happened one dusty afternoon, smack dab in the middle of the dry, disheartening Harmattan.

There might be no rain drops to mix in with our heroine's tears and wet her hair so she looks like a dejected soaked rat (that wouldn’t work anyway since her afro would defy gravity and evade the look altogether). But the lack of easily recognizable visuals does not take away from the gravity of the pain she feels in this moment.

In this moment, she is standing outside her workplace and not lying in a disconsolate heap on the ground only because her brain retains only enough function to keep her on her feet. She works (used to work) at a big name advertising firm that is recently losing ground and customers to newer, smaller, quicker and invariably cheaper advertising firms. She works in Campaign Strategy, which is a department she almost single-handedly built for the firm when she joined 3 years ago.

It was a department solely meant to research the best strategy for a product and test it on a small scale before presenting it to the client. She headed it with three subordinates and together they researched, interviewed, planned and executed. The problem was that most companies came in on the spur of the moment and always wanted things “done yesterday”, failing to understand that the best results take time.

There had been rumours going around the office about the downsizing due to the low client turnout and general downward slump of the economy. She shouldn’t have been so hard hit by the news of her forced indefinite leave. It would seem that she feels it all the more because of the heart-breaking events of the previous night.

She dares not process that news for fear of losing brain function altogether. There is only one thought making the rounds in her head; “how do i live now?”

She had just paid the last of the felonious two year rent advance on a two bedroom apartment and the next two month’s salary was supposed to go into kitchen essentials, furniture and other necessities. But the next two month’s pay is now just an idea.; the company could only manage half a month’s severance pay and promised the other half by the end of the next month.

Our heroine is a woman of tears (they show up at anytime for any number of reasons; she could be doing laundry and encounter an especially stubborn stain which would bring tears to her eyes or she could see a random person helping a school child to cross a busy road and well up with tears) but very few people have seen her cry. The certain square of her shoulders and the almost non-challant line of her back belie the tumult of emotions that constantly rage just beneath the surface. 

People prefer the nonchalance. They find it easier to deal with because it is in tandem with her lean, poised physique. She learned to keep it in the fore when she discovered in secondary school that nobody knew how to handle the sobbing, lonely mess that she is inside.

The woman she has become will not allow her to show her panic so she quietly hails a cab to take her to her new, empty home which is quite close to her office because she wanted to be able to get to work earlier without losing sleep. The best laid plans...

In her apartment, she stands in the middle of the emptiness that would be the living room holding a box of her belongings from work; probably the only things she now owns. Going back to her mother’s home is out of the question. She wouldn’t even if they begged her; her mother and her step-father. He always made her skin crawl and she couldn’t have left the house fast enough when her mother finally married him a year ago after two children and over a decade of courtship..

She understood that her mother needed a companion (why this particular companion remained a mystery to her).

Her birth father is not dead but she doesn’t know where he is and she doesn’t really want to know. She has always felt alone, being the only child from her mother and father’s union and living with her mother and step-father’s children who were almost a decade younger than her.

Loneliness is a comfortable space for her; she had, in fact, reached a point where she craved it. Well, that point no longer exists. Not after she met Chaney, who is the first part of this rainstorm.

Chaney with his understanding eyes and his gentle heart. Chaney who seemed to be the manifestation of her every wet dream and her every requirement. Chaney who is at the moment about to get married to his childhood friend because in a moment of passion, he got her pregnant. Chaney; a part of her life for a split, glorious second, and a near miss to reminisce about for the rest of her life.

The thought of Chaney with another woman while she stands alone in an empty 2 bedroom apartment is her unraveling. Finally, her strong mind buckles under the weight of her sorrow and she falls into a heaving, sobbing mess on her bare, would-be living room floor.

No family, no money and no companion. How is she going to live now?