I fell irrevocably in love with you the summer you bought a new car. “New” being an overstatement because the contraption you brought to my house after months and months of saving might as well have been a death trap. It was a dingy thing that coughed out so much exhaust fumes that it was probably a significant contributor to Earth’s greenhouse gases. It was a miracle it even moved at all.
Still, you loved that road hazard. So much so that it only took you a couple hundred thousand kwachas and a month of constantly taking it to mechanics before you knew how to service it yourself.
On many weekends, I came to your house only to find you hunched over the open bonnet switching spark plugs because you said the car wasn’t pulling anymore. Or you would be under it, all grease and dirt stains, in a worksuit you took from your brother’s wardrobe, changing the oil filter yourself.
But some fixes still baffled you. Like when you blew your shock absorbers and driving in your car felt like being thrown in a concrete mixer. You had opened YouTube, eager to learn how to do it yourself, but I had convinced you to let a real mechanic do it instead.
That’s how you met Mthetwa. He worked for one of these backyard garages, and when you encountered a problem that you just couldn’t fix, you took your baby to him and only him.
He was a fine boy with bronze skin and wit that most people enjoyed but which, when looked at closely, was loaded with something slightly discomforting. Like when he told you, “A fine ass like that had no business being under a car and was better suited under something else.” Or when he sized me up and said he was glad I was a girl otherwise he would not know how to handle competing for your attention. I think he had always suspected something, so easily clocked that he and I, though sharing little else, shared the same desire for you. But his backwards views on how love worked did not let him accept what he could sense to be true, and so he pushed it away.
Mthetwa wasn’t like the scrawny boys you had dated before. He was huge with big hands, and you would go on and on about how those big and already dark hands were always smeared in grease. You would smile coyly when you told me about him, as if you didn’t expect me to notice the black smudges on your waist when you stretched and your top lifted.
That summer, we spent a lot of time eating ice lollies in your new car. The heat was unbearable even for Lilongwe. By some stroke of luck, the air con was one of the few things that worked smoothly. You would pick me up almost every afternoon, after you had done an odd job or two, and drive us to a small joint in the neighbourhood. There was a grocery store that sold over-diluted ice lollies which tasted like badly flavoured water more than anything, but at least they were cold, and so we sucked them for all they were worth. We would buy five each, park the car by the roadside, recline our chairs back and just talk.
“I’ve been applying for a lot of secretary jobs,” you said one time.
The day was scorching and despite working our way through the ice lollies and cranking the AC to its max, we were still drenched in sweat and lethargy. You were supposed to be tutoring your neighbour’s children that day, but you had called it off because “doing math with a brat in this heat was outright blasphemy.”
“I thought you hate office jobs,” I said.
“I do but lately I’ve been applying everywhere,” you replied, tracing a finger along the cracked edge of the dashboard. “There’s this graduate programme at some finance firm. Operations, I think. Or was it something in compliance? I don’t even know. I’m just grasping at straws now.”
You scrunched your nose, your shoulders sinking.
“I’m even considering taking the internship from that media place I got a call from. They’ll pay peanuts, I just know it. These start-ups. Just big dreams and small salaries.” You sighed. “But I need more money if I’m going to keep this tin can alive.”
You hit the dashboard and the car released a series of squeaks and squeals. You scoffed then reclined your chair. I followed suit.
“My gosh, this is not what I thought we would be doing after college,” you said after a moment. “But at least you are here.”
You turned to me and smiled. The same toothy grin you gave me when I first met you in our business communication class. I was late – a habit that followed me through our entire duration in that hellhole of a public university – and the only seat left in the class of 80 strangers was next to you. I still remember how you looked. Blonde braids that captured the sun and that straight, big, white set of teeth.
“Hie, welcome to the rest of our lives,” you had said, already so sociable and full of life.
Somewhere between borrowed assignments and shared deadlines, we became really good friends. Close in the ways that people in college become close. We swapped notes when one of us missed a lecture and studied together in the library until late. We lived in the same hostel for most of those four years and though we never shared a room, we shared almost everything else. My groceries were your groceries. My study notes your study notes. My pocket money your pocket money. And vice versa. We would even take turns cooking for each other in the communal kitchen – me, a fan of simple, practical meals that filled the stomach, and you, drawn to experiments and indulgences that had no rhyme or reason. We ate together. Woke each other up to get ready for the day and walked to class side by side. Our lives overlapped so completely it felt so natural.
I knew all about your life and you knew all about mine. Even back then you were a little boy crazy. You would come back from a string of dates and squeeze beside me in bed, eager to recount to me about John, or Chisomo, or Dalitso – who had said what, who had paid and who had let you pay (ew), and which of them you swore could really kiss like the men from Mills and Boons. I always listened, ignoring the dull, persistent thing that stirred in my chest. Maybe I had liked you even then. My own experiences with men in college had been disastrous, my attraction so low it offended them. They could sense it, the absence of wanting, and eventually I stopped trying altogether.
We graduated bright-eyed and optimistic. You with a distinction. Me with a credit. Fourteen months later, the optimism thinned. The economy had its teeth in us, and we were learning that jobs were neither as easy to find nor as shiny as we’d been promised.
This is not what I thought I’d be doing after college as well, but at least there was still a seat next to you.
“I should’ve become a doctor,” I said, half-jokingly. “Maybe then I could make my parents proud.”
“Your parents are already proud of you, neh,” you said. “Aren’t you in the last round of interviews for that NGO gig you’ve been vying for.”
“Every African parent’s dream – a daughter interning at some local organisation with the most generic mission statement,” I drawled, and it made you laugh, beautiful and bright.
“We will figure it out,” you said. “Especially you, I know you will. You always do.”
You glanced at me fondly. Your eyes still shone the way they always had. You still wore your hair mostly in blonde braids, the colour soft against your skin, but you’d grown prettier since college. You were so lithe now, all long limbs and sharp lines that made people look twice. I looked away first, suddenly too aware of the small, enclosed space between us, of how close we already were.
When it was time to go, my seatbelt refused to budge, the cheap mechanism sticking the way everything else in that car did. You laughed softly and reached across me to yank it free. Only you didn’t immediately go back to your seat. You lingered there, your lips so close to mine that I could smell the hint of the cold, diluted sweetness of watermelon on your breath. I wished you had leaned in closer. I wished I had been brave enough to grab the nape of your neck so I could pull your entire being into me and kiss you until the only thing you could remember was my name. God damn it – which he probably would – I wanted to run my hands across your back. I wanted to recline the chair again so that you could fall into me and I could know what being pressed against you so tightly felt like. But I was too much of a coward. You shook your head lightly, collapsed back into your seat before you let out an exasperated sigh and turned the ignition.
The next day, when you came to pick me up, you told me how you stopped by Mthetwa’s garage after you dropped me off to get the seat belt fixed. I felt the lump form in my throat as you told me you had pressed into his back when he was done fixing your car. Then you told me how he had taken you against the hood of it. I listened, the way I always had – with my heart clenched tightly in my chest. But this wasn’t the low, constant ache I’d learned to live with back in the hostels. This was something sharper and shattering. But like in college you did not notice my heart breaking.
“It was kinda dangerous,” you said. “There was a harshness in it and my gosh it was so hot.”
When we parked along the side of the road, I watched you giggle into your phone and knew I had lost part of you to him. You nudged closer, resting your hand on the armrest between the passenger and driver’s seat, our shoulders brushing. You tilted your phone toward me as you typed, saying, “Oh, look what he’s saying now,” or, “Oh my gosh, he’s so funny – don’t you think?” But even with the screen inches from my face, everything blurred. I sucked only one of those dumb ice lollies before I told you I felt sick and asked if we could go home. You frowned but proceeded to shrug.
“Well, I guess I can always hang out with Mthe,” you said before gesturing at the leftover melted ice lollies. “You think he would like these?”
I shrugged, not even having the heart to answer.
When you dropped me home, I went straight into my bed and cried until I slept. I grieved you the way one grieves something already dead. I knew something had shifted and that whatever we had been would never arrange itself back into place.
The next day, when you picked me up, Mthetwa was in the passenger seat. My seat. The sting came fast and sharp. He was beautiful. Even I had to admit it. All dark and glossy, built in that particular way only manual labour can manage. He smiled at me, and for what it’s worth it truly seemed genuine.
“Get in the back, Mthe,” you said, but I shook my head, already reaching for the door.
“It’s fine,” I said.
“There’s also space here in the front, though I’m a backseat guy myself,” he said, and you laughed at the insinuation.
The joke made me sick. It left a sour taste in my mouth that made me want to spit. I had always known there was something off about him. A sinister sort of confidence that enjoyed taking up space that didn’t belong to him. I stared out the window and said nothing.
You said you wanted to drive to the place where we always bought ice lollies, but Mthetwa scoffed and said they were awful, barely cold, not even that nice. He suggested a bar instead – some place nearby where a football game was already playing. You agreed easily, not even turning for my opinion. I stayed quiet.
Inside, the three of us ordered beers. He slid an arm around your shoulders, pulling you close and leaving me in the periphery. You and Mthetwa drank five between you. I drank only one very slowly until it turned warm and flat, already missing the awful sweetness of diluted fruit flavours. I didn’t know that when you dropped me off the previous day, that would be the last time we were ever going to buy those godawful ice lollies.
When the game was done and it was time to go, you dropped me off first.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” you said, smiling at me.
“Yah, see you.”
“Say bye to Mthe,” you said.
“Bye Mthe,” I said halfheartedly. If he noticed my lack of enthusiasm, he sure as hell didn’t show it.
Later that night you called me all giddy and breathless. You told me he hadn’t let you drive him home right away. He’d asked you to park on the side of the road instead, pulled you closer, and settled his arm around you.
“He said I was the coolest girl he’d ever met even though I fix my own car.”
“Even though?” I repeated.
You laughed but I found none of it funny. One of the most endearing things about you was how starry-eyed you were when it came to your car, so it offended me that anyone could take offence to that, no matter how slight. But you were too elated to care.
“Shush, I’m telling you something important,” you said.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Anyway, the finer details don’t matter, just know he asked me to be his girlfriend.”
You sounded like someone stepping into something new and shiny. There was a brightness to your voice that made me swallow my own heartache and bury every suspicion I had of Mthetwa. You were so happy and it was a lifting feeling that transferred to me. I loved you enough to be happy for and with you, and neither of us – not you, not me – could have guessed that three years later you would call me again to tell me he’d taken you, yet again, against the hood of a car.
By then you’re a secretary at some NGO and living with Mthetwa, who has opened his own chain of garages. He is well loved by your conservative family because he is tall and strong and christian. The car will be long gone. It coughed out its last fumes one day – a year and a half after you bought it – and just gave up on you in the middle of the road. You called me to pick you up by Bunda turnoff, and I towed it to Mthetwa’s garage where he broke it down and sold it for parts. You wept as if someone had taken your actual child and buried it in the ground alive. You got a new car after five months – one that was actually new and in good condition – and it’s the one on which he forces himself upon you. It’s the very one you use after the call to drive four hours to where I now stay and work in Zomba.
When you arrive, it’s close to two in the morning. Mascara streaks down your face. There are bald spots on your scalp where he yanked out a few of your braids. Your clothes are practically falling off your body.
“We should go to the police,” I say even though I already know it’s futile.
Both you and I know nobody will take you seriously. After all, he is your fiancé and you have been living with him for years. You shake your head.
“Please, I’m too tired. I just want to sleep.”
But when I guide you into my home you ask if you can use the bathroom. When I hear the shower start I put a shirt and sweatpants outside the door. You are in there for an hour, and long after I can no longer hear water, I press my ear to the door and hear your silent sobs. When you come out you ask if you can just sleep in my bed instead of the guestroom, and I let you.
By five, you have worn yourself hollow. You cry that you should have seen the signs. That you shouldn’t have laughed at his jokes. That you shouldn’t have told him that was how you liked it when the sex was too rough. That there were nights you wanted to ask him to go softer, slower, that you were tired.
I lie there listening to you cry as I map out the bruises where he touched you and the patches where you scrubbed your skin raw. When your breathing evens out and you start to snore, I open the drawer at my bedside. I pull out the gun I purchased when I first moved to Zomba, back when the paranoia of the very scenario you had found yourself in wrecked my brain every time I heard an odd sound in the night. I imagine leaving at that moment and driving all the way to Lilongwe. I imagine banging on his door, him coming out to ask, “What the hell is going on?” Me grabbing him by the nape of his neck and shoving the barrel into his mouth and pulling the trigger multiple times. The thought is vivid but useless and leaves me emptier than before. I put the gun away. I stay awake all morning, listening to you breathe, knowing there are some things love cannot undo.
I wish I could go back to a time when I did not think this. When I was only jealous of Mthetwa but did not want to kill him. When I only wanted to ask you to move in with me instead of him because I wanted you more than thirst wants water. When I did not have to listen to your parents calling you for days to tell you that you could not leave Mthetwa, regardless of what he did, because he’s a good man. When I did not have to drive to Mthetwa’s house with the gun in the passenger seat to get all your luggage and he had the nerve to ask me what he did wrong in that genuine way of his. When I did not have to hold your crying frame each night as you told me it would have been easier if you had just kissed me that summer. When I did not have to watch you become more and more subdued as I realised I had lost more parts of you to him. When I did not have to find you sobbing with my gun in your lap when I came home from work one day.
I wish I could go back to when we were just two girls in a beat-up car, eating terrible ice lollies. When you were telling me about getting a job and I was falling more and more in love.
*Photo by Mx Moritz on Unsplash