“You are a liar, she is your girlfriend,” Maggie blurted. She was furious and pointed her forefinger into my face.

Caught unprepared this Friday evening in September, I stuttered, “No she isn’t.”

“Yes. She is not. Yet she would come here on a visit when she knew very well that I won’t be home, right?” She countered, her rage unabated.

“Look here Maggie, Abena is your friend and she is free to come here at anytime to look for you when she wants to,” I threw in my defence.

“Don’t tell me that,” she spat. “You men always do that when you are interested in your fiancée’s friends,” came her piercing accusation.

“Tell me Maggie,” I queried, “what proof do you have?”

I didn’t even complete the question and Maggie bellowed, “You know as a woman I can tell when I see a man who is interested in another woman.”

I looked at her, and my patience began to wear thin. I bit my tongue as I tried to speak, “but there is nothing to show that I love your friend.” I told her.

As if stung my insistence of innocence, she stormed out of the room and banged the door behind her and hissed, “you just wait, and you will see,” she threatened.

After she left, I slumped into a chair with my wide opened eyes gazing intently at the ceiling. So many questions began running through my mind. Why would my fiancée get suspicious of me and her closest friend of so many years? Has someone told her anything about us? Or it is good old jealousy that is eating at her?

Maggie and I have been in a relationship for over a year. I met and fell in love with her under very strange circumstances.

I was jilted by my fiancée of three years, after I have helped her to travel to the US through my influential uncle. Seven months after she had settled in the US, Becky wrote to me, and the content of the letter could send any weak hearted man to his grave.

She wrote:

My dear Kwame,

Although I love you, for all the time we have been together, I really never could tell if we could live together as man and wife. I have always thought you always get carried away by your emotions.

You easily feel sorry for people in distress, and you always show compassion for some women, especially my friends. You are always ready to help and you empathise with them whenever they are facing difficulties.

When you do, it makes me feel uncomfortable and edgy. I think it is dangerous if you keep on like that, because you could easily fall for any of them. And you know how I hate to share my man with any other woman, moreso, my friends.

Kwame, there are other things about you that I didn’t like, even though, I loved you so much, but I won’t bother my self to recount them here, because it would be futile to do so.

I have news for you. I am very sorry but I can’t help it. I want you to know that I have found somebody I truly love. Someone who possesses all the qualities I want in my man. I have found Mr. Right. I know this would hurt you, but I am very sorry I can’t help it.

May I inform you that we can’t marry any longer, you are therefore, free to look for another woman.

Thank you very much for all the help you gave me on my way here. I am also grateful to your uncle for his help, I shall surely reciprocate.

I am sorry, Kwame, but it’s time to say good bye.

I wish you good luck in your next attempt to get another woman.

Sincerely yours,
Becky.

Becky’s heart rending letter gave me such a hefty psychological blow that it took three months to actually start to recover from the shock.

The only way I thought I could sail through the painful experience was to find a church and belong to. I believed that I needed a caring and friendly environment to help me feel better and to be able to regain my self-confidence, and I thought the church was the right place to go.

I found a Pentecostal church and joined. I attended fellowship regularly.

And then I met Maggie at a Bazaar organized by the church at the Children’s Park. We got along so well on the grounds, and felt comfortable at first, chatting about almost every activity at the Bazaar. We settled to playing ‘Oware’, and then we talked, talked and laughed. Then we talked about ourselves. She told me something about herself that made me feel sorry for her.

“I live in a single room with my elderly brother.” She said. Maggie told me her brother was getting married soon, and she had to leave the room and find somewhere else to go. But she doesn’t have the money. She was still undergoing apprenticeship training in hairdressing, and their parents were both in their hometown over 600 miles away from Accra.

She told me that she asked her brother where she would live after he gets married, he told her that she was a woman and she could help herself.

I felt the brother was being inconsiderate. Why couldn’t he help to settle his own sister? I thought. That was how our friendship began. Maggie visited me a number of times and my interest in her began to develop. I began to feel much more comfortable when I am with her.

She was very good at conversations and I appreciated her sense of humour and thoughtfulness.

I must confess that I began to fall in love with her before I knew it, but was very careful to propose to her. I also felt restricted to do so because now I went to church regularly and I was becoming accustomed to a new culture of discipline and self control that the church encouraged.

Before I said anything to Maggie, I prayed about and discussed it with Paul, one of the young and dynamic leaders in the church. I told him about my experience with Maggie.

“That’s alright brother,” he said, “but you must pray hard about it.” He counseled. He added, “Kwame, it is easy to fall in love, and when you do, it is not easy to do the right thing all the time, but as a Christian, your only source of strength and guidance is to pray.”

I took his counsel alright, but I didn’t think that I prayed hard enough. I went ahead and proposed love to Maggie. She told me she was going to pray about it too. Because we were both new to the Pentecostal system, we agreed that praying about the relationship more than anything else was the right thing to do.

Meanwhile, my concern about her situation with her brother had been growing.

Three weeks later, even though I thought that was a long time, Maggie accepted my proposal.

Against all odds and advice, she moved in to live with me.

“You can now come over if you want since your brother’s wife has arrived.” I said to her.
The following evening she had moved in with her few belongings.

Life, I must say was smooth for us in the beginning. To avoid any sexual contact, I often slept on the floor while she took over the bed.

Try as we did, just three months after she had moved into my place, we began slacking in church attendance. Some concerned members visited to counsel, pray with and encourage us. And as they did, we simply told them we knew what to do, even though, I hardly knew if we were right, Maggie and me.

But suddenly things started changing for the worse, when her own close friend Abena began visiting us at home. As she told me, she feared I might fall for Abena.

“You know I can’t do that, Maggie,” I assured her. But as the days wore off, she grew more suspicious and skeptical about Abena and me. She grew so jealous that she could hardly sleep, the days following.

One evening I was home when Maggie returned. She barged into the room fuming.

“What is the matter with you?” I asked.

“Now you have crossed the line,” she bellowed.

“But why? What have I done to you?” I asked.

“Oh, so you want to know, what else do you want to know about Abena?” She snarled.

“But she is only your friend, isn’t she?” I retorted.

“That is what you will say. As for you men, you know no bounds at all! You are now going after my friend.” She blurted.

“That is not true. Whoever said that to you is lying,” I said defensively.

But Maggie would take none of these. She snapped and went out. And for three days I never saw her. I made frantic efforts to find her but to no avail.

On the fourth day, I returned home, opened my door, switched on the light and bang! What hit me was unimaginable. I was hardly ready for it.

My room has been emptied! Every piece of furniture, and electronic equipment, including some of my clothes were all gone. And lying on the floor was a piece of paper. I picked it slowly, and as I did I swallowed saliva to moist my drying throat.

Maggie left me a note saying she had compensated herself with my property because I have cheated on her.

“Oh Maggie,” I cried, “would you reward me with such a punishment after all that I did for you?”

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi
Email: edogbevi@hotmail.com