SHORT STORY

Redeeming love Short story by Ananiya Alick Ponje She had been standing there by the roadside for the past two hours and she was about to give up when a white Toyota Corolla abruptly pulled up a few metres from where she was standing. Hurrying towards the car, she beamed radiantly. She opened the other door and sat on the passenger’s seat nonchalantly. “Good evening,” the driver of the car greeted her as the car surged forward and caught speed. “Good evening.” She looked at his pencil moustache furtively and sat back. “So where are we going now?” “You mean you have picked me up without knowing where to take me to?” she asked, her tender voice sounding as though it had been slightly magnified through a megaphone. “Well, I’ve been seeing you standing where I picked you up for a number of nights,” he said. “And therefore I suppose you know why I stand there.” “Of course I do,” he replied as he jammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a cyclist who was crossing the road recklessly. “Would you mind if I take you to my house?” The words came out of his mouth firmly. She remained silent and he took that silence to mean consent. “By the way, I’m sorry for not introducing myself in the first place. My name is Joseph Soko. You can call me Josey,” he said in a clipped way. She almost said she was meeting so many people that she could hardly find time to memorise his name but she thought better of it. “I’m Lucille and my friends call me Lucy.” Within a short time, the car drew up in front of a stately mansion belonging to Joseph. They both climbed down and walked towards the front door. Taking a bunch of keys from his breast pocket, Joseph unlocked the door and ushered Lucille in. They sat in opposite armchairs. “Welcome to my place,” said Joseph as he picked from the shiny coffee table a copy of that day’s Top-rated Medium. “So far so good.” “Well, I think I’ve to inform you in advance that I no longer spend nights at people’s houses. I usually have plenty of appointments to honour, so you have to be time-conscious,” said Lucille, looking at her wristwatch. “It’s now three past seven and I think it would do me a world of good if I left before nine.” “Look here, Lucy, the fact that you don’t spend nights at people’s houses is the more reason why I’ve taken you to my place. Did anyone ever tell you that you are such a beautiful girl that you deserve a better marriage?” He peered at her only to see a hate gleam in her brown eyes. “Joseph or whatever you are, I’m not here for some trivial issues you are trying to raise. If you are no longer interested, pay me for the time I have wasted and let me leave. I have clients waiting for me,” she blurted out. “You don’t understand.” “You need to understand me first. If you have been sent by someone to make a research on prostitution, then I’m sorry, your plan has misfired. If you are a journalist….” “I haven’t been sent by anyone.” “So what do you want from me now?” She seemed to be a hard nut to crack. He stood up and strutted towards the fridge. Bringing down a bottle of squash, he poured some into two goblets and diluted the drink. He extended one goblet to Lucille who received it to make a virtue of necessity. “Lucy, I have to admit that I haven’t seen any girl around here who is as beautiful as you are.” Those words struggled to come out of his mouth. “Thank you for the compliment but what you have to know is that prostitutes need no flattery at all. We, being what we are, only need men who can give us money not who can shower trivial flattery. It means nothing to us,” she said. “I want to marry you.” “What?” she was mystified. “Do you really know me?” “Of course I do. I know that you are a prostitute but I hold so much love for you that I feel attracted to no other woman in this world. I just can’t avoid it.” “Well, I’m leaving,” she said, standing up and pacing towards the door. “Not now.” “But when?” she shouted, practically on top of her voice. “I don’t know. Obviously not tomorrow….not next week. Never.” “I don’t understand you,” “Of course I understand why you don’t understand me,” said Joseph persistently. “You never knew me before I picked you up there by the roadside. I picked you not to use and then pay you but to marry you. This is the greatest redemption I’ll offer you. I know you didn’t choose to be a prostitute…” “I did. I chose.” “Perhaps you did but not because you wanted to.” “What exactly do you want from me?” She had completely lost her cool. “I want to marry you. To give you what you need. To restore your human dignity. There is a soul in you that you are persecuting. I’m here to redeem you.” Lucille was greatly touched by those sentiments. They meant a lot to her yet she could see herself going back to the streets even if she got married. Prostitution was in her veins and blood and she appeared to be addicted to it like hell. She could hardly see herself living successfully in marriage. But her mother’s advice once things got out of hand was that she should marry and now after four years in the oldest profession, this man sitting opposite her was asking for her hand in matrimony. “Just briefly explain how you became what you are to me,” Joseph said persuasively. She sat back, moved her soft hand down her face and sighed. The hate gleam in her eyes had now vanished. In the deep recesses of her heart, there was something pushing her to narrate the road that had led her into prostitution, yet her mouth seemed to be reluctant. “It should be a bad history I know,” Joseph intoned. She nodded humbly. The push to tell the story was becoming too much to be suppressed and in a trice, she found herself narrating it. “My parents died in a car accident that claimed not less than eleven people. That marked the beginning of my misery. I had grown up in a very rich family but two months after the deaths of my parents, the only thing I was left with was this silver ring that I ripped off my dead mother’s finger before her burial.” She paused, looking at the ring on her little finger. Her brown eyes glittered with tears like drops of rain on a rose petal. “I’m sorry.” “Soon after the death of my parents I went to leave with my uncle who ravished me several times until it became too much for me. My escape to nowhere landed me in this filthy business that I’m now doing. Please, pay me I’ve to leave,” she said, reaching for a hanky in her reticule. “You are going nowhere, Lucy. You are not leaving this house.” “After all what I’ve told you?” she wondered. “Everything matters less in love.” “Joseph, you seem not to understand. You have fallen in love with someone who has been taken to solitary places umpteen times. You have fallen in love with a stranger. Joseph, you don’t understand me, I’ve lived a very dirty life. I don’t want to ruin your dreams. This world is no longer my home.” Her melodious voice wafted across the room like music. “As I sit here, I see in you a streak of a woman who is going to make the best of homes. The only way you can ruin my dreams is by not marrying me.” Lucille stood up, dropped her reticule and ambled towards where Joseph was sitting. He stood up as well. They were feeling each other’s breath at a very short distance. Tears streamed down Lucille’s tender cheeks and disappeared into her mouth. On a nostalgia trip, she found herself sitting together with her parents in their huge house. And this place where she was now felt like where she belonged. “This is your destiny. It could only be delayed but it couldn’t be denied,” Joseph said as they embraced passionately. “Bury your past and remember it no more.” “I know it’s going to be hard for you to believe me but I have to say it anyway. I promise to be with you for the rest of my life. It appears to be abrupt but this is the vanishing point of all roads I was destined to take in this life. Your love has redeemed me from the pains I was engrossed in.” Three months later, Joseph and Lucille married in the new redemption church and they lived happily thereafter.