The Lady On The Bridge

The Lady On The Bridge

A Story By Onyinyechukwu Mbedologu

I sat on the guard rail of the third mainland bridge in the heat of traffic but didn’t pay attention to the traffic situation. I was intent on one thing, throwing myself off the bridge and into the ocean.

I was tired of life and just wanted to end it. The pain was too much to bear. My heart had broken into tiny pieces and there was no patching it. I couldn’t believe this could happen to me. I had done everything humanly possible to please him.

Where had I gone wrong?

Had I come off as being desperate to get hitched?

Born out of wedlock, I had to struggle for a lot of things while growing up. My mother had been dating a married man and the moment he found out she was pregnant he had cut off all ties with her. Three years after my birth she had died in an automobile accident and her aunt in whose house she had been living had dumped me at my father’s doorstep.

Life had been tough but I had learned early to be a hustler. God had blessed me with intelligence and I paid my way through school by plaiting the hairs of other students and helping students with project research. By my third year I was designing clothes and making money from it. I had started little but currently, I had made my name as a fashion designer. I couldn’t wait to go international.

I was making my own money. I lived in a decent two-bedroom apartment in Ajah with a shop on the island. Life was good but I wanted a family of my own especially since I had been deprived of one.

And then I met Dan! I had fallen completely in love with him. He had in essence become my life. He was starting life and talked to me a lot about his future prospects. I had never been a snub. I was used to having nothing and having to work hard for what I had so I didn’t have difficulties relating to Dan who was an orphan.

He had this habit of trying to impress everyone but being in love with him I didn’t see it as a fault even when people tried to point it out to me. On some occasions, he would request for the use of my car saying that all his friends going for the same occasion would be coming in their cars and he didn’t want to look odd. I would fuel the car and hand over my car keys to him. The first time we quarreled over the use of my car was when he returned to the car with an empty tank despite the fact that I had given it to him with a three-quarter full tank.

The exchange of words had been so much that he threatened to leave the relationship rather than get insulted because he didn’t have a car. I had apologized to him even fixed him his favorite meal. Before long, he began to use my car a lot more than I did and I began to once more patronize public transportation. This happened so gradually that I didn’t even notice.

Little by little, he began to move his things into my home, spending more time in my apartment than he did in his. And then he began to host his friends there and I would do the cooking and clean up after them like the good little wife material that I was.

He was a contract worker and this meant that his time was more flexible. There were good days when he took me out and spent his money but most of the time it was my money that we were spending. I had several accounts but the account I didn’t access was my fixed deposit in which I was saving money for my future.

And then he had problems with his landlord and informed me that he would be moving in with a friend for the time being. As his girl, I invited him to live with me until he got another place. He had proposed to me and I had accepted. All that was left for him to get that special contract and we would be planning our wedding. It didn’t make sense for him to live elsewhere when I had a comfortable place. I barely made use of the second bedroom anywhere and so it could be his private place.

Finally a new business deal comes in from Accra and he needed was five million naira. He had already raised more than half the sum through friends and reluctantly asked if he could get the balance from me. I would receive the money back with interest. Foolish me, I emptied my savings and gave him the money.

Dan travelled and kept in touch, still seducing my ears with sweet words and thoughts of how we would get to spend the rest of our lives together. He would never forget my contributions towards his life and I would enjoy being his wife especially when his millions started rolling in.

After two weeks he had stopped calling. His phone number was no longer connecting. It didn’t even occur to me that I had been duped or that he had left me. I became worried that something terrible had happened to him. I began to ask his friends about him. None of them gave me any positive answer.

And then I received with shock a medium-sized brown envelope of his wedding pictures. While I had been worrying about him thinking something terrible had happened to him, he had been busy getting married to another woman. The date on the photographs was for the Saturday after he had disappeared.

I tried to convince myself that it was all a lie, that someone was just trying to come between my love; that the man in the picture was just a doppelgänger of my love; that the woman in the picture was his cousin as he had convinced me! She had been coming into my house, talking with him in private and I felt nothing wrong because they were related. I believed all the stories she told me about growing up with Dan. And I had been looking forward to travelling to Ilorin to meet his family!

The wedding invitation also in the envelope knocked me back into reality. Their first names had been true but not their surnames. Dan’s friends had been in on the joke. How they must have laughed at me.

I cursed and wept but my heart was broken. Without thinking I took a cab to the third mainland bridge, paid the cab driver and here I was getting ready to jump off the bridge because that was the only way to deal with the pain in my heart.

I couldn’t believe he had done this to me in spite of everything I had done for him, all the sacrifices she had made to keep him happy.

Damn you! I cursed.

I paid no attention to the crowd that had gathered, the cars that had pulled to a stop not just as a result of the traffic, but to see what I would do. Some of the persons present had taken out their phones in a bid to get a detailed eye witness report.

My thoughts were on Dan.

How could you?

My friends and family had warned me that there was something about him that wasn’t right. But I had felt they were being harsh. I told them my Dan loved me. His world revolved around me just as mine revolved around his.

I had broken every code I had lived by, believing I could keep him. He had moved into my home for crying out loud, knowing he was getting married to another woman. Who does that? The woman had even been in my home, eaten my food, laughed with me and shared girlie gist with me!

No more!

I was about to let go of the guard rail when a hand curled about my wrist and I heard a whisper of the most beautiful words I had ever heard:

‘Your life is priceless, don’t let him win!’

Those simple words brought me to my senses. It told me a lot of things!

How could I be contemplating taking my life simply because a man had disappointed me? How could I have been so selfish? I had a great job and a lot of persons who depended on me and I hadn’t even been thinking about them!

I wasn’t the first woman to be disappointed and I wouldn’t be the last. I had lost a lot of money and other things to this failed relationship but what I did with my life would determine whether or not I had given him complete hold of my life or not and I couldn’t have him owning me for as long as I drew breath.

I looked at the man on the guard rail and recognized him. He was badly scarred, most likely from a burn. However, what caught my attention wasn’t his terrible scars but the light in his eyes. Looking as he did, one would have expected him to go into hiding or spend his time seeking for sympathy. But not this man. He was well dressed, although not expensively, and from his eyes I could tell that this was a man who thanked God for every day he drew breath and chose to make the best out of his life despite the circumstances.

‘Walk with me,’ he said in that whisper-like voice, probably caused by his accident.

Without thinking, I let him help me back to the bridge and putting my hand in his, I began to walk with him, the crowd parting to give us space, their reactions more of reflex than intention.

I didn’t know what my future had in store for me but one thing was certain, I wasn’t dying that day.

The End

 

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