RIPPED (OFF)

ONE WORLD SUTURED APART

Mr. Hanson’s home wasn’t anything like what we had back home, In terms of size and luxury.

Nevertheless, it was a classy twin three-story mansion spaced apart by a few meters of a flowerbed.

They were linked at their adjacent with a concrete walkway that had a beautiful glass overhead roofing.

They stood under a canopy of towering trees in an airy and relatively livelier neighborhood than the farm, looking resplendent.

A closer look would, however, show that one of them had a tastefully polished exterior and was sealed off halfway from the rest of the compound using a wire fence.

Its environments were well-manicured- the flowers, the lawn, and the well-trimmed.

It had security cameras strategically hoisted on the trees even deep into the woods.

It spoke loudly of thorough care, maintenance, and class.

On arrival, Mr. Hanson showed me into a 3-bedroom suit on the block, in obvious need of a renovating touch, that the family stayed in.

The interior had what could be seen as beautiful finishing ornamentations but apparently… neglected.? Abandoned, yes.

The rooms were styled in delectable, simple, and modern designs though, just as I would have liked them if they didn’t look like their glory days had passed.

Only that which Mr. Hanson stayed had a faint look of occasional tidying visitation.

The blinds were old and laden with dust, and so were the table surfaces, caked.

The electric lamps on the ceiling were dimmed, clotted by dark stains.

They came on with a weak blink accompanied by a second of resurging click sound when you pushed the switch on – that said it all - they had been out of use for decades.

The back door opened into an interlocked open yard enveloped by tall trees that extended around the compound to offer shade around the home.

There were slabs of concrete seats, tables, and swinging seats covered in the shades located at similar points around the two buildings as one walked around the yard.

However, the seats, tables, and the walkway on this side were several inches below heaps of brown leaves covering them.

The leaves sounded agonizingly off with crunchy cries in sympathy to one’s footsteps as one walked around

Furthermore, inside the building, the elevator in our block had packed up and was sealed off with caution-printed tape.

The bathroom items although they looked expensive, also openly attested to have seen better days.

The vanity mirror had a permanently blurred and dull face, and the shower poles were rusted.

The color of the once-white basins and the WCs had also degenerated considerably, begging for urgent replacement.

However, everything around the one sealed securely off spoke neatness –meticulous polishing, to contrast the shade of the one the family and I now lived in.

The few moments I looked at ours, my mind returned to the faded frames of Mr.Hanson'sn younger self pasted on the walls of the living room.

Whenever this happened, my mind would quickly balance the book, comparing the lustered one to the colorful framed pictures of the same man in his hay days pinned to other parts of the wall of the room.

Although the buildings were the same, the lack of maintenance in the one we stayed in made it look older.

It was safe to say that the home had passed its glory days but the interesting paradox was that I felt comfortable in it.

The first few hours of my arrival had been filled with a peaceful aura and the simplicity of life around there was the opposite of what was obtained in my home.

I liked it! It was different from what I had always known - wanted.

I liked the privacy. The absence of stewards implied that I had to learn to clean my room and do my washing and I did.

It proved hard, almost impossible when I first tried. Therefore, my father opted to hire some helping hands for me which I would later find that my refusal because I wasn’t going to be the only one with servants, was a great decision.

Daily, I painfully went through life learning to do some domestic chores.

There were times, when I first dared, when my body would ache for many days after doing my laundry. The pain used to be so great that It would feel as if I was going to die

Then, I fully appreciated all that the wards were doing back home, although from afar.

I was half right and almost glad that I could think of advocating for more rest for them, even when I could only relate vicariously.

But the complementary half that would have assured my gladness died with the gesture at the realm of thought, regretfully.

No thanks to my father’s absence at the period.

One of the days while I cleaned the living room, picking and wiping clean all the frames that decorated the walls of the room, it dawned on me that there was no photo frame for a mother figure among the other two

“She may have died,” I said to myself.

“Even if so, should the photograph be taken off from the,” a thought countered.

"Then, Mr. Hanson must have adopted," I replied and that made sense enough to have satisfied my curiosity.

In a moment my mind was dragged away by another photograph- a charming young man with lush dark eyebrows and immaculate blameless dentition.

He wore a bright smile and also wore a military cadet uniform. I realized I had wiped the cloth over his smiling face many times, insipidly wishing it made his smile brighter before I hung it back.

For the next few weeks, I lent a superficial look to the frame of the smiling young man before I kept it back after cleaning it.

The face would soon grow attractive forcing a lingered look off me with the passing of the days as I picked it up to clean.

Soon, I began to notice a few features I never noticed were there.

At first, I noticed his towering frame and as if it was not always there, couldn’t stop goggling along, from his boyish sweet face to his well-toned legs shoed-up in a pair of light brown combat boots.

Would It make sense to you that I was beginning to be moved by yet another guy who would never know I existed?

I fought hard to keep whatever that was creeping up at bay. But the face trapped in my head was just everywhere. It popped up mostly when I was away for my classes and usually, with a part not painted out.

Therefore, whenever I got home from school, I usually would pause parenthetically by the living room to catch a gaze at the part of the face that wasn't clearly defined in my mind, before heading up to my apartment.

At a time, I couldn't make out the details of his nose type and that was because I had all my focus on the easily noticed effulgent teeth. Or so I thought.

Therefore, When I got back home, I took some time to stare and internalize the size and shape of his nose but neglected to capture the details of his eyes and had to repeat that which I had done with the nose.

By every means, there was something I usually would not recall vividly on the photograph and curiously, would return to it again until it registered deeply and rivaled and assumed the missing part of Harry's image.

Meanwhile, there was a narrow interlocked walkway at the back of the blocks leading to a small gate at one end of the wood- a common exit for the occupants of the buildings that opened into a beautiful shore of a bluish sea.

I would sit under the umbrella on the shore, dipping my feet bare into the moist white sand, and read Portal's series long into the afternoon on my free days.

I loved the swooshy sound of the wave that matted about a mile deep in the water. I moaned in pleasure whenever the wave tossed the cold water on my bare legs up to my pelvic region.

Daily, I would visit the shore to enjoy the company of seagulls littering the shore. They usually appeared to provide a parting to the sonorous chirping of colorful little birds in the woods nearby.

One day, in my third year in my new environment, while I was engrossed in my reading, enjoying the benevolence of nature as it ran its soothing hand all over my body, my left eye became aware that an object was approaching along the shore.

It wasn't a private beach, so it could have been anything, anyone. So, I continued lending the book in my hand all of my attention.

However, I was forced to look up when the image of the object grew bolder. Then, it dawned on me that it was drawing closer.

It was him, flesh and blood! He wore a grey t-shirt that was mildly moistened in different parts in a pattern that was not uniform, burgundy shorts, and a pair of wet slippers. It spoke of one who had just come off the sea.

He had a military face cap and a pair of dark Rayban glasses on, saddling a loaded as he approached.

I was struck dumb by what I saw. No...that didn't capture it.

It felt like an active grenade whose pin had been yanked off was thrown under my chair but it didn't blast after l already prepared a fatal report in my head.

Gratefully, a dawning quickly happened to my senses and I recalled that he didn't know a thing of my person, and selling out so cheaply wouldn't be great an impression.

I tried hard to project a composed exterior and returned my face to the book in my hand even though I could no longer pick out a letter.

He was just a foot away, and with that came a volume of heat around my thorax region that was going to cause me to explode in a second.

I did the hard task of bracing up for an imminent salutation that should break the ice and pave the way for the most important conversation of my adult life.

But what happened next extinguished the heat and turned the afternoon on its head- sour.

He simply walked by and walked on. He didn't as much as give me a hello.

An air of despair hung over the atmosphere. I felt empty, shattered.

I waited a little until he was out of sight, then, picked up my books and my dampened self and walked home, saddling collapsed shoulders in utter shame of myself.