Love over Religion

Vows in chain 2

She could not speak to him. The driver was watching, the market crowd was watching, the whole world was watching. But she bought an orange from his stall, pressed payment into his palm, felt the folded paper he passed to her in return.

That night, in the bathroom, she read his message. An address. A time. A promise that he had found a place where they might meet, however briefly, however dangerously.

She went the following Thursday, under cover of visiting her cousin. The place was a room above a print shop, rented by the hour, anonymous, surrounded by the noise of machinery that would cover any sound. They had two hours. The print shop owner, paid in silence, watched the street below.

They did not speak at first. They touched, with the desperate greed of the starved, with the knowledge that this might be the last time, that every meeting might be the final one. When they finally lay still, she told him of her life, of the house, of the Tuesday nights, of the first wife's perfume that still lingered in her bedroom.

"I cannot bear it," he said, his face buried in her neck. "The thought of him touching you, possessing you, claiming what is mine."

"He possesses nothing," she replied. "He has my presence, my performance, my body when I cannot prevent it. But he does not have me. I am here. I am yours. I remain myself, hidden beneath the role I must play."

"But the children. When he demands children..."

"I prevent them. I will continue to prevent them, until the time is right, until the risk is calculated, until we can be certain that any child would be yours and not his."

Sam raised himself on one elbow, studying her with an intensity that had not diminished with separation. "And when will that be? How long must we live in these fragments, these stolen hours, this deception that consumes everything?"

"Until we are safe. Until the children are old enough to survive exposure. Until we have resources, plans, alternatives to the life that claims us both."

"That is not an answer. That is a postponement."

"It is the only answer I have." She took his hand, pressed it to her heart. "I love you, Sam. I say this here, in this place, where no one can hear but God. I love you with everything I am, with everything I might have been. But I will not throw both our lives away for a gesture. I will not be the reason you die."

He was silent for a long time. The print shop machinery rattled below, indifferent to their negotiations, their compromises, their love that demanded everything and received only fragments.

"I have found work," he finally said. "Not at my uncle's workshop. The railway depot, loading freight. It pays better, though the labor is harder. I am saving money. Not enough yet, but someday, perhaps, enough to leave Kaduna, to establish somewhere else, to build a life that could include you."

"And the children?"

"And the children. However many there are. However long we must wait."