JOG IN THE RAIN
by Carl Terver
She saw the new pair of trainers in the cupboard, fine white things wrapped in a transparent bag. Only, the size was smaller. She knew Dami jogged every morning because she had been waking up beside him these days.
Dami was a quiet guy, in a way any hermit would covet. He smiled gently and walked as if his heels avoided the ground. Nobody knew what he did save that he jogged every morning.
‘Maybe you should jog to Lagos one of these days,’ she said to him when he returned from one of his jogging adventures in the morning, while she gave him a glass of water. As he gulped the liquid his eyes fell on her belly whose bulge, which he expected to see, was not showing. ‘I would,’ he answered.
She kept a journal since she moved in with him because she knew her life had changed. She had fallen in love with him and now was out of school because of the baby. She had to write down the things noteworthy of this change, like the uncanniness of her lover whom she knew only a pinch of; the man she’d spend the rest of her life with, maybe.
There was little conversation that went on between the two of them. With someone like Dami, it was hard to start one. When she’d left her father’s house for his place, she’d expected to meet him very unsettled, but he wasn’t. He’d simply asked, ‘You’re pregnant?’ looking at the luggage she carried. ‘Yes,’ she had nodded.
♣
‘How do you feel’ he asked.
‘Fine. Okay.’
He sat on the arm of a cushion, perspiration all over him. A collection of poetry was on the table. ‘You’re reading poetry?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I found it.’ She didn’t want him to take her up on it. Before now she’d only known poetry as a form of art, especially inspired by love.
‘You know, there’re some poems marked there. There’s this particular one.’
‘… ‘The Good Morrow’. Have you read it?’ he continued.
‘No,’ she said.
‘You should,’ he said, too.
She was quiet as she sat on another cushion. The conversation had yielded things to write down in her diary.
The room was big, deliberately so. It was both bedroom and living room without demarcation. There was a bed at the far end by the windows. There was
‘It’s a big compound . . . Where is everybody?’ she asked.
He started joltingly, then recollected himself. She hadn’t seen it, he thought.
‘In Canada.’
It wasn’t enough. Her brows went up.
So, he continued. “My father used to, well, still works with this manufacturer. He had a big promotion. He took everybody…’
‘Except you,’ she finished.
‘I was in the Navy. I could have followed them then, but I had other plans.’
‘What plans?’ she asked.
‘Well, I calculated. After ten years I could resign from the Navy with a pension, and I would have the house. Just me. Alone.’
Then, she wondered if she had intruded on his aloneness. Her eyes were focused on a point on the wall. She followed his conversation, but his voice came to her from the point on the wall.
‘Did you see it?’ he asked.
‘The trainers?’ she thought, saying.
♣
They walked past the area in front of the porch of the house. The front door to the house was locked. And she commented, ‘I was looking around. It’s like every other part of the house is locked.’
‘I think so,’ he replied.
The ground of the compound was filled with gravel, strands of grass shot up from the pores. The coat of paint on the walls nearer to the ground had turned to flakes, revealing cracks that resembled the boundaries on a map, some part of it, fallen off. Spirogyra fried by the sun coated the walls, too. They passed an overhead water tank, inhaling the rust on the metal architecture that supported the tank, their feet making crunching sounds against the gravel.
They were now at the backyard.
He produced a key and inserted into a lock to a door that was hidden in dried vines. It opened into a void. Blankness. They couldn’t see anything; just shafts of light from windows high up the walls of the interior that shaped into a hangar sort of. A sound was heard – the click of a light switch – and
On the night of that day, as she lay on the bed before slumber came to borrow her consciousness, her eyes were wet. There wasn’t much to know about her lover
‘I’m an artist. I paint, but I don’t like people knowing about it,’ he’d told her when they both stood at that door gazing into the plethora of easels and canvases and paintbrushes and
♣
It began drizzling in the early hours when Dami presented the new pair of trainers to her to try on. It was a bit funny to her, but she did.
‘I want us to jog today,’ he said.
‘Today? It’s raining, my pregnancy
‘You’ve never jogged in the rain before. It’s sweet. You’ll see.’
So, she went out with him, that morning, in the rain, initiated into his ritual. It was sweet as he had said. Tiny droplets of rain fell softly against her skin. The cold weather was kind, mildly so. They held each other’s hands as their trainers touched the earth and
