On Her Way Home This is the story of a girl called Beatrice. There was nothing really special about this girl called Beatrice. She grew up in a very ordinary home and lived a very ordinary life. Having reached the required age and level of maturity, she was sent forth from her home to fend for herself. She came upon a place called Little Rock and felt a strong impulse to settle there. So settle she did, and it turned out that this little town did have something good to share. The people of Little Rock were very kind and warm and friendly. She felt right at home. Working as a seamstress at the local tailor’s shop afforded her her basic needs and was also a pleasurable distraction from a life of solitude and loneliness. She had never really had time or the opportunity to make any friends. They had lived a very secluded life back at her home town with her family. She hoped that she could make some good friends once she settled down well at Little Rock. One day as she was walking home from work, a handsome young man approached her from behind and engaged her in conversation. She was a bit hesitant to open up to him, having been taught from an early age to keep away from strangers. He on the other hand was quick to speak and show his interest in her. He spoke of the many days he had watched her from his shop opposite hers across the street. He said how much he had wanted to get to know her and had finally mustered the courage to speak to her this particular evening after work. He introduced himself as Charlie and said he worked as a butcher with his father. While he went on and on, Beatrice tried to avoid looking into his eyes and kept her eyes on the ground before her. There was just something she could see in them when she glanced over at him, a kind of mesmerizing sparkle. Soon she had covered the journey home and it was time to part ways. They exchanged their goodbyes and Charlie proceeded on his way home. That evening as she lay in bed, Beatrice thought about her encounter with Charlie. Well, he seemed like a nice young man, plus he was good-looking. He showed interest in her and she thought that they could at least be friends. Well, friends they became, not just any friends, but bosom friends. They shared much together, and slowly they both started developing strong feelings towards each other. Their platonic relationship quickly turned into a whirlwind romance, and soon the whole town was invited to their wedding. It was a wonderful wedding with lots of tears of joy flowing freely. Beatrice thought it was the happiest day of her life. Her family and relatives were there to wish them well and give them their blessings. Richard’s family and relatives were there too and they all celebrated together and shared in their joy. After a glorious honeymoon, Charlie and Beatrice settled to a conjugal life. They were happy together. She was passionate and sensitive, and loved him with every bit of her true blue heart. He was thoughtful and considerate, and made her laugh. Their first child came along a year later. It was a beautiful bouncing baby boy. The little cherub marvelled them all. Everyone complimented the proud parents on the beautiful baby boy that they had been blessed with. So they named him Richard. The mother was patient and gentle with him. The father was very doting and loved to play with him. Out of all the fuss they made over Richard, Charlie and Beatrice hardly had time for themselves, and soon they started to grow apart and distant from each other. It’s not that they didn’t love each other anymore, it’s just that they had forgotten how it was before the baby came. Now they had put Richard between them and everything was about him. Five years down the line, Richard began pre-school. The house was suddenly quiet and awkward, for they did not know what to do with each other, now that their whole lives were about Richard. Charlie would stay out more at night, on many nights, on the pretext that he and his friends were ‘just letting off steam, having a good time’. The real reason however, was that Charlie had lost that spark he had had for Beatrice, and was trying to avoid her for fear that he could do or say something he might regret. Beatrice on the other hand, still loved Charlie and was still very much devoted to him. She sensed that Charlie had changed, evident from his distant attitude toward her, but she did not know why. All the same, she tried hard to please him. It seemed as though that the harder she tried, the worse he became. Soon she grew jaded and decided to leave him alone to his own devices. One day while at work, a young lady came in to have some work done on some torn dresses. While they were talking, the young lady brought up Charlie. Everyone in the town knew about Charlie and Beatrice as a couple. She said she had seen him moving around with various local young women at the pub. Obviously Beatrice was shocked to hear that. She knew things were not exactly peachy between Charlie and herself, but she didn’t think it was that much worse. Determined that she would get to the bottom of things, she decided that one day she would actually go to the extent of spying on her husband. One evening when Charlie was late in coming home and she knew that he just had to be at the pub, Beatrice put Richard to bed, grabbed her coat, and went down to the pub. Not wanting to get noticed, she hid her face with a scarf while she looked around. She did not like the atmosphere in the pub. The air reeked of alcohol and cigarette smoke, mixed with the sweaty stench of rowdy men at the pub. She felt nauseated. At a secluded corner table she saw Charlie. He was sitting close to a young, pretty woman, and they seemed very intimate with each other. Her feet got stuck to the ground as she watched the man she loved, her own husband, get cosy and intimate with another woman. She couldn’t move forward or backward. There was a sharp pain in her throat and her heart beat very fast. She felt heartbroken and desolate, but she knew she couldn’t just let her life disintegrate because of this. Slowly she turned away and was on her way home. She knew what she had to do. It was time she moved on without Charlie, so she packed up all her belongings in a bag, together with Richard’s, and they both left the one home they had known all their lives together. Richard did not know where they were going, or why mummy was so sad, or why daddy couldn’t come with them. Like any child would, he asked a lot of questions, and his mother just told him that daddy and she couldn’t live together anymore, that he didn’t love her anymore, and she had to move on without him. Richard loved his father very much and did not want to go away with his mother, without daddy. So he begun to cry and yell that he did not want to go away. His mother reassured him that he could see his father any time he wanted, for they could visit each other. Beatrice tried to comfort her son with a hug and a kiss and a word of love, and soon he calmed down. It was three o’clock at night, when Beatrice, together with Richard and all their belongings, left their residence, never to return again. She knew she couldn’t go back to her parents’ home, so she went to the bus station and waited till six o’clock in the morning, when she bought a ticket to Newham, a little town on the outskirts of Little Rock. So here she was, a young woman with her young son, with no place to go and nowhere to sleep, just living on a prayer. The two-hour journey was soon over, and Beatrice and her son alighted the bus to walk into foreign territory. Unlike Little Rock, Newham seemed cold and distant, and everybody was going about their own business without minding anyone else. She tried to look for a day-care centre where she could leave Richard, and fortunately she found one just in the town centre. Richard did not want to be left alone with strangers by his mother, but the matron of the day-care centre was so kind and warm, and offered Richard some warm milk and cookies, and soon he was comfortable. So Beatrice left him and went in search of a job. She had experience only as a seamstress, but she went knocking on every shop’s door to look for any vacancies. Most of them turned her down, but one particular shop was willing to afford her employment. It was a small supermarket and they were in need of a cashier. She spent the whole day learning how to operate the machines and learning where each item goes. The manager gave her a small lecture on customer care and how to be a good employee. Afterward, she spoke to him about her predicament, and asked for her pay for the week in advance. Fortunately, the manager was very sympathetic, and he gave her a full week’s pay. At around four o’clock in the evening, she left the shop and went to a nearby phone booth to go through the directory for apartment listings. After calling several of them and being turned down each time, she came across one which she called and was able to obtain a one-bedroom apartment for an affordable amount of money. She went back to the day-care centre, collected Richard and their belongings and boarded a minibus to the location of the apartments. Once there, she saw the landlord, paid rent for one month, and was given the keys and some orientation of her apartment. The apartment was modest and cosy and warm. It had a wonderful view overlooking the city. Beatrice loved it from the first and knew that she and Richard would live well and comfortably in that apartment. So begun their lives, in that small, modest apartment. Richard was eight years old then, and was in second grade. His mother would take him to school early in the morning and later go for him in the evening after work. One evening she had been very busy and was late in leaving the shop to go for Richard. A feeling of apprehension flooded over her and she wondered what could be wrong and if everything was okay with Richard. On arrival at the school there was an ambulance and a police car, and there was a small crowd of people gathered just outside the school on the street. Curious to find out what was going on, Beatrice approached the scene and almost collapsed at what she saw. It was an accident, and the victim was none other than her son Richard. Suddenly she went hysterical, screaming and crying all over the place. She knelt down by her son’s side and tried to shake him to some kind of a response but it was too late. He was already dead. She cried so much and so hard that she felt she would die too. Life was now vain and without purpose now that the person she lived for was dead. All she seemed to ask herself was how God could do this to her, how He could take away the only person in the world who mattered to her and who she lived for. More importantly though, is how this had happened. The police told her what some eye witnesses had informed them. That he was playing outside the school’s gate with a ball, when it rolled across the street. He didn’t see the car coming up the street, and when he ran to get the ball, the speeding driver had no time to brake, so he ran over the young boy and drove off without even stopping. Luckily, the vehicle’s registration number had been noted down by one of the eyewitnesses. The police had radioed the registration number of the car to other police stations and police officers, and it was just a matter of time before the hit and run driver had been apprehended. Richard was taken to the city morgue and Beatrice had to go back to her apartment. She called her parents and Charlie and told them of Richard’s death. They were all in shock and shared her tears and pain. Early the next morning, the police called her with the news that they had arrested the driver who had killed her son. They told her that he would be imprisoned straightaway without trial and she was relieved that she wouldn’t have to go through the ordeals of a courtroom case. She didn’t even want to see the person who had killed her child and decided to move on with her life, forgetting the past. Her boss gave her a whole month off as mourning period and even gave her a full month’s pay. Charlie surprised her that afternoon when he popped in to see her at her apartment. They held each other for a long time, crying and comforting each other, for only they knew the pain they both felt. They talked for many hours, reminiscing about the past and the wonderful times they had had with Richard. There were many great moments. He had enriched their lives with a lot of love, happiness, joy, and meaning. In the evening, they both decided they would put together all of Richard’s belongings and keep them away. They felt that having his stuff lying about would bring back too many painful memories. So they got a couple of boxes and packed up all of Richard’s belongings, but as Beatrice was putting some books into a box, a small letter slipped out and fell onto the floor. She picked it up and what she read overwhelmed her with emotion. It was written by Richard, and it was addressed to God. It read: ‘Dear God, I really wish mummy and daddy would get back together. I miss daddy very much. Maybe I’m the reason they both drifted apart. Please help me to bring them back together so we can be one big happy family again. Thank you God. It’s me, Richard.’ Even Charlie couldn’t hold back his tears. They both knew that they had been given another chance to be together and work things out. After they were through putting away Richard’s belongings in the boxes, they sat together and talked things through about their past mistakes and heartaches, and in the end they both forgave each other and made up. One month later, they decided to renew their marriage vows. So they moved back to their old house at Little Rock and set a wedding date. They invited their families, relatives and friends, and on the D-Day everyone was there. It was a very colourful wedding ceremony and everybody had a good time. Beatrice and Charlie were both very happy. This time, they didn’t go for a honeymoon, but instead took a month off work to be together at home. A year later, they were blessed with a beautiful baby girl. She was simply divine and they named her Jessica. They showered her with a lot of love and they also grew closer and closer to each other. To them, Jessica was a godsend as she closely knit them together. When Jessica was a year old, she was baptised at the local church, to symbolise the beginning of a new life in God. So begun their new lives together in God, joy and expectancy in their hearts. They knew there would be rough and tough times along the way, but they also knew that love would get them through the storms, and hope and faith for a better tomorrow would get them through the night. After a long life of bumps and hurdles, Beatrice was finally on her way home, where she belonged. THE END.
Copyright © 2004 Bancy Mwihaki |