The Conscious Mistake

  

“Janet, I am sorry but this is over.”

These were the reminder of the pain Janet passed through five years ago in the hands of Jackson. 

Janet sat in an armchair starring out of her balcony in her Festac apartment. The night air was fresh but it tasted sour to her lungs. She felt an unreasoning sting and burn of helpless tears. These were not tears of self-pity, but of anger, frustration and self-hatred. She hated men for the hopeless maze in which she found herself ensnared, but she hated no one as she hated herself. She blamed men rightfully, cursing them and all their ancestors back through the fabric of antiquity, but she knew in the end the blame was hers alone to bear-except that it was unbearable.

A jubilant thunder flung open the sky gate and a new rain tumbles down in drums of joy. She took a backward step to her living room and collapsed in her antelope skin settee. She wasn’t crying but the misery in her face could tell the amount of pain in his heart.

She sighed and allowed the torrents of her hateful memories flood her mind.

 

Janet was a beautiful, young lady working with one of the biggest telecommunication company in Nigeria as a Public Relations Officer. She was in every sense equivalent to the runner-up in a Miss Nigeria Beauty contest statuesque. Chocolate in complexion, with legs of a colt. She was the type of a lady for which a thing is either black or white and no room for any colour in between. She was vision driven and focus minded. She was 27 and determined that at this stage of her life sex before marriage was a no-no.

Janet met Jackson when the latter came to complain of a fault with his internet modem. He was a grey haired man of forty years; he’s heavy, dark and stands five foot nine inches. He had a broad chest, a square posture, a broad face with his head raised high and chin rushed out. He had sunken eyes and many terraces of facial marks on the cheeks. His arms were very strong, but he had thin legs which were quite out of place with the well proportioned body. He evinced confidence and when he spoke, he spoke gently. 

Janet felt strongly attracted to him at first sight and when he approached and introduced himself to her she felt her world vibrate and settled back. This must be it, she thought to herself.

One thing led to the other and they became friends and afterwards, lovers. She felt very comfortable and happy around him. He was her dream man and she was ready to do anything to keep him. Except one thing. She wasn’t ready to allow him eat her apple core before marriage.

Two years passed and nothing happened between them despite intense pressure from him and her peers to let him have it since he was going to marry her anyway. She allowed him do everything with her except sex. It was a gift she's packaged for her husband. Whoever that would be.

Jackson later traveled to Germany in search for a greener pasture as it were. He got a job as an accountant in a publishing company and things were all right with him but he wasn’t ready to settle down just yet. He was a Don Juan and giving that up was not a thing he was ready to sacrifice on the altar of marriage.

 “Getting married now will cage me forever, I don’t need that.” He often told anyone who cared to inquire of his reasons for not getting married even when age was no longer smiling at him.

 His parents continued to taunt him with the issue of marriage and when he could not stand them anymore, he decided to marry. He visited Nigeria a year later but before he did he asked his parents to visit the family of Janet on his behalf and ask for their consent to marry their daughter. He had decided to marry Janet.

Janet felt on top of the world when he asked her to marry him. She accepted. She was finally getting married after waiting so long for the Mr. Right. She prayed about it and talked to some very reverend pastors in her church for their advice and they confirmed that he was the right man for her. She became pregnant with happiness and began preparing for the journey ahead of her. She bought books on marriage and read them as though her marriage would depend on them. She also attended workshops and seminars to prepare herself for the task ahead.

Jackson finally landed in Nigeria and a day after he arrived, he invited Janet to the hotel room he lodged. Janet was excited and throughout her day at the office she was smiling and laughing at every slightest joke. Even stories that wouldn’t have made her smile, made her reel with laughter.

She took her bath when she arrived from work and hurriedly applied a slight make-over and headed to the address of the hotel room her prince charming had told him to come see him.

 

Owing to the gridlock traffic jam on the way, she arrived at the palatial hotel at 9pm. Those hours at the traffic were like to her, decades spent in Hades. She knocked at the door of the room number the receptionist gave her and Jackson opened the door glistening in his dark nature suit. Janet was stunned at first but when she noticed that he was at ease with himself she smiled serenely at him. Jackson smiled back and opened his arms for an embrace which she gladly accepted. When they both dislodged from the embrace, Janet shifted her gaze to the meat dangling in between his legs. She stared at it intently as though it was a finger print under a magnifying glass and for the first time of her life she felt lust gnawing mercilessly on her inside.

Jackson led her in and closed the door behind them. He chomped his lower lip with his upper lip and smiled mischievously to himself. My plans are working out, he said in the silence of his heart.

He offered her a glass of red wine standing like a pestle before her. Janet felt the urge to ask him to put on some clothes but as she opened her mouth, incoherent mumbles purged out. She was surprised at herself

She was half way into her drink when Jackson began smooching and kissing her hair. She gripped her breath and waited. The kiss moved to her neck and in that instance she felt a terse current zing through her body. She shivered involuntarily. She was trapped and she knew it.

She shakily dropped the glass of wine on the cushion nearest to her and allowed him ravish her. He hauled her to the bed, took off her blouse and bra to meet her seemingly untutored nipples staring provocatively at him. He stuffed his mouth with one and worked around the other with his thumb and middle finger. She sagged and in a few minutes, she was moaning under his breath. 

It was over.

She had given it away. Goose pimples of shame and regret descended on her in a split of seconds but she waved them off with the back of her hand, telling herself that Jackson was going to be her husband anyway. Jackson smiled victoriously to himself and kissed her on the forehead before jumping out of the bed to get his pair of boxers. He has eaten the forbidden fruit and now saw that he was naked.

A week after, Jackson traveled back to Germany promising to come back soon for their marriage and her subsequent relocation to Germany but that was a promise made on the lips.

Weeks after Jackson traveled no calls, no e-mails and no facebook messages. Even when she tried to reach him, he ignored her. This went on for months and when she could not handle it any longer she went to his parents’ house in the village to find out from them what the problem was. They told her Jackson was alright and they would let him know when next he calls that she was worried sick about him. From their tone she sensed some fowl play but kept her cool.

One afternoon while she was at her office, her phone chirped angrily and when she checked the caller it was Jackson. She breathed out a heavy sigh of relief and answered the call.

“Janet, I am sorry but this is over.” Said Jackson, without preambles.

 He said these words once but they sounded many times in her brain, crumbling and tearing her world into shreds. This has to be a joke, she thought and gathered the pieces of her broken heart together. She checked her calendar and when she confirmed that it wasn’t the 1^st of April, she got the message. She had been used and dumped the fourth time. 

She pressed her palms into her eyes and rubbed. Tears poured out like they had been caged for ages. Her heart was shattered. Her world had fallen apart. Friends tried to console her but it was like trying to apply bandage to a tornado. She was inconsolable.

She cried her eyes out and asked God to punish Jackson for leading her and her parents up the golden path.

A month later, Jackson was roped in a scandal in Germany and was deported back to Nigeria. His efforts to clear his name and get back overseas met brick walls. Things never remained the same for him again. He practically ate from hand to mouth and long after Janet forgave him things took a slight shape but karma has a way of dealing with perpetrators of Conscious Mistakes.