Marriage Chronicles - Season 1 - Episode 10

5 years ago

Marriage Chronicles - Season 1 - Episode 10

☆☆☆☆☆

continues..

..CEPHAS..

Lubuto Bwalya, one of the biggest mistakes of my life was now suddenly back from the dead, what a shocking and unpleasant surprise! I hadn’t believed in ghosts, not until my wife Coreen started seeing one.

Now as I drove away from home to one of my favourite pubs, I wondered what the hell Lubuto wanted from Coreen. Why not punish me who had wronged her while she was still alive?

Believing that the ghost Coreen was seeing was actually Lubuto Bwalya’s had been beyond difficult. At first when she told me all about the strange things she was seeing and experiencing, I thought it was her hormones at work seeing as she was pregnant. But something had been off since the first time she told me about the Kimono clad version of her… Lubuto Bwalya had been wearing a Kimono the day she had breathed her last.

I arrived at the pub, went in and ordered a shot of Jameson at K20, and then another one, and one more. I started feeling tipsy enough to relive my past….

I was only twenty-one by then, this was eleven years ago, when I met Lubuto Bwalya who was eighteen. But before I tell you more about her, let me tell you about my family. I grew up with both parents and two sisters. An elder sis, Ethel, and a young sis, Marjorie. My Dad had achieved quite a lot at his age so money wasn’t an issue. Life in Ndola was fun as my siblings and I had almost all we needed. At my age I even owned a car and had an account where Dad deposited money from time to time.

I was studying Economics at CBU (Copperbelt University), and was on my way home from the University one day when I saw her. She was standing by the roadside, drenched cause it was raining cats and dogs. I parked my car right before her and rolled down my window, the rain oozed in.

“Hello,” I loudly called. “You need a ride?”

“Actually,” she was hesitant as she looked around. “Yes.”
“Jump in!”
“Thank you!”

She got into the car and we’d only gone a few metres when the rain got so severe that the wipers were the same as useless.

“I’ll have to park and wait for the rain to subside.”
She nodded and I parked.

Silence.

Being the jovial guy I was, I said, “Am Cephas.”

“Okay..Am Lubuto.”

“Lubuto means light, right?” of course I knew what it meant.

She smiled. “Yes it does.” and then after a sigh, “Whats the time?”

I checked on my phone. “18:23..why?”

“Nothing,” Lubuto shrugged and then after some time said, “It’s my adoptive mum, she became cold towards me ever since Dad, that’s my adoptive Dad, died.”

“Am so sorry.”

Lubuto took a deep breath. “I don’t even know why am telling you this but I need to get home as soon as possible otherwise she’ll lock up.”

“I guess you’re telling me all this because you feel at ease with me, Lubuto. Let me now take you home,” the rain had subsided. “Where’s home?”

She gave me directions and I drove her home and guess what, the adoptive mother sent her away, telling her to go back to wherever she came from.

So after much persuasion, Lubuto agreed to follow me to my house where she was welcomed by my family.

That’s how I came to know Lubuto. We exchanged lines the following day before she left and we started texting, from texting to calling, to setting up dates.

We’d just come back from our third date in the course of the seven months that we’d known each other when it first happened.

“Mum has gone to Chinsali for a funeral,” Lubuto told me when I drove her home. “Can you please spend the night here? Please?”

It wasn’t the first time I’d be sleeping out so my parents would have no problem as long as I told them where I’d be spending the night. “Why not?”

I parked in the driveway and she ushered me inside.

“Now I know we ate Dolnuts but am still hungry..how about I prepare us some nshima?”

“No problem,” I was akwardly hungry myself.

She left me in the living room watching T.V and went to prepare supper in the kitchen. The movie I was watching was an extreme bore so I followed her there and sat on a stool as I watched her move around in her red Sari. Yeah, a Sari or Saree or however you spell it. Lubuto had a really strange dresscode. I’d asked her once why one day she’d be dressed like a Nigerian, the next like an Indian, the other a Korean or Japanese or Chinese and all she told me was, “I like being different from all these Zambian girls.”

Now in the kitchen, I asked her, “You mentioned you were adopted, do you happen to know anything about your real parents?”

“Nope,” she uttered the word coolly. “Life had been too good for me to wonder about my roots until two years ago when..when Dad died.”

“Am sorry.”

“Let’s not even bring up my biological parents because I think am better off here anyway. I’ve completed school and will go to college to study fashion designing and then I’ll become the best fashion designer in the country.”

“You dream big, Lubuto, and I admire that.”

“What I admire,” she slowly said, turning off the stove as the nshima was done simmering, she came to sit on my laps. “Is you, Ceph Donut.”

“Ceph Donut?”

“You like Dolnuts so that’s my nickname for you. Don’t you like it?”

I didn’t like it cause it was cheesy, no offense to all those who like cheese. But not wanting to hurt her feelings because she was beautiful, cute and had this sense of vulnerability, I said, “I love it!”

Lubuto beamed and ran hands through my head. “You know what I’d love? For you to make love to me.”

“You sure?”

“I’ll change my mind,” she frowned.
I laughed and then kissed her so slowly…everyt
hing was in slow motion that night, including the sex itself and can you believe it was after we were done that I discovered Lubuto was a virgin and I was her first?

“Why hadn’t you told me earlier?” I asked her as I caressed her face right there on the kitchen floor where we’d made love.

“Because I didn’t want you to make it a mission to de-flower me. I didn’t want you to be with me because of the eagerness of wanting to take away someone’s virginity. Because, Ceph Donut, most men are after sex. You aren’t.”

“What makes you so certain?”

“We’ve been dating for seven months and you haven’t asked for sex so I guess that answers your question.” And then she looked me straight in the eye.

“I love you, Cephas Mwaba, my Ceph Donut!”

The guilt of taking away her virginity made me say, “I love you too, Lubuto.”

We had sex twice more in the next month and Lubuto showed up at my place one evening and mum ushered her to my bedroom.

“Babe.”

She pecked my cheek and closed the door and then without sugar coating, “Am six weeks pregnant,” she handed me a report from her bag. “The baby is yours.”

When I informed my whole family that night, Dad looked at me and calmly asked, “Do you think the baby might be yours?”

“I know so,” I shamefully said.

“Then you’ll have to take responsibility, son.”

This didn’t sit well with either of my siblings or mum but Dad was the head of the house and always had the final say.

A week later, Lubuto moved into my house because her mum threw her out, saying Lubuto was on her own henceforth. I welcomed her into our home and this brought upon conflicts and many problems which eventually led to…

“Cephas buddy!” someone jovially hit my shoulder, snapping me from my memories. “It’s so good to see you, cousin!”

“It’s good to see you too, Raj. Take a sit, what are you drinking tonight?”

“Whatever you’re drinking is fine.”

He sat beside me and I ordered shots of Jameson for him. We talked about soccer, the economy and nothing in particular. Raj even told me about running into Coreen in a shopping mall earlier that day. She probably had gone out to buy the stupid Kimono that she was wearing tonight.

I was drunk but could still drive home so I did likewise and found Coreen drunk too, for the first time in the four years that we had been married.

She grabbed me by the collar once I was in our bedroom. “You b-----d,” she slurred and burped. “People are saying you’re a Satanist so you better tell me who the f--k Lubuto is before I pack my f-----g bags and f-----g go home!”

“Jesus! Coreen, you’re cussing way too much due to the liquor, I guess.” I pointed at the almost empty bottle of Best Whiskey and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Come on, let’s sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Am not drunk..” She slurry said. “So you can goddamn tell me everything right now!”

“Am drunk myself, sweetheart. We’ll talk tomorrow, I promise.”

It took much wit to finally convince Coreen to just sleep. She was fast asleep by the time I was stripping and as I joined her under the duvet, I knew I had to tell her part of the truth tomorrow. I say part of the truth because I didn’t think I’d bring myself to tell her how Lubuto Bwalya, who looked exactly like my Coreen Hachilenge, had died or what I’d done with her dead body…
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