The Unripened Fruit BY …Jude Idada

The Unripened Fruit BY …Jude Idada

… He loved her with every breath in his being.

All of her.

And as she grew more into her true self.

He loved her even more.

It was a worried kind of love.

The kind of love that feared to lose what it loves.

He was afraid.

She was changing.

And each day made him feel even more undeserving of her.

She loved him deeply.

But differently, than she had once loved him.

It was a settled way.

Not deeper.

Not shallower.

Just a way that made her have the confidence to look out of the window to the alternatives that strolled about in the world searching for exciting escapades.

A settled way that made her listen to the whispers over the phone.

And read excitedly the chats and messages over the internet.

It was a confidence that stemmed from knowing that whatever happened, you still had the one you loved and who loved you waiting for you at home.

It was a confidence that was hinged on the fact that no matter what happened, no man would desecrate the altar of your womanhood with his errant manhood.

All was well with them.

Until the arguments began.

Arguments birthed by suspicion.

Suspicion occasioned by the long hours she spent on the phone whispering.

Or chatting.

Or texting.

It was fueled by her ceaseless smile.

As though she was privy to a secret she could not share.

So he began by throwing nonchalant questions.

Questions she shrugged off with passing nonchalant remarks.

Then the nights she stayed awake while he slept and pretended to sleep increased.

He would lay there motionless, and behind his closed eyes he could feel her smile and the electricity of her happiness.

He could hear the silent pater of her typing on her phone.

And his imagination ran wild.

While fear gripped the core of his soul.

So he decided to keep his cool and find a way to read for himself what her fingers typed in such secrecy.

But he lost it in due course.

The first time he lost it was when she snatched her phone out of his hands when he attempted to read the WhatsApp message that had just come in.

He looked at her silently as she stuffed the phone into the pocket of her jeans.

Her eyes were wild.

It was not of anger but of fear.

What are you afraid of?

He could hear himself ask her.

In a voice that dripped with deep pain and dread.

She didn’t answer.

Instead, she turned around and walked away.

Before he knew it, he was screaming in anger and running after her.

She ran before he could get to her and locked herself in the master bedroom.

Their children were with their grandparents for the holidays, and there was no one at home to see him pound on the door and threaten before breaking down in tears begging.

She didn’t open the door.

So he slept in front of it, on the cold marble floor.

She woke him up with a tender kiss.

Before she whispered.

“I am sorry darling, I just didn’t want you to read meaning into what isn’t there.”

He was too tired to argue.

So he stared at her eyes.

The eyes he knew so well.

They spoke the truth.

So he believed her.

And right there on the floor upon which he lay, she rode him into blissful forgiveness and solemn amnesia.

And all was well as the days and weeks unfurled.

Until he lost it the second time.

It was her stifled moans that woke him up.

He startled her with the speed at which he sat up and turned around.

Face to face they stared at each other.

Her legs were open wide, her core wantonly displayed.

Fingers were wet and sticky.

Right hand held the phone.

On the screen of which was a masculine hand stroking the massive oiled member of a trespassing soul.

He screamed as though he had suffered a million stabs in the gut at the same time.

And to save herself from imminent massive bodily harm, she flew off the bed and fled into the bathroom, where she hid crying and trembling behind the locked door.

He shredded and broke everything he could see as he raged around the room, intermittently visiting his rage on the door behind which she was locked.

The door withheld the force of his punches and erratic kicks.

He threatened to call her parents.

He threatened divorce.

He threatened to take the kids.

He threatened to trumpet to the world.

He threatened and wailed.

Until his sobs disappeared and he fell into a deep sleep sitting on the carpeted floor with his back against the door.

She woke him up with her voice whispering through the door.

It pleaded.

It begged.

And finally, he promised to do her no harm.

So she opened the door.

And cradled him in her hands.

As he sobbed with inadequacy.

They made love that day.

Hours upon hours.

In different positions as they marauded the entirety of the house.

He desperately wanted to leave an indelible imprint on her.

To claim her for himself.

You are mine!

He repeatedly shouted as he thrust his entirety into her.

So deep she felt the blows in her brain.

I am yours!

She echoed to him.

And after they exploded together into a nebula of pleasure, they collapsed into each others arm.

And as their breathing subsided.

And their heartbeats quietened.

They rededicated themselves again to the fleeting yet permanent love they both knew they shared.

Time passed.

She fought to stay true to her promise.

And she did.

No phone calls.

No facebook.

No Whatsapp.

No Instagram.

Nothing.

She slowed down to a point close to extinction.

And they began to exist simply.

Like familiar strangers.

The children. The house. The Office.

She moved silently.

Speaking only when absolutely necessary.

With vacant eyes.

And he was pained.

He now had her all to himself.

But it was the new her and not the old her.

And he loathed it.

Hence he tried to resurrect the old her.

To take the blame for her demise.

So much so that he found himself apologising for offences he didn’t commit.

He needed her to smile again.

To laugh again.

To share those funny jokes and juicy gossips.

To be the one he had fallen in love with and married.

So one day he sat in front of her and cradled her hands in his.

And he pleaded with her to go bring back to her life what she had discarded.

Social media.

Disconnected friends.

And she bluntly refused.

He kept at it.

He was willing to take the risk of a temptation too hard to resist as long as it was just flesh and not love.

Day after day.

He persisted.

She would hear nothing of it.

And her silence deepened.

Until he could no longer find her within the new her.

Then one day he came out of the bathroom, wet from a shower and found her standing in the middle of the bedroom.

Her peignoir was clinging to her curvaceousness.

She was trembling.

Her eyes were on fire.

His phone was in her hands.

And her words rushed out to him with controlled rage.

Ice cold.

“Who is she?”

And he looked down at the phone, a chat window was open.

He looked back at her.

And he knew it just by the way her face was set and the angle her head was cocked.

The old her was back again.

He wanted to smile and welcome her back.

But instead, the words that escaped him were…

“I can explain.”

They officially divorced seven months after.

And the court gave her full custody of the kids with monthly visits for him, the house, and a hefty alimony.

She had tendered during the trial the steamy chat history and hotel receipts she had found of him.

And even in his pain, not even to his lawyer, he never said a word about the painful past they had shared and the times he had forgiven.

He beheld her as though she was his errant child, to scold but not to destroy.

In the ways of age, she really was his child, even though she had bore him children.

And because he had carried her from adolescence to adulthood with unadulterated love.

He felt responsible for the good and the bad.

The kind of herculean responsibility that only true love begets.

Hence his gargantuan love shackled his hands and steeled his tongue.

So much so that he silently allowed himself to be condemned and crucified.

A villain.

To this day.

Even in his loneliness,

He still finds his heart often times, beating, helplessly in love, with her.

While he wonders what happened to her.

What made her change.

His questions return unanswered as he repeatedly listens to her old voicemails.

Yet in his core, he hears a still voice whisper to him.

“I told you not to eat an unripened fruit. I told you it will revolt in your stomach. I told you it will escape through your anus and set itself free. I warned you.”

That voice he knew.

It was older than their marriage.

He ignored it then.

And even now, he still ignores it.

So he keeps listening to the voicemails.

He replays her laughter.

He replays her saying…

“Babe…”

In her soprano voice that sounds as though everything in life is a surprise.

That drips in innocence.

Of a soul who has not yet found the sweetness and temptations of the world.

A soul too young to be encumbered by marriage.

He replays those voicemails.

Voicemails that remind him of a time when love, true love, happy love, ruled their lives and their dreams of a happy ever after could fill three universes and still overflow.

A time in which the large difference in years held no fear and sowed no concerns.

He reminisces of the past as his present sits in a standstill, and his future hides behind malfunctioning shadows.

And up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada…

She lives remarried.

Love.