I see her everywhere, something people always say. It’s funny, I would never have imagined myself saying this, leave alone believing it. But it’s true, I hear her laughter when birds sing by our window, when butterflies flutter by a bush, I see her in queues in supermarkets, in restaurants, by the water, everywhere. She is here right now, as we speak.
We met in the oddest of places, that’s how I knew it was meant to be. Most couples meet online nowadays, or in clubs. Not us, we met in the air. Yes, you heard right. We sat next to each other on a Norwegian Airlines flight bound for Toulouse, south of France. I can tell you the page number in the book I was reading, when I turned and noticed she was reading the exact same book. Well, the sequel. But still a coincidence, I would say. At first, I didn’t say anything, there’s nothing I hate more than people who start conversations when I’m deeply engrossed in a story. Maybe it’s just that I hate small talk. Sometimes I take a book out and stare at it for as long as it takes to signal ‘not interested!’.
But still, I couldn’t let it go. I mean, what are the odds. The author of the books is a little-known Kenyan author, Empress Ciku Kimani-Mwaniki. I was reading the first volume of her ‘Cocktails from The Savannah’ series. A fun book about people misbehaving, being promiscuous, as my mother would say. Simply put, a book about people enjoying their lives. A friend had lent me the book and after reading the first page I knew I was hooked. I needed to read the rest of the books in the series, and I had no idea when I would be going to Kenya again.
As it turned out, Mariya had just been to Kenya and had spent a full day in a bookstore in downtown Nairobi. ‘Nuria?’ I asked her. All the upcoming Kenyan writers have their books in Nuria bookstore. I am a Kenyan, I love books, that’s how I know.
‘Ah, what are the odds?’ she said, displaying the book cover. Unlike me, Mariya had few inhibitions, she spoke her mind, and without hesitation. I pretended to have no idea what she was talking about. ‘You are a terrible actor. I was wondering why you kept giving me the side eye. I am Mariya, by the way.’
That’s how we met, it was that easy. I was taken in by her openness, her laughter was so contagious, it came from deep down, down in her belly. We talked so easily you would think we were old friends. And that’s how it’s been ever since, eight years of pure joy.
We talked the whole way, mostly about her impressions of Nairobi, how much she loved the noise and the openness of the people. And when I told her I was Kenyan she said ‘Then I must marry you.’ I felt myself blushing, my cheeks, my neck, my whole body was burning. I wanted to say yes, the way they do in the movies, you know.
She was headed for the opening of the Tolouse Museum of Modern Art. Mariya is, I mean was, an art critic, same reason she was in Nairobi a few months before our meeting. Outgoing too, she was. She made me love going to museums, though I never understood any of the artwork I was staring at. I still don’t. She would explain with all the patience she could muster, and she wasn’t that patient as a person. But with art it was different. She took her time, ignored my ignorance, and that, to me, is a sign of love. When she explained about a painting, you could see the figures move inside the frame. I saw art through her eyes. It is hard to go to museums now, I feel so lost, so alone. There’s this exhibition at Baldersgade that opened a few weeks ago, the debut collection of the artist Danielle Mckinney. Another sign of how cruel this life is, is that Mariya never got a chance to see Danielle’s work. We had been planning to see it together on the first weekend after the opening. You will find me there daily if I can summon the strength to get out of bed at all. When I miss her desperately, when I need to hear her voice, I know this is the one place I would find her. So, I listen for her voice as I walk through the crisp white rooms, looking at framed paintings of brown women’s bodies on the walls. ‘Look at that one with the cigarette in her mouth, she doesn’t give a damn about us, the gazers,’ Mariya whispers in my ear. I shake my head, realizing that I am the gazer. She is right though, the woman on the wall is not bothered. ‘Not bothered’, how lame. Mariya would use a more fitting word to describe her. You see, Mariya, will not just tell you what she sees, but will describe the emotion the artwork evokes as well. The next frame, ‘Naked but discreet’, she says, ‘Yes’ I say out loud. A young girl beside me looks at me and walks away. Like the woman in the frame, I need to learn to ‘not be bothered’. A few minutes later, I am pointing at another painting of a black woman, resting on a chaise longue. On the wall behind her hangs what appears to be a photo of a white woman posing for the camera, all in the same painting. ‘This one is interesting’ I say. Mariya agrees and explains, ‘You see the black woman is not posing, she is just going on about her life, while it’s the white woman who is posing, who gets the gaze, who is conscious of the gaze.’ She says ‘the roles are reversed’.
‘It’s beautiful’, I say. You’d think I would have learnt a thing or two by now, having had the best art expert in my life for eight years.
‘I know what I loved about the paintings today’, I say as I lay down later that evening. ‘I felt seen.’ I felt seen. A rare experience for me at exhibitions around Europe. ‘There is nothing that talks to a woman like me, a black woman’, I say, feeling very confident. I can sense that she agrees with me. I can sense her smile in the dark. ‘You’re getting good at this,’ she whispers in my ear just as I doze off. ‘You really are getting good at this.’ She kisses my earlobe. Something she always did when I was sad. ‘It tickles,’ I say already laughing. ‘I know’.
From the moment we met Mariya was always a good cheer. At the Tolouse airport, after exchanging phone numbers, we hugged as if we had known each other all our lives. She had invited me for a day trip in Tolouse after I told her that I was going to be alone for a week at the retreat. ‘I’ll be at the Ritz if you get bored,’ she had said. I wanted to be alone, to be bored, to get my energy back. It had been a tough year and with the onset of autumn, I needed to get away. I never really got used to the cold and dark months of winter and I’ve made it a tradition to get away from this cold North for a week every November.
‘I am a hermit, a Virgo, I enjoy solitude, in fact I need it, I crave it.’ She laughed when I told her that. I was to find out she was too much of a realist to believe in astrology. I didn’t need to be a certified clairvoyant to read her, her outgoing nature meant she was born in April, a true Aries! I was right, but still she was unconvinced. We had our moment there, at Toulouse airport, I swear I can still feel her gaze, directly in my eyes, to my core. I felt a surge of emotions, of love and fear combined, with the imminent knowledge that we might never see each other again, a knowing that I would never be whole again if I didn’t get a chance to know her love. We stood outside Java, staring at each other as I waited for my driver, Patrick, to find me. Patrick arrived holding red plastic roses. I waved at him and could sense the awkwardness immediately as Mariya looked at him and then me. ‘He is the driver, that’s how I would recognize him,’ I said, my way of excusing the image of a man meeting me with flowers. A joke we would laugh at ever since.
Patrick drove me to Mont Bernard, a little town an hour from Toulouse. Patrick was kind, he too a foreigner. I must admit, I love meeting foreigners when I travel abroad, maybe I see myself in them from being a foreigner, too, nearly half my life. I feel safe with them, there’s an instant connection, a common understanding of the struggle. Patrick was open and gentle in his manner, he told me about his decision to relocate, his experiences in France for the year, most of them positive. I was silent most of the way, trying to imagine the week I was to spend at the Valent, of the books I would read, my morning yoga and meditation, the wholeness that comes with being alone and silent, but all I could think of was the mystery woman I had just met. Her smile, her hearty laugh, her eyes that could see through your soul. Oh, I knew I was in trouble. She was different, gentle and irresistible. Powerful! That’s what I wrote in my diary on the first day at the Valent. I hardly read any of the books I’d carried for the vacation, instead I wrote letters. Letters that are still buried somewhere in our attic, letters she will now never see, letters of my hopes and dreams for a future with her, letters that I always meant to show her one day, maybe on our wedding day. I had dreams even then of us reading those letters together forty years from now, when we were old and toothless, letters that would be proof that I loved her from the very first day we met, letters that I now want to burn, turn them into ashes. But that would be burning us. No, I am not ready to let go.
Those letters, the waiting, that is one of my regrets.
Mariya always wanted a large flamboyant wedding, where we would invite all our friends and families, mostly her friends and family. She was the more outgoing one, my guests would not exceed ten people, family and friends included. I was never sure how my parents would think of our relationship, they never knew about her, but Mariya was adamant that they would approve of us, that love was love, and love would always win in the end. But even if they did, I would argue, it was simply too expensive to fly them all the way. ‘That’s why we have been saving for years, it will be my gift to them, my way of saying thank you.’ For eight years, she refused to accept that our union was not exactly what most parents dreamed of, I didn’t think her parents approved of us either, but she never saw it that way. ‘How can they not love you?’ she would say every time I brought up the topic.
The wedding, the not giving her a large, colourful, glamourous wedding with three hundred invited guests and space for more, that wedding, any wedding really, is another one of my regrets.
She was always so understanding, you see. We had been trying to get pregnant for years now. When I think of all the times, we were told yet again that the egg didn’t get fertilized this time, I can still see the pain in her eyes. The whole exercise is so mechanical that after a while, we would talk to the eggs, persuade the eggs to work with us, as we waited for the next disappointment. I had given up, it hurts to admit that, but I could not stand seeing her going through the procedure and what it did to her body one more time, ‘Never mind the money,’ she would say. We had a decent income, but still, we had to choose either the IVF or the wedding. March of this year was our very last chance. We even had a date for the wedding, August 15th, my sister’s birthday. I was certain we would face yet another disappointment at the doctor’s office, and I was so tired of seeing her so unhappy. It’s so invasive to the body, you know. It was her insistence that we actually tried that last time in March. It was exactly twelve weeks later, at the doctor’s office, when he declared that we were expecting twins. The embryos transfer was successful, two eggs were fertilized, hers and mine – the last part is something we told ourselves, wishful thinking. This was the happiest day of our lives. A day we had waited for, for what felt like a lifetime. And as you can imagine, we had plans and ideas of how we would celebrate the news with a big dinner and friends and champagne, but when it finally happened, we just found ourselves back home snuggled up on the sofa, talking, dreaming, imagining what our babies would look like. ‘We will be great parents’, she’d said with all the confidence in the world, a lot more certain than I was, at least on my part. Well, her company was all I wanted, it didn’t matter where we were or what we were doing. I just needed to be with her.
Of course, the wedding was postponed. She would be five months pregnant – and with twins! No, she wanted to look her best, a stretched-out stomach and breaking skin was not her idea of beauty, much as I tried to let her know she would look amazing in whichever form. ‘No, babe’, she said, ‘we have waited this long we can wait another year.’ I knew there was no changing her mind, the wedding had to be perfect, just like anything else Mariya touched. I should have insisted – another regret.
They say it gets better. No it doesn’t, that I can tell you for sure. I am so lost I don’t know what to do with myself. Mariya always knew the right thing to say or do, the right words. If only she was here. What a damn thing to say, if she were here then I wouldn’t need to find the words!
The last months were the most glorious times we had together. She was always home now, with little to no traveling. We were busy organising the nursery for the twins and often had friends over for coffee. Well, most of our friends were Mariya’s friends and that meant they were fun loving, artsy people who would pass by for just a cup of coffee and end up staying the whole weekend. I wonder if it was a sign, the universe telling us that Mariya wouldn’t be here for long and therefore gave her a chance to say goodbye. I just wish I knew.
Mariya didn’t like it when I called our friends artsy people, but I like artsy people, they have an opinion about everything, books, movies, art, paintings, politics, even history. Our friends were not too shy to share their opinions with the world, something I never learnt. They keep calling me now, the friends, I don’t know if out of guilt or obligation, I don’t know, I don’t answer the calls, they remind me of her, their vibrancy, I can’t, I’m not ready. But I do read their messages in the night when I can’t sleep, with a pillow over my mouth so the neighbors don’t hear me crying and screaming.
This last November, just before the accident, this year was the only time I decided against going for my solo trip. Mariya had insisted that I should go, that she would be fine, that pregnancy was not a disease, that this was the only chance I had, before the twins. She was right in many ways, but I couldn’t leave her, I knew she would be fine without me, but I just didn’t want to leave her alone.
I should have gone.
On the 28th, our eighth anniversary, she insisted on taking her bike to the supermarket to get us, I mean me, a bottle of wine. ‘There is no anniversary without wine’, she said. We hadn’t kept wine in the house since we discovered we were expecting. ‘I am fine with ginger tea, make it strong enough, and it’s better than any wine,’ I insisted. But before I could say anything else, she was out of the door, riding down H.C. Andersens Boulevard on her brand-new bike.
The next thing I saw was a call from a number I didn’t recognise. I knew something was wrong, Mariya’s helmet hung by the entrance, the first time she took her bike without it, I just knew. ‘There has been a hit and run’, the voice on the other side said, ‘we need to operate, it doesn’t look good’. I was at the hospital in no time, I kissed her hand before she was whisked to the operating theatre. A brain hemorrhage, our babies, a scream, bright lights, the next time I gained consciousness, Mariya’s mother was sitting next to me in the waiting room, holding my hands. ‘Our babies! Mariya!’ They are fine, she said. ‘How is she?’ ‘They are still operating on her,’ she said. It would be a long night. The babies were delivered safely, premature by three weeks, Mariya was on life support.
I spent the next couple of days by her bedside reading to her the book that brought us together. I carried with me some of the letters I wrote after our first meeting, of dreams of old age. This was far from old age. In the movies, the patient wakes up from a comma, smiling, talking, a new lease of life, they would get married and live happily ever after. Now I know why. No one should go through this. No story should ever end like this.
The funeral was a month ago. I didn’t show up. Instead I sat the whole day in our apartment, looking, searching for anything that she touched. She was everywhere. I didn’t want to make a spectacle, be a spectacle. As long as I stayed here with her, we would be fine. Our friends kept knocking on our door but I couldn’t face anyone, I still can’t, not like this. I stayed locked up in the apartment for a whole week, and then one day, I just went out, and walked and walked for hours, ending up at the beach on Amager. I sat there, covered in her warm, dark green winter jacket and this red blanket, it’s her favourite. I was just staring at the water, hours on end. Suddenly someone tapped my shoulder. A lady, well dressed, I guess, it was dark, I could only see a silhouette. She asked how long I’d been sitting there. Finally, she extended her hands and pulled me up. ‘Go home,’ she said, ‘you will catch pneumonia in this cold.’ I turned around and looked at this woman who sounded just like Mariya, but she was already walking away. I followed her, calling out Mariya’s name but I never caught up with her. Now I wander around the whole of Copenhagen, everywhere we went together, anywhere she ever took me, all the picnics we had at Oerstedsparken. I am always looking for Mariya, hoping she finds me, and she does show up, she always does, in different ways, not like that though, but I know it’s her. Most of the time, it’s her voice, I hear her whispering in my ear, and I whisper back. Sometimes I smell her on the leaves. And when I’m stubborn, she kisses my earlobes, and I let out a little shriek. That’s how I know she is there with me.
Marian and Marius are with their grandparents. They often invite me for dinner, her parents, but I prefer to be alone, I can’t face our kids, I don’t know what to tell them, I don’t think I will ever make a good parent, I know I will never live up to what she saw in me.
One thing I know for sure, it should have been me on that bike.
Regrets
By Gathoni wa Wairura
07-02-2025
