She was a virtual presence that had captured my heart with her words. It all started in a bleak December and each dying moment of the year brought its own gothic lust of achieving phantom dreams and buried wishes. It is often said that we find love in unexpected places and to this memories attest to this fact.
I logged on to my facebook and saw a friend request which I spent no time in accepting. She had no mutual friends with me so I wondered how she was able to find me. She lived in Canada, spoke French and I doubt if she had heard whispers my name anywhere to merit a friend request and even if she had heard my name from somewhere how was she able to spell my name?
This is how it all began – she sent me a message on facebook in French and I sent her a translated reply “I don’t understand French.” This was done by the kindest courtesy of Google Translator. She replied in a few hours and asked how I was able to reply her in perfect French when I claimed not to understand French. I replied her again “I used Google Translator.”
Her name was Belle and for the next month, we spent time chatting (with Google Translator as my saviour). As time went by, I began to less and less depend on Google Translator; there were some of the conversations I could simply guess its equivalence in English. I think I enjoyed her chats and I am sure she enjoyed mine too.
She told me she was fourteen and had never had a boyfriend before. She claimed her classmates did not find her as desirable. She from that moment started to cry on me – she sounded like a bud needing help to blossom into a flower – and I thought I should help her. What happened next was that I was her boyfriend and she was my girlfriend.
From that time, she became everything I ever and never wanted. We talked about the future like we were gods who sat on thrones caressing each other into happiness. She told me how her mother hated blacks and how she would be disappointed if she ever dated or married one. A fool in love – I should have read in between those lines that our relationship was like a wind chasing happiness but I assured her that maybe her mother would change her mind if she happens to see me. She told me of how her father, a Kenyan, left them in the ditch and how after ten years down the drain, they have never seen or heard from him. It pained her to talk about this and confessed that every timr she looked at her skin, she wished she had not a shade of black in it. I promised her I was never going to be like her father because if for nothing at all, I am from Ghana and I will be different from his father who is from Kenya. She told me of how she trusted me and how she felt we could belong together.
She told me of dreams she had of us marrying in Ghana. She said in that dream, her mother had scolded her when she told her that she had been dating a black man for five years. She replied her mother that she was nineteen and capable of loving whoever she wanted to love. Her mother cried and her younger brother told her not to trust me for he had learnt that black men used magic to hoodwink people and he didn’t want his sister to be a victim of an unfortunate love story. She couldn’t take it anymore and came to Ghana where we married a week later. I smiled and told her that in the next five years – probably – we would marry and live in Ghana.
She asked me how Ghana was like and I told her beautiful tales of the sun kissing our bodies every day. I told her of the castles which was built by whites to sell slaves but are now tourists’ attractions and of beautiful natural vegetation and mountains set on God’s beautiful eyes.
In all these while, neither of us had heard the other’s voice before; it was like we knew each other’s voice all along. In my mind, I felt she had a soft beautiful feminine voice which begged to be heard and I weirdly guessed she thought I had a baritone voice which had so much authority and power driven in it I begged her one day to give me her number which she hurriedly gave. I prayed over the number and started guessing how happy she would be when she finally hears my voice.
I had the number on Monday and in that week; I listened to a lot of French songs and audios with the hopes of acquiring a French accent, read a lot of books in French and transcribed a lot of sentences in a diary I had labeled in her name. Then on Friday, I called her only for me to learn that the number was a wrong number. I was disappointed and told her that it was a wrong number. She vehemently denied and I told her to simply call me so that I can store her number.
In the next two hours, she replied stating that when she also calls, she gets the response that my number was a wrong. The universe was indeed conspiring to keep us apart. I wasn’t ready to let that get into my way so we agreed on a skype call on Sunday. She said her mom would be at work and her brother would also be at his friend’s. I confessed to her how I really wanted to speak to her brother since we would one day be my in law. She told me that it was a bad idea because the dreams she had earlier were rather apocalyptic and she didn’t want him to know about me for him to break us apart by his snide and condescending attitude. I agreed to it because I myself held dreams in a strong conviction.
The day came rather fast and I sat behind my laptop waiting for my love to come on the screen. I, in the morning, had gone to the barber just to look desirable in her eyes. I shaped my hair in the style she told me she liked the most. She said she liked her men in afro. So I had left my hair unshaven for about four months. The appointed time came and my love was not online, I waited for about an hour and I called her on skype. There was no answer. I waited for an extra hour, I called her again and there was no answer then another hour and still there was no response and she was not online either. I asked myself if Belle was even real. The walls in my heart were breaking and everything French started to put me off. That day onwards, it was as if nature wanted to tease me – whenever I put on the radio, I would hear something French and it would break me down.
We still kept correspondence via facebook. I asked her if she didn’t want to speak to me or whether she was fake. She cried on me and told me that she had a horrible voice and didn’t want me to be disappointed when I heard it. I told her that I did not mind and that I also did not have a nice voice either. I begged her to at least say a word or two to me on phone and just hung up; I was going to be okay with it. She also told me that she was ugly and my photos looked too nice she felt she would be undeserving in my eyes. I told her I did not care about her looks either. She gave one too many excuses that I just knew I had to leave her. I didn’t want to be the one to break up with her least I become another name that reminded her of her father’s or another example of how blacks are bad.
I think she could sense in my replies that I did not trust her again. Her answers began to be short, always telling me that she was busy assignments and project work. She started uploading pictures of she and some guy she said was her cousin. I did not believe her because I was jealous but who am I to disprove someone is not her relation? I still loved her and kept on calling her number with the hopes that someday it would go through. The replies I heard on the phone were the usual “The number you’ve dialed is incorrect, please check and try again later.”
Just when I thought everything was crushing down, she added me to her profile as her boyfriend. This restored the trust I had in her till I realized that her profile was private and that my friends on facebook could not see my relationship change. Not that I asked any my friends about it, one day, a friend of mine was showing me one picture of mine he liked on his phone, it was then that I realized that Belle did not reflect on my profile. I did not ask her about it because I knew she was going to give excuses and honestly, I was so tired of hearing them.
Two days to our first anniversary she was deactivating her facebook profile without even a goodbye. I was more than glad. I did not want to know her reasons neither was I willing to show any signs of how happy I was that our relationship had hit the inevitable end. We broke up (or was it, we lost correspondence? We never really broke up) and I have since not heard from her.
Sometimes I think about her and imagine if the photos she ever shared were real. Deep within, I feel she exists in the form and face her photos spoke of. What the relationship taught me that love is not like those in books or on the streets, there is never a perfect beginning or end for love. I still think that one day I will meet her and even if I do, I simply want to hear her voice. I simply want to hold and tell her that she reminds me of ghosts and of perfect wines which never exists. Sometimes, everything feels so surreal that sometimes like Belle feels so practical. I wish, the love I had for her will suffice in letting her know that not all blacks are a tragic backdrop and that blacks too are capable of giving purer tastes of love. The fact that her father left her and her mother in tragedy does not mean that all blacks are walking tragedy bombs waiting to explode with time. I hope she learnt how to destroy the mental walls of her mother and build her own according to how I treated her.
I never learnt again to love French it became deplorable never to rise again. I still spend a lot of time searching her name, hoping that I would see that aquiline nose, that pink lips, enchanting Bambi eyes and that beautiful skin which seems to be made of gold. To be honest, I still believe in her dreams and I know that one day, somehow or somewhere, I am going to marry someone who has her soul.
If you want a copy of #TheJainist email me on jyfrimpong@outlook.com
I logged on to my facebook and saw a friend request which I spent no time in accepting. She had no mutual friends with me so I wondered how she was able to find me. She lived in Canada, spoke French and I doubt if she had heard whispers my name anywhere to merit a friend request and even if she had heard my name from somewhere how was she able to spell my name?
This is how it all began – she sent me a message on facebook in French and I sent her a translated reply “I don’t understand French.” This was done by the kindest courtesy of Google Translator. She replied in a few hours and asked how I was able to reply her in perfect French when I claimed not to understand French. I replied her again “I used Google Translator.”
Her name was Belle and for the next month, we spent time chatting (with Google Translator as my saviour). As time went by, I began to less and less depend on Google Translator; there were some of the conversations I could simply guess its equivalence in English. I think I enjoyed her chats and I am sure she enjoyed mine too.
She told me she was fourteen and had never had a boyfriend before. She claimed her classmates did not find her as desirable. She from that moment started to cry on me – she sounded like a bud needing help to blossom into a flower – and I thought I should help her. What happened next was that I was her boyfriend and she was my girlfriend.
From that time, she became everything I ever and never wanted. We talked about the future like we were gods who sat on thrones caressing each other into happiness. She told me how her mother hated blacks and how she would be disappointed if she ever dated or married one. A fool in love – I should have read in between those lines that our relationship was like a wind chasing happiness but I assured her that maybe her mother would change her mind if she happens to see me. She told me of how her father, a Kenyan, left them in the ditch and how after ten years down the drain, they have never seen or heard from him. It pained her to talk about this and confessed that every timr she looked at her skin, she wished she had not a shade of black in it. I promised her I was never going to be like her father because if for nothing at all, I am from Ghana and I will be different from his father who is from Kenya. She told me of how she trusted me and how she felt we could belong together.
She told me of dreams she had of us marrying in Ghana. She said in that dream, her mother had scolded her when she told her that she had been dating a black man for five years. She replied her mother that she was nineteen and capable of loving whoever she wanted to love. Her mother cried and her younger brother told her not to trust me for he had learnt that black men used magic to hoodwink people and he didn’t want his sister to be a victim of an unfortunate love story. She couldn’t take it anymore and came to Ghana where we married a week later. I smiled and told her that in the next five years – probably – we would marry and live in Ghana.
She asked me how Ghana was like and I told her beautiful tales of the sun kissing our bodies every day. I told her of the castles which was built by whites to sell slaves but are now tourists’ attractions and of beautiful natural vegetation and mountains set on God’s beautiful eyes.
In all these while, neither of us had heard the other’s voice before; it was like we knew each other’s voice all along. In my mind, I felt she had a soft beautiful feminine voice which begged to be heard and I weirdly guessed she thought I had a baritone voice which had so much authority and power driven in it I begged her one day to give me her number which she hurriedly gave. I prayed over the number and started guessing how happy she would be when she finally hears my voice.
I had the number on Monday and in that week; I listened to a lot of French songs and audios with the hopes of acquiring a French accent, read a lot of books in French and transcribed a lot of sentences in a diary I had labeled in her name. Then on Friday, I called her only for me to learn that the number was a wrong number. I was disappointed and told her that it was a wrong number. She vehemently denied and I told her to simply call me so that I can store her number.
In the next two hours, she replied stating that when she also calls, she gets the response that my number was a wrong. The universe was indeed conspiring to keep us apart. I wasn’t ready to let that get into my way so we agreed on a skype call on Sunday. She said her mom would be at work and her brother would also be at his friend’s. I confessed to her how I really wanted to speak to her brother since we would one day be my in law. She told me that it was a bad idea because the dreams she had earlier were rather apocalyptic and she didn’t want him to know about me for him to break us apart by his snide and condescending attitude. I agreed to it because I myself held dreams in a strong conviction.
The day came rather fast and I sat behind my laptop waiting for my love to come on the screen. I, in the morning, had gone to the barber just to look desirable in her eyes. I shaped my hair in the style she told me she liked the most. She said she liked her men in afro. So I had left my hair unshaven for about four months. The appointed time came and my love was not online, I waited for about an hour and I called her on skype. There was no answer. I waited for an extra hour, I called her again and there was no answer then another hour and still there was no response and she was not online either. I asked myself if Belle was even real. The walls in my heart were breaking and everything French started to put me off. That day onwards, it was as if nature wanted to tease me – whenever I put on the radio, I would hear something French and it would break me down.
We still kept correspondence via facebook. I asked her if she didn’t want to speak to me or whether she was fake. She cried on me and told me that she had a horrible voice and didn’t want me to be disappointed when I heard it. I told her that I did not mind and that I also did not have a nice voice either. I begged her to at least say a word or two to me on phone and just hung up; I was going to be okay with it. She also told me that she was ugly and my photos looked too nice she felt she would be undeserving in my eyes. I told her I did not care about her looks either. She gave one too many excuses that I just knew I had to leave her. I didn’t want to be the one to break up with her least I become another name that reminded her of her father’s or another example of how blacks are bad.
I think she could sense in my replies that I did not trust her again. Her answers began to be short, always telling me that she was busy assignments and project work. She started uploading pictures of she and some guy she said was her cousin. I did not believe her because I was jealous but who am I to disprove someone is not her relation? I still loved her and kept on calling her number with the hopes that someday it would go through. The replies I heard on the phone were the usual “The number you’ve dialed is incorrect, please check and try again later.”
Just when I thought everything was crushing down, she added me to her profile as her boyfriend. This restored the trust I had in her till I realized that her profile was private and that my friends on facebook could not see my relationship change. Not that I asked any my friends about it, one day, a friend of mine was showing me one picture of mine he liked on his phone, it was then that I realized that Belle did not reflect on my profile. I did not ask her about it because I knew she was going to give excuses and honestly, I was so tired of hearing them.
Two days to our first anniversary she was deactivating her facebook profile without even a goodbye. I was more than glad. I did not want to know her reasons neither was I willing to show any signs of how happy I was that our relationship had hit the inevitable end. We broke up (or was it, we lost correspondence? We never really broke up) and I have since not heard from her.
Sometimes I think about her and imagine if the photos she ever shared were real. Deep within, I feel she exists in the form and face her photos spoke of. What the relationship taught me that love is not like those in books or on the streets, there is never a perfect beginning or end for love. I still think that one day I will meet her and even if I do, I simply want to hear her voice. I simply want to hold and tell her that she reminds me of ghosts and of perfect wines which never exists. Sometimes, everything feels so surreal that sometimes like Belle feels so practical. I wish, the love I had for her will suffice in letting her know that not all blacks are a tragic backdrop and that blacks too are capable of giving purer tastes of love. The fact that her father left her and her mother in tragedy does not mean that all blacks are walking tragedy bombs waiting to explode with time. I hope she learnt how to destroy the mental walls of her mother and build her own according to how I treated her.
I never learnt again to love French it became deplorable never to rise again. I still spend a lot of time searching her name, hoping that I would see that aquiline nose, that pink lips, enchanting Bambi eyes and that beautiful skin which seems to be made of gold. To be honest, I still believe in her dreams and I know that one day, somehow or somewhere, I am going to marry someone who has her soul.
If you want a copy of #TheJainist email me on jyfrimpong@outlook.com
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