Love in the Time of Corona (Part 2)

Day 20 of Isolation
I can feel restlessness rising off Frank each day. These days, he is edgier too. The sex is still phenomenal but something has changed; it’s rougher, more urgent. Our supplies are running out. We are down to 20 packs of Indomie, 3 packs of pasta, a miserly looking tuber of yam, some random balls of potatoes, tomatoes and onions, bottle of palm oil, a head of coconut, sugar, milk and half painter of garri and rice. Water is also a problem; ever since the power went off, water supply became epileptic. Frank’s power bank blinks to death. His phone follows shortly afterward.

“Shit!” he mutters tossing the dead rectangle away and flinging himself onto the plush embrace of the bed. He stares blindly at the ceiling as if it held answers to our current predicament. I am left to contemplate my fingernails. The curtains flutter as a soft breeze whispers in. I stop staring at the white spots on my fingernails as the breeze catches my attention. It is stronger now and lifts the blue curtains almost high to the ceiling. I stand up and quickly close the alumaco windows. I feel his eyes following my every movement; their perusal feels hostile and for no tangible reason, I feel anger suffuse my whole being.
What’s wrong with him?
Is it my fault all this happened?
If he didn’t press the damned phone so much, it wouldn’t be dead, anyway.
Absentmindedly, I draw circles on the sun-warmed glass and for the first time in twenty days, I wonder if I had made a mistake.

Cries of “Up NEPA!” rent the air. I spin around so quickly, I hear a crick.
The glowing bulb looks down on us like an old, long-lost friend.
Frank jumps up and pounds the air in triumph before rushing to where I was and spinning me around. All that anger curls out of me in multiple squeals. Those little shared moments of joy were all we had to look forward to.

Day 25 of Isolation
The second extension of the lockdown is coming to an end and talks of another extension hover over social media like a bad omen. Our cases hit the thousandth mark yesterday. These days, we spend every waking hour on TV or on Twitter. Sometimes, I tell myself I’ll go on a social media cleanse, just to detox from all the negativity I see online. That decision only lasts an hour at most and once again, I am listlessly scrolling through Twitter. In these times, it is better to be misinformed than uninformed.

It’s been four days since the last time Frank touched me. I toss and turn restlessly on the bed as I battle two different forms of starvation. Frank murmurs something incoherent in his sleep and turns away from me; his soft snores once again fill the quiet room. I sit up and feel for my phone in the dark; the time glows up at me:
1:04 a.m.
Hissing bitterly, I drop the phone on the bedside table. It knocks something which clatters noisily to the floor. I hold my breath; Frank’s snores continue uninterrupted. Sighing with relief, I lie down and stare at Frank’s back. His shoulders heave and fall with each snore. I run a finger slowly down the valley on his back. My belly growls petulantly and I stop midstroke. Frank shimmies, turns towards me and continues sleeping. My hand trembles as I raise it once again to Frank’s sleeping form. The rush of blood in my ears is so loud, it drowns out his snores. With light-fingered strokes, I run my fingers over his chest. The increasing beat of his heart under my fingers gives me all the confidence I needed. My hands got bolder.
Over his pecs and through the springy dusting of hair there. Down the semi-firm expanse of belly. Over the elastic band of his boxer shorts...

Callused fingers painfully encircle my marauding hand, “Diogo, I am not in the mood. Just go to sleep, abeg.” He bites out. All the blood rushes to my face and embarrassment pools in my belly. I open my mouth to say something but words elude me. Rejection stings differently when you are a woman. Disappointment leaves me in a single syllable:

“Wow.”

Dropping my hand roughly, he turns and scoots further away from me. The night yawns before me like an unending quest. The whole scene is on repeat in my mind; the ill-concealed irritation in his voice as he grips my hand, the threatening tightening of his hand on my wrist as he tells me to go to sleep. By morning, I-love-yous and I’m-sorrys would be said and we would kiss and make up but that didn’t stop the tears from running down the corners of my eyes and into my hairline.

Day 30 of Isolation
“Are you really going to cook all that Indomie?” Frank asks, his eyes glued to the screen of his phone.
I stare at the half-open pack in my hand; two small packs of 60g noodles hardly qualified as “all that”.

“Guy, it’s just two. Besides, we still have like eight packs left..”

“..Doesn’t mean we should eat them all in one sitting. No one knows when this would end. I can manage myself sha....”

The unsaid part of the sentence hangs between us like an unwelcome presence. Sighing, I toss the unopened pack into the carton before sitting down on the edge of the bed, far, far, away from him. These days everything I did seemed to annoy him. My words were either met with subtle hostility, disdain or were just plain ignored. I rifle through my socials and stare at the updates through a sheen of unshed tears:

Italy Records Eight Days Without Casualties

Numerous Cases Discovered in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Macau

“COVID-19 Will Leave the Earth on the 1st of June”, Ghanaian Pastor Proclaims.

Strange Flying Objects Spotted in Anambra, Nassarawa and Different Parts of Rwanda and the Philippines.

South Africa to be Africa’s Italy in Face of the Pandemic as the Country Records 500 Deaths in 3 Days.

Passing Out Ceremony of 2019 Batch B Corps Members Postponed Indefinitely as COVID-19 Cases Jump to 1183

Corona 35, Nigerian Police 65, as Police Kills Two in Akwa Ibom.

Microaggressions in Jos, Kogi, Abia, Lagos and Owerri as Branches of the Notorious One Million Gang Spring Up Nationwide.

Hunger Virus: “Government Cannot Tell Us to Sit at Home Without Food!” Nigerians Protest

30 Killed in Katsina

NCDC: 48 New Cases of COVID-19 Discovered in Abia, Kano, Ebonyi, Osun, Niger, and Lagos

From Grace to Gas: Day 9 of Negative Decline in Oil Prices Brings Unexpected Surprises for Nigeria

Black Friday as Aso Rock Records Third Death to the Virus

My screen blurred to bright nothingness as the tears began to fall; I knuckled them away quickly. I felt Frank’s eyes on me. I had to leave this place. The last thing I needed was pity, however grudging it might be.

That night, for the first time in nine days, we made love. It wouldn’t have mattered otherwise. His attentive ministration mirrored his remorse but I didn’t care. I just lay there and waited it out.
Morning brought a crippling discovery: rats had eaten half of our meager supplies.

Day 32 of Isolation
Frank stares at the empty store with the cool, dejectedness of one that has come to terms with his fate. The tawny bottle of palm oil stares rudely back at him. Drinking palm oil was not an option; two unkind weeks of starvation await us.

“I still have money in my account. I could run out and pick some things...” I begin.

He cuts me off with a raised hand,

“Have you looked outside lately? Everywhere is a fucking ghost town. Even if I can find a store...” he continues, emphasizing the word “I”, “...I still have these trigger happy bastards to worry about.”

“OK fine. What if I call my Mom...” at his incredulous stare, “..or my sister. We still chat, remember? She has an admirer who is highly placed at 82 Div. She could set aside somethings for us and have him...”

“I’d die before I agree to that!” he bites out. “I don’t want your fucking charity. Take that philanthropic rich girl act somewhere else abeg.”

He slams the door loudly as he leaves the house. The house shudders from the impact and something in me breaks a little.

I borrow a few packets of noodles, onions, and pepper from the next-door neighbor. My effusive “thank you” was met with a lecherous smile and a quick squeeze of my left buttcheek. He hesitated before closing his door. I hurry back to Frank’s apartment to cook the noodles. I add a few capfuls of red oil and watch the pot of bubbling noodles like it held the answers to my problems. My sister had agreed to help with supplies but we had to find a way to pull through till they came.
I pick at the small plate of tangerine-colored noodles.

Where is he? Was he OK?
Maybe the police have injured or killed him.

Thoughts of his body dumped carelessly in a gutter make me shudder. I pour what was left of the cold, lumpy Indomie back into the pot with his share of the food.

Frank came back some minutes past midnight, laden with food and different supplies. I pretend to be deep in sleep to avoid talking to him. He opens the pot of clammy noodles and heaves a sigh of disgust. My heart wrings as he scrapes the noodles into the waste bin; the action feels like a figurative rejection of me and all that pertains to me. He wolfs down half a loaf of bread and a can of malt before falling asleep. That night, listening to his measured breathing, I type the text my fingers and whole being have been itching to text for the past fifteen days:

I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I want to come home.

But for some reason, I cannot bring myself to hit send.

Day 35 of Isolation
I wake up to the cold, purposelessness of noon. Instinctively, I reach out for Frank, only to grab a fistful of cold sheets. Sighing, I sink deeper into the warm embrace of the bed. He went out again.
Thirty minutes later, he barrels in, a black nylon bag in tow. His expression is blacker than the bag he is carrying. He flings away the polythene bag and sinks into the only chair in the room. Packets of biscuits, noodles, and sachets of tomatoes spill happily to the floor.

“Frank...” I begin gently, “...This is getting out of hand. I thought this was meant to be a one-time thing. What if you’re caught? You can’t keep breaking into people’s houses and shops. It’s unf...”

“I thought it was meant to be a one-time thing,” he mimics savagely, “Because na only one time you dey chop now. It’s easy to be sanctimonious when you’re talking from a place of privilege!”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I have been here with you! I starved and I’m starving with you!”

Laughing mirthlessly, he points at me, “You? Starving?” he hisses loudly. “You have a backup plan. Your family is your backup plan. That’s why you can sit there doing nothing brandishing morality at me. For me, there is no backup plan; it’s either I survive or I don’t.”

The spite and bitterness in his words are too glaring to comprehend. Never in my life had I felt like a sinner for being privileged.

“Diogo, you’re just living out a fantasy. This thing...” he gestures wildly between us, “...for you it is a phase. It’s more than that for me. For you, it’s just acting out; going on an excursion on the less privileged side of things and experiencing crazy things. You’ll get it out of your system and move on.”

My phone rings. It’s Ayo from 82 Div. He’s downstairs with everything as planned. I leave the room to meet him.
I come up to an angry Frank glaring at from the doorway. He snatches the bags away from me.

“Frank, wait...”

He visibly deflates as he takes in the contents of the bags. He looks miserably at the forlorn-looking nylon containing the supplies he came in with.

“Frank, don’t do this...”

He flings the bags into the out unto the passage. The empty passage echoes with the clatter of tins and packets of food. The disgust on his face is evident.

“I’m leaving. I want you out of my house before I am back and take all this rubbish with you. I don’t need your charity.”

He steps over the scattered food items as carefully as if they were landmines. I sink to the floor as the man that has come to mean so much to me descends the stairs and walks out of my life.

That evening I returned home; as one final act of rebellion- or love?- I left the bags at his place. As the driver pulls up to the huge gates, trepidation blooms in my belly. I take in my surroundings as I slip back into a reality I have come to detest. It’s like I never left. Everything is still the same but different all at once.
Mum is waiting outside. Her face is devoid of emotion but in her eyes dance that dreaded four-word sentence.
I told you so.

(click here for the first part)