Anna Grace Awilli
A couple of months ago, as I applied my make-up, one thought burned in my mind: I despise cowards. Events from years prior replayed as I prepared to go out and check on the would-have-been suicide victim my friend Marcus and I had rescued the previous evening.
My thoughts went back to a picture of myself seated on the bed in my stuffy, dimly lit room, where I first came face to face with the reality that I had, in fact, lost my mind. I had just lit a match and burned the hem of the dress I was wearing—entertaining the flame for a while before I jumped quickly and slapped it out.
Oh, my God. I’m insane. I really am insane, I told myself. My thighs buckled under the weight of the realization. I descended from my bed, slouching, and landed with a thud on the cold cement floor. My chest began to heave until the well of tears in my bosom burst forth through my eyes in a surge of unfettered sorrow. Still bawling, I reached out for my phone and called a family member for the eighth time in two weeks.
“Please help me,” I said once I got on the phone. “I’m afraid I’m going crazy or something. I think I’m running mad. I don’t understand the things I’m doing. I just need a place to stay temporarily, please. Anywhere. Just not here. Please…”
“Come on. You have managed to live like this for years. Surely you are already used to it now? You must learn to tolerate your circumstances.”
“I can’t anymore, do you understand? I’m losing my mind.” I do not remember who between the two of us hung up.
That memory stung. But bad as it was, it was only a foreshadowing of the phone conversation I would have the very next moment. My phone rang, pulling me back from that reverie. The call was from a number I did not recognise. I finished lining my lips and applied a quick slide of wine-red lipstick before answering.
“Hello,” I said, puckering my lips.
“Hello, my name is James, and I’m from Church,” the voice on the other end of the line said.
“Yes, James,” I answered.
“How is the person you went to rescue yesterday?”
The question, and its intrusive nature, sent a shiver of unease across my skin. I did not know this person. I immediately decided I would answer him honestly (she was doing well; the doctors were working on her; her family was there with her), while avoiding the salacious details (she was the “other woman” in an affair that had soured; the man apparently did not love her anymore; she was distraught, and other relationship challenges had driven her to that decision).
“You know, I actually got some information about that girl,” the caller said. “She is a very bad lady, actually—you know those ladies who go and grab the husbands of other women—she is that kind. I am happy that even the Church did not involve itself in trying to help her. It was going to spoil the name of the Church if she had done that thing. Thank God she is now okay. Otherwise, it was going to be very bad for the Church.”
He had said it plainly: she did not deserve to be saved.
I blinked, shocked but not surprised at what I had heard; and since I had braced myself right at the beginning of the call, I answered, with all the neutrality I could muster, “Okay. Thank you.” I splashed on my body spray and moved out of the house.
Years ago, when I made that distress call, I had reached the end of my rope. With that dismissive response from my family member, I felt utterly trapped. My rope snapped. A series of events over the next couple of weeks culminated in my walking to the main road at the end of our housing estate with the plan to run in front of one of the many trucks that sped along and end it all.
Then something strange happened. I began to feel happy—exhilarated, even—at the prospect of a solution. My pace picked up with each advancing step toward the running wheels that would execute my intention. At the same time, however, another thought hit me: If I was so ready to die, then it did not really matter how I lived. That thought infused a shot of new life into my weary bones. I immediately stopped, went back home, picked my few belongings, and left to do life on my own.
My phone was bombarded with calls and messages from family members, suggesting that I had eloped and insinuating everything below my waist. I was being bullied into going back home. Oh, so now they cared? The irony was not lost on me. Exhausted and indifferent, I took out the SIM card from my phone and discarded it. For the first time since I was born, I now had only one voice to listen to: mine. The first thing I used that voice for was to vow that I would never entangle myself back in the toxicity I had just escaped.
This was the experience at the back of my head when the message came to the church WhatsApp group that a church member seemed to be in distress, judging from the messages she was sending to people close to her, one of whom happened to be another church member. “I cannot live anymore,” they read. “I am tired. I have really tried. I am sorry that I have to do this, but I just cannot bear to live even a day longer.”
The WhatsApp group lit up with one message after another: “Who is that?” “Why does she want to do that?! She is not serious! People are sick and dying in hospitals, and she wants to commit suicide? God will punish her!” “I wonder what is wrong with people like her.”
It rang eerily similar to the kinds of responses I had been given years ago. It took everything within me not to argue. Instead, using my networks, I managed to locate the exact area she was in. I also looked for a vehicle with which we could try to get her.
I sent a message to the WhatsApp group: “I have managed to find a vehicle. Who can come with me to rescue her?” The group suddenly went quiet. Ten minutes later, still no response. I told the driver to set off for the village. Finally, a call came through. It was my friend Marcus.
He had just got online and seen my message in the group chat. I picked him from town and we went together. By the time we arrived, she had already drunk her concoction of medicines and lay on the floor of her house, unconscious. Her five-year-old daughter was standing over her, wailing. We carried them both into the vehicle and rushed to the hospital.
The next day, I went to check on them. Marcus had stayed until late, leaving only when the woman’s mother had come. When I arrived, I was impressed to see her body humming with life. Her mother and aunt were present, and her daughter sat next to them, drinking warm tea from a blue plastic cup. The scene was a sharp contrast to the previous evening’s chaos.
Since that time, I have never stopped thinking about the nature of human beings, remembering with unresolved disdain the slow response to this young woman’s distress call. I am often called “reactive,” “too sensitive,” and “too emotional,” yet in moments of crisis, it is I—the apparent coward—who acts while others recoil. I have been questioning, with renewed interest, what exactly people mean by these labels.
I am still locked into that morning phone call from James. What did he mean? Did she, therefore, deserve to die, now that she had been in an affair? What did he mean by “it would ruin the reputation of the Church?” My mind is full of questions too convoluted to articulate.
#nonfiction
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