Mary’s Story
By: Joshua Omena
Tags: Death, Death And Dying, Short Story, Storytelling, Fiction

Picture credit: Author

Mary’s Story

A Timeline of Rains

Every day, Mary would sit at the balcony of the house and wait for the rains. She wanted to feel it again; drops of water and humid winds.

At the age of five, the rains came earlier. Wind heralded its coming and the month of April was its doorman. That month, Oscar was born. Her brother with the invisible golden hair, or why else did everyone love to touch his dark, curly hair? The rains that came in September of the same year had death all over them; her mother never recovered from Oscar’s birth.

Every day after school, she would walk home with her brother and Ify, her friend. Those were the beautiful days of July, filled with misted rain, as if it passed through a very fine sieve. Those were days of rainbows with black and white rain. They would sing songs as they ran through the rain, playing in an aura of innocence and freedom.

“Home my home,

Home my home,

when shall I see my home..”

Ify’s family moved out after the rains and Ify became a childhood memory; a dream of freedom.

After eight rain filled Julys, she left home to stay with her aunt. Everyday was a wet day and she missed home. The university was at the city near her mother sister’s town. She had applied to read books and also to learn how to write them — that was what she believed studying English and literature meant. Oscar had cried the morning her father drove her to the park and it was raining while she stared through the window of the bus as it left her town.

She met Edward when she was seventeen and in her freshman year. The thunderstorms of September were more frequent and those evenings had something romantic about them. Maybe it was the flashing lights and moans from the heavy skies that charged the earth with love. Or maybe it was the warmth a lover’s embrace would give on a stormy and cold night. Edward was a soothing balm to school aches and his smiles meant a million things to her. She wrote her first love poem to him.

“Let the floods rise in my heart

and drown me in your love

I want to gasp for air

and yearn for you”

The October before her final year in school brought wars. Fraternities unsheathed their swords and swung them across campus. It looked like it would rain that evening when she heard the news. Edward was a soldier in the war and he later became a casualty. She mourned him with bitterness and sometimes she wished she died with him.

It was in the same month she wrote her first story. She sat by the window and the falling rain reminded her of everything. It had an aroma that caused her thoughts to wander and her fingers to tell a story. Water falling from the sky became a muse.

She wrote about everything and the world found solace in her stories. A story about war and love. Then another about loss and death. Later, another masterpiece about family and memories. The world related to her pieces like a drunkard to wine.

Years ran along and she caught up with every bitter and sweet moment offered. She wrote it all down. From Oscar’s hug to Father’s laugh, she whispered them in her stories, hidden under characters in her tales. Even when the doctor said she wouldn’t see her twenty-fifth birthday, she wrote about a city where the sun sets at midday.

Every day in the month of March (in the year she turned twenty five), Mary would sit at the balcony of the house and wait for the rains. She wanted to feel it again; drops of water and humid winds. She wanted to tell her last story, one that speaks of the beginning rather than the end.