The People We Were
By: Mythological Africans
Tags: Lovestory, Cameroon, Fiction

Marvin returned to Yaoundé two days after Robert was discharged from the hospital. Robert drove him to the Garanti bus park and lingered until the bus was ready to take off. He hugged his brother close and tight, promising to visit him as soon as possible.

“Just make sure you’re completely healed before you come,” Marvin teased gruffly. “I don’t have a car to carry your half dead body to the hospital again.”

This earned him a playful shove which he laughed off. Robert watched the bus disappear into Douala’s early afternoon traffic before driving home. To his surprise, Tatiana sat in his living room with his parents when he returned. She gave him a worried once over, before coming to wrap her arms around him. He hugged her back with mixed feelings of gratitude and guilt.

“Thank God you are well,” she whispered.

“Thank you for coming,” he whispered back.

She insisted that he and his parents sit down so she could she serve them the food she brought.

“You have all been at the hospital,” she explained, ladling achu soup into the hole she had expertly made in the pounded cocoyams. “Let someone who was not there take care of you now.”

Even his mother seemed moved by her thoughtfulness.

Later that afternoon while his parents napped, Robert sat down next to her on the couch and took her hand in his.

“Thank you for still caring, Tati,” he stared down at their entwined hands, thinking about the many times he had resented her for not painting her nails in the delicate shade of creamy pink that Fese favored. Guilt swelled over gratitude.

“No wahala, Bobby. I’m glad you are feeling better.”

“Me too. I’ve never been so sick in my life!”

“Bertrand told me that you almost died, that the doctors didn’t know what was going on. I was so scared. Did they ever find out what you had?”

“All tests came back negative and then I got better.”

“Wow…” Tatiana said. “So it came and went, just like that?”

Robert started to say yes then hesitated. It had not come and gone just like that. Many things had happened before, during and since.

“With some spiritual intervention,” he replied still staring at their hands.

“Look at you talking about spiritual intervention!” Tatiana chuckled. “That illness really got to you.”

“I guess it did, Tati,” Robert said with a sigh. “I guess it did. My outlook on life is definitely different now. I feel like there is so much more to life than all the things I have been trying to pursue since I came back to Cameroon. Not that there is anything wrong with what I have been doing. I just feel like there is a lot I have been taking for granted and even more I have not bothered to explore, especially here in Cameroon, about the people, the cultures, what we believed before colonialism and Christianity and all these things which have changed the way we live and relate to each other.”

“Near death experiences always change people’s outlook on life,” Tatiana mused softly.

“This all started before I even got sick,” Robert explained. “When I was in Buea to cover Senator Effoe’s funeral I met this child from one of those villages in the Manyu division that soldiers burnt. Talking to her and hearing about her life really made me see that there is the Cameroon we know and the Cameroon we hope can be and that those two Cameroons are sitting on top of a Cameroon made of all the people who were in this part of the world before it became Cameroon — people whose worldviews, aspirations, and values are still influencing the way we live now. The question is how we are all going to move into the future with this new identity we have been given. I look at myself, for example, and I know that I am from Oku. But there is so much about being an Oku man that I still have to learn and these things I don’t know have already profoundly impacted my life in ways that I cannot even begin to explain, talk less of reconcile with what I think I know about the world. I feel like I have become a child again, and the world is this mysterious place that I have come to, and I have all these different groups of people from whom I can learn. I feel like someone unraveled my sense of self into this big wide space capable of holding so much more.”

“That is really deep, Bobby,” Tati squeezed his hand.

Something in her voice made him look up at her. She was smiling at him, but her eyes were watery with confusion and pain.

“Tati…” he began.

“What happened to us, Bobby?”

The anguish in her whispered question sliced through him. He closed his eyes in guilt.

“I’m so sorry, Tati,” he whispered back.

“But that’s the thing,” tears spilled down her face as she spoke. “I don’t know what you are sorry for. I don’t know what happened or what changed. You never gave any indication that something was wrong, then you just ended things. Next thing I hear is that you are in the hospital sick and possibly dying.”

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“It was very selfish of me to do what I did to you during our relationship, Tati. I was only thinking about myself. I didn’t call you when I got sick because I didn’t think it was fair and then I was too sick to do anything.”

“What did you do, though? Why did you end things so suddenly? Were you cheating on me with someone else?”

Robert felt like he had, given the way he felt about Fese, but couldn’t find a way to say it.

“I think I spent more time wanting you to be someone else rather than seeing and appreciating you for who you are.”

She gave him a long look after he spoke.

“Is it Fese?”

Robert stared at her in shock. How could she possibly have known? He started to deny it but as he opened his mouth to speak, Tatiana’s eyes narrowed, and her jaw clenched. Robert had come to know Tatiana well enough in the three years they spent together so he knew the clenched jaw, narrowed eyes, and steady gaze she was leveling on him at the moment were how she prepared herself to hear lies from someone she trusted to tell her the truth.

“I’m sorry, Tati.”

“I always suspected you had some feelings for her.”

“Nothing happened between us, I swear.”

“I know, Bobby. You’re not that kind of guy.” Tatiana said softly.

Neither of them said anything for a few seconds but Robert could hear the wheels of her mind turning from where he sat.

“You broke up with me when she and Bertrand got engaged!”

Her shock at the realization made Tatiana’s voice rise slightly.

“I’m so sorry, Tati,” he said again, thinking of Bertrand’s suggestion that he just be honest with her. “I wish I could go back and change things.”

“I’m sorry too,” she replied, sadly. “I wish things were different.”

“I wish they were too, Tati. I have a lot of soul searching and self-accountability to work through.”

“Sounds like you do,” she replied, standing up. To her credit, her tone was not nasty, just very matter of fact. Robert stood up with her.

“Thank you for coming to see me and for bringing food. My father really likes achu.”

Her eyes dulled with some gloomy emotion for a few seconds then she smiled. It wasn’t her normal happy smile, but it was genuine. It struck Robert then that Tatiana had been holding out hope that things could be mended between them.

“It was good to see him again.”

He helped her pack up the bowls she brought food in, which his mother had washed and set out to dry.

“Let me drive you home,” he offered.

She declined firmly so he walked with her to the road and insisted on paying her fare. She gave him one last hug before entering the taxi.

“Thank you for everything, Tati,” he whispered into her ear.

“You’re welcome, Bobby.”

(The People We Were is an excerpt from a longer work of fiction I am currently working on.)