An Imagined Relationship
The last visitors have left, and he comes into the main room and sits down. He looks tired. His long brown hair, bleached by salt water and the sun, is lacklustre and dry, his skin pale. I walk over to him and pass him a cup of freshly made tea. He nods and smiles fleetingly. He is quiet and withdrawn as he has been so often lately. I sit down on the floor beside him, lean lightly against him. He puts his hand on my hair as I knew he would and plays distractedly with one of my curls. He loves my hair. Sometimes, when we are all alone like now, he will grab my brush and brush my hair. He’s so tender and careful when disentangling the different strands I sometimes feel like crying. He’s almost like the mother I never had but yearned for. I didn’t know I could love somebody so much, that I could ever love a man this much.
He has lost weight and his feet are beginning to look bony and big. They still flock to hear him speak, but lately he has been running into serious trouble. Not everyone likes what he says. Quite a few think he is dangerous, others believe he is quite mad. He’s ardent and never seems to waver. He’s so convinced and convincing. And unafraid. I wish he wasn’t, because I am afraid. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, terrified that I might lose him. I listen to his every breath then, crying silently to myself and trying to savour every minute of being close to him at the same time.
It’s not that I couldn’t live without him. After all I lived without him for most of my life, but what would my life be like if he was gone? I try not to think about that. I will never become again what I was. I could never live that kind of life again. I still get smirks from men, some of the male visitors will even pat my behind when they think no one is looking, or will wink at me. At first, I got so angry, but Jesus always calmed me down and told me not to waste my energy on them and to think of myself as a woman of honour. I cried when he said that to me the first time. He took my face into his hands and gazed into my eyes with that strange intensity he has and told me that I was never to doubt that, that I was a woman of great value and an honourable woman. I nodded meekly, not believing it. But after living with him for three years now I have changed, he has changed me. The way he treats me, the way he talks to me, the way he loves me. Now I’m truly no longer the woman I was.
Most of the women here don’t like me. They haven’t forgotten. They pretend they have when he’s there, but I know they haven’t. They know their men and they hate me, because they think I could and would lead the men astray if I got half the chance. If only they knew how much I despise most of their men. Even those I don’t despise, I certainly don’t want to lie with.
I edge a little closer to him, and place my forehead on his upper leg. I can feel the heat of his body through the thick cloth. It is cold in the room now. They don’t know this, but he has beautiful legs, long and straight with perfectly formed calves and knees. I can feel desire rising in me and begin to stroke the dark hairs above his ankle. He coughs and gets up. I look up and see he’s silently begun to cry. I suppress a sob, get up too and we hold onto each other tightly, then go to bed, to a night of fitful sleep.