1

“Mum, Ebon left me,” Tika said, voice trembling.

On the other end of the phone her mother inhaled sharply. Then there was silence.

“Mum?”

“Well, where’s he gone?”

Tika wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard a spark of anger in her mother’s voice. Or maybe disapproval. That was it, her mother disapproved.

“I don’t know. He packed an overnight bag and left,” Tika said, feeling the tears prickle in the corner of her eyes.

She leaned against the window frame, cradling the phone between her shoulder and ear, looking at Ebon’s SUV in the driveway. It gleamed metallic blue in the sun, freshly waxed. It looked like a picture in a magazine, framed by the fence and flower beds.

“Did he go to a girlfriend’s?” her mother demanded, her tone ripe with accusation. “Is there another woman?”

Tika hadn’t even considered that. And affair? Ebon? He could have had an affair, but she honestly didn’t think he’d want to. He’d have thought the idea was vulgar. Only Ebon would have said ‘distasteful’ like a british lord and pranced around the kitchen saying ‘wot, wot!’ until Tika was in tears with laughter.

“No. I don’t know. We had a fight. I yelled at him--”

“Tika Jane May-Crawford you haven’t yelled a single word in your whole life. What on earth would possess you to start now?”

Now her mother definitely sounded disapproving. Exasperated, even.

“You call him,” her mother insisted. “You call him right now and tell him you’re sorry.”

Tika swallowed, and the tears that had been prickling her eyes slid loose and made twin pathways down her cheeks. “Don’t you want to know what he--”

“Tika-Jane all couples fight. That’s what married life is about. You fight sometimes and then you make up. It doesn’t matter what that man’s done, its not worth loosing him over and men have too much pride to say sorry. So you call him and ask him to come home. Honestly, Tika Jane, that man is too good to you.”

Carrie May-Rutherford had thought a long succession of things were too good for her daughter. First, it had been anything her stepfather gave her, now, it was anything her husband gave her. Any time Tika had wanted something for herself, her mother had been there reminding her she didn’t deserve it.

Ebon himself was always at the head of this list. Ebon the handsome, wealthy, kind doctor whose father was a bank manager and whose mother played tennis. Carrie May-Rutherford had not been able to marry Tika off to him fast enough. She’d even suggesting they should scrap their plans to have a church wedding and just get married at the youth hall, because it was available six months earlier.

It was Ebon who had been patiently insistent on Tika’s behalf. And being patient with Carrie was no mean task.

“Yes, mum,” Tika said. The tremble was gone from her voice now, replaced with a resigned sadness. She pushed herself away from the windowsill and closed the curtains.

She should have done that to begin with. Then she wouldn’t have been able to see Ebon’s car, glimmering gemlike in the driveway.

“Honestly, Tika-Jane,” he mother’s lecture was not over. “If you knew what I’d put up with from your father over the years...”

She meant Tika’s stepfather, whose ballet lessons and tap shoes had been too good for Tika. Her real father had left when the birth of two children had left Carrie’s hips and breasts slightly wider and saggier than before. Several younger, perkier girlfriend’s later and the Christmas and Birthday cards had stopped coming. Carrie May-Rutherford had vowed never to loose another man.

“Yes, mum,” Tika said again, on automation now.

“It’s always something with men. Women or drinking or spending a whole paycheque on a pool table that doesn’t even fit in the house. The important thing is we forgive them and move on.”Tika padded across the living room to sit on the edge of the couch. Her bare feet were resting in a puddle of blood, fast expanding through the thick wool carpet.

“Yes, mum.”

“And you know you can’t come home. I haven’t got room for you here, we’ve had people in the guest room every month since thanksgiving. You don’t expect your aunt to drive all the way from Florida then sleep on the couch, do you?”

“Of course not--”

“So you call Ebon right this moment. E-mail him if he doesn’t answer. SMS him.”

Tika glanced at Ebon, lolling like a doll over the far arm of the sofa, his sightless eyes fixed on the TV, mouth slightly agape. One eyeball was nearly black with blood. Flecks of meat and foamy vomit were clinging to his cheeks and tangled in his silky black hair.

Tika bit her lip.

“Yes mum. I’ll call him. I’ll call him right now."

 

COPYRIGHT. TALITHA KALAGO. 2009