I knew she was trouble

I knew she was trouble but some times when the trouble is beautiful, you go ahead and tell her you like her. In my case, I didn’t tell her that I like her. I used body language. I made it obvious. I wanted her to know that I liked her without saying a word. I let my actions do the talking but she wasn’t getting it. Maybe it was intentional. Maybe she wanted to hear it from my mouth so when one night I asked her to go out with me, she asked, “Go out with me as what?” I told her, “I just want us to hang out.” She answered, “You just want us to hang out as what?” I said, “Just like people hang out every day.” She asked again, “Just like people hang out everyday as what?”

I got it. She wanted to know what she wanted to know. So that night I told her I wanted her to be my girlfriend. I told her how long I’d wanted to tell her. She hit my chest and said, “Don’t be a coward. If you like a woman, actions are not enough. Say what you’re trying to show with your actions. It’s easier. Yes, actions speak louder than words but using words to tell me to close my eyes is easier to understand than acting it out.”

That night she became my girlfriend and our journey in love begun.

There is this phrase she liked to use; “You are mine and I am yours.” You might think it’s cute but wait till I tell you what it meant.

She was with me one evening and took my phone. She tried going through the phone but couldn’t because of the password. She said, “Kobby, what’s the password?” I was like “huh?” She repeated, “I mean your phone’s password.” I was confused. It’s the way she said it. She said it so casually as if nothing was at stake. “Ok, let me open it for you.” She said, “Oh don’t worry. Give me the password, I will open it myself.”

There’s something about phones’ password that makes even the saints among us uneasy. Even if there is nothing suspicious on the phone. I gave her the password.

She started going through photos and asking questions. “Where is this?” “Who is that girl behind you?” “Who took these photos?” “Why is this one smiling so much?”

And then she went to my Whatsapp. There was a password. She tried opening with the first password I gave her, it didn’t work. She turned to me, “Your WhatsApp has a password? What’s the password?”

“Ahh, Why do you want to read my messages? What for?”

“I want to meet your friends. I want to know what you tell them and what they tell you.”

“But my friends are out there. We can meet them. Not on my phone?”

The argument went on and on. I didn’t give her the password. Not that I had something to hide, it just didn’t make any sense.

Alice was not a girl you can hide. She takes the stage to introduce herself even before you think of introducing her. Within a couple of months that we were together, everybody who mattered in my life knew she was my girlfriend. She would close from work and come to my office unannounced to wait for me. And then use the opportunity to introduce herself to my colleagues. I didn’t like it. It felt intrusive but she enjoyed it so I allowed her to have her way.

One night a friend of mine called. He asked, “Where’s your girlfriend? Are you still together?” I told her she wasn’t with me. I asked why he was asking about her and he said. “I just saw her at a program. The guy she’s with introduced her as his girlfriend.”

“Alice? I doubt.”

I called her phone twice but she didn’t pick. I called my friend again, “Please, is she still there?” He answered, “No I saw her leaving with the guy.”

All night I called and all night she didn’t pick my call.

Maybe I was trusting her too much so I also started monitoring her. Whenever she came around to sleep, I woke up to check her phone. Her Whatsapp chat had only four or five chat history. I checked her text message history. All the messages came from her service providers. Her call logs had nothing to hold on to.

Friends have a way of giving wrong information sometimes. It could have been a force alarm. Maybe he saw a different lady. People resemble people so I let it pass.

One evening, I spent some time in her house and left very late. One my way to my house, I tapped my back pocket and realized my wallet wasn’t there. I called her to check if I left it in her room and she confirmed. I wanted to get it from her the next day but I had no money on me so I turned back to go and get it.

I saw her in front of her door. I thought she had seen me. She looked left and right and dashed into the room next to her own room. I didn’t think too deep about it. I just entered her room and picked my wallet. I stayed for a while just to tell her I’d come for my wallet. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. She was still in that room. I got up to leave. But something wasn’t right. She was in her nightie and I knew also that that room she entered was for a man she was always fighting with. So when did they make up that she could go into his room and stay for that long?

I went closer to the window and leaned my ears in to eavesdrop on their conversations. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have just walked away. If I died that day, it would have been my own fault. At first, it was very faint. I wasn’t sure what I was hearing. I stayed alert and quiet. Then it started becoming a little bit louder. It was as clear as day that my girlfriend was moaning.

“Should I break the door and go in to rescue her? Or I should call the police?” That girl never moaned when we did it so how come? Or….Well…

I didn’t know what to do. I just let myself down behind the window. And for the next ten or twenty minutes, it was all “Ouch, aww, huuuh, arrh, my god..”

I sat there with my sad life listening while my heart kept breaking.

But I had to let her know that I heard what was happening. So I got up and went back to her room. Waiting for her to finish and come back. It was around 5:30am when she dashed into her room as if someone was after her. She was shocked when she saw me. She asked, “You had to be here this early all because of your wallet?” I didn’t say a word. I was only watching her. She was holding her hairnet, with messy hair. She asked, “When did you get here?” I kept watching her and asking myself how I was able to trust a woman like that.

I asked her, “Where are you coming from? She answered, “It was my turn to sweep so I woke up early to pick the broom from the next house.” I asked, “And You’ve been looking for the broom since 9pm last night?”

She started shaking. She asked again, “When did you come here?” I answered, “I saw you entering that guy’s room last night. I was behind the window. I heard you moaning through it all. I’ve been here since last night.” She sat down and buried her face in her palm. I said, “All the while you were checking on me, you thought I was doing the same thing that you were doing?” Don’t let me see you anywhere closer to me again.”

The man was coming out from his room when he saw me coming out, he quickly went back into his room. He wasn’t my worry. I just walked away.

She sent me several messages trying to explain herself. The flimsiest of all the excuses was, “I went there to talk to him about something and he locked the door. I struggled with him to open but he didn’t. He pounced on me and I was fighting him. He put a cloth in my mouth so I couldn’t scream. What you heard wasn’t moaning. It was me trying to scream but couldn’t because of the cloth in my mouth.”

I told her, “Report it to the police.”

—Nick, Ghana