I've always heard that where there is smoke, there is fire but I've never paid any attention to that saying. However, I understood it to an extent when I got to a point in my life where I began to see smoke. It was my first roommate, Joyce.
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I love to live on my own but it has almost never worked. Each time I rent an apartment there would be this lady who needs help, or this person who has half of the rent and wants to combine to stay with me. My inability to say “no” caused me to have three different roommates. Joyce was the very first.
She was a naive girl when she first arrived at my house, she hadn't even gotten admission into the university yet, and she was still processing her admission when her mother called me from the village and pleaded profusely to let Joyce stay with me. Being a distant cousin, it was not so hard for me to accept, I simply told my mother and when she said it was okay, I asked Joyce to come over.
The day I went to the transport company to pick her up, she was clutching her Ghana must-go bag to her chest, looking like a frightened puppy.
I was the one who took that bag from her and asked her to walk with her head up because she was a queen. I was the one who took her to the market to shop for a few new things she would need when she was eventually granted admission, I was the one who noticed that she had suddenly started sleeping late into the mornings.
It was a sunny afternoon and since Joyce didn't own a cell phone, I decided to get some foodstuff on my way back from school. I arrived at the house feeling famished and completely exhausted but when I tugged on the handle of my door, it didn't budge.
I knocked on the door several times, calling out her name but there was no response. It was my next-door neighbor who stuck her head out of her door to tell me that Joyce had gone out that afternoon.
I was surprised but I didn't think anything was wrong yet. I sat on the pavement in front of my room and waited until past 6 pm when she came back from wherever she went.
I didn't ask where she went to and she didn't give an explanation.
Joyce's strange outings didn't stop. Sometimes she took my clothes and folded them back neatly when she was back, forgetting that the smell of sweat was strong enough to give her away.
On one of those days, she asked for my phone to make a call. When she gave it back, there was no call history of a strange number.
I wanted to report all these findings to my mother but since I didn't have enough evidence about anything, I decided to give it some time. After all, it was said that nothing could be hidden under the sun.
I woke up on an early Saturday morning to see Joyce shivering beside me.
“Are you okay? What's wrong?” I asked her, she was shivering so badly that she could hardly speak comprehensively.
“My head, all my body, everywhere is paining me”
I took out some painkillers immediately and asked her to take some, then when I was sure that a pharmacy would be open, I gave her some food to eat and took her along to the pharmacy.
She explained her symptoms to the pharmacist and she was asked to do a general body test.
Four days later we went to get the result and it said that Joyce was 3 months pregnant.
“Joyce! You're pregnant?”
I almost couldn't believe my ears. To my greatest surprise, she wasn't remorseful or shocked, she just lowered her head to the ground, fiddling with the hem of her dress as both the pharmacist and I chided her.
When we got back to the house, I sat her down to talk to her.
“It was all my fault,” I told her, she lifted her head to look at me with surprise. “Yes, it is my fault. I saw the smoke but didn't look for the fire. Truly, where there's smoke, there's fire”
I could see the confusion display across her face but I didn't bother explaining myself to her.
“Do you know the father?” I asked her.
“Mr Vincent”
I hoped it wasn't the Mr Vincent I knew, “The one who has a supermarket on our street?” I asked to confirm when she nodded her head, I took my phone and called my mom immediately.
That same day, her mother came to pick her back to the village.
I still blame myself for what happened, if I had reported to my mother when I started seeing the signs, maybe it wouldn't have escalated to pregnancy.
I totally forgot the fact that where there's smoke, there's fire and it resulted in a bad situation.