Fiction

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FAITHFULL About 1500 words

Maria looked nervously at us and smiled to keep from breaking down.
“He hits me because he loves me”, she explained desperately looking from one to another eyes beseeching. I averted my gaze from her to look at my watch. The seconds sprang forward in slow motion, as all eight of us froze, chilled at her determined defense of her boyfriend.

“See you all at the wedding next week”, she told us and brought the ten minute meeting to an end.

Our order forgotten, we walked out of the coffee shop and said our goodbyes, gently to avoid bursting the tension that clustered around the small group. We knew that Maria’s resolve would carry the day and hers would be a sordid victory. I had the unenviable task of ridding home in her car as we lived in the same area.

“He is truly a good man’, Maria chirped, the tears in a free fall from her eyes as she stopped at the traffic lights.

“He deserves a chance”, she moaned.

I stared at her blankly, not knowing how to respond to the monologue she had embarked on since we left the restaurant. She praised her future husband for his love for her, his generosity, industry and great inner strength. Joseph, Maria’s fiancee lived off his girlfriend of three years. He could never hold on to a job for any appreciable period because of his love for the bottle.

And assault her he did. Twice she had been hospitalized after he attacked her savagely after she questioned his spending of her money. At the hospital after the second attack, she had resisted our demands that she leave Joseph, insisting she had been way out of mark by pressuring him too much, thus provoking him.

Joseph had been at her hospital bed like a man truly repentant, holding her hand and meeting her every need. A week after Maria had left hospital, Joseph vanished, taking with him her whole monthly earnings plus a sizeable chunk of her savings. Maria flew into a rage like a disturbed rogue elephant and put the authorities hot on his heels. She even considered hiring a private eye.

Joseph returned to Maria three weeks after his disappearance, stealing into her house like a cat that had been caught in a heavy downpour. He went on his knees, wept and begged for understanding. A man sometimes needed a break from a life that continually frustrated him, he pleaded. Maria cordoned off Joseph from the authorities and the girls.

“It was a small dispute between close friends” she triumphantly informed all and sundry, asserting that their love was intact.

The police prepared to change Joseph with theft and assault, convinced that Maria would soon see the light. She arrived at the police station with an adoring Joseph in tow and changed her story. She had feared she had been jilted by her lover and had lied about him to get even. Later she had sent messages to all eight girls, telling us of her decision not to involve the jealous in her affairs.

“She must have stepped out of a textbook”, we gossiped about her behind her back.

We heard from neighbours of other fights, and Joseph spending a night in a police cell for assaulting a bar patron. Maria landed in some financial trouble and talked to neighbours of selling her car. Our hands tied, any one of us would call Maria just to chat and ask her out. Maria had become ice cold and rarely discussed her relationship.

All eight of the girls trooped to the venue of her weeding way before time. We found Maria seated at the registrars office, replescedent in a white suit, her icy coolness intact. She kept darting her eyes to the entrance, expecting Joseph to show up at any time.

We waited for an hour. Joseph shuffled in as if coming from a board meeting. It was obvious that he had been drinking.
The ceremony was rushed, and the dinner later was held at an exclusive club. Gifts were handed to the couple, and the lovebirds flew away into the sunset, as we thought Maria saw it, to be happy away from us mean and judgemental losers.

A month into the marriage, Joseph added drugs to the list of substances he was abusing. Maria confided this to one of the girls in a desperate moment. But they were still very much in love, she hastened to explain. She hang up and went back to the world she had built for herself. Loving Joseph and shielded from our negative perspectives.

Six months into the marriage, she lost a tooth. We learnt from her colleagues at work that this had happened after she slipped on the stairs in her house. Her husband had been very supportive, we were told. She returned from hospital to invite all the girls for high tea at her house.

When we arrived, she was in unusually high spirits. Joseph moved around the house in an apron serving the girls tea, expressing his endless love for his devoted wife.

“We now have a new member in our family”. Maria announced to all of us. Again the palpable tension descended on the small group. I barely heard the rest as Maria’s voice drifted off, taking on a tone we had never had before. She hoped she could win us to her new way of life.

Maria became friendly again and started calling us each at a time to tell us about her new found way of life. Every Friday, we would have invitations to all night prayer meetings where we would see the power of God at work. Soon it became obvious to us that the hunter was now the hunted. The breakable, vulnerable Maria had been transformed overnight into a fierce and determined fighter who rarely lost nor gave up for that matter. Two of the eight girls changed our phone numbers, while the rest of us toyed with more drastic ways to cut Maria out of our lives.

In the following year, she was beaten senseless twice again by Joseph after he returned home from drinking to find her away at a prayer meeting. Each time, she informed us of the violence, and promised Joseph would soon come under Gods mercy. Maria was as well changing into a tower of strength we were becoming more and more inclined to seek out. She pestered us with encouragement, rebuke, and forgiveness and assured us we did not want to wind up in hell. Her persistence become to us like the fiery fires that refine silver.

One fine evening when we thought the only thorn in the flesh of Maria was Joseph, he called one of the girls, as if to put our minds to rest. Maria had completely lost it, he informed, and he could take it no more. She would spend whole nights on her knees, praying for us and him. He was leaving her.

Three months later, it became awfully quiet from Marias. We sought her out to find out how she was. She informed us that she had decieded to travel to some quiet location and shut out all distractions and commune with her creator. Joseph had moved in with a lady friend.

Her silence and pain reminded us all of the vulnerable Maria we all knew. She returned from her trip two weeks later less combative but oozing even more quiet determination.
Joseph would not move in with her until they solemnized their union in church, but he would now be accompanying her to church and prayer meeting. He had moved back to his mothers until he found a job.

We so desperately wanted to believe Maria about Joseph. We could see that she was completely convinced that Joseph was now a changed man. But we knew time would prove her wrong, as had so often happened in the past. One of the girls met Joseph looking distinctly different at a restaurant with a lady friend. We did not confirm our fears to Maria. We held an impromptu meeting to pray for her, something we never did on our own. We hoped that when she did eventually know her Joseph, it would not kill her.

Joseph returned to work in the upcoming months and started church ministry in his area to rehabilitate drug users and alcoholics. Maria told us that he could go through a distiller and not crave a drink. But we wondered. There was always a strange look in his eyes, and he would constantly go into bars. He spent unduly long times on his own, with no one quite sure what he was doing.

It is now fifteen years since Joseph and Maria married in church. In this time, neither Maria nor their three children have ever had any accidents. Joseph has held on to a job and foots most of his family’s bills. He works tirelessly at his ministry in church. He is still quite a loner and goes to places where alcohol is sold.

As for the girls, we kind of dispersed. But we still meet often, every three months to pray. We each joined a church in our areas.

Persistence is a treasure and clears all dross. Nothing could have prepared us for the life we have if Maria had not been with Joseph. We thank God for every truly dark night.
END.

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