Eka's story 7&8

Episode 7 and 8

“Doctor Gerry! Your food is ready!” Eka called out from the dining room. Doctor Gerry jumped out of his bed. He was still in his work clothes. Opening his wardrobe, he found casual clothes to put on and then came to the dining to eat. One look at him Eka said, “I don’t mean to act like your mother, but you haven’t had you bath, have you?” Doctor Gerry looked at her, shaking his head with a smile on his face, he went back to his room to wash up. About twenty-minutes later Dr. Gerry returned to the dining looking very fresh. Eka teased him, “Now my food will find its way into your stomach without hindrance on the way.” “Who told you that eating without having one’s bath hinders food from finding its way to the stomach?” “Do you think you know everything Doc.? Have you studied Eka-ology?” “What is that? There is no such word?” Dr. Gerry opened the plate of food before him and for a moment, he could not say a thing. Eka watched him with delight on her face. He was awed by how rich the food looked, its aroma and how it was garnished. “You did not tell the part which says you studied food craft.” “You didn’t become a doctor in one day, did you? In just the same way you can’t find out everything about me in one day. Right now you are in Eka-ology class one.” “So Eka-ology is who you are?” Happily Eka answered him, “Yes. It is who I am and the things I can do. So don’t think I can’t teach you stuffs. You will be surprised by the things you can learn from me.” Dr. Gerry mumbled a short prayer and began to eat the food. First he attacked the fish in the food; with the look of pleasant surprise on his face he said, “Uhhm! Christ! What did you do to this fish? Wait!” Dr. Gerry stood up to his feet and ran into his room.
Ekaette stood to her feet wondering what he was doing. In a jiffy he emerged with his phone and snapped the food. “What are you doing Doctor?” Eka asked. “Preparing to win at work tomorrow the bragging right of who eats better food at home.” “Hahahaha!” Eka laughed heartily. “I guess you have always been on the losing side.” “Always! Always they made jest of me. That is not to say I am a bad cook, but I don’t know how to make good food look this good.” “Don’t worry; from now on no one will stand you in this workplace competition.” Dr. Gerry gave her a hi-five and they both began to laugh. Suddenly Dr. Gerry grew quiet and Eka noticed it and so asked, “What is it Dr. Gerry?” “I met you only weeks ago and already it feels like I had known you all my life.” “I have thought the same thing too. Actually I have a lot of funny ideas in my head about you.” “What ideas are those?” “They might make you laugh, but seriously they are the only way I can explain you.” “What are the ideas? Let me hear them.” “Dr. Gerry, are you for real?” “What are you insinuating? Do you think I have intentions to take advantage of you?” Dr. Gerry asked raising his voice. “No Dr. Gerry. You missed my meaning completely. What I mean is this. Are you really human?”
“Now the Eka whom everyone thinks is not human is suggesting I am not human. What is your point?” “I have heard stories about people like you; people who are not really people. Why are you helping me?” “I am helping you because you need help Ekaette. God knows and sees my heart. Yes, I might have a little challenge containing your unusual beauty, but God is my witness that I have no evil in my heart against you.” “Yet again you have misunderstood me doctor. This is what I mean. One day you are going to go to work and not come back. I will become afraid and run to your workplace only to be told they never knew who you are. And then I will come back to this house and find a note saying, ‘Ekaette take care of yourself, God loves you’.” “I still do not understand you Eka.” “I have heard stories…” “You only entered my house today, who could have told you things about me?” “I don’t mean stories about you, but about people like you. People who help those in need and after a while they simply vanish. Simbi said such people are angels. I am wondering if you are one.” “Hahahaha! Eka, you have got this one wrong. I am not an angel; if only you knew the challenge I am going through right now, you wouldn’t say that.”
“Doctor I might be a bit young and naïve, but I have heard such stories. In fact one happened in my street. On a rainy day, a pregnant woman’s house was being flooded with water. She got on her knees and began to scoop out the water with a plate. Her effort was insignificant against the heavy downpour and the flood which flowed into her house. In the process of her work, she went into labour and began to cry out for help. Of course the downpour made it hard for anyone nearby to hear her; she was drowning in her own house and was in labour. This woman, I can even give you her name, said that suddenly a man entered her house and lifted her from the floor and put her on a bed. In just minutes the man had helped her put to bed. When he was about to go, the woman noticed that the water in her house had vanished, yet the woman did not see him scoop the water out. The next day the woman went to the address he gave her and found out it was an empty plot of land. No one knows the man or had seen him before, or since then. How do you explain that?” “The man may have been an angel, but Eka, I am not angel. Believe me, I am very much human.” “Okay doctor; but whether you are a real angel or not, for me, you are my own angel. God has used you to help me. Thank you Doctor Gerry.” Eka said sounding a little emotional. Dr. Gerry could tell there was a lump in her voice; she was fighting hard not to cry. “You are welcome Eka.” “Doctor Can I use your phone to call my friend Simbi. She must be worried to death about me. I need to tell her God has helped me.”
Dr. Gerry handed Eka his phone looking the other way. The simple faith Eka had in him almost brought him to tears and he did not want her to his eyes were a bit moist than usual. He could not believe someone could think of him an angel. While he munched his food, he admonished himself, “I can’t make mistakes with this girl, God please help me not to love her as I would a girlfriend. I need to be the best friend I can be to her.” While Dr. Gerry mused and communed with God, Eka punched Simbi’s father’s number into Gerry’s phone and dialed it. Simbi’s father picked the call and his baritone voice croaked, “Hello! Who is this?” “Papa Simbi it is Rita, can I speak with Simbi?” Ekaette used her middle name so Simbi’s father would not know who was calling. The man did not say another word, Eka could hear him shouting, “Simbi! Simbi! A friend of your is on the phone!” Eka waited and shortly Simbi’s voice came through, “Hello!” “Simbi, it is me Ekaette.” Eka whispered. Simbi leapt into the air and shouted, “Ekaette! Oh God! Eka! God answered my prayer over your life!” Like a bee, Simbi swung around their living room. Simbi’s father asked with his voice raised very high, “Simbi! Which Ekaette is that? I hope it is not the witch who ate all the children on our street?” Eka heard Simbi’s father and his words pierced her heart. Momentarily she moved the phone away from her ears.
In anger Simbi shot at her father, “Daddy it is not the Ekaette you know! Are there not many Ekaette in the world?” “But she told me her name was Rita, why are you calling her Ekaette?” “Daddy her name is Rita and also Ekaette. This one is different and not the one you know.” Simbi’s father calmed down and Simbi turned to her friend on the phone and asked, “Rita how are you doing?” With a broken voice Eka asked, “Simbi so they still call me a witch in that place?” “Rita, please don’t mind them. Hear me, one day God will vindicate you and lift you high. All of them will beg to eat from your hands. Mark my words. I have joined the prayer band in church, and I did so all because of you. I will pray until God clears your name from the false accusations. Tell me, how are you?” “Simbi, if you are praying, God has already answered you. God sent me an angel like in those stories we heard in the street.” “Are you serious Eka?” “Yes I am very serious. He bought me clothes and took me to his house. He wants to get me a job. Soon I will start working.” “I hope he won’t make you do bad things Eka?” “Lai lai (never!), he doesn’t even notice me.” On the other end of the phone Simbi began to cry. Eka had to console her friend, telling her the good things God had done for her. At the dining table Dr. Gerry listened with tears in his eyes. When Eka was done talking with Simbi on the phone, she sat down and whispered to God, “Dear God, if Dr. Gerry is not an angel, please finish your work by making him to love me. He is a good man.” She stood up and went to the dining to give Dr. Gerry his phone

Episode 8
After Eka had given back Dr. Gerry his phone, she sat down in the living room and stared at the television as though her interest was in what was being shown on the screen. How her mind peeled the events of her life layer after layer. She pondered how in a short time she moved from a girl that had parents and siblings to a girl who was beaten up and thrown out by her parents for imaginary crimes. While she thought about her family and what she had been through, tears freely ran down her cheek. Vividly she remembered the smile of her younger ones and also the pain which riddled their faces just before they succumbed to death. She knew she was no witch; at least she was sure she had been to no coven or flown in the night. But as she sat and thought deeply that night, she thought about all her recent night dreams to see if she could recall anyone that might suggest she was a witch. In spite of how hard she thought, she could not find anything to suggest to her that she had something to do with the dark works of witchcraft. However one thought she could not shake off was the reason a certain prophet in Oron claimed she was a witch and was responsible for the deaths of her younger ones and the children on her street.
While Eka mused about her life, Dr. Gerry absentmindedly munched the last bits of food in his plate. The seemingly little action he took that day – helping Eka. Had slowly morphed in size and was already looking like it was going to change his life completely from the way he knew it. Only in one day, he had been branded an angel, questioned if he was human and served the best meal he had in quite a long time. When Doctor Gerry met Eka, he had only one interest which was to get as much close to her as he could. Eka’s beauty was just too hard for him to walk away from. He had hoped he would become a friend to the dazzling teenage beauty and perhaps become much more than that with time. Each day he visited her while she was being treated at the hospital; he assured himself that though there was some age gap between them, he would wait for her to make that insignificant by attaining maturity in a few years. However bringing Eka into his house seemed to have changed all that; he knew he had to be nice and courteous to her and not take advantage of a young girl who life had already dealt a bad hand at her age.
Doctor Gerry hated to be in that situation; he wanted to love Ekaette and not just be a nice, caring, friend. As he lifted his plate to go wash in the kitchen sink, his heart ached intensely. While he washed his plate, Eka entered the kitchen not wearing the trademark affecting glow on her face. One look at her, Gerry knew something bothered her. Before he could ask to know what it was, Eka quipped, “I know this is your house and you have given me your rules, but I now share it with you and I have a few of my own rules too, which I think you should do well to keep.” Dr. Gerry liked the witty manner in which her words often came out. It always clicked with the intellectual side of him. With smile returning to his face, he asked Eka, “What then are your rules? I will be glad to keep them so long as they will make for a peaceful living between us.” “I don’t have so much doing now, and even if I did, doing minor chores such as washing plates wouldn’t take much of my time. I want you to leave kitchen and all other domestic matters to me. Except maybe tidying up your room; it is one place I don’t want to go into while I am here. It is your private world and your responsibility to fix.” “Eka, I am not going to keep all your rules. I wasn’t brought up to let people do all the domestic work around me. I was an only boy in the house; my mother made sure I did not get spoilt for that reason. She made me do everything my sisters did. I scrubbed the floor, cooked food, washed clothes and dusted electronic sets in the house. I mean, I did about every chore you can think of. I am pretty sure I will flout your rules very often.”
“If your home training has left you bent in that area; well I won’t straighten you out, it is a good bent. When you get married your wife will need you to be very domestic in some cases. However, you have to let me do a bit more around the house, okay?” Like a little boy, Dr. Gerry nodded and began to dry the plate he had washed with kitchen napkin. Eka went over to the cooking gas and began to transfer the leftover of the food she cooked to small plates to put them into the fridge. She didn’t want Gerry to leave the kitchen, his company made her feel warm, so she decided to strike up a conversation to detain him in the kitchen. “Did you speak to your superiors at the office about letting me work as a cleaner in your hospital?” “Yes I did. Their answer wasn’t what I expected. A few of them have some other people in mind for the job.” “It’s okay, that is not the end of the world, somehow I will find another thing to do.” “I thought about that all day, and then I remembered you said you can sew. If you don’t mind, I can arrange to get you a sewing machine. You can make clothes for people in this neighbourhood for good money. You just have to convince them that you are good enough to make their clothes.” Eka stood rooted to her spot; she could not say a word. She only stared at Dr. Gerry emptily. “Eka, you haven’t said anything about my suggestion.” Dr. Gerry could not see that the edges of Eka’s eyes had moistened and she was breathing heavily. “Eka won’t you say something?”
Eka made to say something but instead began to cry. Dr. Gerry watched her for a moment to figure out why she cried. Then Eka said amid her cry, “I was going to ask you to help me get a place where I could attach myself and work with their sewing machine. I thought about the cleaning job and felt it would get me nowhere. However I felt it wasn’t my place to tell you what I want, so I decided to let you get me the cleaning job. My intention was to save up money and buy a used sewing machine. I may have learnt sewing the hard way, but it is something I love to do. I can dream big with sewing. I already have plans in my head.” “So sewing it is?” “Certainly yes, Dr. Gerry, I can work in the house here or under the canopy I saw outside.” “I am glad you like the idea.” “Yes! I do. I do very much! It is actually God who put it in your head. The cleaning job just didn’t click with my heart. It would have sounded very wrong for me to have told you I didn’t want the cleaning job, so I prayed about it. I hope you don’t mind, I pray a lot. When things got pretty bad for me, especially when my parents began to tilt toward what was being said about me in the street, Simbi taught me to pray. I can say with all confidence that it pays to pray.” “You can pray as much as you want Eka. I have no issues with that. I don’t pray much though. Praying was one habit I couldn’t learn from home. My parents prayed very little. I have tried to improve my praying habit without success, so I gave up. But I think God makes good use of the little I pray.”
“Don’t worry doctor, I will teach you to pray. Now you can see there are things you can learn from me; and you haven’t even started.” “I don’t need you to say it, I can see it clearly. Concerning the sewing machine, I will call my sister today from work. She has some sewing machines and I know she does not make use of all of them. If she agrees to give me one, I know she will, I will go to her house to bring it home today. I want you to start immediately. You have momentum now; it will be good to use it.” “Thank you doctor. I was right when I said you are an angel, can’t you see it now?” As Dr. Gerry stood and regarded Ekaette’s beauty, she swung 180 degrees and began to pack the small plates of food into the freezer. Her mind was filled with joy and her thoughts spread with wings and flew. She thought about her sewing business growing big and about having Dr. Gerry for keeps. In seconds she forgot Dr. Gerry was still there watching her. She picked the pots she emptied of food and began to wash them. Dr. Gerry could tell she thought he had left. Shaking his head in admiration he thought, ‘whoever branded this girl a witch, was the real witch’. Quietly he tip-toed away from the kitchen, careful not to let her know he had been standing there watching her all along.