marisa's story Part 2

Everyone was surprised and happy for us, I was to get married before my friends who had been dating long before me, some despised me openly for beating them to it, and others asked ‘how did you get him to pop the question?’ to the latter I say ‘when a man knows what he wants, he knows what he wants, it is that simple, it has nothing to do with all the other things like money, job and all that we have assumed it to be about. Plus when you are a good thing, and when it is for you-it just works out, no stress.’

Wedding preparations got hot and heavy, church counseling and dress fittings, then came the news. Keke had been having headaches, and I insisted he got it checked, so if it was malaria we could begin to treat it. I did not want my groom sick on our day. Keke went to the hospital, and did a blood test, the good news was it was not malaria, the headaches were probably related to stress; the bad news was discovering that Keke’s genotype was AS, just like me.

Why didn’t we talk about this before hand? Why didn’t it matter to us before we got here, a month to our wedding? On hearing this, my father immediately refused to go any further with wedding plans, I was heart broken. My mother asked me to see reason, that to go on was to be selfish and not consider the future of my children, then she asked me ‘don’t you want to have healthy children?’ of course I did, what sort of question was that?

On Keke’s end, it was not easy either; his parents were also on his case. The wedding everyone was excited about, preparing for, the one that had made me the envy of all was now threatened to not exist at all.

I prayed like never before, begging God to do a miracle change his blood type, change mine, or better we get married and none of our kids the victim’s of our love.

Keke and I would meet in secret, as now our love was a taboo; word went out to our invited guests that the wedding had been ‘postpone’.

‘How are you holding up?’ Keke asked me minutes after I got into his car, on one of those evenings we met at Yumi’s place.
I said nothing; I did not even look at him I simply stared at my engagement ring.

‘they have a point you know, we won’t be happy… you could hate me for what our children will go through, I could hate you… or worse our children could hate us. I love you Marissa but…’ Keke was saying.

I could not believe what I was hearing, three weeks and they had finally gotten him to cave in, Keke wanted out, he wanted out but did not want to be ‘the bad guy’.

“fine.” I said holding back my tears as I pulled my engagement ring off my finger.

“Have it…” I said. My palms were open where the ring sat beautifully my arm outstretched, my tears now falling… silently.

“Do not be like this, Marissa this hurts me too but what can we do? I can’t stand this over our heads, like a dark cloud. We deserve to be happy completely and build a family of healthy happy children… now that we know, it won’t be right to go on, it just won’t…” Keke said and quickly wiped his eyes, I knew he was crying I heard it in his voice.

“Take your damn ring!” I cried as I tossed it at him and before he could stop me or say anything I walked out of the car into Yumi’s apartment and bolted the door.

Keke knocked on the front door, rang the door bell, Yumi begged me to hear him out
‘To hell with him! ’ I screamed.
(c) Tischioni Moore
2010