Forensic Evidence

 They say black people do not pace. 

Whoever ‘they’ are, they lie. That little toilet cubicle morphed into a vast cold, tiled white hall with glass walls and steel buttresses, devoid of décor and whose echoes were emphasised with each high heeled footfall of my pacing.

I could hear my own voice as a distant but approaching whisper drumming and shouting possibilities in my pounding temples. Those whispers were building up into a loud crescendo of howls as I spat questions out to myself in rapid succession and flung answers back in the same compartment between my ears, none of them at all convincing. All the time I was in there I was trying to steady my breathing enough to be able to walk out calmly with the offensive evidence still in hand and calmly still inquire as to what a part of the female anatomy (yes hair is part of the female anatomy) was doing on the floor in his toilet.

I remembered deceptions as far back as kindergarten. I remembered that fight in the sandpit. I remembered hurts that got more acute and amplified as the relationships I got into had gotten more and more complex. I remembered seeing things and denying them to myself and nowhere was that more evident than in my marriage. Unrelenting images of worthlessness and lies being fed to me because it wasn’t a woman’s place to question her partner’s detrimental decisions and actions especially since those actions would benefit the relationship in the long run.

 Any doubts you had were your own business to deal with and one cannot realistically expect a man to lose focus of his goals as he mollycoddles your fragile female ego. Well, at least this is how society felt when you approached it seeking to be palliated over your suspicions of infidelity or some kind of reassurance from women who have been doing the whole being a woman thing longer than you. The stubbornness of the patriarchal mentality thrown at women (even by women) will take a long time to remedy. It just screams at you to know your place, in the face of doubts, disquiet and disease and at risk of having a personalised delivery of a death sentence handed to you in complicity.

Just ignore your gut and know your place.

I have no idea how long I was in there before I heard a soft knock on the door that jolted me out of my troubled reverie. I had somehow sat back down on the closed lid and had faded off into tormented memories of how I had handled finding such incriminating evidence in the past. I decided that I had behaved like a wimp and not faced issues head on and I was not that guy anymore.

“Are you ok in there?” Nemesis’s voice sounding muffled through the door and the cacophony in my head.

At that point I flushed the toilet again in deflection and yelled above the noise that I would be out in a second, he should make me a cup of coffee in the meantime. I sat back down again and recited the Serenity prayer which goes thus:

“Lord, Grant me

  Serenity to accept the things I cannot change

Courage- to change the things I cannot accept

And

 Wisdom to hide the body of this man after I am done using my ample behind to smother the life out of his being”

He told me that my coffee was ready through the same door and only then did I exit. I sheepishly clambered on to the stool beside the kitchen counter and eyed him introspectively. Up and down. Surveying his features and again arguing with myself about how the curve of his nose can’t possibly be shaped like that of a deceiver. Surely the eyes I was gazing into can’t be eyes that would watch placidly as I self-combusted. These eyes were worthy of even more than the 87% trust their owner held. 

I took a sip of the coffee and glared at him over the rim of the cup. I was already in my Detective Clouseau / CSI mode.

He stroked my forearm, smiling when I set it down on the counter again and cocked his head to the side as he once again asked if I was ok… I stole a quick disgusted glare at his stroking fingers and he almost recoiled.

Gotcha!

Before I even formed the sentence in my head fully I had blurted out “, whose hair is in the toilet?”

“What hair?” came his confused response.

I said, “Whose hair is in the toilet of the house you supposedly live in alone that does not look like mine or yours. Whose strand of long brown hair is in the toilet?”

He looked even more bewildered, his mouth opening and closing like a drowning fish.

“Ohhhh OHHHHHHH you can’t talk now?”

Then he started laughing.

I hissed through clenched teeth, “You have some nerve…what is so funny???”

He had to steady himself as he almost slid off the chair. I still had a hot cup of coffee in my hand, this man had hair in his toilet and he was laughing at my query and anguish? Who the hell did he think he was, or maybe he just liked taking chances with his life? I settled with the latter.

As someone who is usually very quick on the uptake it startled me that he found this remotely pleasant. His jokey demeanour vaporized, no - shriveled as it dawned on him that I was livid and shaking visibly.

He grabbed my hand and pressed it to his warm cheek as I struggled in vain to yank it from his grip. He stroked my face and told me to calm down. He reassured me that my assertions (which did not need spelling out) were severely misguided. 

He had only the day before taken on the services of a cleaning lady as his schedule would not allow him to clean up the house properly as well as the laundering and ironing of his clothing. Since he was traveling and needed a solid stock of clothing she had been brought in on a temp basis to wash and iron his clothing. She was under instruction to make use of only the toilet downstairs, the kitchen and scullery as well as the laundry room. 

I stole a quick glance at the ironing board and rack of clean pressed shirts that were hung beside it. Just as quickly I planted my eyes firmly on the floor as I refused to look at him, he would see my shame.

I managed to mumble that he should have just told me if he needed to have his washing done. Surely I could have managed that!

Nemesis shook me by the shoulders and forcefully informed me that I am not his maid. He also hastened to add that I had quite the demanding schedule to deal with and it was simply not my job to clean up after him. He apologised for not having told me and pointed out that he never thought it would matter that he had needed cleaning done and that such a mundane task could cause me such consternation. I stretched the hair out to its full length and it gave after stretching to almost double its length-this pleased me immensely because it showed that this was not real hair, not a Brazilian or even cheap imitation human hair. It was proper synthetic plastic that I decided would probably be all Sisi Sophie could afford considering her station in life. MYSTERY SOLVED.

I grudgingly conceded defeat and TOTAL jumping of the gun- mentally. There was no need to just expose myself like a beached whale even though I felt like one.  I promptly got up and headed to the sink, picking up both our coffee mugs in the process. I opened the tap and grabbed a washing cloth to just rinse the cups and spoons quickly. I hadn’t noticed him sneak up behind me and only knew it when I felt his hands from under my elbows as he tried to grab the cups out of my soapy hands. I had to keep my hands busy to counter the massive embarrassment that was consuming me. Sadly, or maybe not so sadly he would have none of it.

"You are not my maid !!!" he growled.

He spun me around to face him and firmly gripped my ass in his hands as he pressed me into him in a bone crushing embrace. His lips covered mine with such urgency and fervour that I almost forgot I was holding a cup which he very graciously relieved me of. As the cup landed in the sudsy water, my sudsy hands were wrapping around his neck sucking all the bitterness of the coffee off his lips and tugging at his ears. 

Pop! Went one button off his shirt

Then two off my blouse 

I felt myself being lifted off my feet and placed on a wet, cold sink side counter and the weight of his body literally force my legs apart to accommodate him. I eagerly hooked my heels into the back of his knees and pushed my chest out for him to bury his face in as he pulled my ass in closer to him, grinding his fully clothed pelvis towards my moist punani….

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