The last knock

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The last knock

Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo

New York, USA

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

At exactly 3 am, he knocked mildly at her bedroom window, pam-pam-pam. One minute after, he knocked again. The sound vibrated through the walls of her posh apartment at the center of Bay Shore. One minute after, he knocked yet again. He followed it with three chilling call of her name, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella. Then, he disappeared.

When it started, some one and half years ago, she used to peep outside to see who it was. Despite several attempts, even when she was looking at the window just before the knock, she had not seen anybody.

He had knocked unfailingly on the 12th of every month at 3.00 am. She had since given up seeing the knocking hand. Of recent, she just woke up to listen to the knocks and the calling of her name. And then, she would stay up and think a little about the decision she made at 3 am on November 12, 2003.

But that was then.

Last week, Ebuka, her husband, returned to America. It was his first visit in more than two years. He has decided to reside permanently in America after years of traveling between Nigeria and America. To the joy of Isabella, he has given up trying to excel as a businessman in Nigeria. Instead, he will live in America and begin to raise a family with her, four years after their marriage. But as he lay beside her and the clock ticked towards 3 am, she wondered what she would tell him when the knocks occurred and her name was called.

***

That first night she heard the knock, Isabella stayed up all night. She tried to decipher the voice that called her name but couldn’t. She recalled all the men she knew but none seemed to her like someone who could come at 3 am and knock on her window. She called some of the men but none acknowledged knocking on her window. The man with mild eccentricity whom she suspected most was on vacation in Europe.

Every night afterward, her anxiety grew. One month after, just when she thought it was a strange aberration, when she began to suspect that it was just her imagination, it happened again.

It took the sixth time for her to nail down the pattern and register the voice of the caller firmly in her mind. It was a hybrid of a young adult with a childlike voice. She scrambled the voices of the men she knew but none convincingly seemed like one that could be transformed to what she heard.

Though Isabella had brothers and sisters all around America, she did not tell any one of them. Known in the family as ‘the one who visits the psychics,’ she did not want to add paranoia to her reputation. She did not tell her husband, either. Of what use will that be other than to raise his suspicion. It took the third occurrence for her to mention it to Norman.

Norman Kamau was Isabella’s Kenyan confidant. He knew many things about Isabella that nobody else knew. And as Isabella figured, he could as well know this too.

Norman tried to help her unravel the mysteries but couldn’t. Together, they meticulously ruled out all the men in Isabella’s ten year life in America. But each month, as the knocks and the calls came, the mystery deepened.

By the first year anniversary of these knocks and calls, it had become like a benign cyst. Isabella had given up on all permutations of who it could be. She and Norman had in the process of trying to figure out the incident relived the stories of her life. They exhausted all possibilities except for one secret they would take to their graves. It was one incident they did not revisit, not even to themselves.

***

At exactly three o’clock in the morning, the knock came as it had in the last year and half. Isabella, holding her heart and hoping to be calm when it happened, jumped out of bed. She walked into the bathroom right inside the master bedroom and turned on the faucet. With water splattering into the sink, she hoped that her husband would not hear her name called. But on this day, the call sounded louder. She splashed a hand full of water on her face in vivid anticipation. She grabbed a towel and wiped down her face. As she looked into the mirror, she saw her husband standing by the door. Isabella missed a heart beat.

“What’s going on?” he asked, half asleep and half awake.

“I don’t know. Did you hear that too? I don’t know who knocked on the window and was calling my name.”

Her husband staggered out and gravitated towards the bedroom window. He yanked the curtain up and looked out. He saw nobody. He grabbed a shirt off the closet door, threw it on his shoulders and rushed out of the apartment. He ran to the back of the house and looked around. He saw nobody. He walked round and round, but heard no sound. Suddenly, two cars at the other end of the parking lots cranked their engines on and pulled out. He rushed toward them but the cars hit the street before he could get close.

Isabella was sitting on the bed, resting her heavy face in her hands when he walked in.

“Did you see anybody?” she asked.

“Did I see anybody?” repeated her husband rhetorically. “You actually expect me to answer that question? Or do you have a prepared answer for me as to who that was?”

His voice was cracked. Isabella knew he was angry. She knew if she misspoke, a furious slap could follow, so she remained calm.

“So who was that? Another of your boyfriend who doesn’t know I am back?”

Isabella did not answer. She had no good answer to give and she knew silence was a better answer.

He dropped his shirt on the dresser and climbed back into the bed. He faced the other end of the wall and covered himself with comforter. Isabella quickly knew what that signified. It was a matter for another day. She stayed up a little more in her pensive position before she stretched her legs and covered her body with the other half of the comforter, facing the opposite end of the wall.

***

On the 12th of next month, as the clock ticked towards 3 am, he lay on the bed facing the window while she lay on the other side of the bed, her back turned on him, facing the door.

Since the first incident, they had not spoken. He had demanded an explanation but had not gotten any. Meanwhile, he had pulled out all her phone records and called each number just to announce, “Hi, this is Isabella’s husband.”

On getting home after work, he went to bed early every night and woke up in the middle of the night to await the knocks. He pulled the curtain away and stared straight at the window.

On her part, she had decided on this day to tell him the secret story before another knock comes.

“On the 12th of November 2003,” she started, with tears dropping down her face, “I had an abortion.”

She paused as a large gulp of hot air went down her throat. “It was the most painful thing I ever did in this life.”

She paused again and swallowed another gulp. “Two months before, my sisters and I went to a party in the Bronx. I was half drunk when they dropped me off. There was this white guy I met at the party. He called me on the phone and asked if he could come over…”

She broke down and began to sob endlessly. He did not turn around to look at her. He did not try to console her. He simply laid there listening.

“On the 12th of November 2003 at exactly 3 am, I decided to abort the baby. Since then, he has been visiting me on the 12th of each month and at that same time,” she said in between tears. “I swear, it was the only time I strayed since we got married.”

It was ten minutes after three in the morning when her tale telling was drowned completely by tears and heart wrenching sobs. There were neither a knock nor a call, just a couple in bed with their backs turned on each other.

****

This story was first published in the January edition of Xclusive – a Dublin based magazine.

Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo is the author of Children of a Retired God. To order the book, visit Amazon.com, or irokoproductions.com. You can also order Children of A Retired God at any bookstore near you.