Mile 1 Silence

I wake up before her. The cold from Up Station sits in the room like a quiet visitor. The rooster down the road keeps talking; it does not get tired. My phone lights up. Messages. Work. Group chat. One minute, I tell myself. One minute that becomes ten, then fifteen, then the kind of long that eats a morning.

She turns her face to the wall. I know that move. It is small, but it carries weight. I keep typing. I answer one more message, then another. When I stop, the bed feels wide—wide like Commercial Avenue on a Sunday when the taxis are few and the road is open and empty.

She is a good woman. She knows where the sweet tomatoes sit at Food Market. Not in the front; inside, the second row, where the old mama smiles with red fingers from pepper. She bargains soft-soft and wins. She saved small, small coins in a butter container and bought our baby’s clothes at Mile 1 Nkwen. I say “thank you,” but it is light, like dry leaf. It floats. It does not land.

I think I am a good man because I pay rent, fix the tap, change the bulb when it dies, carry garri from Mile 1 in a black bag. I tell myself this is love. Maybe it is only duty. Duty is good, yes. But duty without touch is cold. Duty without words is dry. Duty stands outside the house and knocks; love enters and sits.

She asks for small things. “Hold me.” “Look at me.” “Say good morning.” She does not ask for much. Simple things. Bread-and-tea things. But my chest gets tight when she asks. It feels like a test. It feels like she is marking me with a red pen. Maybe I am the one failing. Maybe I am running from a mark no one is giving me.

I remember the day our baby came. The room was hot, then cool, then hot again. Nurses walked fast. My head felt slow. She was tired and bright, like a lantern with little oil but new flame. I opened my mouth and said her stomach was big. I thought it was a joke. It was not a joke. Her eyes went quiet, like a door that closes with no sound. That look still follows me. It follows me to Mile 1. It follows me to Food Market. It follows me up Up Station and back down.

At night, I lie beside her and lift my phone like a small window to another world. I scroll past faces from Nkwen to Mankon, from Mulang to Old Town. I laugh. I drop hearts. I say “beautiful” to strangers I will never meet. I do not say it to my wife. I do not know what is wrong with me. Maybe the phone is a rope. Maybe I am pulling myself away with my own hand.

Morning stretches. The sun rolls slow over the hills. We go down to town. Taxis shout “Up Station! Up Station!” even when they are full. We stand and wait. I watch her tie her scarf, smooth it, leave it simple. She looks good in quiet ways—clean, sure, steady. I want to say it. My mouth holds it like a secret it does not know how to share.

We stop at Food Market. Pepper bites the air. Fish lies silver on wood. The tomato mama laughs and calls her “mama baby.” They talk prices like old friends. I carry the bag. It is not heavy, but the silence between us is heavy. I think of the wall in our room, the way she turns her face to it. I want to break that wall with a soft hammer. Not noise. Not fight. Just small knocks, soft and sure, every day.

We walk to Mile 1 Nkwen. The road remembers many feet. Boys run past with bread. A taxi kisses the curb and apologizes with a horn. She buys small things: soap, salt, thread. She asks me, “Blue or white?” I say, “Any.” Any is a lazy answer. Any is a man who is there but not inside. I feel it as I say it. I want to catch the word and throw it away, but it is already out.

Up Station waits above, calm and cold. In the evening, the wind climbs into our room and sits on the bed. I lie beside her and lift my phone. The screen is bright. The room is dim. My heart is somewhere in the middle, confused.

I think of duty. I think of love. I think of small things: her scarf, her laugh at Food Market, her steady hand counting coins at Mile 1, the way her wrist feels when I touch it and she does not pull away. I turn the phone face down. It is simple. It is small. It is mine to do.

I touch her wrist. I say, “Good night.” Two words. Easy words. Bread-and-tea words. The room does not change. The wind does not leave. But she breathes out, long and slow, like rain that starts at Up Station and takes its time to reach town. Her fingers open, slow, like a door that knows the house. I walk through. I do not run. I do not rush. I walk through and sit.

Tomorrow will bring phone light. Tomorrow will bring duty. Rent will still be there. Taps will still leak. Tomatoes will still wait in the second row. But tonight, I am here. Not outside. Not on the road. Not lost in faces. I am here, inside my own house, inside my own woman’s quiet, saying simple things that land.