She croaks, “Baraka?”
He looks at her, eyes big and brown, outlined by the black kohl, more precious than anything she has ever encountered and she wants to run to him but she is scared she will reach for him and grab air, scared that he is not really there. So instead she stays still and says, “I love you.” Hoping the words will become tangible things that will keep this moment in continuum.
He laughs. Their ‘I love you’s’ are present but more unsaid than said. “I guess the new look does make me more likeable.”
“BARAKA, if I have to call you one more time!”
“Yoh, gotta go, mum’s about to break something, or someone.” When he reaches the doorway he turns around, “But just so you know nakupenda pia.” and then he is gone.
Okay, she thinks, looks at her phone, notices I am different from what she expected. The thoughts running through her mind, okay, she thinks, hopes? Maybe Baraka dying was just a nightmare? And this is what’s real but no, too many days went by.
She collects herself and moves, taking the steps down two by two; she almost trips, steadies herself on the railing and reaches the last step just in time to catch the conversation taking place in the kitchen.
“Not in my house!”
“Ayii mum, it’s not that big a deal!”
Mama Kabi, never one to consider her words before they come out says, “What will you be wearing next? Ehh? Lipstick? Dresses? If God wanted me to have another girl he would not have put that soldier hanging between your legs.”
Baraka is mortified, “Muuum!”
“What? It is the truth.” She sees her daughter lurking. “Nyokabi, can you talk to this brother of yours. I do not understand what behaviour he is trying.”
—And how small this detail is in the scheme of everything. Does she know he was dead?! Will be dead? But how can she know?—
“Sometimes I swear God gave me children to punish me. Mwathani, what did I do wrong?! Eeh?! Why do you want my blood pressure to finish?”
Baraka did not expect her reaction to be positive but he expected… well, he does not know what he expected, just not this, not the overwhelming despair this reaction brings up inside of him; if he had just slipped by unnoticed—but he didn’t slip by unnoticed and they are here now and he knows with his mother it is a battle of the will so he tries to reflect strong will on his face but his eyes are glistening.
“Wipe it off.”
“But…”
“Now!”
Nyokabi takes the chance to intervene. “Mum maybe…”
“Stay out of this, Nyokabi!”
Kabi works her jaw, measuring her words. “So you only want me to speak when I am on your side.”
Their mother gives her a look and she goes silent.
When he is gone, the black liner sufficiently cleared off his face, another tube stubbornly and comfortably tucked into his pocket, saved for the bathrooms at school, the unfinished conversation hangs in the air between the glances traded back and forth.
“Usiniangalia hivo, I do it for his own good.” Mama Kabi looks at her daughter about to add something but changes her mind, busies herself with clearing dishes, signalling she is done with the conversation.
Kabi thinks of the words to tell her, to explain what is happening, but they do not come. How to say, —your son will die by his own hand and I know this because I found his body hanging from the ceiling in the future—
Something clicks. “Mum there is a lady; your second or third cousin, I can’t remember her name but she has long dreadlocks and big arms.”
She is distracted. “What are you talking about? Kwanza don’t you also need to go to work Kabi?”
“Mum, LISTEN! This is important!”
Mama Nyokabi looks at her daughter hard. “Nyokabi, you may be an adult but you do not shout at me under my roof, ehh?! Remember I still carried you for nine months. Umenisikia?”
Nyokabi restrains herself from throwing something, anything. Deep breaths. “Okay, I just need to know how to find the lady?
Mum?
She’s your cousin, the one who always carries cowrie shells.”
Mama goes back to cleaning the counter, silent for a moment and then, “Are you talking about mad-ma-Nyasi?”
“Who?”
“Mad-ma-Nyasi. Well, she is named Njeri, after our Maitu; we started calling her Ma-Nyasi because after her daughter died she left the city for up country, went to live in the grass, and started calling herself a prophetess of God.”
For a moment Kabi’s mother is lost in thought. Does she know? And then she remembers she is in the middle of conversation, “Anyway, why do you want to know about her?”
“I just, I just do. Can I get in touch with her?”
“Ha! Does that woman look like she is reachable? I’m even surprised you remember her. She only comes when she wants to be seen but that is probably for the best. She carries a bad omen, that one. Anacheza na uchawi.”
The dishes cleared, she wipes her hands and moves away. “Anyway I have a chamaa to go to and I suggest if your plan is still to save enough money to leave this house eventually, that you get to work on time.”
And when the house is empty, Kabi texts in that she is sick, and sits in front of her computer, researching,
Google
Potions to go back in time?
Can you change the past?
Skips Articles offered by:
Medium
How To Change The Past Without a Time Machine: The Power Is Real
Psychology Today
How You Can Alter Your Past Or Your Future – And Change Your Present Life
The Philosopher’s Magazine
Sorry, Time Travellers: You Can’t Change the Past
Over and over again, unhelpful papers, essays, conspiracy theorists until she stumbles on,
Time in Traditional African Thought
I take as my point of departure for this paper the thesis of Professor John Mbiti that in African traditional thought a prominent feature of time is the virtual absence of any idea of the future… Time is not an ontological entity in its own right, but is composed of actual events which are experienced. Such events may have occurred (past), may be in the process of being experienced (present), or may be certain to occur in the rhythm of nature. The latter are not properly future; they are ‘inevitable or potential time’ (3). Consequently time in African traditional thought is ‘two dimensional’, having a ‘long past, a present, and virtually no future’. Actual time is ‘what is present and what is past and moves “backward” rather than “forward”… -John Parratt
And more and more she reads until she thinks she knows what she must do, and then she starts to feel tired, so so tired and she rests her head, closing her eyes, thinking, it is possible, not tomorrow, not after, only yesterday and now. But I dare say the ‘what if’ cannot always exist in the same realm as the ‘what is.’
And somewhere on a different side of the city the ‘what is’ is a boy, is a blessing, a blessing moving and breathing and feeling and loving and punching and suffocating and choosing and chasing after what it means to stay alive.
Baraka
This is how I felt it: for a moment during the night Kabi was not here and I was not fully here either—wherever here is for those who exist after life but before forever— and I cannot remember how or where but we were together. Me in death and her in life met somewhere in the middle of time where the division had not taken place. And maybe this is why on this morning before my body is to be lowered into a casket, she sleeps with a half-smile on her face. Baba finds her in my room and gently taps her; there are dark shadows on his face and under his eyes but I do not feel guilt or pain for him. “Kabi, sweetie, we cannot be late. Wake up.”
Half still in sleep, she asks, “Late for what?”
“Today is the burial.”
She yawns and stretches. “What? Which one?”
He clears his throat and repeats himself, “The funeral mpenzi. W
e need to get ready to leave.”
The expression on her face shifts, she shakes her head, “No, no burial, he is alive.”
Baba is terrified; does not know what to do when his strong collected daughter loses her reason. “It’s okay baby, we all, uhh, we all wish he was still alive, uhm, but today,” he places his palm at the back of his head, rubbing his neck compulsively, “Today let us give him a proper send-off, ehen?”
“No baba, he is alive. I saw him. He was alive.”
He holds her, rubbing her back, “Hush,
Tsi
tsi
tsi,
Hush.
It was a dream mpenzi. Be strong now, you have to be strong also for your mother.”
Nyokabi’s face turns bitter. “That woman can be strong for herself!”
“Ayii yawah, daughter, don’t say things like that. I know things have been hard but she is grieving.”
“No, she is the reason Baraka was so unhappy. She always looks for a reason to be angry, disappointed.”
“As much as I wish I could blame anyone more than myself Nyokabi, that is just not true. Your mother’s responses always have a valid justification.”
“That is just her trying to get into your mind. She is always blaming everyone else but herself…”
“Nyokabi, enough.”
“And do not think I did not hear her shouting at you. Aren’t you also allowed to be in mourning?! You are a grown man! No one, least of all you, should be taking her shit.”
“I said enough, Nyokabi!” his voice barely raised but firm, “You will not speak of my wife that way in my house okay? I know you are angry but today is, today is a day for us to come together. Not to fall apart.”
Kabi’s jaw hardens. “You want to talk about coming together but even you, you were a problem. You and mum both.” She shifts her body up, not making eye contact. “You never let him just be himself, everything that made him him, you had a problem with. You were afraid he would be one of those boys you and the other fathers gossip about, the ones that bring shame—” her voice cracks, “and now somewhere inside of you there is a sense of relief because you never have to find out.”
Whoosh!
Rushing of air, palm-on-cheek.
Baba has never touched Kabi before today. How dare he? She holds her face where it is hot and he gasps at what he has done, “Kabi baby. I’m sorry.” He moves to hold her tighter but she pulls away. “You just,” He lifts his hands in exasperation, “You’re saying that I wished my son dead. Do you think any parent wishes this for their child? ehh?”
Kabi does not look at him.
“I would do anything to bring him back, Kabi, believe me— any and every version of him. I didn’t understand him but… but God knows I loved him.”
“Just,” she whispers, head down, “he was alive.” Her eyes well up. “I could have saved him but I didn’t.”
Baba stands up. “Darling, we all could have saved him, but none of us knew how.” He walks toward the door. “Get dressed, I expect you ready in thirty minutes.” He sighs. “I know it doesn’t feel like it right now mpenzi but we will get through this. Somehow, we will get through this.”
When he is no longer in the room, Kabi drops to the floor, on her hands and knees, frantically searching until she finds it.
As she tips her head back, her hand stops mid-way and she rethinks her decision. Bringing the bottle back down, she dresses in her black trousers and cotton shirt and places the bottle discreetly in the corner of her pocket. She fiddles with it all the way to the service.
Nyokabi: Eulogy
“Baraka used to say that one of the reasons we are here is for here and now. He advocated for fully living in the present moment and I…”
Can’t finish. The tears closing my throat come out in a sob on stage in front of this collection of friends and strangers. I’ve been better about holding my tears, keeping them for when I am alone but,
“I just, I just can’t talk about the here and now without talking about yesterday.” There is mucus running from my nose and I feel the weight of this grief will bring me to the ground. It is not pretty. I look at mum and she does not look at me. Her eyes are hidden behind dark shades and even though I can’t see them, I feel her gaze elsewhere. My hands are shaking almost as much as my voice. I can’t talk. “I can’t talk about the here and now without talking about the absence that exists in tomorrow.”
Yesterday tomorrow, yesterday tomorrow, yesterday tomorrow. I close my eyes and he is there behind my lids in the darkness, I see him, and I curse him and I want to say, “How dare you make me write your eulogy?”
But instead I say pretty words, “God’s timing and Baraka means blessing and I”
Can’t finish. And suddenly there are arms around me and I think it is him but I open my eyes and it is Baba and I fall into him and I stop pretending that I have the energy to be strong and I wail into his shirt and he takes the half open silver notebook in my hand and reads on my behalf and I am led to a chair to sit and I close my eyes and I count to ten times one hundred, fiddling with the bottle in my pocket, and I remind myself how to breathe and I open my eyes and wish I didn’t have to so I draw it up to my lips and swallow. It is more than halfway gone; let me go with it. This time I can save him, I know I can. This time he will stay alive.
Baraka
This is how to not think about being alive when you are dead. Do not watch the living. Do not attach memory to feeling. Do not attach memory to feeling but of the things that reminded you what it means to be alive:
Music. Sound and rhythm interrupting silence taught you how to move; you learned, even the most basic beat,
ta tadata ta-ta
ta tarata ta-ta,
ta-tarata-ta-da.
Do not attach memory to feeling but remember the time Kabi surprised you with your first Blankets and Wine concert tickets and on that day in the middle of April when the clouds threatened to interrupt every outdoor plan, you prayed.
And you didn’t pray to be different and you didn’t pray to be better and you didn’t pray to be other and all you prayed is that it wouldn’t rain and all you prayed is that you would get to listen to Sauti Sol play. And sometimes prayers are like music, and sometimes someone listens and is moved, and this time the sun unpredicted teased its way out of hiding and this time the grass was greener on this side and this time you stood with Kabi out under the still partly cloudy sky and sang Lazizi word for word at the top of your lungs and this time you let the music carry you and you took Kabi by the hand and she said, just this once, and you laughed, and you danced until even the ground was tired of holding you up.
Do not attach memory to feeling, do not watch the living but as you watch her swallow the liquid that burns her tongue, you think, she is coming to find me, somewhere between life and after, in the middle of time, she is coming to find me.
Time
And this is how it went. On this day when Kabi first became paralyzed with a grief she had never thought possible, on this day when Mama Nyokabi screamed at a paramedic on the phone and screamed at God for more of me, on this day when Baraka decided to die, I begin again.
They both wake up with different memories of time passing. The clock: a tool tick-tocking its way into later vibrates and Kabi opens her eyes. He is singing in the shower and now she knows she is not imagining.
“Baraka!”
26
“The Front Line” © WC Dunlap
Originally Published in Fantasy Magazine (Issue 61, November 2020)
My ass sticks to the thick, hot plastic seat of a waiting room chair that is unable to accommodate the spread of my hips. The AC groans with effort. It’s 68 degrees in here, but my body runs hot. I squirm in discomfort, inadvertently pushing my shorts up my crotch. My thighs pop out like sausages heated to bursting. Thick with sweat, their dimpled roundness lays bare for the judgmental stares of those seated around me. Leaning to my side, I lift a butt check and ungracefully dig the sho
rts out of my crack. It takes longer than it should. I glance around nervously, but no one’s looking. I’m just another big girl whose body has become armor.
* * *
“You weren’t wearing panties,” the officer replies impassively.
I don’t sleep in underwear, so I don’t answer, but the unspoken accusation hangs in the air. This was my fault.
That was two years and two hundred pounds ago.
* * *
There are three other women in the waiting room, only one like me. She is nearly my size and wraps her arms self-consciously around her belly. Legs too thick to cross, she presses her knees together. She’d be more comfortable if she’d just spread ’em, even in these tight-ass chairs. I smile in commiseration, but she looks away. She will learn to take up space, or she will die.
“Monique Renée?” The nurse calls my name.
I roll myself out of the chair, and the nurse tries not to stare.
Instead she says, “That’s a really pretty name.”
“That’s why I chose it,” I answer, squeezing past.
* * *
“Were you conscious when it happened,” the investigator asks.
“I was awake,” I answer.
“Did it hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Any idea why it chose you?”
I shrug. “Because no one cares what happens to a Black woman’s body?”
* * *
I sit in another white room now, flat on my back, legs spread, pelvis tilted. The top of the doctor’s head is barely visible below my belly.
The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2021) Page 33