When Flannery returned—without her tea, with two glasses of red instead—she said to Thandi, “So what is it you do in Uganda?”
“I’m in the dry-cleaning business,” Thandi said. “But I don’t live there. I live in Nairobi, where my husband is from.”
“Is that where you’re going?”
“No. Boston.”
“What takes you to Boston? Is it work?”
“A little bit of work. But mostly pleasure.”
“Ohhh, lucky you. There won’t be much pleasure for me where I’m going. Lisbon. Just work work work.” Flannery sipped her wine. “And will you be staying at a hotel or . . .?”
“With friends of mine who live there.” This was false. Her travel agent had booked her a top-floor room at the Mandarin, but Thandi saw no need to divulge this information.
“Doooo theyyy?” Flannery said. “What are they doing there, then?”
Thandi, who was used to this sort of thing from strangers—curiosity that churned into something more suspicious—was still not immune to its antagonizing power.
“Working. Living. Paying their taxes,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Flannery said. “I didn’t mean to intrude.” She leaned back against the sofa, picked up her wine and a copy of OK! magazine (which Thandi knew she couldn’t possibly have procured from the lounge, had to have purchased from one of the bookshops downstairs). Thandi, who suddenly recalled that she had things to do (duty-free items to collect, food to eat so as to avoid airplane food), stood and announced her intention to leave.
“But the flight doesn’t leave for another two hours. Are you going to lug that thing around? For two hours? Why don’t you leave it here?” She pointed at Thandi’s carry-on. “I’ll watch over it for you since my flight leaves later than yours.” And something must’ve alighted on Thandi’s face, because Flannery added, “You don’t think I’d steal anything, do you?”
“I don’t know you,” Thandi said.
“It’s up to you.” Flannery shrugged, returning to her copy of OK! “All I’m doing is offering.”
Thandi could not explain, then, the sensation that came over her: an emulsion of dread and pity. She took a moment to appraise this Flannery, thinking she was tiresome, imagining how she must flounder in her day-to-day, bumping along winds of self-harm, unable not to warp her human interactions. Much like a gnat. But harmless, Thandi concluded. And anyway an act of theft in this place of white lilacs and black horses seemed unlikely to her.
Thandi acquiesced. “Okay. I’ll be back in an hour. Thanks.”
FLANNERY WAITED TILL 6:17. It seemed like a good sign, the fifteen minutes that Thandi had been away. She walked over to the woman who occupied her former seat, the chair from which she’d been evicted, and tapped her on the shoulder. The woman turned around, her face unable to feign interest.
“Could I ask of you a favor?” Flannery said.
“Yes?”
“I’m just going to pop over to the bathroom. Would you watch my things while I’m gone? I’m sitting over there.” She pointed to the leather sofa, her magazines and large duty-free bag.
“Okay, but I’m leaving in five minutes. I won’t be responsible for your things after.”
Flannery nodded in thanks. She searched for the ladies’ bathroom, Thandi’s suitcase in tow, and when she found it—a place of gleaming dark walls and elegant vanity tops—ensconced herself in a large stall.
The carry-on itself was not quite what she’d imagined: hard, black, and unfussy. But she stuck to her plan, still. Emptied it, one by one, of its contents. The small silver computer, the transparent bag with creams and cosmetics, the blue jeans, the cotton underwear, the newspapers, these ubiquitous things were of no interest to her. Nor, in the end, was the scarf—its square white center exploding with brown bird plumes. These things were, some of them, curious. But they did not count as evidence.
This fact satisfied Flannery. She repacked the case, everything in order, and after emptying her bladder, pulled up the carry-on’s handle and wheeled it out of the stall. She stood before the mirror, washing her hands, gazing at her blue-veined face, feeling the split-second sadness to which she’d lately grown accustomed when she looked in a mirror, and the understanding that came with it: that she could no longer be counted among the beautiful. Not at fifty-four.
Flannery recalled that she’d been beautiful once. That she’d been beautiful in Lichfield—where she was from—and that there was a time when hers would have bested the beauty of the Thandis of the world. She thought of all the poor young girls in Lichfield growing up now, neighbors of other young girls, the kind who didn’t exist in Lichfield forty years ago. How unfortunate that they were born in this fragile age, one where every Thandi expected to be accommodated and indulged at the expense of others.
She dried her hands with a white face towel, which she gathered (disapprovingly) that she was meant to add to the growing tower under the sink. She was nearly dismayed to find that the bottle of hand lotion was empty, until she recalled Thandi’s bag of creams. Flannery unzipped the case and pulled the bag out for close examination.
They were the first things she saw when she lifted the bag to eye level: small and skull-white, gleaming at her with menace, as though they’d been biding their time, waiting all along to be discovered—these pots of diamond-infused face creams.
BY THE TIME Thandi reemerged from below—with her own duty-free bag (wine for her Boston friends, chocolates for their children), the gate to her flight had opened. She saw her carry-on, pulled right up against Flannery, who was asleep, stretched out on the sofa, sandals off, arms folded over her belly. She stood over her for a moment, hesitant, trying to decide whether to wake her. To say thank you and goodbye. But then Flannery exhaled deeply, rolled onto her left side, and turned her back to Thandi, who took this as a signal to leave.
On her way out, the lady at the front desk (the same one who’d been at the receiving end of Vikram Rao’s rebuke) said that they weren’t boarding premium passengers yet. “We’ll let you know. You can still relax, Mrs. Kimani,” she said. But it would feel awkward going back, and anyway Thandi preferred to be early as opposed to on time. She thought about Flannery as she made her way down to the gate. She’d found it alarming at first, how her carry-on handle, which she’d left folded down, stood lifted like an antenna, but then she imagined that Flannery had pulled it up to wheel the bag closer. In the end, she decided, she’d had the right idea about the woman. And the more that she thought about it, what did it matter if Flannery had taken something? Everything she required—passport, wallet, jewelry—stayed with her at all times, hedged in a tight grasp between arm and rib. The rest was easily substituted.
At the gate, where there was a steady swell of passengers, Thandi was first in a line of five. On the other side of the barrier, a gate agent—short and red-haired, the name Stephen etched onto a badge—was flanked by two men. Stephen regarded her and said, “Step forward, madam.” Thandi, who was reading phone messages in her left hand, gave the man her passport and boarding pass with her right. So she didn’t see it, that moment when he turned to the men behind him. But she heard it. Heard the whispered baritone of “This is her.” Thandi looked up, with sudden force, at men who appeared to be scrutinizing her. Then she looked behind her and around her at the assembly of travelers, to try to locate the suspicious one among them. By the time she turned around, the two men—average of height and slim as reeds (and who knew that slimness could be so menacing!)—had moved past the barrier to enclose her.
“Will you follow us please, ma’am?” the one with no beard said. He pointed at her carry-on. “I’ll take that,” he added. She relinquished it without pause. But when the other man, the one on her left, pointed to her bag and said, “That, too,” she refused.
“No,” Thandi said. But he picked it out of her hands easily, as though he were confiscating something from a small child.
Thandi walked behind one and in front of th
e other and replayed the sound of that no in her mind. This was a habit that followed precarious moments, when she felt unsure of whatever had just found its way out of her mouth. Sometimes, the words in her head disappeared as though carried off by some interior wind. But now all she could think about was that no: that a weaker no, a more faltering no, had probably never been uttered by a Kimani. She wanted to cry out, to curse, though she couldn’t imagine what she’d say if she did. And of course she knew, without having to look (though she stole a dismayed glance before she stepped into the lift), that the assembly of people she’d turned to before had now turned to her. Were watching her. Kneading her into various ill-made shapes.
SOMEWHERE DEEP INSIDE the belly of Heathrow Airport—somewhere that was the kind of place she’d heard of but had not had to imagine—Thandi sat. The room was void of extravagance or care. There were two red chairs on either end of a white table, a boxy telephone attached to the wall, and a black box—an audio recorder. On her way in, they’d passed others like it and she saw a tall man wearing a khamis exiting the room that neighbored hers.
An hour passed and she wondered what on earth the men were doing, though through the window she could see the arm of the one that guarded the door. The other, the one who’d spoken first and who she now saw was the leader between them and who she was now sure would be conducting some kind of interrogation, had wandered out of view.
Thandi had had some time to brood. To consider the kinds of things that Kimani would think of: protocols, legality, their London lawyers. She remembered them now because she was convinced that the officers—or whatever they were—had not behaved properly or followed the right protocols. She intended, when they brought her things back in, to phone her lawyers right away and prepare them to do ferocious battle. But in the meantime her mind kept wandering off to the passengers on the plane. And she cringed at the thought of how she must have caused them a delay. Wondered if at this moment, a flight attendant was announcing her name to everyone on board: this is the final boarding call for passenger Thandiwe Kimani. And whether the other travelers would put two and two together, would identify her as the suspicious figure that had been whisked away. Thandi wondered if a few of them would google her, and what they’d make of their findings: a recent Forbes list, interviews with one or two of the loud Kimanis (second cousins of her husband), speculation about how many square miles of land they owned. Perhaps they would even come across an article in a British tabloid from two years ago, the infamous one that existed, now, as mere screenshots: “These Black Africans Are Crazy Rich. But Where Does Their Money Come From?”
By the time the door cracked open, bringing with it the two officers, Thandi had been waiting for two hours. She was sure she’d missed her flight. She was fuming.
The beardless man sat down across from her. And she saw her captor properly then—the pale pear of his face, the brown hair that was overmoist, the smallness of his mouth, which, when he talked, when he said, “Kee-MA-nny, is that how you say it?” barely moved—and was struck by how weak he looked.
She allowed herself to imagine that he was more easily overcome than she’d first thought.
The officers got on with their duties in the order they’d explained, but this was after informing her that they had the right to do whatever they were about to do under the law, and that if she resisted, at best they would keep her in the room for as long as they desired, and at worst they would lock her up in a cell.
Thandi, who’d refused to open her bags when they asked, who had said, “If you want to open it, you open it. You’re the one that brought me here,” sat in silence. She eyed the men intensely, as they searched her bags and swabbed them. She did not waver, even in those moments when they glanced up from their rifling and caught her eye. She wanted to convey something: that she, too, was watching them and had marked them. The search and swab took ten minutes, and then the officer, the pale one, announced that they were done. “I’ll be back with the results. In the meantime, pack this all up,” he said. He collected his swabs and made for the door, but then turned back, picked up her bag of creams, and said, “I’ll be taking this.”
THEY RELEASED HER, eventually, once it was ascertained that she was carrying nothing prohibited. Once it had become clear that they had gotten something terribly wrong. But not before reporting these facts to her without apology. Informing her that they were simply doing their duties, that they had done nothing wrong, they hoped she understood that, and that it wasn’t their policy to reimburse passengers for missed flights.
Thandi—who by then had informed the lawyers of the situation, two big-time barristers who were presently en route to Heathrow—stood to pack her things. She couldn’t be sure exactly when it had happened, but something old and hard had broken inside of her. The officers watched her as she put her handbag on her shoulder and lifted the carry-on handle.
“I’m free to go?” she asked. They nodded, yes.
Thandi walked out of the detention room and passed the officer who was holding the door open. She ambled a few feet forward, then turned around and said to him, “Do you have children?”
The officer frowned, indicating that the question was odd and that he had no more time in his day to give her, but still he said, “Yes.”
And then Thandi spat on the floor. “You are nothing!” she said to him.
He looked up, face even whiter than before, and said, “I’m sorry?”
“I said you’re nothing! Just a fucking worker! And your children will be nothing and their children too. Never forget that.”
It would take Thandi some time to connect the cardinal dots of her detention. Three weeks, to be exact. When the whole story unraveled. When big people got involved at the request of a government minister who, in turn, had involved himself not through the lawyers but through a friend of the Kimanis who sat in the House of Lords and was determined to get to the bones of this awful humiliation. This is how it came to light that Flannery Green had reported Thandi to a security officer at Heathrow, informing him that she was all but certain that the lady in question was hiding drugs in her pots of creams. And this is what the officer had passed on to the men who had carried out Thandi’s arrest. Later, when the woman hired to investigate the whole thing paid Flannery a visit in Lichfield, Flannery would deny that she’d made false claims: “I’m a good woman, a good neighbor, you can ask around. I didn’t lie, I just got it wrong.”
In the end, nothing happened to Flannery. But the officers were suspended for misconduct and for failure to follow protocol. Kimani thought it didn’t go far enough. He’d wanted the officers sacked. He’d been so angry, angrier than Thandi. But a few days after her return from Boston—as she lay in the sun on the veranda of their Karen home and recalled, with laughter, her mighty imprecation—she’d said to him that it was time to forget about it, that she’d taken care of them in her own way. That they would reap what they’d sown.
Khaddafina Mbabazi is a writer and musician. She was a Henry Hoyns Fellow at The University of Virginia, where she received her MFA. Her work has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, The Johannesburg Review of Books, and Vox Populi. She currently resides in Kampala, where she is working on a novel and completing a story collection.
EDITOR’S NOTE
Every now and then, a character’s voice captures me right away. Stanley’s story, “The List,” opens with a narrator talking to his sister. Then the heartbreaking conflict unfolds. A man has lost his only child to a tragic accident and might lose his wife and marriage in the grieving aftermath.
The narrator, his sister, and his wife are fully realized characters who turn in a circle of directions after the child’s death, to literature, philosophy, mysticism, and physical estrangement and retreat. Each suffers in a particular way. More than that, the characters are self-contained and revealed, known and unfolding mysteries, who grieve apart but who remain connected. When the narrator and his wife eventually reunite, a baby has already been made. The
story’s resolution is surprising, magical, and well earned.
Suzanne Heagy, Fiction Editor
Kestrel
THE LIST
Stanley Patrick Stocker
NOT LONG AFTER the accident, my sister Claire and I took a walk down by the river when the leaves were just beginning to turn. This was back when my wife, Eunice, was still barely getting out of bed in the mornings, and Claire had come down from Ohio to help out. As we walked, she said the soul drops down into the body anywhere from six months before birth to one month after. In the latter case, she said, it often hovers above the child, trying to decide whether to come down. I just gave her a look, and we walked on in silence, the leaves crunching beneath our feet.
To be fair, she’s been into that kind of thing since we were kids. When my friends and I were in the basement smoking weed and listening to the latest Earth, Wind & Fire, she was up in her room with her girlfriends, trying to figure out what it meant if your rising sign was in Cancer. Later, after college, she became a serious metaphysician long before it was popular: crystals, a miniature pyramid in a corner of her living room big enough for her to sit beneath and “listen to the vibrations of the earth.” Now she’s got a decent real estate business with a Reiki practice on the side. Anyway, it sounded like so much mumbo jumbo to me. I’m a college professor, for God’s sake.
That night I drove her in the rain to the bus station in a rundown section of northeast D.C. for her trip back to Cincinnati and her husband and two pimply kids. When I got back, I went down to the dimly lit room in the basement I use as an office and tried to work on my long overdue book on Melville. I argue that Moby-Dick is a marvelous and variegated outward journey: Ahab shaking his fist at God and Fate and the smallness of the soul in the face of an overwhelming cosmos. “Call me Ishmael,” the narrator says, but what is his real name, and what is he running from? From what crime, real or imagined? I contend that Melville veers away from a yet-untold story in allowing Ahab to take center stage so that Ishmael becomes a bystander in his own tale. What might Ishmael’s journey have looked like if he were the hero? What was the source of that “damp, drizzly November” of the soul? Why was there nothing to interest him on land? Where was his mother when he was put to bed for sixteen long hours for some household infraction by a “stepmother”? I’ve tried to answer these questions, but for the past year I’ve been hopelessly stuck. Already the book was six months late and getting later by the day.
Best Debut Short Stories 2021 Page 4