Somewhere in the tornado of words is a suggestion that I go for a walk along the Mississippi, which we crossed on a large bridge as we made our way on the sturdy Minnesota roads which, I will discover in the coming winter, are impervious to winter blizzards and late summer rains.
‘If you keep on Summit you’ll walk straight into it,’ he says. At first this confuses me because I wonder what I might be keeping. I am not yet used to that peculiar way Americans have of saying certain phrases: ‘keep left’, rather than ‘stay to your left’. ‘Walk straight into it.’ I imagine myself walking into the river humming ‘Wade in the Water’. As the image pops up in my head I smile – America will indeed be an adventure.
I am on campus a week early for an international student orientation that is scheduled to begin in two days’ time. This means there are very few people around. My room is on the third floor of Doty so I lug my suitcase to the lift and wait. Then I notice a sign saying ‘Elevator not operational until 9/1/1992’.
As my chipper guide had said, ‘the troops’ will only begin to arrive in the next few days so I realise I have to trudge up the three flights of stairs. I do so feeling suddenly very alone. And very annoyed. At home there would have been three random guys hanging around in the foyer, offering to help me with my bag – expecting a tip, of course, but available and friendly nonetheless. Here – nothing. Just a quiet, sterile building with no one around. The lack of people was a bit spooky.
The chipper American also gave me detailed notes on getting to Target where I would be able to buy bed linen but, having read my share of Mark Twain, after inspecting the room which is sunny and exactly what a college room is supposed to look like, I decide to go and look for the northern shores of the great river that Huck and Tom had once navigated.
I set off down Summit Avenue looking for the Mississippi River. He was right about walking straight into it. I walk right to the shore and I could keep going if I want to, straight into the river’s wide muddy body. It is disappointingly river-like and uninspiring and this worsens my mood. It looks nothing like I had imagined when I thought of Mark Twain and to make things worse it is a hot, sticky day – far hotter than it ever gets in Kenya and it reminds me of that first summer in Canada and how much we suffered in the sun and how intemperate North America can get with its swinging seasons. I look again at the brown water, feeling underwhelmed about this big adventure and, as often happens when boredom sets in, I make a note in my head to do some things that I forgot to write down like buy a hat and some shorts because Nairobi is always a civilised temperature and the days are mostly mild and perfect and here it is so bloody hot.
I am eighteen and I think I know everything, especially about America. I have watched enough movies and met enough Americans abroad so I think I am prepared to settle right away into the land of the brave and the home of the free. Or is it the home of the brave and the land of the free?
On TV America looks clean and in real life it smells clean and so – ridiculous as this may sound – I assume it is safe. In my mind I have always made a correlation between how a place looks and smells and whether or not it is safe. Perhaps it is because the parts of Nairobi where you need to be vigilant normally announce themselves: they are unkempt and have muddy tracks and good places for people to hide, or they are full of sweaty crowds in which fingers can sneak into your pockets or hands can slide anonymously across your bum. In quiet neighbourhoods where askaris are on hand, Nairobi feels as safe as safe can be.
So, because the geography feels familiar – I have seen white picket fences a thousand times on TV – and because it is America, the greatest country on Earth, which I don’t really believe but kind of do because Americans say it so much themselves – on my first day in America, I make the grave error of starting to feel comfortable in my surroundings.
It is late August so it is hot and humid and the houses on Summit Avenue are quiet – almost as though this is a set for a movie rather than a real place where people laugh and dance and actually live. The street is especially quiet, I will soon be told, because so many people are at their lake houses for the end of summer before the academic year starts. I am wearing shorts, because that’s what Americans do. They walk in shorts and they drink Slurpees or iced coffees and they do not mind if African girls do the same. Who cares? I love that Americans say this all the time. In our house the phrase has always been banned. ‘Your family cares,’ Mummy says the first time she overhears me say this to Mandla after I have picked it up at school in Canada. Mandla was sharing an exciting piece of news and I was at the age where being an asshole was fun. ‘Who cares?’ I said, squashing her story and killing her joy. I was ashamed then and never said it again, but something in me thrilled to its use by others. It signalled an emotional freedom I was never allowed.
I walk down the street with my mind in overdrive, thinking about Kenya and Canada and all the places I have lived. I smirk at the thought of drinking a Slurpee and am swept up for a moment in memories of that maiden summer in Canada all those years ago. I make a note to myself to say something about this to my sisters when I call home later. I walk a bit faster, realising I still have a lot to do. I am getting a bit nervous about exchanging my travellers’ cheques as well.
So, I am walking and thinking and feeling not-too-tired but sort of anxious on my way back from the river which has been so un-momentous. I pass a local school, which is just a block away from campus. I am struck again by how quiet it is and how well kept. I wonder if in America they have groundskeepers like we do at ISK or whether they contract companies to do it. I am about to remind myself to take the travellers’ cheques out of my backpack when I get back to the room when I see him.
He is in the driver’s seat of a parked car and the door is wide open. He has long black hair and a milky chest, which becomes a pale stomach, which slides into a tumble of black hair which is thatched at his crotch, where his penis is standing bolt upright. He is masturbating, stroking himself and looking at me without a hint of embarrassment in a way that makes me want to vomit and also makes me feel as though he has just vomited on me, and then he smiles which breaks the odd spell I have been under since seeing him and I turn and run. He doesn’t chase me but that doesn’t really matter because even though it is only a matter of seconds I am petrified.
I am startled – Bambi with her big eyes in the forest. I have never seen one of those uncloaked and standing upright in the stillness of the afternoon sun. I run with the full reach of my Zulu legs propelling me towards my dorm and I only stop when I see that I am on campus again, in front of a building that says ‘Doty’ in practical brown lettering, which is exactly the spot where the chipper American dropped me off only an hour and a half before.
It will soon be late but the sun is still up and the day is fading and washed in that orange prettiness that settles on North American summer evenings, and makes them look so good you want to remember them forever, even if nothing in particular has happened to make the day special.
Something about the apricot evening and the smell of the overly watered grass and the immaculately kept and professorial homes makes the exhibitionist masturbation incident feel sort of surreal and I begin to imagine myself telling Mandla and Zeng the story and saying, ‘Now how’s that for a first day in America?’
The idea of their laughter makes it seem like the whole thing has happened just so I can tell it and I start half-smiling and picturing Mummy asking what is so funny as my sisters gasp for breath on the other end of the line and them saying, ‘Oh, it’s just something you wouldn’t be interested in,’ and laughing harder and her insisting and then grabbing the phone and me finally telling her and her being appalled and this reminds me that I need to get a phone card at Target which I still want to get to before it closes and that makes me wonder whether the bank will still be open but everything in America has a drive-through and is open twenty-four hours – even banks – so hopefully it will be fine and I am about to make another mental note a
bout that when trouble taps me on the shoulder.
Trouble – especially when you are not looking for it – is usually nondescript. He looks too old to be a student, although not by much. He is short and slight and dressed immaculately in a white linen jacket and white linen pants as though he has just strolled off the set of Miami Vice. He is even the same colour as the black guy on the show whom everyone loves because he looks like he is a point-five, which is our slang way of saying half-caste in Nairobi, which I will soon learn is not a term that anyone in America uses – they say ‘biracial’. Anyway, so Trouble is short and light and dressed like a Cubano and when he speaks he has a voice like Fred Sanford. I am tall and, a long time ago, I decided not to like point-five guys because it’s so predictable. I decided to only fall in love with very dark-skinned guys because of black is beautiful and predictability. Plus I have never liked guys who are shorter than me even though that is very predictable but I am eighteen and can’t be expected to think everything through thoroughly. All this is to say that nothing about this situation seems conducive to a love match.
His opening line comes as no surprise and as soon as I hear it I am irritated and want to move on so that I can get to my banking drive-through.
‘Hey, girl, heaven must be looking for you ’cause . . .’ I am gobsmacked by the actual real-life use of a line my friends and I have laughed at for the last two years.
I wonder whether this is a trick, whether he isn’t some sort of joke my Nairobi friends are playing on me – sending me the exact opposite of my type to come and drop tired lines on me on my first day in America.
I respond with a terse hello – the kind that is supposed to say, ‘I’m not really interested and I am just saying hello because I don’t want to be rude.’
He doesn’t notice my frostiness.
‘Where you from, Angel? You go to school here?’
My well-raised African girl politeness problem rears its timid head again and so, instead of rolling my eyes and walking away, I respond.
‘Yes, I’m a student here but I’m in a bit of a hurry so I can’t really speak with you right now.’ I am starting to move even as I say this but he falls in step with me.
‘Listen to you. You sound like some kinda uppity girl.’
He does a poor imitation of my accent, ‘I caaan’t speak.’ He laughs at his own joke then continues, ‘You from Connecticut or somethin’?’
‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘I really am in a hurry.’
By this time we are standing in front of the lift that will take me to the third floor, which is where my room is: 309 Doty. I try to move past him to press the button for the lift but he moves faster than me and blocks my way.
‘C’mon girl. You haven’t even told me your name.’ This is said in a half-whisper that may have worked on a Hollywood film set, or even on someone who was not tired and irritable. It is not going to work on someone unattracted to the sayer of those words.
I start to worry a bit, though, because in Nairobi whenever I am walking along the street, if a man is too persistent, saying ‘ssst, sst’ for too long, I just keep going and eventually he gets tired and directs his attention elsewhere. By then his eyes have already tasted you and his mouth is a big O with his jaw dropping on purpose so that you and everyone else watching his performance on the street know he wants whatever is inside your jeans or under your shirt neatly tucked into your school uniform and his body turns as you swish past him and if you glance over your shoulder to make sure he isn’t following, you’ll see him looking with eyes bulging like the wolf in bed pretending to be Little Red Riding Hood’s granny and you just shake your head and get annoyed but it is always fine because you are moving in a crowd and he disappears quickly.
But here – right now – there is nowhere to hide. I can’t barge past him because this is not a crowded street and there are no blaring cars and exhaust fumes and no small shops to duck into to pretend I need to buy something. There is no one here except me and him and the worst part is that I am so painfully close to the peace of my room but not close enough and I can’t figure out what might work to make him disappear.
So, I capitulate and tell him a made-up name. I tell him that my name is Sarah because telling him that my name is Sisonke will make him say, ‘Huh? That’s a pretty name. How you say that?’ or something similar and it will prolong the conversation unnecessarily.
Then I tell him I have to go because I am late, and I turn away from him because I remember I had made a note to self earlier that the lift is not working and to use the stairs when I come back from my walk.
He follows me.
We are in the stairwell now and I feel so dumb for not anticipating this. I just thought he would get it and be gone. But he hasn’t been getting it and now I don’t know what to do in an empty stairwell with a strange man harassing me. I have nowhere to go but up, though, nowhere else but forward, so I climb stiffly and stupidly until we reach the third floor. He is still behind me making silly talk about how it is hotter than hot and damn it was like this in Charlotte but he hadn’t expected it in Minnesota and I push the door open into the reception area and then stop walking and turn to face him.
‘Damn, girl, don’t you know not to stop short like that? I almost knocked you over.’
If I weren’t so scared I think I would be able to laugh.
‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I’m really tired, I have had a very long day. I need you to leave please.’ I am still saying ‘please’ because everyone knows that being rude to strange men is just asking for trouble.
‘I just want your number,’ he says.
I am now freaking out so if I knew my number I would give it to him just to get rid of him, but I don’t yet know what the numbers are in the rooms because I only arrived two hours ago. I tell him this but he thinks I am lying.
‘Okay. I’ll take yours,’ I finally concede.
I am worn down and rattled. I have just seen a strange penis in broad daylight and am now having to deal with Trouble in a white suit.
‘Nah, you ain’t gonna call me, College Girl. What’s your room number? I’m around here a lot. I’ll pay you a visit.’
I keep quiet.
‘I ain’t gonna hurt you, College Girl.’ He says it in a voice that is very low and immediately the word MENACING pops up like an air bubble over his head like in a cartoon and I want to cry but I just say, ‘I didn’t say you would hurt me. I told you; I don’t know the phone number here on campus. I just got here.’
‘College Girl. Listen to that pretty voice. You tell me your room number and I can figure it out.’
It dawns on me that I am trapped and in danger and my best option is to be downstairs where there might be more people around. The campus is still pretty empty because I’m here early for international student orientation, which someone told me was just being told things like, ‘Picking your nose in public is considered impolite,’ and ‘Americans generally respect time.’ Also, I remember the chipper guy telling me that the residence coordinator had an apartment on the ground floor so I think to myself maybe he’ll be in and I can knock on his door if Trouble lets me get back downstairs and I am suddenly very thankful for the chipper chatter in the car – it had not been mindless after all.
‘I need to go back downstairs,’ I tell him and I slide past him, hoping he won’t physically block me again.
‘Whoa, whoa, okay, okay, College Girl. Okay. I can see you scared and I’m not a scary kinda guy. I just wanna talk a little. I ain’t gonna do a thing, pretty girl.’
‘Good,’ I say as I start to move more quickly, heading down the stairs with him right behind me, a shadow I haven’t asked for. I feel like a hostage but I am not sure I have a right to feel this way yet.
I write instructions in my mind, a note to remember to tell my sisters. Rule number 1: When you are in America, do not think the rules are different. It’s exactly the same as anywhere. Do not allow yourself to be alone with the strange guy. If he is following you, turn a
round and stay in the light.
I get down the stairs and push the door out into the green and almost bump into two girl giants walking their bikes up the path a few feet from the staircase. Trouble is a few steps behind me, still coming out of the building and so I follow my instinct, which is to rush towards them. I feel slightly hysterical and I know I sound desperate, which seems odd on a college campus in America where everything is so neat and manicured and normal looking.
‘Hi, can you please help me get to my room, this guy is kind of bothering me,’ I say in a half-whispered rush.
They don’t hesitate. ‘Of course,’ they both say as though they were twins. They look like Viking women with long legs and strong backs and blonde hair and worried eyes and just like that there are three of us and only one of him and I can breathe properly again because even though I am still a bit scared I am not alone any more.
I can tell they are a little bit frightened – like maybe they are wondering whether this is some sort of domestic dispute and he isn’t just a random guy – but, actually, who cares because before they appeared his attention was starting to feel like way more than just another attempt to pick up a girl he just happened past on the street. And what was doing in the heart of campus right next to Doty residence anyway?
Once I am certain they are with me and our circle of belonging is strong because we are all women – which counts for everything when you are in danger from a man – I turn to him and he suddenly shrinks and seems not so menacing and somewhat deflated as he watches them protect me and he also looks surprised and has an expression of betrayal on his face that almost makes me feel sorry for him – as though I have overreacted in front of people who have no business in our business. Before the Vikings came he thought he was protected by our shared brownness – as though our skin colour was some sort of a cloak – and I can see that I haven’t played by the rules of the game but I don’t care about that. Right now I need to feel safe. But funny isn’t it how, even after his antics have put my heart in my throat and scared the crap out of me, even after all of that, as we walk past him I feel the need to apologise to him – to say over my shoulder, ‘I’m really sorry, I have to go.’
Always Another Country Page 14