by Atieno Mzuri
On the website he had described himself as a sixfooter with athletic body. His voice on phone was pleasant and I had listened to him talk about giving me erotic massages that would drive me over the moon. He was in his 50s and he had been looking for his queen his whole life and when he saw my pictures he knew immediately that I was right for him. He had said he wanted to get married as soon as we arranged a physical meet and sparks flew.
So anyway when he stepped out of the expensive car, I was shocked to find an old very thin wiry man that barely came up to my waist, and I am not even that tall myself. I remembered my manners and almost slapped myself for not keeping the end goal in focus.
Atieno, if this old boy-man here is not a criminal, get your head out of the clouds and be your charming self and seal the deal, you're not here to marry for love, I kept pinching myself to keep that in mind. With a grim smile I had stepped up and we had driven to the Mall of America and he had bought me clothes worth about $500 as he pinched my ass every moment he got.
Finally I had cut short the date pleading that Dionne had sent me a text that she was going to work and needed me back home. He drove me home while talking about how he was so turned on by me and couldn't wait to sample the cookie before we got married. I told him in Africa we got married before we gave away the cookie. When he tried to touch my hand I told him us Africans didn't appreciate public display of affection.
Deep in my heart I was still craving Matt. I thought of him constantly and on some nights I would wake up crying wondering why everything had gone so wrong. I wondered where he was and what he was doing and whether he had met someone else at church and whether he missed me even a little. Except for a lot of texts on the first day that I ran away, he hadn't tried to get in touch with me. I missed him so much, the ache in my heart was palpable.
Soon it was Thanksgiving day. I had now been with Dionne for two and half months and my misery had increased tenfold. I had lost a lot of weight and in the mirror I was seeing an old haggard woman with unkempt hair. I had stopped trying to meet anyone and was in the worst limbo possible. Dionne hadn't been home for two days. She had taken to picking extra shifts because I never went anywhere. She didn't pay me extra for staying the days I was supposed to be away.
On Thanksgiving day, I made a decision to take back the grip on my life. The following is an excerpt from my diary:
"It's 6.00am. I am floating in that place between dreamland and awake. I can hear and feel what is going on around me. But my body is still too weak and disjointed to actually get up. After all it is 6.00 am. And there is no school today. So there should be no reason for normal children to be up this early. It is one of those days that normal children would sleep in till 10.00 am. But not these ones.
So, I am hearing the voices of the kids. There is Bailey , the oldest of the children. 9 years old. Quite mature for her age.
Then there is Naomi, the middle child. 6 years old. Overweight. Looks like she could be 10 years old. Angry as hell with the world. Yells and kicks and screams and threatens all the time. Then acts sweet the next minute and tries to hug the person she has just been mean to.
The last of the three is Ruthie, 2 years old, going on 30. Intelligent, sweet, kind of reminds me of my own baby. She is the one I like most.
"Should we wake the nanny up?" asks Ruthie.
"No, let's just go downstairs. I will make your breakfast." says Bailey .
"No, mummy doesn't like it when we go downstairs on our own. Let's wake the nanny up." says Naomi.
"Ruthie, could you go into the nanny's room and wake her up?" asks Bailey.
"Hell no!
Well, I am going to wake the nanny up. I am not afraid of her. I need my breakfast now." says Naomi.
All this while I had been lying in my bed. In what was supposed to be my room, my refuge. But since it had no lock, it didn't exactly give any privacy.
Naomi came into the room. More like stomped in. Threw aside the duvet that I had covered myself with. Onto the floor. I was exposed. I couldn't pretend to be asleep anymore. Hoping that they would go back to bed and sleep like normal kids till 10.00 am.
"Bailey is being mean to me." she said
"No, she is not!" I said
"You have to come and stop her. That's what a nanny is supposed to do. To take care of me. You should put her on time out. She is being really mean!"
"No, she is not!" I insisted...
I had been listening to their conversation while I was half asleep. Nothing of the sort had been going on. But Naomi likes to make up stuff. It’s like she lives in her own world, some crazy world. And suddenly she began yelling at the top of her voice.
"You need to come stop her!!! That's the work of a nanny!!! If you don't stop her, I am going to tell on you to mummy!! And you will get fired!!"
I looked at the 6 year old child yelling at me. And thought of yelling back at her. Back home, I would have spanked this child. But over here, they take such a child to a therapist. A grown up, who sits there and tries to talk and reason with the child. I don't know how you can reason with a 6 year old child. Never mind that, that's just the rambling of my discontent mind.
"Get up now!! Bailey is being mean to me!! You have to stop her!! YOU ARE THE NANNY!!!"
Yes, indeed. It dawns on me. I am the nanny. I drag my heavy feet out of the bed. Another nightmarish day begins at 6.00 am. I am going to put in the hours. Because I need the money. To send back home to my family.
"Did you wake the nanny up?" I hear Bailey ask as the kids all march downstairs.
I don't hear Naomi's response. But I hear her yell...it's loud enough to wake up the neighbors.
"Come on down here!! YOU ARE THE NANNY!! I need my cereal now!!"
It's Thanksgiving Day. What have I got to be thankful for? I am not sure.
I took out the cereal and put in bowls and poured in some milk.
"Why are you giving me cornflakes? " Naomi demanded. "I want cocoa puffs”
At which point she threw the bowl of cereal at me. Some of it landed on my face and as I stood there with a paper towel wiping my face and having an angry child yell at me, I knew I had come to the last straw. This wasn’t working out for me. Hadn’t from the beginning. Never would. In Africa I had had a babysitter for my child. And I had never allowed Danielle to treat her so monstrously.
The bowl of cereal. ..
On that Thanksgiving day I decided to get rid of the depression that had settled on me like a wet blanket and get my life back together. I called Jake and set a date for the next Saturday. And then I went to the basement where Dionne kept the treadmill. And I got on it for one hour every day. And I forced myself to eat so that I would put back the weight I had lost. And I went to Wal-Mart and bought some lipstick.
I was going to meet Jake that Saturday.
Chapter Twenty (Enter Jake) Jake and I had our first date on a Saturday. I had never taken advantage of the three off days that I was entitled to so Dionne was a bit miffed that I had decided to go away for the entire day.
"That means I can't work this weekend. " she grumbled. To which I calmly responded that I hoped she didn't mind but henceforth I would be taking my three days off as I had met someone and I felt I needed to work on the relationship. As I was telling her this, I hadn't gone out with Jake yet but I wanted to keep my options open in case Jake and I hit it off.
Jake was prompt. He arrived at 8.00 am as we had planned. He had said he wanted to show me his favorite parts of the city. So we set off for the Minnehaha Falls, a scenic waterfall surrounded by lots of trails for lovers to walk and talk as they explore nature.
Right by the falls is a restaurant where people buy drinks and carry along on their walks to quench their thirst as they drink of each other. November was cold. Luckily it hadn't snowed this week and it was a little sunny though still fairly cold. We bought some coffee to go. Walked down the over 100 stairs to the bottom of the waterfall and then got on the trails.
Jake did most of the talkin
g after I had explained that my current state of isolation meant I wasn't aware of any current world politics and couldn't even tell him whether Osama Bin Laden was still alive or that had been another man's sandal that had been found floating at sea and which Facebook jokes had presented as evidence of the burial at sea. I was that secluded and ignorant of anything happening beyond the four walls of our house.
He talked a lot. There was no relapse into awkward silence. I will give him that. But the easy camaraderie that I had had with Matt was lacking. Oh well, I needed to stop comparing every man I met with Matt.
He talked a lot about himself, his achievements, his past in terms of his career and the progress he was making and his goals for the future. But even though he spoke so much, I felt that there was a lot he wasn't saying. It seemed like he was presenting a carefully detailed brochure of himself, emphasizing on certain selling points. Kind of rehearsed and polished over time. I certainly hoped I would be able to scratch below the surface in time.
Lunchtime was soon here and he took me to an Ethiopian restaurant where he ordered some injara for himself and I contented myself with French fries and a burger as I continued to listen to him chat about the economy and current politics. He was very middle ground about everything, neither a democrat nor a republican. He said the right statements on race relations. He was for equality of everything. Yet I found myself listening for chinks in the armor, a crack that would show his humanity.
I didn't find anything until that evening when he wanted to take me dancing. We went to the Blue Nile a popular Kenyan restaurant which is no longer so popular because of the frequent territorial fights between Somalis of Somalia origin and Kenyans. But I digress.
When we got to the pub he immediately got onto the dance floor and was swaying to the Lingala music and everyone was calling him by his first name and a lot of the ladies were dancing with him. It was here that I first found out that he was a teetotaler. He didn't touch a drop of alcohol and hadn't done so in twenty years. I definitely do not encourage heavy drinking but my antenna always goes up when I meet someone who doesn't take alcohol. Our social drinking would thus be limited to Coca-Cola.
I am one of those creatures who only become great dancers when sufficiently inebriated so that evening I spent a lot of time seated and watching his interaction with the people at the pub and more especially with the ladies on the dance floor. Later as we left the club at around four in the morning, he explained that he had drunk too much in his youth and had broken his mama's heart so he had decided to make it up to her by giving it up.
We drove to his house. I had been determined not to go back to Dionne's house until the next evening just so that for once I would spend some hours away from the children. I wasn't going to go for the 90 day rule but I would definitely hold out till the second date. We slept. I tossed and turned. I find it hard to sleep well even in hotels. Until I acclimatize to a place I am normally restless and uneasy. He was a gentleman. Stayed on his side of the bed and I on my side after a precise clinical kiss.
At 6.00 am I was quite surprised when he woke me up and said we had to get up and go to the gym. He duly informed me that it was routine for him to go to the gym every morning. I didn't understand why he wouldn't let me sleep in and go to the gym on his own. Having had only two hours of sleep I was quite fatigued but I quickly got going. We stayed at the gym for about four hours and I sat on one of the benches and watched him. Later we went for breakfast in a hippie restaurant where we had large pancakes with a dash of cream and pancake syrup. Then we proceeded to his office where I sat once more and watched him work.
With Jake I was soon to learn that it was all about him. He planned his day to the last minute and slotted people in. He didn't just drop by at his mother's house. Or at his sister's house. He planned ahead. Our future dates were planned ahead to suit his schedule. When I think of Jake I am reminded of one of those German trains that run precisely to the second. He took me back to Dionne's house later that evening after making sure that I had carried everything that I came with. No earring was going to be left behind to mark the territory.
The next week was much the same. I spent the week running after the children and when Saturday came around I was quite ready to escape to Jake's house. Our weekend was pretty much the same, dinner, dancing, gym, breakfast, me watching him work in his office, back to Dionne's. The only difference was that on the second weekend I gave up the cookie which was taken in a rapid very mechanical very clinical way and at the end as he collapsed on me and held me closer, I imagined he must have been following a set of instructions. Touch here, kiss here, say this, insert here type of instructional sex.
On the second week after I began dating Jake, on a Tuesday I had a surprise visitor. I heard the doorbell ring as I was trying to vacuum the house quickly with the intent of going back to bed to grab some welldeserved shut eye. The kids had all left for school. The littlest one had finally started going two mornings a week. So I was home alone with Dionne having gone off to pick up some extra hours.
I opened the door to find a smiling Matt. My first instinct was to jump into his arms and hug him and never let go for I had often thought of him and missed him so much. I curbed this as fear spread from my heart through my bones and I was sweating hot and cold at the same time.
"I need to talk to you about Jake." He said simply. "I won't come into the house even though I know you're alone. Let's go over down to that Subway on the corner and have a sandwich. "
I didn't object. For what could I say? The man I had been hiding from for many months had traced me to where I was. Once we were seated, I asked the burning question.
"How did you find me?"
"It doesn't really matter but if you must know, Wahala also worked for Dionne at some point. I have known from the first day where you were."
"Why didn't you ever let me know that you knew??"
"I have wanted to many times. But I thought I should wait until you come back to me on your own. I will wait for you."
We sat there in silence for some time. He was studying me intently.
"Are you okay? " he asked. "I worry about you. I want you to realize your dreams. That's why I am here today. "
"Really? "
"Yes, you need to stop seeing Jake. He's wasting your time. He can't marry you. The IRS is on his back for unpaid taxes. He owes them $50,000. How do you think he's going to pay that back? How many years are you willing to wait? And one more thing, you're not the only woman he's sleeping with. You my dear Atieno are merely his weekend girl"
I stood up. I wasn't going to listen to this nonsense anymore. Matt as per his usual interfering self was trying to ruin everything.
"Open your eyes." He said as I stormed off.
“Stay away from me." I yelled at him as I walked away.
"Look out through your window sometimes and wave at me. I hate it when I sit out here waiting to catch a glimpse of you and you don't come out of the house. See that spot under those trees? That's where I like to park."
Later that week, on Friday morning as I took out the trash, I looked at the spot and indeed Matt's car was parked there. He rolled down the window and waved at me. I stood there frozen for about two minutes. Then he reversed his car and drove off. I ran back into the house and collapsed onto the couch. Matt was back in my life.
The immediate problem as I saw it was on how to tell Dionne, a mother of three little girls that a known sex offender was hanging around her house. I felt that as a mother I would want to be warned if such a character was hanging around my house. But my survival instincts immediately took over. I would not tell her. Instead I would be more vigilant with the little girls. They would not come to any harm under my watch.
That weekend Jake picked me up as usual. We visited the routine joints. However at the club I asked for alcohol. I needed to have an excuse for being left behind in the house when gym time came. Next morning I was running to the bathroom and vomiting furiously.
Jak
e looked very inconvenienced as he left with his gym bag. I knew I had very little time. But I knew what I was looking for. Matt had told me to go through the mail. It took but five minutes to find the letters that came from the Internal Revenue Service. It was exactly as Matt had said. Except that he had been slightly off on the amount. Jake currently owed $67,000 inclusive of interest. His home would be sold in a few months’ time if he didn't make the payments.
I went back to bed and slept. I didn't want to think about it then, but it seemed like fate was conspiring against me. I was meeting men that couldn't be the stepping stone that I needed.
I went back to Dionne's house without saying a word to Jake. If I had learnt anything from my recent past, it was to closely guard any knowledge acquired through snooping until your victim gives you a trigger to ask about it.
I continued to be Jake's weekend girl. I simply needed a place to go to get away from Dionne's house.
Christmas morning is here and I have no plans. I am all alone, like an orphan cast aside even from the welfare home.
I wake up from my twin bed. The room is eerily quiet, a welcome relief from the noise that the children make. Not my children. The children that I normally take care of as a nanny. They are not here today. They have gone to their grandparent's house. And as much as I have grown to hate my job today I miss them. I need human company. I desperately crave it. But there is nobody in this large house.
I finally crawl out of the bed. As my feet touch the cold marble floor I shiver involuntarily. I am not going to cry. It is Christmas after all. And I should be thankful that I have lived to see another Christmas. I could have been with the few Kenyans that I have finally reached out to in this foreign land. But my mistress wanted me to stay because she picked up on a double shift. I understand. She has to make the money to meet the rent and also pay me. She is a single mother after all.
How did I land in this situation? I keep asking myself. I get into the shower. I am going to be cheerful and get on the phone and wish my family a merry Christmas. Not that they have much to celebrate or look forward to. I know they already told me they have nothing major going on. Meaning their food shelf is not full. And they have no plans to go anywhere. They have no money for transport. So they are just going to hibernate and hope that nobody will notice that there was no celebration going on. It is the same thing I am doing. I want to crawl under my bed, much like an insect crawling under its little rock and never get out.