If You See Me, Don't Say Hi

by Neel Patel

  “She’ll be asleep by ten.”

  He dried his hands on a dish towel and asked me to meet him by the gates later, at ten; he would be waiting for me. Then he walked out of the room.

  * * *

  That night, Nirmila Aunty prattled on about her cousins in London, her sisters in the States, her nephews in New England, both of whom were in private schools. I felt sorry for her: she didn’t have children of her own. I’d heard my parents whispering once that Rajesh Kaka was having an affair, that Nirmila Aunty was barren, that there was a child somewhere else. I wondered if this was true. She was pretty, with large dark eyes, full pink lips, slippery black hair she tied back in a bun. She was much younger than Rajesh Kaka. Once, I had heard my mother refer to her as a “tart.” Still, she was kind to me, and I felt guilty about lying to her and saying I was going to read a book in my room instead of watching the movie she had rented for me at the store.

  I took a steam shower and changed into fresh clothes. At nine fifty, I slipped through the back doors. The pool was glowing. The night was dark. A breeze swept through the palms. In the distance I could hear Jeeps crunching over gravel and African music streaming from an open window. I waited at the front gates for twenty minutes, but Kito never arrived. I waited ten, fifteen minutes more. Then I walked around to the back of the house. Perhaps he had asked me to meet him there instead. But there was no one. My heart sank. I walked back to my bedroom and, instead of slipping inside, I kept going, past the kitchen, past the patio, past the fire pit where we toasted marshmallows for s’mores, past the fence and through the servants’ quarters beyond, where a small room was lit from a bare bulb.

  * * *

  It was there that I saw her, sitting on his bed. She was smoking. Gold hoops adorned her ears. She was pretty, with almond-shaped eyes, velvet black hair. Her mouth was very red. Moments later, Kito emerged. “What are you doing here?”

  “You asked me to meet you.”

  I was transfixed by her: the way she held her cigarette, the way she crossed her legs, the way she sat upright and with her back against the wall, as if she had been there before. I remembered her name: Aisha. The girlfriend Kito had mentioned in a way that made her seem frivolous, extraneous even, existing separately, in a world where I did not. But she was real. Her gaze drifted slowly toward me, flashing like a gem. The room was smaller than I had imagined, with a twin bed, a metal dresser, a few of Kito’s belongings scattered across the floor. Aisha stared at me, narrowing her eyes, as if she already knew everything one could know about me and was bored by it all the same. I looked at her more closely. There was a flower in her lap. I looked at her arms and saw something else: my mother’s gold watch. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t have to. I grabbed her by the wrist. “Give that back!”

  It all happened so fast. Aisha ran off into a corner of the room and Kito lunged at me, knocking me backward. “What’s your problem?” His face was knotted with fury, bright with rage. He pinned me to the tiles. “You little queer,” he said. “You want to hit girls?”

  I shook my head.

  Kito was on top of me now, straddling me like a lover, and I began to cry, softly, closing my eyes.

  “Get up,” he said, gently, offering me his hand.

  But I pushed it away. “Don’t you touch me,” I hissed.

  I could have stopped myself then. I could have harnessed my rage. I could have gone back into my room and silenced the voice in my head forever.

  I didn’t. I said things that evening I couldn’t possibly take back, vicious words that could never dwell in my heart: that Kito was a servant, a slave, and that, if he didn’t apologize, I would tell everyone—Nirmila Aunty, Rajesh Kaka, even my own parents—what he had done.

  There was silence. Kito stared at the floor. It was the girl, bristling with anger, who stepped forward. “Leave us,” she said, in an imperious tone. “Leave us at once.” She was still holding a cigarette in her hands, waving it around like a baton, when I headed for the door. It wasn’t until I was on the other side of it that I heard Kito finally speak, in Swahili this time: “Msumbufu.” Then he slammed the door.

  * * *

  Two days later, my parents returned with fresh tans and stories about the wildlife they had seen. Even my sister was invigorated, telling me about a leopard that had jumped in front of their car. She said it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She also said we would be leaving the next day, five days earlier than we had planned. There was a bomb threat outside the city; Nairobi had issued a curfew. My father had changed our tickets. I sat with my mother in her bedroom while she packed her bag, listening to her stories about the bush. She asked me if I had enjoyed myself and I told her I had. I didn’t tell her the truth: that I had cried all day in my room, trying to decipher what Kito had whispered before closing the door: Msumbufu. I had never heard that word before. I watched her sort through her things: silk garments, emerald rings, a white envelope stuffed with shillings, crammed inside her purse. In the middle of it all her eyes landed on something partly hidden under her washing, flashing in front of my face. She picked it up off the floor.

  “My watch,” she said, triumphantly. “I’ve found it.”

  I vomited into the bushes outside.

  * * *

  Rajesh Kaka and Nirmila Aunty prepared a farewell feast for us, but I couldn’t eat a thing. I had been hoping to catch a glimpse of Kito by the pool, swimming while everyone was taking a nap. I was hoping he would come by my room. I knocked on his door; he didn’t answer it. I waited for him in the kitchen; he never showed up. I waited until nightfall but didn’t see him then, either, and by morning, it became apparent that I might never see him again.

  So I got an idea. I went into my mother’s bedroom and found the envelope she had stuffed inside her purse, overflowing with shillings—leftover money to be divided among the staff—and knocked on Kito’s door. The door swung open against the weight of my fist. The room was just as I had left it: the furnishings dusty, the bedspread wrinkled, the light murky and dim. I placed the envelope on top of Kito’s dresser and waited there for a moment, as if I might discover him in the closet or by the banyans outside. Then I left the room. Years later, I would wonder why I did it. I would wonder what would have happened if Kito had been standing behind his bedroom door, waiting to receive me. Our flight wasn’t until midnight, and instead of waiting around for Kito I spent the rest of the afternoon in my sister’s bedroom, reading her Nancy Drew.

  I heard his voice coming from the yard. I tossed the book aside and approached the bay windows and opened the curtain, watching him kick a ball around. He sprinted across the lawn to catch it as it bounced over the fire pit and landed inches away from the pool. Our eyes met. I thought he would call out to me, wave his hands in gratitude (I had assumed he was grateful for what I had done). But I was wrong. Kito stared at me blankly, scratching his head. I dropped the curtain back into place.

  Later that evening, Nirmila Aunty suffocated us with hugs and kisses, smashing her breasts against our faces. She took a picture of my sister and me standing in front of the swimming pool, looking sullen. It is a picture I still have with me to this day. In it, we are wearing baseball hats and tennis shoes and our winter coats are tied in knots at our waists, as was the style. It is the only evidence I have of their house. It is the only memento from our trip. I never went back there again.

  At the airport, my parents bought cookies and chocolates and red Fanta to take with us on the plane, but I was too nauseous to eat a thing. At the gate I asked my father to translate something for me, a word that still lingered in my mind. “Msumbufu,” I said. “What does it mean?”

  He looked confused.

  “It means to be a nuisance,” he said.

  * * *

  Two days later, we returned to the States, jet-lagged and weary. My parents lined the walls with their wares: copper statues, woven mats, a wooden carving of two Maasai soldiers attached at the head. I stared at the pale crusts of snow outs
ide our windows and longed for the greenery outside Rajesh Kaka’s home. My history teacher asked me to make a presentation on my “wonderful trip to Africa,” so I brought in the textiles my mother had purchased, the pictures my sister had taken, the fruits they had smuggled inside their handbags and coats. I answered my classmate’s questions about the climate and the clothes. One of my classmates asked me to say something to her in Swahili. I paused, whispering it. “Msumbufu.”

  She nodded her head.

  * * *

  In time I threw myself into my studies, becoming the student my parents had always wanted me to be. I left the old version of myself behind in Kenya. I never looked back. I joined track and field, a sport that came rather naturally to me. I made friends, too, attending homecoming and the prom. I went to college at Duke. After graduation, I moved to the West Coast, where I started law school and where I fell in love for the first time in my life, with a third-year named Graham—a man, as it so happened to be, who would one day break my heart.

  * * *

  It was there that I heard the news: there had been a tragedy. A group of terrorists had invaded a large shopping center in Nairobi, setting off grenades. Nirmila Aunty had been there, along with Rajesh Kaka. Fortunately, they had survived. My mother flew back to Nairobi to be by their sides, phoning me with updates on their recovery. I remember waking up each morning with Graham, waiting to hear her voice. I remember thinking of Nirmila Aunty and Rajesh Kaka still living in Nairobi, in the middle of their middle age now, at a hospital near their home.

  I did not think of Kito at all.

  When she returned, my mother told me there had been a funeral: one of the houseboys was not so lucky. He had been shopping when it happened. In fact, he was my age.

  “Do you remember him?” she said. “You were quite fond of him at the time.”

  I thought about the last time I had seen Kito in the backyard, the curtain dropping into place. It was an image I had carried with me all of those years. It wasn’t until later, when I pressed my mother for details, that I realized she hadn’t been referring to Kito at all.

  He had left Rajesh Kaka’s house years before. It had happened during our return home: Rajesh Kaka discovered a missing envelope filled with shillings in Kito’s room. He had stolen from us. They fired him at once. At the time, I had assumed my mother wouldn’t notice the envelope was gone. But she had, enough so to raise suspicion. She told me this with a sense of aplomb, as if it had only been a minor inconvenience. I didn’t tell her the truth: that it was I who had put the envelope there in the first place. Instead, I asked her why she had never mentioned this before, why, after all those years, she had never said a word. But there was nothing left to say. By that point the vacation was over. We had returned to our lives. She had doubted, even then, that I would care. ◆

  these things happen

  It wasn’t that I was a snob or anything; it was that Chloe wasn’t the kind of girl you invited over to your house. She lived on the other side of town, where the houses were smaller, the sidewalks unswept, the cars parked in driveways instead of in the garage. I’d heard a rumor that her sister was mentally ill. We were eighteen—that sparkling age when nothing was expected of us but everything was.

  “I’m a mess,” she said. “But I won’t stay too long. Just a couple hours and I’ll be out of your hair.”

  Technically, I didn’t invite her—my parents had gone to Australia for a couple of months, and I had thrown a party. By the time it was over, Chloe was too drunk to drive home. She was huddling over our silk sofa as if it was the gateway to heaven. I knew what she wanted.

  “Just make sure you lock the door when you leave,” I said.

  She said nothing as I handed her a blanket and disappeared. Hours later, she was standing at my bedroom door.

  “I can’t sleep.” She sat down beside me. “It looks like you can’t sleep either.”

  She was wearing an Ohio State sweatshirt over cotton panties. She reached for my underwear and began sliding it down my legs.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Nothing,” she said. She placed her hand on my thigh. “I’ve never seen one like that before—your dick—it’s different.”

  “It’s uncircumcised.”

  She said nothing for a minute or two, mulling this over in her head. Then she parted her lips.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  * * *

  The following Monday I was late to work. Ray was waiting for me in the kitchen.

  He was the assistant manager of IHOP and he acted like it was the most important thing in the world. Sometimes he would give me a shove or a kick and I would have to pretend that it didn’t happen—that it was all part of the job.

  “There are plenty of people who want this job,” he warned.

  “No one wants this job,” I said. “Even you don’t want this job.”

  He told me to watch my fucking mouth and get back to work. Then he disappeared. I washed up in the basin—which was littered with cigarette butts, pancake batter, globs of cinnamon raisin oatmeal. My first customer stared at the menu like it was written in Chinese.

  “Now let’s see,” she said. “Does the short stack come with bacon?”

  There was a flash of movement across the room; someone was waving at me. I turned my head. It was Chloe. She wasn’t alone; there was a pretty girl sitting across from her looking painfully bored.

  “What are you doing here?” I said, abandoning the customer and walking over to Chloe’s table.

  “I’m eating. What does it look like I’m doing?”

  I grabbed an empty soup bowl and walked over to the kitchen; a few moments later, I returned. “Did you know I work here?”

  “Of course, dummy. It’s why I came.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “About the weather—Jesus—I don’t know. Why haven’t you called?”

  At this moment, Chloe’s companion dropped her fork onto her plate and rolled her eyes.

  “My sister is mad at you because you fucked her and never called.”

  I felt myself go red. A woman turned to stare at us and I quickly smiled back at her, reassuringly.

  “Keep your voice down.”

  The sister looked as though she found the whole thing utterly comical. She doused her plate with syrup and resumed eating. I watched her silently. She wore an over-the-shoulder sweater, large gold earrings. Her hair was a cinnamon shade of brown. On her wrist was a series of bangles and a plastic bracelet with her name on it—Tara Evans—followed by a bar code. She caught me staring at it and clucked her tongue.

  “What?” she said. “Never seen a mental patient before?”

  * * *

  Work the next day was the usual: old women with frosted hair, college kids in colored jerseys, families with their screaming kids. The whole place smelled like coffee and smoke.

  “You’re on cleanup duty,” Ray said. “Now stop fucking around.”

  Cleanup consisted of washing dishes and hosing down vats full of bacon grease. I smoked a few joints instead. When my shift was over, I walked out to the parking lot and discovered Tara leaning against my car.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “My sister is in love with you. You know that, right?”

  I shrugged. She offered me a cigarette and I took it from her. I looked for the name tag on her wrist but it was gone.

  “Are you really a mental patient?”

  She smiled. “Are you asking if I’m crazy?”

  She was wearing a black tank top over jeans. She was sweating. There were charcoal patches of mascara beneath her eyes. “This town is bloody boring,” she said, in a fake British accent. “More boring than I recalled.”

  “My father says it’s good to be bored.”

  “Your father is crazier than I am.”

  I wondered if this was true.

  “So are
you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “A mental patient.”

  She shrugged. The heat shimmered; sunlight dappled her face. She cut her eyes up to mine.

  “I want to see where you live.”

  * * *

  We drove in my father’s Mercedes, listening to Rage Against The Machine. Tara changed the station.

  “This is shit,” she said. “My bloody ears are on fire.”

  I wondered if Tara really was British. I wondered if she was adopted. Maybe that’s why she was crazy. There was a girl from our neighborhood who was adopted by two retinal surgeons; her name was Melissa and she was very fat. She looked nothing like her slender parents. Once, when we were little, Melissa marched over to me and lifted up her dress.

  This is my no-no.

  I had never heard of a no-no before, but then Melissa pulled her panties off and began dancing around.

  No, no, no, she sang. No one can touch my no-no. No one but me!

  I touched it anyways.

  The next evening, when Melissa invited me over to watch The Little Mermaid in her parents’ basement, I touched it again.

  * * *

  By the time we reached my house the sun was impossibly high; the lake was like tinfoil. Tara glanced around.

  “I figured it would be like this.”

  She stared at the expensive tapestries, the cream-colored walls, the Hindu statues with their multitude of arms. She picked one of them up in her hands. “What’s this?” she said, smiling.

  It was the goddess Kali. It was frightening looking. My parents had bought it in India—along with other frightening things. I was embarrassed by it, but Tara shook her head.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “What?”

  “It’s feminist, Venkat. I want it—I want it for my room.”

  I wondered what a room in a mental ward was like—I pictured a padded white cell with metal bars on the windows. Tara put the statue down and gave me a look.

  “Got any weed?”

  * * *

  We smoked outside. After three hits I was gone, blinded by the sheen of Tara’s legs. I hadn’t even noticed that she had taken off her clothes. She was wading through our swimming pool in her panties and bra.