The Fall of Saints

by Wanjiku wa Ngugi

  He replied later that morning. He would be more than glad to have us, he said. He included his phone number if I needed assurance. What a relief. But I could not help feeling a little guilt. I should not have neglected our friendship.

  I then called my friend Ciru in Cape Town, saying we wanted to visit her for a couple weeks. She was excited. Now she was Dr. Ciru Mbai, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Cape Town. Seeing her would give me some fresh perspective. Zack would join us there; we would fly back to New York together, having calmly worked out a strategy.

  By the time Kobi got up, I had settled on Ohio. We showered and went downstairs for breakfast in the hotel dining room. It was then that I felt the full impact of Joe turning foe.

  The white male at the next table looked up from the newspaper he was reading, but as soon as our eyes met, he buried his head in the paper. The two men in business suits sitting not too far from him seemed to be looking our way constantly. The waiter came repeatedly to ask if we needed more coffee. Why? A couple stopped by our table and talked to Kobi. The man who kept passing by our table, pretending to be getting more breakfast, looked lean and mean. Every white man around me seemed to wear the face of a mafioso. I could feel their eyes on me. Maybe the stalker was capturing our every move on video.

  As soon as Kobi and I checked out, we walked out to the street to hail a cab. I started waving cabs down, hoping to get one driven by a black or Asian man, preferably a woman. Black cabdrivers kept passing me by; the first cab that stopped was driven by a white man. I wasn’t going to take chances, so I ignored it. Eventually, a turbaned Asian man stopped for us. I hesitated. Could he be a terrorist? I had become sensitive to men wearing beards and turbans. The thought of 9/11 brought to mind my conversation with Ben at the airport. How was the gunman connected with the scene of mass crime? Eventually, I chose a cab with a white woman driver. No woman had threatened my life yet, I reasoned.

  I bought tickets for Ohio at LaGuardia Airport.

  10

  Sam and his father lived in a small quiet rural town outside of Cleveland. They were descended from some Swedish Finns who emigrated to America in the nineteenth century in the great Swedish migration to Minnesota and other parts of America, where they continued their Swedish-Finnish farming tradition.

  I first met Sam when we were students at CCNY. He was rather shy, not voluble in social circles, and that was what drew me to him. He did not have strong views on many national or international matters except one: freeing America from slavery to foreign oil. He saw ethanol as the solution. I argued with him about it: Wouldn’t it mean turning food into oil, taking away from humans and animals to feed cars? Yes, but one could grow enough to feed the human, the cow, and the car. He was taking business classes, but on his own, he followed the economics and politics of oil, at one time even paying his way to Brazil to study the industry. He was interested in developing a strain of corn with higher yields for ethanol.

  He wanted me to move to Ohio, and for a moment I was infatuated with the rural ideal, but I was dissuaded by one visit and the population of mostly older people who all seemed to dress in blue weather-beaten farm overalls. I suppose the Big Apple, its skyscrapers, yellow cabs, incessant honking, fever, yes, insomnia, had entered my system, and I could not see how I could endure the rural silence. Now, as a fugitive from eyes that watched me, I was looking for that peace and silence and some sleep.

  Nothing had changed around the farm, or the area, for that matter. Not even the mailboxes on the road; they were the same color, apart from those whose paint had been washed out by the rain. I could not help admiring Sam for clinging to his passion and vision. It reminded me that I’d never had any strong passions, no vision to live for, fight for, or die for, if necessary.

  His father sat in the yard wearing his eternal overalls. He must have just returned from the farm. As Kobi and I got out of the taxicab, he came up to us, and before I could figure out how to reintroduce myself, he called out: “Mugure! African queen!” I used to be so uncomfortable with that queen business when I was dating his son, but on this day, and after the ordeal I had gone through, it felt personal, welcoming. Sam joined us a couple of hours later, and as we sat on the porch munching roasted corn, I briefed them about my troubles. An edited version. No mention of suited gunmen.

  After Kobi and Sam’s father had turned in, Sam and I sat on the veranda. I lay down on the cushioned bench, and Sam sat on the wooden stairs, facing me.

  “So when does Zack fly back in?” he asked.

  “No firm plans. I’m thinking of flying to South Africa in a couple of days.”

  “Why travel all that way? You can stay right here with us.”

  “I don’t want to burden you guys.”

  “You know I don’t mind. You have always known that.”

  Yes, I did. He still liked me, it was obvious. The following day, as we took a tour around the farmhouse, I tinkered with the thought of staying in Ohio until Zack’s return. I could busy myself as an extra hand on the farm. The more I thought about it, the better an option it seemed. Sam and I went for a walk and talked about everything except our past. Shopping for little things from the SouthPark Mall in Strongsville was a far cry from hectic Manhattan, but it was nice. Sometimes he would take Kobi to feed the pigs and cows. The cow became Kobi’s favorite animal. It was nice to spend time with Sam and see him take to Kobi. It reminded me why we had dated in the first place.

  One morning a day or two after I arrived, Sam’s father called me in a conspiratorial voice. I followed him to the shed a few meters from the house. “Wait here a minute,” he whispered.

  He wasn’t much of a talker except after the occasional glass of wine, which was always followed by a few war stories from Vietnam. Now he was sober, serious. He emerged from the shed with a shotgun hanging over his shoulder. “Ever held one of this?” he asked.

  I thought of telling him about my brief experience at the shooting range in New York, when Okigbo had wanted to turn me into a cheaply paid security guard; about the gunman; or the gun at Zack’s office. I didn’t.

  “No, I haven’t, and I don’t think I ever will,” I said as I followed him down the narrow path into the field till we came to a clearing.

  “Listen, I am not going to let anybody hurt my African queen. I have been thinking about it. A car chase is not something you take to the police. No crime committed, they will say. But we have a right to defend ourselves. I am going to teach you how to deal with the bastards.”

  I was not sure I wanted to meddle with guns. I felt I had learned enough Krav Maga as protection, though it had not occurred to me that I could use my martial arts to defend Kobi and me. The instructors had taught us defense moves against a gun held at close quarters but not how to use one. Perhaps martial skills needed bolstering with smoking metal. Besides, there was nothing wrong with indulging the old man.

  At first I felt silly, intimidated, by the feel of the gun in my hands. But my teacher was not giving up and encouraged me to fire. “The key is to aim. Aim, aim, and aim again. Your hands must be steady. Take a deep breath and pull the trigger. If someone is trying to kill, they will stop at nothing. Don’t doubt it. So if you want to live another day, you shoot the son of a bitch first.”

  I fired. My first shot ever in my life. I felt blood rush through me, very close to how I sometimes felt about Krav Maga. I was surprised at my excitement and fired a few more times.

  “Not bad for a first time,” he said as he doubled over with laughter, “but enough for the day.”

  It became a daily routine. He was a gun lover and had all sorts of weapons. He let me practice with the different pistols. He insisted I practice to shoot with both hands and at different positions, standing, running, rolling on the ground. I was never going to be a crack shot, but I was grateful that he was making me take charge of my own security.

  One afternoon when
Kobi and Sam went to supervise the milking of the cows, I took a walk around the neighborhood. It was nice to have some quiet moments on my own in the streets of Ohio. Though the people worked extremely hard, they were a little laid-back, not fussy, but kind.

  In a way, the place reminded me of rural Kenya. Even the smells of fresh air and farmland brought memories of the Kakuyu of my childhood. I remembered my mother tending her small herbal garden on a Saturday afternoon. Sometimes she would sit on the grass and knit, sometimes she would take an afternoon nap. Every time I saw her out in the garden, I would grab something to snack on and make myself comfortable in the shade. And every time she would go on about how I needed to learn how to knit or sew. I would divert the conversation to what had happened to me over the week or days or hours: how I saw a man with ears that looked like a rabbit’s and I’d asked him where he got them; or how I was so curious about safari ants and put out my finger and got bitten; or how I had tricked a bully boy into running away by shouting to an imaginary mother, “Hurry up with the machete, Mom.” She would warn me against acts that hurt others, but sometimes she would laugh so hard at my antics that tears flowed down her cheeks. She would pull herself straight and end up with “You are a crazy child.” I missed her terribly and wished she were alive. I felt a need to connect with her. I wondered what she would say to my situation now. I knew she would not approve of the drinking. You have to let it go, she would have told me. It will cloud your better judgment. Yes, she would give me good advice, tell me I was a crazy child, but support me all the same.

  Pity my mother was gone. And a shame that my father, though alive, was not really in my life. I liked Sam’s relationship with his dad; theirs was a love with mutual respect. Sam’s dad was not into the ethanol business: Farming for him was cows, pigs, and fruit orchards. But he supported his son’s dreams. Why had I been denied such a relationship? Why hadn’t my father wanted me? I did not know anything about him, his family, his life. I wondered how it must have felt for him to let me grow up without ever seeing me, touching me, washing my tears, admonishing me, saying to me: You have done well, my daughter. I guessed I would never know who he was, what really made him tick, why he made the choices he had made. I would never find out. Unless I paid him a visit. Could I really face him after our last and only meeting? What if he asked about the white boys he had warned me against? I wondered. But I was a grown-up. I didn’t need anything from him. I could ask him questions directly. For far too long, I had avoided attempts to find answers to my questions. It was as if I did not want to confront Kenya, my past, my Africanness, my blackness. Perhaps Ben had been right.

  As I walked back to the house, I realized I had been gone for over an hour. I was tired from the walk, but I had talked myself into visiting my father. It would be a personal journey, my journey. I would go to Kenya for a few days of talk with my father, and touch base with Wainaina and Jane, and then come back. There was the unfinished quest for the Kenya counterpart of the Kasla agency. Call it curiosity or obstinacy, but the more I thought about the idea, the better it sounded. That evening I started making arrangements.

  I had told Zack that I was staying in Ohio with an old college friend while I organized the trip to Cape Town. I continued to let Zack believe Kobi and I would be heading there. The many unanswered questions had eroded my trust in Zack, though not to where I could let go of him. What if I were wrong? The on-and-off attitudes; the doubt and the will to believe; the repulsion and the attraction: It was a mini-war in me. But even if I were in harmony with self, as before, I knew that the Kenya trip had to be mine alone. Maybe after I came back from Kenya and he from Estonia, we could travel to Cape Town as a family. I would be a new Mugure, at ease with her past and secure in the results of her quest for the roots of the threats to our lives.

  With that, I bought a return ticket to Kenya using my credit card. Sam agreed to keep Kobi until I returned, which I hoped would not be over a week. I knew Kobi would be safe here, perhaps even like it. I did not want to add to their already hectic daily routines, so I turned to Rosie. She had few objections to coming to Ohio. It was not a bad move for her financially.

  I was sad to part with Kobi. But in some strange way, I felt it was necessary; that the future I would give him depended on how honestly I could confront my past. Or rather, his past and mine were tied in a common knot of mystery, and the key to the mystery lay in Kenya.

  Part Two

  11

  I was born out of an affair between my mother, a school dropout, and an older person who offered support on the condition that she did not publicly proclaim him the father. She paid for the silence: Her brother, with whom she had lived since the death of their parents, kicked her out in the street.

  My father bought her a stone house in Kakuyu, near Nairobi. It was known as the uniform hub because nurses, policemen, security personnel, and drivers—all in the uniforms of their trade—lived there. Our house was near a road whose tar had largely worn off, and during the rainy season, cars got stuck in the mud. The drivers and their assistants would scatter rocks and gravel under the tires for traction. Sometimes they would ask us, the children, or any onlookers to help rock the cars back and forth, and we would end up with mud all over our clothes. Quite often they would bring a bigger vehicle to tow the one stuck. The noise level was unbearable. The area made up for its run-down appearance with its location, fifteen minutes from the city center.

  I can’t remember my father ever coming to the place. I never found out how much he gave my mother or how it was done. I just knew that he paid for my education and gave us enough to keep us from starving. My mother supplemented the income by taking poorly paid cleaning jobs at the offices of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation. She also planted kale, tomatoes, rosemary, basil, and thyme, some of which she sold to the local kiosks. No matter how exhausted, she would make sure to visit her garden, pull out a weed or two, or simply smell the rosemary. It was her personal ritual, and she would come out of it seemingly refreshed.

  Long-legged and dark-skinned, with big brown eyes set slightly above her round cheekbones in almost perfect symmetry, my mother always walked with her back straight, believing that slouching bent one’s body and spirit. Her wide sunny smile thrilled me. She liked singing and was part of the Kakuyu Church women’s choir. She never married—I don’t know whether out of love of independence or some kind of loyalty to my father—and she didn’t have more children. Sometimes I would catch her off guard with a distant look in her eyes. She appeared so lonely, and that made me sad, but as soon as she became aware of my presence, she would light up, dispelling my sadness.

  Only once did my father express interest in meeting with me. My mother had told him that I was accepted at City College of New York, and he asked that I collect the plane ticket from him in person. I begged her to tell me more about him and their relationship to prepare me for the encounter. Other than his name—George Gata, or GG, as my mother referred to him—I didn’t know much else. She smiled enigmatically.

  My father lived alone but had similar pacts with other women with whom he had sired children: support on condition that they did not tarnish his image as an eternal bachelor, a muthuri mwanake, or bachelor polygamist, as my mother put it in Gikuyu. She painted a portrait of a decent man whose only shortcoming was that he had denied himself the wealth that comes from contact with children. She didn’t like it when I said that he was a mean bastard for denying me a father. She defended him as a good and generous man who did not know how to express love. Did she know the other woman or women? I asked her. No. Did she know the other children? No.

  “You see, a dog in the manger,” I countered. “He has no right to deny me my sisters and brothers by hiding us from each other.” My mother was not too pleased to hear my view. To mollify her, I added quickly that I was curious and looked forward to the meeting. My sudden conversion from indifference to eagerness alarmed her.

  “Please, Mugure
, watch your tongue. He is a good man,” she pleaded.

  Well, the good man kept me waiting in the lobby of his office. I looked around the room, trying to figure out what sort of business he ran. On the walls hung several calendars and pictures of long-haul trucks. The exercise irritated and agitated me: I should not have to guess that my own father was in the transportation business. Over the years, I had reconciled with not having a father, and I didn’t want this peace broken. I rushed to the bathroom to empty my bladder.

  When I was finally invited in, I found the good man standing at the corner of the office with the demeanor of a person waiting for a bus due any minute. He was bald with a potbelly, the roundest I had ever seen, that seemed to rise up to meet his chest with every breath. No matter how hard I tried, I could not see the eternal lover in his figure. How could my mother have fallen in love with this man? Was it even love? I wondered.

  “A spitting image of your mother,” he said almost to himself, and continued staring at me as if looking for a trace of himself. “How did you get that?” he asked, pointing at my ear. “Remarkable. Same birthmark as my father, in the exact same spot.” He chuckled and then muttered almost to himself, “The son of a bitch.”

  I felt like throwing the words back at him for keeping me standing, but he finally asked me to sit down. When growing up, I used to picture our meeting quite differently. In my dream encounter, he hugged me at once and assured me that he was going to forge a new father/daughter relationship to make up for all the missing years. He would introduce me to my siblings, and we would live happily ever after. Reality was rude, this one at least. I started to say something unflattering, then stopped and shifted my gaze. His office furniture was made of exotic wood inlays and burls covered with pure leather. It exuded power and success.

  “So, what are you going to study?” he asked, coming to the reason for my visit.