by Jason Donald
The door opens and Markus gets out. His eyes are fixed on her, but he makes no effort to approach. He just stands in the street, arms dangling at his sides, rain soaking his T-shirt, and glares at her.
She drops her roll and steps behind Daniel, ready to run, sure she can outpace him if she bolts now. A twist of nausea tightens in her. Unable to swallow, she spits out the mouthful of half-chewed sandwich.
What is it? asks Daniel.
That man, she says in Kiswahili. Daniel, we are in danger, big danger. We must go. Right now.
She pulls at his sleeve and, for a moment, thinks of leaving him, just running off by herself, ducking and weaving between the flats and warehouses of the neighbourhood. But she finds herself holding on to Daniel’s coat, unable to abandon him.
Who is that? says Daniel.
He has come for me, whispers Dalila. He is Mungiki.
They both stare at Markus. Markus holds their gaze, unaffected. Behind him the car is still running. The driver’s-side door is wide open, causing an alarm to ping pleadingly for its driver to return.
Markus takes two steps forward to the middle of the road. He pulls out his phone and holds it up towards Dalila. She sees the flash as he takes her photograph, and then another flash.
Mr Big Chris, says Daniel. Please, call the police. Now.
Leaving his umbrella, Daniel limps straight out into the street, stopping a few feet in front of Markus. Daniel lifts his own phone and takes Markus’s picture.
Markus’s only reaction is to lean his head to the side, keeping his gazed fixed on Dalila.
Dalila strides out into the rain behind Daniel, surprising herself, aware of how fearless she must appear. But what looks like courage is in fact worry. She can’t help herself, she has to protect Daniel. She shoves her hands into her pockets to hide how much they’re shaking. As she arrives behind Daniel she hears him say to Markus, You have no power here, young man. You should go home.
Ho, you, shouts Big Chris as he marches towards Markus. Is that your car, aye? It’s parked in a loading zone, mate. I’ve had to call the polis. You better get a move on, afore the cops get here.
Markus glances back at his car and then up and down the empty street. He leers at Big Chris, measures up his size. Big Chris doesn’t break his stride, forcing Markus to take a step back and then another. Aye, and I see you’ve parked in front of a fire hydrant an awe. That makes you a fucking fire hazard. You parking that car there’s put ma business in danger, mate. And I fucking hate being in danger, you get my meaning? So better get yer arse in that motor and fuck off.
And he does. Dalila watches him get in the car and slowly drive off.
Are yous a’right? asks Big Chris.
Dalila and Daniel look at each other. Dalila is shaken but since Daniel seems quite calm she tries to act calm too.
’Mon then, says Big Chris, I’ll drive yous home.
The only sound from the outside world is muffled shouting from neighbours in the flat below. The mute grey TV screen waits in front of her. Time is rough and gritty this morning. Every second scours across her. How long has she sat like this? Three days?
Her senses momentarily sharpen and the details in the room become hyperreal. The groove she has nervously rubbed down the centre of her thumbnail, the nacho crumbs resting in the fibres of the carpet, the dust between the buttons on the remote control, the synthetic lemon scent on her hand from the washing-up liquid.
A brooding gulps down through her stomach. How unexpected, how unforeseen her life has become. Everything is off. This trapped freedom. This safe danger. This full emptiness. Are any days supposed to unfold like this? It’s like living with her uncle. Only, in this town, she is her own captive.
Maybe Ma’aza is right? She has to get out. So what if Markus is out there? Moving is living. The time is now. It is time. Time to take the bus.
Rain spatters across the bus-shelter roof. Dalila stands in the corner, up against a poster of a white family on a sunny beach. With a blue marker pen, someone has drawn a moustache on the father and a pair of drooping breasts over the mother’s yellow bikini. A cartoon joint hangs from the little son’s mouth. No matter how deep into the corner she presses her shoulders the wind finds a way of flinging raindrops at her.
Four other people wait with her. An Asian woman, an old woman with a walking stick and two teenage boys, both with their hoods up.
The four of them stare at the crest of the hill.
The Asian woman and the teenage boys were waiting when Dalila got here, while the old woman arrived only a minute later. This means, according to British etiquette, Dalila is fourth in line. Even though the old lady is her elder by at least forty years, Dalila reminds herself that, in this land, queuing is more important than age.
The bus arrives. Its sides are covered in a wet grey-brown silt splashed up from the city traffic.
Dalila lowers her head against her upbringing and steps in front of the old woman. The driver is patient and helps her find the exact fare from the change in her hand. She moves down the humid aisle scanning the bus for a safe seat. Most people sit alone on a seat for two, staring at their phones or out of the window. No one acknowledges her as she walks up the aisle. No one offers her a place to sit. She claims the only empty seat opposite the two teenage boys, sits down and wipes the condensation off the inside of the window with her sleeve.
The engine revs and the bus lurches forward. Outside, a woman runs towards the bus, holding down her hat, handbag swaying at her elbow. She flaps her free hand at the wrist. The woman’s eyebrows are highly arched and her overly red lips make a neat circle as she shouts, Stop. Whether the driver sees the woman or not, Dalila isn’t sure, but the bus doesn’t slow. The woman’s thin eyebrows sink downwards and her red mouth flattens.
Near the front of the bus, a young woman holds a child. A man raises a newspaper, opens the back page and lowers it to read.
It is good to be out, to be going somewhere. Dalila wonders if Muthoni is riding the bus right now too. She pictures her in a matatu somewhere in the Nairobi gridlock and then she wonders about Markus. Is he driving around the city? Is it just him or are others looking for her? Should she even be going out today? This is madness.
The teenage boys on the seat next to her snigger and snort as they watch something on a phone. The closest boy has no lips. His mouth is neat as a slit in a papaya. Yet his nose is wide as a finger, built like a wall down the centre of his face, and flush with his forehead. His eyes sit deep in his skull under a canopy of eyebrows. He must be able to see the bridge of that nose at all times, Dalila thinks. What must it feel like to hide inside his face? Turning her head to the window, she crosses her eyes trying to see her own nose, but the space in the centre of her face is almost flat. She stares down at the out-of-focus orbs of her nostrils.
The boys snicker and tap the small screen to upload another clip. The one closest to the window is skinnier than the other. His nose curves down and ends sharply with two upward-facing slots for nostrils. It’s an elegant, delicate feature but Dalila worries about his breathing. Perhaps he has to draw hard, as if he has a permanent cold? That’s probably why he is so thin. Not being able to breathe easily would mean he struggled to run and play with the other children, preventing him from growing strong.
The boy nudges his friend and whispers. Dalila realises she’s been staring at them and turns her head towards the window.
Ho. You, says the bigger boy. What you gawking at?
A movement catches the corner of her eye. Instinctively, she looks. The boy places his fist on the seat next to him and uncurls his middle finger.
She turns away, her heart thumping against her chest. She rings the bell and scrambles down the narrow aisle.
Paki bitch, says the boy. They both snigger as she hurries to the front of the bus.
The bus stops. Dalila gets off, praying the boys don’t follow her.
They don’t.
The bus pulls away and through the m
ucky windows she sees the boys preoccupied with the phone as if she had never been on the bus at all. Her heart beats fast as she looks back up the road from where she has come. Though the drizzle has stopped, the sky seems thick with gathering rain, a sign that has always warned her to seek shelter. Yet all around people go about their day, content to live as usual in this foreboding and deepening dark. She wants to be like them. To live, unaffected.
She turns her face into the wind, towards the city. The air is brisk and clean against her skin. She chose to come out, to feel the life and rhythm of the city around her, to be part of it. But to stay out, she’ll need to continue making that choice moment by moment. She takes a deep breath and steadies herself on the exhale.
They were only boys, she whispers to herself, just boys.
Putting one foot in front of the other, she lowers her head and strides into the wind.
She walks, moving her limbs to the cadence of her heart. Moving for the rhythm of it, enjoying the simple mechanics of one leg swinging past the other, each golden shoe planted and uprooted in turn. The pavement rolls beneath her, while shop windows, fences and graffiti pass beside her. One moment unfolding into the next.
She crosses a river and, checking her map, confirms it is the same river that flows by the BBC building. Soon she finds the city’s heart, a shopping district with imposing old buildings and very modern shopfronts full of brands she recognises. There are shopping plazas and fast-food outlets, buses and cars and thousands of people moving about the streets. She wants to explore it all and email each exciting finding to Muthoni. But for now it’s enough to know it’s here. Instead, she follows the broad brown river named Clyde.
She walks and she walks. A calmness comes to her along with thoughts of her brother. The faces of her mother and father appear. They are close for a while but they float off, finding their own way. Then she sees her uncle, standing in the room she had to live in. She remembers his hand on the back of her neck forcing her face down across the table. She picks up her pace a little, striding out, worried that if the dark thoughts come, they might rise up and crush her. Yet somehow the walking focuses her more completely into herself. These memories are as potent as before, but as long as she keeps walking, they seem less cohesive, they slip off her, unable to find their usual purchase.
She keeps placing one foot in front of the other, in front of the other.
By the time she gets home, she knows she has found something. Something she can cling to. A thing that is herself.
A text arrives from Ma’aza.
Dali. U have money? Buy milk eggs green onions. Tonight we make omelette.
Dalila pulls on her jeans, her golden boots, her black puffer coat, her black woollen hat and gloves. Grabs her purse and keys and locks the front door behind her. After shopping she could go for a walk by the river. This will be her day, shopping and a walk.
The landing smells of disinfectant. A new, violent scrawl of graffiti decorates the lift’s metallic doors. She presses the down button and waits for the lift. The lift arrives with a ping. She steps in and presses G.
As the double doors begin to close a hand wedges in and pulls them apart. A man and a woman join her in the lift. Her neighbours. She has seen them go into the flat next door to Mrs Gilroy, but she has never spoken to them. They both wear white tracksuits. Blue Kappa stripes run down his sleeves while hers has a yellow V shape across the chest. They stink of alcohol and speak to each other in loud slow voices as if they are deaf.
Dalila slips to the back of the lift, avoiding eye contact.
The doors close. The man goes to press the G button but it is already glowing green. He sways very slightly and stares at Dalila with his head tilted to the side. The woman licks a tiny piece of paper and sets to building a joint with her fingertips. He mumbles something to his girlfriend. Dalila looks at the floor.
You fae Africa? says the man.
The woman taps the back of her hand against his chest. Leave her alone, Mick, she says.
It’s a’right. I’m no doing anything, just talking. He turns to Dalila. Where’re you from? From Africa? You from Nigeria?
Dalila stares at her gold shoes, her breath beginning to rise in her chest, her leg muscles tightening.
Here, I’m no meaning anything, by the way, says Mick. I’m no meaning . . . See me, I don’t care where you come from. I’m just making conversation here.
Just leave her be, Mick, c’mon, says his girlfriend.
I’m just talking to her.
Dalila’s hands start trembling. She clenches her fists and forces them down in her coat pockets.
The man leans in a little closer. His face is red with drink and he seems older than his clothing suggests. Mid-thirties.
I’m Mick, that’s Alison. What’s your name? Go on, tell us.
Irene.
Irene? he says, glancing at his girlfriend to see if she heard what he did.
Yes, says Dalila.
No way, man. That’s ma mum’s name, he laughs. Ally, d’you hear that? She’s got ma mum’s name.
Aye, I heard it, Mick.
Put it there, love, says Mick, offering his hand.
Dalila flinches and stiffens against the wall. They are only at the tenth floor. The surface of this man’s face seems friendly but it’s difficult to read the deeper parts of him. She looks at the woman, who is absorbed with building her smoke. Dalila takes the man’s hand. It is sticky and cold. He clasps her hand in both of his and shakes them up and down.
Right then, Irene. Nice to meet you, by the way. Here, you’re no a Rangers fan, by any chance? He grins at her.
I . . . I don’t like football.
Aye, well, if you did, you’d be Gers fan. A True Blue. Best team in the world. Definitely. D’you get Rangers on the telly in Africa?
I don’t know.
Where are you from again?
Kenya.
Kenya. Kenya. Right, aye. See that Obama, he’s fae Kenya, is he no?
He is half Kenyan, says Dalila.
Mick keeps his grip on her hand. Listen here, Irene, says Mick. Want to know something? I’m fae Africa too.
What you on about? says Alison. Bloody Africa. What are you like? She leans in and whispers to Dalila, Don’t listen to him, hen. He’s a bit pished.
No, really, says Mick. See, I know things. See if you go right back to the cavemen, afore them even, right, right into history, to the first people. The very first were from Africa. It’s true. I seen it on the telly. We came from Africa. You. Me. Everyone. ’Cept for Alison, she’s fae East Kilbride. He laughs sweet, beery breath into Dalila’s and Alison’s faces, expecting them to join in.
Alison rolls her eyes and says, Mick, you’re a fuckin bawbag. She licks the end of her joint and tucks it behind her ear.
The lift stops at the third floor. The doors roll back and Alison tries to step out, but Mick holds her back with one arm.
This isn’t us, he says.
As he pulls Alison back into the lift he nonchalantly switches his grip on Dalila, holding her by the wrist.
We’re going all the way down, he says. Right to the bottom.
The doors close. Dalila imagines herself running, jumping out between the doors and racing up to her flat. But Mick’s grip is firm, his mood volatile.
Right to the very bottom, Mick mumbles to himself. Here, Irene, you got a job? he asks.
No.
Aye, me neither, he says. See what I mean? Both fae Africa, both got nae jobs. We’re the same, you an me. You got a telly, Irene?
Yes.
Aye, me too. A big telly. What about a toaster?
Yes.
Really? Is it new?
I don’t know.
You don’t know? Mick broods on her answer for a moment, then says, Right well, answer me this. Have y’got a washing machine?
Yes.
Bet that’s new. Am I right?
Maybe it is a new one. Me, I don’t know, says Dalila.
Bet
you’ve got a microwave an aw, don’t ye?
Dalila lowers her head. She glances at her arm in his possession.
Aye, yous’ve got aw that stuff, he says. Fuckin right you do.
The lift stops and the doors open. Dalila is first out, tugging at her arm but he won’t let go. His grip tightens, hurting her.
C’mon, Mick, leave her alone, says Alison, pulling at Mick’s tracksuit. C’mon, let’s just go. Let’s go.
Get off us! Mick shoves Alison back while keeping his grip of Dalila.
Don’t fuckin push me, ye fuckin prick, shrieks Alison, as she stumbles drunkenly against the wall. She steadies herself and lurches at Mick again.
Get off, Alison, or I’ll fuckin do ye. I mean it.
Just leave her alone and let’s go, she says.
I’m just talkin to her, he roars.
Please, says Dalila, her trembling now visible.
Please what?
Please. The tears break loose and roll down her cheeks. I don’t want trouble.
C’mon, Mick, let’s go, Alison screams at him.
Shut the fuck up, Ally. Mick wipes the heel of his hand across his mouth and focuses through the alcohol at Dalila. He lets go of her wrist and spreads his arms wide so she can’t get by. We’re just talking, right? Just a proper conversation, okay? Then I’ll let you go.
Dalila backs up against the wall and wipes her cheeks.
Right, so, says Mick. Answer me this, he steps towards Dalila but doesn’t touch her, see your spankin new washing machine and your wee toaster. Who gave you that?
Dalila whispers, Nobody.
Don’t fuckin lie to me, Irene. You’ve no job, so you didn’t buy that stuff, did ye?
No.
No, you didn’t. He puts his face right up to hers. So who did?
Dalila swallows hard and makes herself answer. When they put me in the flat everything was there.
Aye, that’s right, says Mick, grinning. They. They gave you it. And a bed and new carpets and a toaster and flowery fuckin curtains. They gave you that too. Am I right?