I held out my hand to a chicken, cooing.
Baakir chuckled. “Are you befriending your dinner?”
I snatched back my hand but I was glad to have made him laugh. “I have had experience running a household, I will have you know.”
“Indian girl, are you really the new servant?” His Swahili made all of the words he said roll like an empty bottle down a hill, smooth and bumpy at the same time. He slapped his towel into the dust, forcing the chickens to scatter in all directions.
“I am the new wife.”
“You are the wife?” Baakir laughed heartily. What could be so funny?
He recovered and cleared his throat. “Pardon me, Baby Wife. Do you not know how mornings start?”
“One gathers water from the well to boil.”
“I know that is something you Indians send your servants to do. But if you are my partner, then you are coming with me. I do not want to have to pick up your slack. The buckets are heavy, and you do not look all that strong.”
“I am stronger than you think!” I shouted at his back. He laughed again.
“We will see about that, Baby Wife,” he said, shaking his head. “We will see about that.”
Evening approached and I served the chicken curry I had made with Baakir. Ma stopped me before I poured out my serving.
“Your portion is the neck,” she said.
I was used to the neck. I placed the stacked vertebrae in my bowl. I put the bony column to my lips and sucked out the strings in the neck. Curry juice squirted onto my chin.
“Do not eat like a janver! You are a no good jungle animal!” Ma slapped my cheek hard. The neck dropped to the floor. “From today onward, you eat after us.”
Pa nodded. I touched my burning cheek, remembering the fried cassava I had prepared. My mouth wet at the thought of biting into the crunchy pieces coated with lime juice and chili. I removed the cloth covering the plate. Ma squeezed my shoulder right to my bones. “Wasteful! You used the food for tomorrow! Who helped you cut this cassava?”
“Baakir … ”
Ma’s eyes grew large. The V’s that made up her eyebrows rose until they looked like they would blow off like the tops of volcanoes. She shoved the frying pot so hard the still-hot liquid splattered and burned my arm. I ran and locked the door to my marital room. I need not have bothered. No one was coming after me.
When I showed up unannounced in my auntie’s kitchen a few months later, I was covered in burns, bruises, and cuts. The trip to Buboka had not been easy to make on my own. Auntie did not look surprised to see me. Never before had she made me chai, but today she put a cup in my hands. The fennel was not yet strained. The seeds bobbed on top like insects. There were far too many cloves inside, which stung my tongue with biting hotness. It tasted nothing like the tea of my childhood made by my Mama, with its sweet, smooth cocoa berry flavour.
“Tell me everything,” she urged.
I found myself confessing the slaps from Ma, the long trips to the well, my inability to please Ma, and the string of names I was called. Auntie nodded, looking sympathetic. I continued: the backbreaking work, the confiscation of my wedding saris, jewellery, as well as anything valuable I owned. I touched my nostril, feeling it devoid of my grandmother’s nose-pin. Auntie looked satisfied.
“My, my, I am only happy one of my own daughters did not marry into this family. I told your Uncle your suitor was not good enough for your cousins.”
“Yes, Auntie.”
“I do not want this woman killing you. After all, it is our duty to your father — may he rest in peace — we look after your well-being. I knew this family wanted someone capable of doing her share. Perhaps you are just too thin to keep up with the day-to-day work. But look, you have managed to put on a few pounds; at the least they appear to feed you well. You may move back here but it would cost us a lot more to house you than it would to pay an African servant,” she said.
If I did not get up to leave at once, soon the cousins would enter the house wearing their luxurious custom-made saris, hair plastered in slick waves, finding me in a shredded frock. The thought made my stomach clench. The chai was burning a hole in my stomach, and I had nowhere to spit out the vile, chalky taste. All of a sudden I vomited all over.
“Hai Allah!” screamed Auntie. “You cannot even sit on a couch idly properly. Does one need skills simply to sit on furniture without making disturbances?”
My eyes felt heavy and I refused to get up even though Auntie was rocking me back and forth vigorously. I vomited again and the milky tea stung my nostrils and burned my throat.
She called the new maidservant in to mop up the mess I had made. I felt Auntie’s fat fingers poke my breasts invasively, which were tender and swollen. She prodded my stomach. Maybe I had a sickness and she would tell me I would die. Perhaps now everyone would feel sorry for the way they treated me. Ma would dress in black garments. She would cry and pound her chest the way women did on the Day of Ashura at the mosque. The cousins would fight over whose silk sari I would be buried in.
“Pregnant,” she declared. “It seems you are two or three months along. If you were not such a stick I could not tell this early.”
Uncle and Auntie took me back to my husband’s house. Auntie made a big show of throwing Ma’s pillows on the floor. Ma winced when Auntie said I could no longer work. Auntie told my husband this time was very important in pregnancy. If he would not take proper care of me, the baby would not stick and I would miscarry. His face drained and he squinted at me as if he could see right through my dress and examine my internal workings. Auntie made a big display of pulling out her big frocks and offering them to me, for soon I would be as big as a house. Uncle congratulated my husband and shook his hand. Suddenly everyone was celebrating. Ma ordered Baakir to serve sweet chai and go and get milky barfi in the shapes of sugary diamonds from the sweetshop in the marketplace. But Auntie shook her head no, for they must be on their way.
Now Ma had me do sit down tasks, like mend frocks, pick stones from the lentils, and roll out roti. I did not complain because I spent my time fantasizing about my new baby. I knew immediately he was a boy. I wanted to name him Ali Asghar, after the baby whose tragic story we heard every year during Muharram at mosque.
My husband no longer slept with his back turned to me. I no longer cringed at the thought of removing his shoes. At night, he held his hand to my belly and found Ali Asghar’s head was always planted firmly in the top right corner of my stomach. My husband joked Ali Asghar’s head was a hard coconut. Ali Asghar became my best friend. I talked to him in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Out of scraps I hand-stitched tiny shirts and hats for him. After years of never owning a store-bought doll, I would finally have a live doll. I drank sweet and nutty raab porridge known to help produce ample breast milk. Usually, the mother of a pregnant woman was supposed to make the concoction, but I did not mind making it for myself.
One afternoon, during my eighth month, I felt as if Ali Asghar wanted to come into the world. All the women in the village had told me smart babies knew how to turn and ready themselves for birth. But when I touched my belly, Ali Asghar’s head was still high in my belly.
I ran to tell Ma. “It is time,” I said.
Ma said she was surprised someone as uneducated as me would know where the baby’s head was located. These were false contractions and she said she would check on me after her ladies luncheon. I begged her not to go, but she plucked my hand off of her shoulder as if I were one of the men that slaughtered goats at the market, pestering her to make a purchase.
“But what if they are real contractions?”
“The baby has not even dropped into position yet. You may have my son eating from your hand, but not me.” Ma pinched my filled out bottom and clicked her tongue. “You eat us out of house and home and run to your auntie to complain about me. Go live with her then. Only Alla
h knows how much it will cost to feed another mouth in this house.”
I motioned for Baakir to come in from the outside where he was pretending to be feeding the chickens. I asked him if he could wait outside of the toilet pit because I was feeling sick. He shrugged and pulled up a stool to shuck beans.
I felt like I had to pee or push something out. My body was shuddering. I tried to remember what muscles I used to pee, but I could not isolate them. I felt wetness dribbling down my thighs.
“There is blood!” I shouted at Baakir. “Blood!”
The metal bowl of beans clunked hard. Baakir said his wife had some experience delivering babies and he would send for her on the way to get my husband. I screamed for him not to leave me, but he was already gone.
Another contraction came, and my entire body convulsed from the sensation. I did not know whether to fight the urge to push or to go with it. It felt like Ali Asghar was still head up in my belly. I had heard of people turning babies so their head would face down, but no one was here to help me. I wanted to move to the living room, but what would Ma say if she found blood on her furniture? The wooden floor was damp, and the air was heavy with the smell of fresh blood and old urine.
Hours passed. Suddenly, Ma came into the toilet pit. She pulled my body upwards. I realized I had sunk down on my knees in a semiconscious state and my hands had been crawling up the sides of the wall, to keep me from falling in the hole filled with flies. I could not make out the dark shadowy faces behind her. She yelled at me to lie on my back in the living room so she could feel the position of the baby through my stomach. Someone had already set old bed sheets and towels on the floor to receive me.
Ma’s hand felt like they were travelling inside me. “The baby is already halfway outside of you. Do you not feel that?” I could not even give birth properly.
I realized then that when I died I would not feel anything. It would be like when you have a heavy dream and you do not remember anything about it, just the blackness, and you realize you did not even miss living. Someone shouted for me to keep my eyes open. I did, and in vivid colour I could see traces of people’s faces. Black hair, greenish worried faces, red mouths. But then dark blue and purple patches started filling them up, leaving me a half-finished puzzle to look at. Someone shouted again, and then blotches of faces reappeared as quickly as they disappeared. Something expelled out of me. My lower regions had become numb. I could not tell whether I had passed a bowel movement or a baby.
“Stay with me,” a man who looked like my husband said.
It was then that I saw the body. He was blue and lifeless. Ma was covering him with a cloth.
“He is my baby! Let me look at him!” I called Ma a thousand names under the sun.
Ma was stunned. Baakir’s wife put the baby on my chest. The cloth that Ma had covered the baby with was mottled with blood. The baby was still attached to me. I saw Baakir’s wife cutting the cord; she was mopping the blood away and saying over and over again that I needed to see a doctor.
Ma pried my arms open so she could remove the baby.
“Stop touching me!” I shouted, slapping her away. “You did this to me! You left me alone to go for lunch!”
Ma stepped back, shocked. I undid the towel and examined Ali Asghar’s fully formed fingers and toes. His tiny mouth made a round circle. I ran my hands over his entire body. Tiny, soft hairs covered it. Ma called me a crazy woman from the doorway. “Let go of the baby! He is dead! Do not pet his hair; he is diseased!”
I brought Ali Asghar’s white wrinkled body close to my nose. Ali Asghar’s thin nostrils had stiffened in the flare position, and his eyebrows felt like the downy feathers chickens left behind in the courtyard. The wrinkles between his eyebrows gave him an aged look. He looked like he wanted to talk, but had forgotten what to say. I wanted to ask someone to get the hat I had sewn for him, but I could not find my words. I rubbed Ali Asghar’s arms to give them warmth.
My husband touched my shoulder. “Give the baby to me now, for I must perform ghusl.”
“Ghusl is only performed when you have to wash away the dead’s sins. This baby has no sins. It was killed unjustly, so no ghusl need be performed!”
My husband backed away. The doctor arrived and tried to remove Ali Asghar’s body, but I refused to let go of his curled fingers. Baakir’s wife held me down and the doctor injected me with something that plunged me into blackness.
Days later, I was stitched up and lying in fresh clothes in bed. My husband was packing my things. I could hear Ma’s voice telling him not to leave the family, that this was unheard of. He ignored her and kept folding clothes.
His eyes did not meet mine when he spoke. “We are leaving Tanganyika and setting out for Uganda.”
I said nothing. There were two open suitcases on the floor, laid out like carcasses. In mine I could see a tin of talcum powder, a bottle of coconut oil, my wedding jewellery, my house frocks, and my wedding saris. In the centre of the suitcase, folded neatly, sat the unworn clothes I had sewn for Ali Asghar.
***
THE WORLD WAS A crystal bauble. If I stood on my tippy toes I could touch the sky. The trees were tinted pink and the ground was a murky purple; it was like everything had been created from a roll of undeveloped film. I saw myself sitting at Nina’s kitchen table. She gave me black sesame and orange ice cream, light as a soufflé and creamy as roasted marshmallows. It reminded me of Mama’s special tea. How sweet Mama’s tea had been. How chocolaty and rich. The taste of cherries.
“This new place is not good to raise a family,” I said, licking a tablespoon of smooth velvet.
Nina looked at me with accusing eyes. I was her mother; it was my job to be honest. I mean, what was all this Canadian nonsense about mothers being their daughters’ best friends? I knew in a week Nina would discover rodents, and her fridge would ooze liquids she would bandage with tea towels. I couldn’t explain how I came to know this information. Instead, I tried to be kinder.
“Nina, I just want to see you happy. Do you think this is place is good for kids?”
Avoiding the question, Nina spun away from me, like an Indian dancer. For a second I saw her on stage, powder blue skirt flaring out like a church bell as she tilted her hands upwards, surrendering to the sky. A crackling sound whipped through the air. Was the crowd clapping at her performance? No, it was her feet making a pfft sound as she stepped on the chipped linoleum. Looking down, I saw the fissured partitions of the floor spread apart slowly, like the plates of the earth would do, over time. I was sure an army of ants would move into Nina’s apartment this summer. At the sink, Nina looked like she might be measuring out pills or drawing liquid into sharp needles. Perhaps she was fishing for trout; who knew where the water in this neighbourhood came from.
I was not suggesting that Nina didn’t keep her place clean. Cleaning was what she did best. She was someone other housewives hated to measure themselves against. I was the one who had set the bar high in the cleaning department because in Uganda, I woke up to a comforter of dust every morning. If you didn’t do everything to take care of this pesky houseguest it would just roll in and stay there like it owned the place. In Uganda we had bars on the windows and a mud stove on the kitchen floor we had to squat down to cook on. Our toilet was a hole cut out of the floor. So who was I to judge? But I was scared of the druggies in the alleyways around the corner. As poor as we were in Uganda, we never had to deal with used needles. I feared my grandchildren would contract AIDS — it was all anyone was talking about these days. I didn’t know how Nina let her child go to school in this kind of a neighbourhood — if it were me, I would keep Maya at home, out of danger. But Nina said that there was no such thing as an AIDS monster lurking around the corner, waiting to gobble children up.
“Nina,” I tried again. “Don’t worry. Place only is a temporary stop.” My words were coming about jumbled, like I had stones wedged in my mout
h. Each word was ramming the word in front of it.
Nina looked older than I remembered. Was I looking at myself? Like me, this person also had two satin marigolds planted exactly where her eyeballs should be. Her lower eyelids were puffed with worry. But no, this wasn’t me, for Nina was far skinnier than I ever was. She held my hands, which felt like the dehydrated trunks of an aged elephant. When had I become so old? I was not so sure I could feel my legs either, come to think of it. Should I mention this? No, Nina would just panic; she was a very edgy person in general. Once carefree, motherhood had made her as jumpy as the grasshoppers we used to fry back home. So I stayed quiet.
“Mummy, don’t waste energy speaking. You need rest.”
“Nina,” I continued. “Peoplewillrobyoufordrugmoney! Whataboutyourbaby?” So much care had gone into enunciating my words yet only “drug money” and “baby” were clear. The rest sounded like it had been through a slush drink machine.
“Do you need more drugs for pain? What baby? Maya is all grown up.”
“I want ice cream,” I forced out. My throat was as parched as sandpaper. My lips were rubber tubes that would not close around my words. The right side of my face felt as wobbly as gelatin. If I spoke too much, my skin might slide off altogether, ending up on the floor in a gooey soup.
“Mummy, you are only supposed to drink water. It has ice chips in it.”
“I don’t want water!”
Nina jumped. But I didn’t care. I was tired of being polite. I removed my left hand from under the blanket, and swiped the glass of water. It should have shattered. But for some reason the water just rolled around aimlessly on the floor in a plastic cup. I wanted to throw more things, but I was stuck.
“What have you done to me? Remove the glue from this bed at once! I am no prisoner!”
Nina backed away to the door. There was cooking oil running down her cheeks. “Anisa, I can’t do this. You are stronger than me. You help her.” And just like that, Nina disappeared.
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