The Dream Chasers

by Claudette Oduor

  I watched Mama drop the last potato into the big bowl. While I talked to my uncle, she collected the potato ribbons into a newspaper. I followed her to the kitchen, as she carried the soaking spuds with her.

  “Uncle Matayo wants to meet me tomorrow, Mama.”

  “You’re not going.” Mama turned her back to me and pounded garlic cloves. She had a cold; she believed garlic made flu go away. She threw the pestle into the sink. A water glass fell on its side—the sound muted, as though afraid of defying Mama—creating a neat crack, dividing itself into two.

  [Three]

  MAMA TRIED TO UNCORK a jar of honey. The honey had crystallised, and the crystals had sealed the cork, cementing it into place. She struggled with it for a long time. Then she reached for a knife from the knife stand on the kitchen table, and tried to pry the jar open.

  “Let me help you, Mama,” I said, reaching for the jar.

  “I can do it on my own.” She tried to prise my fingers away from it. The knife slipped off the cork. Its sharp blade slit through fingers—both hers and mine—which it found along its path. Mama let go of the jar, and it crashed to the floor, its glass pieces plated in honey gold and embossed with drops of our blood. She turned the knife over in her hand and stared at its smudged red edge. She threw it in the sink. There was a knock on the door.

  “Get that,” Mama said. “It must be Chibayi and Mumia.”

  Chibayi and Mumia were Mama’s older sister and older brother respectively. Mama sat with them in the sitting room. Chibayi’s face was short and round, with worry lines and laugh lines and sad lines and tear lines, all smeared against each other. I imagined her face a blank slate in someone’s lap and her features, the granite in someone’s pencil. The person I imagined drawing her face was a lazy artist. The artist portrayed a face that was an innuendo to faces; a sketchy summary of what a face should look like, with features haphazardly doodled in place.

  Mumia was older than both Mama and Chibayi were. One of his eyes had faded with age. It had blue-grey rings inside the iris, and a mucus maggot oozed out of the corners. His skin was rumpled as though he had taken it out for a wash and then worn it without ironing first.

  They listened to the clock. Mama, Chibayi, and Mumia sat the same way: backs straight, legs crossed at the ankles, and feet fidgeting. Their eyes skidded across the ceiling, tearing the wood apart, skimming for things to talk about.

  “I heard that Mama Felistia died,” Mumia said.

  They discussed Mama Felistia, a woman from their village. Death was a good subject. It drowned out the loud ticking of the clock.

  “Yes, Mama Felistia died,” Chibayi said. “That woman owned a hundred vitenge dresses in the latest fashion. You know people and their jealousy; they threw her the evil eye as though it was her fault she had children in Nairobi to send her a kitenge dress every month.”

  “People can be so jealous,” Mama said. “I heard that when people threw her the evil eye, Mama Felistia went to the medicine man. The medicine man removed the axes and machetes people with the evil eye had thrown inside her stomach. But then the medicine man was incompetent. He didn’t remove everything; he left a knife in Mama Felistia’s stomach. It cut up her intestines. That’s what killed her.”

  Chibayi gave an exasperated click of her tongue. “You shall soon get a stomachache from all the lies you have been fed, Eshe. Mama Felistia didn’t die of a knife. She died under a knife. When the doctor said she had a tumour in her stomach, her children in Nairobi sent her money for an operation. But Mama Felistia thought she would save up on hospital bills, you know, get a cheaper operation and have change to buy herself more vitenge dresses. So instead of going to the hospital, she went to her next-door neighbour. The boy is sharp in the head; he got a C+ in biology. The boy lay her on the kitchen table and slit her stomach open. He took her intestine out, put it on a tray and threw it out to the dogs. He sewed her back together and told her to go home. She died that night.”

  “And what became of her vitenge dresses?” Mama asked.

  “At her funeral, people broke into the house and fought for her dresses. Her beautiful dresses tore until everyone in the village got a piece of them.”

  The clock seemed to get louder. A mobile phone went off. It was in a coat on a reed couch.

  Chibayi nudged Mumia. “Your phone is crying.”

  Mumia got up to answer the phone and went outside the house. When he came back in, Mama asked me to serve them sturungi and scones.

  “How is your daughter doing?” Mama asked Chibayi. “I heard she is in Nairobi. Did she come with her husband?”

  Chibayi placed her teacup on the table. She scratched her scalp, making her wig lopsided. “That girl. I don’t know what to do with her. Which husband would come with her to Nairobi? She cut off her mother-in-law’s arm with a panga. That’s why she came, so the police wouldn’t catch her and make her sew the arm back. She really is no good at needlework.”

  “Lulu,” Mama said, turning to me. “Will you cook?”

  I boiled three cups of water on the stove, and took a mwiko and a packet of unga. With the mwiko, I stirred the flour in boiling water, added more flour, and stirred again. When it became firm, hard, mouldable, and nonsticky, I gathered it all into a large china plate. I then fried some spinach, cooking it with tomatoes, grated carrots, chillies, and dhania from the kitchen garden.

  We sat on a sisal mat in the veranda. The mound of ugali wasn’t unnaturally round. It was oblong, and the white wasn’t so glaring, as though it had been cooked with bleach instead of just water. It was floury and crumbly in some places and burnt in others. As we watched, a massive fault line tore the ugali into two ragged halves. Mama and Chibayi exchanged alarmed looks.

  “Ugali is not supposed to crack like that,” Mama murmured. “This is a bad omen. Someone will die.”

  I laughed. “Mama, that is silly. Look, I shall take the first bite. I volunteer to die first. The rest of you can live to die another day.”

  Chibayi slapped my wrist. “Spit out that dirty saliva. This is no laughing matter.”

  Muchai came to the house. We went to the kitchen. In the sitting room, the television was on. Kibaki was giving an address at a rally.

  “Are you voting in December?” Muchai asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Are you voting for Raila, your father’s kinsman?”

  “Does it matter who I vote for? A Kikuyu man will employ his people to plunder the economy. A Luo man will do the same.”

  The breeze blew the curtain inwards, dismantling it from its knot. The curtain dipped its hem inside the sink. I gathered the curtain, tied it in a knot and fitted it through the window grills. I opened the tap and ran water over the dishes.

  Muchai brought in a small three-legged stool from the back. He sat on it, his back to the kitchen wall. The wall had stains from water used to mop the floor. It had mosquito carcasses smashed against it. The wall was shedding its paint, like a snake tearing out of its skin. The parquet was chiselled out, each block lying on top of the other, too lazy to stand up straight.

  “Do you need help with that?” Muchai asked, pointing at a basket of peas that needed to be broken from their pods.

  “Yes, please.” I pushed the basket towards him.

  He took it in his lap. “Tomorrow, my family shall go to Nyaera’s ancestral home in Kiambu.”

  “What about?”

  “Dowry negotiations.”

  “So the wedding’s really happening?”

  “I guess it is.”

  I pulled a stool from the sitting room, sat beside Muchai, and placed a handful of pods in my lap. “You know, Muchai, it is stupid to test the depth of a river with both feet.”

  Muchai opened his mouth to reply, but Mama’s, Chibayi’s, and Mumia’s voices grew louder.

  “One may roam both ends of a boat,” Chibayi sai
d, “but, in the end, they shall wind up in the middle. Eshe, you need the money. Humble yourself and go back to your daughter’s father. Think of your daughter if you can’t think of yourself.”

  “The rough times will pass. God is faithful. I will not go back to that man. Will you pick my carcass when he beats me to death? I will find another job.”

  “It’s been a year since the retrenchment. You should have found one by now.”

  “Things will be different this time, Chibayi. Raila is coming to power. All Kikuyus will be laid off. People like me will get jobs.”

  Chibayi smirked. “Maybe you ate in the dark and swallowed devils down with your food, Eshe. They filled up your stomach. Now, when you swallow your pride, it doesn’t go down; it remains lodged in your throat. Someday, your pride will kill you.”

  “Then be sure to write that on my epitaph: Here lies Eshe. She got food poisoning from swallowing rotten pride.”

  Outside, the baobab tree with sores all over its skin stooped low and patted the kitchen window with its branches, as though telling us: “Enough eavesdropping. Now get back to work.”

  I threw empty pods to the floor, gathered peas in my skirt, and poured them into an empty sufuria. Swoosh! Caterpillars and chaff rolled down my leg. I flicked them to the floor.

  “I’ve tried,” I said, “but I just don’t see why she refuses Baba’s help.”

  Muchai shrugged. “Sometimes the more we look, the less we see.”

  Mama spoke again. “Perhaps you’re right, Chibayi. Perhaps I really did eat in the dark, and I swallowed demons down with my food. Perhaps the evil spirits I swallowed cut off one wing so I would fly only half the distance. But this race is a relay; I don’t need both wings. I only need to fly half the distance and then pass the baton to my daughter.” She called out to me. “Lulu, wait in the house. Take care of things. Your uncle and aunt are leaving; I’m escorting them to the bus station. If Stima House is open, I will pay the electricity bill.”

  [Four]

  IT WAS RAINING. HEAVY RAINDROPS pulled at the maize stalks in the garden, holding onto them with all their might, weighing them downwards. I wondered why the raindrops fought so hard. They would still splatter to their death on the ground, the silly things. I watched them as they splashed to the earth, spilling their watery innards.

  It stopped raining. The sun paid the sky compliments. The sky blushed. It liked compliments. The sun was a cunning suitor. The few moments that the embarrassed sky closed its eyes and drew maps on the ground were all it took for the sun to triumph over it. The sun stole the sky’s innocence and it birthed a new day.

  Uncle Matayo sat in his Toyota NZE and waited. Mama stood at the kitchen window and watched the journey his hand made from its roost on the NZE window to his black lips. “He’s smoked five cigarettes, Lulu. Five! His lungs must be grilled by now, ready to eat.”

  “Mama, stop watching him. That’s uncouth behaviour.”

  “He is not a good man, Lulu.”

  “Why, Mama? Because he’s smoked five cigarettes or because he is Baba’s brother?”

  Mama shrugged. “You know, Lulu, one who does not listen to the wise suffers a broken leg. And one who is not taught by their mother is taught by the world.”

  “Mama, please.”

  I got in the car. Uncle Matayo threw the cigarette out the window. He drove to the basilica. We were early enough to get sitting space. The hymns and sermons echoed over the stained glass. I wondered where all the pigeons had gone. When I was younger, Mass at the basilica had been an exercise in dodging pigeon poop.

  After Mass, Uncle Matayo drove down Lang’ata Road. He took a turn into a secluded road. There was a barrier at one end of it. A watchman recognised Uncle Matayo’s car. He lifted the barrier and let him pass. Uncle Matayo drove up a dirt road, turned into a street, and pulled up in front of a black gate. He opened my door for me, after getting out himself. Then pressing a button on the wall, he took a step back and waited. There was a crunch of slippers over gravel and then the jingle and clank of keys and padlock against the gate.

  “My husband,” a woman said, pulling open the small door in the gate. She squinted at me, her eyes almost sloping shut as the sun hit her face. “Lulu.”

  “Aunt Akma.”

  She embraced me. “Did I cook snakes the last time you were here? Why did you never come back?”

  Aunt Akma had slaughtered a chicken. She had cooked that and served it with ugali.

  “Won’t you ask about your father?” Uncle Matayo asked me.

  “I don’t have to,” I said. “You will tell me anyway.”

  Uncle Matayo gave me an irritated look. “Well, he is overseeing Raila’s campaigns in the coast. It’s very demanding. He doesn’t get much time to himself. You know that, don’t you?”

  I shrugged, refusing to accept his apology on behalf of Baba. Baba had last spoken to me two years ago, at my grandfather’s funeral. He’d asked, “That was a good funeral, wasn’t it?”

  “Have some more chicken, Lulu,” Aunt Akma said, passing the serving dish to me. “Just don’t eat the gizzard. Women don’t eat gizzards.”

  She and Uncle Matayo smiled at me. Their family portrait smiles stretched like rubber bands. I imagined their rubber-band smiles snapping, leaving their faces without smiles. Perhaps they would have a smile transplant; cut up elastic skin from their upper arms and paste it on their faces.

  Aunt Akma and I went out in the drizzle into the small garden to harvest beans.

  “Can you see the plants that look like dried twigs, Lulu? Uproot those. Don’t touch the green ones, they aren’t ready.”

  I pulled one by the stalk. A black, redheaded caterpillar fell on my hand. I dropped the beans and flicked it away. It landed on the back of Aunt Akma’s dress. I was about to flick it away again when she bent over a patch of dried beans. Beside it was a tall maize plant with outstretched leaves. The caterpillar held on to it and disappeared on the bottom side of a leaf.

  I picked up the beanstalk I’d uprooted and pulled at others, matching Aunt Akma’s movements. By the time we were done, it was raining in torrents. We heaped the beanstalks in the shed, on the bonnet of a rusty eighties BMW.

  Uncle Matayo sat in a rocking chair by the window of the sitting room, an ashtray on the stool and a newspaper open in his lap. He had spectacles on and a pencil lodged behind his ear. The pencil’s location reminded me of a children’s book that had fascinated me when I was younger. Tom, a character in that book, had forgotten that he had placed his pencil behind his ear. He went round asking people where his pencil was.

  Mary, have you seen my pencil?

  Peter, have you seen my pencil?

  Cat, have you seen my pencil?

  Aunt Akma and I watched The Jeffersons together. The noise of the television got in Uncle Matayo’s way. He folded his newspaper and scraped the chair on the floor as he stood up. His keys fell to the floor. When he bent to pick them, I saw the narrow dent in his head, like a slot for inserting coins into his skull. A penny for his thoughts.

  Aunt Akma brought out sulphur oil. She parted my hair into rows and applied the oil on my scalp. It reminded me of my childhood, sitting between Mama’s legs, placing my head on her thigh, while she untangled the hair on my head and applied oil to it.

  “Aunt, do you remember my friend Muchai?”

  “Why? Is he dead?”

  “No, he’s getting married.”

  “Is that girl of his pregnant?”

  “No.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “The same age of my daughter this year, if she were still alive.”

  “Oh, Aunt. I didn’t mean to remind you about her.”

  “Time is a good storyteller, Lulu. Sit tight and listen to its stories.”

  I winced as Aunt Akma passed the comb thr
ough my hair.

  “How was your daughter like?”

  “Frankly, Lulu, I don’t remember. She stayed with us just three months. I never even took a photograph of her. The only thing I remember is the feel of her burial dress. It was lacy, white, like a wedding dress. Matayo said she was Christ’s bride. But why would Christ take an underage bride? I asked Matayo if Christ was a paedophile. He told me to spit out my dirty saliva. I guess your friend Muchai is old enough to marry, unlike the age my daughter was when she got married to Christ. What do you think?”

  “About Muchai? I think that he’s an adult; he can do whatever he likes.”

  Aunt Akma placed the tub of oil on the table. “Really, Lulu? You know what I think? I think that your thoughts simmer in your mind and drown in their own stock. Words are not food. Swallowing them won’t make your bones stronger.”

  “Tell me about my mother, Aunt Akma. I want to know why she married Baba.”

  “She was a young thing back then, barely twenty. A telegram arrived at her home one morning, informing her that love was lost. She left everything behind and went to find it. She lost herself, forgot that, if she looked in the mirror, she would see right into her own eyes.”

  Rain pounded against the windows; the drops, polka dots that lost balance and slid down to the ledge. The glass in the window shivered, as though it needed to wear a sweater.

  Aunt Akma told me a story. “Long ago, there was a clan called the Dream Catchers. All the beautiful girls in the land wanted to marry men from this clan to give birth to Dream Catcher babies and have all their dreams come true. The Dream Catchers convoluted reality. They dreamt in their waking hours and wove their dreams into baskets to carry the fruits of their desires. When a Dream Catcher slept, he dreamt whichever dream he had trapped behind his eyelids. He dreamt whatever he wanted to dream. If he wanted gold, he envisioned it before he went to sleep. In his dreams, he would possess the Midas touch and turn everything into gold. Then he would hurl the gold from the soft hammock of sleep into reality.