by Iman Verjee
The three Kohlis look at each other. Look down. Look away. They each wait for one of them to speak, not wanting to be the first. Raj lifts his wife’s feet from his lap and reaches out toward the tea. But she is too quick for him, slapping his hand away. ‘Since when have you poured tea? You talk and I’ll do it. Come on,’ Pooja prods chirpily, lifting the pot. ‘Talk, talk.’
‘She seems happy to be home,’ he says, and is met with two sets of lifted, dubious eyebrows. A twitch of his son’s mouth. Just wait until you’re married.
‘Not really, Dad.’
‘She’s just tired from her trip.’ Raj accepts the tea from his wife. She leaves the tea bag in the cup, no milk. Three teaspoons of sugar.
‘You want diabetes?’ she often says to their friends. ‘Ask Raj. He has the pur-fect recipe.’
Jai speaks hesitantly, guilty for talking about his sister while she is in the house, and he lowers his voice. ‘Does she seem a little fragile to you?’ He considers telling them about the odd breathing she was doing in the car, blowing up her cheeks and vibrating her lips, clutching her stomach so tight that her fingernails turned white. No need to worry them.
‘If she says she’s okay then we should believe her.’ Pooja is firm. ‘We have enough problems, no need to go searching, digging for more.’ She dips her biscuit into the tea, watches as the crust of the chocolate turns soft and catches it in her mouth just as it begins to fall apart. Her skin breaks out into a shiver, as it always does when she is forced to think about what happened. ‘It’s been four years now. Why bring back the ghosts?’
Later that night, Leena raps lightly on her brother’s partially opened bedroom door. ‘Knock, knock.’
He looks up from his laptop, sliding off his headphones. ‘It’s you.’ He is pleased to see her and pushes back his chair to stand, rolling out the stiffness in his ankles.
She looks around as she steps into the room. Gone is the baby blue she remembers, the haphazardly stuck Rocky and Arsenal posters and clothes-strewn floor. Now the room is simple and clean, with gray-tinged green walls and elegant beige bedcovers. Above the bed are hung black-and-white photos in different-sized frames: the hands of an elderly farmer cupping kernels of corn, the hardships of his life dug permanently into his skin; the keen yellow eyes of a lioness peering through blades of grass, caught mid-breath as she readies herself for a hunt; downtown Nairobi stilled at peak hour, when the streets are jammed with lights and music. Kenya – a whole country watching down on him as he sleeps.
She points at them. ‘These are beautiful. Where did you get them?’
‘A friend.’ Jai recalls the moment in the car that morning when he was eager to explain everything. He wants to tell her again but she looks exhausted, fearful almost, and he decides to keep it for another day.
She traces her hand absently over the walls. His window is wide open and a breeze of pollen rustles the pile of papers at his elbow. ‘You look busy.’
‘There was a fire in a Kikuyu church in Nakuru a few days ago and I was just writing up the report.’ He falls back onto the bed and presses the heels of his palms to his closed eyelids. ‘It’s not a very hopeful sign for these elections.’
She lies down beside him. ‘Why not?’
‘The men who set the fire were Luos,’ he explains, referring to a different tribe. ‘All this rivalry between the candidates is seeping down into the villages, causing a lot of tension and violence.’
‘Do you ever run into trouble when you’re out in the field?’
‘Sometimes,’ he admits. ‘Though I would never tell Ma about it. You meet a lot of angry people, most of it stemming from the fact that they have been forgotten by the government, left to live and die in the worst conditions imaginable, and there comes a point when they just need someone to blame.’ His eyes turn to her. ‘I look different, I speak differently, so it’s easy for them to hate me. But most people I meet are just welcoming and ordinary, glad for the help. It’s not like how everyone imagines it to be.’
At times like these, she wonders if her family has forgotten what happened four years ago. It’s as if they packed up the memory of it within her full suitcase and sent it off on that midnight flight, waving from the glass doors and shivering in the cold.
Outside, the day is receding into a burning horizon. On the equator, night falls upon you without warning – one minute, everything is speckled in gold and possibility and the next, becomes harrowing, charcoal shadows. Engulfing, she used to think, after what happened. This is what it means to be lost.
She makes a cradle for her head with interlocked fingers. ‘Where are the parents?’
‘Out for a walk. Ma says Dad is getting old.’
Leena smiles. ‘Have you eaten?’
‘Grace made some fish.’
‘I didn’t see her when I came in.’
Jai checks his watch. ‘She’s probably in her room. It’s later than I thought.’
‘She’s staying in the outhouse?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it safe?’
Jai blows out a breath. Tries to understand that it is natural for her to feel that way after everything. ‘She’s been with us for two and a half years. Don’t do that.’
‘Do what?’
‘Judge her based on what happened. Mistrust is the rotting limb of this country and we have to cut it away if we want to heal and move on.’ He throws his arms wide open.
She makes a face. ‘Nice imagery.’
He grins like a little boy, only half-kidding. ‘I find it effective.’
While he attempts to get comfortable, she notices how large the muscles of his arms have become, the size of his body, which dwarfs everything around him – there is a heaviness to his movements that implies stability rather than slowness. Skin covered in dark, coarse hair. She blinks, and when she opens her eyes she sees a handsome man. Not unlike her father but different in many ways.
She puts a hand gently on his. ‘You shouldn’t kill yourself for Dad’s ideas.’
‘I’m not.’
And then she tells him what’s on her mind. The pleasant demeanor of the ATM con man. The incident that happened four years ago, the traces of which linger in everything around her, sickening her stomach. It’s no use, she wants to tell him. You’ll be dead without making a dent.
5
The next morning she runs into Grace in the corridor between the kitchen and the dining room. They side-step each other awkwardly, colliding and fussing before Leena stops.
‘Hello,’ she says, too cheerfully.
The other woman stares back at her, balancing a tray full of dirty dishes on her hip – remnants of pink papaya and crusts of buttered toast. ‘Fine, fine,’ Grace replies, trying to move away. Shrunken, quiet, stayed in her room all day yesterday, this one is strange. Not like her brother. ‘Do you want toast?’ Grace asks. ‘Ceerio?’
‘What kind of cereal is there?’ Leena asks.
‘Weetabix, cornflakes.’ Grace tries to remember the name of the fancy honey-coated one that Raj sometimes makes her sneak past his wife, but it’s lost on her. ‘I’ll bring it for you.’
‘I can do it, thank you.’
She follows Grace into the cramped kitchen, her eyes wandering over the room. A small stove, colonial-rose cabinets above and below it. A single window casts a hazy dimness so that she has to squint to see anything properly. Searching for the light, Leena finds it behind the refrigerator.
Startled, Grace shuts her eyes against the bald glare and feels a spark of irritation. She always works with the light turned off, has grown comfortable in the dark and now this invasion of her territory makes her bang the dishes down in the sink.
Leena rifles through the cupboards. The kitchen was designed to fit one person comfortably, but now Grace has to press herself into a corner and wait for the girl to finish before she can start her work.
‘What are you doing?’ A voice at the door makes Grace quickly rearrange her face into
a smile. Jai is looking into the kitchen, amused.
Leena stands. ‘I can’t find the cereal.’
‘Grace will get it for you. She doesn’t mind.’
Grace nods her head enthusiastically. ‘Indian tea?’ she asks.
With both their eyes on her, Leena feels like a stranger, disturbing the normality that has been established in her absence. She closes the cabinet door with a sigh. ‘Kettle tea is fine. No sugar.’
In the dining room, they sit at the marble-top island and Leena plays with a leftover crust of toast.
‘How did you sleep?’ Jai asks.
‘Fine.’ She won’t tell him about the nightmares, so common now that she even has them when she is awake. But there is something more menacing about her dreams when she is here – a realness to them that causes her muscles to spasm and lock, weak groans leaking out of her as she sleeps.
Jai turns away. He won’t remind her of the thinness of the walls, the close proximity in which they all sleep, so that last night the whole family had been invited into her terror.
She breaks the silence. ‘I was thinking of taking the Nissan for a drive.’
‘It’s not an automatic.’
‘You taught me how to drive stick, remember?’
‘That was four years ago.’
She throws his own words back at him. ‘It’s just like riding a bike.’
Jai approaches cautiously, hoisting his bag onto his shoulder. ‘Why don’t you wait until Ma is back from the temple? She can take you wherever you want to go.’
‘It’s like being in jail.’ Leena crushes a breadcrumb into many smaller pieces.
He feels the sting of annoyance mingled with pity. ‘You just got here – be patient and give it some time. It might surprise you.’
When Kidha tells her what happened to the girl, Grace feels a little sorry for putting two teaspoons of sugar in her tea.
They are sitting outside on the low concrete partition just near the back door. It has an inbuilt sink that she uses during the day for washing and cutting vegetables or for wiping the dirt from Jai’s shoes. He often comes back from his work trips upcountry with them encrusted in a solid layer of mud so that she has to pick away at them before using a garden pipe to hose them down.
In the mornings, however, she takes the two old mugs and plates that Mrs Kohli has set aside for her and brings them out with a thermos of tea and a full loaf of white bread. Sometimes, if she can manage without anyone noticing, she’ll pocket the margarine tub. Then she and Kidha will sit under the cool shade, using it as a place to do some gossiping before Mrs Kohli returns from her meetings.
Grace pushes a large piece of bread into her mouth after generously layering it with Blue Band margarine and slurps her sweet tea. The handle of the cup has broken off and she has to hold the hot ceramic, the heat stinging her palms.
‘How do you know this?’ she asks Kidha in Kikamba, the dialect of the Kamba tribe to which they both belong.
‘I hear them talking sometimes.’ He strokes Luna’s head with his toe. The dog looks up at him adoringly. ‘Pooja is always ca-crying about it.’
‘That’s why she’s so strange,’ Grace muses. ‘This morning in my kitchen, she was ja-jumping around me like she’d seen a ghost.’
He throws a piece of bread to a whimpering Luna, who snatches it up mid-air and then bangs her tail down for some more. He tears off another piece but Grace stops him.
‘They didn’t see it coming,’ he tells her.
‘Yes, sad.’ Grace chews down on the loaf. Feeling some pity for the dog, she gives Luna a dollop of margarine and watches as the animal flicks her tongue around it to get used to the texture. ‘But these things happen all the time to us. Why should it be something big when it happens to one of them?’
They hear footsteps and immediately fall silent. A new sound in the house, clicking of small heels, and the girl appears at the door. She stops when she sees them, hadn’t expected anyone to be there. Kidha jumps down from the partition.
Leena glances from them to the dog, who is still chewing on the butter. ‘Can you please open the gate for me? I’m going out and I’ll be back soon, if my mother asks.’
6
The old Nissan lurches forward. Stops. Turns off. Her skin dampens with a premature sweat and she shrugs off her cardigan. Despite the earliness of the morning, the sun has fully ascended, chasing away the clouds and filling the city with a lethargic stillness. She can’t even roll down the window – Westlands is full of wandering, opportunistic street boys. She twists the key in the ignition, and is filled with a fleeting second of hope as the car gives a struggling whirr but then falls quiet. She pounds her fist on the dashboard and it spits out dust, choking her. Eyes itching with dryness, she moans and lets her head fall onto the steering wheel. Car horns, a string of curse words, shaking fists – all directed at her and the old car that has decided to break down right in the middle of Westlands roundabout.
Further down the road, a policeman is supposed to be directing traffic coming through Waiyaki Way, a major highway, but instead he is leaning against a giant Samsung billboard as he speaks into his mobile phone. Eyes and ears that are blind and deaf to anything that cannot be milked for kitu kidogo.
With no other option, Leena calls Jai and tells him where she is. After an hour spent in traffic, he has almost reached the office. He keeps his voice calm, tells her, ‘Don’t get out of the car or let anyone in,’ trying not to be angry, trying to understand. But he can’t help but snap, ‘Why would you go for a drive during rush hour?’
Cars move around her, forming lanes between lanes, squeezing into minute spaces and bumping up onto curbs, forcing swarms of pedestrians out onto the road. Matatus are blasting reggae and gospel tunes from old, staticky radios and a man hangs out of the door of one, collecting up passengers. When he spots her, he shouts, ‘Hey, pretty muhindi, let me give you a ride!’
She rests her head once more on the wheel, wondering what she has come back to.
Keep everything locked, her mother would command whenever they were leaving the house. Pooja would twist in her seat and watch as Leena pushed the lock down before she started the car. Never take any chances. But Leena’s skin is burning and the air in the car is riddled with layers of aged dust, making her cough, so she cracks open a window, slides it downward. She breathes in the air deeply, thick with smog but relieving nonetheless. Her eyes flicker shut as the cool air sweeps against her cheek.
‘Huko! Huko!’ a childish voice shouts.
She hadn’t noticed them before, sitting on the island in the center of the roundabout, their faces black from dirt and diesel fumes. Two boys who look to be about fifteen years old, barefoot and quick, race toward her.
A war of reflexes.
Leena reaches to roll up the window but he has done this many times and has already inserted his arm into the car, almost up to the elbow, before she can even begin to close it. Something drips into her lap, oily and wet. In his hand, he is clutching a plastic bottle full of liquid the color of light straw. She draws her knees together, trying to move as far away as possible. The stench of urine is overwhelming.
‘Give me the phone or I’ll throw it on you.’ Wild, throbbing eyes – a mind caught up in a crazed glue-haze. She recognizes the look and it scares her more than the human waste in his hand so she hands him the Blackberry. It’s not his fault. His actions are a result of a highly addictive neurotoxin – shoe-repair glue. An escape for many boys just like him, he has probably been sniffing it all night.
The bottle moves a little closer. She squeals and twists further away. Cars keep moving by them; no one stops to help.
‘Kwenda nyuma!’ the boy shouts at his friend. ‘The back door better be unlocked,’ he growls.
‘I’m not opening it.’ Her stubbornness surprises her. She had expected to cry, scream, break down. She has been hoping for it for a long time. The liquid quivers above her.
‘I’ll throw
it in your face,’ he threatens.
The policeman has finally noticed her, tucking his phone away and starting to run in their direction, shaking the baton in his hand. ‘Weh!’ he shouts. ‘We-weh!’
The boy at her side yells at his companion to hurry. The door opens behind her – it must be broken because she is sure she locked it.
‘Hey! No!’ She grapples with the hand stealing her new purse, which she has hidden under the seat. How many of her mother’s rules has she broken today? No opening windows. No fighting back. Something salty hits the side of her cheek and the purse slips from her loosened grip. Her eyes are burning and a bitter sharpness cuts into her tongue, making it jerk unpleasantly. He has dropped the bottle into her lap, spilling the remainder of its contents onto her jeans. She pushes open the door just as the police officer reaches her and the boys sprint off, Blackberry and purse in hand.
She retches, tries to hold it in but it comes up anyway and she throws up beside the officer’s shiny black Bata shoes, noting with some satisfaction that a few specks have settled on his trouser hem. He wipes it away casually with the back of his hand as if it is a daily occurrence.
Trying not to cry, or breathe in the smell, she kicks the bottle onto the street, a warm wetness gathering beneath the denim of her jeans and soaking into her skin. ‘I hate this place.’
The policeman pats her shoulder heavily. ‘You’re lucky it’s just some chokora piss,’ he says to her. ‘The other day, some woman, she had battery acid thrown on her face for one hundred bob.’ He draws back his lips, hisses in imagined pain. ‘Eh-he! I tell you. Skin all gone – no more eyes, no more nose, no more anything. Burned, burned, kabisa.’ Smacking his hands together. ‘A shame for such a pretty face.’ He leans down and sneers. From the left corner of his mouth a gold-plated tooth shines menacingly beneath the unremitting sunshine.