Who Will Catch Us As We Fall

by Iman Verjee

  ‘Right place at the right time,’ he said, but the adrenaline was pumping through him in jolts, warming his cheeks.

  ‘Do you want to join us?’

  They were out on the street, their backs to the houses on either side. To the left was the gate and to the right of them, beyond the walls, a crowded line of kiosks – small, locally owned shops that sold everything from cigarettes to soda bottles and sukuma-wiki. Past that, there were the slums: clustered, make-shift shelters whose corrugated metal roofs made tinkling music in the rain, like steel drums. They had been forced to play that way after Ricky Singh smacked a huge one into Nishit Patel’s house, past the front yard and into the back one, narrowly missing his wife’s head.

  The wickets were created from fallen branches and placed four meters apart. Tag was at one end, Jai’s bat at the other and Leena stood in the middle, impatiently gesturing for the ball.

  ‘It’ll be fun,’ Jai prodded.

  The sting of the ball still sat in Michael’s palm, temptingly heavy. Combined with the fact that he had actually begun to like this muhindi boy, Michael was compelled to answer the same question differently that day.

  ‘Come on, Jai!’ Leena called out to her brother’s back. She was tired of his repeated, inexplicable attempts to draw Michael into their games, their lives, when he so clearly didn’t want to be a part of them. She was surprised then, and a little nervous, when Michael started to walk toward them. Tag spoke up loudly.

  ‘There’s no room for anyone else. We have full teams already – sorry!’ And then, soft enough so that it could pretend to be a whisper, ‘Who wants to play with a maid’s son?’

  Jai shouted back, ‘Your mother was calling you in for lunch, Tag. You can go now – Michael will take your place.’

  Tag’s voice died in his throat. He turned to Leena for support but she scuffed the ground with her toe, arms folded behind her back.

  ‘She was calling you in fifteen minutes ago.’ As always, she sided with her brother.

  Tag dropped the bat, kicked it away. ‘Whatever. I’m tired of this game anyway.’

  Jai pulled on Michael’s arm. ‘You can’t say no now.’

  As they approached, Leena refused to meet her brother’s eye. She was angry at him for ruining the game, thought he was selfish for sending Tag away just so Michael could join in. He wasn’t like the rest of them and it created a level of discomfort that made playing the game less fun.

  But Leena was also jealous of the way her brother looked at the boy with a keen interest he never seemed to regard any of them with. Jai spoke freely with Michael, his smile a permanent white, as he pointed out which position to stand in, where to hit the ball. Watching them stand close together, their movements so similar, as if they intrinsically knew what one was about to say to the other, she realized that Michael would never have to ache or beg for Jai’s company – and that was what hurt her the most.

  ‘Do you know how to play?’ Jai asked.

  The bat was heavier than he had anticipated and as Michael went to pick it up, his arm dropped with the weight. Leena was glaring at him, tapping her foot in annoyance. He seemed to be grinning at her, as if they shared something secret, and she remembered those days he’d stood by the veranda fence and watched them.

  Jai jogged to the opposite wicket. ‘Leena, you’re up.’ He tossed the ball to her and she rolled it in her palm, letting the worn-out red leather leak into her fingertips as she took her position a few steps behind Jai.

  At his cue, she took off – a skipping run just as he had taught her. Keeping the ball loosely between her fingers, she released it as her arm came down, a satisfying clockwork motion that rushed and settled in the hinge of her shoulder. The ball bounced once, racing toward Michael – a blurry, red dot. He wouldn’t be able to hit that. It was her best bowling performance. She almost began cheering.

  Smack. The ball fell to the center of the bat, sending hard vibrations through the wood and up to his palms, his skin erupting into tingles. They all watched it sail through the air.

  ‘Whoa,’ Jai said again once Michael had lowered his bat. Leena stood at the line, panting and furious as her brother rushed to Michael. ‘That’s what we call a six – see how it went flying over the boundary without bouncing?’

  Once Jai had returned to his position, Michael shrugged at Leena. Something about the flashing annoyance in her eyes made him want to tease her, the excitement making him bold.

  ‘It’s not my fault you bowl like a girl.’

  Jai turned to his sister and burst into laughter, his fist thrown up in a delighted cheer.

  From then on, Michael joined in their games and they discovered that he was good at all of them. That he could run barefoot and never miss a step, or swing a cricket bat as if it were an extension of his own limb and send the ball flying over the compound wall with a loud crack.

  ‘I suppose it’s nice to be with someone your own age,’ Pooja told her complaining daughter, watching out the window and worrying herself.

  But Leena knew it had nothing to do with age. Tag was only a year younger than Jai but she had never seen her brother sprint out to Tag the way he did to Michael, searching for him as soon as breakfast was over, leaving her lonely at the table. He never discussed the winning tactics of football with the other boys the way he did with Michael, huddled together under the wide shade of the bougainvillea tree, drawing diagrams in the dirt with a twig, their faces serious until one of them cracked a joke and the air broke with their unstoppable laughter.

  Jai refused to participate in any of the games that Michael wasn’t included in and so he quickly became a fixture in their lives, a constant member of their group, unlike them in so many ways but too talented for it to make much of a difference.

  But outside of those games, Michael remained a ghost to them. It was as if they didn’t see him when they invited the other boys in for snacks or to watch the highlights from the previous day’s Manchester United or Arsenal football match. It was more than intentional, this act of leaving Michael out. It occurred to them naturally, as a thing never to be questioned or thought about.

  Leena knew that Michael was affected by this. She could see it in the dulling of his eyes, the almost undetectable clench of his fist, which he quickly hid in the pocket of his shorts. But he never complained. Michael moved through life the way he did through the games they played – gracefully and seemingly without effort yet with a firm and unshakeable confidence that turned everything the right way.

  ‘He’s your maid’s son,’ Tag said to Leena once as she followed him in for his mother’s chocolate milkshake. Jai and Michael were lying on the grass outside and their sounds petered out behind her. ‘Of course I wouldn’t invite him into my home. What if he stole something? What if he wanted to use my toilet?’

  And although she took the cold drink outside, holding it up to them after checking that Tag wasn’t in sight, they both refused.

  ‘Why would he want to drink from Tag’s glass when he wasn’t even allowed inside his house?’ Jai asked in a way that made her feel at fault.

  She had always enjoyed Tag’s mother’s milkshake – sprinkled with pistachio flakes that crunched down between her teeth as she drank it. But that day, it wouldn’t move past the middle of her throat and she poured most of it out behind the bougainvillea tree.

  ‌

  14

  Traffic officer Jeffery Omondi pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the back of his neck, which was tickling with sweat. He brought the cloth forward, frowning at the brown residual streaks left there. Dust and fumes laced the humid air, made it thick and impossibly heavy, unavoidable while standing in the middle of afternoon traffic.

  He had strategically placed himself at the junction of Ngong Road and Haile Selassie Avenue, his preferred spot to teach the more junior officers the most important lesson of all – how to mint money – because it never failed to provide him with the necessary opportunity.

  ‘Eh-he,
are you watching?’ he snapped at the spindly, alarmed boy beside him. Barely a man, younger than Jeffery had been when he first joined the police force and he had only been twenty-two. ‘Mjinga,’ he cursed under his breath. Fool. Not for the first time, Jeffery contemplated what had become of his beloved Kenyan Police Force, in whose motto, Utamishi Kwa Wote, he had truly believed. Service to All – a phrase that suggested justice, equality and an unshakeable sense of patriotism, but what he had discovered instead was greed, conspiracy and a different, truer motto: Utamishi Kwa Mimi – Service to Myself.

  It wasn’t that he hadn’t been aware that corruption within the police force was endemic, aggravated by the low wages and appallingly poor housing, along with a general sense of mistrust from the public – he may have been naive but he hadn’t been disillusioned. However, he had been profoundly dejected to discover just how deep the infection really ran. From the lowest police officer to the highest-ranking government official, it was rare that Jeffery met a clean man anywhere in the force. Corruption was rampant at every level – a carefully thought-out process of abusing public resources that required a chain of willing participants from down to up, each parting with their own share of the money once the deal was done. He had found it difficult to navigate the institution, which was a messy maze of bribery, canvassing and influence peddling, but he had been let know early on that if he wasn’t willing to play the game, he would be transferred, or even worse, fired.

  So when he had started to get his hands dirty, he told himself that it was for a bigger cause. That one day, when he was the top man, sitting in the spacious government office surrounded by a three hundred and sixty degree view of the city, well versed in all malpractices, he would turn the force into a pristine beacon of hope, where a ‘Good Day’s Work’ didn’t involve a police officer allowing himself to be bribed by a criminal in custody, soiling Nairobi’s streets for nothing more than five thousand shillings.

  But somewhere along the line, that dream had rotted under his ever-loosening morals. He had been blinded by how easy bribery was and bowled over by the rewards one was able to reap. He could afford three large meals a day and could dine in restaurants, which as a younger man had been beyond his reach. He spent years ignoring his wife, leaving her at home while he wandered the enchanting nightlife of the city, which fell easily under his command like a desperate prostitute recognizing how his trouser pockets puffed out with wealth.

  And because people offered it themselves, because so many Kenyans were willing to pay their way out of the law – to take the shortest route – it never felt like stealing.

  ‘There.’ Jeffery pointed to a car heading toward them, grabbing the boy roughly. The car weaved from the left lane to the right, overtaking a slower-moving vehicle before switching back to the left. He tried not to say, Ah-ha! because it happened all the time. He lifted his hand and flagged down the driver as she approached Nairobi Club. ‘Come on,’ he told the junior officer. ‘You want me to leave you here?’ and stopped because the words were not his, but someone else’s.

  Same road, similar car pulling to a stop before a younger version of himself. His fellow officer, David, knocking on the driver’s window – a twenty-something African woman – asking her to open the rear door so that he could climb in. She had done as instructed and David had shouted over the hood of the Toyota to Jeffery, ‘Omondi, what are you staring at? You want me to leave you here?’

  And Jeffery had disappeared into the cool interior of the car, sneaking a look back at the traffic they were meant to be directing and then casting his eyes upon the rearview mirror, where the driver was watching them uneasily. She was chewing down on her lipsticked mouth and getting doll-pink dye all over her teeth. It’s your right to refuse us entry into your car, he wanted to tell her, but was certain that David would disapprove. After all, this was being done for Jeffery.

  ‘Driver’s license, ID.’ David held out his hand as she shuffled through her glove compartment and handed him the documents. She pulled on her afro, which was so large it could have been a violation of traffic laws itself. Jeffery appreciated it; he didn’t see many young women with their natural hair any more. Always braids or mermaid-like weaves, dressed for an affluent future, pretending to be independent but hunting for a rich man and never a Kenyan – mostly mzungus in bars and Nigerian tycoons.

  He had read an article in the Standard newspaper about how Kenyan men could learn the art of romance from these flashy ogas from the west. How his fellow men here refused to go that extra mile to sweep their women off their feet and then acted insulted when these pretty ladies trotted off to some Nigerian businessman in a handmade suit, holding a big bouquet of roses. Things cost money, he had wanted to write back to the editor. It’s not that we don’t want to, but how can I spend five thousand shillings on dinner and flowers if it costs me more than a quarter of my monthly salary?

  ‘Drive,’ David had commanded, shaking Jeffery out of his thinking. They were back in traffic, moving in silence except for David occasionally slapping the license against his thigh. Eventually he asked the girl, ‘Do you know why I pulled you over?’

  She tightened her trembling grip on the wheel. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘That is incorrect.’ David was pleased with himself. ‘In fact, you wrongly changed lanes. You moved from the left lane to the right and then back again, which is an offense. Perhaps you should have stayed in the right one, it would have taken you back into town.’

  The woman treaded carefully in an effort not to aggravate him. ‘It was a broken white line, which means that I was allowed to change lanes as long as it was safe to do so, which it was. So you see, I haven’t broken any laws.’

  ‘Surely you have.’ David’s manner was infuriatingly slow but beneath his smile, Jeffery had sensed a warning. ‘Sisi-haturuhusu-watu-wabadilishe-lanes-hapo.’

  She spoke again, this time a buoyed confidence in her tone thanks to his lack of any sound argument. ‘I was perfectly within the law to change lanes and overtake a slower moving car and get back into my lane twenty meters before the intersection.’

  His smile completely gone, David scooted forward. He spoke in an agonizingly sing-song manner, as if addressing a child. ‘Wedonot-allow-forchangeson-that-road,’ he had repeated, glancing in Jeffery’s direction but Jeffery had chosen to keep staring out of the window. He would hear about it later, no doubt, but in that moment, his first participation in breaking the very thing he had sworn to uphold, Jeffery was humiliated. Betrayed by the system and a government that forced him and so many others like him to so easily degrade themselves, to become starving vultures, beaking and grasping at whatever they could get their claws around.

  ‘Sawa.’ David heaved a sigh and fell back against the seat once more. ‘Just drive to the traffic headquarters.’

  ‘Why?’ Her voice had turned querulous.

  David sneered. ‘I have to book you and ground your car until your case can be heard in front of a judge. We are the Kenyan Police – we don’t allow for law breakers to get away so easily as that.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’ The anger in her voice was replaced by a resigned helplessness. David snuck Jeffery a knowing look. Easy as that – threaten them with the staggering inefficiency of certain institutions of the country and they would be willing to pay an arm and a leg to get out of it.

  ‘Shuari yako.’ David had inspected the dirt beneath his fingernails. ‘It’s your problem now. Continue driving, please.’

  Her eyes darted from the road to the rearview mirror, where she looked at the two officers in disbelief. ‘You’re stopping me for some rule you just made up so you can get some money!’

  ‘Also another reason,’ David’s lips had twitched. ‘Visual pollution. This car is dirty! Aieesh!’

  ‘What kind of people are you?’ The woman was muttering to herself. ‘Supposed to stop thieves but instead you are too busy stealing yourselves.’

  ‘Madam, please watch your tone.�
�� David was beginning to enjoy himself. ‘Or will I have to put you in jail for harassing a police officer?’

  ‘But I’ve done nothing!’

  ‘Nipe five thousand.’ David was suddenly impatient with this silly game they were playing. ‘Five thousand and I will allow you to pass, sawa?’

  ‘You must be joking.’ Her indignation was unconvincing. ‘I don’t have that kind of money.’ She was planning on what to do next – Jeffery saw it in the quick scurrying of her eyes back and forth from her purse – she was wondering how low she could take him.

  ‘Ninasikia njaa,’ David had told her, then addressing Jeffery, ‘Aren’t you hungry also?’

  His mouth remained a vacuum for words, his lips stiff. With a yelping sigh, the woman pulled into the next petrol station she saw. As she dug through her wallet, David nudged his friend.

  ‘I only have one thousand.’

  David took it. ‘Come on, Mama. I know you have some little bit more.’ Despite the wink, the mischievous smile, she knew he was serious.

  ‘Here’s five hundred more. But really, that’s all I have.’

  It was blind robbery, done in the manner of a simple transaction – she was a willing participant so Jeffery could not feel sorry for her. He knew that if she had agreed to follow the law, to take them to the traffic headquarters, David would have told her to drop them off. He refused to waste his time with paperwork when he could be out on the road making money. It was people like her, Jeffery concluded with a bone-deep resentment, who kept corruption going.

  She pushed the remaining shillings into David’s hand. ‘Get out now. I’m late for a meeting.’

  ‘Asante, madam.’ David thanked her, pushing Jeffery out of the door. Once both policemen were back on the road, David tapped on the window and said cheerfully, ‘Have a good day.’