by Iman Verjee
‘I know.’
He hesitates but has to ask. ‘Your mother—’
Her eyes jump open, a translucent ocher in the sunlight. ‘Actually, do you mind if we keep this between us for now?’
‘I told you, I don’t want any secrets.’ A rush of disappointment shifts him away from her.
‘I just want to enjoy this for a little while without having to explain it to anyone.’ Annoyance dashes across her face. ‘Can’t you understand that?’
In the distance, he can make out the rolling, high notes of a Hindi love song escaping the open windows of a parked car. The buzz of chatter overwhelms it as a sudden horde of shoppers enter the food court and already Michael feels the prick of their gaze, people struggling to make sense of the two of them sitting across from each other, fingertips grazing. The sneaky looks and loud whispers are a rude distraction upon their private moment and he catches her hand as it moves away. ‘Okay. We’ll do it your way.’
He runs his thumb slowly up and down the inside of her palm in deliberate, secret circles. When he eventually pulls away, she feels the absence of him acutely – a throbbing, sweet hum just below her skin.
The country is stirring with the beginnings of trouble, its corners already unraveled, but they don’t pay attention to it because they are too busy coming together.
Before meeting Michael, if someone had asked her to describe Nairobi, she would have struggled with the answer. Her replies had always been vague and run through with an air of fiction. Sweeping red-night skies and daylight robberies. Thin-faced street children compelling you to save them; dusty game drives through yellowing, flat savannah. Things that, though sincere, were the least true things about her city.
Back then, she couldn’t have told of the huge, open flea markets such as Gikomba, where gumboots were required to move through the muddy terrain and where one had to arrive in the frigid hours of the morning to beat the rush. She wouldn’t have been able to describe the unique yet ordinary pockets – the kind one found elsewhere in the world – such as Arboretum Park with its green trails and park benches frequented by joggers and couples looking to steal a romantic moment; the modern, silver-peaked skyline that would not stop growing.
All those intricate details that made Nairobi less of an enigma and more of a capital city in its own right, she knows them now and they give her home town roots and a firmness in her mind so that for the first time, Leena feels as if she belongs to it and it belongs to her.
She tells him this, leaning against a crooked street light and tilting her mouth up to catch the vanilla streams escaping her ice-cream cone. Michael takes it from her and throws it in the dustbin.
The first time his mouth comes down, it’s quick – the brush of a question – before leaving. She tries to talk but once again his lips cover hers, firmer this time, a pressing claim, and he takes her by the waist, drawing her impossibly close.
‘I’ll buy you another ice cream,’ he says afterward.
She steps back, fingers hovering at her startled mouth. ‘Can we go somewhere quieter? We need to talk.’
In the middle of the afternoon, the apartment block and street around it are tranquil. Not a sound except for their footsteps moving upward, fingers linked. She trails behind him, distracted and overcome by a familiar, dizzying breathlessness whenever her thoughts come too close to what happened that day. Once inside, he leads her to the couch where she pulls her legs up into a soft, lumpy corner, hands busy in her lap. Michael places himself a few spaces away and waits.
Head dipped down, her lips move wordlessly. Talking about what happened isn’t the problem. It’s trying to explain how it has changed her. Every time she begins, she is met by a veiled uncertainty – shadows seeping into the edges of her thoughts and obscuring them.
Jai has already told Michael about what happened but hearing it from her is painful. He feels it – a rallying anger in his gut – compelled forward just in time to catch her as she falls back, head tucked beneath his chin.
‘I wish I had seen his face because right now, he could be anyone.’
It is easier to talk while supported by the steadiness of his body, the assured pitch of his breath calming her. To confess the anxiety that had extended beyond the man who raped her to others who reminded her of him. To admit that every time one of them brushed against her, approached too near, spoke to her, she recalled the violent rush of his fingers, taking away what was rightfully hers, the accusations he spat so readily, as if she carried within her every injustice of the past.
‘For the longest time, I didn’t want anyone to look at me, let alone touch me. Until just now, outside that ice-cream parlor.’
He kisses her face – all those hollow, sharply formed crevices – and holds her for a long time after that.
53
‘It’s dirty business, what’s happening up at Tana River.’ Raj is talking more to the television than he is to his family.
‘Most of our friends have left for the month. We should think of doing the same – perhaps visit your mother in Toronto or go to London. I haven’t seen Amandeep in a while.’ Pooja is worried, unnerved by how isolated their street has become, as exposed as it is to the main road. One never knew who could be sneaking in to climb over her neighbors’ gates, taking advantage of their prolonged absences – the idea causes her to shiver theatrically.
‘We can’t just leave.’ Raj’s eyes never stray from the graphic images on the news.
At dawn that morning, a village in Tana River Delta belonging to the semi-nomadic Orma tribe was attacked by Pokomo farmers armed with spears and AK-47 rifles, reigniting an age-old rivalry between the two groups.
Even though the pictures have been blurred out, Pooja can still make out the horrific damage: burned, grass-thatched huts split open and blackened like rotting teeth. A small boy, shot from behind, lies unmoving in the blood-clumped dirt. He is still wearing his school backpack, ribbed blue socks pulled up to his knees. Pooja looks away, thinking of her own children.
Her anger at her husband burns stronger than ever, fills her ears with a buzzing heat as she listens to the villager being interviewed on KTN. These politicians are setting us up, taking advantage of the long-standing conflict between our two groups – do they think we don’t know who is funding and perpetrating this violence? I’m lucky no one saw me – I jumped out of my back window and escaped through the swamp.
Pooja says, this time more aggressively, ‘Look at the situation. Why shouldn’t we go when everyone else is doing it?’
‘What kind of Kenyans would we be if we just ran away when it was convenient?’
‘You and your morals.’ His love for this country is a selfish streak within Raj that Pooja has never been able to reconcile with, such insensibility from an otherwise practical man.
Raj thinks of Pinto, disrespectfully hidden away in his toilet. ‘I’m going to cast my vote at the end of this week.’
Jai speaks up. ‘There has been some upheaval in the Rift Valley area. I might have to go there for a few days.’
Pooja shakes her head emphatically, still perturbed by what she has seen. ‘You’re going to stay here with all of us, in case something happens.’
‘It’s for work, Ma.’ Just like his father, Jai doesn’t even look at her.
‘I don’t care. Let those kharias solve their own problems.’
Today, her words have a poisonous bite. Perhaps it is the knowledge, as Jai watches the nine o’clock news – the murders, the buying of votes, politicians ready to promise anything just as long as it gets them into State House – that certain things are beyond his reach. It is the slow muting of an impossible childhood hope. He might spend his lifetime fighting and never see any progress at all.
He wants to talk to Michael but his friend hasn’t spoken to him in a few weeks, no matter how many times Jai calls. He cannot help but feel that it’s all his mother’s fault. It had started when she had sent Angela from their lives for noth
ing more than a hunch, a silly worry. She had spent so much time trying to keep everyone in her control, heeding to certain black-and-white rules of behavior that were as outdated as they were outlandish, simply to fit in with the community, that she was blind to the fact that the world was moving forward without her.
‘When are you going to stop calling them kharias?’ Jai rises. ‘How many times do I have to ask you not to? You don’t pay attention to a word anyone says and yet you expect the whole world to listen to you.’
Pooja’s face contorts into shameful arcs; windmill eyes and a mouth dropped open into a tiny o. ‘Show your mother some respect.’
‘Why should I when you have no respect for me?’ he challenges, going for the door and finally understanding the cause of his anger. It is the building tension that is stretching this city tight – Jai feels it, ropelike, in his own body – unfurling, ripping, racing headlong toward breaking point.
She has been instructed to stay at home but instead, at ten o’clock that night, Leena is still sitting at Mercury Lounge in a hard, red booth. The dim light falls in thin bars across the faces of her friends, making them appear villainous and not quite real. She eyes the doorless nook leading out into the open-air patio, feels a pull toward its chilly relief but then Michael rests his hand on her thigh – a firm anchor instantly calming her.
‘I think it’s so cute that you two are together.’
The cigarette-filled air has dried out her eyes and makes it difficult to see anything properly but Leena detects a finger pointing out of the darkness at the two of them. The voice is high-pitched and has an annoying tendency to elongate every word.
‘Thanks.’ As always, Michael is open and generous with his smile but Leena cannot help the frown that pushes her bottom lip upward, creasing her chin.
At the beginning of the evening, the tension at the table had been palpable, though well hidden. The conversation had been stilted and formal, her friends’ eyes permanently stuck on their drinks. It had reminded Leena of the first time Michael had played cricket at the compound; the group dynamic had shifted, becoming uncomfortably fluid and difficult to navigate.
But now, two rounds later, released by the alcohol and dark ambience, her friends lean forward eagerly to inspect Michael. They wear silly, scary smiles and are accepting – encouraging even – of their new relationship, and Leena isn’t sure which of these two conflicting attitudes makes her feel worse.
‘Good for you,’ someone told her when Michael had gone to the bathroom. ‘We’re not stuck in our parents’ generation any more.’
‘Nairobi is becoming so cosmopolitan, we have no choice but to accept each other’s differences if we want to move forward.’ The words are directed at Michael. ‘It’s a shame we still have all this nonsense about tribalism.’ Whiskey tilts and glints orange as a glass is placed to a speaking mouth. ‘Are you worried about the possible aftermath of these elections?’
Leena sits upright, involuntarily gripping Michael’s fingers. ‘What do you mean?’
Michael speaks slowly, as relaxed as always, his nail tracing slow lines in her skin. ‘There have been a few instances of tribal-based riots outside of the city recently with people saying that the only way Kibaki will be re-elected is through a rigged election. And if that happens, they are threatening that it will be us Kikuyu who will pay the price.’
‘But it’s just talk, right?’ She has forgotten about the people sitting around them; it’s only his face – calm and seeming to smile even in its stillness – that she sees. ‘You aren’t really going to be in any danger if he is re-elected?’
‘Maybe not.’
The whiskey-slurred voice of one of her friends reaches her, slightly muffled. ‘All you Africans are quite well educated now…’
They both ignore the careless insinuation as she shifts closer to him, resting her head on the back of the booth so that he feels the quickness of her breath. In a small voice, she says, ‘I don’t want anything to happen to you,’ and then, his chest expands outward in delight when, right in front of all those watchful eyes, Leena leans forward and kisses him softly on the mouth.
54
The name has changed but everything else in the bar has remained the same. There is still the pervasive beer stink hanging in the air, though the floral chairs are faded now, lacking shine – much like Marlyn herself.
‘What are you doing here?’ She approaches him wearily, perched at his old table.
The bar is the only point of contact between him and those men and he has come to dissuade them, to beg them to leave him alone. ‘I wanted a drink.’ His next words surprise him with their truthfulness. ‘And to see you.’
A sigh – a glint of pleasure quickly hidden away. ‘One drink and then you must leave.’
But the whiskey is not helping today. If anything, it makes everything seem more dire. Sinking into a relaxed mood he is able to think more cleary, to understand better, what it is those men are asking of him.
Kibera slums is the constituency of the opposing electoral candidate. Jeffery knows that, on voting day, the line-up at that poll station will be over a kilometer long. People will wait all day, some up to twelve hours, to drop their ballots into the color-coded boxes, leaving with a sense of accomplishment, a shared hope. His hands tremble when he thinks of what he will be destroying, and David’s words, that long-ago warning he never heeded, come back to him. The line has to be drawn somewhere. If it wasn’t, imagine all the things we could do to each other.
When he next looks up, wanting another drink, he sees Marlyn speaking to a young man. His back is turned to Jeffery but there is something familiar about the straight, drawn-back shoulders, the casual way he leans against the bar despite the urgency of the conversation.
‘She’s staying at different men’s houses, going from place to place with no direction. You need to start thinking about your daughter’s future. I can’t do it all.’
Marlyn puts a placating hand on his upper arm. ‘You’re right. I’ll do better from now on.’
Jeffery feels sorry for her. Worry and age have overtaken her beauty completely. The impressive fullness of her hips has sunk into boniness; the shine has seeped from her skin. He remembers when it was lustrous with shea butter and sweet promises, Mar-Lynne the mermaid, all color and sensual brightness.
He is still watching her when the man turns, almost misses him. Their eyes catch – a spark of recognition and a slow grin from her companion, arrogant and superior. The man pushes open the door and leaves.
Jeffery calls Marlyn over. ‘Come here, now.’
She rushes to him with a full glass. ‘I’m sorry about what I said before. Here, have another drink.’
Waving away her apologies, he asks, ‘Who is that?’
‘It’s nothing to be jealous of,’ she teases, stroking his chest.
‘I’m being serious, Lynne.’
Her hand drops dully to her side. Black irises inky with disappointment. ‘He’s my nephew.’
‘I’ve arrested him on several occasions.’
She laughs at this, a strong snort that shows off her large, pearl teeth. ‘You have the wrong boy.’
‘I’ve caught him for vandalism numerous times now.’ Jeffery’s mind is working fast, an idea forming and unforming as soon as he has a grasp of it.
‘It’s impossible,’ she protests, suddenly worried. She recognizes the tightening grip on her wrist, those lips pulled back in a snarl.
‘What’s his name?’ Twisting her arm until her lips go pale and dry.
She gives a sharp breath, the leaping hope of his impromptu return quickly gone. ‘Michael.’
Jeffery has been to this apartment building several times before, when he foolishly believed he was in love with Marlyn. He would watch as she was dropped at the gate, always as the sun was rising and always by a different man, stumbling over loose gravel in matchstick heels. How tempted he had been then to chase those cars and shoot the driver between t
he eyes, but all he had been able to muster was a growling grimace, undetectable in the busy night.
The building looks more rundown during the daytime – broken windows displayed like missing teeth, packed washing lines resembling a bazaar strung from one balcony to another. He is about to climb out of the car when he hears voices – as sunny as the day outside and in the sing-song manner reserved for new lovers.
Marlyn’s nephew is standing with a woman at the main entrance, pressing her up against the door frame, his mouth caught up in her neck. She makes a move to leave and is pulled back – he kisses her again through her protesting laughter.
‘Do you really have to go?’ he is asking.
‘It’s getting late.’
‘Where did you tell her you were this time?’
The girl reaches up to smooth his brow, taking her time when she puts her mouth against his. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
When the boy finally releases her and she approaches the parking lot, Jeffery shrinks into his seat. As she comes closer, the world sharpens bizarrely. He knows that face. Though today the features are softer, touched by happiness, he remembers when they were seized with fear, recoiling with disgust. The small body stumbling up the stairs, full of fight. How still she had been when they had left, pink pajama shorts at her ankles.
Now she looks at Jeffery as she passes his car. He smiles, filled with wretchedness as she returns his grin jovially, jumping into her vehicle that is parked just beside his. After she has left he spends several seconds collecting his breath, watching the boy as he does so.
Michael remains at the doorway, his face and body arched in the direction she has gone. When he hears the policeman’s footsteps, his smile fades fast.
‘Are you following me?’