Leona sat in the still car. The windows were open, and the air was filled with the smells she’d loved and lived with for so long: wood smoke and cattle and meat roasting on a fire and, underneath it all, the sharp smell of dust in the grasses and the wind; a distinctly African smell. The wave of emotion she felt suddenly took Leona by surprise. It was the exhaustion, she told herself as the tears came. Leona hardly ever cried. The heavy feeling in her chest and the tears themselves were a shock to her, but more of a surprise was the feeling of longing. She wondered how it was possible to long for something you hadn’t left yet. Preemptive nostalgia, she decided. She was ready to leave—she wanted to leave, but in so many ways she would miss this life, this manyatta, these people. She would miss Adia. She drew in a deep breath and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. The car door, slamming shut behind her, sounded too sharp for this soft place.
First, Leona went to her old home. Nobody was in the central corral, just the lowing cattle, methodically chewing their cuds. They shook their heads as Leona threaded her way through them. Of course her fire was out. She couldn’t remember if she’d extinguished it before she left that afternoon, or if it had gone out naturally. Either way, the hut was dark and chilly, and the coals in the fire pit sooty and dead. She fished her key fob out of her jeans pocket and found the tiny flashlight attached. Its light was too small to make out much, but she ran it over the contents of the little room with the hope she’d see a box of matches. She usually kept some, but she couldn’t see any now—not on the little wooden shelf she kept her cups and plates on, not on the overturned box she used as a bedside table. She was wary about fumbling around in the dark too much. Snakes were always a possibility since the place had been empty of people for so long, scorpions, too. Instead, she swallowed her dread, and turned to head back toward the corral.
It was hard for Leona to think about that afternoon. On one hand she accepted that, at least in her mind, she’d acted in Adia’s best interest. She’d wanted to provide a different life for the girl, one her own parents would approve of, and one that might be more secure. But shame rose in her chest now. The look on Simi’s face haunted Leona. Simi, who had been a friend and confidant; really, her only friend and confidant. Simi, who had loved Adia in a way that Leona hadn’t—couldn’t. How could she have hurt her friend that way? Dreading the confrontation, but needing fire, and wanting to get it over with, she crossed to Simi’s house and ducked in the door. The air inside was acrid and stale. Simi hadn’t been taking care of the fire, or cooking much. That was obvious. The embers glowed tiny and orange in the very bottom of the fire pit, they would die soon, but in the pale glow they gave, Leona could make out two figures twined together on the rawhide bed across from her. One thin woman, wrapped in a shuka and shaking with sobs, and one little blonde girl.
Leona knelt on the dirt floor and blew into the coals; she tossed in a few bits of kindling she found there and emptied Simi’s bucket of water into the suferia. She busied herself without speaking; finding Simi’s tin of tea, the sugar in a twisted piece of newspaper and a small jug of milk someone had recently left.
When the tea was ready, Leona ladled it into three cups. Only then did she clear her throat and speak. “I’ve made tea. Simi, Adia, we have to talk.”
She handed a cup to both Adia and Simi, and then sipped from her own. She wished she knew what to say.
“Simi, I’m sorry.” It was a good start, a necessary one. “Adia loves you, and I love you, and you’re an excellent mother to her. Much better than I am.”
Simi stayed quiet. Leona noticed how comfortable her daughter looked, curled in Simi’s lap, the mug held carefully in her hand. Leona wondered again, for the hundredth time, how on earth she could have pulled these two apart.
“I am her mother, too, though. And even though Adia lives like a Maasai and thinks she’s a Maasai, she isn’t. The fact is...” Leona grasped for what to say next.
“The fact is that she is an American, and that brings good things, good opportunities.” And here her voice veered into pleading. “I haven’t been a mother to her, not like you have. I can only really give her two things—education and an opportunity to be American if she wants. I’ll probably never be as good a mother as you are, Simi. That’s why I hope we can agree to both be mothers to her. You for here, and me for Nairobi, and one day maybe for America.”
Simi looked down at Adia, who had drained her cup and now lay with her head in Simi’s lap, her legs stretched out to the side.
Simi was quiet. Leona felt a rustle of panic. If Simi refused, what would she do?
But then Simi shifted Adia off her lap and stood up. She knelt down and pulled a box from underneath the bed. From that, she lifted a traditional, wide necklace. In the firelight, the beads glinted and shone. It was beautiful. Even to Leona’s untrained eye, it was obvious the work was delicate and perfect.
“When I knew I couldn’t have my own baby, I gave this to N’gai. I hoped he would accept it and make me pregnant, but he didn’t.”
She looked up and Leona saw that Simi’s eyes were clear and her gaze unapologetic. “I gave you leaves that I knew wouldn’t work to make you bleed your baby out. I knew that she would live inside of you. I wanted her here more than you did.”
Leona hated to cry, and the threat of a sob made her want to escape back into the darkness of her own little hut. Simi had never spoken to her this sternly, and maybe anticipating Leona’s instinct to run, she placed her hand on Leona’s arm.
“I took the necklace back from him. I lied to you and I stole my offering back—all for this child.”
Leona didn’t like the way the shame felt on her skin, like an itchy heat rash. But she forced herself to stay still, to endure the words she knew were true.
“You ask if we can both be her mother? I have always been her mother. If you wish for my daughter to go to school in Nairobi or in America, I will find a way to let her go.”
Leona didn’t answer. She was exhausted. Her body felt weak and worn out. She took the last swig of tea and tried not to catch Simi’s eye as she stood up. She didn’t want Simi to see how upset she was.
But Simi reached over again and touched Leona’s pant leg. “Look at her,” she said. When Leona looked up, Simi’s eyes were gentle. “Two mothers can be better than one.” Leona sighed deeply and tried to shake away her sadness.
“Look at our daughter,” Simi said in a voice more proud than Leona had ever heard her use.
Leona looked down at the blonde head of her child. She was surprised that when she opened her mouth and said, “She’s fast asleep,” her own voice was warm and hopeful.
Leona woke the next morning in her cold, fireless house to the sounds of children playing a game, and she heard Adia’s laughter. Leona stretched, rubbed her eyes and looked around the house where Adia was born. Then she pulled on her jeans and left. She didn’t know when she’d be back.
Simi was up and different from the shadow she’d been last night. Leona, too, felt a sense of calm she hadn’t felt in weeks. She was relieved she’d made this decision. Simi had already been to the river for water and had a pot of ugi boiling over the fire.
“Eat,” she commanded Leona, handing over a bowl of the hot porridge. “It’s a long drive to Nairobi.”
Leona didn’t wait long to leave. She found Adia playing outside the manyatta and gave her a hug. The little girl’s body hummed with energy, and Leona knew she was desperate to escape back to her game. She released her daughter and watched as the girl bounded out of sight. Simi walked to the car with Leona and the two women stood together for a long, silent moment.
“I’ll come back on as many weekends as possible, and holidays. When she turns six, I’ll take her with me and enroll her in the school there. The one where she’ll meet other American children,” Leona said. She needed to watch Simi agree to this again in the light of day. She needed to make absolutely certain t
he other woman understood. “So, when she turns six, she’ll come live with me.”
Simi nodded. “Leona,” she said, “you know I wanted to finish school. I would never stop my daughter from being educated.”
“And no talk of emurata for her—ever. I don’t even want her attending them.” This was most important.
“Even though I’ll take her to Nairobi when she’s still too young, she’ll be back and forth here a lot as she gets older, and I don’t want her ever thinking she’ll be cut. She cannot ever begin to want it, to think she needs it.”
Leona had to trust that Simi would not put the notion in Adia’s mind. The girl needed to know, all along, that she would never be joining her age-mates in that ceremony.
“Simi, you’ll have to make it clear, not just to Adia, but to the elders.”
Simi hadn’t reconciled the image she’d had of an older girl, one who’d been to school, being cut. She had no idea how that would work, or if she could keep Adia from feeling the weight of that tradition. But her mouth opened, and she said what she needed to say.
“I swear to you, Leona, she will never think it’s going to happen to her. She will never think she needs it.”
Leona climbed in her car and closed the door. The window was still broken—permanently rolled down—so Leona stretched out her hand and clasped Simi’s. The women looked at each other and Simi said, “Sometimes a child needs two mothers.”
Leona didn’t answer. She was ripe with more sadness, but also she felt a sense of relief. She was doing her best with what she had. Adia needed a family, and now she had one. Simi needed a child, and now she had one. Leona, well, she needed her work and her freedom, and her solitude. At least for a while longer.
As she shifted the car into Reverse, she leaned out the window one more time and waved at Simi, who still stood, her hand shading her eyes, the silver on her beaded necklaces glinting in the morning sun. It was a Kenyan sun; the kind she loved best—the brightest sun Leona had ever seen. Leona turned the car toward the road, and then she was gone.
THE BAOBAB IN SOLAI
John wasn’t expecting anything other than the usual weekly update. “How’s the old girl, then, Daniel? Still hanging on?”
But Daniel, the houseman’s son, didn’t assure John that his mother was okay, still forgetful, still confused, but okay. Instead, he sighed into the phone and clucked his tongue.
“Your mother, she is telling stories now, Mister John. My father is worried. Yesterday, your mother told him that an American memsahib came to the house. That she had a small girl with her. She said it was your daughter.”
John lowered his coffee cup. His hand shook.
“An American was at the ranch, Daniel? In Solai?” His voice was rough in his mouth. “She had a girl with her?”
“Mister John, that is what your mother told my father when he went to cook her dinner last night. He told me that she was very firm. She was clear. Tell John the American came. Tell John she brought his daughter. But I am telling you, Mister John, this cannot be true. I think your mother’s mind is almost finished. We saw nothing. We saw nobody.” The phone line crackled. Despite being less than two hundred miles away, the phone connection from Solai to Nairobi was tenuous at best.
“No worries.” John managed to hide the catch in his throat. “I’ll come to see Mum. I’ll check that she’s okay.”
Almost four years ago, he was well on his way to being drunk when the American woman entered the bar. The place was a dark, wooden-walled room lit primarily by Christmas lights strung all around and looped across the ceiling over the bar. The woman seemed comfortable, like she’d been there before. She wasn’t a tourist; John could see that from the way she greeted the barman in a familiar way and the quiet mix of Swahili she sprinkled on her English.
He’d liked the way her slim legs looked in her faded jeans and the way her straight brown hair was pulled back from her face in a tight ponytail, but how one piece, slightly shorter than the rest, kept falling back across her forehead. He liked the clear and steady gaze she gave the bartender when she ordered her beer and the way she didn’t seem at all self-conscious of being in a bar, a woman alone in the middle of southwestern Kenya.
But mostly, he had to admit, he was drawn to something else about her—the air she had, the way she sat in this still pool of just herself and the way her face was so clear and plain and yet... He’d recognized something in her, a kinship of the broken. She was not whole, somehow. She resonated with echoes of spaces inside her that he knew too well. She wasn’t beautiful, definitely not the kind of woman he normally found himself attracted to, but she was of his kind. He knew her without speaking a word.
When the blonde American he’d been flirting with came back from the restroom and stood behind him, sliding her sunburned arms around his shoulders and pressing her breasts against his back, he slid loose and turned to face her.
“Now you’ll have to meet me again, next one’s on you.”
The way her face fell punished him a little. He didn’t like hurting women’s feelings, but it was better, he figured, to rip the Band-Aid off as quickly as possible. He stood up and walked down the bar to where the brunette sat. He slid onto the stool next to her.
“Nipe bia ya Tusker, Matthew.”
She made no movement to acknowledge him, even when he surreptitiously edged his stool closer to hers. She made no half turn so that her knees would brush his, gave no sidelong glance as she tipped her glass of beer to her lips. He’d never met a woman so unaware of his presence. He raked the fingers of his right hand through his thick, blond hair. He kept it just slightly long, curling over his ears and at the nape of his neck. Women loved to toy with it—pulling gently at the curls over his temples and brushing it back from his eyes as if he were a child. They liked to feel as if they were helping him, taking care of the handsome and hapless man-child.
Not this one, though. She didn’t move a muscle when he pulled his fingers through his hair or when he deliberately laid his hand down on the bar just an inch or two from the wet ring her glass left there. Instead, she flagged the barkeep and ordered another beer.
“It’s on me, Matthew,” John said loudly. “Get the lady a drink.”
That’s when she turned to face him. Her face was slender and she wore no makeup. Her eyes were clear and her gaze completely steady, no guile, no sense of nervousness or needing to flirt.
“Thanks,” she said. “But you don’t have to buy my drink.”
“No worries. I saw you come in. You’re not a tourist are you? What... Peace Corps? Development worker? Christ—” he paused and tipped his head back, squinted his eyes at her “—don’t tell me you’re a bloody missionary!” He grinned as he said it.
Women told him all the time that with his looks, he could call a person a bastard and it would sound like a compliment if he smiled when he said it. He registered the tiny movement in her brow, the slight softening of her mouth. It worked. She dipped her head and the errant tendril of hair fell from behind her ear and slipped across her cheek. Before he could think what he was doing, he lifted his hand to slide it back into position for her.
“Are you English?” she asked.
“Not for generations. Born in Nakuru, actually. Kenyan all the way back to my great-greats. They came here from England to farm and to fuck. The farms mostly went to shit, but they drank enough that they stopped caring.” He flashed the smile again. “How about you? American?”
She nodded. “Pacific Northwest. Oregon.”
“Well, we’ve established that I am home and that you are not. So what’s your story? What brings you to the armpit’s asshole here?”
“I live south of Narok. In Loita. I’m living in a manyatta there. You know...” She paused, and he watched her fingering the label on the bottle. Peeling and unpeeling the same corner, over and over. “I’m an anthropologist.” She s
miled and turned to face him straight on.
“So it’s you, then? You’re the ‘muzungu Maasai’? I’ve heard about you.”
He took a deep drink from his bottle and waved at Matthew to bring a couple more. “I’ve been to your manyatta before. Hired moran from there. Years ago, before I hired a permanent staff of guides.”
She smiled. “I have to admit, it’s amazing to speak English like this. It’s been forever since I’ve had a conversation in a language I know fluently.”
She blushed and he watched the light—so tiny—click on behind her eyes.
He could hold his alcohol easily. His father’s son. But hours later, when he laid his hand over the woman’s and pulled her from her bar stool, he planted his lips on hers as she stood and he felt dizzy. Maybe that’s why he’d not thought of his usual protections. It didn’t occur to him. In his dank hotel room, he’d not thought at all. They were both just bodies being swept away down some fast-moving river, clinging together, trying not to drown. They were just movements, not thoughts and not words. They didn’t speak once, but he felt her underneath him, her dark interior shifting and rising, turning itself over and outward, desperately seeking whatever light he could shed for her. His body, too, betrayed the usual spaces he liked to keep between himself and his women. He fell into her when he was finished and found himself drifting off to sleep, unable to move his arm from around her shoulders and not minding how close she was—her hair across his face and one naked breast rising and falling, all night long, under his palm.
They hadn’t even exchanged names, he and that woman in the bar. It was something of a game they played. Flirtation. He asked her, and she’d answered with a series of Maasai nicknames, words that described her but didn’t name her. He laughed, but when he asked again—seriously this time—she said she would tell him the next time they met. If there was a next time. He had to leave early that morning to drive up to Solai. It was time he checked on his mother, made sure the water was still on in the house and that Samuel hadn’t given up and moved away. The woman, though, left even earlier. He woke to see her fully dressed with her ponytail tightly in place, trying to slip from his room.
The Brightest Sun Page 15