Yellow Room

by Shelan Rodger

  The word ‘tourist’ visibly stung Femke. She had tried so hard to be accepted and build a life for herself here.

  ‘Give her a break, Mick,’ Chala intervened, and then more softly, ‘Who wants a drink?’ She went into the kitchen and poured two large whiskies and one very watered-down one. ‘I think we could all do with this,’ she said as she came back into the living room and then stopped dead. Mick and Femke were lost in a fairy- tale kiss right in front of her.

  ‘Sorry.’ Femke blushed a violent, endearing red, and Mick laughed slightly nervously and took a whisky off the tray that Chala was carrying. The familiar face of one of the reporters appeared on the TV screen and Femke jumped at the distraction and turned up the volume.

  The reporter was standing at the charred site of a church in western Kenya, a church that had been full of women and children taking shelter when it was burnt down. The words ‘cold-blooded’ and ‘massacre’ were used over and over again, and the reporter gestured with her arms to highlight the horror of an account of a three-year-old child thrown back into the flames. On another channel another phrase was used for the first time – ethnic cleansing – against the backdrop of live footage of a man being slashed to death in Kibera. Raila Odinga was determined to proceed with the rally in the centre of Nairobi, despite the fact that Kibaki had declared it illegal. There were rumours that police had been ordered to shoot on sight. The spectre of a possible bloodbath that would set in motion a chain reaction of huge proportions loomed. Chala caught the tension on Mick’s face as the Nairobi correspondent interviewed a mother in Kibera: ‘If God wants me to die, I will die tomorrow. I will die for Raila.’

  CHAPTER 30

  The first images on their TV screen looked like a science fiction film set in Nairobi the day after a deadly virus had wiped out its entire population. Cameras zoomed in on eerily empty streets in the city centre, over the shoulders of soldiers, a human barrier to prevent access. Femke placed two mugs of coffee on the table. The house, too, was quiet. There was no hum of Esther singing under her breath, no digging or chopping from the garden, no monkeys jumping on the tin roof. The whole of Kenya was holding its breath.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Femke asked. ‘Weird.’

  ‘Weird-tummy weird or weird-Kenya weird?’

  Chala laughed despite herself. ‘A bit of both, I think.’ Her mobile bleeped another incoming message. ‘It’s from the Kenyan government,’ she said, answering the expectant look on Femke’s face. She read the text aloud. ‘The Kenyan government warns you not to take part in any unlawful rallies.’ She stared at the phone, alarmed by the intrusion. The TV screen still had the effect of distancing them, but suddenly the fingers of what was happening were reaching out and clawing into their lives.

  ‘I got one, too, when I woke up.’ Femke was trying to make it sound completely normal.

  ‘From the Kenyan government?’

  ‘No, from Safaricom.’ She opened her message from the biggest mobile network in Kenya. ‘Safaricom urges all Kenyans to stay peaceful.’

  ‘Well, yours is a lot nicer.’

  They refocused on the screen. An international reporter was tracking a small crowd of demonstrators waving orange flags and marching slowly along broken, muddy pavements towards the city centre.

  ‘Hardly a million demonstrators, hey!’ Mick’s sudden appearance in the room startled even the dogs.

  ‘Don’t do that! I thought you weren’t coming today.’ Femke had jumped up and almost knocked over the coffee.

  ‘Can’t keep away.’ He looked at her and she blushed. He loved that in her, it was so obvious.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ The edge of irritation, which Chala felt sure was to do with the fact that he kept making her blush, did nothing to hide the eagerness in Femke’s voice, the attentiveness to Mick’s opinion.

  ‘I think we should bathe the dogs. Something to stop you clock-watching until the next headlines.’

  They did. Cheza squirmed and whined, Tek Tek looked vaguely embarrassed and they all ended up soaked. Chala found herself laughing along with Mick and Femke, and then the laughter died inside her as she looked at them and thought, this baby should be theirs not mine. Instantly, the pronoun crashed down on her. Mine – not ours. Where was Paul? Was it simply that he wasn’t there? Was it the doubt about whether it was actually his? Or was it something else, something worse? She got up and turned aside to hide the tears from Mick and Femke.

  She moved quietly away with her mobile and sat on the veranda, staring at the acacia trees. Then she stared at the mobile. Her tears had dried and her face had a fixed look. She started to scroll through her phone contacts, then stopped. Would he answer if she called? What would she tell him? Did he have a right to know? What if they were the ones that were meant to be together? ‘Yes, I felt it too.’ She remembered his words, closed her eyes and saw his face, saw him looking at h… Perhaps he wouldn’t answer. He could be anywhere in the world by now, somewhere his phone might not even work. He could even be in Africa. But what if he did answer? Her thumb hovered above his name and her heartbeat quickened. Was this her real Sliding Doors moment?

  She let the phone drop as if it had burnt her.

  CHAPTER 31

  ‘Your chests are bigger, I think,’ said Femke over breakfast.

  ‘Breasts, you mean breasts,’ corrected Chala, but Femke caught the hint of pride in her voice.

  ‘Did someone say breasts?’ Mick was upon them out of nowhere.

  ‘Not in your ears, they didn’t.’

  ‘For,’ corrected Chala again lightly. ‘For your ears.’

  The release was palpable after the previous day’s tension. They had waited with the rest of Kenya, the world watching, and clashes had broken the science-fiction stillness finally. Tear gas and rounds of blank ammunition were fired above crowds converging on the city centre. Outraged international media coverage leapt on images of screaming women choking on tear gas and waving white rags in the air.

  But no one got beyond the army cordon. In the end the rally was simply not allowed to happen, and most of Kenya breathed a sigh of relief that the spectators in the West could not really understand. When Chala had spoken to Winnie that evening, she sounded tired but her words were pragmatic.

  ‘White handkerchiefs are not the same in Africa as they are in your world,’ she’d explained in the same tone that she used to talk about the reality of street kids. ‘This rally would not have been peaceful. It is good that they stopped it.’

  Today, the drive for normality was apparent everywhere, with shops reopening, businesses resuming, and – most strikingly – a local radio station banning all politicians from its airwaves. The press was switching its emphasis to the growing humanitarian crisis affecting all those who had fled their homes, turned into refugees overnight in their own country.

  The road to Nairobi was open. Chala had resolved to go back to her hotel in Naivasha today and get to a doctor the next day. She held Femke close as they said goodbye, grateful yet inarticulate about the support and companionship she was going to miss. Mick came up behind, wrapping both of them in his comfortable embrace and telling Chala to call him if there was anything at all she needed. She pushed down the pedal on the moped, stifling the longing to have Paul by her side as Mick stood with Femke now, and sped off through the dust back to Naivasha.

  ‘Mama Shelter, you are home,’ were the first words she heard as she entered the hotel. ‘Come, we have Coca-Cola again and Mama Winnie is waiting for you.’ The familiar face of her favourite waiter positively beamed, and it was hard to imagine that elsewhere in Kenya people were beginning to suffer from malnutrition as a result of the last few days’ events.

  ‘Chala, karibu, come and drink to peace with me,’ Winnie beckoned her.

  ‘Is everyone at the shelter OK?’ She thought of little Julius.

  ‘Of course they are OK. Why shouldn’t they be OK?’ That angry edge in her voice again. ‘Your Western press has been very irresponsible, y
ou know, reporting as if the whole country is in chaos when the riots are only in pockets.’ It was like listening to Mick without the swearing. Winnie sighed. ‘This will cost the country dear. Our politicians have made a mess of things and your press has made it worse. Did you see the pictures of tourists running away? They were never in any danger, but now they will take time to come back again and we need them.’

  Chala flinched from the use of the pronoun ‘your’ to talk about the Western media. No foreigner could ever belong here, she realised. If Femke married Mick and stayed for twenty years, she would still be ‘the Dutch vet’. Perhaps there really was something in that whole business of the root chakra – feeling grounded. All her life she had struggled with the notion of belonging, assuming this was related at some level to what she had been capable of as a child and the way she had been ostracised at school. Yet Philip had helped her feel grounded, and without him she had moments when the world seemed to spiral out of control around her, moments that made her feel she was physically shrinking. Was it panic that drove Philip into the sea? Would his letter to Denise hold the answer? Oh God, how could she ever be a mother to this baby inside her? It was fantasy to think that she could bring up a child with someone she could not even be sure was the father.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Winnie’s words drew her up short, a dislocated echo. ‘It must sound as if I’m blaming you, and I don’t mean that at all. We are paying the price for our own politics, that is su… Chala, are you OK?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. Yes, I’m fine – just a bit drained by it all.’

  ‘Listen, Chala, these are not your problems and I’ll understand if you want to go home straight away, now that the roads are open again.’

  ‘No.’ The determination in her own voice caught Chala by surprise. ‘No, I want to see this through. It will only take a few more days to finish everything for the website and then I will go home.’

  ‘Good girl.’ Winnie’s smile stretched across her face and Chala felt pleased out of all proportion.

  She hesitated. ‘But I need to see a doctor in Nairobi tomorrow. Nothing to worry about, just a check-up—’

  ‘I can take you,’ Winnie interrupted. ‘I need to go, too. We’ll leave early in the morning.’

  * * *

  Chala forced herself to focus on the cappuccino in front of her, to lift it, to sip it, not to scream out and bang her arm against the table until it hurt. When the doctor had finally left no room for doubt and confirmed the pregnancy, she had felt as if someone had gripped her by the shoulders and was shaking her.

  The taxi had taken her straight back to the shopping mall where Winnie had dropped her and she had gone straight into the Internet café there – quite unlike the broken-down green shack in Naivasha – and found out all she could about abortion. There was still time to undo this reality. Still time to terminate. But the word drilled a hole in her brain.

  ‘Hold on to what you’ve got.’ The phrase rang in her ears – in Philip’s voice, in Denise’s voice, in Amanda’s voice, in Winnie’s voice, Femke’s, Mick’s – until she started to feel dizzy with the effort of keeping everyone out. Only Paul was silent. Chala stared at the half-empty cup and thought of Denise; of how if Denise had been there now she might have been able to talk to her; of how Denise might have found a way of helping Chala’s words come out and making them seem normal. How many suicides, she wondered, would never have happened if only the right person had been there at the right time? Had Philip really committed suicide? Could she have been the right person at the right time? She remembered his strange reaction when they had talked about abortion once. What right did he have to reject abortion if he had taken his own life away from her? What was in his letter to Denise?

  The questions came and came, like playground kids around a skipping rope. What would she look like, this little piece of life? What made her so convinced it was a girl? What would she call her? Emma? What if it was a boy? Julius? She stared at the cappuccino.

  And Rosie looked on from the recesses of her mind, a silent smirk on her face, made of cloth.

  CHAPTER 32

  ‘Mama Shelter, you are stronger!’ The gesture that accompanied Mwangi’s words left no doubt about the euphemism.

  ‘You mean fatter?’ Chala wondered if her private reality was slipping slowly into public view. ‘You know that we like to be thin in England. It is not good to tell a woman she’s fatter!’

  ‘But you are in Kenya, Mama. Here it is good for a woman to be big,’ he quipped, repeating the gesture with his hands. Status and size went hand in hand. Chala assumed it had something to do with being well fed and what that represented. The boys at the shelter were all skinny and small for their age, testimony to the days when glue filled the cracks of hunger. Winnie’s solidity won her authority and respect; women were meant to have flesh.

  ‘Come, Mama, we have a new boy here. He is from Nairobi. He ran away when his father was killed in the nonsense.’ He used the same term that Femke’s staff had used to describe the recent strife.

  ‘Josphat, kuja.’ A small boy separated himself obediently from a cluster of boys collecting water and approached them, hanging his head. He looked about six years old. How on earth did he make the journey from Nairobi, and how had he ended up here? What had he seen before he fled? Mwangi would tell her everything in simple words in due course. Chala had learnt to be gentle at these meetings, to avoid seeking eye contact. She extended her hand.

  ‘Mimi ni Chala, unaitwa nani?’

  ‘Josphat.’ The answer was barely audible, his hand limp. She longed to put her arms around him and hold him to her. ‘Twende, go and play with your friends.’ She watched him flee to the safety of the group and saw Julius reach out and touch him briefly.

  ‘Come, come and see our baby cow.’ Mwangi was pleased that she was back, and Chala felt a warm wave over the tug of war inside her. At least she had not run away from the shelter before her job was done.

  Later that day, she sat on the hotel veranda with her laptop and a conspicuous bottle of soda water to replace the cold beer habit that was so infectious here. She pored over the boys’ names and tried to work out the logistics of how to make the sponsorship scheme work in practice. And yet the statistics dragged at her uncomfortably. Why did these fifty boys deserve to be trained up and supported by unknown donors in the West? A tiny handful of better-fed tummies in Kenya and a handful of rich donors feeling better about themselves – what would it actually solve? It wouldn’t even touch the causes of the problem. She’d read somewhere that Kenya’s population was forecast to grow by around thirty-five per cent in the next ten years. Everywhere you went you saw children, but only the well-fed middle classes bred less. For the poorest majority, large families were the norm, the only investment in the future they were able to make.

  Chala’s hand went to her stomach. Suddenly her ability to play God with the future existence of this seed of life felt wrong. The majority of people here could not afford the luxury of the choices she was dabbling in. People here dealt in consequence, not choice. She reached for her phone and dialled Paul’s number, but when she heard the awkwardness in his voice, the moment died inside her. How could she possibly even begin to ask him to share her dilemma over whether to abort this baby? She needed to make this decision alone – she alone would have to live with the consequences of her act.

  ‘Paul, I know this is difficult on the phone,’ she said instead, ‘but I will be finished here within a we…’

  Silence stretched on the line.

  ‘So are you coming home?’ She wished she could read his face as he said these words.

  ‘If that’s still OK with you, y… Yes, I would love to come home.’ The word felt grounding. For a moment Chala forgot about the dilemma inside her and thought only of Paul and his arms around her.

  CHAPTER 33

  A horn beeped and Chala looked up to see Winnie at the wheel of a pick-up loaded high with maize meal and fresh corn.

  ‘Come on
, Mama Shelter.’ Winnie used the nickname with good-natured irony. ‘Leave that laptop behind and get in.’

  ‘So, what are we up to?’ asked Chala as she climbed in, responding to the enthusiasm in Winnie’s voice.

  ‘We, my dear, are taking a shedload of ugali to the shelter. Have you seen what the mhindi has given us?’ She gestured grandly at the brimming back of the pick-up and winked. Chala laughed. With a tiny variation, the same word in Swahili meant Indian or sweetcorn. Winnie was talking about an Indian who owned a small maize factory outside town.

  ‘Well, it’s good to see you smiling, girl.’ Winnie looked pointedly at Chala.

  ‘I feel good.’ She had woken, well rested, with a sense of lightness this morning.

  ‘Amen!’ Winnie spoke with such emphasis she might have broken into song, and Chala laughed again.

  It was a Sunday and the boys were lounging or playing on the grass. They jumped up and flocked to the pick up to see what Winnie had brought. Chala noticed little Josphat, taking his cue from Julius and running hard to keep up. Mwangi emerged from the staff room and organised the boys into a kind of conveyor belt to shift the bags of ugali to the kitchen. Julius dropped one and the boys chortled; then Josphat dropped a bag, as if to say ‘me too’. In the distance below them silver light splintered through cloud cover onto the lake, oblivious.

  Mwangi wanted a lift to Naivasha, so Chala squeezed into the middle on the way back. They took the usual shortcut down a pot-holed side road into the middle of town. As they joined the main road again, Chala was obscurely aware of more people and more noise than normal. It sounded like a distant football match. She turned to Winnie to ask what was going on, but the car suddenly leapt forward as Winnie stamped her foot on the accelerator. Chala tried to see what was happening as she and Mwangi lurched into each other, but all she could see were people running towards them. She tried to read the situation on Mwangi’s face, but he, like Winnie, seemed frozen, despite the movement of their car.