Dust (35 page)

“Please do.”

“Where are you going?”

“Somewhere.”

“As I am.”

“Go away.”

“Or what? You’ll spit on me again?”

“Yes.”

They jostle past the reception.

“Bye, Jos,” says Ajany.

“Bye, Jos,” repeats Isaiah.

“Uh,” Jos replies.

The chilly evening air.

Ajany rubs her arms, adjusts her hold on her purse and envelope. They stand in the car park. Peter the taxi man sees Ajany, flashes his lights, and switches on the car engine. He says nothing when Ajany and Isaiah reach for the same door and cling to it.

“What do you want from me?” Ajany groans.

“My father,” says Isaiah.

She looks up at Isaiah. “I don’t know him.”

A sudden sheen in her eyes.

“So tell me about your mother.”

A shrug. “Go find her. Talk to her yourself.”

“Where is she?”

“Don’t know. Somewhere.”

“Liar.”

Ajany, her voice brittle, says, “My mother left the day we brought my brother home.”

Isaiah pulls open the car’s door.

“Twilight,” she tells the taxi man.

Inside the car, Isaiah asks, “You don’t know where your mother is?”

“No.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“No.”

Isaiah exhales, tousling his hair.

Families are complicated organisms.

They reach the venue.

The bouncers glance at Ajany, swivel their heads at Isaiah, and glance back at Ajany. She winks back. Yesterday’s man in pink is today in vivid purple.

Ajany stops to waylay Justina.

“You can go in,” she tells Isaiah.

“No,” he says.

“You can’t keep this up.”

“I will.”

A quarter of an hour later, Justina approaches the main dance hall. She sees Ajany.

Justina says, “
Mavi ya kuku
, you’re here to fight again?”

Ajany thrusts the envelope at her.

“What?”

“For you and the baby.”

Justina fingers it, glares at Ajany, pouting.

“Who’s this?” Her chin indicates Isaiah.

Ajany shrugs. “Ask him.”

“He’s with you?”

“No.”

“Yes,” answers Isaiah. He drapes a firm arm over Ajany’s shoulders.

She wriggles. An idea: “This is Odidi’s friend Bolton.”

“Oh. The
mzungu
he was meeting at Wuoth Ogik? Wasn’t he an old man?”

“Yes,” confirms Ajany.

Isaiah scowls. He grips her wrist.

Ajany tugs at her hand.

Justina is looking Isaiah up and down.

She asks Ajany, “Does he pay well?”

“You beat him up.” She pulls free. “Then he pays double.”

Justina’s eyes flutter, mocking Ajany as two fingers pluck Isaiah’s shirtsleeves. “I’ll beat you with chains, if you want.”

Isaiah lifts Justina’s fingers from off his shirt. “This woman and I”—he indicates Ajany—“sewn together.”

Ajany escapes.

Isaiah guffaws.

Justina joins him.

“You know Ebewesit … Odidi?”

“We wrote to each other. I’d have enjoyed meeting him.”

She nods. “England?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t look English.”

“What does English look like?”

Justina gestures to a part of the dance floor that is visible. There, five men of indifferent stature and shape gyrate in paroxysms of off-beat pain. One of them slides left to right and back. The music is determined to push them off the dance floor. It is also apparent that they are committed to staying on. Arms and bodies in motion, whirring like propellers ready for liftoff.

Isaiah watches the dancers. “Moses told me to come here. But then … uh …”

“Yes,” breathes Justina wistfully. “That sister calls him Odidi; me, I say Odi-Ebe; you say Moses. Many people. One person.”

Isaiah remembers the corpse.

“A true man.” Justina wipes her eyes. She makes a face. “Want to go in?” Isaiah scans the crowd, looking for Ajany.

“She’s inside,” says Justina, now amused. She inserts the envelope into her shoulder bag.

They step in and are swallowed by the warmth, noise, and rhythm.

Ajany is dancing. Justina watches Ajany as she has before. Finds Odidi’s stormy abandon in Ajany’s gestures, in her sinuous moves. Ajany is unconscious of her complete otherness. She is not of this place. Just like Odidi Ebewesit.

A vision, a feeling.

Justina takes three urgent steps toward it. Ajany must go. She’ll beg Ajany to leave before the rottenness creeps over and possesses her.

Her baby moves.
I know
, Justina soothes the child.

She turns to confide in Isaiah.

He stands frozen, his eyes fixed, mesmerized by
this
Ajany.

Justina scowls.

“You?” she prods.

Isaiah slips his hands into his pockets. He casts his eyes to the ground, lips pursed. A shudder.

One of the Twilight regulars bumps Justina’s shoulders. “Sa’a Jusi?” She gestures at Isaiah.

Justina sticks her tongue out, wraps her hand around Isaiah’s. “Dance with me?”

“No.”

“I need you.”

“You don’t.”

Justina giggles. “But you can’t dance with her,” pointing at Ajany.

“Why?”

“You are just a human being.”

“So?”

“They don’t really need us.”

“Who are
they
?”

Justina starts to say something, but hugs her body instead. She would do anything to feel Odidi’s strong and securing arms around her, even for a minute. She wants to hear again his vow to keep her safe forever.

Isaiah says, “She’s human.”

The DJ changes the music.

“Keep telling yourself that. You dance?”

“Mhh.”

“Like that?”

Ajany is against the steel pole. Hearing melodies that had been played in Bahia, wanting to throw off the weight of her world and its realities, she dissolves like wax into the music, feels it become her body. Now she is simply Arabel, and the other side of the song is silence, and its roots are in eternity.

“No,” says Isaiah.

“Dance with me?” Justina asks.

“Yes,” Isaiah replies.

Ajany emerges from the vision in sound after the DJ mixes in some Hi-Life. She finds the present. She is outside the clubhouse, staring at a starry sky. She finds Kormamaddo the sky camel. Tears. She must return to Wuoth Ogik.

The taller bouncer asks, “Leaving, madam?”

Over-the-shoulder grin: from
malaya
to “madam” overnight. She peers at her phone, calls Peter the taxi man. “Need to go,” she says.

“I’m praying for you,” Peter reminds her.

He is worried about the state of her soul.

“Evening, Jos.”

“Morning, madam. Better today?”

Ajany winces. “What time is it?”

“3:30 a.m.”

“When do you sleep?”

“In the day.”

“I’m checking out, Jos.”

“Leaving?”

“Going home.”

“Now?”

Ajany nods.

“
Woyee!
I’ll miss you.”

Ajany makes a face at him.

An hour later, Ajany has cleared her room, stuffed clothes, portraits, pictures, and art materials into two holdalls and three plastic bags, and left a large tip on the dresser. She pulls the door open—hinges squeak—and walks into a block of heat, Isaiah. In that moment they are alone. Nothing moves, not even breath. Not the night. A gush of fear, as if she might never find her way out. She takes a step back into the room. Isaiah follows. She propels herself forward, fighting to leave.

Isaiah had intended to be reasonable. To scold her for abandoning him at the club. Had meant to tell her he had paid Peter the taxi man to leave, that it was unfair of her to go without talking to him first. He had wanted to ask Ajany for one sensible conversation about Wuoth Ogik, finish things so they could return to their lives in peace.

Thwack!

Her handbag got the side of his head. Shock greater than the sting. Her eyes are dark with decision. She is willing to behead him if she has to. He is afraid she will spit on him again.

“Hngngh!”
Isaiah dives to the ground, his flailing foot slams the door, he is still holding on to her.

It is possible to brawl in private silence. He can’t remember locking her legs to the ground with his own. He remembers the intoxicating blend of sweat, adrenaline, soap, and woman.

Turned on.

Wanting.

He is large enough to contain her, sad enough to need to get lost inside her, with her, through her.

She kicks, aiming for his balls. Her punch catches the base of his nose. Scent of blood, screaming pain.

He could hurt her.

Hands squeeze her neck and arm.

She bites him.

Isaiah grunts and wipes his bleeding face.

Ajany reaches for his head and yanks at his hair. Bites his arm again, breaks skin. He shakes her off. Her nose is bleeding. Her teeth grasp his fingers. He drags his fingers from her mouth. He pulls back his arms to deliver a blow. She whimpers. He sees how small she is. Remorse.

Inside-out pain.

His hands fall to his sides, and he turns his face and body away from Ajany.

Breathing.

Lonelinesses spill and mix.

She wipes the blood from her nose.

Isaiah whispers, “I am sorry.” For many things. Coming to Kenya in defiance of his mother. Chasing after ghosts. The solitude of walking through restless dunes into North Horr. Nobody noticing. Arriving at a place that was the same as the one left behind. How could a human being endure such infinite spaces? Causing a woman’s nose to bleed—wounding another creature. What had happened to him?

Ajany listens to Isaiah breathe.

Warmth, darkness, stillness. She is lying on her stomach. Can crawl into herself. Expectations disintegrate and leach into the floor. Pain on her shoulder—is it dislocated? She chooses not to speak. She waits. She is learning how to wait.

For the next moment.

Outside, a night bird coughs and coughs.

Inside, silence.

Breathing.

Sweat, silence.

Rasping air.

Blend of blood.

In the parts where her nails have ripped his skin, a tingle.

Isaiah is motionless.

The thing that had invaded his body with heat, hatred, and fire leaves. He turns to Ajany. “I won’t hurt you.”

Part promise.

To life.

Ajany’s eyes are solemn. Isaiah touches the drying blood beneath her nostrils and straightens her twisted arm. Wipes her face with his wrists. She watches, sees when he notices the small space between their bodies.

Contours of desolation.

She smells fear, finds that it is cold on her tongue. She tastes sadness. Shared flavor. She waits.

He licks his lips. Tastes blood.

A burned taste, like dark-roast coffee.

Dusk’s light invades their space.

His right hand hovers over her.

She wonders about his touch, what it would tell her body.

He drops his hand to the floor.

A cold stone spreads from his heart, and he curls over.

A despairing admission: all losses have secret names.

Thirst is a dry scratch in the back of Ajany’s throat.

And his. He squeezes his temples and blocks out the light, which pokes at his throbbing head. Could do with a cigarette, even though he had smoked for only a year and that when he was only twenty-one. Long ago.

Memory shapes.

To name something is to bring it to life.

His loss, the failures.

Bodies touch.

No one pulls away.

He whispers into Ajany’s mouth.

Seeking light.

Breathing.

Slow-motion memory patchwork, the times in his life when disbelief was like certainty, illusion had become real. Once upon a time, when he was failing and being abandoned he had run and screamed and howled out a name.

Then limped home to wait for normal to return.

It never came.

Isaiah lifts his arm, touches the back of Ajany’s head. She peers into his eyes. Old eyes. Her left hand frames his face. This, too, she could paint. Touch, shape, mold, and draw. Here. She could carve an outline of a man.

Isaiah says, “Life’s ephemeral.” Memory kaleidoscope: another face, a beach, the sea, an eternal absence.

From the light of their window, silhouettes and shadows.

Hidden things start to whisper all at once.

Ajany remembers Odidi.

Isaiah touches her face.

He says, “You’re waiting for your brother. Picking up rubble from his life. You think you can rewind time.” His left hand cups her face. “The Styx is a one-way bridge, honey.”

Ajany stiffens.

“Will
you
return from the dead?”

She closes her eyes. She asks, “Where d-do you go?”

“War zones.”

A sad sound.

“Photographing passersby.”

“D-does it work?”

“Sometimes.”

“And when it fails?”

“I photograph warlords.”

“Why?”

“Souls that coexist with the shades of death they create: no excuses, no explanations, no platitudes. Wondered how their faces look through light.”

“And?”

“I ask them to smile and photograph how their eyes disappoint their attempts.”

Isaiah’s fingers tug at Ajany’s braids.

She flinches.

He says, “Anguish has its pleasures.”

He says, “I clean up tragic houses, strip them down, sell their content, refurnish, sell for a profit, buy another house, and then another.”

Distant traffic, voices downstairs, Calisto’s voice, Jos’s high-pitched answer.

Ajany says, “You’re here now.”

“Yes.”

“What if
he
doesn’t want to be found?”

Isaiah says, “Tell me more.”

Words jam in her mind. Then an admission: “I can show you.”

“What?”

“You’ll see.”

“I wish Moses …” Isaiah waits, and then: “The woman this evening, Justina, she is …”

“His.”

“She’s pregnant.”

“Yes.”

“His?”

“Mhh.”

“What’s she doing … there?”

“That’s where they met. She’s waiting for him to come back.”

Outside, rustling, shuffling, knocking, tapping, twittering, and ringing. Inside, hearts beat. Something unravels.