Who Will Catch Us As We Fall (17 page)

After he was done, he rolled it into a thick wad, handing Jeffery two hundred shillings. ‘See? Did you think I would cheat you?'

‘This is only two hundred bob.'

‘Are you questioning me?' The voice was no longer friendly.

‘But I gave you five thousand!'

‘And I asked you for thirty. I'm the one being generous.'

Jeffery turned to leave, anxious to return to his mother. But the officer's heavy hand pulled him back. Something was tugged out of his pocket and his trousers became light. ‘Thank you, I'm very thirsty.' The officer opened the bottle. Tossing the cap aside, he took down half the contents in one voracious sip. When the man came back up for air, gasping and sucking on his cigarette, he barked, ‘What are you looking at? Go, before I kick you out of here for good.'

There were no streetlights in Kibera to pierce the inky blackness that came with nightfall. He walked as if blindfolded, unable to see two steps ahead of him. There were momentary flickers of yellow from some shacks, illegally obtained electricity, which was dim and buzzed like swarms of insects overhead. Jeffery had none at home because, like everything else here, you had to pay someone else for it – thirty-five shillings a month – and he was saving to take them away from here, to be the first man in generations of his family to move out of the slums and into the city.

He was careful to stay as close to the walls as possible, wanting to avoid the flying toilets. With nightfall came violence and many people chose to stay within the shaky yet safer confines of their houses, relieving themselves in paper bags rather than risk going outside. They then threw these bags out onto the street, as far from their homes as possible. Sometimes, the bags of human waste landed, if you were unfortunate enough, on the roof above your head, bursting open as they hit the sharp corners of galvanized metal and raining down in clumps of sticky wetness. If you were luckier, they would be thrown at your feet and spray only your shoes and the hems of your trousers, which were more easily wiped away.

But despite this, Jeffery had always found night-time in Kibera peaceful. He passed a bar where people were laughing and telling each other stories over a drink, their outlines lit by a gasoline lamp that threw gold beams upon the wooden tables. Further down the road, an old man was grilling goat meat over a small
jiko
and he waved at Jeffery as he passed. A man and woman talking, a TV playing a dubbed-over telenovela and the bleating of goats – sounds of the living, the persevering. Despite it all, losing themselves in the small bits of normalcy they found, whilst clinging to hope.
There is always tomorrow.

As he approached his home, he heard new noises – people crying, curious onlookers peeling back the curtain he had hung up over their door for privacy, and glancing inside. He began to run, tripped over a bump in the street and had to steady himself by grabbing the low roofs on either side of him. He felt the sharp edge of the metal dig into his skin but was unable to sense the pain as he half-crawled to the door.

‘Get out, get out.' He pushed people away with his shoulders and stepped into the dark room, instantly gagging at the smell. It kept him at the entrance, the crushing stench of rot, feces and death. It was so brutally raw, encompassing him as if it were a solid presence – like the Devil himself.

At first he couldn't make out his mother because no light reached in that far, but as he staggered toward the back wall, his eyes adjusting to the shadows, he glimpsed the outline of her still figure. Someone had picked her up from the floor and placed her on the bed, a good Samaritan who had the kind sense to wrap her in a
shuka
before propping her up against the wall of the shamba so that she appeared to be sitting, waiting for him as she usually did. The only thing that gave it away was the way her neck tilted upward, her mouth frozen stiff and her bones marble-cold. He shook her, dragged her forward and slapped her cheeks but as soon as he let her go, she fell back. There wasn't a single thing in her that was moving, that wasn't empty.

A hand on his shoulder. ‘She's gone. Be happy for her – she is at peace.'

‘I tried, I really tried. Don't, why? Please, don't.' A string of nonsensical words caught on his tongue. ‘I'll get the money tomorrow. Please don't leave me.'

How quickly her face, which had always been so young, had sunken. Her body, which had always been so strong, shriveled down to that of a little girl's. He tried to force her eyes closed, not able to bear seeing his reflection in them, to be taunted by a feature belonging to the living, but each time he did, they slowly opened again.

‘Jeffery.'

‘Leave us alone.'

A warm wetness surrounding him – he climbed into the bed beside her, bringing her close, tucking her head beneath his chin. Feeling her so close, knowing that soon she would be completely gone from him, he started to cry.

He thought of the woman in the car once again, wondered how it was possible for people to exist here, living on too much – who spent and spent and yet when they reached back into their pockets, found that they were still full, still filling up, while people like him were left to live and die like animals by a government who saw no profit to be made from such a desolate place.

When he next spoke, it was to no one in particular because by that time everyone had left. ‘Why have they forgotten us? Is Kibera not also a place? Are we not also human beings, citizens of this country?' He kissed his mother's pointed nose, her once proud forehead. And the next time he pushed her eyes closed, he kept his fingers pressed down against her lids, whispering against her icy cheek, ‘We are Kenyans too.'

There was an old fruit market opposite their apartment block that sat on a large, abandoned field that was marshy and easily mistaken by most people who drove past it to be a rubbish dump. It was packed full of crude, make-shift stalls created from cardboard boxes and bright, plastic crates. Most of them were covered by thick, polythene roofs designed to protect the goods from the heat and unexpected rains, which came down heavy and without warning. The crates overflowed with colorful rivers, the neon pink flesh of watermelon and the dark yellow of passion fruit, clouds of pure white sugar cane that were impossible not to sink your teeth into, feeling the juice flood into your mouth.

The ground was always muddy and littered with a rainbow of fruit peels, cockroaches and discarded paper bags. Intermingling with the sticky smell of fruit was the charcoal scent of Mary's Kitchen, a family-run establishment that consisted of two plastic tables covered in plaid cloth and four chairs. It was located at the far corner of the market and was always packed with tourists and locals alike, forever with bottles of lukewarm Tusker beer, no matter what time of day it was, scraping up the restaurant's most famous dish of
nyama choma.

Michael had introduced them to the goat meat, grilled over an open fire. He used his teeth to tug at the crisp, charred edges. He had showed them how to drizzle it with
kachumbari
, a mixture of chili sauce, onions, diced tomatoes and fresh coriander, scooping it up in
ugali
,
a type of bread made from maize flour. Pressing it down into soft white baskets, he had placed the meat in the center, rolling it up and pushing it into his eager mouth, then washing everything down with a long swig of coke.

It was nearing the end of their summer vacation, when the days seemed even more precious and difficult to hold onto. They found Michael sitting cross-legged on the floor of the veranda, a stainless steel bowl in his lap, deftly picking apart pea pods and letting the small, hard vegetables roll in his palm before dropping them one by one into the bowl with a soft
ching.

‘Everyone is at the market,' Jai told him.

‘I promised my mum I would help her finish this.' Michael's fingers never stopped moving even as he looked up to talk to them. ‘You guys can go ahead without me.'

He had been careful to follow Angela's instructions ever since that evening spent arguing on the brown sofa. They had come back to work the next morning to find that Mrs Kohli had locked up most of the drawers and cupboards, leaving open only those that Angela needed to do her work.

‘It's just for safety,' she had said, but there had been a quickness to her movements, a suspicious sprint of her eyes, which had made Michael believe that no matter how upset his mother's words made him, they held a heavy truth.

‘I hope this doesn't have to do with what Tag said.' Jai sat down beside him.

‘We didn't believe him – you know that,' Leena added.

‘I know. And thank you for helping me.' He looked up at her and she blushed slightly under the concern of what he said next. ‘I hope you didn't get into any trouble because of me.'

‘It was fine.' Her voice was higher than usual.

The night it happened, the two of them had received a ranting lecture from their mother after she had demanded to see the sweets they had claimed to buy.

‘We finished them,' Leena told her.

‘Where are the wrappers or did you eat those as well?'

‘I threw them away.'

‘And yet I have not found one in any dustbin around the house.' Pooja leaned down to glare at her daughter. ‘I hope you aren't taking the blame for what Michael did. Stealing is very serious.'

‘Michael didn't do it. He was with us all day.'

‘He could have hidden it – these
kharias
are very clever, you know,' she warned them.

‘I'm sorry, Ma.
It won't happen again.'

‘Of course it won't!' her mother had yelled. ‘Because you never took it to begin with! Don't let me catch you pulling another stunt like that otherwise I'll never allow you to play with that boy again.'

Now, sitting around Michael as he shelled the peas, Jai gestured to Leena to do the same. She folded her oversized T-shirt in her lap and pushed a handful of green vegetables into its folds. She stared down at the long half-moon shapes. ‘What do I do with these?'

Michael dropped his peas into the bowl and came closer to her. As he took one from her lap, she noticed the smooth, wide surface of his hands – the cleanness of his palm. There were no dark, extra lines like the ones that ran through hers; just soft, undisturbed skin and fingers that did everything with meticulous care.

‘See this marking here?' He pointed to the division that ran down the entire length of the pod. ‘That's the opening. All you have to do is this.' He pressed it softly between his thumb and forefinger and it popped cleanly open.

He showed her the three peas sitting inside – a trio of wrinkled, miniature golf balls. He dropped them into her cupped palm and she closed her fist around them, running their ridges against her skin. ‘Easy, isn't it?'

‘Yes.'

He went back to his spot closer to her brother; they were racing to see who could clear the most pods the fastest but she stayed as she was, peas in hand. She traced their inflexible, hexagonal pattern and threw two of them into the bowl, allowing the third to linger. It stuck to her skin, refused to let go and she slipped it into her pocket.

‘What are you doing?'

The sound of Angela's voice caused her to jump, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. ‘I was just—'

But Angela wasn't listening. ‘Stand up!'

‘We were just helping Mike finish so that we could all go to the market,' Jai told her.

Angela grabbed the bowl from the center of the circle. ‘Do you know what your mother would say if she saw you sitting here?' She spoke to them in rapid Swahili.

‘We don't mind helping out.'

Angela paused to observe the three children looking up at her. Her son hadn't spoken to her properly since that day, always mumbling or averting his eyes but listening to her nonetheless and spending most of his time helping her with the work. She had caught him, in the past few days, washing the dishes with his eyes on Leena and Jai in the garden, sometimes stopping altogether so that she had to turn off the faucet because the soapy water had started to fill up the sink.

Looking down at the three hopeful faces, Angela was unable to refuse them and reminded herself that it was only one day – no harm could come from it.

‘Take Michael with you,' she told Jai. ‘I'll finish up here.' She shooed them away, dusting off Leena's T-shirt and calling out to their running backs, ‘Jai, don't forget to hold your sister's hand when you're crossing the street!'

After they had gone, she settled down on the concrete floor. Michael was only a young boy and she would allow him this, knowing that it wouldn't last. That eventually, as age wore out their naivety, the three of them would begin to understand the power of their differences, would be unable to resist them. She thought to herself that it was not unlike the story that had been playing in the news recently.

A lioness at Nairobi National Park had adopted a baby antelope after she had killed his mother. For two weeks, she nurtured him, treated him as if he were one of her own. There were pictures on TV, showing her nuzzling it, keeping it warm and hauling it along by the scruff of its neck, as if it were one of her own cubs. But close to three weeks in, the baby had grown into a sleek, chestnut creature, raising itself on prancing legs. The lioness had shivered from her slumber, shaken out her fur and rolled onto her front paws. She saw the lithe animal, now meaty enough to be eaten and, as the unsuspecting youngster danced closer, the lioness yawned open her mouth and wolfed him down for breakfast.

There was a group of boys from the compound already at the market and as they approached the entrance, Tag said, ‘I see you brought your pet along with you.'

‘Mike beat you five times in a row in cricket and kicked your ass in football last week so show him some respect,' Jai said, stepping forward.