Who Will Catch Us As We Fall (20 page)

It began one night, after Jai and Leena had gone inside for dinner and he wandered the compound, waiting for his mother to finish. He had been accosted in the small alleyway between two houses by Tag. The boy followed him for several steps before Michael stopped.

‘What do you want?'

‘You're the intruder here.' Tag was advancing. ‘This is where I live. I'll go wherever I want.'

Michael had tried to move past the boy, back into the lit-up street, but heavy fingers were laid on his chest.

‘She was in on it, you know,' Tag informed him. ‘She came up with the idea because she wanted to get rid of you.'

‘Who?'

‘Quit playing dumb. You know who. She said you smell funny and dress in ugly, old clothes and that you refuse to leave them alone, even though Jai is only being nice to you because his father told him to be.' Tag was glad that he had caught Leena crying behind the water tank that day. She had been so upset, so ready to spill everything and then begged profusely afterward for him to keep her secrets safe.

Not wanting to hear any more, Michael said, ‘Get out of my way.'

Tag pushed himself up off the wall, his large frame blocking the entire path. ‘Make me.'

‘What do you want?' Michael asked, a little tiredly.

‘
She
wants you to stop coming here. Get a hint – you don't belong in this place.'

‘Then why did she defend me?' His stomach plummeted in pleasure at this memory.

Silence. They heard Angela calling and he was about to push past Tag when his collar was grabbed and he was shoved up against the grille gate of someone's veranda. The smell of Indian spices and bad breath. Michael turned his head away.

‘She was just scared that she was going to get into trouble. It had nothing to do with you.'

‘Mike?' His mother stood at the edge of the tunnel-like alleyway, ready to come in. Tag released him and Michael straightened his shirt, starting to smile. He was still grinning when he emerged onto the street and into the graying evening.

He should have been upset. As they made their way home, Michael searched for a sense of betrayal or injustice, thought that he would have been hurt to learn that she had wanted him to leave, but instead found himself walking with a light step beside his mother, unable to stop smiling.

‘What was that boy saying to you?' his mother demanded as they carefully navigated the broken, almost non-existent pedestrian pathway, past hordes of other people making their way home. A light drizzle had started and a faint layer of mist built upon his cheeks, caught in his eyelashes, polka-dotting his vision.

‘Nothing important. He just doesn't like me, that's all.'

‘And that doesn't make you angry?'

He shook his head because he finally understood the reason for Tag's hostility. The boy had threatened him because of her, because he was intimidated by his presence, and the shock of it jolted Michael into his own awareness.

‘I don't care about him.'

The world had shrunk into the small, gangly figure of a twelve-year-old girl. Everywhere he looked, he discovered her. Her name housed itself on his tongue, waiting to jump out every time he opened his mouth to speak. It was liberating to be so possessed by another, as if she were living inside his skin.

It didn't matter to him what Leena had thought before, because she had changed her mind. She had protected him, come to the decision that what she had planned was wrong and had wanted him to stay.

Evenings soon became the center of their lives. Those free hours after school they stole to sit together beneath the bougainvillea tree, in the soft chill that carried the scent of wood fires being lit up for the night. Michael watched Leena speak in that charming way, more with her hands than her words. Always gesturing in wide sweeps when she was explaining something, or stabbing the air with frustration – he had come to know all her gestures by now. Sometimes, he even found himself mimicking her.

She was telling him about her school, a private one in the suburbs of Karen, and the way she described it – small classrooms of fifteen children, British expatriate teachers who were strict about manners and cleanliness, the science lab and outdoor swimming pool – burned him up with longing.

‘Do you have British teachers also?' she asked.

Embarrassment. It was a new feeling that came with the others – a severe self-consciousness that caused Jackie to yell at him every morning to hurry up: ‘I was ready in five minutes and you're still finding your trousers,' pointing at his torn pajamas and raising an eyebrow. He had rushed back up to put on his school pants, her giggles running through his ears, making him laugh until he shook and felt his mind slip away.

Every afternoon before leaving school, he would check his appearance in the bathroom, waiting until all the other students had gone before grabbing the slimy, black bar of soap and running it under his arms, wiping away the foam with a wad of wet toilet paper. He bowed his head under the cool water of the tap before gargling repeatedly.

When he reached the apartments, he worried that it had all been for nothing because the sun was too hot and he had sweated all over again. That was why, despite wanting to always stand close to her, he kept his distance, worried she might catch a whiff of him. So when she asked whether he had British teachers, he wanted to lie but couldn't bring himself to.

‘No. They're all Kenyans.'

She stared at him, reflecting on how strange he had become – aloof, without a trace of the easiness that had been there when he had helped with her bike. Gone was the cool, collected boy she had come to know. Nowadays, he couldn't seem to keep still, his eyes forever darting, his feet always stepping away from her – and when she asked him questions, he no longer teased her but regarded her with a seriousness that was out of place in their new friendship.

‘I bet they teach you things relevant to our history,' Jai interjected. ‘We learn about British prime ministers and American wars, when all I really want to know is how the Mau Mau got our country back.'

He had been this way ever since school had started, disillusioned and frustrated, refusing to back down on his new opinions, even though Pooja often rubbed her temples and groaned, ‘Why must we always talk about such things at dinner?'

Finally, concerned about her son's recent interest in Kenya's past, his growing friendship with Michael and the way he shunned all the other boys in the compound and at school, she asked, ‘Is there something going on that we should know about?'

‘Just because my ideas don't agree with yours doesn't mean there's something wrong.' He looked her boldly in the eye, in his lap a history book she had spotted Michael with, not long before.

‘Don't talk to me that way.' Pooja banged her fist down on the table. ‘Bringing so much shame onto this family,' she said, pointing at her husband. ‘And you aren't doing a thing to stop it.'

‘Leave the boy alone.' Raj spoke proudly. ‘He's growing up.'

In their room, Leena tried asking him again. ‘She's worried about you,' she told her brother. ‘And so am I.'

She felt distanced from Jai in a way she never had before; it was as if his readings had created an unshakeable barrier of misunderstanding between them – as if everything she said and did was wrong.

‘There's nothing to worry about. I'm fine.'

In truth, Jai's feelings had never been more tangled, more impossible to decipher. He knew that his father was proud of him, could sense it in the way Raj spoke to him, more like an equal – listening to him talk with rapt attention. Sometimes, in the middle of a conversation, Raj would rub Jai's head with his large hand and say, ‘You're such a clever boy. You've made us very proud,' gesturing at Pinto's picture, which Jai didn't like to look at any more because it was full of too-big dreams and the disappointments that inevitably came with them. Yet it had pleased him that his father thought of him that way – and he was involuntarily sucked into the heroic, larger-than-life version of himself that lived inside his father's mind.

But he found, after reading the books Michael had lent him, that he was burdened with a phantom despair. The history of his people in Kenya was fraught with racial tension and violence, beginning with the
coolies
brought in by the British to build the Ugandan railway and it seemed that even now, those divisions were there, stronger than ever, and he was overwhelmed by it. Sometimes he wished he could erase all the information he had learned and live with the easiness of an unthinking, empty mind.

Wanting to break the heaviness in his chest, he leaned over the edge of his bunk and said to his sister, ‘Michael is our friend.'

‘I know.' She tried not to feel as if he were blaming her for something.

‘You shouldn't let what anyone else says about him change that.'

The mattress shifted above. She reached up to touch the shafts of wood holding him away from her. ‘I won't.'

‘It's harder than you think. People can be cruel.' They lay in silence, listening to the night noises before he spoke again. ‘I'm not sure what's happening to me, so what do I tell Ma? Sometimes I feel so confused and angry.'

Leena didn't know what to say – was at a loss as to how to comfort him, afraid that her words might drive him further away, might disappoint him on this first time he was looking to her for answers.

‘You're the best person I know,' she said finally.

Again, his face came into view and it was more relaxed this time, more like himself. When he smiled, it was a flood of happiness in her chest. ‘Thanks, monkey.'

There was an old electronics store downtown, situated in the center of Biashara Street, nestled between dozens of small shops, which had been standing there for three generations, selling everything from leather to textiles, live chickens and food. Jeffery passed the many East Indian
dukas
, such as Sunu's Baby & Children and Taj's Fancy Shop, pausing to glance at the bright silks draped in the display windows and the costume jewelry sets that most Indian women wore – and wondered what one would look like on her. He imagined the necklace high up on her neck, falling in stiff waves of gold and ruby and he paused, fingers pressed to the glass, before David kicked his ankles and forced him forward.

‘There it is.' David pointed to a large sign that read Abdullah & Sons Electronics and they crossed the street, holding up their hands to pause speeding
matatus
and
boda-bodas
,
motorcycle taxis, as they criss-crossed their way to the shop's entrance.

A bell chimed as they went in and the man at the counter paused from what he was doing, placing the phone battery aside as they approached, asking pleasantly, ‘Yes, officers? What can I do for you?'

David rested his palms on the glass countertop. ‘Is this your shop?'

‘It is.'

‘You have many things here,' David observed, gesturing at the shelves stacked with radio parts, CD players, TVs in sealed packages. ‘Where do you get everything from?'

‘Overseas, mostly.' The man's manner was untroubled and he spoke in Swahili. ‘I make a few trips to America every year.'

‘Business must be doing well then.' David was glowering, his voice packed with envy, and Jeffery found that he was affected by a tightening in his chest as well, a plummeting jealousy. His whole life he had been dreaming of leaving Kibera for Nairobi, only a few kilometers away, but it had never occurred to him to think of traveling any further.

‘God willing.' The shopkeeper understood they wanted something and was prepared to make them wait for it. ‘If you could give me a few minutes,' he held up the phone battery, ‘I have to fix this for a customer.'

They watched him as he worked. He was likely in his early thirties, light-skinned and groomed, dressed in a lavender shirt left open at the collar. Everything about him was extravagant. A thick gold chain was roped around his neck, a matching hoop in his left earlobe. Most of his fingers were adorned with large-stone, imitation rings and whenever he moved, the officers were overwhelmed by a musky scent of cheap deodorant, disguising itself as cologne. Catching the lemony whiff, Jeffery noticed that in every exaggerated action, a small bit of the man's falsity came leaking through, and when he glanced at David he received a nod in confirmation.

After several minutes, David asked, ‘Are you finished?'

‘Sorry to keep you waiting. As you can see, I was busy.'

David stood, stretched and tilted his body as if to peer into the back of the shop. ‘Don't you have any employees to help you?'

‘They've gone for lunch.'

The two officers glanced purposefully at the clock overhead, which read ten forty-five. ‘So early?'

‘I didn't think I would have so many jobs, so I told my man to take the day off.'

‘It doesn't do you any good, playing games with a police officer.'

‘I'm not lying.'

David folded his hands into his belt. ‘Tell me this. You seem like a very successful businessman. You go on trips, you wear lots of necklaces and such things. And yet, when I look around, it seems to me that your shop is in trouble.' He held his hand up to stop the man from interjecting. ‘No need, I understand. The black market for electronics is growing and why would anyone come here to buy something when they can get it cheap, cheap from the
chokora
down the street?'

‘It's difficult,' the young man admitted. ‘But I'm getting by.'

‘And how is that?' David leaned in once more.

For the first time, the man looked uncomfortable.

David's voice shaped itself into a steely sternness. ‘A
sacco
,
sindiyo
?'

Stubborn quietness filled the shop; the sound of haggling street vendors outside came sneaking through.