Who Will Catch Us As We Fall (44 page)

She had wanted to leave for London. Unlike her husband, as an East Indian residing in Nairobi, Pooja often feels as if she inhabits a liminal state. She has lived here her whole life and yet it doesn't seem permanent. She tries to empathize with Kenyans but finds it impossible to identify with being Kenyan. She loves this country, its lushness and ease, but it has never felt like home. No matter what Raj chooses to believe, she knows that there remains an impenetrable buffer between Indians and native Kenyans – a wall that she is constantly aware of and doesn't mind because it protects her.

She is distracted from these worries by the compressed sounds of her daughter's whispers. Setting down a can of tuna, Pooja shuffles closer to the corridor so that she can hear the girl better. But still, it is impossible to understand the rushed words spoken under half-breaths.

An old uneasiness tickles her chest. For the past week, her daughter has been acting strangely, even more so than when she first arrived. Leena is constantly distracted and keeps to her room and when Pooja puts her ear to the whitewashed wood, she hears surges of laughter and low conversations, carrying on for over an hour.

‘Who are you talking to?' She bursts out of the kitchen but her daughter is already putting the phone back in her purse.

‘No one.' She reaches over Pooja's head to take the car keys from the hook near the door.

‘Where are you going?' Pooja tries to convince herself that the prick of fear is unwarranted but she cannot shake the feeling that something is being kept from her.

‘Out.'

Again, Leena is stopped by her mother's protestations. ‘Out where?'

‘You can't be serious.'

‘I'm very serious.'

Leena softens her voice. ‘I'm going to meet some friends.'

‘Which ones?' It hadn't started out as an interrogation but the way her daughter is standing, one sandal-clad foot out of the door, her ponytail roped around her wrist, Pooja knows she is hiding something.

‘What does it matter?'

‘The situation here is not very good at the moment. I want to make sure you're safe.'

‘Kiran.' Leena throws her hands up in exasperation. ‘I'm going for a coffee with her. Are you happy now?'

Pooja follows her daughter out onto the steps of the main entrance. Her anxiety is a dead weight at the back of her neck, springing her nerves into frantic energy. She waits until the car has fully reversed out of the closing gate before she hurries back into the kitchen, picks up the phone and dials Kiran's number.

He leans casually against the metal gate of Parklands Sports Club with the heels of his feet pushed out. Concentrating hard on something, he trails his toe over the ground, making a shape. Michael hasn't yet spotted her, he's so engrossed in his drawing, and she slows to a crawl. She wonders, not for the first time, nor for the tenth, what she is doing here.

He is attractive and interesting, a refreshing change from her usual friends, with the same assuredness she remembers from when they were children. Watching Michael, her mind becomes a series of images – arms thrown out, a bike beneath her, his voice calling out her name as she tripped over the curb. But the pleasure she gains from these memories is spotted, thinned by an unspoken resistance between them, and although he doesn't seem affected by it, she is.

She had thought that perhaps it might have something to do with what happened four years ago; after all, that would make sense. It would be understandable, a suitable excuse. But the more she ponders and the closer she watches him, the more she comes to realize that it is something that runs much deeper than that one problem. She was never taught to love someone like him.

Closer now, the hum of her engine audible, Michael approaches the passenger side and she glances about her, thinking how reckless it is that they're meeting here. She could run into anyone at any moment.

‘What are you looking at?' He slides into the car, sounding as if he knows her thoughts.

‘Nothing.' She does a quick U-turn and they are back on the main street. ‘Where do you want to go?'

‘Any place where there aren't too many Indians, right?' His voice is light but slightly frigid and she looks at him, feeling guilty and small-minded.

‘Michael—'

‘It doesn't matter.' He waves it away – the stiffness that suddenly settles between them. ‘I know a good place.'

He can't be sure if he takes her there just to poke some fun at her. They arrive at a kiosk-style nyama choma restaurant in Hurlingham, tucked behind a garden center. The fern-colored shade of the Tiger Palms and the moisture thickening the air creates a damp, rainforest-like heat.

Here the tables are made from recycled barrels and the beer is warm and costs a hundred bob. The toilets are in an outdoor shed – nothing but narrow holes in the ground. She holds tightly to his elbow as they make their muddy, uneven way to the door.

‘It looks interesting.' She is being polite, sensing that she upset him in the car.

‘They definitely have the best nyama choma in town.'

Before she sits, she discreetly wipes at the seat of the plastic chair and he laughs away her apology when she catches him watching her.

‘There's no reason to be sorry.' He gives her a kind look, signaling for the waiter. ‘I've always found you charmingly sweet.'

She flushes to think of how he must have seen her those many years ago, a scrawny, sulky girl disturbing their games.

‘I was a nuisance back then.' She tugs the straight edges of her hair.

He takes her fingers, bringing her hand down. ‘Quite the opposite.'

What sneaky desire his words spark in her – a weakening of her muscles and bones, collapsing her inward. She doesn't know anyone else who speaks in that manner, so unafraid of his feelings, as if he can't understand the point of secrecy.

‘I'm sorry for what I said before – about not wanting to go to Diamond Plaza because there are too many Indians there. I didn't mean it that way.'

‘Yes you did.' There is no malice in his voice.

She chuckles at the old familiarity they share. ‘Okay, I did.'

When he leans forward to scoop up some meat, she notices the lovely shape of his hands – the handsome dip of the palm and how it occasionally rubs at his stubbled cheek. The light running of veins just below his skin, dark forearms extending outward from casually rolled-up shirt sleeves.
To think he was the boy I once wished away from our lives.

‘Why does the thought of people seeing us together make you uncomfortable?' His voice pulls her back to him.

‘Because the people I know are incapable of minding their own business. You remember – they'll talk about me.'

He sits back and crosses his arms over his chest. ‘Do you think you're doing something wrong?'

She pauses to contemplate with a sip of tepid Tusker beer before telling him the story of Simran; how, when she was an eighteen-year-old girl, she had seen a woman only a few years older get kicked shamefully out of her house in the bitter hours of a cold morning for kissing a man who wasn't Indian. ‘My mother agreed with Simran's parents. She didn't think that there was anything wrong with sending one's daughter packing in the middle of the night. So can you imagine what will happen when she finds out about us?'

He looks back, unimpressed. ‘You haven't answered my question.'

She stammers, unsure. ‘I just did.'

‘I asked if you think what we're doing is wrong,' he says. ‘You've only told me your mother's opinion.' Before she has a chance to speak, he continues. ‘You don't want to go anywhere too public, don't want to talk to me too loudly, just in case people notice and talk about you only because you think you're doing something wrong.' He straightens up in his chair and gestures the waiter over, indicating for the bill. The cheerful disposition he had only moments ago has disappeared.

He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans to pull out his wallet. She offers to pay but he refuses and she sits in confused silence, feeling caught out. Most of the food remains uneaten.

When they reach the car, he lingers. ‘I'm going to walk.'

‘I don't mind dropping you off.'

He takes her hand and she is momentarily distracted by how pleasant it is – dry and smooth and when she looks down, she recalls that clean and constant palm.

‘I really like you,' he tells her in a tone of dead seriousness. He is so much more grown up than the other boys she knows, doesn't look like he wastes time on anything as childish as going to bars and gossiping. He sounds like he knows the world and understands it in a way that is only possible when you pay attention. ‘But I'm not in the habit of being ashamed of myself and I don't want to be with someone who is embarrassed of me.'

He stops her protestations by placing two fingers on her mouth and it makes her remember three emerald peas, sheets of newspaper beneath her feet and a red plastic bucket in the middle of their circle. A boy flying through the market, his back solid beneath her.

‘You need to think about some things, Leena,' he tells her as he throws his jacket over his shoulder, moving toward the gate. ‘Before you decide whether or not you want to see me again.'

He sits at home alone most nights now with nothing but the sad drumming above him, old and tired as well. Sometimes he holds the remnants of their note in his hand, reading and rereading what is left of it in the hope that one day he will know what ladder Betty climbed and will be able to find her. For the most part, however, he leaves the smudged paper beside his bottle of whiskey and it flutters teasingly in the evening breeze. Oftentimes, he is tempted to let it be carried away. Perhaps then he can let her go.

He had planned on leaving Nairobi – to travel somewhere upcountry, almost two hundred feet above sea level, where the vices of the city would not follow. He didn't know where to, just somewhere that wasn't filled with ghosts, both dead and alive. But with the elections less than a month away, he had been told that his services were needed.
To ensure that peace is kept.
He scoffs at the idea – whether or not it was would not be up to him.

There are traces of violence starting up though it's hardly a cause for concern because it's what happens every election period. Luos fighting Mkambas fighting Kalenjins and everyone fighting the Kikuyus.
The Jews of Kenya.
A fellow police officer had told him just yesterday, ‘Ever since Jomo took his place as our first president, they have all been rubbing our noses in their pre-eminence. These Kikuyus are obnoxious, loud, thrusting and everywhere – they need to be taught a lesson.'

Jeffery had always kept away from politics. When he was younger, it had been too dirty and disturbing for him. Kenyan politicians were a strange breed, their heads full of water and more indecisive and easily swayed than the most uneducated man in the country. Men here did not go into politics for a love of Kenya and its people – it was for the high salaries, the holiday villas and private jets.

It is humorous to think of the relentless campaigning, all of them coming in with such grand promises. Better housing. Lower food prices. Land relocation – ‘Vote for me and I will be for all Kenyans and not just my tribe – it's time we unite.' Never mentioning that for the past fifty years, the ruling elite had always been determined to hype ethnic differences to cover up its more suspicious activities. These promises were then dusted out of State House as soon as the new president entered the sprawling, three-hundred-acre property with its high gates and beautifully crafted gardens.

Jeffery has time to reflect on such things now. Soon after Betty and Esther left, Marlyn did too, coming to him in tears and a makeup-less face. She had looked more alluring that day than he had ever known her to be, handing him back the very first necklace he had bought her.

‘When I wear this, I remember you as you used to be. Perhaps it will give you the same comfort.'

She had kissed him on the cheek, keeping the trembling tips of her fingers close to his mouth.

‘Why are you doing this?' He had held tightly to the flesh of her arms.

‘Because you aren't the man I fell in love with.'

After she had left, he sat with the jewelry set in his lap, watching his reflection within its shiny, gold-plated surface and found that Marlyn had been right. He was hidden within the grooves of the fake crystals, the chipped and dulled rhinestone setting – a shy young man staring into the silky display window of an Indian clothing store. He had snapped the case shut and put it away, never looking at it again.

Now he turns up the radio, grateful for its presence because it drowns out the stillness of the house, and listens to the presenter.

‘Most Kenyans are still hoping for a peaceful election, a fair one.'

Since they have never had either, it is not a question of whether it will become violent but rather
how violent
it will become.

That is the problem with Kenyans, Jeffery concludes. They are foolish, hopeful dreamers. Trample on a Kenyan with fake promises and flatteries and he will rise up and run straight back, hungry for your boot. Yes, he may for a time protest and speak out, but eventually he will return to his life, nonplussed, consoled by family and friends.
What can we do, how much can we say
–
our lives don't matter but they are ours, carry on, carry on, this is the way the world has always been
.

Pooja is waiting in the doorway for her daughter, so anxious that her eyes have become slightly unfocused, her thick plait coming apart.

‘Where were you?' she demands.

Lost in her musings, Leena steps into the house and snaps, ‘I told you, I was with Kiran.'

‘Don't lie to me. I called her after you left – she didn't know what I was talking about when I asked if she was meeting you for coffee.'