Who Will Catch Us As We Fall (7 page)

She had been disappointed when the sun started to lose its solidness, as it stretched out across the afternoon sky and people began to leave, pulling on their cardigans and shivering in the slight chill that the evening brought with it.

It had been a successful event and now the family sat in contented silence as Raj tapped his fingers on the wheel and hummed old Hindi film songs. The trunk of the station wagon was full of presents and leftover goodie bags, from which Jai had grabbed a Chupa-Chups
lollipop.

‘That's not for you,' Leena had protested from the other side of the backseat, lunging toward him.

He dodged her snatching fingers easily, her seatbelt holding her back. He wrapped his tongue around the Coca-Cola flavored lollipop, sucked on it lightly before smacking his lips together. ‘I don't know why I had to come to this lame party.'

‘It wasn't lame!' It had been Leena's first boy-girl party because her mother had conceded that she was now old enough to invite boys as well as
girls. She had worn her new outfit for it: a white, flower-printed T-shirt and a denim skirt that had a pair of shorts stitched into them.
Culottes
,
Pooja had called them the night she had returned from visiting her brother in London.
Everyone is wearing them on Oxford Street. See how easy they are? You can sit, stand, jump, run, everything without your panties showing.

Twelve years old and still a baby. Jai rolled his eyes and reached back into the goodie bags, found her favorite – Strawberry & Cream – and gave it to her. ‘Now you have one too so you can stop bugging me.' He inserted the headphones of his new Sony Walkman into his ears and pressed play on his recently made mix tape.

‘I want to listen with you.' Leena grabbed his arm. ‘Let me listen with you.'

‘You have your own Walkman.' She had received hers that morning as a birthday present.

‘I didn't have time to make a tape!'

‘Stop it.'

‘Give me!'

‘You'll spoil the whole thing.'

‘
Maaa
.'

‘
Baas
.' Nothing as loud as their father's quiet voice, telling them he'd had enough. ‘Can't you see I'm driving?' He looked back at his children.

‘Watch out!' Jai leaned forward with wide eyes, pointing outward, and Raj turned speedily in his seat to see a man lying in the middle of the road. He slammed his brakes, heard the squealing protest of the wheels before the car came to a halt in a haze of rubber fumes.

Parking the car up on the curb, Raj climbed out while instructing his family to lock the doors. He approached the man, whose only movements were the sharp jerks of struggling breath.

Raj hiked up his trousers and knelt down. ‘
Mzee
,' he spoke gently, not wanting to startle him. ‘
Makosa ni nini?
' The man rolled, stretched out on his back and looked up at Raj with wet, unseeing eyes. He spoke in single words.

‘Sick,' he groaned. ‘Diabetes.'

‘Where is your medicine?' Raj was calm despite the cars veering narrowly by them, the sound of horns telling him that they considered this a nuisance, keeping their palms pressed down as they passed.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

‘None.' White foam had formed at the corners of his mouth, his eyes rolling and fluttering shut before he lurched back with a gasp. ‘And. No. Money.'

Raj glanced back at his car. ‘I'll be back,' he told the man, dodging the traffic back to his family, knocking urgently on his wife's window.

‘What are you doing?' Her relaxed disposition from the afternoon was slowly fading.

‘We have to take him to the hospital.'

‘No, we don't,' she replied. ‘Just get back in the car. It's getting late.'

Raj didn't have time for an argument. Sticking his hand inside the window he unlocked the door and ushered Pooja out. ‘Get in the back, quickly. I'll go and get him.' He gestured for Jai to help him.

Pooja shouted after them, the light-headedness beginning to settle into a throbbing headache. ‘You – Raj Kohli, come back here!'

But he was already away with his son, back on the road and lost in the cacophonic noise of the traffic.

They had never had an African in their car before. Skin cracked open with dryness, rubbing his tongue continuously over his lips and along his inner cheeks. His clothes were old strips of dirty cotton and the soles of his shoes were broken – like flapping, dusty mouths every time he moved his feet. Leena wanted to open a window for his smell to escape but she was squeezed tightly between her mother and Jai.

She recalled Pooja's constant warnings.
You must be careful, most of them are thieves
–
they robbed my friend Bharti, they hijacked your second cousin, Jiten, and tied him up and stuffed him in the boot for three hours!
Those words caused fear to pile up in her because it made it impossible not to see this man as the enemy.

Her father spoke, his soft voice immediately soothing her. ‘We're almost there.'

‘Where exactly is
there
?' Pooja asked pointedly, speaking in Punjabi.

‘We're taking him to M.P. Shah Hospital.'

Pooja shook her head. ‘Don't you ever think that other people would also be able to solve these problems if you just let them?'

‘Did you see anyone else stopping for him?'

She talked over her husband. ‘Always having to be the first, always wanting to be the hero.'

‘What would you have me do? Leave him dying in the middle of the road?'

‘And when we get to the hospital? If he has no money, they'll just let him die there anyway.'

Raj remained silent, unwilling to reveal his full plan to Pooja.
Constantly wanting to argue
, he thought irritably.
The woman was born with difficulty in her blood.

When they reached the hospital, Jai helped his father to carry the man across the parking lot, toward the swinging white doors of Emergency Care. It was difficult and took time, given how heavy and limp the man had become. When they placed him in the plastic chair of the crowded waiting room, the man groaned and his head began to pitch and roll.

‘Let it kill me.'

‘Hush.' Raj patted his shoulder. ‘You'll be better soon.'

People in the waiting room had lowered their magazines, watching the scene keenly.

‘Go and tell the receptionist he needs immediate help,' Raj instructed his son, and as Jai went to speak to the woman behind the desk, Raj slipped three thousand shillings into the man's limp hand and pressed it shut. ‘This should be enough for you right now.'

‘Thank you,
mzee
,' his fingers clutched tightly.

As they made their way back to the car, Raj wrapped his arm around his son's shoulders and brought him close, whispering, ‘No telling your mother about this, you hear…'

They were watching the nine o'clock news later that night when they were interrupted by the shrill ring of the telephone.

‘Mr Kohli? This is Dr Pattni from…'

‘Yes, yes. How is he?'

‘I'm afraid I don't know.'

Confusion made his words slow. ‘What do you mean you don't know?'

‘He left just after you dropped him off.'

‘But he could barely even stand!' Raj remembered to speak in whispers, gripping the telephone, struggling to understand.

‘The nurse at the front desk told me that he waited for five minutes after you left and then stood up and walked out. No one saw where he went.'

‘Are you saying that he tricked me into thinking he was sick so that I would give him money?'

‘I've seen it happen before. It was very kind of you to bring him in.'

Raj swallowed down his building aggression. ‘Thank you for calling.' He put the phone down and turned to his son, who was standing beside him. ‘You heard that?'

‘Yes.'

‘You know, the people with the kindest hearts are often the ones who get trampled on the most. That doesn't mean you stop being generous, understood?' Raj gazed down at the phone, thinking of the man and what Pio might have done and his anger slowly broke apart. He said to Jai, ‘One day, you will be called upon to do the right thing and nothing else will matter except that you do it. African, Indian,
Gorah
,
it doesn't matter when we are all Kenyans.'

The world fell away, shimmered and thinned. The circle of people around her dropped down one by one, folded up like cardboard mannequins to be stashed away. All she could feel was the sturdy, round hardness of the marble pressed against the tip of her index finger, her head filled with the oceanic rush of her breath.
Ready. Set.

‘Hurry up and take your shot.'

Go.

The voice distracted her and the marble slipped from her hand, bounced sadly once and rolled a couple of centimeters ahead.

‘You cheated!' Leena pulled herself up off her knees, starting toward Tag. ‘Do you know how long it took me to set up that shot? I would have hit you, I know I would have.'

Her circle of friends slowly rippled back into existence.

Tag rolled his eyes.
Girls. Especially this one.
‘Think what you want.'

She grabbed the marble and stepped back, her arms crossed tightly over her chest as he knelt down, eyebrows sinking forward in concentration. ‘Fine, take your shot. Just remember—'

‘Excuse me?'

It came from behind her, a voice on the wind. One that she didn't recognize, unsettling her because everything in this closely guarded, gated compound was familiar.

A boy was watching them with eyes that were quiet, dark pools and his hands were curled around the thick, worn-out strap of his satchel. Her mother's voice came to her.
You must be very, very careful of these Africans. They can even use their children to trick you.

‘What are you staring at him like that for?' Jai came down the steps of their house to stand beside the boy.

‘Didn't know you had African friends, Jai.' Tag had set his marble carefully down and had stood up, sneering. The crowd around him tittered nervously, having been taught, as Leena had, to be suspicious of such people.

‘Can I help you?' Jai asked the boy, ignoring Tag.

‘I'm looking for Angela.' His English was drawn out and careful, steady despite the whispers around him.

Leena spoke up. ‘You mean our Angela?'

At that, the boy looked at her once more, his face crinkling into a question.

‘Your Angela?'

Jai interrupted, shooting his sister a warning look. ‘Angela Muriuki?'

‘Is she here?'

‘She's around the back.' Jai gestured for the boy to follow him.

Tag was down on the pavement again, victory within reach and the boy forgotten. When the last marble was knocked out of the fading dust circle, he threw his hands up in celebration. ‘I win.'

But Leena wasn't listening. She was too busy staring after her brother, at the boy who walked so lightly beside him – grave and serious, entering into shadows.

Raj heard his daughter come loudly through the door, a shout on her lips. She was so intent on finding Pooja, she failed to see him leaning on the sill of the open window in the living room, out of which he had been smoking leisurely and watching her play.

The sky was sinking into darkness, opening up its pockets of evening stars – tiny blades of metallic light blurring the edges of all the street objects so that they merged into one large, indistinguishable shadow. As if timed, the yellow lights from the neighboring houses sprung on as people sat down for dinner. Several housemaids emerged from around the verandas, out of their uniforms and in long skirts and cotton blouses, clutching plastic bags full of their belongings. They converged at the main gate, ready to walk home or take
matatus
together, speaking in rapid, fading tones. Housewives leaned out of doorways to call for their children, releasing cooking smells so that soon the entire compound was alive in the stink of Indian curry staples: cumin, fried red onions and garlic.

To rid himself of the stench, Raj lit another Embassy Light. He was disappointed at the ending of the game outside. It pleased him to watch the children playing, their unrestrained, boisterous nature that knew how to exist only in extremes. When he had been his daughter's age, all he had known was frenzied joy or the powerful crush of sorrow – anger that moved him to tears or the total stillness of an untroubled mind. There had been no room for a middle ground, no space for those diluted, in-between emotions which, as an adult, he had begun to settle for.
Mock feelings
,
he called them, because they weren't real, only poor imitations of something true. Under the guise of maturity he had grown shallow and bland, but when he watched his daughter play – saw the permanent crease of irritation across her forehead or heard the tantrum-stamp of her shoes – it stirred within him a sweet recollection, a longing for a simpler time.

He turned from the window and to the small picture that hung on the right wall, swallowed by the busy, floral wallpaper.

‘You never lost that, did you?' Raj said to Pio Gama Pinto.

The modest Goan man stared back at him with that infamous, wide smile and 1950s bushy haircut, his essence perfectly captured in the sepia-toned newspaper clipping.

When Raj had first come across that photo, he had been sixteen and restless. Two years after independence, the country was awash in so many possibilities that one went hunting for a dream the way they did a lion on safari – as mad and hungry men, greedy for a purpose. He had been rifling through the newspaper in the back room of a family friend's
duka
and had paused at the image of a young Asian man hoisted upon the shoulders of his cheering black compatriots; had discovered something within its frozen celebration – a lingering hope that he had struggled to catch hold of before the demanding shop owner barged through the door.