The Fall of Saints (12 page)

With that, I bought a return ticket to Kenya using my credit card. Sam agreed to keep Kobi until I returned, which I hoped would not be over a week. I knew Kobi would be safe here, perhaps even like it. I did not want to add to their already hectic daily routines, so I turned to Rosie. She had few objections to coming to Ohio. It was not a bad move for her financially.

I was sad to part with Kobi. But in some strange way, I felt it was necessary; that the future I would give him depended on how honestly I could confront my past. Or rather, his past and mine were tied in a common knot of mystery, and the key to the mystery lay in Kenya.

Part Two

11

I
was born out of an affair between my mother, a school dropout, and an older person who offered support on the condition that she did not publicly proclaim him the father. She paid for the silence: Her brother, with whom she had lived since the death of their parents, kicked her out in the street.

My father bought her a stone house in Kakuyu, near Nairobi. It was known as the uniform hub because nurses, policemen, security personnel, and drivers—all in the uniforms of their trade—lived there. Our house was near a road whose tar had largely worn off, and during the rainy season, cars got stuck in the mud. The drivers and their assistants would scatter rocks and gravel under the tires for traction. Sometimes they would ask us, the children, or any onlookers to help rock the cars back and forth, and we would end up with mud all over our clothes. Quite often they would bring a bigger vehicle to tow the one stuck. The noise level was unbearable. The area made up for its run-down appearance with its location, fifteen minutes from the city center.

I can’t remember my father ever coming to the place. I never found out how much he gave my mother or how it was done. I just knew that he paid for my education and gave us enough to keep us from starving. My mother supplemented the income by taking poorly paid cleaning jobs at the offices of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation. She also planted kale, tomatoes, rosemary, basil, and thyme, some of which she sold to the local kiosks. No matter how exhausted, she would make sure to visit her garden, pull out a weed or two, or simply smell the rosemary. It was her personal ritual, and she would come out of it seemingly refreshed.

Long-legged and dark-skinned, with big brown eyes set slightly above her round cheekbones in almost perfect symmetry, my mother always walked with her back straight, believing that slouching bent one’s body and spirit. Her wide sunny smile thrilled me. She liked singing and was part of the Kakuyu Church women’s choir. She never married—I don’t know whether out of love of independence or some kind of loyalty to my father—and she didn’t have more children. Sometimes I would catch her off guard with a distant look in her eyes. She appeared so lonely, and that made me sad, but as soon as she became aware of my presence, she would light up, dispelling my sadness.

Only once did my father express interest in meeting with me. My mother had told him that I was accepted at City College of New York, and he asked that I collect the plane ticket from him in person. I begged her to tell me more about him and their relationship to prepare me for the encounter. Other than his name—George Gata, or GG, as my mother referred to him—I didn’t know much else. She smiled enigmatically.

My father lived alone but had similar pacts with other women with whom he had sired children: support on condition that they did not tarnish his image as an eternal bachelor, a
muthuri mwanake,
or bachelor polygamist, as my mother put it in Gikuyu. She painted a portrait of a decent man whose only shortcoming was that he had denied himself the wealth that comes from contact with children. She didn’t like it when I said that he was a mean bastard for denying me a father. She defended him as a good and generous man who did not know how to express love. Did she know the other woman or women? I asked her. No. Did she know the other children? No.

“You see, a dog in the manger,” I countered. “He has no right to deny me my sisters and brothers by hiding us from each other.” My mother was not too pleased to hear my view. To mollify her, I added quickly that I was curious and looked forward to the meeting. My sudden conversion from indifference to eagerness alarmed her.

“Please, Mugure, watch your tongue. He is a good man,” she pleaded.

Well, the good man kept me waiting in the lobby of his office. I looked around the room, trying to figure out what sort of business he ran. On the walls hung several calendars and pictures of long-haul trucks. The exercise irritated and agitated me: I should not have to guess that my own father was in the transportation business. Over the years, I had reconciled with not having a father, and I didn’t want this peace broken. I rushed to the bathroom to empty my bladder.

When I was finally invited in, I found the good man standing at the corner of the office with the demeanor of a person waiting for a bus due any minute. He was bald with a potbelly, the roundest I had ever seen, that seemed to rise up to meet his chest with every breath. No matter how hard I tried, I could not see the eternal lover in his figure. How could my mother have fallen in love with this man? Was it even love? I wondered.

“A spitting image of your mother,” he said almost to himself, and continued staring at me as if looking for a trace of himself. “How did you get that?” he asked, pointing at my ear. “Remarkable. Same birthmark as my father, in the exact same spot.” He chuckled and then muttered almost to himself, “The son of a bitch.”

I felt like throwing the words back at him for keeping me standing, but he finally asked me to sit down. When growing up, I used to picture our meeting quite differently. In my dream encounter, he hugged me at once and assured me that he was going to forge a new father/daughter relationship to make up for all the missing years. He would introduce me to my siblings, and we would live happily ever after. Reality was rude, this one at least. I started to say something unflattering, then stopped and shifted my gaze. His office furniture was made of exotic wood inlays and burls covered with pure leather. It exuded power and success.

“So, what are you going to study?” he asked, coming to the reason for my visit.

“Education, but I haven’t really—”

“All the way to America to train as a teacher? You could do it right here, and it would not cost me so damn much.”

For the sake of my mother, I looked away again to avoid saying something rude.

“America is a very expensive place,” he was saying. “Two of my daughters are studying there. I tell you what. I will offer you the same deal. I will pay for your tuition and upkeep for four years. After that, you are on your own. Do you understand?”

I wanted to ask him about those daughters, my siblings, their names, their ages, and where they studied. They must be older, so did I have younger sisters? Brothers? Where? Did they have the same birthmark? Then I remembered my mother’s plea to remain polite and simply said thank you.

At the door, with the check for my ticket in my hands, I glanced over my shoulder, but he had already gone back to reading the pile of papers on his desk. His voice reached me outside: “Watch out for those white boys. They like beautiful African women.”

My mother died in an accident two years after I left Kenya—she was hit by a tow truck on the road outside her house. The good man was my only parent, and until now I had not made any efforts to get in touch with him, let alone get to know him. It was ironic that I was flying home to tell him that I had a white boy for a husband.

Only I did not know which face of Zack’s whiteness I would present: the loving owner of a bellyful of laughter, a senior attorney at Edward and Palmer, or a secretive lying lawyer living under the shadow of my suspicions and that of a mysterious gunman.

12

W
hen I finally found myself outside the Jomo Kenyatta airport after a grueling fifteen-hour review of my life, I stopped, closed my eyes, and took in the sweet smell of home. The breeze. The freshness.

Wainaina walked toward me, his smile sending out a sunny embrace. “The man with a body to die for,” I said as I hugged him, to remove any lingering embarrassment about my outburst at New York University years ago.

“Yours is no less killing,” he said. “Good to see you, Mugure. You haven’t changed.”

“Neither have you. Nairobi, perhaps.”

“The skyline, yes, otherwise not much. I have been sitting in traffic for two hours.”

I was about to say it was like that when I was here for my honeymoon when I recalled that we never actually came to Nairobi. The extension of our honeymoon from Estonia to Kenya had been my idea. Zack had thought Estonia was enough, especially since I had taken to the old town so intensely, but I insisted out of a sense of equity and pride. Zack had told me that he’d never been to Kenya, and I thought of it as my contribution to the honeymoon bliss. With the help of my friend Jane, I picked out the best resorts in Malindi and Mombasa, with their amazing views of the endlessly blue waters of the Indian Ocean. I also planned trips to Maasai Mara and to the Treetops Hotel in Nyeri, but a week before we were to leave, Zack got an urgent message requesting his return to New York.

“I avoided Narobi traffic by confining my honeymoon to the coast,” I said. “I missed you, though.”

“You mean you avoided me?”

“I did not want my flame to dim when set against you,” I said.

“His name?”

“Zack Sivonen. And you? Are you hooked up with somebody, or should I divorce Zack?”

“Still a bachelor. But no divorcée for me.”

I loved our banter. It assumed a friendly familiarity but also a respectful distance. He took my suitcase, and we walked to a nearby taxi. I gave Jane’s home address to the driver. As we drove farther on Mombasa Road, the vehicles moved at a snail’s pace all the way to James Gichuru Road. Peddlers welcomed the traffic; they walked beside the cars, trying to sell their wares, pens, watches, cell phones, calling cards, newspapers, anything they could hold in their hands.

Bright-colored public minibuses tried to overcome the jam by driving on the shoulder, sending scores of cyclists and pedestrians scampering for safety on the side of the road or right into the thorny, spiny shrub around apartment blocks.

“The speed limit is generally viewed as the government’s conspiracy to slow down their business,” Wainaina said. “
Matatu
drivers ignore it all the time. Even the traffic lights are taken as decoration.”

I was going to stay with Jane. She had offered me her place, saying she would be offended if I stayed in a hotel. “Your husband refused to let you come here on your honeymoon,” she had joked on the phone. “Time for girl talk, you and I, without sons and husbands.”

Jane had never married and did not want any children, and over time, her relatives and friends alike had come to terms with the fact. She had held her views on children and marriage for as long as I could remember, even in high school. Knowing her as a rabble-rouser who was involved in every student crisis, I would not have seen her getting into law school, let alone graduating with honors from Harvard.

And now here she was, one of the most successful attorneys in Kenya, working with Lawson, Anderson, and Wilson. It was one of the oldest firms in the country, founded in the early years of the colony. Before and up to independence, it was solely European, but after, while retaining the same name and reputation, it had taken in African and Asian partners. The owners had wanted the firm known by its initials, LAW, but they were satisfied with the more popular initials SOL, for Sons of Law. She still volunteered her services at the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA). She took her work seriously but played hard on weekends, so I would not be an intrusion. At least so I hoped.

She came out of her Lavington house to welcome us to her place.

“Meet the man with a body to die for,” I announced, introducing Wainaina.

“Or a body to live for,” Jane said, casting a wicked glint at me.

I knew what it meant. “I am happily married, and he just told me he’s not interested in a divorcée. Jane has always been a troublemaker, you know,” I told Wainaina, then quickly explained, to Jane’s raucous laughter, how the phrase came to be.

“She made all the women in New York avoid me. Nobody wanted to die,” Wainaina said. He looked shy or embarrassed as he stretched his hand out to Jane. It turned out they knew each other by name, she as the sharp-tongued lawyer from SOL, and he as the nationally known investigative journalist with the
Daily Star
. “He’s the shining star of the newspaper world,” Jane said, to which Wainaina responded with appreciative modesty: “Thank you, I’ll take it coming from you.”

A warm shower and a change of clothes made me feel fresh and relaxed. Soon we were tearing into baked chicken served with soup and peas, corn, and mashed potatoes. The food brought back happy memories.

“I’m here for a week,” I told them. “I want to do in seven days what I have not done all my life.”

I talked in detail about what I had experienced in the past few weeks. Hopefully, I said, my pursuers would lose the trail. They sat there, transfixed.

“So where would you like to start?” Jane asked me.

“I really don’t know. Obviously, with my father. A daughter with a thousand questions and a father with a thousand secrets. Suppose we start with those matters where I most need your help? I want to find the local adoption agency and sort out the contradictory information about Kobi. If we can do that this afternoon, then tomorrow I can visit with my father. The Mafia connection will be made clear by what we find about the links between Nairobi and New York.”

“That’s a good starting point. After all, your problems began with your visit to that Kasla place,” Jane said.

“By the way,” Wainaina interjected, “I was able to get some more information about the agencies that didn’t respond to your messages. The one in Westlands is owned by a woman by the name of Maryanne Stanley. She’s Kenyan, but I suppose the name Stanley sounds more professional. I don’t know why people do these things; I am happy with Wainaina. But she’s a really nice person. Her agency only deals with orphaned children; they don’t work directly with any particular agency outside the country. It was closed down for renovation, but it’s back in business. That leaves us with Three Ms. As I told you, I found their logo interesting.”