2006 - What is the What (62 page)

I was given the bedroom Mike and Grace shared; the mattress was enormous and firm, and in that first moment in that room the sheets were so white that I had to turn away. I put my bag down and sat on a small wicker chair in the corner. I had a crippling headache. I thought I was alone in the room so I dropped my head to my hands and tried to massage my skull into some kind of agreement that all this was good. But my head frequently was overwhelmed, and the best times of my life were often accompanied by migraines of inexplicable origin.

—Are you set? Mike asked.

I looked up. He was standing in the doorway.

—I’m fine, I said.—I am very good. I am very happy. I forced a smile that would convince him.

—We’re seeing a movie tonight, he said.—You’ll come?

I said I would. He and Grace had to go to work. They worked at an automobile dealership down the road, but they would be back at six to pick me up. Mike showed me the TV and the bathroom and gave me a key to his front door and to the apartment building, and he and Grace jogged down the steps and were gone.

To be alone in that place! They had given me the key and I sat for some time, watching the people move below the window. This was the first time I had been on the second story of a building. It was quite disorienting, though not so much unlike sitting in a tree over Amath’s house with Moses and William K, trying to listen in to the conversations she would have with her sisters.

After an hour of watching the street, the path below the window, I tried the television. I had seen only scattered bits of TV by that point, and so, left to my own devices, alone with twelve channels, this was a problem. I did not move for three hours, I am ashamed to admit. But the things I saw! I watched movies, the news, soccer, cooking shows, nature documentaries, a movie where the sky held two suns, and an examination of the last days of Adolf Hitler. I found a learning channel, directed to students my age, where the hosts were teaching the same book I was studying at Kakuma. This filled me with a certain pride, knowing that what was good enough for refugees was good enough for the Kenyans of Nairobi.

In the afternoon, after far too much TV, I heard the students returning from school. I used my key to lock the door and I walked out to see all the boys and girls in their uniforms, and they looked at me and whispered.

—Turkana!

—Sudan!

—Refugee!

They pointed and giggled but they were not unkind, and I loved them for not being unkind. Here the students walked freely and wore clean white shirts with plaid skirts and scarves to match. It was too much. I wanted to wear a uniform, too. I wanted to be one of them, to know what to wear every day, and to be Kenyan, to go to school along paved roads and laugh about nothing. To buy some candy on the way home and eat it and laugh! That was what I wanted. I would have walls where I slept, and I could turn a faucet and water would come and wash over my hands, as much as I wanted, cold as bone.

The film Mike, Grace, and I saw that night, I remember distinctly, was
Men in Black
. I knew to some extent what was going on in the movie, but wasn’t sure what was real and what was not. It was the first time I had been in a theater. The film was confusing but I did my best to follow the reactions of the audience. When they laughed, I laughed. When they seemed scared, I became scared, too. But all the while the separation of the real from the not-real was very difficult for me. After the movie, Mike and Grace took me for ice cream, and they asked me what I thought of
Men in Black
. There was no possibility that I would admit that I had no idea what was happening much of the time, so I lavished the film with praise and otherwise agreed with all their assessments. They were fans of Tommy Lee Jones, they said, and had seen
The Fugitive
four times.

We walked along the streets of Nairobi that night, on the way back to their apartment, and I thought of this life. To have ice cream! We actually had to choose between two ice cream vendors! I remember being conscious of the fleeting nature of that night, how in two days I would be back at Kakuma. Though I tried to disguise it, I slowed our pace as we walked. I wanted so badly to make the evening last. It was a lovely night, the air warm, the wind civilized.

Back at the apartment, Mike and Grace bid me goodnight and encouraged me to take what I wanted from the refrigerator, to watch television if I liked. This might have been a mistake. I did not take any food from them, for I was overstuffed anyway, but I did take advantage of the second part of their offer. I am not sure when I fell asleep. I spun the channels until my wrist was sore. I know that light had begun to bleach the sky when I finally went to bed, and I was dazed for most of the next day.

In the morning, I found Grace on the couch, crying. I tiptoed quietly into the living room. She held a newspaper in her hand.

—No no no! Grace said.—No! I can’t believe it!

Mike came to see what Grace was reading. I stood, timidly, for fear that something like the bombing of the embassy had happened again. As I got closer to the newspaper, I saw the image of a white woman in a car. She was very pretty, with sandy brown hair. There were pictures of the same woman handing flowers to an African child, stepping off airplanes, riding in the back of a convertibles. I guessed that this woman, whoever she was, was dead.

—This is terrible, Mike said, and sat with Grace, holding her shoulder against his. I said nothing. I still did not know what had happened. Grace turned to me. Her eyes were wet, swollen.

—Don’t you know her? she asked. I shook my head.

—This is Princess Diana. From England?

Grace explained that this woman had given a great deal of money and assistance to Kenya, that she worked for the ban on land mines. She was a beautiful person, she said.

—A car crash. In Paris, Mike said. Now he was behind Grace, wrapping his arms around her. They were the most loving couple I had ever seen. I knew my father loved my mother, but open affection like this was not part of life in my village.

All day, people were crying. Ten of us, Tabitha and the Somalis and most of the Dominics, walked through the city and wherever we went, we found people weeping—in the markets, outside the churches, on the sidewalks. It seemed the whole world knew this person named Diana, and if the world knew her, the connection between the peoples of the earth was tighter than I had imagined. I wondered if the people of England would mourn if Mike and Grace died. At that time, confused as I was, I imagined that they would.

My sleep-deprived state dulled my senses, and perhaps this was helpful. After lunch we went to the theater to rehearse for the next night’s show, and had I been more alert I might have fainted. The theater was enormous, a lavishly decorated space. The last time we performed the play we had done so on the dirt of Kakuma, the audience sitting on the ground before us. There were no proper stages in our camp, and now we were standing on real boards of cherry wood, looking out at the plush seats, twelve hundred of them. We rehearsed that day, though the mood was somber. The members of our group had all been informed of Diana’s death, and who she was, and they feigned or adopted sadness.

When the troupe was alone that day, in whole or in part, we talked about staying. We all wanted to remain in Nairobi, to live there forever. No one wanted to go back to Kakuma, even those of us with families, and we theorized about how we might stay. There were plans to run away, to disappear into the city, to hide until they’d given up on us. But we knew at least some of us would be caught and punished severely. And if anyone did run, it would mean the end of any trips to Nairobi for anyone else at Kakuma. In the end the only solution, we knew, was a sponsorship. If a Kenyan citizen agreed to sponsor any of us, or any refugee in Kakuma, one could live with that sponsor, go to a real Kenyan school, and live as the Kenyans did.

—You should ask Mike to sponsor you, one of the Dominics urged me.—I bet he would.

—I can’t ask him that.

—He’s young. He can do it.

The idea was not a good one, I didn’t think. It was the habit of so many I knew, in Kakuma and later, to take the generosity of a person and stretch it to breaking.

But in a few weaker moments I thought,
I could ask him, couldn’t I?
I could ask him the night before I was to leave. Then no harm would be done; if he said no, it would not be uncomfortable.

So that became my plan. Until the last day, I would be cavalier and happy, showing how appealing I was, and then, the last night, I would mention to Mike that a young man like myself would be helpful in Nairobi, would be able to do just about anything for Mike and Grace and the Mavuno Drama Group.

After rehearsal, Mike and Grace offered to take me and one friend out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I chose Tabitha, but was ready to have my selection rejected as inappropriate. But as it was not unusual in Kenya for people like Tabitha and me to date, Mike and Grace accepted and welcomed her. My selection intrigued them, I believe, for they asked many questions on our walk to pick her up.
Which one was she again? Did we see her yesterday? Was she wearing pink?

We ate at a restaurant with clean ceramic floors and pictures on the wall of past dignitaries of Kenya. Tabitha and I ate lamb and vegetables and soda. I gained weight, everyone did, so quickly those few days. We had never eaten so well. All during dinner Mike and Grace watched us eat, smiling sadly, and as we became sated and could talk undistracted by our food, Mike and Grace, I am sure, noticed that we were in love. They looked from Tabitha to me and back again and they grinned knowingly.

We walked from dinner to a shopping mall, four stories tall and filled with stores and people, so much glass, a movie theater. Tabitha and I pretended to be familiar with a place like this, and tried not to seem overly impressed.

—Oh lord, we’re tired, Grace said, forcing an extravagant yawn. Mike laughed and squeezed her hand. He stopped outside a photo-processing shop. A potbellied man stepped out and he and Mike and Grace greeted each other warmly.

—Okay, Mike said to Tabitha and me.—I’m guessing you two would like some time alone, and we’re willing to allow this. But first we’ll make an arrangement. This is my friend Charles.

The potbellied man nodded to us.

—He’ll be working here till ten o’clock. We will allow you two to stay here at the mall together, unchaperoned, so long as at ten o’clock, you meet Charles back here at his shop. He’ll close up and take you both home.

It was a very good deal, we thought, and so we accepted immediately. Mike handed me a handful of shillings and winked at me conspiratorially. When I held that money in one hand and Tabitha’s hand in the other, I felt sure that I was living the best moment of my life. Tabitha and I had almost two hours alone together, and it did not matter that we needed to stay inside the mall.

—Be back here at ten, Charles said, looking at Tabitha.

—You’ll be okay? Mike asked me.

—Yes sir, I said.—You can trust us.

—We do trust you, he said, and then winked at me.

—Now go, you’re free! Grace said, and shooed us with the back of her tiny hand.

Mike and Grace left the mall and Charles returned to his film-developing machines. Tabitha and I were alone and the choices were too many. I began to think where might be the most appropriate spot to hold her against me, to hold her face in my hands. Gop had instructed me to hold a woman’s face in my hands when I kissed her, and I was determined to do it this way.

I knew nothing about the mall, but I had the presence of mind to know that in such a situation, the man should appear decisive, so I first led Tabitha up two flights of stairs and into the biggest and brightest of the mall’s stores. I did not know what was inside. When I finally realized it was a grocery store, it was too late for me to change my mind. I had to feign great pride in my choice.

When I look back on this, it seems very unromantic, but we spent most of our two hours in this grocery store. It was enormous, brighter than day, and filled with as much food as all of Kakuma could eat in a week. It was also something of a variety store and a drug store, too—so many things in one place. There were twelve aisles, some with freezers stuffed with pizzas and popsicles, others stacked with home appliances and cosmetics. Tabitha examined the lipsticks, the hair products, false eyelashes, and women’s magazines; she was very much a cosmetics girl even then. At Kakuma Town the stores were wooden shacks stuffed with ancient-seeming products, nothing packaged brightly, nothing so pristine and delectable as the contents of that Nairobi grocery-variety store. We walked up and down each aisle, showing each other one wonder after another: a wall of juices and sodas, a shelf of candy and toys, fans and air conditioners, an area in the back where bicycles were lined up and gleaming. Tabitha let out a little squeal and ran to those made for the smallest riders.

She sat on a tiny tricycle built for a toddler and honked the horn.

—Val, I need to ask you an important question, she said, her eyes alight.

—Yes? I said. I was so worried that she wanted something of me that I was not prepared to give. I had feared for a long time that secretly Tabitha was well-versed in the ways of love, and that the moment we were alone, she would want to move too quickly. That it would be clear I had no experience at all. Seeing her on that tricycle provoked strong and inexplicable feelings in me.

—Let’s run, she said.

This wasn’t what I had expected.

—What? Run where? I said.

—Run away. Stay here. Leave Kakuma. Let’s not go back.

I told Tabitha that she had lost her mind. She said nothing for a minute and I thought she had regained her senses. But she was far from finished.

—Val, can’t you see? Mike and Grace expect us to leave tonight, together. That’s why they left us alone.

—Mike and Grace don’t expect us to leave.

—You heard Grace! She said
shoo!
We can go off and be like them. Wouldn’t you like to live like them? We can, Val, you and me.