Say You’re One Of Them (2 page)

“Happee, happee Ex-mas,
tarling!
” Mama toasted me after a while, rubbing my head.

“You too, Mama.”

“Now, where are these daughters? Don’t they want to do Ex-mas prayer?” She sniffed the bottle until her eyes receded, her face pinched like the face of a mad cow. “And the govament banned this sweet thing. Say thanks to the neighbors, boy. Where did they find this hunger killer?” Sometimes she released her lips from the bottle with a smacking sound. As the night thickened, her face began to swell, and she kept pouting and biting her lips to check the numbness. They turned red—they looked like Maisha’s when she had on lipstick—and puffed up.

“Mama? So, what can we give the neighbors for Ex-mas?” I asked, remembering that we had not bought anything for our friends.

My question jerked her back. “Petrol . . . we will buy them a half liter of petrol,” she said, and belched. Her breath smelled of carbide, then of sour wine. When she looked up again, our eyes met, and I lowered mine in embarrassment. In our
machokosh
culture, petrol was not as valuable as glue. Any self-respecting street kid should always have his own stock of
kabire.
“OK, son, next year . . . we get better things. I don’t want police business this year—so don’t start having ideas.”

We heard two drunks stumbling toward our home. Mama hid the bottle. They stood outside announcing that they had come to wish us a merry Ex-mas. “My husband is not here!” Mama lied. I recognized the voices. It was Bwana Marcos Wako and his wife, Cecilia. Baba had owed them money for four years. They came whenever they smelled money, then Baba had to take off for a few days. When Baby was born, we pawned three-quarters of his clothing to defray the debts. A week before Ex-mas, the couple had raided us, confiscating Baba’s work clothes in the name of debt servicing.

I quickly covered the trunk with rags and reached into my pocket, tightening my grip around the rusty penknife I carried about.

Mama and I stood by the door. Bwana Wako wore his trousers belted across his forehead; the legs, flailing behind him, were tied in knots and stuffed with
ugali
flour, which he must have gotten from a street party. Cecilia wore only her jacket and her rain boots.

“Ah, Mama Jigana-
ni
Ex-mas!” the husband said. “Forget the money. Happee Ex-mas!”

“We hear Jigana is going to school,” the wife said.

“Who told you?” Mama said warily. “Me, I don’t like rumors.”

They turned to me. “Happee to resume school, boy?”

“Me am not going to school,” I lied, to spare my tuition money.

“
Kai,
like mama like son!” the wife said. “You must to know you are the hope of your family.”

“Mama Jigana, listen,” the man said. “Maisha came to us last week. Good, responsible gal. She begged us to let bygone be bygone so Jigana can go to school. We say forget the money—our Ex-mas gift to your family.”

“You must to go far with education, Jigana,” the wife said, handing me a new pen and pencil. “
Mpaka
university!”

Mama laughed, jumping into the flooded alley. She hugged them and allowed them to come closer to our shack. They staggered to our door, swaying like masqueraders on stilts.

“
Asante sana!
” I thanked them. I uncorked the pen and wrote all over my palms and smelled the tart scent of the Hero HB pencil. Mama wedged herself between them and the shack to ensure that they did not pull it down. Baba whispered to us from inside, ready to slip away, “Ha, they told me the same thing last year. You watch and see, tomorrow they come looking for me. Make them sign paper this time.” Mama quickly got them some paper and they signed, using my back as a table. Then they staggered away, the stuffed trousers bouncing along behind them.

Mama began to sing Maisha’s praises and promised never to pound on her trunk again. Recently, Maisha had taken the twins to the barber, and Baby to Kenyatta National Hospital for a checkup. Now she had gotten our debt canceled. I felt like running out to search for her in the streets. I wanted to hug her and laugh until the moon dissolved. I wanted to buy her Coke and chapati, for sometimes she forgot to eat. But when Mama saw me combing my hair, she said nobody was allowed to leave until we had finished saying the Ex-mas prayer.

I
HUNG
OUT
WITH
Maisha some nights on the street, and we talked about fine cars and lovely Nairobi suburbs. We’d imagine what it would be like to visit the Masai Mara Game Reserve or to eat roasted ostrich or crocodile at the Carnivore, like tourists.

“You beautiful!” I had told Maisha one night on Koinange Street, months before that fateful Ex-mas.

“Ah, no, me am not.” She laughed, straightening her jean mini-skirt. “Stop lying.”

“See your face?”

“
Kai,
who sent you?”

“And you bounce like models.”

“Yah, yah, yah. Not tall. Nose? Too short and big. No lean face or full lips. No firsthand designer clothes. Not daring or beautiful like Naema. Perfume and mascara are not everything.”

“
Haki,
you? Beautiful woman,” I said, snapping my fingers. “You will be tall tomorrow.”

“You are asking me out?” she said in jest, and struck a pose. She made faces as if she were playing with the twins and said, “Be a man, do it the right way.”

I shrugged and laughed.

“Me, I have no shilling, big gal.”

“I will discount you, guy.”

“Stop it.”

“Oh, come on,” she said, and pulled me into a hug.

Giggling, we began walking, our strides softened by laughter. Everything became funny. We couldn’t stop laughing at ourselves, at the people around us. When my sides began to ache and I stopped, she tickled my ribs.

We laughed at the gangs of street kids massed together in sound sleep. Some gangs slept in graded symmetry. Others slept freestyle. Some had a huge tarp above their piles to protect them from the elements. Others had nothing. We laughed at a group of city taxi drivers huddled together, warming themselves with cups of
chai
and fiery political banter while waiting for the Akamba buses to arrive with passengers from Tanzania and Uganda. Occasionally we’d see the anxious faces of these visitors in the old taxis, bracing for what would be the most dangerous twenty minutes of their twelve-hour journeys, fearful of being robbed whenever the taxis slowed down.

We were not afraid of the city at night. It was our playground. At times like this, it was as if Maisha had forgotten her job, and all she wanted to do was laugh and playact.

“You? Nice guy,” Maisha said.

“Lie.”

I pulled at her handbag.

“You will be a big man tomorrow . . .”

She dashed past me suddenly to wave down a chauffeured Volvo. It stopped right in front of her, the window rolling down. A man in the backseat inspected her and shook his bald head. He beckoned a taller girl from the cluster jostling behind her, trying to fit their faces in the window. Maisha ran to a silver Mercedes-Benz wagon, but the owner picked a shorter girl.

“Someday, I must to find a real job,” Maisha said, sighing, when she came back.

“What job, gal?”

“I want to try fulltime.”

“
Wapi?
”

She shrugged. “Mombasa? Dar?”

I shook my head. “Bad news, big gal. How long?”

“I don’t know.
Ni maisha yangu,
guy, it’s my life. I’m thinking, full time will allow me to pay your fees and also save for myself. I will send money through the church for you. I’ll quit the brothel when I save a bit. I don’t want to stand on the road forever. Me myself must to go to school one day . . .”

The words died in her throat. She pursed her lips, folded her hands across her chest, and rocked from side to side. She did not rush to any more cars.

“We won’t see you again?” I said. “No, thanks. If you enter brothel, me I won’t go to school.”

“Then I get to keep my money, ha-ha. Without you, they won’t see my shilling in that house. Never.” She saw my face, stopped suddenly, then burst into giggles. “I was kidding you, guy, about the brothel. Just kidding, OK?”

She tickled me, pulling me toward Moi Avenue. I held her hand tightly. Prostitutes fluttered about under streetlights, dressed like winged termites.

“Maisha, our parents—”

She turned sharply, her fists balled.

“Shut up! You shame me, you rat. Leave me alone. Me am not your mate. You can’t afford me!”

Other girls turned and stared at us, giggling. Maisha strode away. It had been a mistake to mention our parents in front of the other girls, to let them know that we were related. And I shouldn’t have called her by her real name. I cried all the way home because I had hurt her. She ignored me for weeks.

AFTER
MAMA
STOPPED
CELEBRATING
the end of our debt, she fished out two little waterproof Uchumi Supermarket bags from the carton and smoothed them out as if they were rumpled socks. She put them over her canvas shoes, tying the handles around her ankles in little bows. Then she walked out into the flood, her winged galoshes scooping the water like a duck’s feet. She started to untie our bag of utensils and food, which was leaning against the shop, her eyes searching for a dry spot to set up the stove, to warm some food for the twins. But the rain was coming down too heavily now, and after a while she gave up.

“Jigana, so did you see those Maisha’s
ma
men?” she asked.

“There were three white men, plus driver. Tall, old men in knickers and tennis shoes. I shook hands with them. Beautiful-beautiful motorcar. . . . I even pinched that monkey.”

“Motorcar? They had a motorcar?
Imachine
a motorcar to pick up my daughter.” She stretched forward and held my arms, smiling. “You mean my daughter is big like that?”

Otieno woke up with a start. He stood groggily on the cushions, then he climbed over Mama’s legs, levered himself over me with his hand on my head, and landed in the flood outside the shack in a crouch. He began to lower thin spools of shit into the water, whiffs of heat unwrapping into the night, the cheeks of his buttocks rouged by the cold.

When Otieno returned to the shack, he sat on Mama’s legs and brought out her breast and sucked noisily. With one hand, he grabbed a toy Maisha had bought for him, rattling its maracas on Mama’s bony face. She was still looking ragged and underweight, even though she’d stayed in the hospital to have her diet monitored after Baby graduated from the incubator.

Mama took out our family Bible, which we had inherited from Baba’s father, to begin our Ex-mas worship. The front cover had peeled off, leaving a dirty page full of our relatives’ names, dead and living. She read them out. Baba’s late father had insisted that all the names of our family be included, in recognition of the instability of street life. She began with her father, who had been killed by cattle rustlers, before she ran away to Nairobi and started living with Baba. She called out Baba’s mother, who came to Nairobi when her village was razed because some politicians wanted to redraw tribal boundaries. One day she disappeared forever into the city with her walking stick. Mama invoked the names of our cousins Jackie and Solo, who settled in another village and wrote to us through our church, asking our parents to send them school fees. I looked forward to telling them about the lit parks and the beautiful cars of Nairobi as soon as my teachers taught me how to write letters. She called out her brother, Uncle Peter, who had shown me how to shower in the city fountains without being whipped by the officials. He was shot by the police in a case of mistaken identity; the mortuary gave his corpse to a medical school because we could not pay the bill. She called Baba’s second cousin Mercy, the only secondary school graduate among our folks. She had not written to us since she fell in love with a Honolulu tourist and eloped with him. Mama called Baba’s sister, Auntie Mama, who, until she died two years ago of a heart attack, had told us stories and taught us songs about our ancestral lands every evening, in a sweet, nostalgic voice.

The sky rumbled.

“
Bwana,
I hope Naema put clothes on Baby before she left,” Mama said to me, the middle of her sentence wobbling because Otieno had bitten her.

“She put Baby in waterproof paper bags. Then sweater.”

Otieno, having satisfied himself, woke up Atieno, who took over the other breast, for they had divided things up evenly between them. Atieno sucked until she slept again, and Mama placed her gently near Otieno and began to shake Baba until he opened one eye. His weak voice vibrated because his face was jammed into the wall: “Food.”

“No food, tarling,” Mama told him. “We must to finish to call the names of our people.”

“You’ll be calling my name if I don’t eat.”

“Here is food—New Suntan shoe
kabire.
” She reached out and collected the plastic bottle from me. “It can kill your stomach till next week.”

“All the children are here?”

“Baby and Naema still out. Last shift . . . and Maisha.”

“Ah, there is hope. Maisha will bring Ex-mas feast for us.”

“Ex-mas is school fees, remember?”

Mama groped inside the carton again. She unearthed a dirty candle, pocked by grains of sand. She lit the candle and cemented it to the trunk with its wax. Taking the Bible, she began to read a psalm in Kiswahili, thanking God for the gift of Baby and the twins after two miscarriages. She praised God for blessing Maisha with white clients at Ex-mas. Then she prayed for Fuunny Eyes, the name we had given to the young Japanese volunteer who unfailingly dropped shillings in our begging plate. She wore Masai tire sandals and
ekarawa
necklaces that held her neck like a noose, and never replied to our greetings or let her eyes meet ours. Mama prayed for our former landlord in the Kibera slums, who evicted us but hadn’t seized anything when we could not pay the rent. Now she asked God to bless Simba with many puppies. “Christ, you Ex-mas son, give Jigana a big, intelligent head in school!” she concluded.

“Have mercy on us,” I said.