The Fall of Saints (11 page)

I almost screamed. Ben told me that he’d seen the gunman board the same flight that Zack was on. Was Ben telling me a lie?

“Zack, you must learn to trust me, my judgment. I was right about Mark.”

“Look, I don’t know what to think right now. I am just worried about your safety. Why don’t you guys get away from the tristate area? Go see our friends in California, or better yet, our friends in South Africa. Ciru. I can even join you there. A kind of holiday from all of this.”

“A good idea. I mean, for you to join us. Sort things out away from these threats to your life. Our lives. I will see what’s possible, but you are right, we need to get away.”

We talked for a little while longer. He said he would put even more money into my account so that I could be flexible in my moves. Not that I needed it. He had been very generous with his money; he had set me up well.

“And, honey, I don’t know if this will make you feel better, but I understand they let David out.”

“David is out? That’s good,” I said. “What was he in for?”

“No charges. I don’t know what they were after. I haven’t talked to him.”

Actually, the news made me feel better. I liked David. Still, I could not sleep: too many thoughts and feelings swirling in my head. Zack was right; I needed to get us as far away as possible, even from America. In this day of information technology, texting pics, there was not a state in the US where I could hide from those who were after my skull.

South Africa was looking good. Cape Town. Zack and I been there once. The hotels and cafés by the sea. The drive around Table Mountain. Oh yes, Kobi would love that. The view from the top. The air. So much to prepare for the journey. Buy tickets. And a little shopping. Not enough clothing. Shopping in New York or New Jersey? Mugure, you’re crazy. Mafia. Joe. Mark. Get the hell out of here. Yawn. Sleep. Where could I go? There is Sam, my old flame. The man from Ohio . . . Ohio . . . Ohio . . .

Somehow I must have fallen asleep. I woke up early, as from a nightmare. Kobi was still asleep. Then my head began to clear. The events of yesterday. Ben. Joe. The chase. My talk with Zack. My thoughts. Sam. Ohio. I would go to Sam’s place. What an inspiration. Neither Joe nor Mark knew Sam. I did not have his phone number. I immediately fired a message to Sam’s Facebook page. I skipped the details, merely telling him that my child and I were in danger and we could use his help.

He replied later that morning. He would be more than glad to have us, he said. He included his phone number if I needed assurance. What a relief. But I could not help feeling a little guilt. I should not have neglected our friendship.

I then called my friend Ciru in Cape Town, saying we wanted to visit her for a couple weeks. She was excited. Now she was Dr. Ciru Mbai, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Cape Town. Seeing her would give me some fresh perspective. Zack would join us there; we would fly back to New York together, having calmly worked out a strategy.

By the time Kobi got up, I had settled on Ohio. We showered and went downstairs for breakfast in the hotel dining room. It was then that I felt the full impact of Joe turning foe.

The white male at the next table looked up from the newspaper he was reading, but as soon as our eyes met, he buried his head in the paper. The two men in business suits sitting not too far from him seemed to be looking our way constantly. The waiter came repeatedly to ask if we needed more coffee. Why? A couple stopped by our table and talked to Kobi. The man who kept passing by our table, pretending to be getting more breakfast, looked lean and mean. Every white man around me seemed to wear the face of a mafioso. I could feel their eyes on me. Maybe the stalker was capturing our every move on video.

As soon as Kobi and I checked out, we walked out to the street to hail a cab. I started waving cabs down, hoping to get one driven by a black or Asian man, preferably a woman. Black cabdrivers kept passing me by; the first cab that stopped was driven by a white man. I wasn’t going to take chances, so I ignored it. Eventually, a turbaned Asian man stopped for us. I hesitated. Could he be a terrorist? I had become sensitive to men wearing beards and turbans. The thought of 9/11 brought to mind my conversation with Ben at the airport. How was the gunman connected with the scene of mass crime? Eventually, I chose a cab with a white woman driver. No woman had threatened my life yet, I reasoned.

I bought tickets for Ohio at LaGuardia Airport.

10

S
am and his father lived in a small quiet rural town outside of Cleveland. They were descended from some Swedish Finns who emigrated to America in the nineteenth century in the great Swedish migration to Minnesota and other parts of America, where they continued their Swedish-Finnish farming tradition.

I first met Sam when we were students at CCNY. He was rather shy, not voluble in social circles, and that was what drew me to him. He did not have strong views on many national or international matters except one: freeing America from slavery to foreign oil. He saw ethanol as the solution. I argued with him about it: Wouldn’t it mean turning food into oil, taking away from humans and animals to feed cars? Yes, but one could grow enough to feed the human, the cow, and the car. He was taking business classes, but on his own, he followed the economics and politics of oil, at one time even paying his way to Brazil to study the industry. He was interested in developing a strain of corn with higher yields for ethanol.

He wanted me to move to Ohio, and for a moment I was infatuated with the rural ideal, but I was dissuaded by one visit and the population of mostly older people who all seemed to dress in blue weather-beaten farm overalls. I suppose the Big Apple, its skyscrapers, yellow cabs, incessant honking, fever, yes, insomnia, had entered my system, and I could not see how I could endure the rural silence. Now, as a fugitive from eyes that watched me, I was looking for that peace and silence and some sleep.

Nothing had changed around the farm, or the area, for that matter. Not even the mailboxes on the road; they were the same color, apart from those whose paint had been washed out by the rain. I could not help admiring Sam for clinging to his passion and vision. It reminded me that I’d never had any strong passions, no vision to live for, fight for, or die for, if necessary.

His father sat in the yard wearing his eternal overalls. He must have just returned from the farm. As Kobi and I got out of the taxicab, he came up to us, and before I could figure out how to reintroduce myself, he called out: “Mugure! African queen!” I used to be so uncomfortable with that queen business when I was dating his son, but on this day, and after the ordeal I had gone through, it felt personal, welcoming. Sam joined us a couple of hours later, and as we sat on the porch munching roasted corn, I briefed them about my troubles. An edited version. No mention of suited gunmen.

After Kobi and Sam’s father had turned in, Sam and I sat on the veranda. I lay down on the cushioned bench, and Sam sat on the wooden stairs, facing me.

“So when does Zack fly back in?” he asked.

“No firm plans. I’m thinking of flying to South Africa in a couple of days.”

“Why travel all that way? You can stay right here with us.”

“I don’t want to burden you guys.”

“You know I don’t mind. You have always known that.”

Yes, I did. He still liked me, it was obvious. The following day, as we took a tour around the farmhouse, I tinkered with the thought of staying in Ohio until Zack’s return. I could busy myself as an extra hand on the farm. The more I thought about it, the better an option it seemed. Sam and I went for a walk and talked about everything except our past. Shopping for little things from the SouthPark Mall in Strongsville was a far cry from hectic Manhattan, but it was nice. Sometimes he would take Kobi to feed the pigs and cows. The cow became Kobi’s favorite animal. It was nice to spend time with Sam and see him take to Kobi. It reminded me why we had dated in the first place.

One morning a day or two after I arrived, Sam’s father called me in a conspiratorial voice. I followed him to the shed a few meters from the house. “Wait here a minute,” he whispered.

He wasn’t much of a talker except after the occasional glass of wine, which was always followed by a few war stories from Vietnam. Now he was sober, serious. He emerged from the shed with a shotgun hanging over his shoulder. “Ever held one of this?” he asked.

I thought of telling him about my brief experience at the shooting range in New York, when Okigbo had wanted to turn me into a cheaply paid security guard; about the gunman; or the gun at Zack’s office. I didn’t.

“No, I haven’t, and I don’t think I ever will,” I said as I followed him down the narrow path into the field till we came to a clearing.

“Listen, I am not going to let anybody hurt my African queen. I have been thinking about it. A car chase is not something you take to the police. No crime committed, they will say. But we have a right to defend ourselves. I am going to teach you how to deal with the bastards.”

I was not sure I wanted to meddle with guns. I felt I had learned enough Krav Maga as protection, though it had not occurred to me that I could use my martial arts to defend Kobi and me. The instructors had taught us defense moves against a gun held at close quarters but not how to use one. Perhaps martial skills needed bolstering with smoking metal. Besides, there was nothing wrong with indulging the old man.

At first I felt silly, intimidated, by the feel of the gun in my hands. But my teacher was not giving up and encouraged me to fire. “The key is to aim. Aim, aim, and aim again. Your hands must be steady. Take a deep breath and pull the trigger. If someone is trying to kill, they will stop at nothing. Don’t doubt it. So if you want to live another day, you shoot the son of a bitch first.”

I fired. My first shot ever in my life. I felt blood rush through me, very close to how I sometimes felt about Krav Maga. I was surprised at my excitement and fired a few more times.

“Not bad for a first time,” he said as he doubled over with laughter, “but enough for the day.”

It became a daily routine. He was a gun lover and had all sorts of weapons. He let me practice with the different pistols. He insisted I practice to shoot with both hands and at different positions, standing, running, rolling on the ground. I was never going to be a crack shot, but I was grateful that he was making me take charge of my own security.

One afternoon when Kobi and Sam went to supervise the milking of the cows, I took a walk around the neighborhood. It was nice to have some quiet moments on my own in the streets of Ohio. Though the people worked extremely hard, they were a little laid-back, not fussy, but kind.

In a way, the place reminded me of rural Kenya. Even the smells of fresh air and farmland brought memories of the Kakuyu of my childhood. I remembered my mother tending her small herbal garden on a Saturday afternoon. Sometimes she would sit on the grass and knit, sometimes she would take an afternoon nap. Every time I saw her out in the garden, I would grab something to snack on and make myself comfortable in the shade. And every time she would go on about how I needed to learn how to knit or sew. I would divert the conversation to what had happened to me over the week or days or hours: how I saw a man with ears that looked like a rabbit’s and I’d asked him where he got them; or how I was so curious about safari ants and put out my finger and got bitten; or how I had tricked a bully boy into running away by shouting to an imaginary mother, “Hurry up with the machete, Mom.” She would warn me against acts that hurt others, but sometimes she would laugh so hard at my antics that tears flowed down her cheeks. She would pull herself straight and end up with “You are a crazy child.” I missed her terribly and wished she were alive. I felt a need to connect with her. I wondered what she would say to my situation now. I knew she would not approve of the drinking. You have to let it go, she would have told me. It will cloud your better judgment. Yes, she would give me good advice, tell me I was a crazy child, but support me all the same.

Pity my mother was gone. And a shame that my father, though alive, was not really in my life. I liked Sam’s relationship with his dad; theirs was a love with mutual respect. Sam’s dad was not into the ethanol business: Farming for him was cows, pigs, and fruit orchards. But he supported his son’s dreams. Why had I been denied such a relationship? Why hadn’t my father wanted me? I did not know anything about him, his family, his life. I wondered how it must have felt for him to let me grow up without ever seeing me, touching me, washing my tears, admonishing me, saying to me: You have done well, my daughter. I guessed I would never know who he was, what really made him tick, why he made the choices he had made. I would never find out. Unless I paid him a visit. Could I really face him after our last and only meeting? What if he asked about the white boys he had warned me against? I wondered. But I was a grown-up. I didn’t need anything from him. I could ask him questions directly. For far too long, I had avoided attempts to find answers to my questions. It was as if I did not want to confront Kenya, my past, my Africanness, my blackness. Perhaps Ben had been right.

As I walked back to the house, I realized I had been gone for over an hour. I was tired from the walk, but I had talked myself into visiting my father. It would be a personal journey, my journey. I would go to Kenya for a few days of talk with my father, and touch base with Wainaina and Jane, and then come back. There was the unfinished quest for the Kenya counterpart of the Kasla agency. Call it curiosity or obstinacy, but the more I thought about the idea, the better it sounded. That evening I started making arrangements.

I had told Zack that I was staying in Ohio with an old college friend while I organized the trip to Cape Town. I continued to let Zack believe Kobi and I would be heading there. The many unanswered questions had eroded my trust in Zack, though not to where I could let go of him. What if I were wrong? The on-and-off attitudes; the doubt and the will to believe; the repulsion and the attraction: It was a mini-war in me. But even if I were in harmony with self, as before, I knew that the Kenya trip had to be mine alone. Maybe after I came back from Kenya and he from Estonia, we could travel to Cape Town as a family. I would be a new Mugure, at ease with her past and secure in the results of her quest for the roots of the threats to our lives.