Who Will Catch Us As We Fall (10 page)

‘Come with me,' he had said and Michael followed, looking up at the sky of a city where night-time smelled of smoke, the stars were not as close and God was missing.

Michael waited for the
muhindi
boy to leave before running straight into his mother's arms. Bony but gentle, unlike his grandmother, not that the old woman had ever embraced him. Angela's arms fit perfectly around him, holding him to her chest just the way, as a child, he had longed to be held.
So happy you are here, sorry I never visited, expensive bus fare, saving it all up for you
.
Excuses he didn't care to hear because he had forgiven her a long time ago.

They left soon after and walked to the Parklands district, reaching the unpainted, brick building where Angela lived with her sister and niece, Jackie, who was two years younger than Michael but acted like she was much older. A city girl with wild energy in her veins.

She asked him if he wanted to go to school with her but he refused, telling his mother that it made more sense to wait until the beginning of the new term and so, a few days later, Angela insisted that he start going to work with her.

‘Your auntie will be at her job all day and I don't want to leave you at home alone, at least not until you are properly settled in. Nairobi can be dangerous.'

He hadn't wanted to argue, to fuss, to remind her that he was almost sixteen now and not the young boy she had left, because he didn't want to make her upset or regret bringing him back. Despite the Eldoret-shaped hole in his chest, Michael couldn't imagine being without her any more. So he listened when she said, ‘You stay with me and no going inside the house!' He had no choice but to trudge along, keeping Madam's words close, like the old blanket she had given him, along with the books he had carried when he left her house.

He used the blanket to cover his ears whenever he lay down on the bumpy mattress in the evenings. There were too many night noises and he had trouble sleeping. The living room floor was hard against his hip, the scratching of rat claws and murmurs of cockroaches throwing him back awake every time he started to fall into slumber. Oftentimes, he would give up and sit by the windowsill, feeling homesick and watching the city run chaotically beneath him, well into the mist-covered hours of the morning.

Soon after he arrived, Michael was at their house every day. Most of the time he kept to himself, staying with Angela out on the veranda and Leena wouldn't see him until dusk, at his mother's side, quiet and fluid in the darkness with his trusted satchel. Angela would shout out a goodbye and Leena would wave from the window but his eyes stayed trained ahead, a face that was serious but never guarded. When she and Jai attempted to speak to him, Michael would answer in that measured, intelligent way of his, as if he considered each word a thousand times before stringing them together – a perfectly constructed necklace of thought.

‘A city is a city,' he said to them once, shrugging his shoulders when Jai asked how he was settling into Nairobi. ‘There's noise, pollution and too many people everywhere. It's the same wherever you go, just on a bigger or smaller scale.' He felt their watchful eyes, wondering if they knew he had picked the phrase directly from a copy of
Time
magazine that their father had thrown out.

To Leena, he spoke like a grown up and in perfect English, declining to join their games no matter how many times Jai asked him. When he wasn't helping Angela with the dishes or folding clothes, he sat cross-legged on the veranda floor with a book spread neatly over his knees.

But there were times she caught him watching them as they played, his hands slung in his pockets. The immobility of his features made him appear bored, as if he was there because he needed a break from whatever chore he was doing. But on closer inspection, she saw his eyes moving quickly, following their movements. His body was held tightly, on edge, as if he was the one taking the penalty shot or fielding the cricket ball rolling toward the boundary. He watched with careful intent, as if calculating the precise force needed to swing a bat in order to smash six runs or the exact angle at which one had to flick the marble if they wanted to knock everyone else out of the circle.

Whenever he saw her watching him, Michael would straighten up and respond with a quick nod of acknowledgment, disappearing around the back. She would turn away and he would fall onto a stool, missing the games he played and the people he used to play them with back home in Eldoret.

But he found it intriguing, the rules that they followed so carefully here, the discipline with which they played. The football he had engaged in had been carefree – composed of rough teenagers running around and smashing into each other, pulling T-shirts and shorts, simply with the goal of getting the ball past the keeper – it didn't really matter how it got there in the first place. But here, they were always shouting, always accusing, picking up the ball and kicking it from odd corners, edges, a few meters from the net – and it seemed more exciting that way. And what was that game they played with the thick bats? Smashing the small, red ball around like lunatics, screaming
Six
,
Four
,
Ooooooouuuuuut
,
the
muhindi
boy his mother worked for zoom-zooming in and out of the other children, arms spread out like a low-flying plane.

The boy who would not leave him alone. His first full day at the compound, Jai had jumped over the low fence of the veranda, landing so smoothly that Michael didn't hear or see him until he turned around and came face to face with a wide smile. Valley-like dimples and small teeth, made whiter by his sun-browned skin.

‘Oh!' Michael almost dropped the bucket of wet clothes his mother had given him to hang up on the clothes line.

‘I'm Jai.' A hand stretching out in greeting.

Michael recognized him as the one who had helped him on his very first evening in Nairobi, his first encounter of kindness in the frenzied city, but his grandmother's words stuck, invisible and stubborn, between them.
You can't trust these people
,
she had told him.
A muhindi is worse than a snake in the grass
–
they don't care if you spot them or not, they'll sting you with their poison in broad daylight if it means getting ahead.

And so Michael had pulled up the plastic bucket, creating a shield between his chest and Jai's hand.

‘Michael,' he said.

‘I know – I've been waiting for you for almost a week now!' Jai's words were impatient as he took the bucket from Michael, sliding it across the cement floor with a quick swipe of his arm.

A prick of anxious sweat. ‘Why?'

‘Do you want to play football with us?'

The offer was tempting but his grandmother's warnings were stronger, his anxiety heightened by the remembrance of all those circling eyes, trapping him in their suspiciousness. He felt safe on the veranda, hidden, and wasn't ready to risk coming out.

‘I have work to do.'

Unused to being refused, Jai was surprised. Michael had seen the way the other children responded to his invitations – exploding into talkative pleasure, eager and quick to do whatever he said, his sister included. Still, Jai accepted Michael's refusal graciously.

‘If you change your mind, you know where I live. But don't worry, I'll find you again tomorrow.'

And true to his word, the boy was back on the veranda in the morning, a half-eaten tangerine in one hand and a cricket ball in the other. He held it up to Michael, who paused from peeling carrots, bright orange skin around his bare feet. Jai cocked his eyebrow. ‘How about it?'

‘I can't.' A mumble, his hand moving aggressively against the thin vegetable. The game looked like a lot of fun and Michael was annoyed at himself for refusing, cross at his grandmother for her words, but even more so at Jai for tempting him.

‘Next time,' Jai called over his shoulder as he hopped over the fence.

The next day, a soccer ball stopped at his stool, tapping his foot in a dare. Michael picked it up, its rough rubber taut beneath his hands. It was a lot firmer than the half-deflated one he used to play with and he bounced it over his knees.

‘You're pretty good at that.' Jai was leaning against the wall, watching.

Michael let the ball fall to the tip of his toe, flicking it in a wide arch toward Jai. ‘I used to play all the time.'

‘We're just about to start a game,' Jai offered.

The eager smile was pushing him off the stool, weakening his resolve. Michael almost agreed but was interrupted by shouts from the other children. ‘Come on, Jai, what's taking so long? We have enough people to play already.'

‘Maybe next time,' he said to Jai, retreating slowly back to his chair.

It was a Saturday morning and Michael sat sulking and peeling potatoes. He dropped the skinned ones into a green bucket and tossed the remains onto a sheet of newspaper. He had always hated the smell of spuds, like old water and mud, and now he ripped the skin off with fast strokes of the small knife. He hadn't minded doing it for his grandmother because at least he had been the one eating them. But these were for the Kohlis; once dipped into a pot brimming with spices, black seeds and bay leaves, he would never see them again.

Angela put her hand on his. ‘Watch you don't cut your finger.'

He jerked away, keeping up the same frantic speed. For the first time since he had moved to Nairobi, he was irked by his mother. That morning, he had begged to stay home with Jackie, having grown tired of washing clothes, scraping food residue off the bottoms of plates and brushing dirt from the veranda floor – especially when it was so warm out and the day was made for playing.

A noise from within the house caused him to look up. He saw Mrs Kohli at her bedroom window, drawing back the lace drapes. It was ten o'clock and she had just woken up, sleepy and pleased, welcoming in the weekend light. Several minutes later, the shower turned on and the pipes groaned to life and he envied the unhurried way with which she was treating the day.

Now that Jackie was home for the school holidays, she often invited her friends over and Michael realized how much he had missed the company of children he felt comfortable with – who spoke his language, understood his jokes and looked at him without any sort of meaning. His cousin had offered to show him all the wonderful things about Nairobi that he had missed out on, having been raised in a ‘small and boring town with goats instead of people.'

Last week, Jackie had returned from a day spent at Uhuru Park, her face painted in the design of a butterfly – blue glitter wings expanding outward over her cheeks – and a balloon hat wrapped around her braids. She carried with her the smell of charcoaled meat and freshly cut grass and told him of the cold glass bottle of coke she had drunk from and the one ride she had spent ten shillings on – offering to take him the following weekend. But his mother had refused, telling him that she needed his help at work.

‘I don't know why they can't peel their own potatoes,' he said now.

Angela's eyes darted quickly to the back door. ‘Hush. Someone will hear you.'

He lowered his voice and switched to Swahili. ‘Why do we have to sit here and do all the work while they're in there, watching TV or sleeping until late? Don't they also have hands?'

Angela was concentrating on stitching a loose button onto one of Raj's work shirts. The slim silver needle glinted between her fingers, the white thread invisible between her teeth. Without a pause, she said, ‘I know what your grandmother must have told you about me.'

Michael focused on the potato, the slimy juice stinging a never-noticed-before cut in his skin. His mother continued speaking.

‘She used to tell me all the time what a coward I was. How I had betrayed her and everyone else in this country when I decided to work as a housegirl and, even worse, for an Indian family.
Encouraging subordination
, she used to tell me.
Letting them believe that they're better than us.
' Angela jutted out her jaw. ‘But I'm grateful for this job because it allows me to live here, in the city, with your aunt, and I was also able to send you to a good school.'

‘Why didn't you just stay in Eldoret with my grandmother?' he asked. ‘You wouldn't have had to work for anyone.'

Angela scoffed. ‘I would have had to work for her and that would have been worse than anything. She hated me, blamed me for what happened to your father and would have taken any opportunity to torture me. Besides, I want a life for you here.' She pushed the needle back through the shirt. ‘The Kohlis aren't such a bad family. They pay me on time, they treat us kindly – I can think of a lot worse jobs for someone to have.'

Rebuked, Michael turned back to peeling and they continued to work in silence, his gaze fixed downward. Eventually, Pooja began shouting for Angela as she came down the stairs and his mother rose, folding the shirt and taking it with her as she went.

The knife dragged along the potato, jerky and removing most of the vegetable along with the skin. He slowed his hand.

‘I agree with you. I don't know why we can't do anything for ourselves.'

Startled, Michael looked up to see Jai at the doorway, bouncing a yo-yo. He placed it in his pocket and dragged a chair out of the kitchen. ‘Let me help.'

‘I can do it.' Michael's voice was stiff with embarrassment. But the boy ignored him, picking up the largest vegetable he could find. Michael asked, ‘How did you understand what I was saying?'

‘I speak some Swahili,' Jai told him. ‘Enough to understand that you're upset.'

‘I was wrong to say those things.'

They kept peeling. Jai was singing a galloping tune, pausing to unclip a boxy-looking device from his belt. It was similar to a mini radio but without the speakers and he snapped open the contraption, flipping over the tape inside.