Who Will Catch Us As We Fall (16 page)

It was not uncommon to see people crouching on the roadside in Kibera, pulling up their skirts or with their trousers around their ankles, pissing or shitting wherever the space allowed – upon piles of old garbage or in the open trenches that ran freely next to homes, restaurants and even schools. But his mother had never been one of them. Too proud, she had spent even the little money they had to pay the five shillings to use the toilets that were privately owned by landlords.

‘Just because we live in hell doesn't mean we're allowed to act sinfully,' she used to say to him. As a boy, he would take the money she gave him to use the bathroom services and pocket it for sweets or save up for a new pair of shoes and hunker down like all the other children, far away from home or while she slept. To see her do it now overwhelmed him with pity and disgust. He knelt and caught her as she fell forward, pulling down her dress and carrying her into the small house, watching as she curled up on the bed they shared.

He left her there, asking a neighbor to check in on her, and made his way to the closest health clinic, its avocado-colored
mabati
structure a sore thumb in the low-lying, gray landscape of Kibera. When he arrived, it was to an ever-growing queue crowding the restricted lanes between buildings and up the unsteady steps to the main entrance. When he looked around, he saw mostly young mothers with children strapped to their backs, straddled in brightly patterned
shukas
, heard the groans and high-pitched screams of babies too young to understand that they were dying.

Despite the angry protests, people blocking him with their shoulders, Jeffery managed to shove his way through the swelling crowd and into the unlit stone corridor where he searched for a doctor, a nurse, anyone who might be able to tell him what was wrong with his mother. But each time, he was either ignored or told to wait like all the others, huddled over the wet cement floor. So he sat impatiently, cradling a young boy whose mother had fallen asleep against Jeffery's shoulder.

‘I've been coming here for four days now,' she told him when she eventually roused. ‘Always the same, always waiting, always for nothing. Waiting for his suffering to end – what else?'

In Kibera, there were no government clinics or hospitals, just as there were no government schools or other public services – close to two hundred thousand people left to fend for themselves, forgotten by everyone who lived in the nearby city. Most providers of health care were charitable organizations, churches or do-gooding volunteers from abroad, hungry for adventure. And most of these institutions were severely understaffed or provided limited services so that one had to wait for days before receiving care. Often, it came too late.

While he waited, Jeffery considered finding another clinic but he knew that he would only waste time and might be met with an even larger crowd. He debated going to a local kiosk to buy medicine but he had heard about the shopkeepers there being quacks, ready to give you anything for a little money and you only recovered if you were lucky.

After sitting that way for close to five hours, darkness having closed in on him long ago, a nurse came by and told them all to leave. ‘The doctor has gone home,' she announced. ‘Come back tomorrow.'

He chased after her, begging, ‘Please, my mother is sick. If someone could just come and look at her.'

She shrugged him off and repeated, ‘The doctor has gone home.'

And so he had returned early the next morning before going to work and then again after, each time finding the same woman with the young boy, who was more of a skeleton than a human being and who had stopped crying and begun to whimper. Then the whimpering gave way to raspy, struggling breaths and finally, those too eventually stopped. His mother held him for a long time after that, pressing her face to his emaciated chest and wailing so profoundly,
no, no, no
,
that Jeffery found himself sobbing alongside her. He cried, sticky saliva slipping through his lips and excess fluid running from his nose, but it didn't matter because when he looked around he saw that there was no dignity to be found there.

When he finally calmed down enough to help her wrap the boy carefully in a
shuka
– how wrong those colors seemed now, so mocking and full of life – he asked her what had happened.

‘Too much diarrhea and vomiting,' she told him. ‘Everything coming out and nothing staying in.' He let her go, recognizing those symptoms in his mother.

‘What was it?' Wanting to know, not wanting to know.

‘
Kipindupindu
.'

Cholera.

He should have known.

In the past few months, the country had been hit by severe drought, which had led to a shortage of water. The ground had wrinkled like a raisin, reduced to dust beneath his feet. The skies remained stagnant, an unbroken blue, and so hot that the air suffocated you as you breathed it in, a cotton-ball tongue and a throat full of dirt. In Kibera, the landlords who controlled the water points were the same ones who owned the toilets and, adept at recognizing desperation, they hiked up the price of one jerry can of water to thirty shillings. For most people, water became impossible to afford. Jeffery began to steal it from the broken, public mains, crouching down and letting it spray into old plastic bottles that he collected from the roadside. But this water ran alongside alleyways that were polluted with garbage and human waste, and now Jeffery understood what had caused his mother to be so sick.

‘How many days?' he asked the woman.

‘Less than a week.'

He had left the clinic with another plan in mind: to take his mother to Kenyatta Hospital in Nairobi, where she would receive better and much faster care. It would be expensive, he was told. You need money for transport, for medicine, for a bed. Sometimes there were too many people and so to see a doctor you needed to be able to offer something extra.

‘Let it go,' everyone advised him. ‘She is dying, why waste your money?'

He ignored them. ‘How much? How much will it cost me?'

‘More than you can afford,' everyone answered.

This was why he had gone to see his senior officer and why, two days later, he was standing at Westlands roundabout and stopping every car with a vengeance. He had a list of violations in his mind, which he ticked off one by one.

Cracked side mirror.

Almost flat tire. Danger to the road.

Tinted windows.

No seatbelt. Danger to oneself.

Talking on the phone.

So many reasons he could come up with, but it was saying them that proved difficult. Most drivers ignored him, threatened him or, worst of all, gave him no more than fifty shillings and he took it because he was desperate.

Every time that dirt-riddled note was rolled into his palm, the blood-like smell of it hitting his nostrils, a little of his pride was replaced by anger, his values stubbed away by resentment until he forgot to be ashamed and only felt hungry, greedy for some more.

It was close to five o'clock and he counted out less than a thousand shillings in his pocket. He was ready to go home, back to the clinic, back to waiting and praying and doing nothing. And then she came. In a sleek, silver Mercedes, sunglasses so big they grazed the tops of her cheekbones. In this bribery dance, just as he was preparing to quit, Jeffery found his prima ballerina.

Hand held straight out, chest puffed, voice gruffed.

‘Stop right there!'

Right in the middle of the traffic, he stepped in front of the car so that she was forced to press down hard on her brakes. The cars behind her shrieked their horns at him, drove around the obstruction, glaring eyes tracking him through closed windows. But he was blind and deaf to them. He saw only her, perfectly polished, like a smoothed down piece of valuable soapstone.

She rolled down her window. ‘What is it?' she inquired in a high voice. He detected a slight tremor in her mouth, her worried eyes.

‘License.'

‘First tell me why you pulled me over.'

Jeffery remained silent, keeping his hand out. Lead the dance and she would have to follow his feet. He repeated himself and she reached into her purse, handing him the red booklet. He slipped it into his shirt pocket, took a slow turn about the car; he glanced at her insurance, poked at her headlights, pounded her bumper with his fist harder than he had intended and saw her grimace in annoyance. Then he gestured at the back seat.

‘Open.'

Single words halted any possible arguments and she had no choice but to unlock it for him now that he had her documents. As Jeffery climbed in, the expensive smell of leather submerged him, edged with a pineapple-scented car freshener. The seats were cool despite the heat outside and it excited him because the Mercedes was the most extravagant thing he had ever sat in, ever touched, and he took an appreciative moment to glance around.

High-heeled shoes, forgotten packets of Trident mint-chewing gum and an extra jacket littered the seats around him – everything about their neglect spoke of the value of her life. He saw how easily the world must fall under her hands, was stung by the fact that she had more possessions in her car than he had ever had in his life. He collected that feeling and held it in his voice, used it to push away the shame that threatened to surface at any moment.

‘Drive,' he commanded. ‘Parklands police station.'

Her thick hair fell across her cheek, olive skin shining with the beginnings of a nervous sweat. Pretty, young
muhindi
girl, just as David had instructed.

‘I haven't done anything.'

‘Obstruction of traffic!' he barked. ‘You cannot just stop in the middle of a roundabout!'

Her mouth opened and closed in disbelieving anger. ‘You made me do that!'

He tapped her license to remind her who was in charge. Under normal circumstances, he would have been appalled at himself for playing such a dirty trick, but surrounded by the gross extravagance of her life he was reminded of the hardship of his own and everything was different. ‘Come on, let's go.
Twende
,
twende
!'

‘I'm not paying you off, just so you know,' she warned him as she began to move. ‘I'll go to the police station, where I will file a complaint against you.'

‘
Sawa
.' He feigned indifference, finding that once he lost himself in the pretense threatening her became easier. ‘I'll have to keep your car and maybe you in a jail cell until someone can come and pick you up. Maybe they'll be here in twenty minutes, maybe two hours with the traffic. I'm sure you know how dangerous it is in there, especially for someone like you. It's very possible to get HIV.' He pushed himself forward, snickered at her through the rearview mirror and found that his face had taken on a new shape, scowling, loose lines that made him appear aged.

‘You can't do this to me. I'm going to call my father.'

‘You're welcome to do that once we get to the station.' Sensing her growing unease, he straightened up and spread out his legs to appear larger. He burped and said, ‘Please go faster. We're almost there.'

Instead, she slowed down and he knew that his chance had come. Sighing, as if doing her a favor, he said, ‘
Sawa.
Take out ten thousand shillings and I will let you go.'

She scoffed. ‘I don't have that kind of money.'

‘Okay, eight thousand.' He saw that she was almost crying, felt bitter and hoped that she would. He wanted to ask her what she could possibly understand about desperation. A part of him wanted to put her in the jail cell, just to teach her a lesson. It was absurd that she should have four half-f bottles of water in the pockets of her back seats – that for those things he considered life, she treated as luxuries she could afford to waste.

‘I have four thousand on me and that's it. That's all I'm giving you.'

He tried to stop his hands from shaking as she pulled out the notes from her purse and threw them at him. His breath was ragged, cut short with disbelief, as he shoved them deep into his pocket.

‘Just drop me at the station and carry on.' His authority established, he sat back comfortably and enjoyed the short ride. He decided that he wouldn't tell his senior officer about the money – he would use it for his mother today and give the officer back what he made tomorrow.

He instructed the girl to stop at the gate, springing out and smiling – ‘Thank you, madam! Have a very good evening' – and slipped one of the water bottles into his back pocket.

When she was gone, he touched the money lightly, felt it flutter as if alive. Altogether he had collected close to five thousand shillings, enough to get his mother to the hospital. Enough to get her the care she needed, at least for now.

He was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn't hear his name being called. A hand stretched out to stop him at the entrance to the station. The senior officer was smoking on the concrete ledge of a small flower garden. ‘Jeff,' he called, as if to a friend, rising and flexing the thick muscle in his neck. ‘You have something for me.'

Not a question.

Jeffery considered lying but from the raised eyebrow, the way the cigarette drooped warningly from the corner of his mouth, Jeffery knew the officer had seen him climbing out of the car, heard the joy in his voice as he waved the lady away. He wondered if it was too late now to slip most of it into his trouser pocket but the man was already standing before him, hand out waiting.

‘Please, sir. I need the money today; it's a matter of life and death.' There were no spaces between his words, just a hurried plea.

‘Isn't everything?' The officer's fingers curled in an indication for Jeffery to hand it over. ‘Don't worry, don't worry! I will give you your share.' His long fingernails scratched Jeffery's skin as he took the notes, licking his thumb and counting them out.