Who Will Catch Us As We Fall (42 page)

She met them on the stairs, four silent bodies creeping slowly upward. Upon seeing them, she was blinded by the ridiculous thought that her pajama shorts were too revealing and she wished she had put on some trousers.

The men before her seemed equally bewildered. As if, just as she had found herself unknowingly revealed on the staircase, they were equally shocked to be there, with guns in their hands and struggling on the slippery, hardwood steps. For a surreal, distant moment, she thought Pooja might have given her too much cough syrup, causing her to hallucinate, but then the man's gruff voice lurched her back to reality.

‘Turn around, back upstairs.' He threw the gun in her direction and she screamed, ducking behind her arm.

‘Shut up!' Panicked, one of them yelled, ‘If you make a sound, we'll shoot.' Something cold was pressed into her hair and her skin broke open in fear. She imagined blood, crushed bones and her body sprawled on the stairs – her family finding her that way, exposed and shameful. ‘Let's go.' His breath came at her rolled in scents of coffee and tobacco, her own voice from an unclear fog:
You can take whatever you want. Just don't hurt me.

The gun moved from her temple to right between her eyebrows and its largeness startled her – a clunky, new pressure point in the center of her forehead. The man addressed Betty. ‘Show him where the jewelry is, hurry up.'

Passing her, Betty's fingers grasped hers – cold and tight – and Leena muttered, ‘It's all in the third cupboard drawer. She keeps the key under her mattress,' and then she was alone – between two surprisingly relaxed-looking men.

‘Where's the money?' one asked.

Leena gripped the handrail, the floor sloping beneath her. ‘What money?'

‘Don't play games. Your father must keep money in the house – all you
muhindis
do.'

For the first time, she felt her fear as if it were a real, inescapable thing. She had been taught:
If they come into your house, give them whatever they want and they'll leave. They won't hurt you.
But she didn't know if her father kept money in the house and, if he did, where it would be. The rim of the gun dug an imprint into her temple and a sob cracked in her throat. ‘Please, don't.'

The gun was removed slowly, his fingers, thick as anything, around her neck and forcing her eyes upward. ‘Where's your bedroom?'

Disgust swelling in her chest, puncturing her eyes with tears. ‘No.'

‘Your bedroom,' he repeated. ‘Or I'll shoot.'

She thought it would have been better to die because nothing could be worse than being taken prisoner in your own home, surrounded by things that once made you feel safe. It was bizarre to have her head angled in the direction of her bedside table, where her favorite Winnie-the-Pooh
teddy bear sat, having been passed down from Jai, while the man unbuckled his belt above her. He pinned her down, his knee on her chest, but as he went to undress, it lifted slightly and she took the opportunity to kick out. Her heel hit him squarely in the abdomen so that he doubled over and she scrambled up to leave.

He got to her before she reached the door, slamming into her so hard that her head met the wall and the air congealed into small, multi-colored spots and her body collapsed unresponsively. He dragged her back down to the marble floor.

‘Fucking
muhindi
,' he snarled in her ear. ‘You think you can just come here and take everything from us without giving anything back?'

Slapping hands, struggling fingers as he tugged down her shorts. She dug into his skin with her nails, welded her thighs together and spat into his eye. ‘I'd rather die than have you do this to me.'

A punch to her mouth, the iron taste of blood. She almost choked on it and had to release her grip on him to spit it out. Before she could turn back, he had pushed her legs apart. A sharp angry pain, thick fingers pressing down on her stomach, clutching her shirt so she couldn't get away. His wet breath moistening her face, suffocating her, until she went slack.

Three bodies swallowed in darkness, unmoving and bound by a terrible silence. When Esther reached out to flick on the kerosene lamp, Betty stopped her.

‘Don't. I can't bear to look at him.'

His grasp was blind in the night. ‘Betty, just listen to me.'

‘Did they kill her?'

‘No.'

‘Did they rape her?' The sounds refused to leave her ears – shrill cries that ripped her arms and neck out in goosebumps, even now.

Softly, ‘Yes.'

‘Ohh.' A trailing, wraith-like moan, reminding him of the ghost women his mother had once warned him about, haunting the edges of Mombasa town. Damaged and lost, left to their sufferings – Betty seemed like one now with the helpless
ohh
, the constant shaking of her head. ‘No, no, it's not true. No, no.'

‘I'm so sorry.' He would have comforted her if he could but everything of hers was pulled tightly away from him, shrunk back in horror.

She spat, ‘You're a coward and nothing but a petty thief and I wish I had never met you.'

‘And a murderer,' Esther chimed in, wrapping her arm around her cousin and drawing her further away.

‘I did it for you,' he protested weakly.

‘Don't say that.' Her voice was a hard warning.

‘It's not my fault and I did it so that you—'

To see her rise in such a tremendous state, a woman he had come to love for her unshakeable calmness, made him wince and lean back. ‘Today, you went into a house that wasn't yours and you stole a woman's wedding jewelry, violated her memories. Because of you, a young girl's life was ruined.'

He wanted to put his fists in his ears. ‘I didn't rape her.'

‘No one would have if you hadn't brought them to the house.'

‘It's not true,' he mumbled, his conviction weaker this time.

‘And you did it all to save your own life.'

‘I could never have known it would turn out this way.'

‘And then you handcuffed me and put me in the trunk of your car. Brought me here and for what?' she scoffed. ‘You think I want to be here? That I want to stay under the same roof as someone as vile as you?' Spit gleamed at the corners of her mouth. ‘You should have shot me instead.'

Esther rose. ‘It's been a very difficult day. Why don't you come with me?'

He listened to the two women go upstairs – the soothing hushes of one and the unstoppable cries of the other. How the roles had reversed today and how much he had damaged Betty. He searched desperately for some solace.
She has nowhere to go now
–
she has to stay here and eventually, maybe months or a year from now, she might forgive me.

He nursed his whiskey, thinking back to his conversation in the car with the men.

‘You didn't have to hurt her,' Jeffery had said.

‘No,' one of them had agreed. ‘But I wanted to.'

And huddled over in the darkness of the kitchen, engulfed by the cool camphor of a now-lit kerosene lamp, Jeffery understood exactly what the man had meant.

For days after the incident, the world took on a watery shapelessness. Emptiness blocked her mind – black shadows and the dirt-stench of wet tobacco, the cherub cheeks of her Winnie-the-Pooh
teddy bear. After she was released from the hospital, she had to throw the toy away because she couldn't look at it without being sick, haunted by the dead-bead eyes that held an infinite reflection of that moment. It had angered her that she couldn't keep something that had once meant so much to her, that she had been forced out of her room and into Jai's. Every morning she awoke to find that her body had receded a little further from her, her eyes growing so heavy with shame that she could no longer look at people when they addressed her.

Men scared her. She hated the women, especially when they said, ‘It's not your fault. It's them – those dirty, dirty
kharias
,' because they didn't understand that shifting the blame didn't change the fact that it had happened, only made it more real. She was broken and damaged now and not in the mysterious, romantic kind of way, but rather in the way that made people uncomfortable and nervous. Pooja's words were all that filled her head in those next few months.
Who was going to marry her now?

She insisted that they keep the lights on permanently in the garden and she watched out of the window, tracking every sound and shape.

‘You need to get away from there now,' her father would say.

‘Leena, eat something. You must stay strong.' The pinched voice of her mother.

‘You're safe with us. Nothing is going to hurt you any more.' Her brother's protective reassurings.

Their words made her feel like a stranger. For how could they possibly begin to understand what had happened to her and where could she start to explain it? After the rape, conversations became merry-go-rounds.

‘You know, it's normal to feel that way after what happened.'

‘You should rest. You've been through something terrible.'

‘He's a horrible man and he shouldn't have done that to you.'

‘Done what, Ma?' It was a week after the incident when her frustrations finally broke through, over flakes of dried toast crusted with strawberry jam.

Pooja had stopped talking, her hands clutching desperately at her
chuni
.

Leena's voice was loud and unwavering as she repeated, ‘What did he do, Ma?'

Her mother had shifted in her chair, tapping, smoothing, fussing with the tablecloth. ‘Come on, eat something.'

‘Not until you say it.'

‘I know you're angry, sweetheart.'

‘Just say it.' Leena gripped the edge of the island, furiously batting away her trepidation.

‘He hurt you—'

‘He raped me.'

Tears sprung to Pooja's eyes and Leena scraped back her stool, appalled that she had been waiting for that exact reaction.

‘That's what happened so let's not hide from it.' Leena had thrown down her fork and fled to the bathroom, where she had kneeled over the toilet just in time.

She heard the three of them talking in the living room one evening, thinking she was asleep.

‘Of course Betty was involved in this,' Pooja was saying. ‘You give and give to these people and they just take advantage whenever they can.'

‘You don't know for sure that she was, Ma,'
Jai had interrupted.

‘Who else could have let those men in? Led them straight to my jewelry?' Her voice had cracked. ‘To my daughter?'

Raj's always-steady voice. ‘It'll be okay. She can take the next year off university and we will get her the help she needs.'

Though Leena came into the room quietly, they all heard her and turned with their cheeks aflame from having been caught planning her life without her. ‘Classes start in two weeks and I want to go back.'

‘I don't think that's a good idea,' her brother interjected.

She was more adamant than they had ever seen her. ‘It's what I need to get better. Don't you want that for me?'

‘Of course we do,' whispered Pooja, distraught.

‘Then let me go. I can't stay here any more.' She looked out into the fast-approaching night, thought of all the things it concealed within its inky shade and said, with contempt in her voice, ‘It's the ugliest place in the world.'

In the small border town of Busia, two women and one suitcase hitched a ride with a driver of one of the cylindrical oil tankers waiting on the busy highway to cross into Uganda. It had two-and-a-half seats upfront and Betty was pressed between her cousin and a man who smelled of drying paint and grease. Packed in so tightly, the artificial dust of the air conditioning smearing her face, she felt especially suffocated after the five-hour-long bus ride from Nairobi – during which she had spent the majority of her time hiding her sorrow from Esther.

With a splitting heart, Betty had watched as the city she loved fell away behind her, its large houses, tall buildings and purposeful people folding into dirt-red roads scattered through with cheap motels, kiosks and barefoot children playing. Past the lush green coffee-growing town of Meru, which sat up in the northern slopes of Mount Kenya, and winding through the narrow lanes up toward the Great Rift Valley. They had stopped at the viewpoint there and were given a five-minute break to stretch their legs.

While Esther had gone straight to one of the curio shops to talk to the selling women, in the hope of receiving a hot cup of tea and something to eat, Betty had stayed at the observation point, her hands upon the flimsy, zebra-patterned barrier, watching out. It was a gray morning and the fickle weather had hidden the low hills of Mount Longonot but still allowed her an impressive view of the valley below. Looking upon the dipping crater, she had felt so insignificant in the midst of so much history and had quickly retreated, wondering what she was doing so far away from home.

Once back on the bus, she had consoled herself by admitting that she would have never been able to live with Jeffery, after all that he had done, but that didn't mean she didn't feel a sickening plunge every time she thought of him coming home to their note on the kitchen table – so cruelly evasive. Esther had insisted on being the one to write it, a manic grin upon her face, the bumpy pink tip of her tongue peering out between her lips, saying, ‘You cannot imagine how long I have been waiting for this very day, cousin.'

Betty had agreed to Esther's plan because after the incident at the Kohlis' house, Nairobi had changed overnight. It became dirty to her, and her mistakes followed her around like spiteful ghosts, haunting everything she did. She knew that if she wanted to be happy again, she would have to leave its busyness – its chaos and wonder – behind.