Who Will Catch Us As We Fall (43 page)

‘Can I climb the ladder and sit on top of this tank?' Esther asked the driver and her voice, childishly silly, broke through Betty's thoughts.

‘Are you crazy,
Mama
?' the man shook his head. ‘You'll fall right off.'

Esther patted the torn seat, stuck her finger into a hole where sponge stuffing was springing out. Greenish-gray flecks littered her skirt as she picked at it. ‘This will have to do, then.'

Just before they crossed over the border, Betty allowed herself to think of Jeffery one last time, to wonder what he was doing. She felt an expanding sense of loss in leaving him behind because she knew that in another life, which wasn't his, things between them would have been different. She wondered if he would search for her and it gave her a small pleasure to think that perhaps he might, if only for a little while. As if she could read her cousin's mind, Esther rolled down the window.

‘Wave goodbye to Kenya, Betty. Soon we will cross that border and he won't be able to hurt us any longer.'

The truck jerked forward, the strong vibrations of its engines rising up and spreading through the bottom of her seat and although she was tempted to look back, she couldn't bear to. She tried to reassure herself that, soon, it would be over. That in a few minutes she would be in a new country and beginning a fresh life and everything that she loved, had been comforted and injured by, would become nothing but fading beauties, half-formed images that she would eventually have trouble knowing. In a little while, she comforted herself, it would be like none of it had ever existed at all.

He had come home to a dark and cool house, the promise of rain lingering, and failed to see the note waiting for him on the kitchen table. He called out for them, listening within the creaking house for their sounds.

‘Betty? Esther?' He had gone quickly up the stairs and pushed open the bedroom door – ‘Where is everyone?' – before coming to a startled, dismayed halt.

The cupboard doors swung aggressively in the wind coming through a forgotten window and he rushed to it, catching it between movements. All of Esther's belongings – her bible, the old pictures she kept of David, the tub of Vaseline she used every evening on her skin – were gone.

In a confused tumble of thoughts, Jeffery tried to recall if Betty had any other family or friends she might have gone to; he struggled to remember where exactly upcountry her home was, but he had largely ignored her in those early days and so his mind stayed blank, stiff with dread.

He tore away the remainders of the room, left them scattered over the floor as he tripped downstairs once more and came to a stumbling stop right at the chair, blinking down at the open-faced piece of paper.

Jeffery,

We've climbed the ladder and you will never find us.

He squinted down at the writing, the incoherent ramblings of a mad woman – Esther, no doubt. What ladder? His first, clenching thought was that they had jumped out of the window and that the ladder was an implication that they had climbed up into heaven. He dashed to the window and, panting, leaned out. Spotless tarmac pavement. He was almost disappointed.

What ladder?
He slumped down on a chair, whiskey and glass in hand, automatically pouring out a neat, amber shot. Time had once again turned on him. One minute, he had had three women and in the next, he was alone with a tricky note and empty cupboards.
You will never find us.
What ladder?
You will never find us.
He threw the sentences around in his mind but they only became more jumbled, more idiotic, and he knew that had been the point of writing it that way. Esther may have gone but she still wanted him to suffer.

He crumpled the letter and pushed it into his glass, which was still a quarter full of whiskey. The alcohol flooded the paper, its stiffness slowly collapsing until their secret taunts were nothing but smoky ribbons of ink, escaping the note and staining his drink black.

It's too late in the year for jacarandas but they line the highways and small side streets in full bloom anyway, their fallen flowers creating a glossy, periwinkle carpet. The five-lobe petals make quiet
pop-popping
sounds as tires speed over them, bursting apart and releasing their honey stickiness into the air. It seems ill-mannered to Michael that such brightness should exist while the country is falling apart at its seams, a violet taunt of all the things they could have had and all the things they chose instead.

Earlier that week, a woman and her two-year-old daughter were found dead in Tana River county beside a watering hole. In that baking corner of Kenya, they had been hacked to death with a
panga
and Michael thinks of the pictures he had been sent there to take to accompany a newspaper article. He had captured the shot from the waist down – his own effort to give her one last dignity. She had been holding her daughter's hand, a small girl with unusually clean feet because she was being carried when they were struck.

At first, the killings hardly garnered any attention. Ethnic violence was rife in that former coast province where conflict over water and farmland was high. But then, a few weeks later, eleven more people were dead, an inkling of a more serious, wider issue.

Such is the method of crude politics
,
the article that went with the picture had read.
Ensure that your tribe is in the majority
–
so that in Tana River Delta, this violent competition to ensure that their main man gets governorship looks an awful lot like ethnic cleansing.

It is death more than anything that reminds him of his own weakness when it comes to Leena. Perhaps it is the intensity of emotion it brings with it or the jarring reminder that one day, his chances with her will run out.

‘You need to leave it alone now,
cuzo
,' Jackie had said after catching him with the painting. She had pushed it back behind the many others, ensuring that it was wrapped tightly away, and led him from it. ‘There are some things we have to move on from otherwise we will waste away from wanting them so badly.'

Nairobi is a sly town. It is so small that run-ins with people one is trying to avoid are a common occurrence, yet it is segmented enough to keep two searching individuals apart. It has been almost three weeks since Michael last saw Leena at the police station and he is restless and irritable, though unsurprised.

The city was designed to keep people apart, European from African, African from Asian, Asian from European. Each group had been assigned their selective pockets and even though, after independence, those boundaries had grown more precarious, that feeling of division had been hard, if not impossible, to shake.

So when they stumble across each other at a bar one Saturday night, it is confusing for both of them. He isn't sure which one of them is in the wrong place and she knows his face but is having some difficulty recalling where she last saw it.

‘You're here,' is all he manages to say.

‘I am.' She has been drinking and he is handsome in a comforting way, so she smiles and leans against the cushioned wall outside the bar. When he looks beyond her into the low intensity, blue-lit space, he sees a group of people watching them. They are perched on cream chairs and whisper to each other without taking their eyes off him. Michael realizes that he is the one who is out of place.

‘Your friends are worrying about you.'

She follows his gaze, satisfied with herself. ‘Let them.'

They laugh softly together until the shared pleasure is used up. She is exactly how he remembers yet not the same at all. The round face and amber eyes, the misplaced dimple that is like a dent in her cheekbone, the wide stretch of smile with its narrow fleet of teeth. Her hair is long once more, falling in a steady wave over a single shoulder. Seeing Leena in the flesh makes him grow tired of the image he heaves around – he wants to know her this way, this real way, and understands that once he leaves this place, the memories he has of her will no longer be enough.

‘That's where I know you from.' She snaps her painted nails and takes a sip of her drink. When she speaks again, her words are fueled by vodka. He thrills in it, for how grown up she has become. ‘It was at the police station.'

His mouth runs dry and he looks around for a waitress. As he does so, she leans in, so small that she is forced to stand on her tiptoes.

She winks and he realizes that she is teasing him. ‘You're the one who did all the art.'

‘Don't say it too loudly – you never know who is listening.'

‘I've been thinking about you.' It spills from her mouth after another sip of her drink.

The words take him aback, warm him with pleasure though he should have expected it – she has always been so bold. It infuses him with the same confidence.

‘Actually, we met before the police station.'

Parallel lines of confusion appear around her mouth. ‘But I've just got back from London.'

Placing her drained glass on an empty table, she shoots her eyes uncertainly back toward her friends, who are gesturing her over. He catches her wrist lightly, a throb of blood beneath his thumb. ‘It's me – Michael.'

He watches with some amusement the stages her expression passes through. A pulse of familiarity, doubt, remembering, and then she laughs – a girlish, short tinkle. ‘It really is you.'

It is difficult to decipher what she is thinking; her eyes are charcoal, darkened by the poor lighting. He cannot tell if she is glad to see him or just enjoying the unexpected resurfacing of her past.

‘How come you never told me who you were at the police station?'

He grins wryly. ‘Being in the position I was in, can you blame me?'

She wants to hug him, feels an insistent, rope-like tug drawing her forward. ‘It's not at all like the boy I remember to get into such trouble.'

Michael straightens out his ribbed sweater, more gray now than black, and is suddenly overly conscious. ‘It's been a very long time since then.'

Agreeing with him, she asks about his mother. ‘She took such good care of us when we were younger.'

‘She lives in Eldoret now,' he tells her. ‘We have a house there.'

‘What about you?' The old habit in her hands has stirred and they move animatedly along with her words. He is glad to see that there are some parts of her that have remained unchanged.

‘I'm a photographer.'

The impressed glint in her eye churns his stomach with pleasure. But then he asks about her and her answers are vague and her body stiffens, shrinks away. She has picked up her empty glass and is playing with it idly. Her lack of willing responses means that they run out of conversation quickly and she looks back at her group – they are calling out for her once more.

‘I should go,' she finally tells him.

Cursing his weakness, Michael says, ‘It was wonderful to see you.'

She is watching him with that old, keen expression. Her mouth puckers slightly as it always used to when she was concentrating hard on a problem. ‘Maybe I can give you my phone number?'

He smiles.

She had always been the braver one.

The early part of the next week passes in a mild, thrumming panic. Somehow, the bar napkin she scrawled her number on keeps finding its way back to his unfolding fingers until he has it memorized – is even able to pick out an individual digit and know where in the order it belongs.

Michael is tempted to call Jai and tell him what happened, for he could use some advice, but a larger part of him wants to keep this between the two of them. When they were younger, he had never known Leena outside of his friendship with Jai and seeing her last Saturday – the maroon lips and short, dark dress – he wants it to be different this time.

Playing with the keys on his phone, he dials her number and as soon as he presses the call button, ends it. Every time he punches it in, he is seized by the memory of four nights ago. Maybe she had woken up the next morning kicking herself for giving in to him. Perhaps she had been glad, relieved even, that he had not yet called – or after all these days, she might have forgotten him altogether.

‘Give me that.' The phone is snatched from his hand.

He lunges at Jackie but she is too quick for him, backing away with his mobile. ‘What are you doing?' he protests weakly.

She presses the redial button and waits for it to ring. ‘Can't hang up now,
cuzo
.'

Michael clears his throat, practices
hello-ing
, all the while ignoring his cousin's smirk.

‘Hello?' Her phone voice is different. She sounds older and unlike herself, words clipped with a British accent.

Goaded on by the fact that she might hang up if he remains mute for too long, he says, ‘Hi, this is Michael,' and squeezes his eyes shut painfully against the formality of his tone.

He concentrates on the growing silence at the other end, his palms aching with anticipation. Glares at Jackie.

‘You called.' Leena sounds surprised, but with the drumming between his ears Michael cannot tell if she is pleased or not.

‘I was wondering if you wanted to have coffee with me.' Straight to the point because he has already waited too long for this moment.

When she replies, she sounds unsure and distracted, wrestling a million different responses. It is a swallowed-up whisper when she says, ‘How about lunch tomorrow?'

‘That sounds perfect,' he says calmly, struggling to hide the smile in his voice.

‘Where shall we go?'

And he stops smiling because that is an entirely different problem. He tries to suggest something he thinks she will like. ‘How about Java House?'

‘I was thinking of that new shopping center – Junction Mall. I heard they have some pretty good restaurants there.'

He tries not to see it as a bad omen; even in the simplest of things, their differences arise, clashing and struggling to find middle ground.

‘It's a little out of the way for me,' he admits. ‘I don't have a car.' Then, ears filled with static silence, Michael wonders if he should have lied and said it was in the garage, but reminds himself that he has nothing to be ashamed of. ‘How about Diamond Plaza?'

‘Too many Indians.'

‘What's wrong with that?' he challenges.

‘They stare a lot and it makes me uncomfortable.'

He laughs, remembering the watchful gazes of the sari-clad women in the compound, wing-tipped with black kohl. Leena joins him, timidly at first, but then really laughing, just like he remembers how she used to. He can picture her sitting at her desk or on the couch, upright with her hands fussed in her hair or pinching her top lip.

Her voice is worried when she asks, ‘How will we ever decide?'

‘We'll manage,' he replies, and wonders if they are still talking about coffee shops.

Eventually, they settle for a non-descript café called Khawa downtown, nestled between an optometrist's store and a Hooters, so hidden that most people pass it by. It has shredded, twine chairs that poke mercilessly through their clothes, and linoleum floors – the whole place stinks of cold cheese pies, refried chips and Peptang
tomato sauce.

‘This place is perfect,' she says.

He looks around. ‘Because it's empty?'

‘I like my privacy.' She fiddles with the corner of the menu – a single sheet of old paper that has recently been laminated.

Pooja hates it when she comes to town,
full of thieves, no place for a young girl like you
,
and it is the first time Leena has come alone. She feels vulnerable, exposed, and it doesn't help that Michael is watching her so carefully, that his eyes are warmer and browner than she expected, his lips impressively bowed. He seems so free and unbroken, unlike her. She chuckles to think of what her mother would say if she could see her now.

‘Is something funny?' he asks. It is the thing she remembers most about him – his ability to be so straightforward without crossing into the obnoxious. An honesty she rarely encounters.

‘I was thinking how unexpected it is that we're here together.'

He puts the menu down. ‘After you moved, I kept waiting for you to visit me. It's silly, I know, even after Jai told me that you wanted to make your own friends, I just kept on waiting.' His skin darkens with embarrassment.

Eyebrows knotting. ‘You kept in touch with Jai after we left the compound?'

‘He came over every Saturday. I thought you knew that.'

It comes to them almost simultaneously. Michael registers the knowledge with a sinking anger, a surprised pang that his friend could have done that to him. Leena rolls her eyes playfully and the careless gesture makes him feel worse.

‘That's my mother for you.' Leena tosses her hair back with a silly laugh. ‘Always meddling.'

She couldn't have known what it meant to him and he tries not to be offended that she can brush it away so lightly. Grabbing hold of his finger, she tugs it. She is emboldened, knowing how unlikely it is that she will run into anyone she knows in this innocuous, brown café. ‘Serious as always,' she teases.

‘Some things never change,' he tells her and hopes she understands what he means.

In the breezy afternoon, amid car fumes and the oily stench of deep-fried chicken, she almost does. But then she pulls away from him and turns silently back to her menu.

In the days leading up to the elections, Pooja makes sure that the cupboards in her kitchen are fully stocked, barrels of drinking water stored away in her pantry and emergency supplies inventoried. Many of her friends and most of the foreign families who live in Runda have left, catching flights to safer places as is the norm during the election period, and the suburb is quiet and still, a reflection of the entire country. Anxious and waiting.