The Fall of Saints (17 page)

“Our old school,” Jane and I said in unison.

“We could talk to her. Years have passed. She may be willing to share some information,” I suggested.

We agreed. Jane offered to make the arrangements and then continued, “The clear winners were Reverend Susan and Father Brian. Reverend Susan registered her adoption agency: the Real Alternative Clinics. Father Brian became a sensational picture of morality, although nobody knew what it is he had wanted to say in court. Some rumors claimed that he was the author of the secret document that doomed the clinics and brought about the fall of a saint. Brian became an overnight celebrity when he registered his all-purpose charity to lift Africa. Some called him a great nationalist, a white Pan-Africanist even, a holy visionary. Madness! How could a name like All Lost African Sun Kingdoms Arise turn a wayward priest into a Pan-Africanist visionary overnight?”

“Extraordinary,” I said. “A whole sentence for the title of a mere charity?”

“It’s registered under the initials,” Wainaina said. “ALASKA. Alaska Enterprises!” He looked at me as if he had realized the implication.

“Oh my God,” I said, excusing myself to the bathroom, where I sat motionless, though my mind was a whirlwind. How did Alaska Enterprises end up in my husband’s file in Riverdale? Whatever, the saga of the Alternative Clinics and Betty’s story of enslaved wombs were intertwined with my life. I played with the initials. Alaska. Kalaska. Kasla. The Palmer defense of Kasla. Rhino Man. The priest. The gunman. The priest, the lawyer, the gunman, and the Rhino Man. Mark. Joe. The Mafia. A web of intrigue and personalities. How did they connect?

I took out my cell phone to call Ben. I had forgotten to keep my phone on. He had called again. Ben . . . but why was he following me? Was he part of the web? I decided not to call him just yet. I had to find out more, arm myself with details, knowledge. I had to take a good look at this Wakitabu and the Supa Duka, the fertility clinic in Mashingo, and anything else connected with Alaska. Then meet with Paulina, Wangeci, and Susan. In that or any other order.

“I am going to Kambera,” I told Jane and Wainaina after I returned to the table.

They looked at each other, then at me.

“For a few days,” I added.

16

T
he next call from Ohio sounded anxious. Ben had called Sam again to tell him they had questioned Joe and found that his story didn’t make sense. Nor did the fact that I’d ended up in Ohio and then disappeared, leaving Kobi behind. Ben wanted to know the relationship between Joe and Sam and sounded skeptical when Sam denied knowing Joe. What irritated Sam was Ben’s implication of a white conspiracy against a black female.

“Oh, and Dad advises you to get a gun. He does not like this Ben fellow insinuating that I could be involved in the disappearance of an African queen,” he said with a nervous chuckle.

I had to stop this. This time I called Ben.

“Mugure, thanks for calling. Where are you? I have been looking for you everywhere.”

“And harassing my friends? Threats, even?”

“You must admit that the series of events has been strange. I am your friend, sister. I meet with you at Kennedy. We talk about Zack and suited gunmen. I give you my hotline for any emergency. The same afternoon, you leave your home in Riverdale in such a hurry that you don’t even stop at traffic lights. Thereafter, Joe chases you all the way to Manhattan. He calls us. I question him, and he tells me some fiction that you are crazy. But you did not look crazy to me when we met at the airport. He says we should lock you up in a ward to have your head examined. Then you vanish. You leave behind a child you love. Cape Town? You are not there. My calls to you? No response. Melinda disappears at about the same time. The police ask Mark to report at the police station to answer a few questions about smuggling and employing illegal immigrants. He disappears. You told me that he recommended Kasla to you. Kasla was once represented by Palmer. I drive past the curio shop. The owner is gone.”

“The Rhino Man?” I asked, unable to disguise my fear.

“Is that what you call him? Mugure, we have to meet. There are things I want to tell you.”

“Ben, I am far away. Can’t you can tell me over the phone?” I asked.

“A meeting is best.”

The more he emphasized a meeting, the more suspicious he made me, but curiosity overrode that. What if he was telling the truth? I did not want him to bother Sam again. “I am in Kenya,” I said.

“What! You are in Kenya?” he sounded agitated.

“I was going to South Africa. I changed my mind at the airport.”

“Remember my friend Johnston, the detective I once told you about? I will text you his number. He is a good man. Please call him in case of anything . . . Mugure, I’m sorry, but I must ask you this: Has Zack been in touch with you lately?”

“Why? Has anything happened to him? Please tell me.”

“I don’t know. We lost him in Tallinn. We think he may have crossed over to Latvia.”

“What about the suited gunman?”

“We haven’t seen him, either. Does Zack know you are in Kenya?”

Why does he want to know? I asked myself. “No!” I said.

“Keep it that way.”

“Look, Ben, tell me the truth. Is Zack safe?”

“Put it this way: I’m not aware of any harm to him.”

“Thank you for your concern, but I really have to go now,” I said, trying to terminate the conversation without unduly annoying him. I could not trust him fully. His good came mixed with evil. Perhaps he wanted his friend—if Detective Johnston existed—to keep an eye on me.

“Wait. How about Melinda?” he asked.

“She is performing at the annual Festival of Rags. Look, I have to attend to something now,” I said hastily, and hung up.

I called Zack. No response. At least Ben had not said anything about the suited gunman hurting him. I will keep on trying, I said to myself, both upset and relieved that I did not reach Zack.

But the fact that I did not know where he was, along with the conversation with Ben, left me with more questions than answers, including his role in the mess. Why did Mark’s friend Joe want me locked up in a ward? And why had Mark disappeared? Where had the Rhino Man gone? I felt like I was lost in a maze where everything was visible, even familiar, but each path I took ended in a cul-de-sac, and I had to retrace my footsteps to the beginning.

I must get to the bottom of it. I felt comfortable with my decision to spend a few days and nights in Kambera.

•  •  •

Betty waited for me at the bus stop. Her belly seemed to have grown bigger within the last twenty-four hours, but she looked less overwhelmed by it, maybe because of the bright flowery maxidress she wore. She had a pretty face, despite the hardships that she bore on her thinning shoulders. Her braided hair was held back in a ponytail that made her head look a little pointed, but the style suited her well. She smiled broadly when she saw me, then covered her mouth with her hand when I removed my head scarf.

“Oh my, you cut your hair off? You look so different, but I like it.” She had said exactly what I needed to hear. That was why I had cut it short. To get rid of the lady from the Bronx.

Last night’s revelation had made me feel a more personal relationship with Kambera. As we walked back to Betty’s place, I noticed what I hadn’t the first time—the many women who sat outside creating hairdos that were really works of art. At my request, Betty had arranged for me to meet a few other women in the scheme. And of course, Wakitabu.

Betty first took me to see Grace Atieno, who lived about a fifteen-minute walk from Betty. She was a vibrant and extremely beautiful woman. She and her parents had been chased from their home in Naivasha. Her parents lived in the IDP camps. But she had to help them and her younger siblings. Unlike Betty, Grace did not care if people knew how she earned her living. She took the view that she was rendering a positive service to childless couples. “I just take care of their child for nine months and then leave the rest to them. It’s like babysitting, except easier, because the baby is in my belly. Some women are paid for wet nursing; I am paid for carrying them. I bring a little happiness to childless couples.”

In the early evening, Betty walked me to Philomena Wanjik˜u’s. Philomena’s father had been killed in post-election violence in Molo. Her mother lived in IDP camps. She had left to the city in order to provide for her three siblings and see them through school. Her story and Grace Atieno’s were almost interchangeable.

She was preparing dinner when we arrived. The kitchen was also the living room, and we sat there. The small house was sparsely furnished with the bare necessities: a table and three wicker chairs. On her wall, she had old ragged pictures of African American musicians pulled from newspapers and magazines. The King of Pop, Michael Jackson, took center stage, while a refreshingly young Whitney Houston graced the left wall, a picture so innocent that it exemplified the beauty of her voice before drugs removed her from music grace.

Philomena had been working several jobs and could hardly meet expenses when she heard about the wombs for hire and jumped at the opportunity. “Giving away that first child, my own blood, was not easy, but I needed the money. I really wouldn’t encourage you to go through with it. You see, the baby I gave away, I think about her all the time. I know she is in America, or at least that’s what they told me, so maybe her life is better there. But there are the small things. Does she resemble me in any way? This is the second baby, but I can’t go through with the arrangement. I thought I could, but I can’t. I want to keep the baby. I must.”

She was quiet for a few minutes and then looked up. I thought she was wondering whether to trust me.

“I plan to run away into the rural areas. They are very powerful people. But I will find a way. Even a hare is able to outsmart the bigger animals.”

I was going to add that these were animals of prey, then stopped: If art gave her hope and the courage she needed to go through with it, who was I to intrude with facts of a situation I hardly understood? Story. Song. Dance. Whistling, all plentiful in Kambera streets and houses. The images pasted on the walls afforded her moments of escape into dreams.

Later in the evening, Philomena showed me a tiny room with two single beds. “Your bed, my bed,” she said, and laughed. There was something endearing about laughter amid the squalor. Laughter embodied resistance against agents of gloom.

Some noise woke me up in the middle of the night, and I saw that Philomena’s bed was empty. I wondered where she might have gone and then remembered that the communal toilets were outside. I relaxed and settled back into the rather uncomfortable bed. The mattress was so thin, I could feel the springs under my back.

Then: “I told you, you can meet her in the morning,” I heard Philomena complaining.

I panicked, but before I could get out of bed properly, I saw a burly figure standing at the door to the bedroom.

“Who are you?” I asked, trying hard to control my shaky voice.

“Who
are you
?” the man retorted and started toward me.

He looked scary. Just then Philomena, in her blue cotton nightdress, stepped forward, a flashlight in her hand, and stood between us. But before she had finished saying, “Amina, this is Wakitabu,” the man had brushed her aside and was in my face. He grabbed me by the collar and pulled me close. His breath was a nasty mix of fish and cigarettes. I could see a scar above his eye; his receding hair was beginning to turn gray. I was now half sitting and half floating in the air. I could barely breathe, let alone talk.

“What do you want with Betty and Philomena?” he demanded.

“I . . . I have no job . . . I . . . want to join,” I attempted to say.

He had probably been following me around and knew I was Mugure. “Join what? Who told you?”

“The women . . . Betty . . . she’s my cousin. She told you,” I insisted.

He suddenly let go of my collar, and I fell on the bed. He stood by the bed, still looking as if he would punch me. “You go to the clinic tomorrow. If you so much as breathe a word to someone else, I will not spare you next time.” He pulled some rumpled papers from his back pocket, straightened them out on his lap as if ironing them, and then shoved them toward me. “Print your name here and then sign!”

I could barely see what it was I was signing. Philomena shone the flashlight on the paper, and I was able to make out “now property of Alaska Enterprises.”

“I didn’t say read, I said sign,” he barked at me.

I did and handed him the paper, which he folded and stuffed into his back pocket. When he got to the door, he shouted, “By the way, you will get a third of what’s due to you, another third when you conceive, and the rest when the baby is born. If you want more money, they can impregnate you with eight,” he said, and laughed.

And with that, the dreaded Wakitabu was gone. Philomena closed the door after him and apologized for his behavior. She didn’t have to; I understood perfectly that they needed to scare me half to death to make me feel that my every move was being watched, in the process making me sign my life away. Even Ben was trying similar tactics.

I started to cry. I felt hemmed in from all sides in America and Kenya by forces I could not comprehend. I needed to go back to my mother’s grave to find peace. Then I remembered her admonition that one must walk with the head held high and back straight, because slouching bent one’s body and spirit. I was my mother’s daughter. That made me feel better. I was not sure if I wanted to go to the Supa Duka, but I could not quit. It was a crucial part of the dots I was trying to connect.

17

T
he town where the Supa Duka was located was nicknamed Donkey City. From the moment I got off the bus, I understood why. Donkeys were everywhere. I had to fight my way through lines of carts piled high with all sorts of goods, from used tires and sacks bulging with potatoes to white aluminum tanks. The starved gray beasts of burden shat and brayed as if in competition, and I walked gingerly to avoid stepping on a mound. I almost laughed when I recalled Kamau telling us about the demons that Susan had cast out from the bodies of the possessed. Had they relocated here?