The Fall of Saints (19 page)

Mwihaki said “how are you” from a distance. “You look like Auntie Wangeci,” she added, and disappeared. Wangeci laughed and introduced herself.

“I am Wangeci’s mother,” the older woman said. “I don’t see the resemblance Mwihaki is talking about. But your skin is dark and beautiful.”

“Thank you. I am Mugure, and this is the journalist Wainaina.” We shook their hands.

“Oh, Wainaina,” she said, and burst into a hearty laugh. “I know you, though we have never met. You are a brave man. Thanks for the good work you do.”

Wangeci, lean, dark, and strikingly beautiful, came across as shy. Her smiling eyes belied what she may have gone through. She went back to where she had been sitting. Her legs on the couch, she reached for a blue cushion and held it across her chest. The mother fussed around us and gave us tea and juice before she sat down again.

I chose the couch nearest to Wangeci and her mother. “Thank you for agreeing to meet us on such short notice,” I started. Wangeci didn’t answer but kept her gaze on me. “We understand you are part of the wombs for hire?”

“Sort of. I never really was,” she corrected me.

“Sorry. What . . . um . . . what had you joined? How did you, um, I mean, how did you get involved? Did someone recruit you?”

“Betty had told me about it.”

“She always was out with the wrong crowd,” her mother quipped.

“Mooooom,” Wangeci chided her.

“She thought it was an easy way of raising money,” her mother continued.

“I had run away from home,” Wangeci said, looking at her mother.

“Why?” I asked.

“My mother here never let me do anything on my own. I felt like a prisoner,” she said.

“It’s hard to bring up a child with an absent father!”

“I resented having a father who never showed up,” Wangeci said.

Sounded familiar. I thought of asking about the absent father, then dismissed it.

“When I came home and found her gone, I cried for a whole week,” Mama said. “Then I thought it would be a good lesson for her to learn, and oh my God, did she learn it the hard way.”

“Anyway,” Wangeci continued after giving her mother a dirty look, “Betty took me along to meet this guy Wakitabu, a kind of go-between, whom I instantly disliked. I dismissed the very thought of carrying a baby, but I needed the money. I wanted to show my mother I was capable of taking care of myself. I didn’t give an answer right then. And then I met him, and everything changed.”

“Who?”

“Excuse me, but the thought of him, his name, makes me sick,” she said, visibly shaken.

I let her compose herself.

“I met him a few days after Wakitabu. He laughed off the idea of my carrying babies. He wanted me in his life. He projected a caring personality. He had the money; there was no need for me to work. We fell in love, I moved into his apartment in Green Estate, and before long, he was talking of my joining him in America.”

Wainaina and I exchanged glances. It was our first direct American connection, unlike Kamau’s generic American.

“Was he American?” I asked, all alert.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “I had not met a person who loved life so much, which was really what I needed at that age. And the American promise. I became pregnant. We didn’t want to keep the baby, but we differed on what to do about it. I wanted to abort, but he convinced me it was better to give the baby away than to abort it. Almost like the way those clinics used to do. He told me the baby would go to a caring wealthy couple, part of a millionaire club for babies,” she said, and laughed almost in a sneer.

When she got to the sixth month, she changed her mind. She wanted to keep the baby. He became upset, telling her that the baby had already been promised to a high-powered politician in Washington. He told her he had big plans for them, and the unplanned baby would interfere with the big picture of expanding his empire to the rest of Africa and Asia. That was why he was always on the move, sometimes gone for days. A multi-businessman, he had good connections to top government officials, judging by the license plates of the cars that would sometimes drop him by the Green Estate apartment.

“I did not understand why he was so keen on giving up our baby, seeing that we were still a couple,” Wangeci said, “and he was rich.”

She fretted, asked questions, particularly about the wombs for hire and if he had something to do with it. He denied any links to it. How, then, did he know about the millionaire club for babies? Or that the baby had been promised to a Washington politician? He looked her in the eye and told her, for their own flesh and blood, he had gone to the most trustworthy adoption agency: the Real Alternative Clinics, now the Miwani.

“You mean the one owned by Reverend Susan?” Wainaina asked.

“Yes, Her Holiness.”

“I have never trusted that woman and her miracles and angels,” Mama Wangeci said. “I know her village . . .”

“I continued to assert my rights to the baby. I wanted us to marry. I told him I would go to the newspapers. I was just saying, but I was surprised by how the threat changed his approach. He relented and said I could keep the baby. The wedding would follow the baby’s birth. I was so happy.”

A week before her due date, Wangeci felt ill, a mixture of nausea and extreme thirst that could not be quenched by water. She insisted they go to hospital, but the man brought her some juice and said it would make her feel better. A few sips and her condition worsened. She could not say what had happened; all she remembered was waking up with a sharp pain across her belly in a clinic with the man and the doctor by her side.

They told her that she had been in a coma, and fearing for her life and the baby’s, they had been forced to operate. Her baby was stillborn, and they had buried it. She did not believe them and kept on screaming, demanding to see her baby or the grave. The doctor forcefully injected her with a drug to calm her. When she came around, she was in the rented apartment alone. The man—or the American, as she now called him—had packed all his things and vanished. She had no one to call.

Dazed, she walked across the bougainvillea hedge that divided the Green Estate and Kambera. Betty was the only friend she had, and the name of the one person the American had mentioned. She went to Reverend Susan. The reverend insisted that Wangeci had signed papers to give the baby away. Wangeci denied having signed such papers, but Susan’s words confirmed what she already suspected: Her baby was alive, probably in the home of the powerful politician in Washington or a member of the millionaire club.

“Betty told me you are going to help recover my baby,” Wangeci finished, and looked straight at me.

Her mother, too. And Wainaina. And Mwihaki, who had come back in the room. I suppose Wangeci had agreed to meet me under that assumption. I felt tears, but I had to be strong for her, for the baby, for all the eyes on me.

“I will do all I can,” I said. At the door, I turned. “Wangeci, I know it hurts. But please tell me the man’s name.”

She hesitated and started sobbing, then blurted out the name: Mark.

“Mark,” I repeated. “Is he . . .” I couldn’t find the words.

“Tall white man,” she replied.

Shocked, I went over to sit on the floor near her and clasped her hands in mine. I held back my tears with difficulty. She sat on the floor, level with me, and hugged me. I could feel her heartbeat.

Afterward Wainaina would tell me that the sight of two black women in sorrow and solidarity would remain in his memory forever, that he so badly wanted to take that picture but couldn’t bring himself to break the stillness. The whole world was absorbed in the silence of our embrace.

I stood up, feeling weak from what I now knew, or thought I did, about Mark’s intimate involvement in adoption agencies. The dream of a landscaping business empire in Africa was a metaphor of a reality remembered. He was talking about the past and not the future.

“Hold my hand,” I whispered to Wainaina.

I was sure he could feel me tremble.

19

M
aina was fast asleep. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, adjusted his seat, then started the car, blaming the slumber on his allergies. The road was deserted except for a blue Toyota Land Cruiser parked a few hundred meters from Wangeci’s house. I could not get my mind off Mark. I reflected on his put-on ignorance of Africa and Wangeci’s testimony.

Down the road a bit, a vehicle hit us from behind. It seemed to come out of nowhere. I was jerked forward. They rammed us again. I was thrown forward, but my seat belt steadied me. Wainaina crashed into the dashboard. “Damn carjackers!” Maina shouted as he accelerated.

A shot rang out. I screamed and covered my head with my arms. For a few seconds everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Another burst of gunfire shattered the back window. I ducked behind the seat as shards of glass fell on me. I thought I had been shot. My mouth dried up. I closed my eyes. My stomach tightened into a knot. I tried to say something, anything, to sound brave, but another gunshot held me silent. I shook with fear and my legs were cramping.

Maina sped toward Ngecha into a potholed section of the Limuru-Tigoni highway. If the gun-wielding goons didn’t, these potholes would surely send us to our death. The road was virtually empty of traffic. We had no one to help us or bear witness to our execution.

I heard another loud bang. I curled up more. Then I felt a soft warm trickle of something on my neck. I felt for it with my right. It was blood. “I’ve been hit! I’ve been hit!” I shouted.

“Keep your head down,” Maina shouted as he hit a huge pothole that sent the car airborne. I heard a groan from Wainaina. “Dammit!” Maina cried. “Should we let these jackers take the car?”

“This is not a carjack!” Wainaina shouted, mirroring my thoughts completely. “Just drive!”

The engine roared without gaining us any distance from the pursuing Toyota. Maina swerved the car left, right, any way, at times driving two wheels on the road and the other two on the side, trying to avoid the potholes.

“Come on, come on!” Maina shouted, talking to the car. “There’s a police station at Kiambu Inn. Just hold on! Almost there, almost there!” I hoped the car was listening.

There was a lull and then a loud bang. I felt as if I had been split into two. The Land Cruiser had pitched us into a tailspin, and Maina was desperately trying to regain control. Then came the unmistakable smell of burning rubber.

“It’s the tires,” Maina screamed. “Everybody stay put!”

After ramming us, the Land Cruiser sped past. Down the road, the driver did a three-point turn. The Land Cruiser was now facing us.

Maina started revving the car, more and more, without moving. I raised my head: His eyes were fixed in front of him; the sweat on his neck and his heavy breathing belied his bravado. I saw him wipe his forehead with his forearm. He shifted a little in his seat and then engaged the first gear.

“What are you doing?” shouted Wainaina.

Maina did not answer. Suddenly, he released the clutch and the car lurched forward, pushing me back against the seat. This is a bad move, I thought. Us against the Land Cruiser. It had started coming at us. I watched as, at breakneck speed, we closed the distance to our fate. This was suicide by car! I saw the man with the gun attempt to take aim and then duck inside.

I held my breath, closed my eyes, and waited for the inevitable head-on collision. Nothing happened. I opened my eyes and looked back in time to see the Land Cruiser swerve, lose control, veer off the road, and disappear down the cliff. We just heard the impact as we sped down and then up the Kiambu hill all the way to the police station.

Maina explained his suicidal gamble. Hired gangs are motivated by greed, not ideals. The dead don’t collect money. His plan B was to swerve just before the collision, but the assassins blinked first. We gratefully recorded our statements at the police precinct, confining them to the chase. Luckily, no one was badly hurt. I had just suffered a cut on my left hand. We left the battered car at the precinct and took a bus.

On arrival at Jane’s place, I called Wangeci to brief her on what had happened. I did not want to scare her, but I stressed that the Land Cruiser had been parked outside their house; that obviously the men knew we were there and were waiting for us to come out. Wangeci told me that they had heard the gunfire. She promised she would be careful in her movements.

Alone, I went over the recent sequence of events. Ben. Wakitabu. Supa Duka. Father Brian. The photo. I recalled the surveillance video back in the Bronx and the car chase that followed it. Now here, so soon after a surveillance photo—though an old one—we had survived another car chase. Both came after my contact with Ben. Father Brian had come into the mix, complicating the way out of the maze. Was there a connection between Ben and Brian?

A call from Wainaina confirmed the limitation of time. Betty had sent him an urgent message: Wakitabu was looking for me. I was being hunted from all sides. I had to find a way out of the maze. Once again I had to go back to the beginning: the Alternative Clinics and its founder, Sister Paulina.

20

T
he next morning found Jane and me driving furiously to our old school, Loreto Convent Msongari in Lavington. I had not been back since I left, and despite being weighed down by the events, I was curious about the changes. The bougainvillea-lined road leading to the school entrance was intact. The fishpond had been replaced by a rose garden. But the group of nuns walking in single file across the compound toward the chapel brought fond memories of my four years at the school.

“Power, remember her?” Jane asked.

“How could I forget. I was terrified of her.”

Power was the nickname we had given to Sister Ann, our headmistress, who exuded and exercised power. And no one, not even Jane the daredevil, wanted to cross her path intentionally.

Jane parked opposite the chapel a few yards from the statue of Mary, mother of Jesus. We had always wondered what became of the chocolate birthday cakes we left at her feet. Were we not on a different mission, it would have been fun to ask one of the sisters.