Mama can’t hide her excitement any more, she wants to celebrate! It is the ideal girls’ day out; a day that she got to wrap her motherly warm arms around me for a couple of minutes and found it hard to let go. I am wondering to myself, ‘why have you been keeping your arms to yourself all this while?’
“I am so proud of you my daughter. You are a big blessing.” I can see a cloud of joyful tears form in her eyes as she utters these words.
I feel guilty though, wondering whether I should tell her the truth, or let Mother Nature make that decision for me.
At the bank, she asks me to queue and make a deposit at the counter as she sits in one of the customer chairs, relaxing, something she barely ever gets to do while at home. She is always waking up too early, going to bed too late, and overworking too hard. In less than three minutes, she is already in dreamland.
After I am done with depositing the school fees at the counter, the teller lady tells me that the manager wants to see me.
“Why? Have I done something wrong?” I ask.
She gives me one of those looks that want to yell, ‘Listen lady, they don’t pay enough to work as both a teller and a messenger.’
The guy who had been impatiently queuing behind me belligerently approaches the counter and shoves me aside to the point of almost sending me to the floor. The teller starts conversing with him as if she is already done serving me. A few feet away from the counter is a small all glass office with a BANK MANAGER sign on the door. Before I hold up my hand and form a light fist to knock, a burly man opens it from the inside and asks that I come in.
Inside are three men, two sitted on one side of a small two sitter leather couch and with the other man sitted at the Big Boss’s chair behind a huge magnificently expensive desk, the kind that must have been bought using the high interest rates the bank charges its poor customers who have to depend on loans for survival. He has one of those very dark and handsome smooth skins with sparkling white teeth; or maybe they are not that white, he’s just lucky that his skin tone makes his teeth look whiter. My guess is that he is no more than 35, but his 8 to 6 Monday to Saturday tight work schedule and fat salary and allowances must be behind his looking at least 45.
He asks me to take a sit, asks what my name is, where I work or go to school and for how long I have had an account with the bank. He then signals for the two men to leave before making the conversation personal and asking for my number.
‘So this has nothing to do with my banking services!’
I look outside the glass wall and right there is my mother, fully awake. She pretends that she doesn’t take notice of me though I’m sure that she is analysing the scene with her corner eye and eavesdropping with her inner left ear.
“Don’t worry, the room is noise proof.” He assures me.
I ask him why he needs my number.
“I would like to call you sometime and talk.”
“Aren’t we talking?”
“How about I take you out sometime? Somewhere where we can talk some more; away from the constraints of this office and the guardianship of your mother?”
I tell him that it wouldn't be possible, for I am already engaged.
A part of me is waiting for him to unleash a fit of temper like the two to three decades old boys do everytime a girl shuns them.
“Okay. I do hope that he's aware of how lucky he is, and, say hi to your mom for me.”
He seemed okay, mature and passed the first litmus test that I use to test all my potentials. Had the circumstances been a little different, maybe I could have given him a shot. But still, a girl has to wonder whether this man is the kind that is always asking young female customers to his office and requesting for their numbers, or if she's the first, last and only one. It's hard to tell, and if something is hard to tell, then it's not worth thinking about in the first place.
Mama asks me what is it that he wanted. I tell her that he was asking about my account details. I know that she knows that I am lying, but she doesn't push it.
“Maybe he wanted to give you a job. I hear they are looking for new employees.”
She knows that I know that she's covering up the fact that I know that she knows why the manager called me in his office. Why do mothers and daughters find it so hard to talk about these things?
“Be careful with these men. You have come from very far, and I wouldn’t want all that gone to waste.” She finally tells me as we sit in a small café where she buys me a plate of cheap but very tasty French fries. I know that they won't be as sweet as the ones my former crushes have treated me with back in campus, for restaurants up there don't use ordinary oil to fry them. They use a cheaper form of oil, oil that they drain from electric transformers at night and use it to cook fries. It has been speculated that the oil is poisonous, but that doesn't matter. What matters is how delicious the meal is.
This is why I am so in love with this woman. Though she usually has just enough to feed herself and her daughters, whenever she gets spare change, she always spoils us in very special ways. All this takes me back to almost 10 years ago.
It would happen every three days in a year; when parents go to shopping malls, restaurants and bakeries to buy their kids in boarding schools all kinds of fancy and spicy foods and snacks. I hated visiting days for they were the days when father would come and lecture me, and call me names while my schoolmates and their parents watched in shock. He would only come for 30 minutes; 10 of which he would spend at the notice board checking and analysing my academic performance, 20 minutes of lecture, and 10 minutes of catching up with his friends, before he left. After a while, he stopped visiting. He alleged that I was embarrassing his good name.
Mama, Ciku and Soni weren't ashamed, or maybe they didn't care about public opinion, and so they continued coming. They would always be excited to see me. The four of us were just awesome. But one day father decided that he had had enough of me. He refused to give mama any money for transport or to buy me any good food with. I remember being so excited seeing her, all alone, without her husband to torment me. But she was just like that, carrying not even the smallest shopping bag to wipe off the rust left by having to eat boiled prison food for the past two months. As we sat under a shade, she removed a tiny hot pot from her handbag, and inside was nicely fried rice, with a few potatoes, carrots and tomatoes.
I was so mad!
How I wished that she hadn’t come so that I would at least have benefitted from the rich dishes other girls had been brought by their parents. But now that everyone knew that I had been visited, they wouldn’t donate me a single snack. Instead, they would be waiting to taste my mother's cooking.
I was so mad at her then. But that one time proved how much she really loved me, for not many parents can walk 15 kilometres with nothing but fried rice on their bag to visit their child during one of the most important days of their boarding school life.
Everytime I remember that day; that very special moment, tears of love fill my eyes.
The afternoon has just fully matured but this weather is making it look like it's time it handed over its survival torch to its offspring Evening. Rain has been pouring heavily for the past one hour leaving a heavy mist on the matatu's windows. Now there's nothing to busy my eyes with as I can barely see the beautiful sceneries along the way to the city, or the funny architectural designs being incorporated by the mushrooming buildings that are being built only an inch away from the highway. It's my belief that it won't take long before the government sends in a group of rowdy youths to tear down these buildings and bring in Chinese prisoners to expand the highway for us; all in the name of strengthening our bi-lateral relations.
Almost everyone in the matatu seems to have fallen prey of the weather and is resting their stresses of life hoping that these short-lived joys could last forever. Other than myself, the other three passengers who are still awake are too busy on their phone texting, listening to their music selectio
n with their earphones and reading an erotic novel.
Then, when all seems to be going on so well, the vehicle breaks down. No one wants to get out of their comfortable and warm seats and help the driver and the conductor with the repair. A couple of minutes later, the men in the vehicle alight and start sharing their expertise on some weirdo facts and myths why the vehicle broke down and what should be done. These are the very auto-smart men who have never been, and are never going to be privileged enough to own a car, yet here they are, fighting each other over what they read from a 1995 Top Gear magazine. With so many volunteer experts, getting the problem solved becomes futile.
It becomes Chrystal clear that we will be stranded right here for as long as God hears one of our prayers and sends help. The few matatus that pass our way refuse to help, or take in more passengers. About an hour later, a mini bus that usually transports anyone, and everything, including farm products and animals to the city, stops. All the men fight for the little space left as the ladies opt to sit on ‘saucers’-the wooden chopping boards placed on the space between two opposite seats that should be used as the pathway.
I refuse to enter and they tell me that I'm being stupidly proud. I tell them there's no way I'm getting into an already full bus and end up becoming another victim who lost her life because she was in too much of a hurry to get to her destination, to the extent that she forgot about the existence of traffic rules.
"Kwani wewe ni mchawi?" One of the women asks me through the window as the bus conductor slaps the door a couple of times, signalling the driver to re-start the engine.
I choose not to seek shelter in the broken-down matatu again, or else I will have to remain stranded all evening and night long, between two strangers that I have no background information on.
I wave down a number of personal cars and matatus passing my way but none stops. Then, just like a miracle descended from heaven, one car stops, without I having to wave for it to stop.
He opens the front passenger door for me and I hurriedly enter. I am so glad that I forget to look into his face but instead busy myself with getting rid of the wet clothes as I repeatedly utter countless Thank You-s.
From the corner of my eye I can see him checking me out, or rather regretting letting this soaking wet girl into his luxurious car.
He looks so familiar, but I can barely recall where it is that I met him.
“It’s you! What a small world this is!” He says, beaming with a mischievous smile.
I smile back, mischievous smile too, hoping that he doesn’t re-create memories that I can’t remember, or don't want to remember.
“You don’t remember me?”
“No, of course I do.”
“…and.”
“We have met…before…I mean before now…that's why I remember you, from somewhere…but, but I'm not sure where...” I stammer hoping that he will save me from this self-imposed awkward situation and just refresh my mind on where we may have met.
He seems to be enjoying this.
"You want me to refresh your memory?"
I nod.
“This morning, in my office.”
#5
I have seen people cry
Women fast
Husbands run to wizards
Families have been broken, crimes have been committed, and marriages have been torn apart
All because, God’s ways aren’t man’s ways
So why do they want me, to turn my blessing into a curse?
God has blessed me with a child
But they tell me; I am too young, too financially unstable, and too unfit to be a mother
And so, I have to get rid of it, wait till I’m ready
All grown up, educated, employed and married
But, if I abide by these rules
Sooner than later, I’ll be the one to cry, fast, run after witchdoctors
And then, he’ll go away, I’ll do something silly, and he’ll leave me
All because I wasn’t ready to welcome God’s blessing when it came my way
MARY; THE MOTHER OF JESUS:
She was the kind of girl that every man in the neighbourhood talked about, the one every mother looked forward to welcoming into her kitchen as her new daughter-in-law. But just like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the truth finally came out. She was no longer the angel everyone thought she was. Here she was, still living with her parents, and lying to her fiancée that she was waiting for the right time, when actually, she had long tasted the forbidden fruit. Her act made all the girls of loose virtue proud of themselves. They would talk in hushed tones while going about their business;
‘Any idea who the lucky guy is?’
'Can you believe that she is still claiming to be a virgin?'
‘I believe her, maybe she is not pregnant, it could be a tumour. I know of this girl who would chew her hair all day long and by the time she was 14, everyone thought she was pregnant. And guess what it was, a lump of hair in her tummy!'
'The problem with such girls is that they are so lame, why didn’t she use protection? Or take a morning after pill?’
‘The good news is; that handsome boyfriend of hers wants a break up. It's only a matter of time before he officially gets back in the market!’
‘Isn't the pregnancy still young? If I were her, I could have gotten rid of it.’
‘No, way! It's better that she carries the pregnancy to full term. Who doesn't want to see who the baby is going to look like?’
‘I seriously can’t believe that the reason we are having this discussion is because Mary is no longer a virgin. If it's such a big deal, why can't she undergo one of those procedures; you know, hymen restoration or something?’
Here I am, in the same shoes as Mary.
Just a few days back I was mourning the loss of my beautiful baby Ethan, and a few days later, after having a clear conscience and reflecting, I celebrated. Now I am back to where I was before. The pregnancy has once again re-emerged.
Doctors call it heterotopic pregnancy; a very rare kind of pregnancy that I had always categorised under the diseases of the wealthy; the kinds of conditions that are only afforded to those with the means to understand them and finances to have them addressed. Baby number one is no more, but baby number two is in here, working harder to live the dream that her twin brother could never see. I have read that baby boys are not so good at fighting for survival inside their mothers’ wombs, but baby girls always have a way out.
I am not ready for a baby Candace. As a matter of fact, I am sacred of her. If she takes after me, we’ll never get along. And if she takes after her father, it’ll be hard for me to ever love her.
There's no way I am letting Dru know about her, and I don't plan to ever have him find out what fate befell his seed. The same way no farmer has ever reaped a seed that he sowed but never watered, manured, weeded or sprayed with pesticides is the exact way a man cannot choose to impregnate a lady and expect to be a father after he let her make all the trips to the pre-natal clinic, deal with hormonal imbalances, develop strange food cravings, double her weight, get stretch marks, go on maternal leave, decorate the nursery and undergo the contractions and hours of labor all by herself.
I can see her, nagging me to tell her who her father is, hating that we have to be so poor, rubbing it on my face that the reason her father left is because he couldn’t stand living with a monster like me. I can see her refusing to adopt my name as her surname, and making up a weird name that she believes was her father’s name. She will criticize my cooking, dressing, talking…everything. I can see her not telling me about the PTA meetings and other social gatherings for she will be ashamed of her mother. And when she starts having problems with boys, she will blame it on me; say how bad she feels that she had to inherit my genes, and how much she wishes I had given her up for adoption to a better off family. She will do everything to find her father. Once she does, it’s him that she will forever talk about. His b
eautiful home, his glass ceiling office, his classy wife, her adorable half-siblings, their immaculate English and etiquette… Then a day will come, when I’ll ask her to help with the household chores. She’ll start ranting about how her father has maids to do all that stuff, and that she is done being my slave.
Not long after, she will disappear. I will cry for weeks, borrow money from anyone to find her. But then, my friend will show me a newspaper article.
‘There she is, your daughter! She was the top candidate in the national exams. You must be so proud of her.’
She will be as smart as me, and with an expensive school that her father sent her, I see her living my dreams; dreams of our four generations. Hers, mine, my mother’s and my grandmother’s; the women who believed that one day, the sun would set in the morning, and rise in the evening, and all night long, we would shed tears of joy.
Years later, while I am nursing her insults on my death bed, she will come back crying, begging for forgiveness. But it will be too late, for I will have lost my eyesight to tell who she is, my hearing to hear anything she has to say, and my memory to recall that I ever had a daughter.
That’s why this little baby girl growing inside me right now should never be born.
I don’t know much about abortion, but by the phrase ‘how to abort’ emerging on top of the most searched keywords on Kenyan search engines; accessing the information will not be a problem.
Since no sane woman will ever be truly happy as a single parent; in pursuit of happiness, she will opt to spare the baby the agony of being born out of wedlock. But when the male law makers who rigged their way to Parliament learn this, they jointly propose a bill, second it and sign it into law. Abortion is a criminal offense. The new law nonetheless makes it okay for men to continue injecting women with unwanted babies, and disappear into thin air, or deny being responsible for the pregnancy.