Hold My Hand

Episode 5: Doro

Read the previous episode here

“I have only a week before I have to report to the boss and tell him my progress,” thought Doro.

“I have to ask for more time.”

“No, I can’t. He hit me that time when I asked him for the second installment of the money he promised. He is a big man, he could do worse. He is offering me a lot so this must be very serious.”

It was becoming more and more difficult for him to act. “Do it however you please,” the big man had told him. He had beamed with delight at this grant of autonomy. Now he wished he had received more specific instructions.

There was another problem besides. Watching Sandra every day had began to make him sympathetic towards her. Here was an ordinary girl, seemingly immersed in the daily struggle to keep life together as most people were. People like him. He thought of his own little girl, Njeri. He could easily picture her growing up to be just like Sandra. Then instead of Sandra, he imagined Njeri being the object of his boss’s consternation. It made him shudder.

On the other hand, it was because of Njeri that he accepted whatever jobs he came across, unconventional as they may be. He wanted to give her a bright future.

The papers the boss had given him on the day he assigned him the task rustled in his hands. He was looking at them without really seeing them. Attached at one corner was a photograph of Sandra. The real Sandra looked different from the photograph, but of course, people changed and to Doro that was of no consequence. Who knew how long ago the photograph had been taken?

Leaning on the perimeter wall of the block of flats, Doro learnt her name from overhearing conversations with her neighbours. The papers he had contained lists of documents, their respective dates and copies of some of the documents. Most were invoices and receipts. A few were letters. The last was a torn sheet on which an address and cell phone number were scribbled untidily.

“You must bring back all the documents on that list! All! Then make sure she never ever says a word about them! I don’t care how you do that!” Doro thought he saw a hint of fear in the big man’s eyes camouflaged behind the rage even as he gave those instructions.

“What does keeping her forever silent involve? Surely he was not asking me to take her life!” Doro shuddered once more. It would not the first time he had been asked to kill. It would be the first time he felt his victim did not deserve to die.

He looked at the key in his hand. He had managed to get a copy of her house key from the soap mould he had obtained from her door lock. He had tested it before and it worked, although it made the lock jam a little. He could have picked the lock, but a key saved him valuable seconds and the neighbours would be inclined to assume she had given him the copy.

© Wambui Wairua 2012

Hold My Hand

Episode 4: Reminisces

Hold My Hand is the story of a girl struggling to make something out of her life and find meaning in the quagmire of incidents, some of them rather bleak, that make up her days. Her tales will appear on this blog in monthly episodes. Read the previous episode here.

The teardrops that fell from Sandra’s eyes sagged heavy with memories. They drizzled at first but soon flowed fast. It wrenched her heart that of all who had witnessed her ordeal, only Tommy knew just how crushed she was. Others could not see beyond the strong front she put up. With the little fund she had been left being no secret, it was expected that she should ‘count her blessings’ and move on. Tommy had found and paid for a psychiatrist when Sandra’s grieving turned into something akin to depression. She could still see the tears in his eyes when he went to see her in hospital after she had attempted suicide. Her suitcase in one hand, he had led her by the other hand out of her aunt’s house where her grief had been compounded by being treated like an intruder. When finally she began to heal, Tommy had helped her along, firmly, affectionately.

“Sandy, we are not going to let this maim your life. There is a reason why you were spared and there is no way you’re going to discover what it is if you spend the rest of your life allowing your sorrow to destroy you.”

That was her Tommy, who was now simply Thomas. Thomas N. A part of the past.

Her reverie took her further back. She half smiled remembering their first meeting. In a supermarket, Sandra could just barely reach the box of cereal she wanted while standing on tiptoe. As her fingers struggled to clasp the box, it came tumbling down on her, followed by half a dozen others. A boy standing nearby came to her rescue, laughing even as he helped her collect the boxes, two of which had burst open. When he offered to pay for the two spoilt ones, she had known it was going to be more than just a chance meeting.

The sound of Shakira’s The One interrupted her thoughts. She grabbed her phone and frowned at the ringtone. It seemed sarcastic at a time like this. She muted it without picking up. A glance at the screen told her that the number was not in her contacts list. Even if it had been someone she knew, she did not have the will to talk to anyone. She let it ring off the hook. When it began to ring again, she switched off the phone, threw it at the couch in one swift movement and went to the bedroom. She would try and force herself to nap.

Doro tried for the third time to call. This time the first ring was met by that annoying pre-recorded “the mobile subscriber cannot be reached…” that meant that the phone was off. He was a bit taken aback. Why would she refuse to take his call? She could not possibly know who he was or what he wanted. He knew she was home alone. If only she would pick up, his task might be made simpler. He waited an hour before trying again, with the same result.

© Wambui Wairua 2012

Hold My Hand

Episode 3: Drops Dripping

Hold My Hand is the story of an average Kenyan girl struggling to make something out of her life and find meaning in the quagmire of incidents, some of them rather bleak, that make up her days. Her tales will appear on this blog in monthly episodes. Read the previous episode here.

When she was safely out of the vehicle, Sandra considered going to the butcher’s across the road -Doro’s if she had known – for beef she had not indulged in for a while. She decided against it. The air sizzled in the sun’s heat and made the distance seem a mile away. Perhaps she would go later, when it wasn’t so stifling.

It felt good to walk past the familiar green gate towards the flats. Clothes hung from balconies and on a few of them, a toddler or two were playing. Just before Sandra rounded the corner to where the stairs were, she suddenly felt a cold wetness spread on her from head downwards.

“Oh no Sandra, I didn’t know you were passing there. Sorry! Woi!” Mrs Kadu was holding a sufuria in her hand from which the last of dirty dish water dripped. The all important folder now dripped too. Sandra was too stunned to say anything. She walked on towards the stairs and made the four flights in silence. She could hear someone laughing at her from somewhere.

As soon as she had let herself back into the flat, her phone rang. It was Tommy, her boyfriend. What perfect timing, she could unwind and tell him all about her bad day. She knew he would laugh at her latest misfortune. The anticipation of his guffaw would have made the incident appear funny even to her, were it not for the dripping mess on her black pants and cream shirt.

“Hey Tommy! Was just thinking about you! You won’t believe the day I’ve had!”
“Hey Sandra.” Sandra, not Sandy or Sweets or any of the other silly names he was wont to call her.
“What’s up? I thought I was having a crappy day, yours sounds worse” She chuckled a bit, thinking it might snap him out of a bad mood.
“ Ummm I needed to talk to you about.. I’d have met you but I don’t think it can wait…I…” He still sounded grave.
“You…what?”
“ I wanted to tell you that I… It’s… I don’t think it can work anymore”
“What can’t work anymore?” She asked it slowly, quietly.
“Us..”
Silence. A deep breath.
“Wait, are you breaking up with me on the phone?”
“Ummm..Yeah.. Kinda”
“Ummm.. yeah.. kinda?”
“I just don’t think…I mean it might be best if we…”

She hang up.

She sat on her couch. Her heart dripped now, a worse mess than the one on her clothes.

Hold My Hand

Episode 2: Cell Mate

Hold My Hand is the story of an average Kenyan girl struggling to make something out of her life and find meaning in the quagmire of incidents, some of them rather bleak, that make up her days. Her tales will appear on this blog in monthly episodes. Read the previous episode here.

 

The police holding cell stank. Her fingers clung to her bag and folder while her mind clung to the hope that it would end soon. Two men conversed in low tones. A fat pretty woman typed furiously on her phone. Sandra wondered why she would not just call. A lady near her began to shout into her phone:

“Woi Josh, imagine we have been arrested! I’ll probably miss the bus now. Ah-ah, I was headed to town and traffic police stopped us…How about you come bail me out?”

Sandra did not wish to listen to the rest. It reminded her painfully that her family was gone. Her pride would not let her ask friends or relatives outside her immediate family for such fiddling favours. There was her boyfriend, but he already felt so sorry for her, it would not help to seem needy.

She moved away a little, and that was when she noticed him. Among the assorted offenders, a young man stood watching her. Even when she caught his eye, he did not look away. His stare was unnerving. It seemed to emanate from his entire long dark face topped with curly somali hair and slice right through her. She willed him to stop by giving him her boldest, most disapproving look, but his glare was glued on her.

She was relieved when, soon after, it was time for them to be arraigned in court and everyone started to move.

The fine imposed on them by the bored-looking magistrate scooped a little more into Sandra’s depleting cash reserve. It took hours just to complete formalities for something as trivial as not belting up. The clock on the courtroom’s wall read 12.30 p.m. She was too tired to go to town now and it was too close to lunch-time to allow for a productive trip anyway. Back home it would be.

This time, the vehicle she got onto was old, its parts tearing apart along lines of brown rust. It galloped forward and she was flung about every few seconds. There was a screw missing where her seat was riveted to the floor, so it had about the same agility as a seat on a park ride. She felt dejected and dreaded the prospect of another evening spent fretting about her uncertain future. A child on her mother’s lap next to Sandra started to complain, “I’m going to throw up!” She was glad that hers was the next stop.

****************

Doro needed a concrete plan soon, or else he would arouse suspicion. Suspicion meant greater risk. As it was, he was not sure that his tampering with the door lock had gone unnoticed.

He was surprised to see the girl returning home so soon. This was going to be much more complicated than he had thought. He twirled a strand of his dread-locked hair as though it had a solution within it.

Wambui Wairua Copyright 2012

Tags: Fiction

The Letter

Dear stranger,

No amount of introspection could,  on its own, have led me to the conclusion I have now come to.

It will not make any sense that I am writing this to you. I do not think it should. I am certain that even then, you will read it to the very end because that is what I would do if I were you. Besides, letters have become something of a rarity and I imagine that it is a pleasure to anyone to receive one, even from a half-raving stranger.

I do not know anybody with whom I would like to share this without hiding behind anonymity, yet I cannot let it remain buried. I do not want to be pitied. That is already happening much too often. If I try to say what I am about to say to any of my friends or relatives, they will probably weep and hug me and say sentimental things to try and comfort me, when in fact that will not be apt. That is why I write to you. I need the audience of a person who is far removed from the situation and can possibly look at it objectively, without the interference of attached emotion.

Jacques Philippe says, not in these exact words, that we need the mediation of the glance of another in order to realize our own real worth, in order to truly love ourselves. My experience may not be exactly what he had in mind when he said this, but it has made his words burn with a veracity I had never thought them capable of having.

I have one arm and one leg less than I was born with. My nights and days are steeped in excruciating pain. It happened because I tried to save a stranger’s child from being hit by a speeding tanker. The child died in the accident so my efforts were futile.

I hope you still remember that the object of all this is not to evoke your sympathy. I only tell what I must in order to have you grasp what the circumstances are, from which I write. The crux of it is however not in the actual accident, but in what has happened since.

You will not be surprised to learn that the days immediately subsequent to the accident had me reeling in incredulity. In my mind, it could not have happened to me because such things only happen to other people and my only participation in them is to watch them on the news. Later, dejection and anger set. For a while, I would not even speak to those who came to watch me languish on a hospital bed and marvel at my newly acquired deformity.

Then, something started to happen. I resisted it at first because it seemed absurd. It was gradual initially but then it took on a momentum I did not have the strength to fight. I began to be more aware of myself than I had ever been. At a time when I would have preferred to be numb to everything, my pain jolted me into drinking down reality in great gulps. I found comfort in the most mundane things. I realised how many things I could be grateful for, even in all the bleakness. I was fascinated by my being, by my femininity, by the mysterious beauty of the personalities of all the people I came into contact with. In time, my affliction was no longer a burden, something to be loathed and regretted. It contained a discovery that was meant only for me, so I gazed right into it.

I have searched within and around my pain and I have found the thing I least expected to find. I have found myself and I have found love. My pain is a gift.

Yours sincerely,

A woman you will never know

Wambui Wairua Copyright 2012

Tags: dear stranger, Fiction, incredulity, jacques philippe

Hold My Hand

Episode 1: The Hunt

Hold My Hand is the story of an average Kenyan girl struggling to make something out of her life and find meaning in the quagmire of incidents, some of them rather bleak, that make up her days. Her tales will appear on this blog in monthly episodes.

Sandra might have been one of many Internally Displaced Persons languishing in a bedraggled camp. Instead, she had a quaint one-bedroom flat to call home. She was lucky. Her entire family had been killed by neighbours on their Nakuru farm. She had been visiting with friends in Nairobi’s South B when it happened, unable to travel home for the elections. Her parents had life insurance and funds for their children’s education. Luck had held her hand and steered her away from death and destitution. She knew that behind Lady Luck was Providence.

It was imperative that Sandra found a job. The fund that had carried her this far would run out if she did not. A year of mourning and pining for her old life had made considerable dents in it. She could no longer use her studies as an excuse not to work. There was nobody on whom to dump that excuse.

She left the flat at 8.30 a.m, handbag slung over wrist and a thick envelope containing copies of her C.V. and job application letters in one hand. With the other hand, she reached out to lock the door. The key got stubbornly stuck as she turned it in the keyhole and it took a struggle to complete the turn. She had only recently had the lock fitted and it had twisted smoothly just the night before. “Cheap stuff this,” she muttered to herself before rushing down the narrow stairs.

The flat was on the fourth floor of a plain, rather ugly building just off the main road. On the opposite side, a smattering of shops, salons and restaurants made up the estate’s shopping center. From the doorway of one of these, a butchery, Doro had his face tilted upwards and his eyes trained on the entrance of Sandra’s flat. She could not have known that he watched her silhouette exit the door of the flat on the right side of the fourth floor and disappear to the back of the building where he knew the staircase was. He made mental notes. It was important that he observed everything.

Sandra quickly found a public service vehicle – the kind that sat fourteen passengers -  headed towards the city center. She was grateful that the seat behind the conductor’s was empty. She would not have to squeeze herself between the bodies of two strangers or hang precariously from the edge of an already occupied seat. She settled in, placed the envelope on her lap with the bag on top of it, reached into her bag for her fare, and then let through a flood of thoughts. She did not notice the police check until after their matatu had been flagged down. Two burly policemen approached and began to inspect the vehicle. She ignored them. All it would take was a bribe from the conductor who was already outside tailing one of the policemen. She was wrong. In a few minutes, the matatu was hurtling towards the police station, passengers, policeman and all. It was going to be a long day.

©wambuiwairua 2012

Tags: Fiction

Kinds of Lost

There are different kinds of ‘lost’.  Each has its own depth of fear and anxiety. A man could be standing at a crossroads, wondering why none of the roads ahead fit the description of the one who gave not-so-clear directions. Another may be walking purposefully, confidently even, but knowing inside that lost could be an internal thing as well.

On some days, even what I thought I had found in myself and grasped firmly seems obscure, imagined even. I question things I have held in absolute certainty. I wonder whether I truly know what I think I know. My mind squirms and puzzles itself.

Then the cloud lifts once more and I am sure I have myself.

Which of them is real? The feeling of certainty when I think I have found myself or the supposed knowledge that what I thought I had is really not there?

When I was much younger, I thought that dreams and wakefulness were simply two states of reality. The only thing I could not quite reconcile was how  my absence  in dreams was accounted for, once I had woken up. I wondered whether my dream-mates missed me or whether I was simply now asleep in my dream and awake on this other side.

Few things are as terrible as being lost in the sense of not knowing real from unreal or believing that reality, truth, is transient or relative.  It’s a lot worse than being a child who can’t distinguish dream from real. Yet, I have met a number of people whose life’s purpose depended on… well, just depended. Nothing firm on which to ground themselves.

Self-discovery and the search for truth is a life long journey, one brimming full of surprises and some of them rather nasty. Yet those truths we find along the way remain, provided they are true in the true sense of the word. To deny that would make us lost, in an utterly hopeless way.

©wambuiwairua 2011