Who Will Catch Us As We Fall (3 page)

In bed that night, he had soothed his crying wife. ‘Those ideas, that boy's head,' she said, ‘it's going to get him killed one day.'

And Raj had rolled his eyes and hugged her close, patted her back.
It's okay, it's okay
, putting it down to nothing more than a mother's worry and a woman's tendency to over-exaggerate.

He looks at the picture of Pio Gama Pinto which, like him, has been forcibly removed from the living room and placed in isolation in the guest bathroom. He searches the face of the man in the picture and is once again satisfied that he made the correct decision when it came to his future and his son's.

But Leena's. He sighs, taps the bottom of the cigarette packet until one shakes loose. Cups a wide palm around its tip and lights it, leaning back to inhale. He is beginning to question his decision to have her come back, at least right now.

As is the case every five years, most of his friends have taken their families abroad to avoid the possible messy outcome of a rigged election.
Better to stay safe
,
they all reasoned.
Business will still be here when we get back.

‘Maybe we should go and visit your mother,' Pooja had suggested. ‘Now is as good a time as any. And then we can bring Leena back with us.'

Raj had shaken his head. ‘What kind of Kenyan would I be if I left now? I still have to cast my vote.' And so he had bought his daughter a plane ticket and ordered her home.

He sees his wife outside, shooing away the dog and instructing Kidha about some or other overgrown tree and he can't help but smile. Thinks that she is still as lovely and bossy as the day he married her.
But Leena.
He sighs.
Too emotional. Too fragile and broken now.
He turns to the mirror, is met with a strong face partially covered by a well-maintained salt-and-pepper beard. Unable to hide from himself, he throws away the cigarette and worries about his daughter.

Grace walks silently into the living room, the silver-plated tray completely still in her hands despite it being overloaded with a full teapot, three sets of cups and five different kinds of
House of Manji
biscuits. The chocolate-layered ones are her favorite and she'd slipped one into the pocket of her apron before bringing it out to the Kohlis.

Draped across the sectional couch with her small feet in her husband's lap, Pooja gestures for Grace to place the tray on the table. Jai stands to take it from her and Grace blushes. He is good looking for a
muhindi
boy. Big and strong, more like an African.

‘What shall I make for dinner?' she asks Pooja.

‘What's in the freezer? I bought some meat last week.'

‘Chicken, beef, mince.' Grace turns her eyes upward, searching the mental image she has of the fridge. Scratches her head, hot beneath her scarf; pounds it slightly.

‘We had chicken last night. How about spaghetti?'

‘Don't feel like anything so heavy.' Raj pats his stomach. ‘I've had too many
karogas
this week.'

Pooja stifles a snap. She has never liked the fact that Raj goes to these outdoor meals with his friends, hiring out a table at the back of the restaurant, all the men gathered around huge silver pots on coal stoves, their faces steaming from the chicken masalas and fish tikkas, and drinking bottles of whiskey until midnight or sometimes later. ‘If you stayed at home with your family instead of gallivanting with your drinking buddies…' she reprimands him as Grace waits at the edge of the carpet, wondering what it feels like to have so many choices.
Too confusing.

‘There's fish.' She offers help. ‘
Teelapia
.' Before she had come to work for the Kohlis, she hadn't known that there were so many different kinds of fish.
Teelapia. Red Snapper. Toona.

Pooja nods. ‘I think Leena still likes fish.'

Grace grunts her acknowledgment, desperate to get out of the room and rip off her scarf; the new girl at the salon had tied the braids too tight. When Pooja waves her away, Grace tiptoe-flies out in the direction of the garden. Kidha is there. She might go and share her biscuit with him.

The three Kohlis look at each other. Look down. Look away. They each wait for one of them to speak, not wanting to be the first. Raj lifts his wife's feet from his lap and reaches out toward the tea. But she is too quick for him, slapping his hand away. ‘Since when have you poured tea? You talk and I'll do it. Come on,' Pooja prods chirpily, lifting the pot. ‘Talk, talk.'

‘She seems happy to be home,' he says, and is met with two sets of lifted, dubious eyebrows. A twitch of his son's mouth.
Just wait until you're married.

‘Not really, Dad.'

‘She's just tired from her trip.' Raj accepts the tea from his wife. She leaves the tea bag in the cup, no milk. Three teaspoons of sugar.

‘You want diabetes?' she often says to their friends. ‘Ask Raj. He has the
pur
-fect recipe.'

Jai speaks hesitantly, guilty for talking about his sister while she is in the house, and he lowers his voice. ‘Does she seem a little fragile to you?' He considers telling them about the odd breathing she was doing in the car, blowing up her cheeks and vibrating her lips, clutching her stomach so tight that her fingernails turned white.
No need to worry them.

‘If she says she's okay then we should believe her.' Pooja is firm. ‘We have enough problems, no need to go searching, digging for more.' She dips her biscuit into the tea, watches as the crust of the chocolate turns soft and catches it in her mouth just as it begins to fall apart. Her skin breaks out into a shiver, as it always does when she is forced to think about what happened. ‘It's been four years now. Why bring back the ghosts?'

Later that night, Leena raps lightly on her brother's partially opened bedroom door. ‘Knock, knock.'

He looks up from his laptop, sliding off his headphones. ‘It's you.' He is pleased to see her and pushes back his chair to stand, rolling out the stiffness in his ankles.

She looks around as she steps into the room. Gone is the baby blue she remembers, the haphazardly stuck Rocky and Arsenal posters and clothes-strewn floor. Now the room is simple and clean, with gray-tinged green walls and elegant beige bedcovers. Above the bed are hung black-and-white photos in different-sized frames: the hands of an elderly farmer cupping kernels of corn, the hardships of his life dug permanently into his skin; the keen yellow eyes of a lioness peering through blades of grass, caught mid-breath as she readies herself for a hunt; downtown Nairobi stilled at peak hour, when the streets are jammed with lights and music. Kenya – a whole country watching down on him as he sleeps.

She points at them. ‘These are beautiful. Where did you get them?'

‘A friend.' Jai recalls the moment in the car that morning when he was eager to explain everything. He wants to tell her again but she looks exhausted, fearful almost, and he decides to keep it for another day.

She traces her hand absently over the walls. His window is wide open and a breeze of pollen rustles the pile of papers at his elbow. ‘You look busy.'

‘There was a fire in a Kikuyu church in Nakuru a few days ago and I was just writing up the report.' He falls back onto the bed and presses the heels of his palms to his closed eyelids. ‘It's not a very hopeful sign for these elections.'

She lies down beside him. ‘Why not?'

‘The men who set the fire were Luos,' he explains, referring to a different tribe. ‘All this rivalry between the candidates is seeping down into the villages, causing a lot of tension and violence.'

‘Do you ever run into trouble when you're out in the field?'

‘Sometimes,' he admits. ‘Though I would never tell Ma
about it. You meet a lot of angry people, most of it stemming from the fact that they have been forgotten by the government, left to live and die in the worst conditions imaginable, and there comes a point when they just need someone to blame.' His eyes turn to her. ‘I look different, I speak differently, so it's easy for them to hate me. But most people I meet are just welcoming and ordinary, glad for the help. It's not like how everyone imagines it to be.'

At times like these, she wonders if her family has forgotten what happened four years ago. It's as if they packed up the memory of it within her full suitcase and sent it off on that midnight flight, waving from the glass doors and shivering in the cold.

Outside, the day is receding into a burning horizon. On the equator, night falls upon you without warning – one minute, everything is speckled in gold and possibility and the next, becomes harrowing, charcoal shadows. Engulfing, she used to think, after what happened. This is what it means to be lost.

She makes a cradle for her head with interlocked fingers. ‘Where are the parents?'

‘Out for a walk. Ma
says Dad is getting old.'

Leena smiles. ‘Have you eaten?'

‘Grace made some fish.'

‘I didn't see her when I came in.'

Jai checks his watch. ‘She's probably in her room. It's later than I thought.'

‘She's staying in the outhouse?'

‘Yes.'

‘Is it safe?'

Jai blows out a breath. Tries to understand that it is natural for her to feel that way after everything. ‘She's been with us for two and a half years. Don't do that.'

‘Do what?'

‘Judge her based on what happened. Mistrust is the rotting limb of this country and we have to cut it away if we want to heal and move on.' He throws his arms wide open.

She makes a face. ‘Nice imagery.'

He grins like a little boy, only half-kidding. ‘I find it effective.'

While he attempts to get comfortable, she notices how large the muscles of his arms have become, the size of his body, which dwarfs everything around him – there is a heaviness to his movements that implies stability rather than slowness. Skin covered in dark, coarse hair. She blinks, and when she opens her eyes she sees a handsome man. Not unlike her father but different in many ways.

She puts a hand gently on his. ‘You shouldn't kill yourself for Dad's ideas.'

‘I'm not.'

And then she tells him what's on her mind. The pleasant demeanor of the ATM con man. The incident that happened four years ago, the traces of which linger in everything around her, sickening her stomach.
It's no use
,
she wants to tell him.
You'll be dead without making a dent.

The next morning she runs into Grace in the corridor between the kitchen and the dining room. They side-step each other awkwardly, colliding and fussing before Leena stops.

‘Hello,' she says, too cheerfully.

The other woman stares back at her, balancing a tray full of dirty dishes on her hip – remnants of pink papaya and crusts of buttered toast. ‘Fine, fine,' Grace replies, trying to move away.
Shrunken, quiet, stayed in her room all day yesterday,
this one is strange. Not like her brother.
‘Do you want toast?' Grace asks. ‘
Ceerio?
'

‘What kind of cereal is there?' Leena asks.

‘Weetabix, cornflakes.' Grace tries to remember the name of the fancy honey-coated one that Raj sometimes makes her sneak past his wife, but it's lost on her. ‘I'll bring it for you.'

‘I can do it, thank you.'

She follows Grace into the cramped kitchen, her eyes wandering over the room. A small stove, colonial-rose cabinets above and below it. A single window casts a hazy dimness so that she has to squint to see anything properly. Searching for the light, Leena finds it behind the refrigerator.

Startled, Grace shuts her eyes against the bald glare and feels a spark of irritation. She always works with the light turned off, has grown comfortable in the dark and now this invasion of her territory makes her bang the dishes down in the sink.

Leena rifles through the cupboards. The kitchen was designed to fit one person comfortably, but now Grace has to press herself into a corner and wait for the girl to finish before she can start her work.

‘What are you doing?' A voice at the door makes Grace quickly rearrange her face into a smile. Jai is looking into the kitchen, amused.

Leena stands. ‘I can't find the cereal.'

‘Grace will get it for you. She doesn't mind.'

Grace nods her head enthusiastically. ‘Indian tea?' she asks.

With both their eyes on her, Leena feels like a stranger, disturbing the normality that has been established in her absence. She closes the cabinet door with a sigh. ‘Kettle tea is fine. No sugar.'

In the dining room, they sit at the marble-top island and Leena plays with a leftover crust of toast.

‘How did you sleep?' Jai asks.

‘Fine.' She won't tell him about the nightmares, so common now that she even has them when she is awake. But there is something more menacing about her dreams when she is here – a realness to them that causes her muscles to spasm and lock, weak groans leaking out of her as she sleeps.

Jai turns away. He won't remind her of the thinness of the walls, the close proximity in which they all sleep, so that last night the whole family had been invited into her terror.

She breaks the silence. ‘I was thinking of taking the Nissan for a drive.'

‘It's not an automatic.'

‘You taught me how to drive stick, remember?'

‘That was four years ago.'

She throws his own words back at him. ‘It's just like riding a bike.'

Jai approaches cautiously, hoisting his bag onto his shoulder. ‘Why don't you wait until Ma
is back from the temple? She can take you wherever you want to go.'

‘It's like being in jail.' Leena crushes a breadcrumb into many smaller pieces.