The Help

She came to my home straight from the village, from the border between Kenya and Tanzania. She had never worked for anyone. She had never been away from home.

She left home to teach her husband a lesson. “I want to be away a whole year,” she said. “He doesn’t pay school fees, he doesn’t buy food. He’s only buying for his many girlfriends. He has like four.”

They had been sent home for several months now. They owed the school about Kshs 70,000 which she had tried to settle with petty trade like mitumba and vegetables… but it wasn’t enough. She needed work.

Her sister-in-law recommended her to me. And so she came to my house – a few weeks before I was due to go back to work from maternity.

We started from scratch. She had never used a stove. She had never taken transport in Nairobi. But by a week’s end, the house ran perfectly. And I was finally getting good sleep.

I read and researched a lot about child development. But even with her Class 8 education, she did everything the books say you should do with infants. She sang to her, with rhymes she made up. She spoke to her and entertained her at every moment. About how the birds were her friends, the teddy bears (which she called dogs) were her friends… instead of reprimanding her for refusing to do things as babies are wont to do, she always found a creative way around it. “Yum yum!” she’d encourage, “before the churries (what she called birds) come eat your food!”

We worked like that for five months. We had a rhythm. I never told her what to do. She always did it before I could’ve asked her.

And then she asked me if she could go home to see her children. Which of course, obliged. It had been five months since she’d been away from home. It was an ordinary Saturday. We said our goodbyes as we usually did, with the intonation and expectation of returning on Monday. But during the course of the day, several thoughts ran through my head… she had reconciled with her husband. Her children were back in school…

I opened the drawer where she normally kept her things and it was empty…

Perhaps some goodbyes are harder to say, we pretend they’re not forever.

I suppose I could’ve found a replacement immediately. But personally, I needed to grieve. I stayed/ worked from home, replaying our conversations – half in denial/ stupid hope that she would come back – waiting until the last day of her “leave” before finding someone else.

It’s normal, I know. People come and go. And I understand her reasons. I would’ve chosen them myself. But she wasn’t just my nanny. She was a blessing. And I would’ve liked a moment to really say goodbye.

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UPDATE: Two weeks later she apologised for not saying goodbye

I put tulips under the pillows and set fire to the house

I thought it would be poetic - even if nobody would ever know. As if the smell of tulips would rage with the fire and burn with the memories of all the gifts he gave me and all the things he wanted me to be - that I wasn't.

But there was no aroma of tulips with the fire. They wilted in seconds the way plots of revenge sound stupid when spoken out loud.

With every affair, I thought I could erase him - bury him under new lovers and new memories. But he wouldn't go! He became even more present, like the lovers were embodying different aspects of him. Death by fire seemed to be the only way.

And so the fantasy became a reality, became a bonafide plot.

The timing was perfect and unsuspecting. We would eat, we would drink, we would talk like there was a tomorrow. And then as they rested with their bellies full and their minds at ease, I would light his tulips, I would light them all.

[So this was a writing exercise in which you pick three sentences several minutes after one another and write for five minutes before you pick a new sentence/writing prompt. The sentences/writing prompts were as follows:
- I put tulips under all the pillows and then set fire to the house
- I cheated on my spouse and it wasn't the first time
- The time he invited his mother to come to dinner]

becoming her

I am haunted by the idea of becoming
that woman in the narrow streets
with her billowing buibui 
and kohl lined eyes
who reveals more with her painted face
than she intends to hide

I am haunted by the promise of loss
where after years of devotion
you would take another
with lustre in her hair
and skin which is not marked by the passing of children
A child cum woman
to consume the desire you once had for me
the beauty I once kept for you
but now cannot keep from slipping away

She is your mother and grandmother and the wife
of every man who wants another

And I do not know whether you will become your father
or grandfather or every man with a wife or two
who still wants another

male justice

they descended on her like dogs let loose
from a cage they normally cannot leave
on prey they normally cannot touch
at least in the day
at least in public

they tore at her with so much vigour
it seemed they really believed
they could take from her
what had been taken from them
as if this were a way they could be remembered
by a world that had forgotten them

transposing their grievances
onto a woman whose blatant agency
spoke too loudly about their own lack

they swarmed around her
- a sea of beasts

taking clothes for dignity
privacy for power

being men who do not know how to be men
teaching a woman how to be a woman

http://thekenyanoline.com/this-is-yet-another-obnoxious-incident-that-happened-rape-in-public-in-nairobi%E2%80%BC%E2%80%BC%E2%80%BC/

her voice

I read a poem in reaction to the strippings in town and loved it so much I had to share it here:

disappearing women

several years ago, i sat down in a matatu and a man touched my thigh. i told him to stop touching me. the man next to him told me it was because my skirt was too short.

i began to wear longer skirts.

two days after that, a man at odeon reached out and squeezed my breasts between his long fingers as if checking for ripe tomatoes. i told him to stop touching me. he told me my shirt was cut too low for him to resist.

i began to wear shirts with a higher neckline.

a few days after that, a man at work run his hand over my butt and smiled at me. i told him to stop touching me. he said my trousers hugged my butt very nicely, told me he was only being appreciative and if i didn’t want him to be, i shouldn’t wear such tight clothes.

i began to wear looser trousers.

one weekend, my uncles sat in a circle and pointed out the things they appreciated about my body. i asked them to be quiet. they told me that as long as i remained single, i still belonged to them.

i went and found myself a man to marry.

several months later, my husband hit me for the umpteenth time because—i don’t even remember why. later, he apologised (again), and said that perhaps it was time we thought about growing our family, growing our love.

we had a daughter together. i wept.

at a party three weeks ago, someone in the crowd caressed my fully covered breasts and disappeared before i could say anything. my friends explained to me that childbirth had given me an admirable bosom.

i went home and chopped off my boobs and bled and bled and bled. my shirts no longer fit me.

last weekend, my husband stumbled into our bed piss-drunk and grabbed my butt. i told him to leave me alone, and he said my butt belonged to him. i told him itdid not and he hit me hard across the head. i think i remember our daughter crying. i woke up and felt the pain he had left between my legs. he told me that’s what love felt like sometimes. he did not notice the holes in my chest.

the next morning i sliced off my butt and bled and bled and bled. my trousers no longer fit me.

on tuesday, one of the men at the construction site down the street slapped at my hips and cried out to his friends to look at this woman with a flat chest and a flat butt, but hips that compensated for the lack. i told him i did not want his hands on me. he asked me if i thought he cared what i wanted.

i turned around and hobbled back home and carved and carved and carved until my hips lay on the floor. and i bled and bled and bled and bled.

yesterday morning, i drove to the doctor’s office to get something for the pain. he touched me. he touched me again. he kept touching me. he did not stop touching me. he told me he had always liked skinny women, had always thought the women around him were too thick for him.

i walked out of his office, drove home, sat on the bathroom floor and cut and bled and cut and bled and cut and bled.

i cut and bled and cut and bled until i disappeared.

earlier today, i hovered over my daughter and watched in horror as her teacher slid his hands into her panties, worked his fingers inside her, held her mouth shut until he was finished.

my daughter—no breasts, a little girl’s hips, skinny thighs, a flat butt— went home and took a knife and scraped at where it hurt. she bled and bled and bled and bled. she bled until it stopped hurting. she floated up to me and held my hand.

she whispered, “mummy, we’re safe now. they cannot reach us here.”

Playing With-Child

You play a game that no one knows
At first you imagine the life within
How much of it would be you
And how much of it would be him

And then you imagine
How you would relate to a one-year old
the first year
A two-year old
the second
A three-year old
the third year
Four -

Some years you forget to play
Other years like mornings you're not ready to begin
You stay in bed
Trying to keep warm
The memory of the sin

You keep the receipt as a testimony of a boy
that would have been
ten - now,
and of the price that you paid
and wish had been more.

beached secrets

She keeps her secrets like oceans do
buried in her belly
assumes that they will not bloat
believes that in Silence
there is no pain
there is no anger
that shuttles
between the sharpness of his tongue
and the hardening of her heart,
the face of his palm
and the soft of her cheek.

Once -
she thought to leave him
before her son could begin
to remember
but it had become so familiar
that even her son
didn't know any other way to be

And so she relived it
every time she witnessed him
shuttle his anger
from his fists to his wife

And still she kept her silence
with all the will of a martyr

Unaware that her secrets
had long since floated
like bodies
even oceans no longer want to keep