Ajany had looked up at him with large, afraid-of-school eyes. The twig had fallen from her hands.
“We’ll go Far Away,” Odidi had whispered. Just as he had promised, “We’re going to real Kenya,” when he had learned of Baba’s decision to send them down-country to a boarding school south of the Ewaso Nyiro River.
Odidi and Ajany’s first vision of the school had been as a space demarcated from the rest of the universe by a massive black gate and an overgrown, almost dark-violet kai-apple fence that covered a thick wall. It was a misshapen world of gray stone edifices, a piteous tribute to an obscure English public school.
The headmistress, Mrs. Karai, M.Ed. Calabash-shaped. Stumpy. Stern. Ice. Yellow-brown, thin legs, faux-pearl necklace, and hornrimmed spectacles. After her New Year new-student assembly speech, on the morning of their second day, she summoned Odidi and Ajany to her office.
“Stand.”
They stood.
“No fighting, no stealing, no politics. Do you know how to use a toilet?”
No answer.
“I take that to mean ‘no.’ Matron will show you. I warn you. I smell trouble — you’ll see. You’ll know who I am, you hear?”
Touch and instinct were missing from Mrs. Karai’s words. Was reason also a sense? Odidi had gathered every fury that possessed him, had heard his sister grinding her teeth, knew she was unconscious of what she was doing. If he exploded, she might crash. So he had swallowed down rage and touched Ajany’s shoulder.
“Dismissed,” Mrs. Karai snarled.
They had left the office hand in hand. They had dodged each other’s eyes. Later, they focused on study. Ajany learned to paint, covered shame with vivid colors. Books revealed destinations. Huskies in Alaska, pumpkins that become footmen, genteel princes, knights of round tables, and agreeable kings who oversaw holy order. Atlases were a favorite; anything could be imagined to happen between the lines and curves of a journey.
Odidi became a grade-three piano student within a year.
“Come. Listen. Listen. Ajany!”
Music and painting bandaged soul-holes.
They forgot teachers whose lip-curling mouths asked, “Ati, from where? Is it on the map?” Drowned out classmates: “You people cook dust to eat.” Music and painting canceled memories of annual February humiliations when news stories of northern land famines arrived with portraits of emaciated, breast-baring, adorned citizens, and skeletons of livestock. They suffered a flurry of “School Walks” and “Give Your Change, Save a Life” and “Help the Poor Starving People of Northern Kenya” picnics. Ajany, being a useful facsimile for the occasion — reed-thin, small, dark, bushy-haired, with large slanted eyes — was thrust to the school stage to slump over one end of a massive cardboard of a bank check for newsletter photo shoots. Odidi would sit in the audience with eyes shut, dreaming about end of term, when the blessed migration from this Kenya to theirs, via Nairobi, occurred. Nairobi was the oasis where he and Ajany boarded a dilapidated green holiday bus shaped like a triangular loaf and shuttled along ramshackle roads to the trading center. Sometimes they walked; most of the time they got a ride close to Wuoth Ogik, where they purged school from their hearts.
After the red cave, life at school for Odidi and Ajany changed. Odidi acquired bulk, merged it with fury, and, after joining the rugby team, transformed the school’s game. In the second season, when the opponents’ defense tried to take the ball from him, he broke three sets of teeth and converted twelve tries. Their school, former perennial failures, became School Rugby Cup contenders. In the created songs of worship for their new hero—Shifta! The Winger! — Odidi found belonging, and Ajany, reflecting Odidi’s glory, was at last left in peace.
Years later, Odidi would command Ajany, “Choose.” She did. She left Kenya. He had stayed. To live out a belonging to which he had become accustomed.
Lying on the tarmac, Odidi connects meaning to sounds he hears: a tire squeal, a slammed door, cut-off words, ricochet shouts of once-alive friends. They are where they are because of a green Toyota Prado of which they had tried to relieve its current owner. Wasn’t stealing. It had been Odidi’s car. He’d bought it, cash. It had been swiped from him. He was just taking it back. He and the car’s current driver had once been friends. Schoolmates, business partners, drinking and whoring buddies who had chosen the green car for Odidi to celebrate a life-changing deal gone through. The friend had opted for a brown Jaguar. A few years later, contracts shattered, he was driving Odidi’s car. This job was supposed to be easy: stealing from a thief.
When Odidi had told Justina that he was going to take his green car back and give it to her, Justina had begged, “Odi-Ebe, please — why not buy another one?”
He had snapped, “This one’s mine.”
Justina had placed both her hands over her bulging stomach. “I’m scared.”
He had laughed at her, seized her, and lifted her up. She had looked down at him. He had watched her until she managed a smile, the way she always did. “A kawaida job like this?” he had whispered as he lowered her. “It’s Odidi.” And finally she had giggled. This last job was supposed to have been easy.
After this he would marry Justina.
Restart destiny.
He would also find the courage to climb into an airplane. It was time to visit his sister in Brazil. There was so much to say and do. This job should have been so easy. Except, after Odidi and his team had struck, and he had been about to drive off in the car, a police execution squad was waiting for them.
Voices.
More cars.
Whirring of a camera.
Bright light.
Murmurs.
Then.
Five, four, three, two, one, action! A voice, gravelly, pompous, and familiar: “Our mbrave mboys returned fire for fire. Two of our men are wounded. The gang leader mocked us. Threw abuse. Our mbrave mboys gave chase. The climinals fred on foot. We persisted. We forrowed for two kirometers.…”
Odidi listens.
“The climinals moved with the plecision of rocusts. They swarmed their targets. They have been stearing, conning, and dismantring vehicles. Have executed bank rombberies, mundered poricemen, and escaped with ninety mirrion shirrings.”
Shit!
Odidi understood.
A setup.
The Officer Commanding Police Division, whom they paid every month to look away, and who on three occasions had hired out his gun to the gang, had just sacrificed them.
Sorrow is a universe.
Guilt.
Shame at being fooled. It contains fear because there is no one who will hear what he needs to say.
Such is loneliness.
Tears.
Electric chill-pain.
Odidi shivers.
Blood.
What’s happening to me?
Then.
Someone is breathing over him.
Warmth. A voice: “I’ve looked for you, boy.”
Odidi opens his mouth. Baba? No sound.
The voice: “I’m here.”
Odidi tries to shift toward the presence.
Wants to say, Didn’t rob any bank.
Attempts a grin. Knew you’d find me.
But it is simpler to allow life its rolling sensations.
Above Odidi, the night. Blurred intimacy of twinkling white stars; watching Kormamaddo, the bull camel of the waters.