She Called My Name

When boys of nowadays say they are in love or they know how to love, I just laugh and mumble, "Lord forgive them for they don't know what they are saying." In those days, my name was on the lips of every beautiful girl in the whole of Kawangware and even as far as Kangemi. I sold more than hot cake and I'm sure I would sell even by today's standards: though I can't imagine donning a ragged pair of jeans and an unbuttoned shirt in the name of fashion.

You know where PBK Supermarket stands today in Kawangware? Near Kabiro Primary and Maranatha Church. Yes. That's where my house or rather the house I rented was. It was a seven by seven feet self-contained room--it had a kitchen, bedroom, sitting room and bathroom in one room. A bedsheet was hung on a piece of string to separate the sitting room-cum-dining room from the bedroom. The kitchen had jerricans, a stove, a  metallic bucket where I kept my flour and a utensil rack on which all our sufurias and other utensils were kept. There was no need for separating the kitchen from the other rooms--my visitors would simply follow all the activities in the kitchen from beginning to end. The house was built of mabati both as the roof and walls. But I was contented with life. I never stole. I survived on my own means.

What I remember this house for is not the fact that it was self-contained. Rather, for the lessons it taught me-both good and bad. I learned to live in any environment, whether hostile or serene and friendly. This was a place where a man could share such a small room with his two wives and nine children. A friend of mine once asked me how our neighbour Adoli managed to make children when he already had two teenage boys and two younger girls, all sleeping in the same house. Of course, I couldn't find an answer to such a question.

Among the bad things I learned was peeping through holes I had made on my walls to see what my neighbours did. I enjoyed most seeing them make love to their wives. Watching a pornographic movie at Sahara Video was very dangerous. You could easily find yourself in the cold cells of Muthangari Police Station. And the movies were very expensive: ten shillings for each movie. So, movies starred by my own neighbours came in handy. Their noises always alerted me when it was time for enjoyment. The irony was that I always asked them to stop disturbing us with their noise whenever I didn't feel like listening to their romancing. I would shout "Acheni kutupigia kelele. Hatujalipa Mama Kamangu kuwaskia mkifanya mambo yenyu. Tunataka kulala bwana"

So, this girl calls me one Sunday morning and insists she must come to see me. "It has been long," she says. Back in the village, we used to call her Chutis, but these days she insists on being called Valentine or Vale for short. I think when people move to the city they have to drop their village names and pick new ones that befit the city. I readily agreed to her self-invitation (if there's anything like that) because I had been in a dry spell for God-knows how long. Two hours later, she knocked on my door. I had been doing pushups since she had told me she would be on her way. Girls back then valued men with well-built chests. I let her in and the rest is history as is usually said.

Later that evening, I was peacefully lying on my back on the bed trying to admire the soot on my roof. My neighbours were still waiting for their kids to sleep before they would start their noise-making. I was glad that at least I had a peaceful moment to go over the good times I had had during the day. And they had indeed been good. It felt like watching a movie in my mind. It had been the first time I had come as close to her as I had wanted. Her perfume had smelt so nice. I didn't even want to change my clothes or take a bath for the remaining part of that day and may be the night. I wished it had continued into the night and into the next day but she had to go back home since her mother was almost coming back home from work. Then I heard a knock on my door.

"Knock knock"

"Who's knocking," I asked waking up from my dream.

"Me," a woman's voice answered.

"You nani?"

"Vale."

I didn't expect that. She told me her mother had instructed her to go back to where she had spent the whole day. I surreptitiously  smiled but immediately frowned when I realized that it may not be just enjoyment. Trouble may be in the offing. Long story short, that's how we moved in.

I didn't think she could stand the vicinity. There was a swamp behind our house, which made the house so cold and inhabitable, especially by those from the rich western part of Nairobi City like herself. Before I moved to that house, I had never seen more snails in the same place as what I saw there. They would make a lot of noise whenever they walked in crisscrossing movements on my floor, leaving their mucus-like substances behind. We always had to wake up and kill enough of them before we could dream of catching some sleep but more came back. Vale never even mentioned going back home despite the disturbance she got from not only the snails but also from the stench that came from the sewage and our overflowing toilet--the toilet stood five metres away from our door.

When we were evicted five months later for not paying rent, we had to leave without taking anything with us. Mama Kamangu added a padlock to our door and we could not access the house to formally vacate with our items. So, we moved into a mud-plastered house near Kamitha. I was supposed to pay my new landlady (I don't know why only women own plots in Kawangware) one thousand shillings per month. It was better than our previous house. At least you could not hear what the neighbours did. As for the latrines, there was no substantial difference. I guess people in Kawangware are just allergic to good latrines or maybe they are so poor at mathematics that they cannot approximate the sizes of the holes. The smell was unbearable and when you went in, you always had to stand on one foot as you carried on with your business as there was barely enough space for both feet--most of the space had human dung. I always covered my nostrils with my fingers and breathed with my mouth to avoid inhaling the bad smell while inside.

Since she had just joined the university, she did not stop attending her classes. She was a third-year student of banking at JKUAT. I sold my acre piece of land back at home in Kakamega to have her retained in school for her mother had completely disowned her. She loved me seriously and I loved her too. We ate as much as we could whenever we had something to eat and happily went to bed on empty stomachs whenever we lacked. I found a job as a video attendant at Our Choice Video Show in Kwanagware 46, where Dj Mikeman was usually live. The job bought us meals and paid the rent. We slept on several newspapers carefully laid on the ground then covered by our clothes to at least make the bedding softer. Another friend of mine had wanted to know why I was busy breaking somebody's daughter's back by laying her on such a hard surface. I just smiled and hoped God would intervene.

After her graduation, she was lucky to secure a job at the Equity Bank Kawangware Branch. Her friend connected her (in this country, you can only get a job when you have a tall friend or relative). Things went on well for the first year. She bought our first 32-inch TV and a refrigerator. Later,  she bought furniture and almost any modern household item you could imagine of. We moved to a bigger house in Satelite. It was a two-bedroomed house on a five-storey flat. Its walls were well painted and the balcony provided a good view of passers-by on the road directly below the building.

We had our first argument, I remember very well, on the Christmas Day of 1995. The day before, she had insisted that she wanted to go out with her friends. I tried to argue but lost the argument. She actually went and came back the next morning smelling as if she had been drowned in a drum of beer for two days. She went straight to the bathroom as I lay on the bed saying nothing. That morning, I also lost another argument. It soon became a habit and she was no longer the woman I had loved and vowed to live with all my life. She was slowly changing.

We lost control of matters when she did not come home one evening. I waited for her till night came and till morning came. She was nowhere. I only saw her in the evening in different clothes.

"Where were you last night Vale?" I asked authoritatively as a man is always supposed to.

"Where I go or sleep is not your business," she arrogantly answered while facing the opposite side.

"So you have become that free in this house that you can sleep outside then walk in as if nothing happened and even have the effrontery to answer me arrogantly?"

"So you wanted me to send you a telegram telling you what happened?" she replied and walked away turning her now huge hindquarters in disrespect. She mumbled something like a man who carried a toothpick between his legs and worked in a video like a small boy had no authority to question a working-class woman.

I contemplated slapping her or even beating her up silly but remembered that almost all laws formulated in recent times protected women and crashed men into pebbles. I regretted having left my mud-plastered house to join her in that house. I was even more peaceful with my snails than I was with a woman that I no longer understood.

Her behaviour worsened each passing day. We no longer even shared beds. She moved to the next bedroom and left me in the previous one. One day, I came back from my job and noticed a new car in the parking lot. It was a silvery Toyota Fielder probably newly acquired. I just went past it because I thought it belonged to one of our neighbours. Slowly, I ascended the stairs whistling Franco's Sandoka loud enough to be heard by somebody on the highest point of the building. Up the second and the third set of stairs I went. At our doorstep, I ran into a pair of sharp-pointed black leather shoes and Vale's brown leather open shoes. I could hear some good music from the house. I had influenced her into listening to rhumba music but on that day "Solidad" was all over the air. Her bra and the black suit she had worn in the morning lay on the floor in the sitting room. There was a pair of khaki trousers and a checked shirt, both of which looked like they belonged to somebody thrice my size. Her red innerwear lay on the corridor that led from the sitting room to her bedroom. When I stood in that corridor, I heard some voices.

"Albert, yes my Albert," the feminine voice said.

"I am not Albert Sweety," the man's voice said. "Call my name," the voice begged.

The woman would, however, not stop calling my name. I stood there for what seemed like an eternity, wondering why Vale was calling my name. I was shocked beyond limits. I decided to sit on the floor. I don't remember how my hands reached my head. So, I sat there with my hands on my head. Tears rolled down my face and formed what looked like small rivers on the floor. I sat there long enough and cried, and wailed, and mourned and sobbed. I wished it was just a dream but it was not.