by Mya Havens
“O Dear I've got to hurry then!” Maryanne said pointedly.
“You had better!” Sherry agreed with her “Sweetie “as she suddenly grasped Claire's arm and started to drag her to her room.” I need this favor from you and let’s keep the senior citizens out of it.”
Maryanne felt another twinge of irritation at not being referred to as an 'old person' but being put in the same category with her mother-in-law. If she was standing next to Mayi Fundikira and someone called them ‘you young beauties’, she would have been just as irritated. Another thing she loathed absolutely about Sherry was the way she seemed to push Claire around. Both were the same age, but Claire was such an innocent girl beside Sherry. True, that Maryanne would have loved for Claire to be just a bit livelier, but Sherry was wild! Certainly not the influence she wanted on Claire.
“Mayi, I have to get ready for the prayer meeting. Claire will get you everything you need.” Maryanne kept what she hoped was an appropriately pleasant expression on her face as she said that.
“An overnight vigil, you said?” Mayi Fundikira stressed the ‘overnight’, but Maryanne's smile remained firmly in place. “Yes, at Sister Agatha's place. They will be coming here next. So, I had better attend today's vigil, or they will boycott my turn,” she laughed nervously. Mayi Fundikira mumbled something about politics in the church as Maryanne went to her room to prepare, but she wouldn't be bothered less. The old lady was a much-respected leader of the Presbyterian Church back in the village and the head of the Women's Guild - always referring to what 'The good Book' says every other minute and criticizing the church Maryanne attended.
Chapter 2 – The Affair
“Why can't you just pray during daytime on Sundays like normal people?” Sizo Fundikira had been drinking steadily for an hour or so and with every minute had gained more of that gruff truculence that comes with a few drinks.
“Well, I was just telling you, not asking your permission!” Maryanne's voice rose a little higher as she said that.
“Since you are the independent, empowered woman, why to bother at all?” Sizo snarled, his voice heavily laden with sarcasm.
“I am informing you so that you can get out of your whore's arms and go and baby-sit your mother yourself - which one are you out with today anyway!?” Maryanne's voice rose even higher. Sizo hung up immediately, not wanting to destroy his mood further. This was the day he finally was going to harvest from the land he had been tending for quite a few months. Never mind that the rightful owner of that land was guzzling lager right at his elbow.
“The Madam wants you to go for prayers or something?” Sizo thought Charles Mwanga's face had this smug, satisfied smirk on it as he asked this question. He had never overcome the fact that Mwanga was somewhat his intellectual superior. He always had this feeling that Mwanga was laughing at him for that, despite his relative success, if that is what you could call success. He knew that all his closest friends knew that his marriage was on the rocks, even though Sizo and Maryanne did a good job of pretending they hadn't a tumultuous union.
“No, she is going for a prayer vigil which is just an excuse for running away from my…” he let the sentence trail off and shrugged his shoulders. What business had Charles been looking for by prying into his personal matters? He felt a twinge of anger. Was poor Mwanga to retire a humble 'handmaid of the government' with no hope of rising through the ranks? Who still drove a battered old Corolla? Mwanga had a Harrier, yet he couldn't help feeling somehow insecure in his friend's presence. Like those African kings of old, who despite practically owning their subjects’ very lives, insisted that everyone must make sure that their heads were lower than the king's when in his presence, even if it meant crawling on the ground.
“Was your daughter sitting for the KCSE this year Charlie?” Sizo couldn't resist asking.
“Uhm, not really. That would be next year. Why did you ask?” There was no hint of any suspicion in Mwanga's voice-perhaps just a little bit of surprise at the unexpected question.
“Just asking.” Sizo shrugged his shoulders.
“Vivacious girl, isn't she? Full of life and all that.” Mwanga carefully examined the label on his Guinness as if he had never seen anything like it before.
“They get that way at that age…normal ones. Thick and Thin don't give you much trouble do they?” Sizo kept a low expression on his face. He was not the one to take insinuations lying down. Sizo felt this overwhelming urge to smash his fist into Mwanga's self-righteous face, but instead inhaled deeply and exhaled. Perhaps what he was planning was the sweetest revenge ever.
Sizo shrugged back his jacket's sleeve and looked at his wrist watch. He still had about an hour to spare. “Look, now as I am both the wife and the husband of my home for today, I had better go and check on them that dwell under my roof.” he took his glass and drained what remained of his drink in one gulp. He always assumed that pompous 'traditional' way of expressing himself when he wanted to sound superior.
“Okay.” Mwanga smiled his ‘consent.’ “I will stay here for a while and greet the elders some more.” Both always announced to whoever they had to that they were going to 'greet fellow elders' whenever they wanted to go out for a drink. Sizo fought down his irritation once more. He needed to be away from Mwanga. He would go home and change into something, younger and stylish—jeans, t-shirt and a cap for camouflage. He may be well over twice as old as she was, but he still had the fire in his loins and a spark of youth in him. To hell with poor Mwanga and his attitude. He will never find out at all.
Silver Glades was quite way out of town, so quiet and private, plus it was highly unlikely that anyone who knew Mwanga and his date for the night would ever see them. Poor Mwanga watched to make sure Sizo had entered his Harrier and driven off before he fumbled for his wallet and signaled to the waiter. “Once a klutz, always one,” Mwanga chortled to himself. “And blind as a bat too; couldn't even see what had been going on right under his nose for almost an entire year! If people couldn't appreciate the good things that fortune had given them, there was no evil in assisting them!
Even King David had something for another man's wife. Mwanga had to give it to Maryanne, though - she was as sharp as Sizo was blunt. Prayer vigil? Did Sizo look at her and see the devout woman of God that fasts and prays? Really? It was she who had suggested the perfect place, a little out of town. Silver something. The name escaped Mwanga's memory just then. Some resort with a club and things like that. She had said Sizo used to take her there before the fire of their love died down.
“You should be going out sometimes you know. Don't you ever get bored?” Sherry Mwanga had asked Claire with what seemed like genuine concern.
“But I don't stay inside all day,” Claire looked at her with the wide, innocent eyes.
“But when it's sunny, I usually go out and read on the garden swing.” Claire replied.
“What?” Sherry had gaped for a second before she understood. “Not that out!” She almost yelled, “Okay, just forget it. Please lend me that chiffon top you showed me for tonight. I have this meeting with someone.” She jabbed Claire in the ribs with her elbow and winked suggestively after looking around furtively - but it was all lost to ‘Thick’ who was already searching in her wardrobe for the mauve and beige chiffon blouse her friend had requested for.
Sherry felt a twinge of pity and some remorse. Claire would never find out who Sherry was going to meet in her blouse. It wasn't her fault that her parents didn't have enough money to give her the things other girls had - should have. Sherry stuck out lip stubbornly. If some geezer wanted a bit of fun now and then and gave her money to get stuff others got from their parents, she would give him as much pleasure as he needed. Thinking about who her 'boy' friend was and what he was to other people was only going to make her feel unnecessarily guilty. And there was no way both her mother and Claire's would ever get to know. They would be spending the night in the church or wherever they were going.
“Did you ask his wife to
cover up for you? You are so bad!” Marsha drawled in the American twang she had never got rid of in the decade and a half that she had lived in Kenya.
“Well, they all think I'm going with her to the damned prayer vigil, “Maryanne Fundikira struggled to remove the shapeless navy-blue blouse she had on to reveal a wine-colored silk top with a low-cut collar that had a lacy ruff all round. Then she threw away the headscarf she had on and shook out her long braids before arranging them on top of her head with a clasp she had taken out of her handbag. Next, she unzipped the ankle length gypsy skirt and shrugged it off. Underneath, she was wearing an entirely fitting black hipster that showed off her natural charms of perfection. “Woowww!” Marsha gasped with genuine awe. “It is true what they say - that it is not what you are wearing that is you, it what you are wearing under what you are wearing!” “Who said that?” Maryanne gave her friend a saucy sideways look.
“Ancient Africans or people like that said. You are such a bad, bad woman look at you!” Marsha twirled her friend around and looked at her from all sides.
“So, the pupil has the teacher's approval, I take it?” Maryanne crossed her arms over her breasts as she said that. “Absolutely!” Marsha lifted up both her arms. Maryanne found her friend's two bedroomed flat the perfect 'safe house' whenever she needed to get away from her domestic situation.
Marsha had separated from her Kenyan husband barely five years after they had relocated to Kenya. And it was after she had discovered that her husband had a carefully concealed 'parallel ' family, something that even those she had thought as her closest friends had kept from her; another woman with two kids sired by him. Marsha had not been able to conceive despite several tries. “Ain’t no man gonna give no shit that I gonna lie back and swallow, “Marsha had always stated with her thick double negatives, her bitterness unending throughout the years”. It was her who had encouraged Maryanne to play the game her husband was playing. “If he insists on doing it, darling, do it better than him,” she had advised Maryanne. Marsha, portly and stocky with a short, rather masculine crew cut was anything but beautiful, but she was so sure of herself and vicious about what she wanted from life. She was the sister that none of Maryanne's blood sisters could ever be.
“You can get away with whatever you want, darling,” she always told her, “what matters is the cover up. Everything you see around is all a cover up for something. None of this goes deeper than what you can see. Remember the funds at the hospital?” She pronounced it like three specific words — hoarse-pit-all.
There had been a scandal at the national referral hospital where she worked when senior officials embezzled funds meant for putting up a new maternity wing. They had simply renovated and painted an existing building, and that had been that. Most of the money allocated by the government had ended up in some people's pockets. It had happened so openly, yet nothing had ever been done about it!
That was one incident that had destroyed whatever trust in human integrity that Marsha had left in her after the messy divorce and the discovery of her former husband's other family. “You go on and have yourself some fun darling!” She pecked Maryanne on both cheeks as she walked her to the door, “and tell me all about it tomorrow, every detail.”
Chapter 3 – Night Vigil
“Ambeoonce!” Maryanne Fundikira pouted her lips as she showed her companion for the night how to pronounce 'ambiance' correctly the French way, “you are making it sound like 'ambulance'.
“If I ever meet a Frenchman, who speaks my mother tongue, then I will struggle to speak his,” the man insisted. Whichever way one chose to pronounce it, though, they just had to agree that Silver Glades had the most exquisite ambiance. How did they ever achieve the whole effect? It must have taken so much creativity and a ton of money. It was a magic wonder world!
The whole place seemed to pulse with warmth, color, music, food, wine and life. The two love birds were in one of the cubicles closed on three sides, that provided privacy to those who needed it, but Maryanne wanted to dance on the open dance floor. “Come and join the young people? We'll look old!” He protested, but she practically pulled him over. “I've seen so many fossils out there and so we aren't that old, come on!” She had insisted.
As soon as they got to the dance floor, they stood there transfixed. There was this young girl energetically doing what an American child prodigy had recently invented a word for it, “twerking”. It made one wonder if there was anything at all that the human female anatomy was not capable of doing. She was vigorously shaking her back parts, up and down and all around the crotch of her jeans and t-shirt clad dancing partner who had a beer gut and was obviously much older. For a moment, Maryanne Fundikira and Charles Mwanga just stood there. They had put their arms around each other preparing to take to the dance floor just before they had noticed the odd couple and they just remained that way, with both sets of eyes popping out and mouths gaping. Until Maryanne did what most women do in uncertain situations: let out a shrill piercing scream that brought every activity in the entire place to a standstill.
The 'mismatched ' pair on the floor was Sizo Fundikira and Sherry Mwanga, who was wearing Claire's new chiffon blouse.
Sizonge Fundikira's first impulse on seeing Charles Mwanga with his arms around his wife was to pick up one of the bar stools and clashes his brains with it. Then he realized that he was with Mwanga's underage daughter, and a feeling of deep horror swept over him. How he got out of the place and drove home was something he never recalled afterward. No one expected him back until the wee hours of the morning, which was usual whenever he changed his clothes and left again late in the evening. Unfortunately, Sizo had never heard or had forgotten that it is not a good thing to go even to your house when you are not being expected. After honking at the gate for a while, he stormed out of the car into the small cubicle beside the gate, where Ezra slept. Some real loud music was coming from the room. The gate had not been locked. As soon as he burst in, what he saw had him standing there dumbstruck for the second time that evening.
Two black naked people were apparently wrestling with incredible energy and determination on the piteously complaining bed. Both were moaning in what looked like really the excruciating pain of some sort. For almost an entire minute, Sizo could just stare, until the person underneath the other sensed his presence, opened her eyes and let out a loud yelp when she saw him. Claire, it was she, in the thick of things with Ezra. More confused and shocked than angry, Sizo silently stumbled outside and into the main house, his car forgotten outside the gate. As soon as he blundered into the master bedroom, he realized that his mind had finally snapped. He was hallucinating. The place seemed like a witchdoctor's shrine. There was some sharp smelling incense burning in an improvised burner in front of two small half-gourds, one with a yellowish powder and the other with a white substance.
Another calabash had what seemed like blood in it. Near the burner was a photo Sizo had taken with Maryanne in their happier times, but it had been torn down the middle, with the two parts placed slightly apart from each other. The gray-haired witchdoctor was completely naked, her flabby dugs dangling just a couple of inches above the floor. Her face was painted with black tarry substance on one side. Startled by his unexpected entrance, she just gaped soundlessly at him, with the object she had been making movements with, some bird feathers with a red ribbon tied all round them - suddenly still in her hands.
“Mother!?” Sizo gasped in a little whisper as the pounding in his head increased to a frenetic tempo and a red film spread across his vision. His knees suddenly became too weak to support his eighty-two kilos. He slowly keeled over and fell with a dull thud on the bedroom rag just in front of Mayi Fundikira's makeshift altar. He was out like sackcloth in the thick of the night. Fury, like a robe, embraced his eyes, his brain, and his whole being. In the broad moonlight, his behind-the-facade sins of his family had played out on this night when the gods had converged to expose him as a wicked man. Silver Glades had a silver lining that
spoke of evil. The exposé of the night was reminiscent of what Noah of old went through.
It was a deluge like the one during Noah's and his ark. “An end comes, the end comes; my end has scuttled away like the dew of a sunny morning.” Sizo abstained from tears that would not have drenched the memory of the night that was quietly giving way to an innocent morning. He feared to see himself in the mirror in the morning. Illicit sex and arrogance had driven him away. He would never venture back in his house again. It was too much doom for his soul. He found refuge in nothing. It was the lost memories and sense of his hot sex with Maryanne, the wife of his youth whose gyrations and groans during their early days of marriage left the bed creaking like an old wagon that gave him a nostalgic vibe. But she was now gone with Charles Mwanga, his former classmate and never again would Sizo think of women and sex. He had money, a job and was well-endowed in physique and bed. But this mash-up was beyond his comprehension.
Like a falcon in full fright, talons unsheathed and the plumage spread like a parachute, Sizonge had quit his house in a huff when he came back to his senses. Dejected, rejected and emotionally defaced, he drove along Haile Sellasie Avenue from Runda Estate like a beguiled man. His wife, Maryanne had played a game of wits even as his revenge mission had fallen flat on the face with Charles Mwanga's daughter. He was to blame for all that had befallen him. He felt worn out.
Chapter 4 – Between Maricopa And A Return Home
Hotel Maricopa's beauty is not only in its name alone. It is also in its variety of recipes that it offers to its customers. Driving from the south on Baranduki Road, on your left, Lake Zinga reflects the image of the cliff on its far side, its surface glittering like sea diamonds in the bright sun. Hotel Maricopa lies here like a toddler. The lake is served by River Honiara. Its sparkling clear water flows down the slopes only to evolve into a mighty roar over the cliffs and plunges into the depths of the lake. The roar itself is a reminder that indeed water is life. The plains, the cliffs, the far away mountains, the meanders in the rivers all show the richness and diversity of Uzalendo's landscape.
