‘Where are you going?’ Chala sounded alarmed.
‘To the bathroom. I think I’ve got one.’
‘One what?’ Chala almost shouted the words.
‘Here!’ Femke emerged, brandishing a small box. ‘Pregnancy test, but you should do the first one in the morning. You can do it tomorrow – on election day!’
* * *
She removed the pee stick and stared at it as if it were an instrument of torture or divine judgement. She looked up at her reflection in the bathroom mirror and saw the little girl behind the curls and the grown-up skin. She could almost picture Rosie, pointing a finger at her. ‘It’s your punishment.’ Chala blinked away the image and another jumped in to replace it: a woman telling her husband she was pregnant and being swept up into the air by him; the kind of joyous moment that was splashed across books about pregnancy and childbirth. Paul would never paint that moment, though. She saw the tears on her face in the mirror. This was the moment he would paint. Quickly, she put the stick to use. Election day in Kenya, the day that the die would be ca…
Quite soon, the first line appeared. She waited. Then another line began to appear, blurred at first, then sharper, unmistakable. She sank onto the bed, her mind swimming. Rosie was laughing at her. Chala wanted to call out for Philip. ‘Make her go away, Phiwip.’
‘Chala, are you OK?’ Femke put her head around the door.
‘Oh, what time is it?’ She looked round the room, disconcerted.
‘I think I must have fallen asleep. Sorry, Femke.’
‘I waited for an hour, but then I felt preoccupied.’ She hesitated, ‘Did y… ?’
‘Yes,’ Chala took a deep breath. ‘Yes. It’s positive.’
Femke came over and sat beside her, noticing the stillness in her voice. ‘Are you OK about it?’
‘I don’t know,…’ Chala took a deep breath. ‘You know, Femke, I never wanted children. In fact, I always thought if I ever got pregnant by accident I would have an abortion.’ She looked down, dreading the reaction her words might have, not knowing how she could possibly explain them.
‘But why? Is it because you’re not sure of your relationship with Paul?’
Femke’s face was open, wanting to understand, but Chala felt powerless to cross the distance of who she was. How could someone who’d killed her baby sister possibly bring a baby into this world? She couldn’t find words for this.
‘I’m sorry. You’re being absolutely brilliant and this is not what you bargained for when you asked me to stay!’
‘Listen.’ Femke had reverted to the strangely reassuring voice of medical authority. ‘This is obviously very new for you. You need time to think and get accustomed. It’s much too early for decisions yet.’
‘Have you ever been pregnant, Femke?’
‘No,’ she looked sad and distant for a moment. ‘I wanted to, but it didn’t happen, and then I started to realise that he wasn’t sure about it and then gradually I realised that it was me not a baby he was unsure of.’
‘Oh gosh, I’m sorry.’
But Femke was suddenly chirpy again. ‘Now come on. Get dressed and we’ll have breakfast – or how do you call it, lunch and breakfast – lekfast?’
‘Brunch,’ Chala laughed. ‘And,’ she paused, ‘thank you, Femke.’
That night Chala dreamt she had to get to the polling booth to vote. She knew that the polling booth was in Brighton, but she had forgotten how to get there. She was going round and round in circles in the Lanes, aware that time was running out. Every time she asked anyone where the polling booth was, they just laughed at her. She was growing more and more frantic. Then a man shouted, ‘It’s over there, you idiot.’ She followed his finger and saw a large post office on the other side of the road. The road was full of traffic going in all directions. Then suddenly it was a road in Naivasha, with matatus screeching past and motorbikes and donkeys and dust. Finally, she managed to get across and walked into the post office, but when she got inside, it wasn’t a post office, it was a church, and so she walked through the echoing chapel and into a confessional. She was looking for the piece of paper to put a cross on the voting card, when suddenly the curtain opened.
In her sleep, Chala whimpered. In the dream, she tried to scream, but couldn’t. Rosie, the cloth doll of her childhood nightmares, sat propped up on a counter behind the curtain. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said. Chala was unable to open her mouth. ‘But if you do, it will be like killing Emma all over again.’
CHAPTER 27
‘Now, it’s coming!’ Giovanni had left a broken heart behind in Italy to reinvent himself in Kenya. He had initially set up a successful pizza bar on the coast, but it had attracted too many Italians and he had run away again – upcountry this time, where his incongruous fire-cooked pizzas had long since become part of the local landscape.
Today the pizza bar was packed, in tense anticipation of the delayed election result. Watchful Kenyan faces had hardened over the last three days, as the margin on candidate Odinga’s apparent runaway victory kept closing, and still the counting stalled and the result failed to come. There had been road blocks between Naivasha and Nairobi, some cars had been burnt, and the embassies were advising people to avoid travelling, to stay away from the roads.
Chala closed her eyes for a second, breathing deeply over the new life inside her. She opened her eyes and took in the faces around her, glued to the large television screen that had been placed in the middle of the bar. Another painting for Paul – they might have been watching a particularly tense Wimbledon final: Kibaki, the favourite in this Kikuyu stronghold, facing match point against him by the unknown, unseeded player, Odinga. Raila Odinga was a member of the Luo tribe from western Kenya.
Femke sat, anchored nervously to the mobile on her lap. Even now, she kept glancing at it to make sure no new message had come in from her ‘blockhead’.
‘Your what?’ Mick had almost wet himself when she’d first used the word.
‘Don’t you call it a blockhead, Chala?’ She’d looked to Chala for support. ‘The person who is your embassy contact, to tell you about the situation with the elections?’
Mick was sitting opposite them, and whenever Femke looked down at her phone, he frowned. Over the last three days he had popped in and out of the house, checking to see if his ‘ladies-in- waiting’ were OK, reassuring them that the occasional truck full of riot police in Nairobi was to be expected and needn’t worry them in Naivasha. Once, he had offered to stay, looking straight at Femke when he said it, and she had blushed and said don’t be silly.
Deu… and then advantage point Kiba…The head of the electoral commission stood up and cleared his throat. Kibaki – it was Kibaki after all – had won by a margin of less than 250,000 votes.
But the collective sigh of relief at Giovanni’s pizza bar was short-lived. Voices and fists were suddenly raised on the screen and a flurry of jerky camera shots zoomed in on the head of the electoral commission being escorted out by security as people crowded in with angry accusations of rigging. For a moment there was silence in the pizza bar, and Chala caught the tight-jawed tension on the faces of white and black Kenyans alike. Then someone broke the ice.
‘Whatever. Kibaki’s in again. Reckon that calls for Tuskers all round, don’t you think?’
‘Sure. Ladies?’ Mick turned to Femke and Chala.
‘Um, no, not for me, actually.’ The banter and bravado were exhausting.
‘Neither me,’ said Femke quickly, and Chala recognised the implicit gesture of support. ‘I think we should get back, Chala, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, if we go back to your place now, I can probably get back to Naivasha before it gets dark, can’t I?’
‘Oh no, you don’t.’ Mick’s voice was surprisingly sharp. He checked himself and continued more gently. ‘It may not be over yet. You need to sit tight for the moment.’
* * *
Chala and Femke sat tight in front of Sky News in their living room and wa
tched the burning slums of Kibera in Nairobi and angry young men shouting, ‘No Raila, no peace.’
‘You OK, Femke?’ Chala asked as she made to go to bed.
‘Yeah, it feels strange, no, just to see it on the television?’
‘It does, y…’
‘But you, how are you feeling?’ And she pointed at Chala’s tummy.
‘I’m OK. It’s ju…’ – and the tears felt like a crime after what they had seen from the safety of their living room – ‘I just don’t know what to do.’
‘Well, first you need to see a doctor as soon as the road is safe to Nairobi. Just one foot at a time.’
‘Yes I know, I know. Thanks, Femke.’
But sleep refused to come. She tossed and turned on the tide of this new wave of life inside her. Images of fire in the Kenyan slums burnt holes in her own tiny drama, and Rosie loomed in judgement, remote and made of cloth. In a moment between sleep and wakefulness, the obvious and shocking realisation finally penetrated her defences: she was pregnant and she didn’t know who the father was. She wanted it to be Paul. It could be Paul. But it could also be Bruce.
CHAPTER 28
Femke snatched the phone off the table in front of them as it beeped the arrival of the latest message from ‘the blockhead’.
‘It is possible the head of the army and the police have resigned,’ she translated. ‘Don’t panic. We keep you informed.’
‘Bloody irresponsible!’ Mick was there again to check on them. Today had been declared a last-minute public holiday. Just a precaution, Mick had assured them on the phone, but Femke’s staff, Esther and Joseph, had come to work anyway, as most people in Naivasha had. ‘We don’t want this nonsense,’ Esther had said simply to Femke by way of explanation. Femke was relieved she still had holiday left before her own return to work.
‘What do you mean? Who is irresponsible?’ Femke was glaring at Mick.
‘I’m sorry, Femke. I know it’s good to be kept in the picture, but they shouldn’t be reporting idle rumours. That’s the sure way to panic. All it does is feed your fear.’
‘Sky can do that on its own.’ Chala pointed at the screen as the latest breaking news headline swept into view and Femke snatched the remote to switch up the volume. The images of Kibera’s skyline in flames were already familiar. A female reporter spoke in a voice fuelled by adrenalin of unprecedented outbreaks of violence in peaceful Kenya. New images flooded the screen of Kikuyu houses burnt to the ground and angry mobs smashing shop windows.
‘Fucking woman, what does she know about Kenya?’ Mick was shaking.
‘She’s only reporting what is happening.’ Femke was defensive.
‘She is sensationalising what is happening and that is a dangerous thing to do in this situation. It will only make things worse. Kenya is nervous, but these riots are not happening across the whole country. They are isolated incidents.’
Mick looked softly at Femke then and touched her lightly on the arm. ‘I’m sorry, Femke. This must be very hard for you both. This is not your country.’
Chala realised suddenly how hard this must be for Mick, precisely because it was his country. The country he loved and had grown up in, suddenly torn apart and exposed to superficial media scrutiny and judgement. And if things got really bad, Chala and Femke could be on the next plane out. It wasn’t so easy for Mick with his Kenyan passport.
Chala picked up her own phone, although the network had been jammed since the night before, and walked into the garden, leaving Femke and Mick inside. Tek Tek and Cheza lay fast asleep on the lawn, serenely oblivious. What would happen to them if there really was a need to leave suddenly? Chala doubted that embassies evacuated animals, but would it come to that? Mick seemed confident that it wouldn’t. Perhaps she should at least register with the British High Commission when she got phone coverage back, though. Femke’s anxious attachment to the Dutch embassy was sobering.
Chala sat down on the bench at the far end of the garden and watched vervet monkeys playing and laughing at the human drama around them. An unbidden narrative flashed into her mind: a pregnant woman miscarrying amidst the stress of evacuation. Instinctively, her hands moved to protect her stomach, a tug of conflicting emotions inside her.
Then she jumped as the phone sprang to life with a barrage of bleeps for all the missed calls and messages that had come in since post-election fever had hit international news. She seized the phone and looked at the names of those who had tried to contact her, momentarily wondering why Philip’s name was not on the list. She was just about to open Paul’s message when the phone rang and it was him.
‘Che, are you OK?’ The sound of concern in his voice was shocking; the echo of another conversation from England to Australia swam in her head.
‘Hello Paul, I’m fine, it’s absolutely fine where we are. We just need to sit tight until things calm down.’ She talked and talked over the surface of what was happening, reassuring him as if she were a mother, gently stroking the secret life in her tummy. Slowly, he reacted to the apparent sureness in her voice and let her end the call.
By the time she roused herself to go back inside, Mick had gone and Femke was lying on the sofa massaging Tek Tek’s ears.
‘Did you tell him?’
‘Who?’ Chala was pleased to hear the feisty authority back in Femke’s voice.
‘That was Paul you spoke to, I think?’
‘No.’ She looked at her hands and imagined them on an old woman.
‘It wasn’t Paul?’
‘No, I didn’t tell him.’ She looked up at her new friend. ‘I can’t, Femke, not yet. I need to see the doctor first and I can’t tell him unless I’m sure about keeping it – it would be too cruel. He was the one who always wanted children, and I told him I would never have a baby.’ She hesitated. ‘I didn’t think I could ever do … I still don’t know if I can, and anyway we don’t even know what is going to happen between us. I don’t know what he feels about it all now.’
Even without the guilty secret that clung to her insides, it all seemed overpowering, but one foot at a time, as Femke said. First, she had to get to a doctor in Nairobi.
CHAPTER 29
Chala sat in the afternoon shade of the garden. Light filtered through the acacia trees and she felt as if she was in a play with no lines. Her eyes dropped to the place where this new life was supposed to be and tired tears ran down her cheeks. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. The words Paul hated, the words that had lived inside her since childhood. She didn’t know if they were meant for Paul or the baby or even partly for Bruce, but they rocked over and over inside her like a mantra with no promise of comfort. Philip, where are you?
Femke had invited Chala to go with her to the blockhead’s house just a few kilometres away around the lake – something about some paperwork from the Dutch embassy – but Chala had encouraged her to go on her own, thinking it would do her good to be surrounded by people speaking her own language for a couple of hours. That morning she’d found Femke huddled on the living room floor with her arms around Tek Tek’s neck, sobbing.
‘Femke, what’s wrong?’ Chala had knelt down beside her and patted Tek Tek.
‘It’s ju… they are everything I’ve got. I’m frightened to leave them. I can’t leave them behind if we have to go.’ She had pulled herself up and wiped her face with her sleeve. ‘You think I’m silly – silly Dutch vet.’
‘Femke, I don’t think you’re silly at all. I was wondering the same thing about the dogs yesterday, but it’s not going to come to that, Mick says—’
‘I know what Mick says.’ The Dutch accent was suddenly sharp in her voice. ‘Mick says that because he has to.’
And then, when Chala had mentioned going to a doctor in Nairobi, the anger in her voice had been another shock.
‘What is wrong with you? You are just like Mick. You refuse to believe what is happening. Listen, listen to this text.’
Chala had listened like a schoolgirl as Femke translated: ‘More
riots in Kibera. Schools closed in Nairobi. Armed GSU forces on many streets in Nairobi. Plans for protest rally with a million people. Avoid travelling. We keep you informed.’
Femke had hugged Chala hard as she left, pointing at her tummy and saying, ‘You promise not to, how do you say, broodle?’
‘Brood, yes, I promise not to brood,’ she’d laughed. ‘Go on, you silly Dutch vegetarian. I won’t go anywhere.’
She looked around the small green garden now, spotting a vervet monkey with a handful of nasturtiums, marvelling at the existence of so many parallel worlds. What was Paul thinking? What was Paul feeling in his parallel world? They’d spoken again, her injecting all the calm she possibly could into her voice, so that he wouldn’t worry about her, and feeling a fraud because the biggest turmoil in her was nothing to do with the Kenyan violence.
Later she and Femke sat cocooned again with the two dogs and the muted television screen in front of the fire. Femke had returned with a sense of resolution and a to-do list, which clearly gave her comfort. The blockhead had managed to get papers signed by the Dutch ambassador saying that they had the authorization of the Dutch embassy to travel. The papers offered no guarantees, but might help in a situation where road travel to Nairobi was impossible and individuals decided to act on their own and make a getaway cross-country through the Tanzanian border. Other Dutch members of the community there had all agreed to stay in contact over a potential convoy should they decide to take action. The to-do list was all about what to take, and ensuring they had sufficient supplies of fuel and so on. For Femke, it gave her a comforting sense of taking control of the situation before the last resort of an airlift, the knowledge above all that she could take her dogs with her.
Mick, on his round to check up on them, was predictably scathing. ‘This isn’t Harry Potter, for fuck’s sake. Where do you think you’re going to get the fuel you need? There is no fuel left in the petrol pumps in Naivasha. Oh, and do you know where one of the worst-hit areas is? Right on the bloody road that you tourists would be on in your gypsy caravan!’
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