Aurora’s Tears by Grace Suge

I sit myself down in this clothing place, I cannot see a thing. I hear my thoughts getting into the scenes of my life. Right there—there in my mind, there is something timeless, something that cannot be undone, something that cannot be fled; just like my pregnant eyes.

***

My years are five—or six—or seven; ignorant of life, I don’t know what’s what. With little light from my eyes, I am rummaging through the pile of well-folded clothes in this closet and my late brother’s shirt, trousers, and shoes find themselves in my little hands. They all smell of him, my brother. I wonder whether they have at all been washed—the blue shirt has a long brown line where it folds at the collar. Ma was to donate all of my brother’s things to the church as advised by our Pastor and I am surprised to come across his clothes. To ensure they are put to use, I wear a pair of the clothes although they do not fit. When Ma sees me in them, she screams at me and immediately gets them off me in anger. I do not understand this affront, I simply have no knowledge of my crime as yet. Pa looks at me speechless. 

 I sense that they are still grieving for my brother’s loss, my parents. Pa has become a violent alcoholic; his coming in the evenings evokes terror in us. And Ma— Ma is overwrought with grief. She cries and cries even when Pa’s thumps have not dropped her. My brother is dead, knocked down by a hit-and-run driver. When Ma sees his mangled body down the street a few months ago, she releases a heartrending scream, throws herself down, pounds the tarred road with her fists. 

They speak less to me and each other —if at all— because Pa gives speech to his fists too. It whittles down my self-confidence, I become retiring; always keeping to myself. Our home, just like this place, is a cold space. 

***

Aurora’s tears are on the grass. Cherry blossoms are in full flower in the garden. My breasts have germinated. The dews drop below our feet, my red ones drop from under me as I and Pa head off to my new school; a girl-only boarding high school. I don’t like them all.

Soon, I am accused of misbehaving myself with a girl and my parents are sent for. The Headmaster convenes an impromptu assembly, he does not mince his words;

“This debauchery act is an acquired taste, a poison. We will not hear anything of this kind, it will not be tolerated. I will not give mercy to whoever is suspected of the act. Do you hear me? Do not get infected!” he sternly warns. The students nod and disperse. I remain in his office, sitting through a berating from Ma and Pa. My parents, they have now found sudden speech. No one gives me an audience. With my tongue subdued, I just nod. 

“We are going to look for a solution,” Pa assures headmaster,

“You better do,” Headmaster intones, his voice doubtful.

I guess to arrest the diffusion of my virulent poison, I am suspended from school. Pa takes me by the hand and is stringing me along as he walks mercilessly towards the school gate, 

“Today is today. Wait, you will see,” he whispers angrily in my ear. 

I wrench myself free from his grip, run homewards. 

“You…you...Bloody hell!” he shouts after me.

“This girl needs to be shouted at to wake up,” Ma snarls whilst bringing up the rear.  

I remain away for a month. On resuming, an aged letter of love from me to another girl is found below the pillow of her bed during the normal monthly searches. The headmaster is left newly appalled, kicks me out of the school permanently. My education is in disarray.

***

The clouds have gathered, I am bigger of bone and Pa is a man of blood. Since I was young, Pa hits Ma, and when Ma doesn’t give him all the money she has, he throws both of us outside. We sleep out in the cold and when the light of morning shows us where to pick our bearings from, Ma’s eyes are always behind her head. I have pleaded with her to flee from my narcissist father, it proves unavailing. She wants nothing more than to believe that Pa will change. It is but wishful thinking. Pa will always be Pa.

Ma instead moves in with me in my bedroom. She is a bubble of warmth in my bed, warming herself into my favor. We are forced to converse. I set her to sleep by the wall, me at the foremost, watchfully waiting, unsleeping. By and by I notice Ma is getting thinner and thinner, the space between us in the bed increases by the day. It gets cold again, our talks wither. I ask her the matter, she is adamant that she is ok. Later, I accidentally come across a bunch of pills secreted at the furthest corner of this place of sorrow that I find myself. They are ARVs. Although they try to hide it, I have seen both Ma and Pa take a handful of the medicine. I don’t tell Ma that I know; it would devastate her. I hear her sobbing carefully in the middle of the night, many days, as she languishes. My heart is knotted in anger. Pa’s moral decay is known; I should know for not once have I met him with women of the town —walking hand in hand— but oftener. He has obtained a considerable prominence at every brothel, including Hindi Lounge— that place especial for its many amusements and dissipations.

We are asleep, Pa intrudes himself in without knocking. I know what he is here for, jump out of bed, face him. Our eyes are on the same level, but his are coals, glaring at me furiously, but its oppressive mien does not flutter mine.

 “If you think you are so right laying your hands on Ma, then you better go through me first,” I hiss. 

“How dare you! You think you are your brother to stand against me?”

“If you think I am, therefore I am,” I respond aggressively.

Ma quickly gets out of bed and tries to hold me back.

“Leave him be Christine.” She begs and comes between us.

“Where is your salary for this month?”  Pa roundly demands from Ma. He throws a punch at her and I lean myself forward to seize it in the air. I grasp at his wrist with as good a hold as I can muster. Quick to discern his left-hand punch, I seize it in the air too. He wheels round on Ma, flies a kick which smites her fully on the stomach. She doubles over, fails to regain her feet fast enough before the next kick smites her face. Pa successfully extricates himself from me and I instinctively rush down upon him, seize him by the collar, heave him across the room before I bolt him out the door. He storms out of the house in a furious rage.

Ma is bleary-eyed when I have her up, sit her down. My action has so shivered her, she doesn’t talk. 

***

Time is dawning, I am wise, my legal identity card is in my leathern wallet. Ma is a bag of bones; there is no fight left in her. And Pa—Pa is a man of the world, the flesh, and the …. he has quitted our home. I couldn’t care less either for all I feel for him is hatred. But Ma’s care and our subsistence are left to the exertions of my shoulders and the only job I get is waiting tables at Hindi Lounge. The pay, it amuses how it dissipates in the pocket.

I am welcomed by Victor—an old hand in the waiting job— who takes me under his wing. He flies, his cheap jewelry communicates itself to everybody; tawdry and of obscure origin. They are pink, they are yellow, they are orange—they shout. His talk is an overflow too, blazed away in an effeminate soprano voice that breaks when he forgets his imposture. A jolly companion who puts me wise, this Victor, but he has this unseemly habit of going to a client’s room with the order and staying there for a considerable time. He tells me he serves drinks and what-not.

“This job is cut out for the ill-educated, us, see the coins we earn. But unajua we are honed differently upstairs. You have to have your wits about you to survive here. Ask me. Morally compromised, I bet I have tasted all life affairs in equals.” He says dryly. 

I scowl.

He winks at me, Salim the lounge owner, tries to block my path. I spurn him.

Ma’s health deteriorates, she has full-blown AIDS and needs medical care ASAP. I take her to St. Paul’s Hospital. They need 50,000 shillings for her admission. It is beyond my bend so I go to Salim and beg him for it—the money. He counts a bunch of notes from part of the day’s collection and extends to me. I anxiously reach out for it. He withdraws it.

“Not so fast. This is a lot of cash. But you know, I can even put you in it for free.”

I am stunned. A look at his face, I know what he will have me do in return and before he proclaims his want, I turn, walk out the door and downtown. I fear for Ma. I muddle along and halfway to the hospital, I come to a halt, stand in the street for a while before I turn back my steps.

Salim leads me to a spacious room. He has his way with me and collapses beside me when he has had his fill of pleasure, then vouchsafes the money. I come away sickened to the stomach. His mucoid dews trickle down from inside me onto the carrier seat of the bodaboda taxi hurrying me to Hospital. The bodaboda rider has to stop severally for me to vomit at the waysides.

I reach the hospital’s waiting bay, Ma has stayed where I left her lying, on a bench below the feet of St. Paul’s statue. They are bound up in their fates—the stillness—her lying there a corpse, the statue standing in a lifelike pose.

I use the cash towards Ma’s funeral at the public cemetery a week later. Pa does not turn up but Victor joins with me.

***

It is Monday, I resume work. He guffaws at me, Salim, his smiling eyes scorns, implying something wanting in me. Victor notices my woebegone countenance.

“Why, how you sorrow! Man, you’re doing badly. You can’t be too busy feeling worse for yourself.”

I look away, smile bitterly.

“I am not of good character but I have good ears. Kunjua roho bwana, or else utazeeka vibaya,” 

Victor has a way of drawing me out, gets my easy confidence.

“Did the boss sheath his nini?” He inquires with a grave face.

I am silent.

“Whatever are you at Chris? Has my question entered you?”

I nod my head, say yes.

“Then give me your answer.”

I pause in thought before I finally relent.

“I don’t know. I had completely blocked out my mind,”

Victor slaps his mouth, snorts, slaps his mouth.

“Leta masikio hapa. Take a listen, man. If you must have ninio with someone you just must be bothered to see his nini. Don’t be like me. I might even be having mdudu.” He declares evenly.

 “HIV?” I furrow my brows.

“Yes, in fact, I have been with him severally.” 

“Salim?”

“Yes. Why Not? He cuts up well, doesn’t he?”

I am stupefied.

“Oh, I am tainted man, already beyond redemption. As for you, don’t be that person ever. It was not for nothing that you did what you did; he saw you in desperate want and suffered you. But next time ensure he is sheathed.”

“Ease up babe. There will never be a next time, with him or with any man for that matter.” I assure.

“Never say never. Bwana, sometimes we are allowed to eat from both sides of the mouth you know,” He jests.

I smile—laugh with him.

“But you are soft man, stuff that emotion down. You have to thicken your skin and find a place for yourself in this life. Meanwhile, if anyone disturbs you, tell me. I will disarrange his facial structure for you.” Victor wrinkles his brow to seem fearsome.

“Those talons of yours will surely fright someone.” I josh.

We giggle. 

He always does this, Victor, doing everything to keep me in good humor. Calls me Chris… man… bwana.

“I am going to help you cheer up man unless am not ours. We are not going to form a support group to cry together. No!  Piga moyo konde. Likiwa wacha Liwe.” 

***

It is a few months later, a gaily dressed Victor balances drinks, his long yellow nails are rakes below the tray. Platform shoes on his feet, he waddles —this way, that way—crooning with equal absurdity what seems to be a dirge with its prolonged moaning without actual tears as he heads to room 28. The terrible sounds he produces echo from wall to wall, but I am to cover him during his rendezvous there. Later, Salim at the counter is getting suspicious. I dash over. 

A man, haunches swathed in a towel and nothing more, opens the door labeled ‘room 28’ on my knock. His chin is up when we are eye to eye, aloof. From his sides I catch a small glimpse of Victor spread out in bed naked. In subdued lights, he shifts his eye away in rare shame. I turn, run to the street. I vomit at the wayside, in the basin, and all over myself. Not only at the scene I have just witnessed, but I have been vomiting for a while now and equally nauseous at everything, but Pa’s nakedness in room 28 is far more unsettling. His eyes, the hate gnaws at my soul.

***

My eyes are silent when I feel for a razor in the bottom drawer, place the sharp end on my wrist. All of a sudden there is a kick within my belly. I unwind my chest contraption, maybe it has slowed blood to my belly after vanishing my breasts from sight, I speculate. But there is another powerful kick—shatters the undone deed. 

A slight gleam of light has spilled itself over the oaken floor, the blue shirt of my late brother Chris comes in sight. Still clinging to it is a whiff of him, thin. I prop myself at a corner, sling the shirt on my shoulder, fold over. And the rains in my eyes come.

THE END