~~Makena~~
September 2016
“Hello.” I smile at Daniel’s daughter. Hope just stands there and stares at me.
I am at the Oganas’ family mansion. I am among the few people that have been invited to Hope’s third birthday. The birthday girl looks beautiful in a pink princess gown.
She smiles at me, then walks to where her uncle Luther stands with Andre. He lifts her up and swirls her around, and she laughs until she snorts. Mrs Ogana, who is sitting near the gazebo, chatting with her friends, asks Luther to be careful with her grandchild.
She looks over at me and waves.
I wave back. We still have our issues, but she is Daniel’s mother.
Ayara and Zuri, her fellow YouTuber friend, are taking photos at the photo booth.
Ayara’s YouTube channel has grown over the years, and she now has over three hundred thousand followers. She is currently the go-to influencer for fashion and lifestyle advice. It has helped her boutique business grow too.
We are all outside at the garden, the dress code is white. The place had been decorated with pink and white balloons, and everything is made of glitter. There’s a pony and a mermaid and everything a three-year-old princess dreams of.
Fay is face painting Hope’s cute demanding little friends and Brian is helping her.
I am standing at the corner as I eat my cotton candy. Hope comes and stands near me again. She does that a couple more times. She stands next to me and then runs away to play with her friends at the bouncing castle.
The next time she comes, she stares at me with her big doll eyes.
“Do you want to play with me?” She asks.
“Ah, Yes.”
She takes my hand and leads me to the bouncing castle. Her friends are jumping on it.
“You have to take off your shoes,” she says.
“Of course.” I take off my high heels. It feels freeing to be out of them anyway. We bounce up and down until I am out of breath.
“Okay, you have to help me down now.” I pretend that my old back is cracking and she can’t stop laughing at me.
“I see you two met,” Daniel says as he looks at Hope and I holding hands.
“Hope, are you not going to introduce me to your friend?” He asks.
“Her name is Kena,” She says.
“That’s me.” I wave at Daniel.
“Let’s go have cake now, Kena,” She says and drags me off. We leave her father standing there, staring at us.
Wanja arrives a couple of minutes later. I spot her as she walks up to the garden.
Hope has gone back to playing with her friends.
I walked up to Wanja, and we hug. It is so good to see her. It has been two months since we last saw each other. She has been travelling all the time.
She was recently on a trip to the Maldives and then to Dubai with her sugar daddy.
“How was the trip?” I ask.
“Amazing.”
“I bought Kennedy lots of toys.”
Kennedy is Nduta’s firstborn son. She was having her second baby in two months. It seemed everyone I knew had a baby or was having one. Meanwhile, I graduated from Trenton and started my own construction company, Katra.
With Ayara’s mentorship, I prefer the business to employment. It is not easy, but it pays off.
“I saw Noor,” Wanja tells me.
“Oh yeah, he works in Dubai, right? How is he?”
Noor moved to Dubai after he graduated last year. The two had not been in communication since then, and Wanja had broken up with him anyway. The sugar daddy lifestyle was more appealing to her.
“No, I didn’t see him in Dubai,” She said.
“I met him here in Nairobi as I was coming in. He owns two taxis, can you imagine and a hardware shop,” She says. “He is going to be great.”
She lives in an apartment furnished by her sugar daddy. She is a mistress and is okay with it. She does not hear it when I or anyone else asks her to change her ways.
We had a few terrible fights and didn’t speak to each other for a week, and our friendship almost ended. Then we forgave each other, and I accepted her decision. She is my friend, and I love her regardless.
“Hey, guys.” Ayara, Fay and Zuri join us. We all sit down and catch up with each other.
“It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” Ayara asks.
“Yeah.”
“I still can’t believe Lynn allowed Hope to come,” Fay says.
“It’s a miracle,” Zuri adds.
Yes, it is a miracle that Lynn allowed Daniel to throw Hope her third birthday.
The two are in the middle of a custody battle. Lynn wants Hope to live with her and her husband. She is now married to a Tanzanian rapper, and they have a son together. I see online photos of them on fancy yachts often.
Her husband was implicated in a couple of cheating scandals, but they stand by each other. Maybe they love each other. Perhaps she is happy.
Hope is such a beautiful, intelligent, bubbly girl, and I respect Lynn as her mother.
When she was born, Daniel and I stopped communicating. He took the time to concentrate on family and on rugby. The national team has been winning season after season, and I took the time to focus on myself and my studies.
While we were apart, Joseph asked me to be his girlfriend, and I accepted. He is good to me, and we are comfortable with each other. We also vowed to remain pure until marriage since Joseph is still a youth pastor.
Then I bumped into Daniel, last year, during my first month of Internship. He was coming from a bank, and I was coming from work, tired and groggy.
He insisted on buying me dinner, and I reluctantly agreed. He looked so good, and his smile made me forget everything. We ended up spending the night in a hotel room, making love all night, me kissing his tattoos, especially the one of me.
I thought he would have erased it by now. No. Instead, there is an addition of Hope’s tattoo on his left rib, near his heart.
The next morning, I told him that whatever we had done would never happen again, but we met two days later and almost every day after that.
Some days I don’t answer his calls. But when we meet everything else didn’t matter, we can’t keep our hands off each other.
“You look so happy these days. Work is really good for you,” Joseph casually mentioned one evening as we came from a Christian Union meeting.
“Thank you.” I smiled. I had been meeting Daniel for two months then.
“So, have you thought about it?” Daniel asks me. He is so close his body’s heat fused with mine.
Ayara, Fay, Zuri are taking photos with the guys Luther, Brian, and Andre. Wanja is on the phone.
I am at the bouncing castle. Hope invited me to play again, but this time I tell her I will watch because of my old back.
“I have,” I say.
“And?”
“I will do it.”
He wants my construction company to build that dream house he told me about on our first date, on that gorgeous place where the giraffes live.
He wants me to be involved in every decision of ‘our’ house as he calls it.
“It’s not our house, it’s your house,” I correct him. “Joseph is paying my dowry in a month, and then this will stop.”
I gestured at the space between us.
“This?” He asked.
I feel his breath on my neck, and my breath hitches. I look around. Luckily, no one is watching us. I am suddenly feeling so hot and bothered.
“This us,” I say.
“You mean this ass.” He stealthily grabs my bum.
“Daniel, stop.”
“We are never going to stop, my love.” He takes my hand in his, and I turn around and look up at him.
We are not supposed to be together considering everything, considering my father and his father. This whole thing is a mess.
“We are a mess,” I remind him.
“Yeah, but we are a beautiful mess,” He corrects me.
“Daddy…Kena,” Hope calls after us as she gets off the bouncing castle.
***
One Month Later
I walk down the beach and look at the blue waters. Then I go and sit down under the palm tree.
A rugby ball falls near my feet. Daniel runs towards me and sits beside me under the palm tree.
“What are you doing here? Aren’t you going to miss your dowry payment?” He asks.
My dowry payment is supposed to be tomorrow, but I called it off and ended things with Joseph. Then I immediately came down to the beach.
I can afford flights now, and it had taken me forty-five minutes to get here from Nairobi.
“I will take the 10 pm bus,” I say.
“No, you won’t.”
“I will,” I say. “And what are you doing here?”
“I came because I knew you would come back to me.”
“I came to enjoy the beach. I didn’t come back to you,” I declare.
“Okay, whichever way you see it.” He looks down at his watch. “As you wait for your bus, maybe we should look around and collect some seashells.
“Sure.” I smile.
We go through the city one last time and ride the ferry and the tuk-tuk.
Ten pm comes, and we are still sitting under the palm tree.
“Well, aren’t you going to be late?” Daniel asks me.
“I just thought about it right now, I can stay until morning. You just got your flying licence so you can fly me back home straight to the event.”
“You are nuts. I am not taking you to go marry another guy.”
“That is just so selfish, Daniel.”
“Yes, I’m selfish where you are concerned, baby.” He kisses the back of my hand as the ocean breeze hits my face.
“Lynn won the custody by the way.” He adds.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” I caress his arm. “We are going to get her back.”
“Yes, we will,” He says.
He leans down and kisses me.
Then he reaches into his pocket and brings out a ring. It gleams under the moon’s shine, and I become breathless.
“I only want to be with you, Queen Makena.” He speaks. “I love you, and I have always loved you ever since we met under this palm tree. I want to spend my days and nights with you, and I want to make love to you and to make beautiful babies with you.”
Tears run down my face now.
“There is no one else I’d rather be with, not now and not ever. Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”
“Yes, a thousand times, yes,” I say. He slips the ring on my finger. It fits perfectly.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, admiring my ring.
“I’m glad you like it,” He says. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Daniel Ogana.”
We kiss then I sit on his legs as we write our initials on the wet white sand. D loves M. I draw a heart around it.
A guy walks towards us. He is wearing a white kaptula and a white cap. Although he had gained a little bit of weight over the years, I still remember him.
“Have you lovebirds heard the story of this palm tree?” Hassan, the storyteller, asks. I look at Daniel and smile.
“No, we haven’t. Would you care to tell us?”
I hold Daniel’s hand and sigh. Happy and content, I listen to the Swahili storyteller tell us again, the story of a man and a woman whose love overcame all obstacles that life put their way.