PLOT TEN

by Caroline Mose

Mathare

The piercing noise, when it comes, rouses us from sleep in an instant, because it sounds like the firimbis every plot in Mathare lets off when thieves come calling. Tired of robbers coming from Bangala on the other side of the Outer Ring Road, our community leaders walked around collecting two hundred shillings from each household, and commanded us to buy whistles. The shrill sound of one of those whistles in the night is always enough to get everyone storming out of their houses armed with machetes, kerosene, and matches. The latter arsenals are for roasting any thief to the afterlife. Every plot, as every neighborhood is called, has a head—that is, the person entrusted with the whistle. In our plot, Father was supposed to get the whistle, but when he didn’t, people became impatient. Mama Mukasa in number 1 bought one and gave it to her son Mukasa, who just turned twenty.

The digital clock reads 3:12 a.m. As the time registers, so does the knowledge that this sound is not the plot whistle. It is a scream. We jump out of bed, shaking. My sister Nyah fumbles for the kerosene lamp, which is under the table that stands at one end of the room, in front of the door. We always move the table to stand in front of the door because one never knows if someone might creep in uninvited in the dead of night. Nyah is lighting the lamp, and my heart is pounding. The screams have now rent the air, a long, tortured cry: “Uuuuuui, Ngai fafa!” It is the unmistakable voice of Mama Njenga, the woman who lives at number 10, at the far end of the plot near the shared long-drop toilet cum bathroom. We have usually been fascinated by Mama Njenga. She is obsessed with cleanliness and order. Her first name is Mary, and people in the plot have taken to calling her Mary Immaculate because of the way she anoints everything around her, including her front step, with bleach. Her front stoop is the only one that is consistently spotless, despite the concrete chipping off over time. Our plot has ten houses arranged in a rectangle. One side is numbered 1 to 5, and then 6 to 10 begin again on the left side, with number 10 being the farthest from the entrance. Ours is number 2, next to Mama Mukasa’s number 1, which is right at the entrance into the plot, directly opposite number 6. It is now Mama Mukasa’s voice we hear in the dark, following the terrible silence that has descended after that scream that has left all of us shaken.

“Enheee! What is that?” she asks in her throaty voice, a voice that carries itself like a soaring beast. We can tell she has not slept. Mama Mukasa usually goes to bed very late, after finishing her nightly sales of home brew, keroro, and making sure she has washed all her trade paraphernalia. This, she does in the bathroom cum toilet, next to Mary Immaculate’s door, staining the area brown and wet with the dregs of her commerce. On many nights we hear the two women going at each other, Mama Mukasa’s throaty voice clashing with Mary Immaculate’s shriller one.

But there’s no duel tonight, only a pounding silence that is cut open by heart-wrenching sobbing.

“Mama Njenga! We can hear you! We’re coming out!” Mama Mukasa is shouting now, and we understand she is summoning us out of our houses.

By now, Nyah has lit the lamp, and we look around the room in the precarious yellow light. The kerosene in the tin lamp is running low, and the light emits a smoke that is oddly comforting. We see our father lying on his thin mattress at the far end of the room. He is fast asleep. Nyah does what she always does when we check up on him and slips her hand beneath his nose.

“Yeah,” she whispers in the dimness to tell me he’s still breathing.

Outside, there is commotion. We cautiously unlock the large metal padlock and open an inch. We peer into the passage outside. Opposite, door number 7 is wide open. We stare in surprise. Number 7 is rarely open. Its occupant is a middle-aged man we know simply as Ouko. He doesn’t reveal his other name and we seldom get to see him. Some say he works with the police, others say he is on the run from the police. Yet others say he was once a robber of some renown who ran a notorious gang from the 1990s. We stare at his door because, as is typical, he is not the one who opens it. There’s a young woman there, peering into the passage with us. We can see her well because of the bright security lights we call Passaris, after the woman who ran the project. She is naked from the waist up, and we stare at her pointed nipples with some fascination.

“Wooi! Ngai, mwathani!” Mama Njenga screams, and we peer into the passage, dropping our eyes guiltily from those tiny breasts.

“Mama Njenga, what is it?” Mama Mukasa passes by our door. She moves fast, her humongous bottom covered in a lesso, her top half in a T-shirt. We come out of our house and stare down the passage. The young woman at number 7 has vanished back into the dark house, though the door remains ajar. We step out into the passage and see Mama Njenga crumple to the potholed concrete. She falls on her knees and sits on them, head hung forward, shoulders shaking with agony.

Mama Mukasa hurries to her side. “What is it, mami?” she asks, looking around. From the bright Passaris lights hanging overhead like midnight suns, the area around Mama Njenga’s corner lies in shadowy cracks and crevices.

I yank the lamp from Nyah’s hands and make for the end of the passage. I lift the flickering lamp over my head and shine it past Mama Mukasa and the weeping Mary Immaculate who is sprawled on the dirty keroro-soaked floor. The door to the toilet is ajar, so I know that Mama Njenga opened it. Every person in the plot has a key to the toilet’s padlock, and every time we use it, we are required to clean it, then lock it. I lift the lamp and peer into the toilet. And then I gasp and jump back. I can feel the people gathering behind me react.

“What is there?” Mama Mukasa asks, her knees making loud creaking sounds as she lifts her body from where she had planted it beside the weeping Mary.

I am unable to speak. Nyah saunters beside me and when she sees what I have seen, she shrieks and falls back, aghast. Others quickly come. Even Mama Mukasa’s son steps out of number 1, tall with a bristling beard that makes me feel hot under my armpits every time I see him. He rarely gets animated by anything, this Mukasa, so he must sense something momentous enough to rouse him out of his mother’s house. I glance to my side and see that Ouko’s beautiful guest has joined our little crowd. Her nipples are now hidden behind a lesso that she has tied around her body just under her arms. A couple pushes forward. They live in number 8. Mr. and Mrs. Nyanjom, they like to have themselves called. Mr. Nyanjom steps forward and grabs the lamp from my numb hands and moves closer to the toilet. He whistles and speaks the name of God and shakes his head.

“Bwana, can you tell us what is there?” someone says, Ouko’s girl, I think.

“We must call the police,” Mr. Nyanjom declares.

“Eh! Why?” Everyone is pushing forward, but Mr. Nyanjom holds up his left arm with comic deference. “People, stop!”

“Waithiegeni is in there,” I say, finally finding my voice. It is clear, almost loud, and its composure startles me.

Mukasa comes close to me, and I feel his breath on my neck. My heart is skipping and jumping.

“Ati, what?”

“Mama Njenga’s daughter, Waithiegeni,” I say, as if it is necessary to clarify who Waithegeni is. “She’s in the toilet. There’s blood. I . . . I think she’s dead.”

People gasp and push back from the ill omen I have just pronounced. I glance back at them and see them fight to register what I have told them. Beacause of the looks of confused horror I see on their faces, I refrain from giving more details of what I have seen: Waithiegeni’s head lolled over, her mouth resting on the edge of the latrine.

* * *

The police have come from the chief’s camp in Mlango Kubwa in their green Land Rover, or “Mariamu,” as we refer to it. They announced their presence about an hour ago by knocking on the iron-sheet gate until we thought it would fly off its hinges. Why they love to knock like that, no one really understands. They are inside now, adjusting their big guns as they look around, taking in the ten doors that make up our plot.

“Hebu angalia hiyo mwili tumalize hii kitu haraka, nataka enda nyumbani,” one of them says in his policeman’s singsong voice full of impatience and contempt. Check that corpse and let us finish this job quickly, I want to go home. He must be the senior officer. I stare at his back, thinking he looks familiar. I turn away when his eyes gaze at mine, and fight the instinct to sink back into our house, because I do recognize him.

* * *

The sun is now up in the sky. 8:08 a.m. is what the clock said when the police arrived with their heavy knocking. It had still been dark when Mama Njenga’s son Njenga returned from his nightly jaunts to find us all gathered around in shock, staring at his sister’s corpse. He had only made one sound from deep inside his chest, like a suffocated screech. He held his chin in his hands for a long time, his chest heaving like it was going to explode. He entered his own house, number 9, to get an old bedsheet which he spread over his sister’s nakedness. Then he declared he was going to call the police, and he departed with Mr. Nyanjom and Bosire. Bosire lives in number 6 with his wife Mwango and two children. Bosire is not a man given to small talk, though we know how active his fists can become when he is angry, and flushed from imbibing Mama Mukasa’s potent keroro.

“Na toa hiyo watu hapo nje, wakwende kwa kazi yao. Hii maghasia wanaenza anza leta shida hapa!” The policeman continues to bark orders in his singsong voice. He wants the small crowd gathered outside our plot dispersed. He is squinting and sneering in the morning sun. He cocks his gun, and we all recoil at the sound. He is anticipating trouble. I know him.

Our plot is in Area Two. Between here and Kiamaiko, in the direction of the Outer Ring Road is a baze where young men like to sit, whistle at us passing girls as we go to school, and smoke marijuana—bangi, as they call it, which is quite appropriate as it looks as though it leaves their heads banged. One of those young men was found dead some weeks back, and by the time police came to cart him away, a huge crowd had assembled. One thing led to another and there was tear gas and gunshots. Five other young men died.

I remember seeing this policeman there as we dodged death and swallowed bitter tear gas that wafted in the air. He is a senior sergeant. People call him Devo, after the devil. I swallow a gasp. Of course. Devo.

One of the junior officers heads outside and tells people to get going or there will be tear gas. I peep through the slightly open gate. People are not happy. There is a hardness settling in lines on their faces as they turn away, unwilling to feed on tear gas so early on a Saturday morning, when some have not even had a cup of strungi—tea without milk and sugar—and leftover ugali or githeri. Times are tough, and leftovers have become rare here.

“Mkubwa,” the other junior officers at the entrance of the toilet call the senior sergeant. He is looking at Waithiegeni’s corpse, which he has uncovered. Njenga is there with his mother, who has not stopped weeping. Her shoulders rattle, while Mama Mukasa stands by, patting her arm and telling her to take heart. The senior sergeant moves closer, and so do we. We stop in front of number 4, giving room to the two policemen and to the third one just returning to his spot after chasing onlookers away. I hear the senior sergeant inhale, something between surprise and shock when he sees the body.

Waithiegeni is lying there on her left side, gray and still. Her body has lost color. The blood has congealed and glued her body to the floor. There are flies buzzing around her nose and lips, as though searching for moisture that is long gone. Her eyes are open and vacant. One fly lands on her right eyeball which is facing upward. Her right arm rests on the floor beside her face, the fingers halfway into the hole we susu into.

“When did you people find this?” the senior sergeant asks; his voice has acquired a gruff edge.

“Her mother found her at around three in the morning,” Mr. Nyanjom replies.

We have now all gathered together in one crowd, all personal space set aside. We are so close that I can feel warm droplets of Mr. Nyanjom’s saliva falling on my neck as he speaks. To my right is Mukasa, with his young beard and tall gait. He places a moist hand on my arm, and I feel like recoiling, but I have no space.

“Wapi, mama?” asks the senior sergeant. Mama Njenga steps forward. Her face is swollen from crying all night. Her braids are old, the growth at the bottom in disarray. It is clear she has not had the chance to go to the salon for a rebraid. She is disheveled, and this is not the way we are used to seeing her. “What happened?”

Mama Njenga, no longer Mary Immaculate, recounts how she came out to relieve herself and found her daughter lying there in the toilet, unmoving. “I almost stepped on her head because I didn’t have a flashlight,” she says, sobbing.

“You unlocked your door, and the toilet door too, yes?” The senior sergeant’s voice has dropped to a gentle prod, and

Mama Njenga nods as she wipes the tears off her cheeks.

“So she was not in the house?”

Mama Njenga is sobbing loudly, and does not respond.

“Mama, if you want us to help you, you will cry later.” The senior sergeant is growing impatient, annoyed. He sounds like my father when he and my mother used to fight, long before she departed to be with the ancestors. Mother would cry, and Father would talk to her in that impatient voice and tell her to shut up, to stop trying to manipulate him with her tears. He loved the sound of that word, while we found it laden with many meanings: ma-ni-pyulaite. Mama Njenga nods.

“If you found her in there after unlocking your doors,” the senior sergeant is pointing at Waithiegeni’s corpse, “it means she was not in the house, sivyo?”

We nod, all of us. We are entranced by that finger of his pointing at the young woman we all spoke to at one point or another in the past week. The shock of her passing, and all that blood dripping into the toilet, is beginning to hit us as we stand in the morning sun.

“So where was she, and how did she get in there?” he asks. “And who locked her inside?”

We fall back. Behind me, someone mutters a low “Mmmhhmmm!”—a sound one makes when they stumble upon a juicy realization that promises to unveil a dramatic climax. I turn my neck to see who it is. Ouko’s girl. Her nipples come back into my memory and I turn away, embarrassed. I wonder, with irritation, who she is, and why she is still here. Bosire from number 6 is scratching his bare head. His wife Mwango balances their baby boy on her hips and tries to pull her lesso up. The left side of her face appears a little swollen, but then, that is nothing new.

“Wewe, mama wa pombe.” The senior sergeant now points at Mama Mukasa, referring to her by her keroro trade. Of course, the police know she brews liqor without a permit, because they pass by every now and then, either to drink for free or to extort money from her. She knows their game, because she has played it for decades. But a look of fear crosses her features. Her son Mukasa is too busy trying to run his fingers over my chest to see it, and my armpits are beginning to sweat because I am not sure how his fingers got to my chest, or if I like them there. I am also afraid Nyah, who is standing behind Mukasa, might see and think this is what I let him do to me. But she is not looking at us. She, and everyone else, is staring at Mama Mukasa, who squeezes her way forward, then stops when she realizes there might be no space for her to advance to the front of the tight crowd.

“Yes?” she answers. Her soaring voice is not flying high today. Its wings seem to have been clipped, or doused with very cold water. There is a slight tremble in her voice.

“We know you go to sleep the latest here.” It is not a question. “Who came in at night?”

“Njenga,” Mama Mukasa says a little too fast.

“Yes, but he came in after we had found Waithiegeni,” someone else speaks up. It is Gathigi from number 4 and 5. Gathigi, or Ga-things as we call him, has his wife Wanji in number 4, and his girlfriend Sweetie in number 5. Wanji has two children, and Sweetie has none. The two women are friends, though it wasn’t always like this. Wa Muvea, the woman in number 3, our next-door neighbor, likes to regale us with stories about how Ga-things beat up Wanji when she tried to give Sweetie food that was laced with rat poison. Ga-things allegedly told Wanji that he would leave her to fend for herself and her children if she tried to harm even one hair on Sweetie’s head. When all this was happening, Nyah and I had been in school at Kariobangi Adventist, some distance away. We missed the drama, but we understood the implication. Wanji’s children were sired by other men long before Ga-things married her.

“And before that?” the senior sergeant is still talking to Mama Mukasa.

“Before that, I don’t know,” she says. “I was busy with my kas-tamas.” Customers.

The senior sergeant muses on these words and turns back to look at Waithiegeni, who now appears to be one with the concrete floor on which she lies.

“Mama, wacha ujinga,” one of the junior officers now casually says to Mama Mukasa. “Sema ukweli. Nani aliingia hapa na huyu?”

She is being urged to reveal who entered the plot with Waithiegeni. We are now staring at her moving mouth which is not emitting sound. The fear in her eyes intensifies. It is clear she knows something, but she is unwilling to say what it is. The fear in her eyes begins to infect us with its potency. I can feel hearts beating, feet shifting, sweat beginning to collect on our backs. Mukasa, silly man that he is, has refused to remove his fingers from my breast. His thumb shifts to and fro against my nipple, which has risen beneath my dress like it does after a cold shower. But he is also staring at his mother. She was the last to use the bathroom. Was it she who locked Waithiegeni in?

“Peleka huyu mama kwa truck.” The senior sergeant orders one of his junior officers to escort Mama Mukasa to the police van.

Mama Mukasa makes a sound of panic, but before she can move, she is being bundled like a sack of charcoal and brought to the vehicle. Mwango makes a sound from her chest that sets the child dangling on her narrow hips crying. Mukasa goes stiff beside me, but says nothing. I turn and grab that idle hand drawing circles on my nipple.

“What’s going on?” I whisper to him. He ignores me.

“There’s something going on here, and you will tell me what it is.” The tone of the senior sergeant has changed from irritated to livid. “Everybody, sit down by your door!”

We all scramble to sit by our doors. Ga-things sits with Sweetie in front of number 5, and Wanji knows better than to open her mouth. All the children who had been told to stay indoors are called out to join their parents on the ground.

Wa Muvea only has her youngest who is three. “Leo ni leo,” she says cryptically. This is the day. The senior sergeant starts to walk among us, dodging our outstretched legs which block the passageway, as the doors across from each other are so close, sometimes we joke that two people on opposite sides can lean in through the windows and kiss without leaving their respective houses. But today is no day for jokes. Senior Sergeant Devo is here. I recall what Waithiegeni told me about a new boyfriend she was seeing, a nice man who had promised to marry her. Davy, she had said his name was. But now I’m convinced she meant to say Devo.

* * *

We are all seated on the potholed concrete. The senior sergeant has been asking us who was with Waithiegeni last night, who saw her come in, who she was friends with, but none of us are talking. We are scared now. Everyone has a key to the toilet. Someone must have opened it for her, and then locked it behind her after she was lying there, her blood flowing into the pit, her body as naked as the day she was born. Someone removed her clothes, slit her throat, and locked her in there. One of us. We stare at each other with suspicion. All eyes end up on Ouko’s girl. She is new, so she becomes the focus of our suspicions. She seems to know this, because she has this sardonic half smile on her lips. She sits with her legs out, crossed at the ankles, arms across her belly, chest thrust forward, her back resting easy against Ouko’s door, number 7. She stares at the senior sergeant, who is on his walkie-talkie.

“Over and out,” he says, and lowers the black gadget from his mouth. Then he stares hard at all of us. “Someone here knows what happened to this young girl, a very innocent person who was supposed to sit for her KCSE in two weeks.”

I feel a jolt of panic crack through my groin. Of course, the end-of-high-school exams are going to start in a fortnight. I am to sit those exams, but I feel inadequately prepared. Waithiegeni was to sit those exams too, but I know she had stopped going to school because she was sneaking off to see “Davy” all the time. We had spoken of this. We had a shared dream of maybe going to a famous polytechnic in the city center once we were through with high school. Walking distance, we had said, so all we needed to do was find a way to pay the school fees. Before she had let Davy fill her head with romance and a good life of raising children, Waithiegeni had wanted to be an artist. Her skills with a brush, or a pencil and pen, were amazing.

“You!” My heart starts to beat like the rotors of those police helicopters that fly by low at night with a big shining light, when I realize the senior sergeant is addressing me.

“Yes?” I hear myself saying.

“She was your friend,” he says, as if he is revealing a secret. “Where was she last night?”

I shrink back. I want to say, I would think she was with you, but I dare not. She and I used to leave school and walk to Moonlight with our friend and classmate Waceke. Moonlight is in the ubabini side of Area Four, which means Waceke and the older brother she lived with had electricity. We would go there to listen to Sundowner on the radio as we did homework. Then we would walk back to our plot, Waithiegeni and I. When she started to skip school, I couldn’t go to Waceke’s house alone. I didn’t like the eyes her brother used to nibble me with, and it was unsafe to walk home from Moonlight alone.

I open my mouth to say I don’t know, but I realize he has lost interest in me. He is telling one of the officers to bring back Mama Mukasa.

Mama Mukasa returns—there is blood dripping down the side of her mouth, and her eyes are no longer visible. Her usually fleshy face is now swollen round like the moon, and has swallowed up her eyes. We all gasp in unison at the sight.

“Ehee?” the senior sergeant grunts, as if to say, This is your last chance.

“Mummy, sema ukweli tumalize hii kitu!” Mary Immaculate is wailing from her corner, urging Mama Mukasa to say what she knows, once and for all. She has taken up that keening cry again.

The senior sergeant turns back and tells her to shut up or they will make her cry forever. She quits her weeping abruptly.

“Inaonekana msichana alikuwa na kijana ya huyu mama usiku,” one of the officers reveals.

“Hmmmh!” Ouko’s girl sits up at this news, while we all turn to stare at Mukasa with surprise and some shock. Apparently, he was the one who entered the plot with Waithiegeni last night. His mother was trying to protect him, and we wonder what they did to her in the truck to make her reveal this. Right now, she turns her misshapen and bleeding visage toward her son, and there is a tear slipping out of her right eye.

“I always knew this chizi boy was a klinja!” Njenga has roused himself from a stupor and is roaring from his door, hurling insults at Mukasa. He has never liked Mukasa, but still, we are taken aback by his screaming. All this time, Njenga had been sitting there, staring at his dusty sports shoes. They have a faded Connate label on the side, but one cannot be sure because those shoes have walked many miles and have seen a lot of stitching to hold them together.

“Kijana, kimya!” the senior sergeant warns Njenga to be quiet, but Njenga leaps up and charges toward Mukasa, who is now half-crouched on his heels like a stray dog about to take a hurled stone. Njenga gets as far as our legs, which we pull back because he looks like he will trample them, when the senior sergeant hits him with his gun. Njenga falls back, his face bleeding. He lands on Ouko’s girl, and both of them let out cries of pain. Njenga holds his face with both hands, while Ouko’s girl hugs herself and pulls her knees into her chest.

“Let us hear from the young man,” the senior sergeant says, then turns to Mukasa.

“Officer, I just opened the gate for her, I was not with her,” he wails. I notice the way his Adam’s apple is bobbing up and down with fear, and I feel a little nausea rising up my throat. Maybe he is a klinja after all . . .

“Were you on the outside or inside when you opened the gate?” The senior sergeant’s voice is changing, and I am unsure what its lowered timbre is all about.

“Outside,” Mukasa replies. “I snuck out when my mother was serving customers, and then I entered with Waithiegeni so my mother would think we had been together.”

Mama Mukasa’s round face is beginning to twitch with annoyance as she regards her son. Even swollen, the threat of a beating later is written in clear lines on her face.

“Ehee. And when you saw her outside, was she alone?”

Mukasa looks away, and that is all the answer needed.

“Who was she with, boy?”

Mukasa doesn’t want to answer, but he looks up and sees his mother’s swollen face and the threat written all over her body, and he sighs. “She was with their father.”

It takes a moment to register that he is pointing at both Nyah and me, and that is when we realize our father is not with us on the potholed concrete. But at this point, we are beyond thinking as Njenga, his mother, and Mama Mukasa jump up, screaming and beating their thighs, as my sister and I cower in front of number 2, speechless.

* * *

We are back in our childhood home in Nakuru where we grew up. My mother was a nurse at the general hospital, and this accorded us a small flat in the staff quarters at the foot of Milimani. We are running away from an irate man who keeps calling us nugu, monkey, as he gives chase. Nyah and I are in full flight, the laughter dead on our lips. We were up in the trees, just playing, and we threw a small stone that caught this man on the head. We laughed, and he didn’t. We are running toward the line of maize plants, where he is sure not to follow. We disappear into the maize field, and dive low to the ground, trying not to pant. We can hear him contemplating whether he should run after the monkeys. He eventually gives up and leaves. And that is when we realize we are sitting neck deep in thafai, the stinging nettle . . .

* * *

They ask us where our father is. There is shouting and screaming directed at us.

“Leave them alone!” Wanji shouts from nowhere, stilling the commotion.

“Those girls are raising themselves with no mother and with a father who doesn’t even talk to them,” Sweetie says, coming to stand by us. “Moraa and Nyakerario are good girls.”

We are both in tears now. The senior sergeant boots our door down and enters with his rifle drawn. We start to scream, because we know our father is asleep on the floor, and if he does not respond, he will be shot. The police are inside our small house. I can hear the lamp breaking, followed by the stench of spilling kerosene. If someone is careless, they could start a fire. I break free from Mama Mukasa’s grip and jump into the dark shack. The senior sergeant is turning our father around so he can see our father’s face. Then the senior sargent jumps back, a small cry on his lips.

“You!” he exclaims. The two men stare at each other. Father says nothing. The senior sergeant appears to lose all his verve. He lowers his weapon, comes out of our house, and goes back to the scene of the crime.

We are all breathing hard, wondering what is going on. We see him lift the sheet that is covering Waithiegeni. He pulls it back, and most of us turn away from the sight of her naked grayness. Except for me. I watch him look at her. I watch him shake his head. Then he pulls the sheet back up and tells his officers to take Waithiegeni to the mortuary. Everyone falls silent as she is lifted onto a black polythene sheet. Her head lolls a little, but her eyes remain open. The senior sergeant tries to shut her eyes but fails. Mama Njenga cries at full volume. This time the senior sergeant lets her be. Njenga follows his mother and sister to the police truck. Then they are gone.

After a minute or two, Ouko’s girl enters number 7 and comes out with a bucket, some Omo detergent, and bleach. Then she proceeds to wash the blood off the floor. We stare at her in disbelief.

“I am pressed,” she says simply as she starts to hum, scrubbing the floor.

* * *

Waithiegeni is buried the day the KCSE exam starts, at the Langata Cemetery. I do not go, because I am taking the exam. For me, and for her.

On the last day of exams, I spot Senior Sergeant Devo near Huruma Primary. He is in his van, the one that took Waithiegeni away. I duck so that he doesn’t see me, and walk on home.

By now, whispers have come and gone that Waithiegeni had been heavy with Devo’s child, and that Devo has a wife and three children. No one knows how Waithiegeni died, but Mary Immaculate is back to scrubbing her floors, and Mama Mukasa is back to making her brews. I don’t talk to anyone, not even our silent father, about what Devo saw underneath the sheet—the blood, the tissue, and the tiny limbs that lay by Waithiegeni’s legs.