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The train pulls out of Lille, heading towards Paris. She is glad to be on the move again. She hasn’t showered or eaten in a long time. She should take better care of herself. Maybe she’ll get a bit of sleep here before they get into Gare du Nord. No chance of a shower, but she could at least wash her face.
In the WC she sees the ‘no drinking’ symbol over the basin and reconsiders. She doesn’t want to put that water on her face. Better not. The toilet bowl has water that is an unnatural blue, full of chemicals. It’s like the blue that Bene used to love, rejecting all other colours. He was funny like that. As a young boy, already very excited by drawing, he went through a very rigid phase. Totally unlike what he became later. But for a short time, when he was three maybe, he only wanted that shade of blue. Royal blue. Superman blue, he called it. Drew and coloured and held the crayons and markers tight in his left hand. Didn’t want any other colour, for about a year. But when he started school, he changed his mind and broadened out. Then he went in the other direction – wasn’t happy unless he had all the colours of the rainbow, and more: gold, black, maroon, all sorts. He would take his paper and markers and spread out on the floor, making sure every colour, no matter what small fraction of a difference in shade, was represented in his wide rainbow.
There isn’t any soap. She flicks her hands under the water, and then runs them through her hair to dry. She doesn’t care what she looks like. No one is looking at her anyway. She walks back to her seat, thrown about by the movement of the train. When did that blue phase end? That is the problem with memories. You have these flashes of them like in a photograph, but then you go blurry on the details. She doesn’t know if she’s actually remembering a number of moments from his childhood together, or just the stories she’s told him and herself over the years. About him and the Superman blue. And she’s never had anyone else to hold her to the truth. What is the actual truth? Would Aunt Magda know?
No, Lena is alone. She chose to be alone, but years later that decision doesn’t feel much like a choice. It feels like a line she’s been forced to walk, a decision by whoever she was at the age of twenty-six. The person she used to be. Does she still want to be that person?
Bene’s mum – absolutely. But Lena alone? No, not at all. But she doesn’t know how to be any other way.
Bene, you’ll be okay, she exhales in a small prayer. Do the other passengers notice? She doesn’t care. He has to be okay. He’s all she has. Without him, she is nothing. He is the best of her efforts, and the promise of a future. She can’t imagine anything else. If anything happens to him... She wrenches her thoughts away. No mother can endure thinking that way for too long. It’s not natural, goes totally against the rhythms of nature, a mother thinking about her son’s mortality.
No, he’ll be fine. The French hospitals are good, some of the best. And she’ll be by his side soon. Lena and Bene, just like they always have been. Nothing can change that.
––––––––
He sits on the closed toilet lid fully clothed. He needs space to think. No one to look at him. No one to judge him. Just breathe for a moment.
I can’t do this, he thinks. I can’t. I’m going to be sick. He feels dizzy. He wonders if he should move in case he vomits. But for some reason he can’t shift himself. The position that feels most natural is this one: elbows on knees, head in his hands. He is a statue set in stone. There is a strong smell from the chemicals they use to clean. He hears the squeeze of some automatic spray above his head on a timer.
It’s too intense. He can’t meet this boy and then have him die. What a nightmare. He wishes he’d never heard of him. Never thought again of Lena. Never met Lena to begin with. Wishes she was never in his life.
No, he doesn’t mean that. You can’t erase people from your history. They make you who you are, at that moment and beyond. Who you become is built upon those moments, who you are in each small unit of time. The choices you make then, the people you choose to be with. The ones you love, and those who love you, including those who leave. And then you have to fix the damage yourself, build your own future.
That’s what he’s done all his life. Built himself back up, without the family to support his efforts. His own father was just a shadow to him after he left home. Kumi – criticising him, taking up all the praise, pushing him to the margins. Why was there never room for the two brothers, different, but each with some intrinsic value?
Lord knows he hasn’t done badly. In any other family, humanitarian work and rising up to be the head of Africa region would be something to be proud of. Saving people’s lives is worth something, surely.
The light in the toilets flickers off. For a moment, it is pure blackness. He is lost in space. He feels the shape of the toilet underneath him, puts his arms forward to feel the cubicle door. It’s still there; it must just be that the light is motion-detected. He waves his arms, but nothing changes. He stands up, reaches for where the latch should be, and opens the door. The lights come back to life as if nothing has happened. He sees his lonely suitcase, resting by the sinks.
He looks in the mirror and sees the worried face of an old man. How has he come to this? He needs to get away from here. Can he leave without anyone knowing? He’ll get another taxi back, all the way to the airport. He’ll catch the next flight to Nairobi. Won’t tell anyone. Only Jeanette will know, and he’ll make her swear to secrecy. He won’t have to tell Lena he was there, that he failed to find the courage to go in.
Paradisa would know – he had put it in the short letter. Why did he write all that? He should have just said it was a business trip, something that came up suddenly. She would have raised her eyebrows, but would’ve left it at that. They had an understanding. Nothing threatened that. As long as her Omondi was okay, growing and learning and bringing his stories and schooling back to their dining table at night, that would be enough.
He hadn’t realised that until now. That is enough. Being in one boy’s life. Being someone to that boy. He isn’t a nobody. Through luck or chance, God brought Paradisa and Omondi into his life, and that is enough. They’ve made him the man he is today. They are waiting for him, back at home. He needs to get there, as soon as possible.
Relief floods through him and he feels light-headed. That’s what he needs to do. He splashes water on his face and feels like he can face the world outside. He puts on his blazer, still damp with the rain, and gets ready to go home.
––––––––
He opens the door, and senses something has changed. The door to room number 22 is ajar, and several doctors and nurses are standing around the bed, talking in raised voices. There is a lot of motion in the room, with beeping noises and equipment being wheeled around. It looks like a dance, this medical choreography to keep people alive.
Despite his conviction declared to the mirror, Kojo freezes. He can’t leave without knowing. He moves closer to the door and tries to understand what’s going on.
There are so many people in the room he can’t see the patient. Instead, he sees the older girl, leaning again on the far wall. She is chewing on a fingernail, looking nervous but something in her eyes is happy. Cautious-happy. Kojo tries to see the other girl and the Arab boy but they are blocked by the doctors and nurses moving around. He hears different voices, all speaking French, and then a laugh from someone. Medium-pitched, it is the voice of an adolescent, not yet a man.
The curtain is pulled back and between the movements of the doctors Kojo sees that the boy is sitting up and awake. He has bandages over his forehead and one eye, wrapped all around the head like a mummy. The other eye has a purple ring below it and there are stripes of surgical tape on his cheek. But he is smiling. A wide, grateful smile, like someone who has been given an unexpected gift.
The boy speaks to the doctors and answers some questions. They reach out and take his pulse, check the beeping machines, testing and prodding him even though the evidence is clear: the boy is alright. He will be okay. Whatever happened last night, whatever happened with that girl in the streets of Paris that led him here and to his missing the plane to Nairobi, he is going to be okay.
That face, even with the bruises and stiches, Kojo has to admit that he is a handsome boy. Something in him looks like Lena, and also like Kumi. And something unique – totally his own. As if he has the confidence and luck to be anything in the world, and he just has to make the right choices.
Kojo can see why Jeanette said those things about him, why Lena would count so much on the boy’s presence making any situation better. There is something about him that would make you hopeful, make you want to believe that the future will happen, and that, for this kid at least, the possibilities are beautiful.
Kojo comes out of the doorway. He doesn’t belong here. He’s satisfied that the doctors will do their job. It’s time to go.
That’s when he sees her. She comes down the corridor from the nurse’s station, just like he did. She has a backpack, no roller suitcase. She somehow looks the same, yet totally different. Her black hair is cut short and has streaks of grey. She looks like she’s slept in her clothes, but then Lena was never someone who cared what people thought about how she dressed. She is wearing plain sandals, no fussy shoes for her.
Her face is older and thinner. She has lines stretching across her forehead and ones around her mouth, making her cheekbones more prominent. The worry crease between her eyebrows is deep.
She doesn’t see him at first. She is walk-running, reading the door numbers as she goes along. She is anxious, and her mouth looks like it has forgotten how to smile.
He steps away from the door to let her pass, and that’s when she looks up at him. Her eyes are the same dark chocolate as years ago. A look on her face that’s impossible to read in a moment – worry about her child, confusion about why he is there, worry about what he might think? Probably the worry for Bene eclipses all other thoughts.
She doesn’t say a word, and looks past him into the room. The girls say something, and the doctor looks up. She sees her son, sitting up and smiling.
Kojo doesn’t expect it, but she looks back at him then. And the look says it all. That there is far too much to explain, but he should know anyway. That she loved him once, but she had to do this alone.
She nods, and he does too.
He smiles widely and before he can help it, he is laughing. It starts small, but grows into a deep belly laugh. He laughs harder than he has in weeks. He holds onto the doorframe and feels his eyes start to water as he gulps for breath and can’t stop. Goodness knows what these people will think, this African man clinging to the wall and laughing until he’s crying.
She laughs too. A quick, light laugh as she moves past him and pushes to her son’s side. The boy says something Kojo can’t hear and she embraces him, holding his bandaged head in her arms as she stands next to him. They make a strange couple, this smiling bandaged boy and the solo pixie-haired mother. The girls and others in the room are also laughing. Lena wipes her eyes and says something to the doctors. Kojo doesn’t know if she is crying from happiness or worry or relief, or all of it and more.
She hasn’t even bothered to sit down, just holds on.