Things They Lost Read online

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  There was a girl at the window, standing so still you would think she was only a crease in the drapes. Ayosa had first noticed her months ago, although she suspected that the girl had stood there much longer than that. Watching, just watching. And blinking. Unflinching. If flies came and buzzed around her face, she did not swat at them. Sometimes a cat came and sat on her shoulder and she did not shoo it away. The girl at the window came on some mornings and did not on others.

  Ayosa once went down to Jentrix the apothecary’s place to fetch chili seedlings for her mama, and she saw the girl there too, standing at the apothecary’s window, watching the apothecary turn a footling breech baby down the right way inside a woman’s belly. Ayosa knew then that this girl had a timetable of sorts, one that told her which window to watch on which day. Later, when the apothecary was done with the pregnant woman, she gave Ayosa a bowl of gruel and Ayosa pointed at the window and said, Who’s that?

  Just a throwaway girl, Jentrix the apothecary said.

  What’s that mean?

  Means someone left her in the gutter, like litter. Don’t mind her, she means no harm.

  The girl spent an hour or two at a time at the window. It did not matter if there was something interesting to look at or not. Sometimes she would just study the cobwebs that fluttered when the air startled. Or she would watch the way the shadows skittered across the floor, like a brood of boisterous kittens. Or she would watch the dirty dishes in the sink, stacked so high that some plates and bowls touched the ceiling. Or she would watch Ayosa sitting there, peeling a pear with a paring knife, or scraping candle wax off the table, or winding one of her mama’s cassette tapes back with a ballpoint pen before shoving it into the radio.

  Ayosa had a great fear now—that one day something would happen, and the throwaway girl would not come to the window anymore. Maybe the people who had left her in the gutter like litter would return for her. Or maybe she would feel too grown to while the time away like this, with her forehead pressed to strangers’ windowpanes. And then what? Ayosa’s heart sank whenever she thought of it. Truth was, there was something about the throwaway girl. A sweetness. A gentleness. They said nothing out loud to each other, yet their silence was a type of language. When they looked at each other, they spoke multitudes with their eyes.

  They said: Poor thing, your mama isn’t back yet? She left you alone for so long… If I didn’t know better, I would think you were a throwaway girl too.

  And: You’re getting awfully skinny, you want some oxtail? I’ve got some oxtail. My mama made some soup and froze it, can’t remember when exactly, but I guess it’s still good to eat.

  And: Listen to me, you’ve got to watch out for the busboys and preacher-men. And if you watch out and still get dirtied anyway, you’ve got to run to the Marie Stopes clinic—they will know what to do.

  Today, the girl at the window had hurried off early. To catch some fish, she’d said with her eyes. She’d said that she had stolen a fishing line and that she had a pocketful of squirming bait and she supposed that she and her cat would have smoked trout for supper. Now Ayosa sat on the porch steps, sad and alone, and watched as the milkman rode up the hill. As he steadied his bicycle against an avocado tree. As he unstrapped a canister from the carrier and placed it on the step.

  Hello, Mr. Milkman, Ayosa said.

  The milkman said nothing.

  Mr. Milkman, I said: Hello, Mr. Milkman.

  The milkman turned away. He climbed onto his bicycle, jingled the bell, and rode down the hill. Ayosa picked up a rock and hurled it after him. The rock fell on a rosebush, upsetting a cloud of gnats. It happened every day—the milkman came and left without saying a thing to her, without even raising his eyes from the ground, and she picked up a rock and hurled it at him. Sometimes the rock hit him on the shoulder or the neck, and sometimes it did not.

  Ayosa dragged the canister inside. She stood on a footstool and reached into the cabinet for a drinking jar. She filled it with milk and sipped on it. The milk was warm and frothy. It tasted like the cow’s moldy tits. Outside, the clouds twirled and the world became paisley prints and palm oil stains and hot breaths on necks and grass tickling the backs of thighs. Ayosa trailed away from the house. She walked through the woods, past the cow barn that her mama had turned into a studio, past the wattle trees and sycamores, all the way down to the river. She hoped to see the throwaway girl fishing for trout with her cat. But she did not, so she sat with her feet in the water. A fisherman bobbed by on his boat, his bare back rippling with sweat. From that distance, he could not tell if Ayosa was really a girl or if she was a spirit child, and he did not mean to take any chances, and so he tipped his sunhat, reached into his net, and tossed her an offering of the thing he had just caught.

  It was a lungfish. It writhed in Ayosa’s lap and then slithered into the mud. Ayosa watched it crawl away. She wiped her hands against her frock. She watched as a monitor lizard emerged from a canopy of thistles and poppies, watched it forage about the riverbank. Ayosa took off her shoes and walked barefoot on the rocks. The water wanted her. It foamed in the spaces between her toes, tickling the soles of her feet. It brought her a red ribbon to tie her braids with, and a little child’s rain poncho, and a biro pen cap, and the rubber wristband of a Casio watch, and a fish with a hook inside its mouth. She clutched these things to her chest and closed her eyes. She took a record of herself—the humming in her ears, and the silverfish glistening inside her eyelids, and the way her heart fluttered and then stilled. She memorized this, stored it elsewhere inside herself, so that someday, when she was all alone and nothing in the world thought of her, she would come back to this moment, would examine it and remember what it had felt like to be wanted.

  She dug in the wet sand and when the hole was large enough, she put the things that the river had brought her inside it. She sang Luwere-luwere-luwere, and her voice crackled because “Luwere” was the type of song that finished all the sound inside a person’s throat. It was the type of song that finished the breath inside a person’s nostrils. She stopped singing it, lest it kill her. Now she tossed rocks into blackberry bushes. She climbed the wattle trees and when she got blisters on her palms, she burst them with a thorn. She poked twigs into the crests of anthills. Gnats and dragonflies and grasshoppers and bees spun maddeningly over her head, round and round, like a ceiling fan. She swatted at them and they scattered, but then a moment later, they all returned, darting about in round formation. The insects wanted her. She stopped swatting at them, and when they perched on her nose and ears and neck, her toes curled. She searched herself for the place where the feeling of being wanted percolated. It was in different places each time. Sometimes it was a throbbing in the back of her ears. Sometimes it was a soft tickling on the soles of her feet.

  Ayosa broke off a stick. Waving it above her head, she walked through the fields of sunflowers and bristle grass, to the edge of the valley. A murram road marked the start of Mapeli Town. She stood there for a long while, watching as traders sold used brassieres and chewing clay and bucketfuls of little dried sardines. Omena! they called. Omena! Five shillings for one gorogoro!

  Her mama had forbidden her from ever crossing the murram road, from ever venturing into the town on her own. Her mama said that the townspeople were dirty. That their mouths were full of mud. That they were uncouth, the crassest type of people there ever had been. Who knows what they will do to a sweet girl like you, her mama always said.

  Ayosa looked about her, hoping to see the dirty people with the mouths that were full of mud. Across the street stood a decrepit shack. The sign above the door read Mutheu Must Go Café. The shack was a lonely, abandoned thing. Ayosa could tell by the way the tin eaves trembled pitifully in the breeze, and by the way the door hung on one rusted hinge, and by the way knotweed sprung through crevices in the flea-chewed walls, its white tassels draping over the windows, its hedgerow clamping over the entire shack. Ayosa stared at the shack for a long while, deliberating. She thought to herself that going there was not really disobeying her mama. She thought: a place that stood off on its own like that was not really part of anyone’s town. That shack was its own separate town. Her mama had not forbidden her from visiting other towns.

  So Ayosa started toward the shack. She forgot to look left and right first as her mama had taught her, and a bicycle almost ran her over. The bicyclist reached into his pocket, took out an egg, and hurled it at her. Yolk splattered all over her shoe.

  You have the face of a warthog! the bicyclist called, holding one middle finger up.

  Ayosa picked up a fistful of gravel and hurled it at the bicyclist. You have the face of an octopus, she called, holding two middle fingers up.

  The bicyclist disappeared down the road. Ayosa watched egg yolk seep into her canvas shoe. Her toes were slimy and warm. She wiggled them to unstick them. Then she walked to the shack and stood in the doorway.

  Above the window, a little brass bell hung by string from the rafter. Ayosa touched it, turning it over, examining the inscription on the tarnished lip. It read Mutheu’s Bell.

  A woman was stacking mugs on a tray at the counter.

  Who is Mutheu? Ayosa said.

  The woman looked up, wiping her brow with the back of her hand.

  My mama’s cow, she said, ripping open a paper bag and pouring sugar into a row of china bowls.

  What type of cow?

  A zebu cow, the woman said. Her face was the color of chickpeas that had been soaking overnight. Her wide-set eyes sloped downward. She had the type of beauty that spread itself patiently. One had to stare at her face intently in order to see the things sprouting in it—the dainty crow’s-feet trickling out like tributaries into her temples, and the smattering of dimples that crimpled h
er cheeks, and the way her chin folded when she smiled.

  Will you show me Mutheu the zebu cow? Ayosa said to her.

  No, my dear, the woman said.

  Because why?

  Because this morning that blasted cow was crossing the road to graze on the other side and a lorry ran it over. The lorry-man came here dragging the dead cow behind him. He said to me, Tell your mama I will buy her another cow. And me, I said to him, Silas Hosanna, if you dare buy my mama another cow, I will be the one dragging your carcass across the town.

  Did you not like Mutheu?

  Lord, no. I hated the cow.

  Because why did you hate it?

  Just see! the woman said. She lifted her blouse, showing Ayosa a midsection riddled with scars, each of which was shaped like a doorknob. All these are hoof marks from Mutheu. That cow liked to chase me across the town and kick me.

  Ayosa’s fingers ached with desire to touch the scars. She tucked her hands beneath her armpits to stop herself from reaching over. The woman walked round the counter and busied herself with things Ayosa could not see.

  Will you stand just nde’e over there all day?

  Ayosa shrugged. I should go, I suppose.

  Because why?

  Because I saw your café from across the street and your café is called Mutheu Must Go Café so I came over here to ask who Mutheu is and why she must go but I suppose I know now so maybe you don’t want me over here anymore.

  I don’t want you over here anymore? What type of mud is that you are starting to speak now? If I don’t want you I will say, Look, I don’t want you. But you haven’t heard me say that, have you?

  No.

  Well then, sit. I will get you some chai.

  Ayosa slid into a nearby chair.

  Madam, where are the people?

  What people?

  Ayosa nodded at the empty tables around her. The customers, she said. Don’t they come in here to drink your chai?

  The woman let out a dry laugh. My dear, you are the first person who has stepped inside this door in ten years. People in this town would never drink any chai that I made.

  Because why?

  Because they are afraid of me.

  Because why are they afraid of you?

  The woman dug a hand inside the pocket of her apron. She was silent for a long moment, her eyes on a cleft in the wood of the window ledge.

  Well, I killed ten men.

  Ayosa’s eyes widened. You strangled them?

  No.

  You struck them on the head with an axe?

  No.

  You pushed them down a flight of stairs?

  No, my dear.

  Did you drive a knife through their bellies?

  Jesus, child, how do you know so many ways to kill a man?

  The death news, Ayosa said.

  The woman gave her head a sorrowful shake. Well, this is what happened. You see, ten different times I tried to get married. But always something killed the man on the morning of our wedding. One swallowed his tongue, another one was struck by lightning. One got lockjaw from being pricked by a thorn, and another one swallowed a mothball. Like that, like that. Ten whole men, not even half ones! So now no one wants a thing to do with me. That’s why no one ever comes here to drink my chai.

  Then why do you keep the café open if no one will come?

  What else am I supposed to do now? I have a café. Shall I close it only because no one wants to drink my chai?

  I suppose not, Ayosa said. She looked toward the window. Why do you have that bell over there? she said, pointing.

  Oh, that? I hung it up this morning because I was so happy that the cow was dead. Every time the wind blows in and the bell tinkles, I cross myself and say, Wajamani-that-cow-is-dead.

  The woman brought a metal teapot to Ayosa’s table. How many sugars?

  Twenty-six, Ayosa said.

  Atse! Twenty-six whole sugars?

  People can’t have twenty-six sugars?

  Of course not! People can only have two sugars.

  So why did you ask me if you knew already?

  The woman clicked her tongue. Now, child, you better not be impertinent or I will name this café Ayosa Must Go. You hear?

  Sorry-sorry, Ayosa said, scrunching her forehead. She stared into the woman’s sun-scorched face. How did you know my name? I didn’t tell it to you.

  Everyone knows your name! Everyone knows you, and they know your mama. Knew your grandmama too, and her mama before her.

  Well, it’s not fair that you know me but me I don’t know you.

  Sindano, the woman said. That’s what my people call me.

  How many people do you have?

  Oh, just one. My mama.

  And she calls you Sindano, like a needle for sewing dresses?

  Yes, like a needle for sewing dresses. And called. The old toad croaked a month ago.

  Why did your mama give you a name like that one?

  Sindano lowered the kettle over another mug. Well, my mama named me after a song. The one about camels going through the eyes of needles.

  Sing for me I hear.

  Sindano placed the kettle down. She sang:

  Ngamia ni rahisi sana

  Kuingia tundu la sindano

  Kuliko mtu mwenye mali

  Kuingia mbinguni kwa Baba

  Ayosa sipped her chai. It was tepid and tasted faintly of ghee. She wondered if it had been brewed with milk from Mutheu the dead cow, wondered if maybe Sindano had stood over its carcass and twisted its limp udder until it was all wrung out.

  Sindano? Ayosa said.

  Yes, my name?

  Will you make me wash the dishes?

  Because why?

  Because I have no money. My mama told me that when you go to a restaurant and order things without any money to pay for them, then they will make you go to the kitchen and wash the dishes.

  Sindano shrugged. Drink all the chai you want, you hear? You will not wash any dishes here. I’m just glad someone wants to drink my chai.

  Ayosa pushed open the window. A gust of wind tore at the curtains and tablecloths. The brass bell tinkled. Sindano crossed herself and murmured, Wajamani-that-cow-is-dead. Then she looked at Ayosa and added, How is she, your mama?

  Ayosa shrugged. Fine, I imagine.

  Sindano knew not to probe. She got up and walked to the counter. She said, It’s four o’clock. Ms. Temperance is about to come on.

  Ms. Temperance was a caramel-tongued poet. Each day, after the noontime news, she read to the people a piece that she had composed. One time, she did not read to the people because she was ill, and the people stormed out of their houses and threw a Molotov cocktail into the radio station. The people could not go a day without her poetry.

  Ms. Temperance had a poem for Epitaph Day. She said:

  Do you remember those crisp mornings waiting for the world

  to end waiting for the second coming of cargo trains

  and tenacity and Auma of the thistles who cut her

  arm off to feed the greedy baby doll? Do you

  remember how blue tasted bent over the creek that swallowed

  Auma of the thistles who fed her toes to the

  starving porcelain child? And red when we lay our heads

  down as the day grew tart? The boy we drowned

  yesterday is waiting at the station with lilies in his

  arms, saying, What in the world took you so long?

  Sindano gave Ayosa a glazed doughnut and Ayosa finished the doughnut in two bites and her toes curled and her eyes welled and Sindano gave her another glazed doughnut and another glazed doughnut and another glazed doughnut and Sindano said, Jesus, child, when was the last time you ate anything?

  * * *

  When she staggered into the kitchen, Ayosa found a bunch of white daisies on the table. The flowers were wrapped in newspaper, their stems bound together with sisal string. Ayosa ran up the stairs and looked through an east-facing window. She saw the shiny-eyed, snot-faced girl, Temerity, just marching through the sugarcane field.

  Temerity lived at the edge of the property. Her grandmother, Jentrix, was the apothecary. Every few days, Jentrix sent Temerity over with some cooked food and a bunch of something—flowers, or carrots, or herbs. Sometimes Temerity brought Ayosa a glass marble too, or a bent hanger that she had found. Sometimes she brought Ayosa a crow’s beak, wrapped neatly in tissue paper. Sometimes she brought Ayosa a little rodent with its neck broken between the clasps of a mousetrap.