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An Ex-mas Feast

Now that my eldest sister, Maisha, was twelve, none of us knew how
to relate to her anymore. She had never forgiven our parents for
not being rich enough to send her to school. She had been behaving
like a cat that was going feral: she came home less and less
frequently, staying only to change her clothes and give me some
money to pass on to our parents. When home, she avoided them as
best she could, as if their presence reminded her of too many
things in our lives that needed money. Though she would snap at
Baba occasionally, she never said anything to Mama. Sometimes Mama
went out of her way to provoke her. "Malaya! Whore! You
don't even have breasts yet!" she'd say. Maisha would ignore
her.

Maisha shared her thoughts with Naema, our ten-year-old sister,
more than she did with the rest of us combined, mostly talking
about the dos and don'ts of a street girl. Maisha let Naema try on
her high heels, showed her how to doll up her face, how to use
toothpaste and a brush. She told her to run away from any man who
beat her, no matter how much money he offered her, and that she
would treat Naema like Mama if she grew up to have too many
children. She told Naema that it was better to starve to death than
go out with any man without a condom.

When she was at work, though, she ignored Naema, perhaps because
Naema reminded her of home or because she didn't want Naema to see
that her big sister wasn't as cool and chic as she made herself out
to be. She tolerated me more outside than inside. I could chat her
up on the pavement no matter what rags I was wearing. An
eight-year-old boy wouldn't get in the way when she was waiting for
a customer. We knew how to pretend we were strangers --- just a
street kid and a prostitute talking.

Yet our machokosh family was lucky. Unlike most, our
street family had stayed together --- at least until that Ex-mas
season.

The sun had gone down on Ex-mas eve ning. Bad weather had stormed
the seasons out of order, and Nairobi sat in a low flood, the light
December rain droning on our tarpaulin roof. I was sitting on the
floor of our shack, which stood on a cement slab at the end of an
alley, leaning against the back of an old brick shop. Occasional
winds swelled the brown polythene walls. The floor was nested with
cushions that I had scavenged from a dump on Biashara Street. At
night, we rolled up the edge of the tarpaulin to let in the glow of
the shop's security lights. A board, which served as our door, lay
by the shop wall.

A clap of thunder woke Mama. She got up sluggishly, pulling her
hands away from Maisha's trunk, which she had held on to while she
slept. It was navy blue, with brass linings and rollers, and it
took up a good part of our living space. Panicking, Mama groped her
way from wall to wall, frisking my two-year-old twin brother and
sister, Otieno and Atieno, and Baba; all three were sleeping,
tangled together like puppies. She was looking for Baby. Mama's
white T-shirt, which she had been given three months back, when she
delivered Baby, had a pair of milk stains on the front. Then she
must have remembered that he was with Maisha and Naema. She relaxed
and stretched in a yawn, hitting a rafter of cork. One of the
stones that weighted our roof fell down outside.

Now Mama put her hands under her shuka and retied the
strings of the money purse around her waist; sleep and alcohol had
swung it out of place. She dug through our family carton, scooping
out clothes, shoes, and my new school uniform, wrapped in useless
documents that Baba had picked from people's pockets. Mama dug on,
and the contents of the carton piled up on Baba and the twins. Then
she unearthed a tin of New Suntan shoe glue. The glue was our
Ex-mas gift from the children of a machokosh that lived
nearby.

Mama smiled at the glue and winked at me, pushing her tongue
through the holes left by her missing teeth. She snapped the tin's
top expertly, and the shack swelled with the smell of a shoemaker's
stall. I watched her decant the kabire into my plastic
"feeding bottle." It glowed warm and yellow in the dull light.
Though she still appeared drunk from last night's party, her hands
were so steady that her large tinsel Ex-mas bangles, a gift from a
church Ex-mas party, did not even sway. When she had poured enough,
she cut the flow of the glue by tilting the tin up. The last stream
of the gum entering the bottle weakened and braided itself before
tapering in midair like an icicle. She covered the plastic with her
palm, to retain the glue's power. Sniffing it would kill my hunger
in case Maisha did not return with an Ex-mas feast for us.

Mama turned to Baba, shoving his body with her foot. "Wake up, you
never work for days!" Baba turned and groaned. His feet were poking
outside the shack, under the waterproof wall. His toes had broken
free of his wet tennis shoes. Mama shoved him again, and he began
to wriggle his legs as if he were walking in his sleep.

Our dog growled outside. Mama snapped her fingers, and the dog came
in, her ripe pregnancy swaying like heavy wash in the wind. For a
month and a half, Mama, who was good at spotting dog pregnancies,
had baited her with tenderness and food until she became ours; Mama
hoped to sell the puppies to raise money for my textbooks. Now the
dog licked Atieno's face. Mama probed the dog's stomach with
crooked fingers, like a native midwife. "Oh, Simba, childbirth is
chasing you," she whispered into her ears. "Like school is chasing
my son." She pushed the dog outside. Simba lay down, covering
Baba's feet with her warmth. Occasionally, she barked to keep the
other dogs from tampering with our mobile kitchen, which was
leaning against the wall of the store.

"Jigana, did you do well last night with Baby?" Mama asked me
suddenly.

"I made a bit," I assured her, and passed her a handful of coins
and notes. She pushed the money under her shuka; the zip
of the purse released two crisp farts.

Though people were more generous to beggars at Ex-mas, our real
bait was Baby. We took turns pushing him in the faces of
passersby.

"Aii! Son, you never see Ex-mas like this year." Her
face widened in a grin. "We shall pay school fees next year. No
more randameandering around. No more chomaring
your brain with glue, boy. You going back to school! Did the rain
beat you and Baby?"

"Rain caught me here," I said.

"And Baby? Who is carrying him?"

"Naema," I said.

"And Maisha? Where is she to do her time with the child?"

"Mama, she is very angry."

"That gal is beat-beating my head. Three months now she is not
greeting me. What insects are eating her brain?" Sometimes Mama's
words came out like a yawn because the holes between her teeth were
wide. "Eh, now that she shakes-shakes her body to moneymen, she
thinks she has passed me? Tell me, why did she refuse to stay with
Baby?"

"She says it's child abuse."

"Child abuse? Is she now NGO worker? She likes being a prostitute
better than begging with Baby?"

"Me, I don't know. She just went with the ma-men tourists.
Today, real white people, musungu. With monkey."

Mama spat through the doorway. "Puu, those ones are
useless. I know them. They don't ever pay the Ex-mas rate --- and
then they even let their ma-monkey fuck her. Jigana, talk
with that gal. Or don't you want to complete school? She can't just
give you uniform only."

I nodded. I had already tried on the uniform eight times in two
days, anxious to resume school. The green-and-white-checked shirt
and olive-green shorts had become wrinkled. Now I reached into the
carton and stroked a piece of the uniform that stuck out of the
jumble.

"Why are you messing with this beautiful uniform?" Mama said.
"Patience, boy. School is just around the corner." She dug to the
bottom of the carton and buried the package. "Maisha likes your
face," she whispered. "Please, Jigana, tell her you need more ---
shoes, PTA fee, prep fee. We must to save all Ex-mas rate to
educate you, first son. Tell her she must stop buying those
fuunny fuunny designer clothes, those clothes smelling of
dead white people, and give us the money."

As she said this, she started to pound angrily on the trunk. The
trunk was a big obstruction. It was the only piece of furniture we
had with a solid and definite shape. Maisha had brought it home a
year ago and always ordered us to leave the shack before she would
open it. None of us knew what its secret contents were, except for
a lingering perfume. It held for us both suspense and consolation,
and these feelings grew each time Maisha came back with new things.
Sometimes, when Maisha did not come back for a long time, our
anxiety turned the trunk into an assurance of her return.

"Malaya! Prostitute! She doesn't come and I break the box
tonight," Mama hissed, spitting on the combination lock and shaking
the trunk until we could hear its contents knocking about. She
always took her anger out on the trunk in Maisha's absence. I
reached out to grab her hands.

"You pimp!" she growled. "You support the malaya."

"It's not her fault. It's musungu tourists."

"You better begin school before she runs away."

"I must to report you to her."

"I must to bury you and your motormouth in this box."

We struggled. Her long nails slashed my forehead, and blood
trickled down. But she was still shaking the trunk. Turning around,
I charged at her and bit her right thigh. I could not draw blood
because I had lost my front milk teeth. She let go and reeled into
the bodies of our sleeping family. Atieno let out one short, eerie
scream, as if in a nightmare, then went back to sleep. Baba groaned
and said he did not like his family members fighting during Ex-mas.
"You bite my wife because of that whore?" he groaned. "The cane
will discipline you in the morning. I must to personally ask your
headmaster to get a big cane for you."

A welt had fruited up on Mama's thigh. She rolled up her dress and
started massaging it, her lips moving in silent curses. Then, to
punish me, she took the kabire she had poured for me and
applied it to the swelling. She pushed the mouth of the bottle
against it, expecting the fumes to ease the hurt.

When Mama had finished nursing herself, she returned the bottle to
me. Since it was still potent kabire, I did not sniff it
straight but put my lips around the mouth of the bottle and smoked
slowly, as if it were an oversized joint of bhang, Indian hemp.
First it felt as if I had no saliva in my mouth, and then the fumes
began to numb my tongue. The heat climbed steadily into my throat,
tickling my nostrils like an aborted sneeze. I cooled off a bit and
blew away the vapor. Then I sucked at it again and swallowed. My
eyes watered, my head began to spin, and I dropped the
bottle.

When I looked up, Mama had poured some kabire for herself
and was sniffing it. She and Baba hardly ever took kabire.
"Kabire is for children only," Baba's late father used to
admonish them whenever he caught them eyeing our glue. This Ex-mas
we were not too desperate for food. In addition to the money that
begging with Baby had brought us, Baba had managed to steal some
wrapped gifts from a party given for machokosh families by
an NGO whose organizers were so stingy that they served fruit juice
like shots of hard liquor. He had dashed to another charity party
and traded in the useless gifts --- plastic cutlery, picture
frames, paperweights, insecticide --- for three cups of rice and
zebra intestines, which a tourist hotel had donated. We'd had these
for dinner on Ex-mas Eve.

"Happee, happee Ex-mas, tarling!" Mama toasted me after a
while, rubbing my head.

"You too, Mama."

"Now, where are these daughters? Don't they want to do Exmas
prayer?" She sniffed the bottle until her eyes receded, her face
pinched like the face of a mad cow. "And the govament banned this
sweet thing. Say thanks to the neighbors, boy. Where did they find
this hunger killer?" Sometimes she released her lips from the
bottle with a smacking sound. As the night thickened, her face
began to swell, and she kept pouting and biting her lips to check
the numbness. They turned red --- they looked like Maisha's when
she had on lipstick --- and puffed up.

"Mama? So, what can we give the neighbors for Ex-mas?" I asked,
remembering that we had not bought anything for our friends.

My question jerked her back. "Petrol… we will buy them a half
liter of petrol," she said, and belched. Her breath smelled of
carbide, then of sour wine. When she looked up again, our eyes met,
and I lowered mine in embarrassment. In our machokosh
culture, petrol was not as valuable as glue. Any self-respecting
street kid should always have his own stock of kabire.
"OK, son, next year… we get better things. I don't want
police business this year --- so don't start having ideas."

We heard two drunks stumbling toward our home. Mama hid the bottle.
They stood outside announcing that they had come to wish us a merry
Ex-mas. "My husband is not here!" Mama lied. I recognized the
voices. It was Bwana Marcos Wako and his wife, Cecilia. Baba had
owed them money for four years. They came whenever they smelled
money, then Baba had to take off for a few days. When Baby was
born, we pawned three-quarters of his clothing to defray the debts.
A week before Ex-mas, the couple had raided us, confiscating Baba's
work clothes in the name of debt servicing.

I quickly covered the trunk with rags and reached into my pocket,
tightening my grip around the rusty penknife I carried about.

Mama and I stood by the door. Bwana Wako wore his trousers belted
across his forehead; the legs, flailing behind him, were tied in
knots and stuffed with ugali flour, which he must have
gotten from a street party. Cecilia wore only her jacket and her
rain boots.

"Ah, Mama Jigana-ni Ex-mas!" the husband said. "Forget the
money. Happee Ex- mas!"

"We hear Jigana is going to school," the wife said.

"Who told you?" Mama said warily. "Me, I don't like rumors."

They turned to me. "Happee to resume school, boy?"

"Me am not going to school," I lied, to spare my tuition
money.

"Kai, like mama like son!" the wife said. "You must to
know you are the hope of your family."

"Mama Jigana, listen," the man said. "Maisha came to us last week.
Good, responsible gal. She begged us to let bygone be bygone so
Jigana can go to school. We say forget the money --- our Ex-mas
gift to your family."

"You must to go far with education, Jigana," the wife said, handing
me a new pen and pencil. "Mpaka university!"

Mama laughed, jumping into the flooded alley. She hugged them and
allowed them to come closer to our shack. They staggered to our
door, swaying like masqueraders on stilts.

"Asante sana!" I thanked them. I uncorked the pen and
wrote all over my palms and smelled the tart scent of the Hero HB
pencil. Mama wedged herself between them and the shack to ensure
that they did not pull it down. Baba whispered to us from inside,
ready to slip away, "Ha, they told me the same thing last year. You
watch and see, tomorrow they come looking for me. Make them sign
paper this time." Mama quickly got them some paper and they signed,
using my back as a table. Then they staggered away, the stuffed
trousers bouncing along behind them.

Mama began to sing Maisha's praises and promised never to pound on
her trunk again. Recently, Maisha had taken the twins to the
barber, and Baby to Kenyatta National Hospital for a checkup. Now
she had gotten our debt canceled. I felt like running out to search
for her in the streets. I wanted to hug her and laugh until the
moon dissolved. I wanted to buy her Coke and chapati, for sometimes
she forgot to eat. But when Mama saw me combing my hair, she said
nobody was allowed to leave until we had finished saying the Ex-mas
prayer.

I hung out with Maisha some nights on the street, and we talked
about fine cars and lovely Nairobi suburbs. We'd imagine what it
would be like to visit the Masai Mara Game Reserve or to eat
roasted ostrich or crocodile at the Carnivore, like tourists.

"You beautiful!" I had told Maisha one night on Koinange Street,
months before that fateful Ex-mas.

"Ah, no, me am not." She laughed, straightening her jean miniskirt.
"Stop lying."

"See your face?"

"Kai, who sent you?"

"And you bounce like models."

"Yah, yah, yah. Not tall. Nose? Too short and big. No lean face or
full lips. No firsthand designer clothes. Not daring or beautiful
like Naema. Perfume and mascara are not everything."

"Haki, you? Beautiful woman," I said, snapping my fingers.
"You will be tall tomorrow."

"You are asking me out?" she said in jest, and struck a pose. She
made faces as if she were playing with the twins and said, "Be a
man, do it the right way."

I shrugged and laughed.

"Me, I have no shilling, big gal."

"I will discount you, guy."

"Stop it."

"Oh, come on," she said, and pulled me into a hug.

Giggling, we began walking, our strides softened by laughter.
Everything became funny. We couldn't stop laughing at ourselves, at
the people around us. When my sides began to ache and I stopped,
she tickled my ribs.

We laughed at the gangs of street kids massed together in sound
sleep. Some gangs slept in graded symmetry. Others slept freestyle.
Some had a huge tarp above their piles to protect them from the
elements. Others had nothing. We laughed at a group of city taxi
drivers huddled together, warming themselves with cups of
chai and fiery political banter while waiting for the
Akamba buses to arrive with passengers from Tanzania and Uganda.
Occasionally we'd see the anxious faces of these visitors in the
old taxis, bracing for what would be the most dangerous twenty
minutes of their twelve-hour journeys, fearful of being robbed
whenever the taxis slowed down.

We were not afraid of the city at night. It was our playground. At
times like this, it was as if Maisha had forgotten her job, and all
she wanted to do was laugh and playact.

"You? Nice guy," Maisha said.

"Lie."

I pulled at her handbag.

"You will be a big man tomorrow…"

She dashed past me suddenly to wave down a chauffeured Volvo. It
stopped right in front of her, the window rolling down. A man in
the backseat inspected her and shook his bald head. He beckoned a
taller girl from the cluster jostling behind her, trying to fit
their faces in the window. Maisha ran to a silver Mercedes-Benz
wagon, but the own er picked a shorter girl.

"Someday, I must to find a real job," Maisha said, sighing, when
she came back.

"What job, gal?"

"I want to try full-time."

"Wapi?"

She shrugged. "Mombasa? Dar?"

I shook my head. "Bad news, big gal. How long?"

"I don't know. Ni maisha yangu, guy, it's my life. I'm
thinking, full time will allow me to pay your fees and also save
for myself. I will send money through the church for you. I'll quit
the brothel when I save a bit. I don't want to stand on the road
forever. Me myself must to go to school one day…"

The words died in her throat. She pursed her lips, folded her hands
across her chest, and rocked from side to side. She did not rush to
any more cars.

"We won't see you again?" I said. "No, thanks. If you enter
brothel, me I won't go to school."

"Then I get to keep my money, ha-ha. Without you, they won't see my
shilling in that house. Never." She saw my face, stopped suddenly,
then burst into giggles. "I was kidding you, guy, about the
brothel. Just kidding, OK?"

She tickled me, pulling me toward Moi Avenue. I held her hand
tightly. Prostitutes fluttered about under streetlights, dressed
like winged termites.

"Maisha, our parents --- "

She turned sharply, her fists balled.

"Shut up! You shame me, you rat. Leave me alone. Me am not your
mate. You can't afford me!"

Other girls turned and stared at us, giggling. Maisha strode away.
It had been a mistake to mention our parents in front of the other
girls, to let them know that we were related. And I shouldn't have
called her by her real name. I cried all the way home because I had
hurt her. She ignored me for weeks.

After Mama stopped celebrating the end of our debt, she fished out
two little waterproof Uchumi Supermarket bags from the carton and
smoothed them out as if they were rumpled socks. She put them over
her canvas shoes, tying the handles around her ankles in little
bows. Then she walked out into the flood, her winged galoshes
scooping the water like a duck's feet. She started to untie our bag
of utensils and food, which was leaning against the shop, her eyes
searching for a dry spot to set up the stove, to warm some food for
the twins. But the rain was coming down too heavily now, and after
a while she gave up.

"Jigana, so did you see those Maisha's ma-men?" she
asked.

"There were three white men, plus driver. Tall, old men in knickers
and tennis shoes. I shook hands with them. Beautifulbeautiful
motorcar. . . . I even pinched that monkey."

"Motorcar? They had a motorcar? Imachine a motorcar to
pick up my daughter." She stretched forward and held my arms,
smiling. "You mean my daughter is big like that?"

Otieno woke up with a start. He stood groggily on the cushions,
then he climbed over Mama's legs, levered himself over me with his
hand on my head, and landed in the flood outside the shack in a
crouch. He began to lower thin spools of shit into the water,
whiffs of heat unwrapping into the night, the cheeks of his
buttocks rouged by the cold.

When Otieno returned to the shack, he sat on Mama's legs and
brought out her breast and sucked noisily. With one hand, he
grabbed a toy Maisha had bought for him, rattling its maracas on
Mama's bony face. She was still looking ragged and underweight,
even though she'd stayed in the hospital to have her diet monitored
after Baby graduated from the incubator.

Mama took out our family Bible, which we had inherited from Baba's
father, to begin our Ex-mas worship. The front cover had peeled
off, leaving a dirty page full of our relatives' names, dead and
living. She read them out. Baba's late father had insisted that all
the names of our family be included, in recognition of the
instability of street life. She began with her father, who had been
killed by cattle rustlers, before she ran away to Nairobi and
started living with Baba. She called out Baba's mother, who came to
Nairobi when her village was razed because some politicians wanted
to redraw tribal boundaries. One day she disappeared forever into
the city with her walking stick. Mama invoked the names of our
cousins Jackie and Solo, who settled in another village and wrote
to us through our church, asking our parents to send them school
fees. I looked forward to telling them about the lit parks and the
beautiful cars of Nairobi as soon as my teachers taught me how to
write letters. She called out her brother, Uncle Peter, who had
shown me how to shower in the city fountains without being whipped
by the officials. He was shot by the police in a case of mistaken
identity; the mortuary gave his corpse to a medical school because
we could not pay the bill. She called Baba's second cousin Mercy,
the only secondary school graduate among our folks. She had not
written to us since she fell in love with a Honolulu tourist and
eloped with him. Mama called Baba's sister, Auntie Mama, who, until
she died two years ago of a heart attack, had told us stories and
taught us songs about our ancestral lands every eve ning, in a
sweet, nostalgic voice.

The sky rumbled.

"Bwana, I hope Naema put clothes on Baby before she left,"
Mama said to me, the middle of her sentence wobbling because Otieno
had bitten her.

"She put Baby in waterproof paper bags. Then sweater."

Otieno, having satisfied himself, woke up Atieno, who took over the
other breast, for they had divided things up evenly between them.
Atieno sucked until she slept again, and Mama placed her gently
near Otieno and began to shake Baba until he opened one eye. His
weak voice vibrated because his face was jammed into the wall:
"Food."

"No food, tarling," Mama told him. "We must to finish to call the
names of our people."

"You'll be calling my name if I don't eat."

"Here is food --- New Suntan shoe kabire." She reached out
and collected the plastic bottle from me. "It can kill your stomach
till next week."

"All the children are here?"

"Baby and Naema still out. Last shift… and Maisha."

"Ah, there is hope. Maisha will bring Ex-mas feast for us."

"Ex-mas is school fees, remember?"

Mama groped inside the carton again. She unearthed a dirty candle,
pocked by grains of sand. She lit the candle and cemented it to the
trunk with its wax. Taking the Bible, she began to read a psalm in
Kiswahili, thanking God for the gift of Baby and the twins after
two miscarriages. She praised God for blessing Maisha with white
clients at Ex-mas. Then she prayed for Fuunny Eyes, the name we had
given to the young Japanese volunteer who unfailingly dropped
shillings in our begging plate. She wore Masai tire sandals and
ekarawa necklaces that held her neck like a noose, and
never replied to our greetings or let her eyes meet ours. Mama
prayed for our former landlord in the Kibera slums, who evicted us
but hadn't seized anything when we could not pay the rent. Now she
asked God to bless Simba with many puppies. "Christ, you Ex-mas
son, give Jigana a big, intelligent head in school!" she
concluded.

"Have mercy on us," I said.

"Holy Mary, Mama Ex-mas…"

"Pray for us."

It was drizzling again when Naema returned with Baby. He was
asleep. Naema's jeans, mutumba loafers, and braided hair
dribbled water, her big eyes red from crying. Usually she sauntered
in singing a Brenda Fassie song, but to night she plodded in
deflated.

She handed the money over to Mama, who quickly banked it in her
purse. She also gave Mama a packet of pasteurized milk. It was half
full, and Naema explained that she'd had to buy it to keep Baby
from crying. Mama nodded. The milk pack was soggy and looked as if
it would disintegrate. Mama took it carefully in her hands, like
one receiving a diploma. When Naema brought out a half-eaten turkey
drumstick, Mama grabbed her ears, thinking that she had bought it
with the money she'd earned begging. Naema quickly explained that
her new boyfriend had given it to her. This boy was a big shot in
the street gang that controlled our area, a dreaded figure. Maisha
and I detested him, but he loved Naema like his own tongue.

Now Naema wriggled and fitted her lithe frame into the tangle on
the floor and began to weep silently. Mama pulled the blanket from
the others and covered the girl's feet, which had become wrinkled
in the rain.

"Maisha is moving out tomorrow," Naema said. "Full time."

Mama's face froze. No matter how rootless and cheap street life
might be, you could still be broken by departures. I went outside
and lay on the row of empty paint containers we had lined up along
the shop's wall, hiding my face in the crook of my arm.

Guilt began to build in my gut. Maybe if I had joined a street
gang, Maisha would not have wanted to leave. I wouldn't have needed
money for school fees, and perhaps there would have been peace
between Maisha and my parents. But my anger was directed at the
musungu men, for they were the visible faces of my
sister's temptation. I wished I were as powerful as Naema's
boyfriend or that I could recruit him. We could burn their Jaguar.
We could tie them up and give them the beating of their lives and
take away all their papers. We could strip those musungu
naked, as I had seen Naema's friend do to someone who had hurt a
member of his gang. Or we could at least kill and eat that monkey
or just cut off his mboro so he could never fuck anybody's
sister again. I removed my knife from my pocket and examined the
blade carefully. The fact that it was very blunt and had dents did
not worry me. I knew that if I stabbed with all my energy, I would
draw blood.

After a while, my plans began to unravel. I realized that I would
never be able to enlist Naema's boyfriend. Naema herself would
block the plan. In fact, until that night she had been taunting
Maisha to move out, saying that if she were as old as Maisha she
would have left home long ago. Besides, even if I fled to the
Kibera slums, as soon as we touched the tourists, the police would
come and arrest my parents and dismantle our shack. They would take
away Maisha's trunk and steal her treasures.

Baba started awake, as if a loud noise had hit him.

"Is that Maisha?" he asked, closing his eyes again.

"No, Maisha is working," Mama said. "My Maisha commands
musungu and motorcars!" she said, her good mood
returning.

"What? What musungu, tarling?" Baba asked, sitting up
immediately, rubbing sleep and hunger from his eyes with the base
of his palms.

"White tourists," Mama said.

"Uh? They must to pay ma-dollar or euros. Me am family
head. You hear me, woman?"

"Yes."

"And no Honolulu business. What kind of motorcar were they
driving?"

"Jaguar," I answered. "With driver. Baba, we should not allow
Maisha to leave --- "

"Nobody is leaving, nobody. And shut up your animal mouth! You have
wounded my wife! Until I break your teeth tomorrow, no opinion from
you. No nothing. Did you thank the ma-men for me?"

"No," I said.

"Aiiee! Jigana, where are your manners? Did you ask where
they were going? Motorcar number?"

"No, Baba."

"So if they take her to Honolulu, what do I do? Maybe we should
send you to a street gang. Boy, have you not learned to grab
opportunities? Is this how you will waste school fees in January?
Poor Maisha."

He squinted incredulously, and lines of doubt kinked up his massive
forehead. He pursed his lips, and anger quickened his breath. But
that night I stood my ground.

"I don't want school anymore, Baba," I said.

"Coward, shut up. That one is a finished matter."

"No."

"What do you mean by no? You want to be a pocket thief like
me,… my son? My first son? You can't be useless as the gals.
Wallai!"

"Me, I don't want school."

"Your mind is too young to think. As we say, ‘The teeth that
come first are not used in chewing.' As long as you live here, your
Baba says school."

"La hasha."

"You telling me never? Jigana!" He looked at Mama. "He
doesn't want school? Saint Jude Thaddaeus!"

"Bwana, this boy has grown strong-head," Mama said. "See
how he is looking at our eyes. Insult!"

Baba stood up suddenly, his hands shaking. I didn't cover my cheeks
with my hands to protect myself from his slap or spittle, as I
usually did when he was angry. I was ready for him to kill me. My
family was breaking up because of me. He stood there, trembling
with anger, confused.

Mama patted his shoulders to calm him down. He brushed her aside
and went out to cool off. I monitored him through a hole in the
wall. Soon he was cursing himself aloud for drinking too much and
sleeping through Ex-mas Day and missing the chance to meet the
tourists. As his mind turned to Maisha's good fortune, he began to
sing "A Jaguar is a Jaguar is a Jaguar" to the night, leaping from
stone to stone, tracing the loose cobbles that studded the
floodwater like the heads of stalking crocodiles in a river. In the
sky, some of the tall city buildings were branded by lights left on
by forgetful employees, and a few shopping centers wore the glitter
of Ex-mas; flashing lights ascended and descended like angels on
Jacob's dream ladder. The long city buses, Baba's hunting grounds,
had stopped for the night. As the streets became emptier, cars
drove faster through the floods, kicking up walls of water, which
collapsed on our shack.

Back inside, Baba plucked his half-used miraa stick from
the rafter and started chewing. He fixed his eyes on the trunk. A
mysterious smile dribbled out of the corners of his mouth.
Eventually, the long stick of miraa subsided into a
formless sponge. His spitting was sharp and arced across the room
and out the door. Suddenly, his face brightened. "Hakuna
matata!" he said. Then he dipped into the carton and came up
with a roll of wire and started lashing the wheels of the trunk to
the props of our shack. For a moment, it seemed he might be able to
stop Maisha from going away.

Mama tried to discourage him from tying down the trunk.
"Bwanaaa… stop it! She will leave if she finds you
mangamangaring with her things."

"Woman, leave this business to me," he said, rebuking her. "I'm not
going to sit here and let any Honolulus run away with our daughter.
They must marry her properly."

"You should talk," Mama said. "Did you come to my father's house
for my hand?"

"Nobody pays for trouble," Baba said. "You're trouble. If I just
touch you, you get pregnant. If I even look at you --- twins, just
like that. Too, too ripe."

"Me am always the problem," Mama said, her voice rising.

"All me am saying is we must to treat the tourist well."

Atieno was shivering; her hand was poking out of the shack. Baba
yanked it back in and stuck her head through the biggest hole in
the middle of our blanket. That was our way of ensuring that the
family member who most needed warmth maintained his place in the
center of the blanket. Baba grabbed Otieno's legs and pushed them
through two holes on the fringe. "Children of Jaguar," he whispered
into their ears. "Ex-mas ya Jag-uar." He tried to tuck
Atieno and Otieno properly into the blanket, turning them this way
and that, without success. Then he became impatient and rolled them
toward each other like a badly wrapped meat roll, their feet in
each other's face, their knees folded and tucked into each other's
body --- a blanket womb.

Mama reminded him to wedge the door, but he refused. He wanted us
to wait for Maisha. He winked at me as if I were the cosentry of
our fortune. Mama handed Baby to me and lay down. I sat there
sniffing kabire until I became drunk. My head swelled, and
the roof relaxed and shook, then melted into the sky.

I was floating. My bones were inflammable. My thoughts went out
like electric currents into the night, their countercurrents
running into each other, and, in a flash of sparks, I was hanging
on the door of the city bus, going to school. I hid my uniform in
my bag so that I could ride free, like other street children.
Numbers and letters of the alphabet jumped at me, scurrying across
the page as if they had something to say. The flares came faster
and faster, blackboards burned brighter and brighter. In the beams
of sunlight leaking through the holes in the school roof, I saw the
teacher writing around the cracks and patches on the blackboard
like a skillful matatu driver threading his way through
our pothole-ridden roads. Then I raced down our bald, lopsided
field with an orange for a rugby ball, jumping the gullies and
breaking tackles. I was already the oldest kid in my class.

Mama touched my shoulders and relieved me of the infant. She
stripped Baby of the plastic rompers, cleaned him up, and put him
in a nappy for the night. With a cushion wrested from Naema, who
was sleeping, Mama padded the top of the carton into a cot. After
placing Baby in it, she straightened the four corners of the carton
and then folded up our mosquito net and hung it over them. It had
been donated by an NGO, and Baba had not had a chance to pawn it
yet. Then Mama wrapped her frame around the carton and slept.

I woke up Baba when Maisha returned, before dawn. He had been
stroking his rosary beads, dozing and tilting until his head upset
the mosquito netting. Mama had to continually elbow or kick him
off. And each time, he opened his eyes with a practiced smile,
thinking the Jaguar hour had arrived. The rain had stopped, but
clouds kept the night dark. The city had gorged itself on the
floods, and its skin had swelled and burst in places. The makeshift
tables and stalls of street markets littered the landscape, torn
and broken, as if there had been a bar fight. Garbage had spread
all over the road: dried fish, stationery, trinkets, wilted green
vegetables, plastic plates, wood carvings, underwear. Without the
usual press of people, the ill-lit streets sounded hollow,
amplifying the smallest of sounds. Long after a police car had
passed, it could be heard negotiating potholes, the officers
extorting their bribes --- their Ex-mas kitu kidogo ---
from the people who could not afford to go to their up-country
villages for the holidays.

Maisha returned in an old Renault 16 taxi. She slouched in the back
while the driver got out. Kneeling and applying pliers to open the
back door, the driver let her out of the car. Baba's sighs of
disappointment were as loud as the muezzin who had begun to call
Nairobi to prayer. My sister stepped out, then leaned on the car,
exhausted. There were bags of food on the seat.

She gestured at Baba to go away. He ignored her.

"So where is our Jaguar and musungu?" Baba asked
the taxi driver, peering into the shabby car as if it might be
transformed at any moment.

"What Jaguar? What musungu?" the driver asked, monitoring
Maisha's movements.

"The nini Jaguar. . . . Where is my daughter coming from?"
Baba asked him.

"Me, I can't answer you that question," he told Baba, and pointed
to his passenger.

She bent in front of the only functioning headlamp to count out the
fare. Her trousers were so tight that they had crinkled on her
thighs and pockets; she struggled to get to the notes without
breaking her artificial nails, which curved inward like talons.
Yesterday, her hair had been low cut, gold, wavy, and crisp from a
fresh perm. Now it stood up in places and lay flat in others,
revealing patches of her scalp, which was bruised from the
chemicals. It was hard to distinguish peeling face powder from
damaged skin. To rid herself of an early outbreak of adolescent
pimples, she had bleached her face into an uneven lightness. Her
eyelids and the skin under her eyes had reacted the worst to the
assorted creams she was applying, and to night her fatigue seemed
to have seeped under the burns, swelling her eyes.

The driver could not easily roll up the window. He extended his arm
to guard the food bags, his collateral. Baba brought out a six-inch
nail and went for the worn tires. "What dawa have you
given my daughter? She always comes home strong."

The driver crumpled immediately, his pleas laden with fright.
"Mzee, my name is Karume. Paul Kinyanjui wa Karume.... Me,
I be an upright Kenyan. I fear God."

"And you want to steal my daughter's bags?"

"No. Please, take the bags. Please," the man begged, trying to
restrain Baba from bursting his tires.

"Aiie, Baba. You shame me. Shut up," Maisha said weakly,
pushing the money toward the driver.

Baba collected the bags and strolled from the road, his nose full
of good smells, until he suddenly broke into a run, to untie the
trunk before Maisha reached the shack.

The driver got into his car and was about to put the money into his
breast pocket when he started frisking himself. Baba stood watching
from the door of the shack. Soon it was as if the driver had
soldier ants in his clothes. He unzipped his pockets, then zipped
them again quickly, as if the thief were still lurking. He removed
his coat, then his shirt, and searched them. He recounted his
itinerary to the skies with eyes closed, his index finger wagging
at invisible stars. He searched his socks, then he got down on all
fours, scouring the wet ground. He dabbed at the sweat, or tears,
running down his face. "Where is my money?" he said to Maisha,
finally finding his voice. "Haki, it was in my pocket now,
now."

Maisha charged forward and screeched at Baba until his stern face
crumbled into a sheepish grin. He returned the fat wad of notes,
giggling like the twins. The driver thanked her curtly, brushing
his clothes with trembling hands. As soon as he'd reconnected the
ignition wires to start the car, he creaked off, his horn blaring,
his headlamp pointing up and to the left like an unblinking
eye.

Maisha staggered into the shack, holding her perilously high heels
over her shoulders. Mama had made room for her and the bags and had
sprayed our home with insecticide to discourage mosquitoes. My
siblings inside started to cough. As Maisha came in, Mama stood
aside like a maid, wringing her hands. I could not look Maisha in
the eye and did not know what to say.

"Good night, Maisha," I blurted out.

She stopped, her tired body seized by shock. She searched my
parents' faces before tracing the voice to me.

"Who told you to talk?" she said.

"You leave full time, I run away. No school."

"You are going to school," Maisha said. "Tuition is ready."

"Run away? Jigana, shut up," Baba said. "You think you are family
head now? ‘All are leaders' causes riots. Stupid, mtu
dufu! Nobody is leaving."

Maisha glared at us, and we all turned our backs to her as she
opened the trunk to take out a blanket. The sweet smell of her
Jaguar adventures filled the shack, overpowering the heavy scent of
insecticide. Though her arrivals always reminded us that life could
be better, to night I hated the perfume.

"Me and your mama don't want full time, Maisha," Baba said, picking
his nails. "We refuse."

"Our daughter, things will get better," Mama said. "Thanks for
canceling our debt!"

"You are welcome, Mama," Maisha said.

Mama's face lit up with surprise; she was so used to being ignored.
She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
Finally, she sobbed the words "Asante, Maisha, asante for
everything!" and bowed repeatedly, her hands held before her, as if
in prayer. The women looked into each other's eyes in a way I had
never seen before. They hugged and held on as if their hands were
ropes that tied their two bodies together. In spite of the cold,
beads of sweat broke out on Mama's forehead, and her fingers
trembled as she helped Maisha undo her earrings and necklace. Mama
gently laid her down.

I believed that Mama might have been able to persuade her to stay,
but then Baba signaled to Mama to keep quiet so that he could be
the negotiator.

"Our daughter," Baba said, "you need to rest and think carefully.
As our people say, north ama south, east ama
west, home the best . . ."

"Maisha, no school for me!" I said. "I told Mama and Baba. They
will return fee to you."

"Jigana, please, please, don't argue," Maisha said. "Even you. You
cannot even pity me this night? Just for a few hours?"

My parents sat outside, on the paint containers. I stood by the
wall, away from them. I wanted to see Maisha one more time before
she disappeared.

Fog brought the dew down, thickening the darkness and turning the
security lights into distant halos. We could hear Maisha twist and
turn on the floor, cursing the limbs of her siblings and swatting
at the mosquitoes. It was as if we were keeping a vigil of her last
night with us. We were restless, the silence too heavy for us. Baba
mumbled, blaming himself for not going more often to sweep the
church premises. He agreed with Mama that if he had swept daily,
instead of every other day, Saint Joseph the Worker would have
bettered our lot. Mama snapped at him, because Baba had always told
her that he was not interested in Saint Joseph's favor but in a
clean place for people to worship. Then Baba blamed her for no
longer attending the KANU slum rallies to earn a few
shillings.

The night degenerated into growls and hisses. I preferred the
distraction of the quarrel to the sound of Maisha's uneasy
breathing. When Maisha clapped one more time and turned over, Mama
couldn't stand it anymore. She rushed inside, took the mosquito net
off the carton, and tied it to the raf ters so that my sister was
inside it. She sprayed the place again and brought Baby out to
breast-feed. The coughing got worse. Baba tore down some of the
walls to let in air, but, since the wind had subsided, it was of no
use. He picked up the door and used it as a big fan to whip air
into the shack.

In the morning, Atieno and Otieno came out first. They looked tired
and were sniffling from the insecticide. They stood before us,
spraying the morning with yellow urine, sneezing and
whimpering.

The streets began to fill. The street kids were up and had
scattered into the day, like chickens feeding. Some moved about
groggily, already drunk on kabire. One recounted his
dreams to others at the top of his voice, gesticulating maniacally.
Another was kneeling and trembling with prayer, his eyes shut as if
he would never open them again. One man screamed and pointed at two
kids, who were holding his wallet. No one was interested. His
pocket was ripped to the zipper, leaving a square hole in the front
of his trousers. He pulled out his shirt to hide his nakedness,
then hurried away, an awkward smile straining his face. There was
no sun, only a slow ripening of the sky.

The twins started to wail and to attack Mama's breasts. Baba
spanked them hard. They sat on the ground with pent-up tears they
were afraid to shed. Naema broke the spell. She came out and sat
with me on the containers, grabbed my hands, and tried to cheer me
up. "You are too sad, Jigana," she said. "You want to marry the
gal? Remember, it's your turn to take Baby out."

"Leave me alone."

"Marry me, then --- me am still here." She stuck out her tongue at
me. "I'm your sister too --- more beautiful. Guy, do me photo trick
. . . smile." She was well rested and had slept off her initial
shock at Maisha's departure. Now she was herself again, taunting
and talkative, her dimples deep and perfect. "You all must to let
Maisha go."

"And you?" I said. "You only listen to Maisha."

"I'm big gal now, guy. Breadwinner. If you want school, I pay for
you!"

She blew me a kiss in the wind. Maisha's creams were already
lightening her ebony face.

Before I could say anything, Naema erupted with mad laughter and
ran into the shack. She almost knocked Baba down as she burst out
with the bags of food we had forgotten. She placed them on the
ground and tore into them, filling the morning with hope, beckoning
all of us on. Baba bit into a chicken wing. Mama took a leg. The
rest of us dug into the sour rice, mashed potatoes, salad,
hamburgers, pizza, spaghetti, and sausages. We drank dead Coke and
melted ice cream all mixed up. With her teeth, Naema opened bottles
of Tusker and Castle beer. At first, we feasted in silence, on our
knees, looking up frequently, like squirrels, to monitor one
another's intake. None of us thought to inflate the balloons or
open the cards that Maisha had brought.

Then the twins fell over on their backs, laughing and vomiting. As
soon as they were done, they went straight back to eating, their
mouths pink and white and green from ice cream and beer. We could
not get them to keep quiet. A taxi pulled up and Maisha came out of
the shack, dragging her trunk behind her. Our parents paused as the
driver helped her put it into the car. My mother began to cry. Baba
shouted at the streets.

I sneaked inside and poured myself some fresh kabire and
sniffed. I got my exercise book from the carton and ripped it into
shreds. I brought my pen and pencil together and snapped them, the
ink spurting into my palms like blue blood. I got out my only pair
of trousers and two shirts and put them on, over my clothes.

I avoided the uniform package. Sitting where the trunk had been, I
wept. It was like a newly dug grave. I sniffed hastily, tilting the
bottle up and down until the kabire came close to my
nostrils.

As the car pulled away with Maisha, our mourning attracted kids
from the gangs. They circled the food, and I threw away the bottle
and joined my family again. We struggled to stuff the food into our
mouths, to stuff the bags back inside the shack, but the kids made
off with the balloons and the cards.

I hid among a group of retreating kids and slipped away. I ran
through traffic, scaled the road divider, and disappeared into
Nairobi. My last memory of my family was of the twins burping and
giggling.

Excerpted from SAY YOU'RE ONE OF THEM © Copyright 2011 by
Uwem Akpan. Reprinted with permission by Back Bay Books. All rights
reserved.

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