A cup of skittles

You know those cars that have a really strange color? It could be dirty mustard or puke green or something out of our wildest nightmares. The ones you see speeding through the super highway or cruising on Kimathi street and you want to ask the driver what the car did to deserve it. Sometimes it's not even a bad colour, it's just bad for  the car. Like bubble gum pink on a muscle car.

Well, I finally got to ask one of the culprit drivers, while I was seated in a small kitchen stool. I got to the apartment complex and was ready to climb the stairs to 3rd floor when I was told the stairs weren't working.

"Huh? The stairs aren't working? What does that even mean?" I asked the guard, who was watching me with curiosity. I bet he was wondering why I had green hair.
Which is fine, I get that a bunch of times.

"We cannot disclose that information to people who aren't residents in the building."

So I used the elevator wondering what would make a flight of stairs to 'stop working'. Maybe someone levelled the staircase to a ramp. Or maybe there's an inch of jello spilled on each stair, so the guy is just worried you'd slip and fall.

At the door, a pair of glasses meet me and I wave uncertainly. Maybe I got the wrong house. Because in my mind people called Sebastian don't wear glasses. Neither are they pretty with long flowing hair, or generally feminine. She says hi and welcomes me in, and I notice the deep raspy voice I thought was male. So in my off guard state, I say the first thing that comes to my brain.

"I didn't know Sebastian is a unisex name" (thanks brain.)

She laughs and walks in after me. Her laugh sounds sweet, like a double thick milkshake. Which is a contrast from her voice which sounds like dark chocolate, coffee and cigarettes are having a party. She leads me to her kitchen telling me why she's called Sebastian.

" You probably know by my accent that I'm not Kenyan, I'm from Jamaica. When I moved here, my friend's kid told me I looked like princess Ariel, but I sounded like Sebastian, so my name stuck. It also didn't help that my name starts with an S too."

At the kitchen, I'm handed a knife and told to peel potatoes for my lunch. We were eating fries and a salad, according to her, the unhealthy would be cancelled out by the healthy.

She tells me how she came here for holiday and loved Kenya so much she only went back to Jamaica to get her stuff.

"It also didn't hurt that I fell in love here. So I had two reasons to come back."

She worked for a while as a saxophonist in a band. Then she began to do hair. Then she moved on to wedding decor. Then she moved on to sales and marketing, then to just marketing through advertising.

Clearly, she's a polymath. I wonder why she was so ready to move here though, so I ask. She was in a part of her life that craved a change. She had just been through a long drawn out divorce from a guy who beat her every other night. Years of concealing scars made her worn out and weary. As she tells me this, she scratches the area around her nose ring every now and then. She gets plates for our lunch as she tells me how one day her sister in law came and  saw her, just after one of the terrible beatings, and she shook her head saying,

"Saleycia, he will kill you. I can't watch this anymore." And she whisked her away to her house to let her heal.

"She kept her brother far from seeing me. I think I only saw him a handful of times over the divorce period." She tells me.

Just when he had consented to give her a divorce, she found out she was pregnant with his child. Her first thought was to abort. Problem is, In Jamaica, abortion is illegal unless in certain circumstances. And some of the circumstances needed consent from the spouse.

"If I told him, he would have found it as reason to tie me to him forever. I wanted to abort so badly."

At this time I'm slowly munching on my crunchy fries, secretly tensed up over her story. I wondered if I saw toys in her living room. Or tiny shoes at the door, or really, anything to tell me if she kept the baby.

"I decided tokeep the baby and hide it from him until I got the divorce. And when I did, everyone wanted to go drink and celebrate. When I said no, I think some people suspected. I'm sure since I was living with my sister in law, she knew. But we never spoke about it.

One evening, I was carrying my shopping to the car when Derek came. That's his name. And he saw my rounded tummy and knew. So he came at me smiling, wanting to hug my belly or whatever, and I backed away, trying to think of a plan.

Then he switched, started to get angry saying I didn't tell him I was pregnant with his child. He grabbed my hand and slapped me. That's when I started screaming and he kneed my stomach so that I would stop. The rest was a blur. I just remember blacking out to him beating me on the ground and calling me horrible names."

She lost the baby. And went on an East African tour that was to end in Kenya. A month later she had moved in to the country. With the help of her savings and her almost immediate gig with the band, she was comfortable.

I look at her, no trace of tears. No bitterness or sadness. Maybe a hint of disappointment. She's healed. She's moved on to better things.

"His name is Eric, and I didn't expect him to creep into my heart and actually stick around through all the stories of my scars." She says when I ask about the guy she fell in love with here.

And finally for the question we've all been waiting for, I asked her why she has a lime green coloured lexus.

"Honestly, I used to regret that car colour choice. The guy I got it from, told me that was the car and colour Kenyans were driving in these days. I thought it was weird, but it was just after I moved here and I wanted to fit in."

She laughs her sweet laugh and I join, her picturing what roads would look like if all of the cars on them were lime green.

Just as I prepare to leave she hands me a golden mug. I take it, feeling a strange weight and I look to find skittles. At my look of confusion she reminds me of our earlier conversation.

"I asked you on the phone what you wanted to eat for lunch and you said a cup of skittles. I got you the sour type"

"It was a joke!" But there they were, a cup full of sour skittles for me to devour. And I have to say, she made my day.

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