Old friends

There was a girl, young and pretty, laughing with a bunch of her friends as they went up an escalator. She was at a higher stair from her friends, listening to a story and laughing every now and then. A woman behind them was in a rush, deciding not to wait for the escalator to take her up, she climbed and by passed the girls.

She gave them a look too as she passed, like she was disappointed and wistfull and annoyed all at once. I wonder if she was missing her youth, or was envious of them, or just sad that the youngins didn’t know to treasure what they have.

Going down the escalator were two men, one, an Indian, was excitedly trying to tell his friend about something, possibly about a nice chutney he tasted. From where I was, it honestly seemed like a good story, but the other man was distracted. 

His eyes were on the pretty girl on the higher stair from her friends. He stared at her until even I got the feeling of being watched. He licked his lips and smiled like a true team mafisi. I wonder if men actually know what they look like when thy stare like that.

A lady distracts me by sitting on my table. I had been sitting in a restaurant for the past 20 minutes waiting for her to come. She’s dressed like she was planning on going to an art gallery after or somewhere fancy like that. She’s changed, from what I remember. She was an old primary school friend one of my first best friends I think. We’re the same age, and yet, she looks like a well adjusted adult and I look like I eat indomie noodles for all my meals.

“You haven’t changed one bit” she tells me smiling.

“ Ah, really? I’d like to think I’ve at least grown taller.” We last saw each other in class three I think. She laughs and we catch up. It was interesting how we got back in touch after all these years. Someone’s Facebook if you can believe it.

She tells me how she’s now in finance. Which is something I never imagined for her. I expected something sporty, because she was the the best footballer in our class, she was the fastest runner too. Always used to beat the fastest boy by a long shot. She always had bruised knees and elbows and mud on her dress during the rainy seasons, and even sometimes in the dry season. Its interesting how times have changed. She tells me how she has a child now, turning three in a month.

Every new thing she told me about herself shocked me. I ask her about her child, because people love to talk about their children. And because I can’t wait to hear what her kid is like.

She tells me how smart she is. Somehow she tricked her entire playgroup that it was break time and they should all go to the swings and slides at the kindergarten next door. The teacher apparently had just stepped out for a moment, then came back and found her class gone. She found them all standing behind Tamara trying to convince the watchman to let them out.

Grace tells me how somehow, with all of the smarts the kid has, she never knows where her shoes are when they go out, even to eat. She tells me how she named her Tamara because she didn’t want her stuck with a conventional name like hers (did I mention her name is Grace?)

She tells me how much Tamara hates dresses. There was a time she almost removed one, right in the middle of a matatu ride home. I pretend to look mortified, but all I can do is picture that scene playing out and laugh in my head. The more she tells me about her the more I believe I should be interviewing her kid. She sounds like a blast.

I ask her what the hardest part about raising her is.

“Everything is hard, from the time I knew I was pregnant at 18 to being kicked out by my parents and then figuring things out on my own. It’s always seemed… like I was always waiting for another bad thing to happen, another shoe to drop.”

I look at her wondering how she does it, I can’t even take care of myself. I ask her how he delivered the news to her parents.

She knew that her father would be more, welcoming to the news than her mother. So she went to him while he was lounging in the sitting room, watching an old action movie. Her mother was not yet home.

She went and sat opposite him, just waiting for the right time, wondering if she should go to her room and just try again the next day. But she knew there was no way she could hide it. Such things have a way of revealing themselves, and already she was sick in the morning, to the point that her mum told her she’ll bring her medicine when she got back.

Her dad noticed her just staring at him and paused the movie.

“Gracey?”

She just felt a wave of tears and started crying. Just before her father stood up to go comfort her, she blurted it out, only she said it fast, and muffled, so she had to repeat it again as he came closer.

“He froze” she tells me. 

“Said nothing until mom came home about 20 minutes later. Well, he just kept asking ‘what? And what do you mean’ in a small voice.”

 It felt like an eternity by the time she gathered herself and stopped crying. Then the sound of the front door opening broke the silence. Her father whispered.

“You have to tell her.”

So then she stood up when her mum yelled that she was home. Then sat down, then stood again. Then sat.

“When I told her, she just sat down saying ‘no,no,no’ over and over. There was nothing I had prepared in my mind after, so when she started asking questions I wasn’t prepared.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Mean ones, spiteful ones, practical ones. Like what was I going to do, am I aware I’ve wasted my life and their money, who is the father, what about school, do I know how much shame I’ve put on them, what with the people at her church say.”

They eventually told her if she was old enough to have sex, she was old enough to get out of their house. So she started out, not at zero, her father gave her some money when she walked out, crammed some notes in her hand before his wife saw him. By this time, she was a month shy of completing her diploma in business economics and she researched endlessly on pregnancy. 

She looked for taking care of babies for dummies books and tried her best to keep calm. She moved in to her friend’s bed sitter. And she knew she couldn’t ask her if she could stay once the baby came, she had to figure that part out on her own. She got a job, then moved out to a bed sitter of her own. She gave birth, bought as many baby things as she could with what she had. Luckily for her some of her friends got together and gave her several gifts.

“Without my friends, and an old lady that lived on my floor, I probably wouldn’t have made it that first year. The lady kept looking out for me in big and subtle ways. Sometimes, she’d bring me fruits and vegetables, another time, she brought me a week's worth of food. She kept doing things for me too. I think she felt sorry for me.”

I ask her where the baby daddy is. She laughs and says he’s probably doing his masters abroad. She had told him when she was pregnant, after she had been kicked out of home. It was around the time she was deciding if she was keeping the baby, and he said she should do what she wants; abort or keep it. He wanted to stay out of the loop completely after that. Now, they’re just facebook friends. She doesn’t even have his number. They haven’t spoken in three years.

I ask her if she had to do it all over again what would she do different.

“Well, that’s a bit tough to answer. Maybe I’d relax more, tell myself that I’m strong and tough and I can handle it. I’d definitely not spend as much time as I did crying. I’m afraid my kid will turn out depressed because of how sad I was when I was pregnant. Also I would probably try again with my parents.”

I ask her how their relationship is now. She tells me they don’t speak. That its been too long and the rift is too big now. She moved on, her words.

As I write this, kids are playing outside “nyamanyamanyama…” they don’t even know if sheep meat is supposed to be eaten. I’m from reading an incredible book that speaks to lifting each other up instead of tearing each other down, not everything is about competition. Hopefully we can teach the generations coming up as well as ourselves that. And I’m really hoping I knew that nyama ya kondoo ni nyama when I was that age.

Happy weekend…