Why I Don't Write Read online

  Are you upset? he said.

  She was putting on her clothes and stopped for a moment. I don’t know, she said. Then she started moving again.

  He got up. He put on fresh clothes, different from the ones he’d worn last night. He buttoned a light blue shirt, looking at each button. He went to the window and pulled back one of the curtains. More light came into the room: the gap showed a short strip of lawn and a sparse tangled wall of trees.

  Where are they?

  He looked over, worried.

  Your family.

  In Naivasha, at the lake. His voice was still gentle, but the honey had gone out of it. We have a house there.

  Oh, they’re out there, she said. She sounded as if she were daydreaming.

  My wife grows flowers.

  She looked at him, frowning.

  No, he said, on a farm. It’s our business, a flower farm.

  Oh. That sounds nice. She found her sandals.

  He continued looking out the window. My wife’s really the one who runs it.

  Uh-huh. She sat on the kilim-covered hassock and began strapping on her sandals. They were well-worn sandals with a wedge. She thought of how she’d gone a lot of different places in those sandals.

  He looked back at her. We’re apart a lot, he said.

  She regarded him with lowered brows.

  * * *

  •

  Will I see you again? he said, standing in the panel of light from the window.

  Her hands were occupied with the buckling of her sandals. She didn’t roll her eyes when she looked at him, but her expression was the same.

  No? he said.

  She rethreaded her sandal straps, first making them tighter, then making them looser. What for?

  I don’t know about you, he said. But that doesn’t happen all the time. He pointed to the bed.

  Oh, I think actually it does. She laughed.

  He stepped toward her and stood there with his bare feet and light blue shirttails untucked. You said so yourself it was something.

  She released her sandal and set her feet on the floor. Her mouth made a small puffy sound which seemed to deflate her. I don’t know, she said. Her shoulders slumped.

  I do, he said. He sat down beside her on the hassock. He slumped, too, but his shoulders were still above her head.

  It was great, he whispered.

  For you, she shot back, but her heart wasn’t in it. Inside, she felt a flutter of panic.

  He was sitting very close and she would only have had to move her head a few inches to slump against him. But she didn’t. She remained in the freeze position.

  She’d once worked on a documentary about the wild dogs of the Kalahari Desert. The animal behaviorist they’d interviewed was a freckled woman who in her forest-green pup tent had recited in a clipped confident lisp how prey employed one of, or some combination of, three strategies for survival: freeze, flight, or fight. The woman had added that this applied to humans as well, though that had been cut from the film.

  I’m not going to say I don’t love her, he said.

  God, no, she murmured. She immediately added, Sorry.

  She felt how near he was. She thought, I’ll just stay here one more minute, then I’ll stand up and smile and walk out. He’d accept that. Standing up she could still keep a small amount of her dignity intact, maybe. She would pick up her handbag and go into the front room, find her cigarettes on the driftwood tree-stump table, get a drink of water in the bare kitchenette, and wait for him to follow with the car keys. They would get back in the Jeep and he’d drive her to the guesthouse in Karen where she was staying and where she’d stay another two weeks till they finished shooting. Then she’d check out doing that story about the cattle vaccinations in Sudan and go there, or would find another story to do or another project somewhere or anything as long as it was somewhere else and Nairobi was not in it.

  Daisy, he said.

  What? she said, impatient.

  Daisy.

  She wished he wouldn’t do that, say her name. She glanced up and made the mistake of looking into his face. Oh God, she thought, or didn’t think. His face was full of concern. She found herself believing it. Just for a second, she said to herself and down her head came and collapsed on his chest.

  * * *

  •

  The night before it had seemed as if she were sailing toward something warm and enveloping. Now she was being swept in a different direction. At least she was moving, she thought, in one direction or another.

  * * *

  •

  Okay, though, now was the moment to stand up.

  She didn’t move and the moment passed. Another moment passed. She was still not standing.

  * * *

  •

  Lulled by the heartbeat in her ear, she wondered if this was the moment she would look back on and think, I could have walked away, but did not.

  In the quiet they both heard something crack like two sticks hitting. It came from around in front of the cottage.

  Now what? he said. His head tipped forward. They heard shouts. Christ, he said. He sprang up, though his expression was not alarmed, just focused. He headed for the doorway, pulled aside the purple-and-yellow kikoi, and disappeared. The soles of his feet were the last thing she saw.

  She heard him rattle open the front door and yell something in Swahili. The voice grew faint when he stepped outside and moved away from the house.

  She stayed sitting on the hassock. After a while she heard talking, people coming back into the cottage. She heard the man. A voice answered in English with a native accent. She got up and ducked past the kikoi into a small hallway. She peeked out from the doorframe to see into the front room.

  The man’s back was to her, his hands shoved in his front pockets. A thin man stood in front of him, gesturing as he talked. He had a dark shaved head and was wearing a cream-colored shirt with short sleeves and four pockets. That would be Edmond. He was about the same age as the man. Next to him were two boys, not quite teenagers, looking caught. The taller one wore a large red T-shirt which came almost to his knees. He didn’t look at Edmond or at the man. The younger one had a dark T-shirt which said VOTE THE MIAMI WAY. His face was also tipped down, but he was watching Edmond out of the corner of his eye.

  As Edmond talked, the man nodded. He shook his head. He ran his hand over his hair. At one point he lifted his arms, as if to say, Now what? Wait, Daisy thought, what had she been thinking of just now? She’d lost the thread of something…Oh, that’s right, a wife. There was a wife. She looked at the man’s back. He looked different to her now with a wife.

  Edmond cleared his throat. He glanced off for a moment, as if not wanting to get to this part of the story, and saw Daisy hiding by the door. His gaze slid smoothly by her, betraying nothing of what he’d seen.

  The man’s hands were now clasped on top of his head. Edmond looked once at the boys, then away from them and finished what he had to say.

  Everyone stood there, silent.

  The man dropped his arms. He turned a stony profile to the boys. The younger one was rolling his shirt around his fist. The man spoke to the older one in the red T-shirt, asking him a question. The boy raised his eyes, blinked slowly, and said something she couldn’t make out but his tone was defiant.

  The man snapped. His loud voice startled Daisy in her little hall. The boy did not look startled in the least. He listened, unimpressed. When the man finished yelling the boy spat on the floor near the man’s feet.

  Daisy watched the man’s long arm swing back and come forward and smack the boy’s small face on one cheek, then with the back of his hand he smacked the other. The boy’s head jerked a little with each blow, but his body didn’t move. Edmond and the other boy continued to stand there. After a moment the boy in the red T-shirt raised his hand
and covered his cheek. Daisy thought she saw a smile hidden by his fingers.

  * * *

  •

  The man turned abruptly with a gesture that said, This is all nonsense and I’m not going to bother myself any further. He turned back to Edmond. He pointed out to the turnaround, and gave him some orders. Edmond nodded, though Daisy could see his attention was being pulled toward the boys, either to check if they were okay, or to continue the punishment. Daisy ducked away from the door before the man saw her.

  Her heart was pounding. She went over to the window and the parted curtain. She looked out at the backyard. The brittle grass was covered with a film of dust, and at the edge of the lawn were olive bushes and thorny dwarf trees and floppy banana leaves. Half hidden by the brush was a high chain-link fence with loops of new silver barbed wire on top. Beyond the fence was a brown forest floor with spindly tree trunks and a carpet of huge maroon leaves.

  * * *

  •

  The man came back into the room, shaking his head with tiny shakes. Sorry about that, he said.

  Daisy remained at the window. He stood close behind her and parted the curtains wider and they both looked out.

  What was that all about? she said. I heard you shouting.

  He took a deep breath and exhaled. She felt his breath on the hair on top of her head. He put his arms loosely around her. Just the usual nonsense, he said. It was not worth going into.

  She thought of the slap and shivered. Maybe he really thought it was nonsense and usual. Maybe that wasn’t a lie. His arms tightened around her.

  But you’re still here, he said. I’m glad.

  I should be going…Her voice trailed off.

  She kept staring out at the garden. Nothing was moving in the bleached yard. She was mesmerized, trying not to think of what was behind her. She thought of the boy in the red T-shirt and his strange smile. She stared out to the garden, feeling as if she had been slapped. The eerie thing was it seemed as if she were right where she belonged.

  * * *

  •

  I saw you hit that boy, she said.

  The man spoke in the same calm voice. He had it coming to him, he said.

  That’s a little harsh, isn’t it? she said.

  You have to be from here to understand.

  People say that a lot.

  Maybe because it’s true.

  She heard his attention straying and turned her head. He was looking toward the other end of the lawn where a woman was hanging laundry.

  Come, he said. He unclicked the lock on the tall windows. Meet Cecily.

  The air was thick and warm. Daisy followed him outside as if she were in a net, still in the physical lure of him.

  The woman at the clothesline wore a crimson short-sleeved dress and a printed green scarf knotted around her head. She was not tall, and when she reached to drape the clothes over a thin rope clothesline, her orange heels lifted out of flip-flops as thin as pancakes. Her figure was sturdy, her neck and arms thin. The man called to her.

  Hello, Mistah T, she said, not turning. She clipped on clothespins made of pink plastic.

  Cecily, I’d like you to meet my friend Daisy.

  Karibu, Cecily said, and paused for a moment to tip her turbaned head in Daisy’s direction. Then she bent down for more clothes.

  Asante sana, Daisy said. This about exhausted her Swahili. Welcome. Thank you so much.

  Daisy’s from America, the man said.

  Cecily nodded. She snapped open a towel, not looking up.

  Since she’d been in Kenya, Daisy had noticed that she was either being stared at as a curiosity or else pointedly ignored. Occasionally she would receive a look from a stranger of direct hatred.

  The man walked over to the other side of the woven yellow plastic basket and spoke to Cecily in Swahili. Being in a place where she didn’t know the language, Daisy had learned to watch people instead. Often that told her enough.

  Cecily listened to the man. She stared at the towel in her hand, then flung it absently up on the line. She folded her smooth arms, took a deep breath, and tucked in her chin. She looked at the man as if sizing him up. For a moment Daisy thought she was going to upbraid the man, and it filled her with an odd sort of hope.

  The man mimed how he had hit the boy. Cecily nodded slowly. Yes, yes, she knew. The man shrugged and winced. Cecily shook her head in agreement. She pursed her lips. Before speaking she frowned and when she finally did say something it sounded decisive. Daisy was transfixed. Cecily was giving the man a piece of her mind. He stood listening to her now.

  Then Cecily’s face burst into a smile. She let her arms drop and slapped at the man’s shoulder. They both laughed. Cecily kept shaking her head and the man was nodding and they laughed together at her joke. Daisy backed away from them, feeling suddenly transparent like a flame in sunlight.

  * * *

  •

  Daisy stood waiting next to the Jeep in the driveway. Through the front window of the cottage she could see the man on the telephone with his back to her, facing the wall. Talking to the wife, she figured. It was bright outside and she was without sunglasses. She strolled off to be out of sight of the man, scuffing the ground. Many footprints had distressed the dirt. Suddenly she felt exhausted. For a moment she was back in the bed with the man. He was holding her wrist. She felt swept up again and it ran through her body. Sex was like that, not all of you came back right away. Part of you lingered with the person, not unhappily; it was nice to be relieved of yourself, though eventually that part would return.

  She had moved into the shade near Edmond’s house. The one door was open to a turquoise-painted wall. There was thin grass in the front yard and a small circle of charred wood. Against the ocher wash of the house sat two white molded plastic chairs. A small child appeared in the doorway, wearing a pink sleeveless dress with ruffles at the shoulders and eating a papaya. She eyed Daisy. Daisy smiled and said, Habari. The girl’s eyes widened and she looked behind her for instruction, then stared again at Daisy.

  Cecily appeared behind the little girl, carrying something, shooing her out of the door. Her arms were straining under the weight of the large gray tub. The little girl sat on a log near the burned area biting the papaya, still watching Daisy. Cecily hauled the tub to the end of the yard near some scarlet hibiscus and tossed the water out. It floated in the air like a mirror, then came down flat and made a circle of puff in the dirt.

  Cecily turned around and looked at her, a white woman standing on the tan drive in her tan skirt. Daisy waved and smiled and started to step back. She rocked on her sandals. Cecily came forward a few steps and stopped. Her smooth solid face was not smiling. At first Daisy thought she was getting some version of the cold stare, the look of disapproval any girl might get stumbling out of the man’s cottage, possibly one in a series of aimless white girls. But when Cecily lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun, Daisy saw a different expression. She was looking at Daisy with pity.

  * * *

  •

  The man was locking the front door. Everyone here was always jangling keys. When she got into the Jeep she noticed a spiderweb of cracked glass at the center of the windshield. She hadn’t seen it the night before, but it had been dark and she hadn’t been looking.

  The man got in the driver’s seat. He turned the key a few times before the engine started. Where to? he said, and pulled at the steering wheel with an effort.

  She didn’t answer. It wasn’t really a question. He knew where she was staying. Back where I belong, she thought. The Jeep bounced forward. They drove out the gate, which was wide open now in the daytime. Now she saw the road they’d come on. It looked as if it had been heaped with fresh dirt and raked.

  Everything okay? he said.

  Fine, she said. She didn’t look at him. She wanted to start right then not looking at him. The soo
ner the better. Immediately she felt expanded. She thought, I don’t even need to tell him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt that way, not needing to explain herself—to him, to anyone.

  There was a phrase Daisy had heard a number of times in Kenya: polepole. It had a number of related meanings. It could mean Easy does it, one step at a time, take it slow. When it was only pole, it meant too bad, or that’s a shame, or sorry.

  It was the thing people might say to comfort someone with a little hardship. You’d say it to a child who’d scraped her knee, or to someone whose car had broken down. Pole. Poor you. Shame.

  That had been Cecily’s expression, pole. You poor thing. It was the understanding expression of a mother, though Daisy could not remember ever having seen the expression on her mother’s face. Cecily had emphasized the look by nodding, as in, Don’t forget this conversation we’ve had. Poor you. Shame. Step-by-step. Gentle now. How that could all be in a look, Daisy didn’t know, but there it was.

  When offerings like that come your way, you should take them. Bouncing in her seat, Daisy thought if she could keep Cecily’s message in mind, she’d be better off. Concentrating was sometimes like praying. You had to repeat it. Careful with yourself. Gentle. The light coming through the trees threw barred shadows on the red ground. She rode through the stripes.

  • THE TORCH •

  She lay back on the clean white pillows.

  Is that—? Who’s there? she said.

  It’s me.

  John? she said in a weak voice. Is that you, John? Happiness came into her tone.

  Yes, it’s me, said her husband, taking her hand.

  Where have you been?