THE GHOSTS WE HAUNT

I must be in heaven but the silence here is unlike how I imagined it to be. Are there no hosts of singing angels? Angels, who hold their trumpets high in praise for all eternity? Or maybe my sins have me cornered and I lay cast in eternal damnation. But where is the lake of fire and brimstone they told us about? The tormented souls hoping for a reprieve that will never come, where are they? Where am I? Oh but the quiet is all but shy. I can’t hear a thing. Not even the sound of my own breath. And the darkness. It’s too dark, for a moment I think I am blind. I look around and see a wispy light floating in the dark expanse. As I walk toward it, muted sounds slowly become discernible. Sounds of people talking, laughing, singing. But I can’t see them, I can only see the light.

I continue inching toward it. I am apprehensive, frightened. I look back and the darkness is only growing thicker. It follows me as death follows its sufferer. Now I can see the blinking light even more clearly and the sounds have faded into a murmur. I begin feeling safer and safer. Is it embarrassing how the mind accepts whatever seems to be agreeably rescuing and warm while choosing not to see the dark and cold? Or maybe it’s just dignifying. It is a weakness as much as it is a strength and many other things. A world that chooses to be blissful and sublime when it can just as well choose to be vile and haunting. In any case, we are who our worlds decide to be, agreeable or not. But that isn’t what I think of at this moment.

The candles sit forlornly on a tall candelabra with two of them unlit while the middle one dances in elegant poise as if chagrining the rest to do better. I feel the need to touch the light, feel alive. Because I feel dead. I light the other two and pick the middle candle to look around. I see naught. I decide to shout as maybe someone from the voices will hear me.

“Hello! Is anyone there?” I call out but all the noise drowns my voice. “Hello! Can anyone hear me!?” I call out again and between my frantic breaths, the candle I am holding stops dancing. It seems strange. It is as if time has frozen in its step and everything else with it. Everything but me. I look at the melting candle I hold in my hand, all the liquid that spills onto my fingers is supposed to sear my skin but I can’t feel a thing. I touch the flame but it feels cold beneath my palm.

“How are you doing today?” A voice jolts me from my peculiar ordeal. I look up toward the infinite darkness and see a girl staring at me through the window I had not seen there before. “How are you doing today?” She asks again in a higher-pitched voice as if happy to see me. I know she will surely tell me what is going on. “Please help me, I think…” I say briskly but she suddenly interrupts me, “How are you doing today…Oh no, maybe I should just keep quiet and let him do his job. We don’t need to exchange pleasantries, do we?”

“What…?” I say, bewildered. Can she not see me? I wave my hand desperately but she keeps adjusting her hair and scarf on the other side of the window. The candle I hold is still not dancing. I cover its flame with my hand. Instantly, the light in her room turns off and she stops fiddling with her hair. “Ah…but I just replaced the lightbulb!” She says, with exasperation in her voice that reminds me of something I can’t quite pinpoint. The kind of exhaustion that I understand well. An enervation that fills me with a dread I cannot describe but that which I have felt before.

I uncover the candle from my palm and the lightbulb turns on again. Is it purely coincidental or is it all connected? I cover the candle again. The same thing happens. I uncover it and the lightbulb flickers on again. Just then, the girl turns to face the mirror. Her eyes are the saddest ones I have ever seen. The most beautiful ones I have ever seen. I see the reflection of her face in her sad eyes. She is staring into a mirror, not a window. She is staring into my soul. I can see it through her demure countenance, but she can’t see me. I want to touch her face, to reassure her so that she smiles, at least. But I can’t. She wipes the single tear from her rosy cheek and smiles. A mask that fails to hide the purgatory she feels.

She walks outside her home and I follow behind. She wears a headscarf and looks down at the ground as if ashamed of something. Standing motionless for a minute, I can read her eyes as if they were mine. I wish to touch her, hold her hand and listen to the dismal secret gnawing at her lovely heart. She keeps on walking, eyes on the ground. We are now in a market and even though nobody looks at her, she stares at the ugly red earth beneath her feet. Finally, she stops in front of a decayed shack with a shuka for a door. What is she planning to do here where nobody ever enters unless they are without fate, without destiny, lost? She wants to turn back and return home but she slowly wills herself to go inside. The secret has to indeed be dismal. The beaded curtains behind the shuka rattle as she enters the seer’s home. I follow behind. I have to follow, as a dejected shadow follows its flesh to the ends of the earth.

The room is not as dark as I envisioned it. When one is used to the darkness, everything is grim and forbidding. A malediction of the mind. Black soot covers the sapling walls of the hut riddled with small holes. Other places have large holes covered poorly with brown earth. Others are left open. That is where the light seeps through. The white smoke smells of frankincense, mostly. It is said that the smoke carries prayers up to the heavens. But this smoke only goes up to the grass-thatched ceiling. And maybe that’s where heaven is.

“Who is that?” A hoarse voice speaks from an inner room. He must have heard the beads on the curtains rattle. I hear his heavy footsteps on the hard ground coming into this room and I can feel her discomfort as he approaches. She feigns confidence when he tells her to sit on a glistening njung’wa, a stool on which lost souls have sat ever since time first began.

“Why are you here young girl?” He asks almost soothingly. He knows, but he still asks.

“What…what will happen to me?” She says, amid anxious yet quiet breaths.

“Oh, little girl, you have brought this upon yourself.” He stretches out his hand and offers it to her and she places hers on his. He closes his eyes and starts muttering incoherently—an act I find almost melodramatic. He opens his eyes and looks straight at me.

“A shadow follows behind you, a part of a story you will live, little girl. You have a choice to make, one which I cannot tell. But this ghoul that follows you always will. As a serpent follows death.”

She maintains her gaze, more puzzled than before. “What does…What does it mean…”

“Only you know the meaning.” He says curtly as he stretches out his hand, behesting his payment. She takes the hand and places it on her forehead. His old, placid eyes scrutinize me all the while. He can see me, he is nudging me to react. I will not, I cannot.

She still is not satisfied and the seer turns his gaze to face her. “Dear girl, it’s the child, isn’t it?”

She is stunned. “Yes, I don’t know what to do. Can you help me? It was not supposed to happen, please. Do you know what I can do?”

“It would be unjust to spill the blood of that which does not deserve it. It will not bring you any solace.”

“But I did not want it… It wasn’t my fault…”

“I know, dear girl. But I cannot help you. It is not just to end such a life.”

She desperately needs to plead her case to the seer but her whimpers make her words indiscernible. I can feel her despondency, how her heart aches for elusive condolence “Please…if you have something I can use to get rid of it…you said I have a choice to make? Let me at least have that,” she tells the seer whose pitiful eyes gaze solemnly at her. He knows not what he should do and his conscience is barely clear. He heads into the backroom and for a moment, I am certain he thinks of our troubles as just mortal vanities. If they are not that, then what are they anyway? But this one, this one spelled only doom. It spelled debasement and rot, all that is wrong with our minds. He trudges in with a bottle of some herb in one hand and a sandglass in the other. She hasn’t moved an inch from her stool, her reddened face buried in her shaking hands.

“Here, girl…take this.”

She looks up and her face suddenly ceases to be sad. She takes them from his hands while standing up.

“Thank you…what should I do now?” she asks falteringly.

“Take these leaves in your third month when they have died and dried up. The sandglass will tell you when you should expect the child to come out—when the last grain of sand falls.”

She nods in agreement at his unexpected change of heart. He signals her to go on her way and she obliges. A single look at him reveals his obvious regret but I remember what he said about me, a serpent following death. Seers and metaphors! Is it too difficult to be succinct, direct? I am certain she did not understand any of it though. All that’s on her mind is to get rid of the being growing inside her. A curse inflicted upon her by a man who knew no mercy, whose eyes did not see the darkness he brought to a poor, young soul. And even if they did, they paid no heed.

She conceals the items under her long skirt and walks home.

SHE

I might be paranoid but today I feel like someone is watching me, always behind my back but disappears every time I turn. It might be the bad man that’s following me. The one who said he would be my husband and I his wife when I am finally of age. But he didn’t want to wait. I hate myself for believing what he told me about his “lavish” work with the “mzungu”, his many “cars” and god-forsaken “luxury house in the suburbs” yet he had me cornered in my own home when no one was there to aid my cries for help. To salvage my remaining semblance of dignity. I remember asking myself, ‘who will want me now?’ as he buried my mouth with his hands to keep me mute. He had me swear not to tell a soul, or else he’d ruin me. I believed him. Besides, nobody had to know. That was a secret I’d planned to keep. I had always thought of myself as strong, a fire in the flood but how wrong I was. The lie was enough in my mind but not quite in my arms and legs. What else have I been lying to myself about? I wonder.

It has been a month and a half since it happened. The last month passed without me bleeding. That’s when I knew. But I did not want to believe it so I waited for this month and expectedly, no blood came. I am to be married off next year. That’s what my mother always tells me. That a “fine man” has his eyes set on me and that he’s from a wealthy family.

So I cannot let this child that I carry live. It has to go. I have to choose this poison the seer gave to me. But if I have to, then it really isn’t a choice, is it? Choice is power. And where I stand, I can only feign to have it because that is the closest I can ever be to power.

My stomach is beginning to grow and in a few weeks, I will no longer be able to hide the bump. Mine will be obvious since my body is lean. My mother keeps telling me I have no ‘meat’ and that I need to eat as marriage will be an exertion and I need the energy to raise children.

I arrive home from the seer’s place still feeling like I’m being watched, read and analyzed like I do constellations on a starry sky. For once, I am happy that I will erase what happened and move on. I just need to find more shukas to hide my belly and all would be well. They would say, “Oh! What a well-mannered girl, she will surely make a good wife!” And my mother will be clutching my hand, boastfully agreeing, “Mmmh…Indeed she will.”

And that’s all that matters. Her happiness. That’s all I can afford to give her. Anything but that would be intolerable, insolent.

“Where were you?” A voice asks as I enter the compound. It is my father. He is holding a bottle of the bitter brew he always drinks on days such as these when he had not made any sales in the market. He seems to have not made any for a while now as he sits for longer hours, drinking more bottles each time, in the company of more men.

“I’ve been in the market,” I respond, trying to be as brief and truthful as I could.

“Oh, and you didn’t get anything?”

“No.” I am momentarily surprised at how natural my lie sounds.

The prying eyes of the men probe my frame as they discuss beneath their breaths things I can only speculate to be concurrences. They must be discussing my marriage, right? But it doesn’t seem like it. They are all too inebriated to discuss such a hefty matter. I am growing more anxious by the second and keep walking towards the house hoping that he won’t summon me. I feel the sandglass slipping from beneath my skirt. The way it tumbles freely against my skin. I quicken my pace, praying that he doesn’t call me to them. I suddenly feel nauseous, sick to my stomach. It must be the disease that’s growing inside me, feeding on the life I once had before it. Or maybe it’s the thought of what would happen if my secret falls before them. How would I explain it? Explain the herbs they will find buried exactly where the hourglass was?

He calls me. I ignore him, half running, half walking into the house. I can see him standing from the corner of my eye. He knows there’s something I am hiding. But I don’t stop. The door to the house is only steps away. I reach for it and push it open. I look toward my father and his odious crowd. He is seated. Maybe he wasn’t even onto me.

……………

In my room, the lights have never stopped flickering. I wonder why that is. And that mirror that sits at the corner of my bed, it scares me for some reason. I feel like I am being gawked at, studied and judged. I haven’t always felt like this. It began when I went to the seer some weeks ago. The medicine he gave me still lies buried in a hole beneath my bed. That’s where my secret remains hidden. If you bury it, it becomes dead. But mine is not dead yet, although it will be soon enough. What worries me more is this stomach. It keeps growing and growing. My mother pretends not to notice but I see her peeking curiously at me every time I join her on the compound and on errands. I have opted to stay away from everyone but this guise is too much for me to handle. I have thought many times about how it would feel to just die. Go forever, be in peace. What would be the quickest way? Pain does not really bother me. I want to feel death clawing my skin, tearing into my flesh and beckoning me to rest my tired soul. But all I have to do is wait a week to take the herb and all will be well, gone like the dust from a dandelion wished upon.

ME.

Does she know that I see her loneliness and misery? She must know. I have tried time and time again to show her that I can see. The light in her room that I always flicker to get her attention has proven to be useless. She thinks it’s her lightbulb that’s defective when it’s she that’s chosen not to see me too. I am trying to tell her that she is alive even when she feels dead. That to feel is to live and to live is to choose good. How does one tell good from bad though? Where is the line drawn? She thinks of leaving home and coming back when she has poisoned herself and the child is gone. Is this good? She knows that this will erase everything she wants erased. Make it look like nothing happened, an imitation of bliss. Is this bad? Tonight, she unearths her poison, holed away under the bed. She does not want to taint her home with innocent blood so she packs it into her shoal and wraps the whole around her small waist just beneath her bulging stomach. Her mind and heart have chosen but each has chosen a different poison.

I follow her outside her home and into the compound. I see she has worn the same headscarf she did a while ago when we went to see the seer. This time, though, the darkness does not allow me to see her face. Her beautiful eyes have been darkened by the night. And the cold air is doing little to numb her fears. I know where she is going. She whispered it one night in her dream. Or nightmare. A place called Naina, where mothers who died during birth and their children were buried. Only dead souls dwelled there. That is where she is going. No one will know because the secret will soon be dead and buried in Naina. She is tripping on rocks and sticks and adjusting her waist-shoal every second. She avoids the lighted paths and walks in the shadows like a lurking creature. We walk for miles and miles until I see the forest that is Naina.

………..

She sees the trees engulfing her and spitting her back out and the babel of noises that she tries to ignore is only becoming louder and more sinister. She wills herself to continue into Naina, where the dried bones of children and mothers beckon her company, urging her on. She stumbles upon a decaying branch and her legs can muster no more strength. The gray moon is finally visible so she uses its light to find the shoal that slipped from her waist. She finds it just close to her, with the sandglass nearly shattered. She sets it aside and pours the herb into her hand. It feels crispy and rough. She is sure what she has to do even if the noises in her head won’t hush.

She flips the sandglass and takes the herb without hesitation. She is immediately reminded of the fragility of her existence and the imminent death of her child. But at least her child will be with the others that died even before they lived.

…………….

Isn’t nature a true enigma? A being with as much reason as any other but still a god. That’s what comes to mind when I look at Naina. A world that turns pain and death into green magnificence. The trees here are never solemn as they dance over the graves watered by the rains. I hoped to see other ghosts like me but maybe they are elsewhere following their flesh as I am following mine. Or maybe they are doing something else entirely.

She has lost her mind now. She speaks of many things that I don’t understand. Although her eyes are my reassurance that her sanity is safe, or at least a part of it. I look after her however much I can but I don’t understand why I am here at all, in this nightmare that no one should have to live through.

Her belly is bigger now than ever before and the small movements it randomly makes seem to make her laugh warmly. She collects daffodils that grow by the sequoia trees at the far end of this blue stream and tucks them in her thick hair. She does this every day when the sun is out. But when the sky is gray, she plucks the purple hyacinths that grow everywhere.

Today, the sky is gray and she wanders out of her shelter to look for the flowers she so needs. They line the path that no one walks on. Is her family looking for her? Do they know that their daughter is in Naina, where bones lay unearthed and no ghosts dwell? A place that reminds one of a finite life?

She suddenly drops the flowers onto the ground and recoils in immense agony. I see water spilling from beneath her tattered skirts. She screams in sheer pain as she laboriously crawls toward her shelter. The pain is too much, and she can’t move any further. Water has stopped spilling. Now it’s only blood. She feels her flesh tearing and her fingers digging through the wet soil that she sits on. She has felt so much, so young. But this, this is another kind of feeling. Searing, sharp, throbbing, drawn-out pain. Pain that doesn’t make you question whether or not you’re alive. Pain that surely exists and brings existence with it. A mother’s pain.

She breathes in deeply and lets out a guttural cry. I look on, petrified but apologetic that she has had to experience this vale of tears alone, abandoned. I hate seeing her like this and I hate being as helpless as I am.

She cries till her tears run out. That’s when the child’s head appears and with renewed strength, she tugs at the baby until it comes out. Then the cries of a new beginning fill the cold ambience. They are surrounded by a pool of dark red earth and she smiles, holding the child in her weak arms. She is slowly fading away from losing so much blood. She feels her life slipping fast. That’s when she reaches out, handing her creation to me, her solace, her ghost from her past and now, a ghost for her future.

Mary W Ndirangu.