Four White Walls

I laughed. It wasn’t a belly laugh. It was a laugh that was expected of me. That’s what we did in those days, Goi and I. When I came to rest on her skin I turned brown. When she landed on mine, she turned black. Two well-meaning but ill-advised chameleons, mirroring each other’s emotions so thoroughly that in the end we gave life to a third party - a nusu nusu. The half-and-half who laughed. Even when it was not appropriate. That morning, I laughed our nusu nusu laugh.

One of Goi’s friends had been chucked into rehab the night before. Another friend called with the grand announcement minutes after the sun peeped through the night’s cracks.

“Carly’s been chucked into Nairobi Place. Kicking and screaming like a bush cat!” Goi and I looked at each other, shocked to the core.

That genuine emotion reared it’s head for the briefest of moments before being swiftly pushed out of the way by our nusu nusu-ness. And so we fell over laughing. It wasn’t a belly laugh. As a matter of fact, it was downright hollow, echoing as it did down the hallway and into the kitchen where the housekeeper stood over the sink, washing a stack of wine glasses from last night.

“Christ, I could do with a Bloody Mary,” I said to Goi. “Last night was a bit of a big one.” This as I wiped the tears away - I had laughed so damn hard, it hurt. So into the shower we went, anxious to clear away the cobwebs before another long day’s night. ‘Twas Christmas after all. The season for merry-making. One day merged seamlessly into the next, leaving behind an amorphous mass of non-memory. Which was all good because, good memories we rarely made.

Christmas passed in a mist of distilled liquor and other spirits not of the holy kind. And then came the New Year. Back at work, the drinks flowed again. All the way down Lang’ata Road and down to the Talisman Restaurant where we were celebrating for celebrating sake.

No babe in the manger to herald this time around, just a bunch of babes around the bar making small talk over large drinks. “Are you sure you can drive?” Goi asked me. I must have said yes.

Nusu nusu was in full effect that night so she may have sneaked in a comment or two. Maybe she gave assurances. Maybe I did. But one of us drove. And one of us lunged off the road about four kilometres from home and ended up in the bush, in a ditch, via a concrete wall and over a couple of trees.

One of us had blacked out at the wheel after we had both consumed enough white wine to flood a small nation. Two of us ended up in the bush, in a ditch. But only I got out. Only I got chucked into rehab, leaving nusu nusu with her head bent over the steering wheel, dying her own death and grieving my passage from night into day.

I woke up later that day, muddy and grimy, but generally unharmed. Oil marks on what used to be a lovely lavender business suit were a sore reminder that I had been in a traffic accident. The stale alcohol on my breath was out of place in a facility where drinking and drugging were not looked upon with any kind of fondness. Someone tried to get me up for breakfast.

“Do you have soda?” I asked. “No,” the man replied. At least I think it was a man, I could barely see through bloodshot eyes and heavy lids. Anyway, if I wasn’t having Fanta for breakfast, I wasn’t having breakfast at all so I turned away and sank back into oblivion, drunk and hangover all at the same time.

As the day marched steadily into dusk, a medical person of some kind insisted that I needed to speak with a doctor. The doctor turned out to be a head shrinker. Guess he didn’t figure out that my brain was shrunk as far as it would go.

“So what brings you here, Jojo?” he asked. Oh my, what a stupid question, dude. You’re the shrink, you flippin’ hell tell me. Out loud I gave him the obvious answer: “I was drunk. I crashed a car. I want to quit the Jesus Juice. You do that here, don’t you?”

He managed to keep his smile in place and carried on with his I-am-speaking-to-a-four-year-old line of questioning. My head was pounding. My throat was parched. I needed a shower. And a change of clothes. Instead I got another session - this time with a psychologist.

“So, what brought you here, Jojo?” Geez. Somebody call the paramedics. I’m dying here. I would have come up with a witty response but instead I began to weep. Uncontrollably.

“Can I smoke here?”

“Oh yes, yes, certainly ... anywhere outside!” he said to me, obviously unsure how to handle a hysterical female.

So barefoot, I went to my room, grabbed a fag, came back into the garden and smoked it into a tiny, pinched and punished stub. The other patients thought I was a real crazy, what with my dreadlocks flying this way and that like a bunch of whisks in the wind, my eyes demon red, my feet bare and my clothes a right, royal mess. I couldn’t have cared less.

Fag duly smoked, I went into the common room and fell onto the couch. There was something on the TV but I wasn’t paying attention. I was contemplating the next two weeks in the loony bin. And then he spoke to me.

“Hey. My name’s Kim. What’s yours?”

I looked up, all stone face-like to see who it was that dared to shake me from my reverie. It was a young lad with a flurry of short spring wire hair. A brown mole sat prominently on the side of his nose which was rather broad. He stood there, skinny as a reed with the remote in his hand, giving off a determined air of nonchalance.

“Errm, it’s Jojo.” No “nice to meet you” or “it’s a pleasure”. None of that. I wasn’t really in the mood to be courteous. And then, “Fancy a fag?” He smoked. Nice.

“Sure.” Over the next hour or so I found out pretty much everything about this man as he spoke to me in his London-esque accent, which he interrupted every so often with a word in sheng and then another in Swa.

The speech was complex and I wondered about him. “Y’know when you were in the yard earlier I thought you were a real nut! How come you weren’t wearing any shoes?” Kim asked with as much astonishment as one person can possibly muster.

“Hey! I woke up in a strange place, dude. I couldn’t’ remember where I was, leave alone where my shoes were. Plus, I don’t have any clothes here so sandals were definitely out of the question!”

Geez, we were in a nut house. Walking around barefoot should be the least of anyone’s concern. Seemed Kim was some kind of hyper-hygienist – I wondered if he had a bath immediately after he has sex.

By the end of the day, Kim and I were as thick as thieves. We’d smoked our way through my pack of fags and I’d heard a lot about his past. I hadn’t really been in the mood to share. There was a shadow of shame skulking behind my back. I wasn’t ready for the glare of the spotlight.

“So, what are you here for?” Kim asked late that night.

“Drinking. I got into an accident with myself…think I must have fallen asleep at the wheel, driven off the road … I figure it’s time to stop,” That was the abridged version but Kim didn’t know that. My mother had recently passed and since then I had been rolling down the slippery slope to stage-three alcoholism. I suppose I had been an alcoholic since birth but life had never really given me a reason to engage. Ironically, life had now given me a reason to disengage. Anyway, off we went to bed – him to his room and me to mine, having formed an alliance of sorts.

Over the next two weeks, we became close. I wasn’t just Jojo anymore. I was Kim’s “baby girl”. And Kim, Kim was my man. I lived not on bread alone but on hugs, kisses and cuddles. I wasn’t in love, I was loved. It felt good. So good. He accepted me, bad morning breath and all. And somehow, while we were getting all loved up, I managed to get the monkey off my back.

“So, this place is working for you?” the doctor asked, days into my stay. “You certainly look better.” My-oh-my, was I ever. I had been set free, not by them, but by me … and the Great Spirit that was within me.

“I feel great! This is the best decision I ever made. Being here is like a balm to my spirit!”

I was glowing. I got woken up every morning by a nurse nudging me to take my pressure and my temperature. Minutes later, a chef gave notice for breakfast. Soon after, housekeeping came in to make my bed. Then I sat with my head shrinker. Next was a session with my soul soother (otherwise known as Kayla, my psychologist).

Talk about being pampered. All the while, Kim and I were getting closer. We’d gone from friendly hugs to passionate kisses and from stolen touches to heady caresses. This was good stuff. Until Kim had to leave. It was a Thursday night and he was leaving Friday morning. We spent the day goofing around, smoking a million cigarettes and stealing just as many kisses behind the rec centre. And then night fell. We did our usual thing, played some cards, facebooked, checked our mail, watched some tele – finally it was time to go to bed. We kissed. Said goodnight. And off we went to our bed chambers.

The pirates were sailing over the moon. Think about the ransom for a celestial body … enormous! “What are you willing to pay?” the man with the stripy turban on his head asked. “Jojo….Jojo?”

“Eight-hundred billion dollars ought to do it … just ask Wall Street,” came my dozy reply. And then: “What? Jojo…it’s me Kim.” Slowly I opened one eye, squinting against the darkness, and there right in front me, in fact about two inches from my face, was Kim. 

We didn’t speak after that. He drew me close with his hand before my hand and kissed me. My palms were splayed across his cheeks, my lips open against his, our tongues entangling in the age-old dance of love. I felt his fingers enclosing my breast, my pebbling nipples rubbing against the calloused tips. My blood began to rush frenziedly through my body, heating every organ on the way. All I could think about was his body inside mine. I could feel him engorged against my stomach. My eyes shuttered close as I reached for him. I stripped his pants off with my feet and dragged him hurriedly between my legs … his breathing was hard, his heart almost pumping out of his chest. For one moment he was still and then in one swift and breathtaking stroke, he took me, filling me to the hilt. Again and again until we both shuddered to a climax.

The next day he was gone. And I had come to. There was no nusu nusu. No Kim. Just me. Just me, looking into the horizon, hand over my eyes, shading them from the brilliant glare. The future was bright.

Copyright Julie Masiga

Julie Masiga is magazine journalist who turned to writing after a brief stint in the legal profession. She writes for DRUM Magazine East Africa but has also done freelance work for the Daily Nation’s Saturday Magazine, the Standard Newspaper and Uganda’s African Woman. Julie is a single girl who lives in her family home in Nairobi, Kenya. She turned 30 in November of 2007.