Eliza was holding the baby. Our little baby brother, Gift. He was fast asleep, wrapped up in the quilted yellow shawl that mum bought the day before she went into hospital. We were sitting on a wooden bench, outside the cashier’s office, near the maternity ward. I was picking the peeling varnish on the bench. It was coming off under my nails, big bits of varnish, small bits too. We needed to pay the hospital bill. The cashier was nowhere to be seen. A fading poster of a mother and baby sleeping under a triangular net was on the wall. A giant-sized mosquito with a bold red cross over it was hovering over the sleeping baby. STOP MALARIA! the poster screamed at us. There was a hand written sign. ‘Gone for Lunch’ with a smiley face. There was nothing smiley about Eliza’s face. Or mine. Or Gift’s. We just wanted to pay and leave this place. I had mum’s handbag. There wasn’t much inside. She always told me to travel light and tread softly in this world. There was her red, pink and orange dera dress; so soft to touch, perfectly ironed and folded; her toothbrush and a small pot of shea butter, scented with eucalyptus. I twisted the top off the pot. I took a deep breath in to smell the eucalyptus; the smell of my mum.
We didn’t talk to each other on the walk home. Eliza carried Gift and walked ahead. The first bit of the sandy path was lined with small, makeshift wooden stalls selling fruits, glucose, sugary drinks and half cakes. We branched up the steep road where the carpenters make coffins. Black ones, brown ones, white ones; small ones, big ones. One was open and the carpenter was lining it with shiny, maroon material. My eyes stung.
I’d thought it was useful that we lived so close to the hospital, when mum was pregnant. We’d rushed mum there, screaming from here to Mombasa in Kennedy’s brother’s tuk-tuk in the middle of the night. It felt like the hospital had sucked her in – and decided not to give her back. We got a brother – Gift – instead. A part of me wished the hospital had kept him and given us my mum back. That would have been better for all of us.
I didn’t want to see anyone. I kept my head down. My legs felt disobedient, like they didn’t want to take any steps and I was having to pull them home. I trudged up our concrete stairs. I looked up and saw the message I’d written in chalk on our wooden door when we’d left for the hospital. My tummy had been fluttering and I’d been so excited about my mum having a baby. I’d scrawled ‘Welcome Home Mum and …….’ I pulled mum’s dress out of her bag and used it to rub the words off.
“Stop messing about. Just open the door, you idiot,” said Eliza. I got my key out of my jeans pocket. The door swung open into our dark sitting room. Eliza went first and laid Gift on our sagging green sofa. She unlocked her bedroom door and disappeared into her room. I pulled the net curtain across the doorway behind us. I wanted air, but no light. There was still a slither of sunlight coming through between the curtain and the door frame. It cut across Gift’s sleeping face. I moved him, carefully, so the bright line of sun left him alone. I sat down. He was tiny. Silent. Not quite silent. I could just make out his breath. In, out, in, out. I tried to breath in time with his breaths. One minute he was breathing short and shallow and the next they were long and deep. Every now and again it seemed like he’d stopped. And then I’d hear a little whimper and he’d start up again. I closed my eyes, my head rested on the back of the sofa. I could hear the whir of Eliza’s hair dryer from her room and the faint sound of an American accent. She must have been watching another hair video on her phone.
Gift was stirring. His eyes were all scrunched and he was starting to cry, a very soft, whingey cry. I called to Eliza. She came out of her room. She was wearing a new weave. It was bright blue. The hair was straight, long at the front and short at the back. Blue all over. The fringe covered one of her eyes. Her make up under the eye I could see was smudged.
“Have you been crying?” I asked her.
“Of course not,” she said, wiping her cheek with her hand. Her pointed fake nails matched her hair, with an added hint of glitter. She’s changed into a short tube skirt that was hugging the curves of her hips. It was also bright blue. Her egg-yellow crop-top strained to contain her chest. She was holding her strappy orange sandals with the wedge heels.
“It looks like he’s waking up.”
“Yes,” she replied.
“What should we do now?”
“I’ve no idea,” she said. “I’m going downstairs to open the salon.”
