The left hand of dying

Evalyne Muliwa, Kenya

The first time I saw you, death clung to you in a familiar weight like that of a child on its mother’s back. I knew because I recognized the darkness that weighed you down, hunching your shoulders and slowing your strides. I had seen it on so many others before there was no doubt it had seen me too. I knew because your eyes were thirsty, thirsty to not just see but do what other eyes did when death came knocking.

When we sat shoulders touching outside the café with the masala fries you told me were your favourite, you spoke but your words did not make sense. So you sang a song instead, wailing that; 

‘with furrowed brows and twisted necks, death has come for the union of three, tearing the trinity asunder, he has killed the boy and left the god. And now he has seen me.’

I watched as you fiddled with your fingers, looking every bit the child I knew you were. Have you tried asking my brother? I asked and you stared at your feet and silently whispered, ‘he’s a man, I don’t think he would understand.’ The truth is I felt sorry for you in that moment. I may even have considered helping you but the darkness in you was too strong, it overwhelmed my sense of reason and called me to play.

How did it happen? I asked. It wouldn’t hurt to know. And again you lamented;

‘My mother was drunk the first time death came for me, wasted on blood and pain and cheap liquor as death pulled me from the folds of her womb legs first. He watched as she fed me from her bottle, her streams of spring eternally dry.’

And that was how he marked you and latched onto your being, his pungent claws digging into your breasts. He saw you and now he wanted you.

When it rained, I got up to leave but you held on tightly to my feet. Washed them with your pity like one of the trinity had done to his flock and begged me to help. A child, I had to remind myself that was what you were and so I refused, but the fear in your eyes mocked me and I agreed to play.

I asked you to meet me outside my hostel at the university. It continued to rain, dark clouds repainted the sky a fragrant grey and I looked up to the skies and let the rain caress my face.

‘Will you come meet my friends first, they would also agree if you do.’

I refused. If you knew the truth, you would not have let me near them, and they would not let me near you. If you knew that I was of many faces, many bodies, many beings, you would not have shown up an hour early in that red dress with the low cut cleavage that drew my eyes to your chest all night.

You were trying to seduce me you said. 

I watched as your face split into a content joy when I whispered into the unholy night, 

it’s working. 

*

Neon lights splintered across the city as we walked shoulder to shoulder, steps matching, past fatherless children with missing mothers, lovers kneeling behind broken window shrines necks twisted back to keep sight of a fleeting young hood.

You didn’t know, or maybe you didn’t let on that you did but I had prepared myself for the occasion, my skin scented with rose petals, my eyes marked dipped in seduction and all for you.

The streets were cold and crowded as we moved in incongruent patterns, avoiding potholes grey with sewage, cracks on cobalt pathways and other imperfections that made the city whole.

I pushed you along, past preachers with honey and silk tongues, hawkers with second hand collections of belly button rings and silver tainted pearls and children begging on the roads hanging onto our clothes and chanting; aunty saidia, aunty saidia. You watched them with pity and finally gave in and dropped five shilling coins in their cups.

Your eyes caught the refractions of stray neon rays and they glowed with a new found life. I had to get you away from all that light. It was keeping away the dark, the weight on your shoulders that drew me to you.

When I brought you to your favourite restaurant on lover's lane,  you talked about Osman and all the others, You swore on your mother's grave that that none of them mattered, unaware that all that did not bother me, that from the moment we laid eyes on each other, nothing would keep me from you.

We talked about your father and how your mother had developed a habit after his death. When she finally met him at the bottom of a bottle, you found yourself alone, except for death's shadow that followed you everywhere.

You ordered a Fanta orange, and as the light from the chandelier above us glistened on the orange drink imitating a sunset across the ocean, I was again reminded of the child that you were, in comparison to the many breathings I had gone through, the countless skins I had hanging on my bathroom mirror.

So I ordered you a shot of whisky instead and watched you battle with yourself about taking that jump into the dark unknown like your mother. I smiled when you downed the drink and ordered you another.

You talked about your need to find a semblance of sanity in the darkest pits of different lovers and I lied as I stroked your hand and told you everything would be alright. You fascinated me, with your ability to feel so deeply, to go through life scars bared unlike most people.

I went back in my mind to the first time I saw you at the support group for suicide survivors and the way you talked about life, about your diminished desire to live and the overwhelming urge to watch your life slowly melt to the dust that followed you since you were a child.

You don't know, but I had followed you for days before that night, learning the things you liked, the things you disliked and those you had no space for in your mind, moulding my existence to take the shape of the skin you would be most be attracted to.

There was a lot you didn't know. A lot I had chosen not to tell you because the less you knew the quicker everything would happen.

                              *
Why I'm thinking of you now as I sit by the window of another's room, smoking a cigar as I watch the neon lights is a mystery to me, for every past breathing I went through I spat into the deepest confines of my mind where I could never reach.

Still, I find myself drowning in thoughts of you and the ride in the elevator as I took you to the hotel room at the top of the devil's tower, watching the surface people shrink to obscure nothings below us.

'Look at them,' you said, wrapping your arms around yourself to keep off the cold. Oblivious puppets in a game of life or death. I'm lucky I know he's coming after me. I've learned to live in the constraints of his shadow, but they have no idea. I suppose that makes me a puppet too.'

You don't know but in my silence, I felt something I had not experienced in a long time. Guilt, for having dragged everything out this long, for having let you have a taste of what the other side was like. She would not be happy With me.

I remember that you stumbled through the hallway, shedding your clothes and inhibitions and I followed behind you picking them up and folding them gently for you.

When we entered the white stained room with ceiling to floor windows like you liked, a single bed cutting the space in half, I played your favourite song and you moved with a callous rhythm, hypnotizing like a snake charmer.

The death charmer, that's what I called you in that moment, as you danced around the room, bouncing from foot to foot, falling on the bed with a laugh. I didn't drink but I made sure your glass overflowed. It would make everything easier.

As I watched you from the edge, you took my hand and pulled me down beside you, and when your hands made it to my folds, I stopped you, pushing you away.

Why? You questioned, hurt crawling all over your face. You want me, I felt it.

Our bodies can wait, I told you. Tonight is about souls and breath.

Life and death.

The truth is I didn't want you to feel my desire, to know that I wanted this even more than you did. The ritual turned me on and I hated it.

When you stood before the mirror and wept, skin adorned with scars from where you cut the pieces of you you felt did not belong on your body, I felt my resolve weaken. And when you turned to me and asked if I thought you were beautiful - everyone was always fussing over your sister June- if there were any parts of you left worth loving, I turned you from your reflection and chewed away at your imperfections, your stomach masking my face from the view outside, desperate hands digging into my shoulders.

It took you a while, I remember, to see past the facade of sandal wood scented candles and jasmine fresh bath bombs, the sweet sting of release; pink river flowing with honey nectar on my tongue, to the devil behind the angel, the devourer of the trinity. 

I was honestly disappointed it took you so long to recognize me seeing as I had brought you to the living and their lungs, and stood by you from when you were young.

I can still feel it now, the fear as I carried you to the bath, when I lay you down in a sea of rose seeds and wailing water.

‘Why?’ You wanted to know, just as others before had.

‘Why the deception?’

‘Did you come to love me?’ I asked, my hand on your cheek like an ember. ‘Did you feel safe with me? Want me to stay with you forever, to take you in my bed just now? You said it yourself, I understood. You had to believe that I did or you would never have let me in.’

I saw it, the moment you saw me for who I was, when your eyes darkened with recognition and shouted ; welcome home. And when you tried to speak, your words did not make sense, so you sang instead;

‘The son of man is no longer man, death has killed the flesh and left the god. And now he has me.’

‘I ran from you for so long, I should have known you would find a way to catch up with me,’ you whispered.

There was more, more you wanted to say to me that I will never know, but I had to get it done.

I can still feel the struggle as I held you under the water, the pain from the scars you painted on my arms and face as you fought it and I tried to tell you to relax, that it would be over quicker if you let it happen.

You had called to me so many times, teased me with false hope and now that I was here, why were you fighting me so hard? As I breathed in all the life you had for myself, I thought I saw a hint of relief on your face, relief that finally it was over and your eyes could quench their hunger and finally close.

When it was done, I dragged a chair to the window and watched the city devour itself for the night. A wet release coated my hips and I felt tarnished, unclean. When I saw you drift so peacefully, I fell to my knees and for the first time in centuries, I cried.

When my sister showed up at the door, brimming with life, she tried to comfort me even though she knew nothing about what it felt like to take from your kind. All she did was give, nothing hard with that, but to don these different faces, these different lives, sometimes hers, she knew nothing about having to end them, others painfully, others tragically.

Watching the one that came after you, body swaying from the ceiling where I laboured to hoist him, I think of you, and I fight back the tears.

When life enters the room, she can tell that the job is beginning to take its toll. She takes me by the hand and as we walk around neon city, she says to me;

 ‘A new one has just been born. Would you like to bet if he's mine or yours?’ 

Evalyne Muliwa, simply Known as Eva to her friends is a psychology graduate from Kenyatta university. She enjoys showing the diversity of African stories in her writing. When she is not hunched over a book or typing away at her keyboard, she can be found cruising through the shelves at a book store.