Snuggled in between hundreds of other zinc-iron structures that lean forward like they are about to hug, your dark, dank shack with a lemon-green door is one of the few with a cemented floor. A single bed, a rickety wooden-table, two plastic chairs, a kerosene stove, a wicker-lamp, a charcoal- iron-box and a tattered mattress is all the furniture in it. Lower down, two rows away is a tarred road that leads to the Dandora dumpsite. A couple of times you’d been to the place; a dystopia covered in smoldering garbage. For days after your visit, you were unable to kick off the stench which lingered in your clothes, at the back of your throat and in your mind.

 It’s the biggest dumpsite in East and Central Africa: You’d heard the strange boast of those who lived around; what to you was an eyesore. It was akin to holding out a festering sore and boasting that it was bigger than your neighbor’s.  Yet eyesore or not, the dumpsite was a boon for many. For besides the hogs, dogs, rats-the-size-of -cats, and the marabou stocks all fighting for territory, it was a source of income for the grubby-faced, glue-sniffing teenagers and adults who like fiends, hovered about the site. Not to mention the mothers who sifted through the garbage, unperturbed by the bawling- babies on their backs. And of course there were the vicious gang leaders in the background. You never really got to see them, but everyone knew they are there all the while, watching.

—

At the back of your shack was a single wooden-window overlooking a brick wall with the words – USIKOJOE HAPA, scrawled in huge, unmatched letters. The warning did little to stop drunks from urinating on the wall. Some even defecated on the edge and the smell of feces and urine wafted into your shack. Late at night the filth would attract huge, hairy hogs that let out loud snorts.

Making the best of a horrible situation, you and your sister, Julia had made the wall a source of entertainment and named it – THE WATERING HOLE.  From behind the cracks on the shack’s wooden-window, you watched drunks from the nearby BRILLIANT PUB, stop by to relieve themselves. Like pilgrims, or herders from a long trek, they would unzip their trousers or tug up their skirts to pee. And from behind the window, you and Julia would nudge each other and clamp your palms against your mouths to stifle your giggles. Once when the trousers of one of the men accidentally dropped to his knees, you laughed so loud, tears streamed down your cheeks. 

You even had names for the regulars. The man with trousers a-shade-too-short-and-tight, you’d named, Achwiti. He would often lean forward like the pee was drawing him in, and at times slam his head against the wall. On occasion when he was too drunk to unzip, he did it right inside his trousers. Then there was the huge woman who would hike up her tent-like skirt, squat and let loose with such force, the sound of her pee against the hard ground would reach your ears. Her, you’d named, Water-Tank, because she’d pee endlessly.

—

It’s a Sunday. It’s been drizzling all morning. Your mother is asleep on the only bed in the shack. Julia is curled by your side on the tattered mattress on the floor. The rain’s thrum blends with Julia’s soft snoring. You snuggle up to her warm body. Her pleated hair tickles your face. You drift in and out of sleep. 

Ka, ka, ka, the door’s iron latch suddenly rattles, 

Ka, ka, someone’s knocking.

Ka, ka, ka, ka, the knocking persists. 

“Open the damn door or I’ll kick it in.” You hear Madividi’s hoarse voice outside.

“Wait! I’m still dressing,” your mother shouts. Then she is up. She unlatches the door.  Madividi’s round-frame fills the doorway. The acrid smell of cigarettes fills the shack. 

Julia begins to cough.

“Someone would think my cigarettes are worse than the filthy smell that drifts down from the dumpsite,” Madividi says. He blows out a cloud of smoke. He clears his throat and tucks his shirt in, under his round belly.

“What is it you want, so early in the morning?” Your mother doesn’t bother to mask her irritation. 

“It is already the fifteenth and you are yet to pay the rent.” Madividi eyeballs her.

“I know.”

“Knowing doesn’t help me. I want the rent.”

Your mother’s tone softens, “I’ll pay. I always do.” 

“And when will that be?” Madividi sucks his-lips and slips his hand onto your mother’s backside.

“Don’t be naughty,” your mother wiggles her butt, but makes no effort to pull away. 

“Make sure you pay within a week.” Madividi runs his-tongue against his thick lips, slaps your mother’s backside and stomps off.

“Now don’t you go looking at me like that.” Your mother rolls her eyes at you after Madividi has left. “Unless you want to sleep out in the cold.” 

It isn’t the first time you’ve seen your mother flirting with the landlord. She does it each time the rent is late, so that he doesn’t clamp his huge padlock on the door to the shack. Every time it happens, you wish you had a father to tell the bully-landlord off. You picture your father punching him in the face and breaking his sausage-fingers one after the other. You fantasize Madividi’s fingers snapping like twigs, and your lips curl into a smile.

And talking of fathers, you’ve long stopped lying to your friends at school that your father is on a long safari in a place called Bagamoyo and will return with fancy dresses and lots of goodies for you. Most of your friends no longer bother to hide their laughter when you speak of a father no one has ever seen. When your friend Jeni sneers and accuses you of pulling the name ‘Bagamoyo’ from one of the school history books, you shoot her a, better-mind-your-own- business look, and that shuts her up.

You no longer ask your mother about your father. The last time you asked, you received a sharp slap accompanied with a warning – there are more important things to do than to keep daydreaming about deadbeat fathers. Now you are content with restricting it all to your imagination. You conjure in your head, the kind of father you desire. At times he is a loving father who kisses you on the cheek. Other times he is a strong father who kicks Madividi’s fat-backside and carries you on his back like you’d seen Jeni’s father do to Jeni. And when your mother is mean and nasty, you conjure a monster-of-a-father who screams at her like she screams at you and your sister. 

—

Your mother never talks of the past unless it is to hurt you, and Julia: 

“Yours was the easy birth,” she says in a tone hoarse from drink. “Julia’s was the difficult birth. Her head was positioned all wrong and the midwife had to literally wrest her out of me. It nearly killed me. It’s the reason she never turned out right,” she says in Julia’s presence, as though your sister has no feelings. 

Julia blinks back the tears that well her eyes. 

“You know you have your father’s eyes.” Your mother says. “And his stubbornness too,” she adds and you look at her in anticipation, hoping she’ll say more. And though she knows you are dying to hear more about your father, she drifts into silence. She throws a shawl over her shoulder and leaves. Long after she is gone, you stand before a mirror, stare at the face that stares back at you, and imagine it is your father’s eyes you were staring into.   

—                  

“Men are dogs! Only difference is you can trust a dog,” your mother says. Which is strange because the very same night she brings a man back with her to the shack. A man who makes her moan and her bed creak, all night. In the morning she looks straight into your eyes and asks, “What? Now you want to teach me what I can and can’t do in my own house? If you don’t like it, you can move out.”

The men your mother brings back home are dirty and not much to look at. They beat her and treat her like dirt. They even steal from her. Still, she makes you and Julia call them ‘Uncle’. You’ve long stopped caring how they treat her, as long as they stay away from you and your sister. 

One rainy night your mother shows up with a skinny guy with dreadlocks. He looks almost half her age and has his trousers sagging halfway down his butt. Even in the low glow of the kerosene-lamp you can see the brand name BOSS on the band of his boxer shorts. He whispers to her in sheng and you are certain she doesn’t understand him. That night your mother’s moaning rises to levels you’d never heard before: “Ahhh! Jobo, you are killing me,” she cries throughout the night and Julia’s chest heaves like she is about to speak. You press your palm against her mouth. 

Jobo becomes a regular in the shack. Cheeks permanently swollen with khat, his eyes constantly rove over Julia’s body and that troubles you. That Julia shoots back coy-smiles and giggles back, has you panicking. If only your mother could see what’s going on. But you know she can’t. She won’t. And even if you told her, she’d probably blame it on Julia. So, you stay mum but try to ensure your sister is never alone with Jobo, which is really a tall order. And just when you think the worst is past, because Jobo’s eyes no longer linger over Julia and your sister no longer throws him coy looks, she starts to throw up in the morning.

Malaria, you think at first. What, with the rain, mosquitos and all. But when Julia’s morning nausea persists, you think the worst and you are right. Soon your mother too, notices. And, even though it’s obvious the culprit shares her bed, she vents her anger on you and Julia. 

“I always knew you were a slut,” she accuses Julia.  

If she is one, she probably learnt it from you, you want to shout, but your mother storms out and slams the door behind her. You fight the urge to scream at Julia. Instead, you wrap your arm around her shoulder, draw her close and whisper, “All will be well,” even though you know it can never be well. You rub your hand against her back and the two of you cry. You use the sleeve of your blouse to wipe your sister’s tears.

—

 “Here is some money, Supa. Could you go to Njoroge’s butchery and get us a kilo of meat,” your mother tells you one morning, and your thoughts are racing. Why now? What’s she up to? She never gives you any money for food. You take stuff on credit from Otuoma’s kiosk most of the time. Other times, you just pinch money from her purse when she’s too drunk to notice.

Why the sudden change?

Still, you take the money, rush off to Njoroge’s and in no time you are back with the meat wrapped in used newspaper. Only to find Julia and your mother gone. It seems the meat-buying-errand was a ploy, to get you out of the way.

 But to what end?  

For hours you await the knock that will announce your mother and sister’s return. You busy yourself with preparing a meal. When dusk’s gray gloom starts to smother the sun’s rays and the noise of activity outside peters, and the two are not back, your apprehension builds to a panic. Finally exhausted, you curl up on the floor and doze off.

Late at night there is loud banging on the door.  You scramble up to unlatch it. Your mother stumbles in alone with Julia’s yellow sweater in her hand.  

“Where is Julia?” You ask but your mother just stares. “My sister. Where is my sister?” Your words come out hoarse and your mother bursts into tears. You let out a scream and then you are punching out, scratching and slapping out before the shack’s gray, cement floor rushes up at you and there is a sharp pain against your forehead, then nothing. 

Neighbors walk in wearing long faces. “Poor child,” someone whispers as a hand runs over your head. To your mother, another says, “You should have let Julia have the baby. But now that it has happened, pull yourself together, if only for Supa’s sake.” 

The days and nights that follow are pregnant with questions. Like restless ghouls they flap about the shack’s dim-lit interior begging for answers that are never forthcoming.      

Raindrops thrum against the umbrella you share with your mother at the Langata Cemetery. You peer at the glass pane at the head of Julia’s box. It has steamed up like she is breathing from under it. How alive she looks in her white lace dress, the only giveaway, the cotton wool sticking out from her nose. 

Two men lower Julia’s box into a gaping hole. 

 Dust to dust a priest intones and tosses a handful of soil into the hole. Then the unending, raap, raap, raap of soil against wood follows. A mound of red soil sprouts on the spot that has swallowed your sister’s box.

—

For months after Julia’s burial your mother stays off the drink. You watch her fumble with the kerosene stove as she cooks supper. 

“You need to eat something, Supa,” she urges and often you ignore her.

It doesn’t surprise you when your mother starts to drink again, once a week at first, then twice. Soon enough she settles into her daily-drinking-routine and begins to return to the shack late and drunk. The only consolation is she no longer brings men back with her. 

But for how long?

—

It’s a Saturday. The NGO people have been around all afternoon, distributing mosquito nets, condoms and for the kids, packs of plumpy-nut. It’s late and your mother is asleep. Sometime, past midnight, she sneaks out of bed, and unlatches the door to let someone in. Even in pitch darkness, you can tell it’s him. The smell of khat, tropical-mint, alcohol and cigarettes only goes to confirm it. 

How could she?  Your eyes tear over your mother’s betrayal. You pull the blanket tight around your head as the sounds of moaning fill the shack. You press your palms against your ears and will yourself to another place but the sound finds cracks in your armor and fills your head.  

You cry yourself back to sleep.

You awaken to a warm presence pressed against your body. Probably Julia, snuggling up to you, you think. 

But wait a minute! Julia is no more. The realization that it can’t possibly be your sister hits you simultaneously with the stench of alcohol, mint and cigarettes so close. It can only be that monster.

You roll off the mattress, struggle to your feet and back on your knees groping for anything to protect yourself. You are almost giving up when you hand wraps around something hard. You swing out into the dark, again and again until you connect and there is a sharp scream. You hit out again and again before the glow of the kerosene lamp flickers and throws out eerie shadows against the shack’s walls. And it’s then that you see Jobo’s naked body prostrate on the floor.

 Your mother snatches the charcoal-iron-box from your trembling-hand.

It drips with blood.

“You didn’t do it, Supa, you didn’t. It’s me that’s done it.  Me. Do you hear? Anybody asks, say it’s me who did it.” Your mother’s razor-sharp scream cuts through the air and there is terror in her fevered- eyes as she brings down the iron box hard against the body on the floor. 

Karck.

It does not move.

Karck.

Still as a stone, the body stays. 

Up, down, up, down. Again and again, she swings and the sickening thud of iron against flesh and bone, melds with her screams. She does not stop until you pull her away and into your embrace. 

“Go on and remove that dress,” she snarls, and, for the first time, you notice splotches of blood on your favorite green rayondress. 

“You didn’t kill him. I killed him. Always remember that,” your mother says, using the back of her hand to wipe her sweat-soaked face, leaving a crimson trail on her forehead.

About the Author:

Patrick Ochieng is a Kenyan based writer and lawyer who resides in Kisumu, on the shores of what the locals call Nam Lolwe, and the rest of the world, Lake Victoria. His middle grade novel, Playing a Dangerous Game, was published by Norton Young Readers in 2021 and is a Junior Library Guild gold standard selection. He has a forthcoming YA novel, to be translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil. Patrick’s short stories have appeared in, Munyori Lit Journal, Kikwetu Journal, The Shallow Tales Review, Brittle Paper and other publications. He was
shortlisted for the Golden Baobab writing prize 2010 and the NALIF short story writing prize 2017. He was longlisted for the Syncity NG 2018 Anniversary Anthology Prize and the Short Story Is Dead Long Live the Short Story anthology 2018. Patrick can be found on the following platforms: Facebook-P Ochieng Ochieng, X- @ptrckochieng, Instagram-pochiengochieng, blog- ptrckochieng.wordpress.com

*Feature image by Aurel Cham from Pixabay