Foreign, A Sequel

Sometimes I get into my email and I find dust has found a home there. Other times I find M-Pesa codes. Thanks to everyone who has bought and is in the process of buying the book, I don’t think I will get used to those M-Pesa messages. Thanks to the great reviews you guys are leaving on kisauti.com/ebook, you guys are jewels. A few guys have asked for a sequel, it’s on the burner but it requires a bit of research so it will take a while. Other times I get there and find an email from a reader looking to be a guest writer. I wrote a piece sometimes back titled “Foreign,” find it here. I didn’t finish it and I called upon you guys to do it for me. Well, I got into my email last month and one of you had finished it.

The email…

I read your piece, “Foreign” a while back and I wrote something. I wasn’t going to send it to you, or anyone else for that matter. However, I have experienced a change of heart. I hope you like the piece. If you decide to run with it, please don’t include my official name. I decided to adopt the pen name—Montie so maybe let’s run with that.

The piece had nuggets of gold in it but it required a bit of polishing up. We exchanged a few emails and cleaned it up and afterwards it read like an emerald. I asked the writer if they still wanted to run it with a pen name and the writer still had the same reservations. I told the writer if they put work into their writing and get better, they won’t want to be anonymous.

The writer lives in Nairobi, likes strawberry over vanilla and didn’t want me to use a pronoun that would give away their gender.

Guys, meet Montie—Montie, meet the guys.

Muthoni will lie in bed at night and wonder whether he is in love with her, on account of the child that lies deep in her belly. She knows that he doesn’t love her like she does. It bothers her how he rented her an apartment and only comes to visit once in a while like she’s some dirty little secret. She was vulnerable in the beginning, desperate for something to finally go well; it did but now everything seems to be falling apart. He makes a mess. She cleans it up. She needs. He provides. Is it okay? Is she okay? Will it last? She grabs her. It is primal. She doesn’t know if she likes it anymore.

The baby bump questions keep coming. Liz brings it up when they’re strolling in the mall. Samuel likes her sexy, even with her baby bump, and they’re looking for lingerie. “Has he agreed to take care of the baby?” Liz asks concerned. Muthoni keeps her eyes fixed to the floor and replies in a calm measured tone, “He hasn’t said anything but I will take care of it if he doesn’t want too.” Liz nods, almost too quickly, but says nothing. She knows that it is a rehearsed phrase. Of course she wants him to take care of it, she wants a family; it’s the one thing she sung about the whole time they were in campus.

Samuel has started pulling away, he will touch her almost as if he wished he was touching someone else. He has stopped eyeing her with dripping lust like he used to. Tris and Liz will come to visit and he will look at them as if there is something he is missing. She has tried to find out how she can keep him happy and get him to stay. She bought cooking magazines and learnt how to bake croissants, enrolled for French classes at Alliance Francaise. She even went on Google and punched in, “How to tighten your vagina walls.” But none of it worked.

“Is he cheating? Isn’t that obvious? Does she have bronze skin too? Does she have bigger tits than mine? Does she rub his feet and clean up after him like I do?” She is aware of how insecure and ridiculous she sounds but she confronts him anyway. His reaction shocks her. His muscles relax and he lets out a deep breath. His tense face breaks into a smile, “Come on honey, you know you’re the only one for me.”

She’s in a skimpy lace dress, just how he likes her. He grabs her and bends her on the leather sofa. His fingers unclip her bra and her heavy tits spill out. He breathes heavily, in and out of her and calls out a name, it’s not hers. She freezes and pushes him out of her but he pushes her back down and rams in and out of her some more. His face gets twisted. His breathing becomes ragged. His fingers dig deep into her shoulders. He orgasms then says, “I don’t owe you anyzing, I gave you a life that waz bigger than your dreamz!” He bangs the door behind him and the sound shatters her silver carriage into a pumpkin.

Her blood pressure rises. The headaches start, her appetite weans. She wonders what will become of her child, what will become of them. She can’t sleep even though fatigue plagues her. She gets out of bed to get a snack. Her vision blurs and it causes her to trip down the stairs. She attempts to wake up but falls down, weak and pale, the wind knocked out of her. She’s unfeeling but regains her strength after a while and calls a taxi.

She sits on the hospital bed with a concussion and bruised arms. She stares at the ceiling, it stares back at her. The nurse tells her that she has lost her baby. She wonders whether to grieve for it. She looks at the tattoo of Samuel she has on her wrist and craves for him like an addiction. This is not the life she wants to live. She deserves better. She’s fallen for a man she cannot have, lost a child that she wasn’t sure she could have raised and lived a life that her parents wouldn’t approve.

The doctor does a few checkups and gives her a prescription. Afterwards, she calls Samuel but his number goes to voicemail. She hails a cab, gets to her apartment, turns the handle on her door and finds him sprawled on the couch watching football.

“I lost the baby.” She hollers, partly because she’s sad and partly because she wants sympathy from him.

He continues eyeballing the TV as if she just told him something mundane, something that does not deserve his attention. She stands in a wreckage, looking at him, then limps to the bedroom, climbs into bed and sleeps her fatigue off.

The days tumble on and her figure returns, her tits bloom back and she turns into a carbon copy of the girl Samuel was attracted to a year back at Best Western’s Level 8. He gives her a look he hasn’t given her in a long time. Like she’s important, as if she holds the air he breathes.

“We should go for a vacation,” he says, a twinkle gleaming in his blue eyes.

“What do you have in mind?” Her cheeks flash red and she giggles like a high school girl.

“Zanzibar then Zeychellez and maybe Robben Island. I want to see your feet in zand and your hair danzing in the wind.”

Her jaws widen into a big toothy smile. She envelops him in a joyful embrace already imagining lying on her back in an idyllic beach watching the sunset and flooding her social media with photos of iced latte’s and bikini shots. “I love you,” she says. He doesn’t say it back, just plants a kiss on her lips and gives her a wad of notes to get something sexy.

They visit the Old Arab Fort in Zanzibar, The President’s Village in Seychelles and Nelson Mandela’s cell in Robben Island.

They get back and he says he is going on a business trip, business trips that he never divulges, and she knows better than to ask him about the clandestine trips. “I will be back in a week,” he says. A week turns into two weeks and two weeks into three. She’s worried sick, she’s been trying his cell but it’s on voicemail. She fires up her social media and stalks his page. She comes across a picture that makes her stomach twist. Samuel is with a lean petite French woman and they are standing next to the Eiffel tower. The caption reads, “I popped the question this morning, she said yes.” She rushes to the washroom nauseated and vomits. She’s pregnant again.

Editor credit: Shiku Ngigi

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