In the Quiet

By Dora Okeyo

There are things no one tells you, these are the kind of things that come your way; like a thought, an event, a betrayal, a misconception.

If you would have told this to Ems, Becky, Lorna, Maggie as they were living their lives in different cities in Kenya, that some events would lead them on the same journey, they would have thought you were insane.

Sometimes, the truth lurks in the quiet...these women find out how.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dora Okeyo
• Release date: Nov 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393535669

Dora Okeyo

Dora is a Kenyan Writer. She is currently wandering along the shores of Lake Victoria.

Book preview

DEDICATION

To Hellen and Cecilia

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To speak about certain pains is also to remember them. And in the act of remembering we are called to relive, to know again much that we would suppress and forget.

Bell Hooks, Sisters of the Yam

Ems

THERE ARE THINGS NO one tells you, like why your husband decides to kill himself by falling to his death from his office building.

How you become the devil incarnate because of the stress you made him go through while at home.

You made it unbearable for him to have the peace of mind he needed.

How is it that he dies at work but the police put the handcuffs on you miles away from him at home? You want to ask how they boarded three matatus to get to you keen on escorting you to the police station to write a statement. What do you say? He left for work like he usually does. The sisters, aunts and it’s always the aunts- the one who never knew you, who say that you killed their son. You kept him away from the folks in the village. You probably wanted so much that he broke his back to give it to you.

So, when you close your eyes, you think of everything about him, how is it that with metal bars and heckling women around you, you close your eyes and for the love of heaven you can think with such clarity? You see his brown calm eyes, hear his subtle timbre voice telling you he’d be home late because he’s got a project to wrap up at work. You see him walk out of the house at 6:10am. You know because he’s got to drive away before 6:30am and the kids are still sleeping, you never want to wake them up- but you see, Junior, watching his Dad by the window. He waves at him and your husband waves back. They do this every day. You know it so well that when he’s out of the house you look at the window waiting to see Junior wave and smile at him, and he always smiles at his son but never at you.

Even more than that, no one tells you that your friends whom you confided in years ago about the late night calls, bursts of anger, trips to Mombasa and the STI...eh, how do you say all this?

There are things you see and choose to look the other way because if you dwell on them long enough, they come back to haunt you.

Greg was created in the depths of honey. He oozed charm even in his sleep and I may have wanted to prove to myself that I could stay long enough, but now that he’s gone, I cannot begin to comprehend why.

My advice to anyone who is willing to listen is this; do not take his name, like any contract, this one called ‘marriage’ binds you to whatever demons he’s got and trust me baby girl, you ain’t seen demons in your single life akin to the ones you will encounter when you are betrothed. Don’t stay hitched, not when you can sleep soundly and pursue your dreams on your own.

I called in my sister and brother who stayed with the kids for the two nights they held me in interrogation. On the third day, my younger sister brought Tasha, to the police station, she wanted to see me and when the OCS learned that I was breastfeeding he demanded that they release me and monitor my movements until the investigation came to a close.

Two nights in police custody and every one of them telling me you will tell us what killed your husband, and a part of me answering his own will, being careful not to utter words that could lead me to my death.

I was raised in a structured home. My brothers, Benjamin and Ibrahim, would always say that our family was like stairs, you could not climb one without stepping on another.

I had only one sister, Rebecca, or as we loved to call her Isaka Two, sometimes Chi Isaka and where everyone went North, Rebecca traveled outside the command of the compass. It did not help that we were the epitome of truth, a mirror family for the world to behold because our beloved Father was God’s servant, Reverend Jonah Owino.

If you ask me I think Rebecca got his spirit but not his discipline. I do not know what I got or from whom I got it, but my ears function as swiftly as my eyes, it’s my brain that’s the tortoise in this partnership. The other person in this dynamic is our mother, the Head Nurse, or as Ibrahim rightfully calls her Chief Mid-wife. There are things our brothers get away with and some things we get crucified for but all in all, there has