The Elephant and the Cat
I don’t have books but I do have time to read.
He has work and lots of money. I’ve explored everything and yet I’m here to experience the toils on his back. He has to work. I don’t. I’m given in my sleep — long stories, that is.
My phone had died and the only book in my bag was the Holy Bible.
Genesis 1:12 — “And the earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.”
Yvi started reading the Bible.
There was a short blackout on the 12th floor. Sam was going to back up his work and go kill his boredom online, on his phone. Somewhere with Msupa S or Abado Jack. They are fun.
Genesis 2:12 — “And the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and the onyx stone.”
There was onyx in Australia. Edel was on a treasure hunt. She was camping close. I enjoyed looking at her interior designs on Facebook, and the work looked exactly like the beautiful pictures I like in magazine and style catalogues. Edel had said yes — she would definitely be one of the bridesmaids. It didn’t matter if she was far away. Juma would.
Genesis 3:12 — “And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.”
Adam was playing blame games. Sharing had gotten Eve into trouble with the Lord God. If Adam was going to play blame game, Eve would eventually be selfish. We all are.
Every day, like every other man, I take a minute to fear women.
Genesis 4:12 — “When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.”
Farming was a mental sport.
Genesis 5:12 — “And Cainam lived seventy years, and begat Mahalaleel.”
Lel was my first boyfriend. I had liked him way before Campus. His name was short, with few letters — just as mine.
Genesis 6:12 — “And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.”
We will all die. The flesh will die.
Genesis 7:12 — “And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.”
Thunder and lightning. That would be Zeus.
Genesis 8:12 — “And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him anymore.”
The dove had found a better place to live. Like married women that disappeared from home.
Genesis 9:12 — “And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations.”
Rainbows had become rainbow monkeys and now a whole community with civilized rights.
Genesis 10:12 — “And Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city.”
Genesis 11:12 — “And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah.”
It was normal to give birth at thirty-five.
Genesis 12:12 — “Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive.”
Long pages. No pictures of the Christian stories. Pretending to be something you are not is an exhausting character. I would — if it was a screenplay. But in Gotham, Nairobi and the hub, Batman had art of mine with hidden codes in his dungeon.
Where could he have hidden it? I kept wondering.
The promise land was somewhere on earth. The garden of Eden was presumed to be in Africa. But after the second creation from Mount Ararat — whose Noah’s ark is till Sacred — humankind sprout out again. From Noah and his sons and their wives.
The Caucasians.
Sam had turned his chair. He was busy on his phone, laughing alone. He was on social media, scrolling through posts to pass time. He was not wearing his black shirt. Multi-colored polka socks, his feet rested on the cold white tiles. His left arm was inside his black shorts, his big torso springing on his back. His beard was dense and his glasses were different.
It was almost lunchtime.
I wanted steak — but they did not deliver nice steak as they served in restaurants.
For three years, I was going to stay out of attention. Stepping out would be looking for attention. He was not looking for problems.
There was coffee in the fridge and I hadn’t had my sandwich yet.
While Sam is still beaten as to why I’m there to begin with — worried that my dad was going to look for me and my phone dead — trying to sneak gifts. In his mind, he was just hosting me as a refugee in his house.
I was trying to avoid any serious conversation, any intimate socialization. But now my phone is dead. I cannot pretend that I’m busy on my phone. And definitely not ask for the new one.
A new one had just been delivered. Sam now has two phones. If one bored him, he would take the other.
And because I have nothing to do with a dead phone — I’m watching Sam scroll through his big screens. And when he is away, I have nothing but snoop around his home.
The TV is not as interesting. He put a password on his account. YouTube sucks but Apple Music works just fine. The house cleaning is done and gone.
He notices the pin I had put on his plate. He wanted to know where it came from.
“From the drawers,” I replied. “The one in the store room.”
He took a minute to process what else were in the drawers and continued scrolling through his big screens.
I did not want to talk. I was quite upset. And the trip that was supposed to relax me had upset me altogether.
He knew why I was upset. I was upset that maybe he did not know why I was upset. He was supposed to be able to travel through the universe and read minds. My mind. He was trying.
He did better than any man I knew.
Better than you.
Everyone knows he has money. I know he has financial freedom with good credit review. He has money because he is smart — a genie. He knows it too.
He so often wants to share. But he doesn’t want to feel like splurging on me. So we play a little mental game where I ask for things and give valid reasons why I like them, and he gauges the benefits, then gives them to me, if he could.
Most of the time he doesn’t. I am always asking for silly things.
He often had everything I needed. Last I checked, he also had the same psycho-prescription as I did — self-prescribed, as always. Notebooks too. I looked pretty in his clothes too. I loved the smell of his mother.
I did TikTok from his bedroom and jammed his private network.
Updating my data and backing up my data at my boyfriend’s apartment — on his private network — also means sharing all the contents of my phone with him.
It is a risk I take.
He has the time to watch, even if it takes a year. He has blocked me at the moment. He is distraught with me. I deserve it. He pretends I cannot see his digital prints, but the idea alone had a grave meaning — that I lost access altogether to him.
Such a grumpy baby. Such an elephant. He was going private and big.
He moves, and he moves massively. Which means I could always retrace his steps slowly — like a wild cat in the Jungle, a lost cat, Yvi in Lala-land.
I had eyes on what he was keeping watch on. We shared the same view on a woman in his life.
I have my eyes on her because her well-being directly affects his well-being. I have my eyes on her just as he has eyes on my people — my friends. He knew a few.
We cannot hide our passion and desires from the digital world.
If J were not going to be my boyfriend, Fyodor Dostoevsky would. He was dead.
Dead men were a delight to their women. We always knew where our men were. We were least worried.
Mine was always complaining about his liver, his wickedness. I did not mind curing mine either. Everyone knew about my wickedness. But still, I would not see the doctor, Daktari.
I would try as much to avoid prisons and mental state hospitals altogether. But I have experience with both.
I knew my way around the people in blue. And Steve was walking proof that the institutions weren’t as bad. He even made friends who were still his friends. He was doing well in the social world — far, much better than I.
In the real world, he was G.O.A.T. In the blockchain, I was Queen.
We often hated each other’s prowess, for it was precisely what we lacked and liked in each other. Working together was our best shot.
Steve likes books. He stopped sharing his books when I failed to finish Dunes and another creepy, boring, sad story.
It was impossible, though, to continue reading the book while Sam Guy watched the screenplay in my presence. I preferred the Tom and Jerry movie. But Sam Guy never got it.
It was simpler for my mind. My mind was already in chaos.
I needed to see a doctor. Three, I was told:
- A physician to check all my body organs, like Sam’s frequent medical checkups.
- A therapist to listen to my long stories, or keep quiet and let me be for most days.
- A neurologist to draw human conclusions about why I behaved like I did — an analysis that will make the world more accepting of me.
We will all die.
So, I choose not to see any.
Last time I was in hospital I almost died. No one knew why. The physicians were going to watch.
I like to stay alive. Life is good. My home was far much better. Mama served me on her nice ceramic plates. My uncles were warmer. More of my people were welcoming.
I wanted to live more. Life was worth living.
I also wanted to show my boyfriend, Sam Guy — and I could do it. I was not as big as an elephant, but I was as great as one of the big five. Indigenous like the cats of Savannah.
Cats live long.
From the sleeping Yvi in Lala’s lands, Atoto Atori had woken up long.
He could not avoid the scrutiny of my eagle eyes.
Looking. Listening. Learning.
He needed to move. He was tremendous in my mind. Massive as the elephant in Tokyo.
I was experiencing his city life. Nairobi city. The Gotham. A city that was once in the sun but is now an icy world full of toys and humans to get by.
I was grateful to be home and alive with a boyfriend who did not bother me.
One of his problems was that the house on the 12th floor needed to be more significant. It was. Smaller than his previous apartment.
He was either going broke, was kicked out, or was waiting on a new property to be completed — and that place was somewhere he had to pass the time from.
The house was high in the sky, with fewer rooms. We spent our days watching each other.
I had found the man that I wanted — but something was amiss. Not really. Something was exactly like how I had imagined it to be.
As soon as Sam walked out of the door, I started my forensics.
He had a doorbell. All strangers needed to announce their arrival. He had moved from his private office to the open space between the kitchen and the living area.
Whatever he was going to do was under the scrutiny of my keen eyes.
Sam had a complete collection of Adidas and Nike custom designs. He had been travelling, somewhere in the mid-continent. He hated it here — back in Nairobi — but he was more positive about the future.
He had seen the world, been with people. He was an inspired man.
I found him darker and more handsome. He worked out, and his new chair made his work tolerable to his back. He had lost a few pounds. And if power went out — like in the Highrise, a story by J.G. Ballard — he would manage 12 flights of stairs.
He was a fit man, and I had proved his ability to control his breath too.
I was pleased.
However, an angel had left two black nails and broken waist beads on our couch. Someone had been home before my arrival. She didn’t matter anyway. If I could not see her, it was just my imagination.
I picked the nails and put them on the table. Carefully laid her beads above the fridge.
She might need them. Beads are hard to come by.
There was still salt in his house — unopened, right like I had left it. Sam never cooked. No one cooked for Sam Guy. He had food delivered from the best chefs in town. He ran out of tea and sugar, though.
He could stay away as long as he wanted but always came back home.
There was milk in the fridge. Two sandwiches — one for me, and another for his brother.
I didn’t need to cook the groundnuts after all.
I was bothered by the presence of the Gunias in the living area. He was shopping for blankets. He had not only heated up his home — he had blankets to warm everyone up.
“I cannot even do the dishes,” I had complained to Mvua again. As a woman, what was I going to do in his house? There was already someone taking care of his needs.
Her response was one of disgust as opposed to admiration.
“It would make sense if I had an art room or a greenhouse. Instead of plants, he has a block that cleans the air. I’m doing nothing but sleeping there.”
I heard him quickly taking a shower and dressing up. He wore his long pants — which meant he was leaving the house.
I quickly got into my black shorts. The ones that my sister left in the Denri travel bag Sam had bought me. She had called me and asked if I had her pants. They had camouflaged and remained in my bag after she had borrowed it.
I liked them.
Beaulah was surprising me with a gift. It is her love language.
I stepped out of the bedroom, meeting the eyes of the whole family.
A stranger dressed like an angel in the house.
“I want a full house Mvua,” I had insisted. “I can give my all but can he? Money is easy to get by. I want a full house and I do not want to be bothered by how much a spoon costs.”
I wanted it all — like life.
Full of love and laughter. Experiences and adventures that would never end.