I was seated
under a bottlebrush tree that summer noonday. I was enjoying the shade, my own
company and restlessness.
It was around the lunch hour, the time when folks with full wallets march with pride and hunger to food courts, while those without a pence content themselves with air burgers and fabulous food fancies.
I did not belong with the first group. Otherwise why would I be fastened on this bench?
The interview had been brief and tense, somewhat. Questions had flown quick and tough. So many. How I had responded to them, whether I scored or not, what the interviewing panel the deuce thought of me, I could not in the least conjecture. Except that I do not remember once stopping. I had rippled on and on during the entire quarter-hour session.
For this job interview, which was in fact a godsend, I had prepared for three weeks. I had been jobless for half a year now, all which period I had operated on a shoestring. My financial state had been dismayingly wobbly, my bank balance frightfully shrunken.
Stella, my wife, was patient and supportive at first, hoping I would get another gig, soon. When soon was nowhere in sight, her patience had waned, and depleted. She was now increasingly angry with me, was unreasonably irascible, and even rude to me.
Peace and tranquility no longer claimed habitat in her heart, and everything, everything mind you, however minute, was sure to trigger unease in our household. All this time Stella had been wont to create a tempest in a teapot.
Making love is a hemisphere that I was no longer permitted to explore!
It was understandable. I took it all. With great humility, and hope.
The kids, our two lovely daughters, Monique and Beatrice, were in and out of school – for lack of tuition fees and remedial charges. In our current economic condition, we lacked the muscle any more to provide the daily allowances to them.
The girls somehow understood, thank the gods. Nique and Betty did not nag when every morning, mum packed the remains of the previous night’s meal to take to school, and dad repeated to them the boring cliché: I’m sorry, darlings, I have no money.
How this performance unnerved my manhood!
Their teacher though was ever on my neck, demanding for money. It came to a point where I no longer picked up calls from the school.
When I had married Stella eight years earlier, after successful two years of dating, like in virtually every union, nearly everything between us had been honky-dory.
Whether blinded by overflowing love or abundance in patience, I cannot tell. But one thing remained certain: we had never fought. Until very recently.
It was a painful space we had slid into.
All this was the excruciating aftermath of my being laid off from Universal Lenses, my former employer.
For two years, the media house with its cradle in Canada had been on a losing wicket. UL had made perpetual losses in the preceding nine months, coupled with an acute drop in share value, all in a severity that had propelled it out of the Nairobi Stock Exchange.
The mass layoff, the exit from NSE and a myriad of other cost-cutting initiatives had not helped matters. Things spiraled south until her eventual collapse, which came in the fourth week of my joblessness.
I could not survive without a job. Stella was in my hair. It was painful. It was humiliating. It was dignity-degrading. My marriage was crumbling into a heap. I was desperate. I had no choice. But get a job. Soonest the safer.
As I sat there, gazing absently at my documents and notes that I had hardly used, waiting for results of my grilling, a lady of middle age, of medium height and light build approached me. Her beauty was not exactly of the proportions of a mythic goddess, but she was agreeably pretty.
She wore a blue linsey-woolsey cardigan and black expertly ironed skirt and silver makeup on her fleshy lips and thick brows.
I quickly returned from my wanderings.
The lady came and sat on the bench, few inches beside me. She did not say anything to me. On her lips was an unmistakable smile, though it was clear for a keen eye that she suffered from some form of listlessness.
She had settled herself on the bench casting me a swift look before withdrawing hardly before I could read her facial features. Peradventure she was buying time. As a rule of natural convention, I expected her to initiate a chat.
She didn’t.
After waiting for a what seemed an eternity, I gave up.
Soon, I slid back to my personal and familial wretchedness.
After some time, I noted that the lady was at pains to trace something in her satchel bag, vainly. I was caught by her troubles and watched her without breaking my gaze, though she was unaware that I was observing her.
Then she turned to me, her eyes wide open, saying nothing, the smile gone.
She started
breathing with difficulty. Two erect purple veins crossed her temples and
forehead. Her eyes crimsoned and skin paled. Goosebumps rushed and took over
her hands, legs and cheeks. She began shaking.
Was this a prank? No, it could not be. For a moment, I forgot all my tribulations, and got carried away in this peril that had opened up before me.
I rose and stood before her, stupor getting the better of me.
"Are you okay, darling?” I asked with a slight quiver, yet startled at the stupidity of my own question.
She said nothing.
Her breathing became harder, hoarser.
Immediately I realized it was an asthmatic case I was dealing with. Monique had suffered a similar condition in her early age, and it had kept us awake most of the nights, until she was three.
I pitied her yet did not know where to begin. I lacked the obscurest idea of how to assist. Should I shout for help or carry her shoulder high to a health clinic? Pilfer away or just watch her? I was clean at the end of my wits.
I was paralyzed then angry, more miserable. Time was running out. Soon, I would be called inside to know the results of my interview. That was half the tragedy. The real tragedy was, death was glaring at my neighbour, a stranger, in a garden. This required my urgent intervention lest.
Losing my head, I took her bag and frantically rummaged through it. Vanity.
Dissatisfied, I poured all the contents of the bags in the green of the garden, and started tossing them here and there, and sorting one after the other, thinking nothing really. More vanity.
It was nowhere. I felt her skirt pockets, in spite of my heebie-jeebies, but the darn thing was nowhere to be seen. By now, she lay flat on the bench, almost lifeless.
I felt insane, irresponsible and infuriated. To lose her in my hands was just too much to bear, and wrong.
Tremulous, confused and anxious, I made one last ditch attempt of saving her. Her jacket! I had not checked it. I grabbed it from the seat and began the search. My hand felt something inside, which I drew and studied.
The bloody inhalant!
I quickly uncorked it and without wasting a second, I placed it against her nostrils and pressed twice, then thrice at her mouth, hoping against hope that my amateurish performance would work a treat.
Hardly breathing, I waited.
Slowly, she opened her eyes, her vigorous shuddering diminished to a slight irregular shiver, and goosebumps disappeared.
She was finally up! I had saved her!
I gathered her items and put them back in her bag, sat beside her, now unafraid to press closer, and made her sip from the bottle of water that Stella had packed for me whining –I no longer afforded the extravagance of lunch in town in these vile economic times.
“Are you okay?” I repeated my initial question.
She shook her head in affirmation.
“I'm James,” I said grinning, upon which she grinned back.
She did not stir though.
“I was so worried,” I went on with my confession, looking at her with compassion.
She only smiled, and said nothing more. From her face though, it was evident she was grateful, and remorseful too.
My partner was Lavender. I had seen her name saw from her documents’ folder, so I did not bother to ask. She had been an interviewee like me.
“It was inside your trench coat’s pocket,” I did not tire from engaging my silent interlocutor. Stella’s coldness to me in the recent days had hardened me. I no longer considered it a really big deal to engage an uncooperative fellow.
Again, perhaps, Lavender was yet to recover from the asthma arrest trauma. I allowed her time. There was no hurry.
Presently, an officer from the office walked towards us. When he had reached approximately thirty yards from where we sat in our unidirectional conversation, he shouted my name, and equally signaled the lady.
Then he turned and left, with an apparent air of impatience.
It was at this juncture that my stomach churned.
Had I got the job or lost? Had she? If we both had, the cuticle of unfamiliarity would sure be worn, and she would interact with me more freely. Soon we would be workmates, buddies.
Such were my fancies as we walked towards the elevator.
The office was tense when we got in. The other interviewees, ten in number, were all in, and tense. The dozen of us were in hot pursuit of the two places on offer: a sales executive and a communication officer. I was after the latter.
The look shot at me by the director made me quiver in the inside. I resorted to fiddling with my phone, feeling crunchy. It is at this point that I realised I had three missed calls. I had not heard them.
With a stern face but with failing effort at calmness, he checked his watch.
“I am sorry, sir. There was an emergency. She fell sick,” I said looking at my colleague who looked generally collected.
Lavender bowed in remorse.
“It’s okay, James. Pass in,” he replied waving us in.
I walked to one of the empty seats in the room. Lavender followed me, where we sat beside each other.
The director started addressing us, now saying how happy they were to host us there, and now how we were always welcome at the firm. An assistant in the room translated what he said in sign language, facing our direction.
At once, I realised that Lavender was actually deaf.
How stupid had I been all along!
After a while, we were handed our scripts. Still grappling with this shocking realisation, I went through my performance. I had scored a 9/10. I beamed, and sneaked a glance at her. She too smiled, and permitted me to peek at her sheet. She had a 9.5/10. A real smartie, she was.
The good news came all too soon. I had got the job. And Lavender too. Of course. After our celebration which we made sure we curtailed for the short ceremony to go on, the director thanked all the participants, then allowed the others to leave.
In a nutshell, we were briefed on what our jobs would entail. When I enquired, as a matter of principle, about my perk, I was informed that each of us would receive a formal employment letter enclosing all the details of the job, pay and allowances.
From the most flaccid ego in the morning, I was now an inflated soul. As the conversation went on, my mind was wandering elsewhere, far away. I felt overwhelmingly eager to leave, to break the life-replenishing news already to my family.
Stella would no doubt be so excited. The kids too. Their allowance was now assured. The end of our troubles was finally here. Ours would once more become the happy and strong unit it was before the strike of the typhoon of unemployment six months ago. I was an elated man.
We stepped out, buoyant and set to begin the job that Monday.
Lavender and I exchanged contacts and before we parted, she offered me a hug, long and warm. This was to thank me for my help for her earlier in the garden, and perhaps a precursor of better friendship in future.
As each left to their direction, I had the courage to flag down a cab to ferry me home. I did not care a rap anymore about broke, though only three bucks stood between me and nothingness.
As I sat myself on the couch of the red station wagon, I checked my phone. A text message. In all honesty, my excitement of the past few hours was overflowing that I had not been keen to hear anything.
This was from Stella. I opened it.
It read thus:
James,
I have had enough of your lies, lack of love and
irresponsibility. I am not stupid and desperate as you think. I am moving on. You
will therefore hustle less.
I have taken the girls with me. In case you feel
you can keep them, let’s meet in the children’s court. Bye.
In agony, Stella.
That sucker
punch sledgehammered me, whereupon I nearly puked in the car.
Damn me! From
one gloom, I had tumbled headfirst into a slipperier, grimier quagmire. I had
won and lost. But the magnitude of the loss eclipsed, in totality, my triumph.
I now had a job. I now had no wife. I now had more misery. It was now a spectacular limbo I had before me.
For the rest of the journey, my head did not leave my knees nor did tears dry in my eyes. I was unrestrainedly melancholic. With my family shipwrecked, I was more desperate than I had ever been.
It was end of road for me.
