Written by Highest Kite
On the first Sunday of the year, a man touched you wrong. Eight months later, you still see him washing cars, clearing grass, gravel and dirt, but more often, tending to the six sheep he claimed he was looking for at the empty paddock behind the pastor’s home when he put his hands on you, and you cried and cried.
Fright is unplanned for. You know this now, but before the evening of the 7th of January, you believed there’d be time to go for his midriff,but it was fright that was forcefully holding you in stasis, like being hit by a wind of sudden bad breath or a fart on a mat ride—nothing else like it.
You screamed until sense told you to ask him what he wanted… so you listened to the garbage that has not left your mind and ears. He wanted to talk slowly but couldn’t stop himself. His pretend mildness (like he couldn’t crush your over-arched back and arms elbowing into all the room his python grip allowed) was only a clause long,
“Mimi hukuona. Nashindwa, nashindwa, arafu reo nimeona nikwambie!”
(I see you around and I’m always so hopeless, but today, today, you’re mine.)
It was too close to your ear, too close to your neck. You’d like to burn these parts away now, since you discovered disgust could be a tone, a memory.
“Ni sawa basi unatakaje?” you asked.
(Okay, what do you want?)
“Unpeee nambari yako. Arafu ukona mutu? Kesho …” He went on.
(I want your number and are you someone’s? So tomorrow…)
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! He was adressing you as if you were on a date but fuck him, you weren’t ready to get raped and asked,
“Alafu saa mbona unanishika hivi kwa giza?”
(So why are you attacking me in the dark?)
His tense grip didn’t lessen.
“Mbona unapiga nduru?”
(Why are you screaming?)
His hands were trying to envelope your breasts.
You couldn’t decide what felt worse: the self-blame of walking out at 7 o’clock to light a spliff at the paddock aka neighbourhood smoke centre, or that days earlier, you’d reset your phone to default and hadn’t reactivated the ‘press power button five times to call an emergency contact’ setting.
You were always ready until you weren’t.
“Sikujui” (I don’t know you!) you managed to spit through lips gone dry, your mouth filled with sharp bitterness. You thought you’d say ‘fuck you’ but you repeated yourself,
“Sikujui!” (I don’t know you!)
“Si wewe inapita uku alafu inakuja uku.” (Aren’t you the one who walks around and comes here…)
“Sikujui!” (I don’t know you!)
“Usipige nduru!” (Don’t scream!)
“Niachilie!” (Let me go!)
“Kesho…” (Tomorrow…)
“Niachilie!” (Let me go!)
Until you did it, you thought a reaction to terror was high-pitched but, a belly powered bark is what left you when he finally let go saying, “Kesho.” Fucking tomorrow. In that moment you thought maybe he wasn’t alright upstairs, you’re Bipolar and have space for grace in you but fuck, you were trembling.
All over, your body felt bad, not yours and funny-boned. The last feeling was an expression a schoolmate once told you described the awkwardness experienced after knocking into something with a jointed part of the body like an elbow or a knee: you know what hurts, why it hurts, but cannot comprehend the intensity, not why it must hurt so much.
