Nightmares in the Daytime

Larry had hated his birthday by the time he was thirteen. He doesn’t care for it. He never gets that rush that hits on the morning of. His steps lack rhythm. It’s like any other day, he says. But it’s not, right? Who wakes up on their birthday and says it’s just a day. I mean, you can tell it to people, especially if you are like me and don’t like people to fuss over you… but there will always be something that makes you feel special about it. That ka-happiness that fills your soul when you open your eyes in the morning. The spring in your step. The rush in your bones. Instead, Larry feels sad on his birthdays.

If he were a woman and was turning 37 without anything to call his own at the time, I would understand. Society has put so much pressure on us to achieve specific things at a certain age, but guys have it easy. They get to cruise through life doing what they want and as they please without eyes judging them from the corners. And Larry is a dude [Duh]. A dude of 24. He is at the peak of his youth. His birthday should be a valid excuse to get shitfaced and sleep in the gutters. He says he wakes up sick.

The year is 2005. The boy wakes up on the morning of his 11th birthday to find nothing. Usually, there would be the sweet smell of his mother’s pancakes. He is immediately alarmed. He calls out to his mother, who on this day wakes him up with a kiss [I presume there is no greater joy to an 11-year-old boy than a forehead kiss and the smell of pancakes in the morning]. There is no answer. He gets out of bed, without the kiss. The atrocity! He walks with no shoes, thinking that maybe it is a surprise party. He had hinted earlier in the year that he would have loved to have one of those. Could this be it? He tiptoes. He wants to surprise the surprisers. To become the master of his ceremony [He-he]. There is no one. He straightens his back in the kitchen. No one.

He remembers being shocked, and then thinking that maybe that is what his parents wanted. His surprise could not be easy after all. They had to make him believe that there was no party to bombshell him.

The boy takes a shower and dresses in the clothes that were bought specifically for this day.

“What were they?” I can’t tell you why I ask this.

“Oh,” he thinks. “A pair of really nice jeans.” His face lights up “G-Unit. That’s it! It was a pair of blue jeans and a matching jacket. I don’t know if you know them, but they were the shit at the time.”

Oh, I know them alright. I still wear my G-Unit jacket today.

The boy leaves his room for the common room, (read sitting room), and finds nothing. Not even a single blue balloon to tell him that at least someone thinks of him. The thought that they forgot his birthday plays at him, but he dismisses it as soon as it floats in. They had been fussing about this day all month. /What do you want for your birthday? //A bicycle//But you already have a bicycle Larry//Yeah, but that bike is for kids. I want a mountain bike//Aah/ Laughter. /So you want a big man’s bicycle now, huh big man? // Smiles. The kinds of smiles that make your cheeks hurt. Smiles that make it impossible to hide your molars. Happy smiles.

The boy hears the gate open and rushes to the door. His father walks in, disheveled, “Like a person who had not slept for a week and only survived on coffee.” This guy watches too many movies. He remembers thinking his father had been up all night making arrangements for his big day. He stands infront of his pops to show him how well the clothes fit. His father looks right through him.

“Did you feel like Taylor Swift in Delicate?”

“What?” he seems puzzled.

“Never mind”

His mother had left. On his birthday. She had packed her things and taken off with a man who his father described only as “that bullshitter from the office”. His world turned upside down. The father, who walked in the door with a smile on his face and arms outstretched for a lift to his shoulders, became a shadow of his former self. He stopped drinking only on special occasions and started “living every day to the fullest”. His clothes started getting tears in weird places. He would leave in the morning with a perfectly good shirt and come with it missing a pocket. His trousers started getting looser. Larry was sent to add holes to belts every other month. But he remained strong. He never broke.

On the 24th of May, the next year, he there was a knock on the front door at about 10:30 pm. I like it when a story has a twist like this. A knock at that time of the night can never be a neighbor asking for salt. It is always something else. Something trivial. Something that can only be understood by opening that door and facing the other side of it. He got up from his bed to get it and met with his father on the corridor. “Are you expecting someone?” his father asked him and he only looked at the older man with puzzled eyes. The knock persisted. His father opened the door to find his mother standing there, having lost a couple of pounds herself [I’ve always wanted to say pounds instead of Kgs. Hello milestone] Anyway, his mother walks in, hugs him and says “Happy birthday baby”. Then he remembered it was his birthday. He was asked to go to his room. See what money does? He was asked. In my house, unapewa macho and that’s it [For the sake of my non-existent diaspora peeps, this is loosely translated to ‘you are given eyes’]

The boy heard raised voices then they were hushed. Whispers that did not really whisper because they were of angry and hurt people who still had to remember there was a boy sleeping in the next room. He heard them, in parts, but the parts he heard made sense enough for him to understand. /what are you doing here? //He is my son//why are you here? //it’s his birthday. I had to see him//Okay, you have seen him. Go to your bullshitter//Darling please//DON’T TOUCH me//I have nowhere to go//We were happy, you know. We were getting back on our feet//What did you do for him today? //What do you care? LEAVE//I have nowhere to go/. Silence. Sobbing. /What are you crying for? YOU left. YOU took your things and left us//I know. I’m sorry/. Silence. /Get up. I’ll drive you to a hotel. We’ll talk tomorrow//I love you. I still do/. The door unlocked and closed after the voices. He heard the car engine start.

He hears this last conversation over and over in his head. That is why Larry started drinking. To drown the voices in the bliss of a stupor. When he drinks, all he hears is the car starting, and that is better than the hushed voices of his parents. Alcohol helped him to remain blind to the policeman who came to his door in the morning. He couldn’t see the strange man’s pitying eyes as they told him how much he had lost in that one night. He lived the next couple of days in a daze. He saw aunts and uncles talk without hearing what they said. He floated through the next few years, going to school and doing the bare minimum so he could be expelled… but he finished school and managed to secure a spot in the University of Nairobi.

One day, in his fourth year of campus, he saw a girl. She cleared up in his otherwise blurred vision as if he was meant to see her. “There is a difference between being happy and being distracted by happiness. She made me happy. She showed me that it was okay to laugh again. That my parent’s death did not define who I was.”

“Do you still hear them?

“Every day. I don’t think it is something that can just leave my head. But it used to feel like nightmares in the daytime. Now, it’s a memory. And I like that it is, because at least they were together in the end. I only wish I heard him say he loved her back.”

“Maybe he said it in the car.”

“Yeah. I formed versions of the conversation they may have had in the car. I want them to have made up. To hold hands. I hope they smiled at each other before the end and looked at each other in the eyes like the first time they met. I hope they were happy.”

“Are you going to tell me about your girl?”

“Maybe, but not today. I need to love her more. To hold her hand and look her in the eyes before I tell anyone of how she dug me out of the hole I never knew I could ever survive and how much I miss her face right now. Maybe it’s the way she says my name.”

There’s a difference between ‘I miss you’ and ‘I miss your face.’

[Have a lovely Easter holiday, My Lovelies]

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