Yvonne Owuor - Dust

Thwack!

Her handbag got the side of his head. Shock greater than the sting. Her eyes are dark with decision. She is willing to behead him if she has to. He is afraid she will spit on him again.

“Hngngh!” Isaiah dives to the ground, his flailing foot slams the door, he is still holding on to her.

It is possible to brawl in private silence. He can’t remember locking her legs to the ground with his own. He remembers the intoxicating blend of sweat, adrenaline, soap, and woman.

Turned on.

Wanting.

He is large enough to contain her, sad enough to need to get lost inside her, with her, through her.

She kicks, aiming for his balls. Her punch catches the base of his nose. Scent of blood, screaming pain.

He could hurt her.

Hands squeeze her neck and arm.

She bites him.

Isaiah grunts and wipes his bleeding face.

Ajany reaches for his head and yanks at his hair. Bites his arm again, breaks skin. He shakes her off. Her nose is bleeding. Her teeth grasp his fingers. He drags his fingers from her mouth. He pulls back his arms to deliver a blow. She whimpers. He sees how small she is. Remorse.

Inside-out pain.

His hands fall to his sides, and he turns his face and body away from Ajany.

Breathing.

Lonelinesses spill and mix.

She wipes the blood from her nose.

Isaiah whispers, “I am sorry.” For many things. Coming to Kenya in defiance of his mother. Chasing after ghosts. The solitude of walking through restless dunes into North Horr. Nobody noticing. Arriving at a place that was the same as the one left behind. How could a human being endure such infinite spaces? Causing a woman’s nose to bleed — wounding another creature. What had happened to him?

Ajany listens to Isaiah breathe.

Warmth, darkness, stillness. She is lying on her stomach. Can crawl into herself. Expectations disintegrate and leach into the floor. Pain on her shoulder — is it dislocated? She chooses not to speak. She waits. She is learning how to wait.

For the next moment.

Outside, a night bird coughs and coughs.

Inside, silence.

Breathing.

Sweat, silence.

Rasping air.

Blend of blood.

In the parts where her nails have ripped his skin, a tingle.

Isaiah is motionless.

The thing that had invaded his body with heat, hatred, and fire leaves. He turns to Ajany. “I won’t hurt you.”

Part promise.

To life.

Ajany’s eyes are solemn. Isaiah touches the drying blood beneath her nostrils and straightens her twisted arm. Wipes her face with his wrists. She watches, sees when he notices the small space between their bodies.

Contours of desolation.

She smells fear, finds that it is cold on her tongue. She tastes sadness. Shared flavor. She waits.

He licks his lips. Tastes blood.

A burned taste, like dark-roast coffee.

Dusk’s light invades their space.

His right hand hovers over her.

She wonders about his touch, what it would tell her body.

He drops his hand to the floor.

A cold stone spreads from his heart, and he curls over.

A despairing admission: all losses have secret names.

Thirst is a dry scratch in the back of Ajany’s throat.

And his. He squeezes his temples and blocks out the light, which pokes at his throbbing head. Could do with a cigarette, even though he had smoked for only a year and that when he was only twenty-one. Long ago.

Memory shapes.

To name something is to bring it to life.

His loss, the failures.

Bodies touch.

No one pulls away.

He whispers into Ajany’s mouth.

Seeking light.

Breathing.

Slow-motion memory patchwork, the times in his life when disbelief was like certainty, illusion had become real. Once upon a time, when he was failing and being abandoned he had run and screamed and howled out a name.

Then limped home to wait for normal to return.

It never came.

Isaiah lifts his arm, touches the back of Ajany’s head. She peers into his eyes. Old eyes. Her left hand frames his face. This, too, she could paint. Touch, shape, mold, and draw. Here. She could carve an outline of a man.

Isaiah says, “Life’s ephemeral.” Memory kaleidoscope: another face, a beach, the sea, an eternal absence.

From the light of their window, silhouettes and shadows.

Hidden things start to whisper all at once.

Ajany remembers Odidi.

Isaiah touches her face.

He says, “You’re waiting for your brother. Picking up rubble from his life. You think you can rewind time.” His left hand cups her face. “The Styx is a one-way bridge, honey.”

Ajany stiffens.

“Will you return from the dead?”

She closes her eyes. She asks, “Where d-do you go?”

“War zones.”

A sad sound.

“Photographing passersby.”

“D-does it work?”

“Sometimes.”

“And when it fails?”

“I photograph warlords.”

“Why?”

“Souls that coexist with the shades of death they create: no excuses, no explanations, no platitudes. Wondered how their faces look through light.”

“And?”

“I ask them to smile and photograph how their eyes disappoint their attempts.”

Isaiah’s fingers tug at Ajany’s braids.

She flinches.

He says, “Anguish has its pleasures.”

He says, “I clean up tragic houses, strip them down, sell their content, refurnish, sell for a profit, buy another house, and then another.”

Distant traffic, voices downstairs, Calisto’s voice, Jos’s high-pitched answer.

Ajany says, “You’re here now.”

“Yes.”

“What if he doesn’t want to be found?”

Isaiah says, “Tell me more.”

Words jam in her mind. Then an admission: “I can show you.”

“What?”

“You’ll see.”

“I wish Moses …” Isaiah waits, and then: “The woman this evening, Justina, she is …”

“His.”

“She’s pregnant.”

“Yes.”

“His?”

“Mhh.”

“What’s she doing … there?”

“That’s where they met. She’s waiting for him to come back.”

Outside, rustling, shuffling, knocking, tapping, twittering, and ringing. Inside, hearts beat. Something unravels.

Ajany listens.

Isaiah moves his arm over her body.

Many routes through desire.

Yearning. To not feel empty. Or lost.

First, they lie together side by side for a long time.

Much later.

He unzips her dress slowly, peels it off her body. He helps her unbutton his shirt, and loosen the belt of his trousers. She sits cross-legged to pull off his shoes. He watches her movements.

Wordless.

Skin to skin.

She concentrates on the quietness of this.

Inhales his waiting, his eyes needing her. A mirror, she thinks.

So she bites his ears, tastes skin, strokes his forearm, collects the feeling of his face, the bony structure, brow ridge, distance between eye orbits, shape of nasal bones, chin form. She strokes nose, eyes, ears, lips, and chin.

They will grope secrets, share unanswered questions and infinite presences. They will also dance between tombs of demoniacs. A man drinks in a woman’s scent, her curves, hollows, and shadows. A woman is suspended in her body’s shocked meeting with tenderness. She will use the backs of her hands to rub the texture of a man’s chest hair. The man will rock to and fro inside her soul, cover her and fill her, and cling.

Somewhere outside, it becomes dawn. Inside this room set apart from the world, she breathes in the man slumped on her body, studies the muscled arm that is pale against her nakedness. She could paint just this. Nothing else. Her fingers move on their own, pinching skin to estimate muscle, fat, skin layers, and contours. They pluck at nuances that create gesture and texture. She strokes soft, hard, warm, cool, hot, wet. She’ll gather and store what she needs.