anger and frustrations out on the easier target.
With the departure of our mother, the other wives, Gacoki and Wangarĩ in particular, took care of my brother and me. We waited for her to come back or for my father to go to his in-laws to plead with them for her return. That was the procedure: talks that would almost certainly end in warnings, fines, and reconciliation. Everybody knew that it was simply a matter of time. But my younger brother and I missed her terribly, and this sharing of a common loss and need made us even closer.
My younger brother used to talk about his journey by train. He enumerated with special emphasis the stations he had passed through, Naivasha, Gilgil, Nakuru, Molo,at least the ones he could remember. He even claimed that Kisumu and Kampala were very near Elburgon, and he would have gone there but for his busy life at Elburgon playing with Grandmother and Auntie Wanjirũ and her daughter, our cousin Beatrice. I learned from him that Auntie Wanjirũ, a trader, was a single parent. He talked about Grandmother’s tenderness though without offering many details. His was a narrative I was not very keen to hear, and I would counter his triumphs by talking about my glorious days at school, a subject that he too was now not very keen to hear. Our unspoken contention became an undeclared duel; he exaggerated his exploits in Elburgon and I, my educational adventures in school. But he always got the better of me by reminding me that Mother had promised to sell some of her harvest for his tuition to resume schooling at the beginning of a new term. He would have schooling as well as the train experience. Even though I was envious of his journey, I was also happy that he would eventually join me in school. But as days came and went, we increasingly became anxious about Mother’s return, our increasing anxiety tempered only by the daily routine of social life at our father’s homestead.
One day my brother and I were playing with our siblings in an open space between Kahahu’s land and Baba Mũkũrũ’s with a ball made of cloth and tied tight with a string. Even the girls had joined in. My father suddenly turned up. He stood at a distance and beckoned my brother and me to accompany him. My father had never called me to him before, let alonecome all the way to a field outside our homestead to do so. We ran to him, sure that he was going to tell us news of our mother’s return.
I want you to stop playing with my children. Go, follow your mother, he said, pointing in the general direction of my grandfather’s place.
We did not have a chance to say farewell to the other children and tell them that we had been banished from their company and from the place that up to then had defined our lives. But before leaving home, I was able to dash into my mother’s hut to retrieve my school material, among which was my beloved torn copy of stories from the Old Testament.
The expulsion was, if not from paradise, from the only place I had known. I was baffled more than pained. My mother had always been the head of the immediate household, so home would always be wherever she was, and in that sense I was headed home to Mother. But it is not a good thing to have your own father deny you as one of his children. The move deepened my sense of myself as an outsider, a feeling I had harbored since I learned that the land on which our homestead stood was not really ours. I had been an outsider at Kamandũra, where it seemed that others belonged more than I did, and at Manguo upon moving there. Now I was an outsider in my father’s house. But there are aspects of the old homestead that will always be a part of me: the storytelling sessions, daily interaction with the other children where alliances changed from time to time; fights and tears even. Some of the scenes flitted across my mind: the games we played, the songs we sang, and the dances in the yard welcoming rain for it meant blessings and made the children grow. At
With the departure of our mother, the other wives, Gacoki and Wangarĩ in particular, took care of my brother and me. We waited for her to come back or for my father to go to his in-laws to plead with them for her return. That was the procedure: talks that would almost certainly end in warnings, fines, and reconciliation. Everybody knew that it was simply a matter of time. But my younger brother and I missed her terribly, and this sharing of a common loss and need made us even closer.
My younger brother used to talk about his journey by train. He enumerated with special emphasis the stations he had passed through, Naivasha, Gilgil, Nakuru, Molo,at least the ones he could remember. He even claimed that Kisumu and Kampala were very near Elburgon, and he would have gone there but for his busy life at Elburgon playing with Grandmother and Auntie Wanjirũ and her daughter, our cousin Beatrice. I learned from him that Auntie Wanjirũ, a trader, was a single parent. He talked about Grandmother’s tenderness though without offering many details. His was a narrative I was not very keen to hear, and I would counter his triumphs by talking about my glorious days at school, a subject that he too was now not very keen to hear. Our unspoken contention became an undeclared duel; he exaggerated his exploits in Elburgon and I, my educational adventures in school. But he always got the better of me by reminding me that Mother had promised to sell some of her harvest for his tuition to resume schooling at the beginning of a new term. He would have schooling as well as the train experience. Even though I was envious of his journey, I was also happy that he would eventually join me in school. But as days came and went, we increasingly became anxious about Mother’s return, our increasing anxiety tempered only by the daily routine of social life at our father’s homestead.
One day my brother and I were playing with our siblings in an open space between Kahahu’s land and Baba Mũkũrũ’s with a ball made of cloth and tied tight with a string. Even the girls had joined in. My father suddenly turned up. He stood at a distance and beckoned my brother and me to accompany him. My father had never called me to him before, let alonecome all the way to a field outside our homestead to do so. We ran to him, sure that he was going to tell us news of our mother’s return.
I want you to stop playing with my children. Go, follow your mother, he said, pointing in the general direction of my grandfather’s place.
We did not have a chance to say farewell to the other children and tell them that we had been banished from their company and from the place that up to then had defined our lives. But before leaving home, I was able to dash into my mother’s hut to retrieve my school material, among which was my beloved torn copy of stories from the Old Testament.
The expulsion was, if not from paradise, from the only place I had known. I was baffled more than pained. My mother had always been the head of the immediate household, so home would always be wherever she was, and in that sense I was headed home to Mother. But it is not a good thing to have your own father deny you as one of his children. The move deepened my sense of myself as an outsider, a feeling I had harbored since I learned that the land on which our homestead stood was not really ours. I had been an outsider at Kamandũra, where it seemed that others belonged more than I did, and at Manguo upon moving there. Now I was an outsider in my father’s house. But there are aspects of the old homestead that will always be a part of me: the storytelling sessions, daily interaction with the other children where alliances changed from time to time; fights and tears even. Some of the scenes flitted across my mind: the games we played, the songs we sang, and the dances in the yard welcoming rain for it meant blessings and made the children grow. At
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