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No More Tears

By

Atieno Mtoto Mzuri

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“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that

America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

… We are, and always will be, the United States of

America. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after

the children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage or pay their doctors' bills or save enough for their child's college education.

There's new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair. The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I promise you, we as a people will get there. There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many

who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can't solve every problem.

PRESIDENT ELECT BARACK OBAMA

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ISBN-13: 978-1511619479 ISBN-10: 1511619473 Copyright © 2015 Atieno Mtoto Mzuri All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author. The characters and events in this book are based on fiction. In some cases names and places have been changed to protect the identity and the lives of those involved.

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This book is dedicated to all the undocumented

immigrants in the United States of America and other countries worldwide. It is a story that many immigrants will identify with. They have lived through it and breathed in the fear and desperation. Everything turns out well in the end for our heroine. It's the author's hope that whoever has been placed in such desperation by the tough immigration laws will be consoled. And it is of course the author's hope that someday the government will offer a lasting solution to the many undocumented immigrants. Most of them are good people who want to make a difference, if they could be accorded the opportunity.

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Acknowledgments

Without the influence and wisdom of my mentor

Raymond Greene and my informal editor Kevin Dobinson, this book would have turned out differently. You are truly appreciated.

I started writing this story in 2014, got through the first five chapters and then lost interest in it. In January 2015 I joined a Facebook group for women, Kilimani Mums Uncensored. I posted one chapter of the book and the overwhelming response and encouragement that I received from the women drove me to complete the last ten chapters of the book in a week. I am forever indebted to them for pushing me forward in their clamor for “mucene and udaku”, terms loosely translated as gossip. I must also acknowledge the women of yet another Facebook group, Vuteni Stul Niwape Udaku, for keeping me sane through their wild stories.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the undocumented individuals in America who shared their stories with me and allowed me to use them in this book.

Without the push from other friends such as Ben Oti, Paula Wangome, Bellah Kuchie, Riogi Mose, Mercy Kamau, who always read my articles on Facebook and constantly asked me when I would write the great novel, this book might perhaps not have been written.

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And finally, I would like to thank my family for always believing in me, and especially my father, the great educator, who believes in me without question. And to my brother Geoffrey who passed away last year, I wish you were here to share this victory with me. I know you would have been happy for me. I trust you are watching over us.

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Synopsis

In an attempt to obtain legal residency status and earn a decent living in the land of honey and gold, a desperate illegal immigrant, Atieno, gets entangled with two unsavory characters who threaten her very existence.

By the time she realizes the extent of their deception, she is in too deep in the nightmare. Scared of deportation, she uses her energy and wiles into trapping any man that looks at her into marriage to save her skin.

However, she forgets that Cupid might have something else in store for her.

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Prologue

It was a cold day in November 2014 when I stood before the Judge shaking slightly, thinking of how far I had come. And in that moment, all I could think of was that I hoped I wouldn‟t stumble when my name was called up. All the agony that I had undergone to get to this point in time was forgotten. It felt much like an afterbirth moment, that moment that the pain that a woman has undergone for over three days sometimes, in the long period of delivery pains is instantly forgotten as she is handed her baby and with disbelief, notices that the pains are gone, and knows that she would do it over and over again just to experience that indescribable joy.

It had taken five years of determination and sheer willpower to get to this point. Many were the times I had wanted to die, many were the times I had beseeched God to let me rest for I no longer could take it. This surely wasn‟t my portion. I hadn‟t been born to suffer or to pay for mistakes that I had made, continuously and without a moment of peace.

The Judge had entered the chambers and we had all stood up. A bunch of nervous immigrants, a term I had truly come to dislike. Us bunch of immigrants were finally getting our citizenship. I looked around the room and noticed the Hispanics, the Cubans, the Indians, the Africans and a sprinkling of Europeans. If their stories were as interesting as mine and if their

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journeys to this point had been as tough as mine, I thought they needed the silent salute that I was paying them. A salute to a resilient spirit. Unbroken yet, though the journey had been long and painful. I couldn‟t imagine what these people had gone through over the last five years. I didn‟t want to. For it was way too painful to contemplate.

I was shaking slightly, thinking of how far I had come. I still hadn‟t visited gorgeous Georgia, or the Mississippi or Florida, but now I knew that someday I would visit them. I was no longer running. From anyone or anything. The full force of the law of this powerful land was firmly behind me and I could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

The judge called out my name. I stepped forward. Took the oath. And I was declared a citizen of this powerful nation. I now had the same rights as the people that were born here. Whose grandfathers came here 200 years ago on the Mayflower. I was finally a bona fide American.

It had been a long journey. Five long years it had taken to get to this point. To say that it had its ups and downs is an understatement. There are no adequate words. I had been to hell and back. And kept walking. Sometimes with the help of Johnny Walker.

I wiped the tears. These were happy tears. Hopefully they were the last tears I would shed. It was time to stop crying and start laughing and smiling and enjoying life. I had fought hard for it. If I say so myself, I deserved it.

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Time was everything. I now had to make up for the five years that I had lost treading on the spot. I had paid the ultimate price by wasting precious time. I would have to work double hard to recover the years. But what I have gained is totally worth it. 200 years from today my great grandchildren will look back on me as the grandparent that arrived on the second wave of the Mayflower and gave them an opportunity to make something of themselves. For after all, this is still the land where Barack Obama, said all things were possible.

President-Elect Barack Obama‟s speech had been an inspiration on the night that he had given it, and many years later it still marked a turning point in my life. I knew there were challenges ahead but I was ready to join in remaking the nation, the only way it had been done in America for 221 years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

I recalled his victory speech and knew that what had started for me, five years ago, well, the fun part was just beginning…

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Chapter One

On a warm day in November 2007, I packed my

second-hand suitcase, and at the International

Departures lounge at the Jomo Kenyatta International

Airport in Nairobi, I hugged and kissed my 4 year old

daughter Danielle goodbye. I then turned to the five

people who had escorted me to the airport and told

them I would be back soon.

“When do you think you will be back?” my

father asked.

I looked at him. He was wearing his best

pinstripe suit and had on a bowler hat and leaned

heavily on a walking stick. I could see that the journey

from our rural home, over 400 miles away had taken a

toll on him and he was looking a little haggard and old.

My mother stood calmly beside him.

“Say after one year. I think.” I said to him.

“Are you sure? Now don‟t go getting lost in

America. You know that neighbor of ours Odhiambo?

His son left for America twenty five years ago. His

mother died. His sisters died. If I am not wrong a son

that he left is very sick and Omollo hasn‟t sent even

one dollar.”

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“Really? Why are you telling me this now?” I

asked him. “You had all the time to talk about this last

night.”

“We were praying last night.” He said.

“Leave the child alone.” My mother gently

interrupted. “It‟s a bad omen to quarrel before a safari.

Brings bad luck. Atieno is a good child. She will keep

her promises.”

“Sure, I know she‟s a good child.” Dad forcefully

said. “But there are a lot of temptations out there in

America. People go and don‟t come back. Just you wait

and see. This child is going to disappear in America. I

fear I might never see her again. I might die before I

see her.”

I studied my father once again. Listening to him

talk, one would think he had been to America several

times and was the expert on all the goings on of that

land of far away. I didn‟t say anything. I could feel

Danielle tugging at me, begging for my attention. She

wasn‟t crying, the brave little girl.

“Mummy when will you come back? Can you

bring me a scooter?”

“Of course I will sweetheart.” I told her. “For

you my love, I would do anything. You know that

right? Now promise me you will be a good girl.”

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“Yes mummy. I will. Will you be back by

December? “

“Yes I will. December it is. Be a good girl now!”

I continued hugging her and listening to daddy.

“Now remember, the cow is rather old. Doesn‟t

produce any more milk. We need to replace her. Also,

you know the roof on the house is still leaking.”

“Dad, I know all the problems you have, okay? I

have to go now.”

“You don‟t have any money to give your old

man?”

I smiled. I was thinking of the $20 that I had

stashed away in my bra for emergency. It was all the

money I had remaining after paying the airfare, for

which I had saved for six months.

I picked up my light tattered suitcase and with a

final hug walked through the doors at the international

departure lounge, swung the suitcase through the

magnetic tables and metal detectors and waved

goodbye.

Two hours later I was on a Qatar Airways flight

to America. The hostess showed me how to choose a

movie and I sat back to watch.

At Doha, I changed flights and sixteen hours

later I was in Washington DC, where an officer of the

government asked me enough questions, including how

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long I intended to be in the land of plenty, whom I was

going to stay with, whom I would fraternize with,

where I would be every hour and minute, what I would

do for a living, whether I had enough money not to

become a burden on the government, et cetera. In

short, I was asked enough questions but for the color

of my underwear. I left that interview room with my

passport stamped with an entry visa, but feeling like a

common thief and as I walked around the airport

looking for something to eat, I was nervous and

imagined that any minute now, some other officer

would stop me and tell me that I had come here by

mistake and should be on the way back to Africa in the

next plane. Let‟s just say that the treatment at the visa

offices and the airport entry points are designed to

scare away people who did not come to America on the

Mayflower two hundred years ago.

Having had my visas stamped and everything in

order, it was with anticipation that I approached the

desk of United Airlines, the domestic flight operators

so that I could catch the next flight to the small town

where I planned to stay with some relatives. Upon

enquiring from the pretty desk clerk, I was informed

that I had missed the flight and would have to catch a

connecting flight the next day. What was I going to do

now, in this foreign land where I knew nobody and

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only had $20 in my bra and my stomach was by now

rumbling?

Crestfallen, I was turning away to go get myself a

bench in the lobby where I would pass the night, when

she smiled and said to me…

“Now, here is what‟s going to happen. The

airline booked for you a room at the Hilton for the

night. There‟s a shuttle that will take you to the hotel

and then tomorrow morning, the same shuttle will

bring you back and you can catch the connecting flight

that you missed.”

“And how much do I have to pay for this?” I

asked her.

“Nothing. It‟s all free, courtesy of the airline.”

Relieved that I wasn‟t going to spend my first

day in America sleeping on the street as it were, and it

being very cold, I quickly asked for more directions to

the shuttle, and was ferried to the Hilton. At the Hilton,

I checked in and was led to one of the most

magnificent rooms that I have ever had the pleasure of

sleeping in. Now unfortunately there was no food

included in the courtesy room. If I was to eat anything I

had to pay for it. When I studied the menu, I noted that

the only thing I would be able to afford was breakfast

which would be about $10. There was a coffee maker

on the side table so I proceeded to make coffee, turned

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on the TV, ignored the hunger pangs and finally slept

on tenterhooks because I was nervous about missing

the shuttle and the scheduled flight.

In the morning, I was woken up by the hotel

front desk as I had asked them to set up a wakeup call

for me. Still drowsy and tired after tossing and turning

from the hunger pangs and the fear that I would miss

the flight, I quickly jumped into the warm shower and

was soon ready to depart to the airport. But as I

showered, I noticed that there were lots of shampoos

and conditioners in little bottles on the bathroom

shelves, all set out for me. I quickly scooped them and

emptied them into my carry-on bag. Now, I should

mention that I had spent a scheduled night stop at

Doha where I had also picked up more than twenty

bottles from the hotel in Doha. So, I knew shampoo

and conditioners were taken care of for at least three

months.

Back at the airport, as I was checking in my

carry-on bag, the airport security confiscated all the

shampoos and conditioners and lotions. I hadn‟t known

that there was so only so much liquid that one could

carry into the plane. I was more embarrassed than

annoyed. But what saved me is that I looked at the

stash in the container into which they threw my stuff

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and I knew there were many hotel thieves worldwide. I

wasn‟t the only one.

I caught the flight, and finally I was in Des

Moines, Iowa, which had been my destination.

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Chapter Two (Maurice, Gentleman Farmer)

My cousin's friends Brenda and Samantha had picked me up from the airport and taken me to their house on the west side of Des Moines.

Edward as you will remember is the one who had helped me get my visa when he had sent me an invitation letter for his graduation from college.

"Edward, are you sure there are jobs in the USA? You know I am giving up a very good job here in Africa and I really don't want to have any regrets?"

"My dear Atieno, there are lots of jobs here! America is lined with jobs, in fact you can't even take two days to get a job! Why are you hesitating so much? Get your butt here on the next plane!"

I waited for six months to get the fare and then travelled.

Brenda and Samantha took me to their two bedroomed apartment and I rested. I was amazed to see 20 year old girls driving big beautiful cars and I was finally content, thinking hey here I have landed and I am gonna be in manna heaven. In a few days I would be driving and have a job where dollars are banking themselves into my account. That first night in Iowa, I slept in their house. Iowa was to be my home for the next four months.

The next day, my cousin Edward came to pick me up from Des Moines from whence we travelled to the small town of Spencer where he lived. The town

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was surrounded by corn plantations and I was surprised to see white people who were dressed shabbily and wore big boots and had unkempt hair and didn't smell as good as the people in the movies.

I settled into Edward's house and made myself comfortable. His wife had just delivered a baby and for two days I was content babysitting but I remembered where I had come from and I started to ask that we get back on track.

"Edward, I do like babysitting for you but you know I need to get me a job. Little girl is waiting on money, mother and father are you know telling the whole village I am going to be building a house, a bungalow, for them soon. As much as I love your baby, it's time to also do something for myself."

"Be patient, everything here is done on schedule, okay I need you to trust me, don't be impatient! Things will work out!"

So I continued to babysit for two more weeks and finally I was getting impatient. I had received a message from Kenya that my little girl's school fee was due and she also needed some drugs to combat the malaria in the highlands where she had gone to stay with my parents. They had said that they didn't have even 100 KShs to buy the drugs and there I was in the land of the wealthy, the land of the free, not making efficient use of Western Union.

"Edu, please why are we taking so long? Is there any document that I should have come with? What is up?"

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Edward sighed and then he said to me "You know perhaps I may not have been so clear when we were talking about jobs. People come here and then they work out ways of getting the jobs. It doesn't just come automatically. The first thing we need to do is..."

"Is what? I asked him. "We need to get you papers." he replied. "But I have papers." I told him. "Don't you remember I invited you to my

graduation for my Masters?" "Oh, yeah I know you graduated and all that, but

Atieno, that's not what I am talking about! To do any work here, to get any employment even if it is cleaning bathrooms, you need papers. I am talking about gaining citizenship or resident status!"

"Really?" I asked. "And how do I go about that? Is there an office that you need to take me to tomorrow so I can apply for these "papers'"?

"Eh..." he hesitated a bit. And suddenly my discomfort was growing.

"Edu, is there something you are not telling me?" He breathed deeply and then said... "Atieno, you have to get married quickly and

that's the only way this thing is going to work!" "Married to whom? I haven't even met anybody!

I have only been here a month!" "I know that." Edu said. "But you know what,

you are lucky I am a very chap chap guy! In fact I have been thinking about how to sort this and I spoke with a lady colleague yesterday and lemme tell you, cousin

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Atieno, God is really on your side! There's a bachelor that I want to introduce you to! And we are going to meet him today!"

To say the truth I hadn't thought of marriage. When I was back home, it had seemed that with my advanced age of thirty, I mean I came from a country where if marriage had passed you in the twenties you were kind of hanging on the shelf and could perhaps only satisfy yourself with another's husband or just sit in your house and watch Alejandro on Mexican soaps, the thought that somebody might actually want to marry me and that it was necessary for life to continue was both a shock and a surprise.

I hadn't been dating for a long time so I didn't even know where I would begin. But Edward immediately took charge and took me shopping and bought me some clothes. On the day he brought me to his house, he had walked into my room as I unpacked and shook his head as I arranged the clothes in my closet. I had brought with me my favorite skirt suits, most of them in drab grey and dreary navy blue in colour and to spice it up, I had my two favourite jeans which at the time were a wee bit out of fashion.

Also I had never really exercised and I had fat in the wrong places. I wasn't like girls of today who talk about squats for their butts and breast firming lotions. My sex life had consisted of furtive touches here and there. Those were the days, females had not embraced their sexuality and if they did, they were considered very

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bad girls. He shook his head at my skirt suits and said sadly

"Girl, we are going to upgrade you first!" That evening, I went for my very first shopping

at J C Penney's. We then went to Walgreens and I got me some

makeup. If we were going to do this thing right, we had to go full blast, Edward insisted.

“You have to dress nice and you have to do your makeup nice. These white people like ladies in makeup.”

"Oh, I am going to meet a white man?" I asked. "Ya duh! There are like twenty black people in

this town! You need to open yourself up to all the possibilities.!”

Open myself up to possibilities? Whoa! I said to myself. What if people back home knew I was going out with a white man? I knew my mother would faint on hearing the news. Back in those days, the only white people I had seen walking arm in arm with black girls were those who were said to have come with their pension so that they could stay on the beach for some days and hook up with prostitutes and I remembered the story which had recently been trending of some girls who at the instigation of white guys had had sex with dogs.

My oh my what would people think of me? I felt myself go cold and hot and then I remembered that I was being asked to send money for drugs and my house rent hadn't been paid in four months and the next week

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the landlord was going to come and carry away the household goods. At the time I had left, I had retained the house thinking I could continue paying rent for the house and eventually my baby would return to Nairobi and go to a school in the leafy suburbs like The Makini School.

I sighed...I would have to do what must be done...I would go out for a date with my first white man. Hopefully he didn't own a dog or some such shit. At this point, I had learnt that dogs stayed indoors and I had seen plenty of them riding around in their owners‟ cars.

Edwards' wife helped me put on my makeup and if I say so myself, I looked rather glamorous. It was the first time I was trying eye shadow, having only used lipstick before this moment. Indeed it was an epic moment for me, girl gone gotten rid of skirt suits, wearing a clingy top and walking like a giraffe in high heels. I had practiced the whole afternoon but I was still stumbling. So that evening we set off at around quarter to five. I was going to meet Maurice, that was his name, in Edward's colleague's house.

I was delaying the moment as I was super nervous but when Edward yelled at me that white people didn't like to be kept waiting

"We are not operating on Kenyan time here! You gotta learn to be on time, even a minute late or too early is bad!"

I had to step out and jump into the car and keep telling myself to calm down as my hands were sweating

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profusely and my armpits too were getting soaked. I remembered with great distress that the shampoos and the conditioners and deodorants I had sneaked out of the two hotels in Doha and Washington DC where I spent two nights had been confiscated somewhere along my journey. Anyway, it would just be fine, I tried to soothe myself. I was on my way to meet my first white man and I was nervous as hell.

Oh yeah, before I forget , Edward and I had passed through a Wine and Smoke shop where we had bought some beer, a carton of 24 beer cans and I had asked why we were buying beer and bringing with us and he had said, just wait, you will see. When we got to Nancy's house, she warmly welcomed us in and said to us to feel at home. We went into the living room and we had with us our beer and I was raising my eyebrows because where I came from, visitors didn't carry their own drinks. Nancy had said to feel at home but she didn‟t offer us anything to drink. She came into the living room asking Edward how work had been that day because she hadn‟t been able to come in, and then she walked to the fridge and took out a can of beer and popped it open and she started drinking, without offering us any. Strange, I thought.

Later on, Edward was to explain to me that white people had the culture of BYOB, bring your own beer. If you visited anyone you had to bring your own beer or just stare at the host and the rest of the guests as they drank and nobody would offer you any. So it

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was that it this evening it was Nancy, Edward, Maurice and myself.

Oh Maurice, how can I describe him... His white hair is long and thin and combed over from one ear to the other, if the wind blew just right it would stand up tall, waving like he was surrendering. He had tied it down into a ponytail. Dried sweat stains outlined each crease in his fat rolls, When he moved there was the smell of horse dung. The skin under his eyes had a yellowish tint, and the rest of his face had red veins. His nose was wide and looked misplaced on his face and his eyes were round and beady. When I looked into his ears I could see the hair growing out of them. And his moustache was bushy and matched the hair from the ears and his nose.

He rose up and offered his hand and said to me that he was really excited to meet me. Then he sat down and opened yet another Busch Light beer and as he took another swig I wondered why he hadn't offered me one..

.Then Edward said to me, “Now you understand why we brought our

beer.” And Edward took a can from our carton and he

handed it to me...and I sat there drinking, wondering what I had gotten myself into.

Maurice seemed genuinely interested in Africa. He asked questions about Kenya in particular and it‟s culture and it‟s people and expressed a desire that one day he might not be so busy such that he would find

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time to travel and see the world. Even though he had only been as far as North Dakota and Minnesota, he seemed aware of world politics and even though he was a Republican as he himself stated, he was still quite fond of Obama who had just taken power. He jokingly referred to him as O-bummer and in a self-denigrating fashion spoke of the welfare that he hoped to get alongside with the tax breaks for the poor now that a Democrat was in charge. A very proud man, he had never received any welfare in his life, save for a few years during his teenage years when he had strayed into alcohol binging. This, he told me as he continued to sip from his can of Busch light.

“I have got things under control now.” He said as he opened his fourth can while I was

now on my second. I was trying to drink up so that I could master the courage to talk with him and Edward was giving me encouraging looks and whispering that I ought to talk slowly, I was rushing over my words and even he couldn‟t understand half of what I was saying. Even though it was rather cold, we moved out to the patio where Nancy had lit a fire and we continued taking more Busch lights as Maurice explained to me that he was wealthy but not secure enough to retire yet and he was working towards that goal so that in a few years‟ time, he might spend all his time as he wished.

Maurice talked about his two sons, one of whom was out in Alabama and had recently been in New York and who was generally moving from State to State as the whim caught him.

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“He will settle down eventually. And I hope he will manage these houses well.”

“So do you support him now?” I ventured to ask.

“No, I don‟t. I am trying to teach him to make his own money.”

And I thought of the folly of parents who restrict access to their money and then one day drop dead and their children squander away their wealth.

“I am going to retire in comfort.” He added. “You should come see my little farm.”

The next day, Maurice came to pick me up at Edward‟s house as we had agreed. He was going to show me his little farmhouse where he had said he lived all alone and where he had ten cats.

“You are going to love Missy.” He said. “She is very precocious, takes well to strangers. Sometimes she will go away for weeks but she always comes back. Last time she came back, she had ten kittens with her. I guess I have about twenty cats out on the farm.”

We drove about eight miles out of town through the corn plantations before we finally sighted the farmhouse from about a mile away. Iowa tends to be very flat rolling farmland and one can see for miles on end, before the corn grows. And even when it‟s all green and high, it‟s a beautiful sight.

“This here is farmer Bill. That there is farmer Jim.” He waved at houses which were miles apart. “Now this here is a man you don‟t want to get involved

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with. You can‟t be friends with his kind. A man up to no good.”

“Which one?” “That white house up there yonder. The man

there, Kenneth I believe his name is, it‟s rumored that he just came out of the pen for child molestation.”

I shuddered. Child molesters were the scum of the earth, in my books.

“Why do you let him live here then?” “Ain‟t no law against a child molester buying a

farm and living peacefully on it. He keeps to himself and we are fine with it. But we are not friends. Everyone around here tracks his movements. We always know where he is.”

That must be a sad life to lead, I thought to myself. A life where everyone knew what you were up to, where there was no privacy, where everyone was wary of you.

“Got himself a new wife the other day.” Maurice continued. “Here we are.” He announced as he drove up the long winding drive and finally stopped at a neat but very small house, surrounded by the regular barn buildings that are the landscape of America. To the day I die, that will always be the image I carry of America. Big red barn buildings and little white farmhouses surrounded by a cluster of trees.

“Step out young lady.” He said. We went into the house, whence he finally

offered me a Busch light. This became the first of many Busch lights. To this day, every time I see a Busch light,

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I think nostalgically of Maurice. He showed me around the house, and I noted the venison that was drying out on the patio.

“Shot that deer just last week. We are allowed by law to hunt one deer every season. Wish I could hunt more. I love venison. I could live on it.”

And then he took me out to the garden. The snow had melted. He said that he liked to grow his own vegetables and this season had harvested enough squash to last him for months and months before the next harvest.

“Stash away some cash, I always tell everyone. Live simply and stash away money for retirement. I do all the gardening myself. Think you could manage that? You look a little delicate. My wife will definitely have to get down and do some gardening.” He added.

I smiled to myself. I hadn‟t come all the way to America to plant squash and eat venison and avoid going to the grocery stores because I was squirreling away for retirement. That dream for his wife would have to be shot down soon in the most gentle manner, I thought. A man is how you make him. You have to make the rules from the first day. Lay down the expectations so that nobody is disappointed. Let him know how far he can push you. Know how far you have to bend. And you all get along fine.

Maurice and I continued to see each other almost on a daily basis. When I was not babysitting Edward‟s baby, I was hanging out with Maurice and we had become fast friends as we swirled away the Busch

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lights. I was walking around in a drunken stupor from drinking away half the day and Maurice had mellowed to the extent that even though we hadn‟t become intimate, we were talking hesitantly about marriage.

As we went around collecting rent from his many tenants, drinking the Busch lights, fixing the plumbing and electrical stuff for the close to twenty houses that he owned, I came to learn that he had three grandchildren that he adored and wanted to give them the houses upon his death but he had indicated he would gift me five of them if we got married. The thought that I might marry rich, even though I wouldn‟t be able to spend the money in his lifetime was making me mellow but still not ready to commit myself completely.

Edward kept tabs on me and I had to fill him in every day on how far I had progressed in leading Maurice towards the altar. I had expressed the fear that perhaps Maurice wasn‟t quite right for me. I didn‟t love him with the abandon that I should have loved someone that I would spend the next twenty years with, and Edward had lectured me that I needed to get a grip on reality and know that I was in this for only two years. Being reminded of my situation had brought me back to the ground fast and hard and I had now set about deliberately enticing Maurice to fall in love with me. And I do believe that he was in love with me, or at least very fond of me at this point.

Maurice and I had been dating for about three weeks before the moment came that every woman who

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is dating an ugly ass man and eating the fruits of his sweat must face. The excuses had run out and anyway if we were going to get married or if I was going to drag him to the altar I would have to let him sample the goods. I was thoroughly drunk. Beer has a way of preparing the mind to do what must be done.

Maurice was a large guy and I had often heard the myth that large guys are small because their fat has been distributed elsewhere. Oh boy was I in for a shock. As Maurice dropped his pants and his schlong popped out, my eyes widened. I wasn't sure whether to be excited or shocked or both. So I stood there staring. "Come on girl, don't just stand there! He said as he made space on the bed. Maurice's penis was enormous, it kind of reminded me of an incident in the village when I had seen a donkey suddenly pop a long black one and hold down a female donkey and in one swift move had pushed it all in and the crowd at the market had gasped and mama had yelled at my sisters what were we waiting for it was about to rain and we hadn't gathered the firewood. So anyway here I was gasping and then thinking oh this might be fun after all. Most times a big dick makes up for lack of skill and finesse in making love.

Having noted how sloppily he had kissed me, I hoped that once we got down to it I would help him into some sort of rhythm, this large bull standing before me so that if things weren't too bad, I might have some halfway decent sex and therefore know that I could tolerate marriage to him. I could feel myself getting

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ready. My muscles were twitching involuntarily and I couldn't wait. I have dated both ugly and handsome men in my life and I always try to look for a redeeming factor in each of them, something that I can focus on and love so that all other inadequacies are obscured. Aha, I smiled. I might learn to love him after all and survive two years with him.

“Okay honey, get down to it. Bring your pretty mouth and put it to use. I need some help getting hard."

“Ehh.. you look fine to me.” I said. "Ah no honey, I need help to stay hard and it's

gonna take some work to get this just right. " I looked at him, standing there... "Honey, get off the bed and get on your knees.

Work that mouth honey." I sighed. Best get over it. So I moved to the edge

of the bed and he was standing in my face with his big penis in my face.

"You haven't done this before? Not to worry honey. I will teach you."

Before I could respond I felt the penis shoved into my mouth and he was holding me by my hair such that I couldn't breath as he started ramming my mouth in rapid fire movements.

He was hitting the back of my throat and my mouth was clamping down on him and I felt my teeth scraping him and he stopped for a moment and said I needed to open my mouth wider.

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I was choking and gagging and about to throw up. God please help me, I cried out, I can't afford to fail at this, you know how much I need this to work, I thought. Maurice really is serious and he does need a wife and I do need a husband.

" How do I do it without gagging? Please help!" I didn't realize I had spoken out loud until

Maurice spoke up saying I should try to relax and everything would be just fine.

“Let's try something else." he said. At which I heaved a sigh of relief thinking we

had come to the end of the torture and he could put the enormous penis where it rightly belonged. My legs were beginning to part willingly to let him in, in all his majestic glory.

"Honey, I am going to lie down on my back and then you can do your thing. This is really important to me."

I tried but my efforts were cut short by Maurice when he realized how hopeless I was. He turned me on my back abruptly and entered from the back and I could feel him all the way up to my throat. As I lay next to him long after he had come, I thought this might just work. I didn't mind the way he had screwed me. It wasn't fine but his size and his vigor had made up for his lack of grace. I drifted off to sleep.

"Atieno, my pleasure is mostly derived from getting a good working by a woman's mouth. It's very difficult for me to come without that. You really need to learn if we are to continue this thing we got going."

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he said to me as we stood outside his house one night looking at the moon.

On several days, he had tried to teach me to satisfy him by using my mouth but I was proving to be a very poor student. The coyotes were howling from the distance and a few minutes ago he had been howling along with them.

"You understand that this is important to me, don't you?" he asked.

"I do." The next day I had looked up the Cosmopolitan

and to my dismay I had found out I was going it the wrong way. This is what the Cosmopolitan recommended:

"Next time you want to pleasure your man orally, start by swirling your tongue around his nerve-packed corona (the ridge where the head meets the shaft) and gently sucking the tip of his shaft. As his arousal grows, lick the length of his penis, alternating between sweeping up-and-down strokes and circular motions. You'll really make his toes curl if you caress his balls as you tantalize his manhood with your tongue. Or, lick his testicles as you manually massage his shaft." I lay in bed that whole day wondering how I

could bring myself to lick his hairy balls and testicles and I was feeling sick to my stomach and at the same time I was saying to myself, Atieno you got this, many

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women before you have walked this path and been great coquettes. What's so special about your mouth?

The next day Maurice and I had a date at the local Buffalo Wings and it was Double Wings night, where one paid half price for two plates of wings. We had eaten the wings and were swirling the Busch Light when his eyes grew misty and he asked me whether I loved him and how I pictured the two of us in twenty years‟ time. Did I see the two of us sitting by the fireside and enjoying the tapping feet of the grandbabies as we went out into the garden to harvest our squash that we ourselves had grown? Would I grow to enjoy the venison? Might I perhaps in time learn to enjoy giving him what he really liked in bed? The blow jobs...

As I looked up into his face I knew I couldn't lie to him. There was no way I was going to ever enjoy having that schlong ramming my mouth. I looked at the gentle giant waiting on an answer and my mouth refused to move.

He took me home. On the long drive we were both quiet. Atieno, tell him you love him. Don't ruin this, Atieno. I told myself repeatedly. But still my mouth refused to open.

He went round and opened the door for me. “We had a good run, didn't we? He said as he got

into his old Ford truck and stole away into the night. I went into the house and explained to Edward

that Maurice had ended it with me and also explained to

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him that I had tried my best to learn the blowjob techniques but I had failed.

“You didn‟t try hard enough.” Edward said. “I think you have made a mistake and you are going to regret it.”

“I don‟t think so.” I said confidently. “I didn‟t want to lie to him anymore.”

“It‟s not about lying to anyone. In time, you will come to understand.”

I did eventually come to understand. But I didn‟t come to this understanding until many months later. In my arrogance, I had let a good man go. I went to bed that night thinking that all was not lost. I still could salvage my situation. But I was so very wrong. I hadn‟t calculated on the events that would happen next.

For, the next week, my cousin's wife told me to get the hell out of her house...

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Chapter Three (I get Thrown Out)

Maurice had ended it with me. And I had gone back to Edward and explained that the affair had not been tenable because he was asking me to do stuff that I hadn‟t in my entire life ever done and that I was feeling misused and annoyed and I wished that he hadn‟t ever deceived me about life in America being so easy and it being such a walk in the park getting a job and building that house for mama.

So he had suggested that perhaps we might go for a drink and cool down and re-strategise. After speaking to several of his friends, the simple strategy, the way forward was to meet total strangers in pubs and hope that one of them fell hard enough for me and dearly wanted to make me his lifetime companion.

There were only two pubs in that little town. And Edward was well known in them because he played a mean game of pool. And he also drank a lot, often leaving his wife at home taking care of their baby who was now six months.

He carried me along with him on these nocturnal activities. For two weeks, we visited the pub every day, alternating between the two looking for suitable prey. To disguise it and make look like I was available, we always went to the pub with the other black people in the little city who all happened to be students. One of my dearest companions was Festu, a young boy who had dropped out of college because the international

38

fees were just too expensive. Festu drank from morning to midnight, except for the few hours that he went to work to sustain the habit. I guess he was deeply depressed but at the time I didn‟t think of it that way. I just went along with the tide. I was trying to hide my increasing disappointment and sinking deeper also into the alcoholic swing of the town. I had by this time drank over 30 brands of beer and fraternizing with Festu meant that I was soon going to be a connoisseur of the over 100 brands of beer that are sold in Iowa.

With Maurice, I had drank a lot of Busch lights. With Festu, I had sampled Bud Lights, Heineken, Corona and every beer under the Iowa sun. Iowa has 38 breweries and annual consumption is worth over $200 million and I was fast becoming a statistic as one of the greatest contributors to that beer booming economy. My only redemption is that I wasn‟t drinking my money. I was drinking an endless supply of beer bought by the blacks in that little college town.

One Saturday night, we had decided to drive to Davenport, which was easily 100 miles away, as a farmers‟ dance was being held there, after an agricultural show. We had arrived in style in a convoy of five cars and drank and danced as though it were our last dance. I had by now decided to relax and let nature take its course, having realized that I couldn‟t just snap a man and drag him to the altar. I had said to myself that I would try to preempt stress by setting a realistic goal of meeting a guy and dating him and marrying him within a year. Anything less was out of the question and

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would simply cause me untold agony and stress, because it was simply unmanageable.

As we were returning from the dance, and singing the then trending weaver bird Osogo Winyo‟s songs at the top of our voices, we had seen the red and blue lights flash behind us. Red and blue is synonymous with freedom in America but it‟s also synonymous with police and loss of freedom when such lights interspersed with loud sirens, are sighted through the rear view mirrors. We crawled to a stop and the two cops came round to our car and asked the driver for license and vehicle registration, which he handed over, as calmly as a drunk driver can master. We had then been ordered to get out of the car slowly and stand at the front with our hands stretched out before us and touch the bonnet and…

“Please ma‟am, sir, keep your hands where we can see them at all times.”

They had then gone ahead to search the car and had found our empty bottles of beer and whiskey, for which we had violated the no-open-bottle law.

“Who was drinking in the car? Step up here please.”

I hadn‟t been drinking in the car, as luck would have it. Although I did have a fidgety panicky moment until the driver and Festu stepped forward. They were then led away into the police car and as it zoomed away, I realized I had had such a narrow escape and it was time to focus on achieving my goals. Surely I hadn‟t come to America to go to jail for violating the

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drinking laws. One of the girls in the car, a nineteen year old who hadn‟t been drinking because she was underage was asked by the cops to drive us to our destination.

Our driver and Festu having been taken away, there remained in the car myself, Edward and the young girl. Needless to say, Edward was too drunk to know which way we were going, and the girl was driving around guessing which turn we had made as we drove to Davenport. In the end we had gotten hopelessly lost in the corn fields and the girl and myself had decided that our best chances for survival was to keep driving. A distance that should have taken us two hours ended up taking us five hours since we had to drive around until dawn to find out where we were.

When we eventually got home, we found Edward‟s wife had lost her voice from crying and wasn‟t talking to us anymore. She had almost reached the end of her rope. In the search for a husband, I had been gallivanting everywhere with her husband and drinking daily, and was no longer helping her in household chores or babysitting. I could see the anger in her eyes as she grew colder towards me every day and I just didn‟t know what to do. It was like I was operating outside my own body, without a mind, just having a nose to smell out the beer and partake and forget the misery in my life. I sensed that something would happen but I didn‟t know it would be so dramatic.

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My cousin Edward and I had gone out of the house on the pretext that we were going to buy a goat from one of the farmers around our little town. In the heat of the moment, ten other fellows had joined us and we had suddenly found ourselves in a convoy of four cars going to buy the one goat. The farmer let us into his goats‟ pen and we selected a fattened one, which he slaughtered and then left it to us to skin it.

Two of the other guys decided that they also wanted goats for themselves and we helped them slaughter, skin and chop. By the time the meat was all bagged as respectably as possible, it was already midnight. At which point, we all decided to go get a drink for the road. More like drinks for the road. We had been drinking since five o‟clock, not in the car but we had carried whisky and beers which we drank at the farmer‟s place.

It was truly a moment of insanity on our part, for which I would come to pay later and to regret for a long time. When we got done drinking at the farmer‟s place, we headed to the pub and drank some more. And then a bright bird decided that we should head to his house to barbecue some of the meat that we were carrying in the car booths. And so it was that we found ourselves having an impromptu party at the guy‟s house and were soon joined by ten other black students.

Soon it was five o‟clock and we were staggering back into Edward‟s house. The whole night his wife had been blowing up his phone and he kept ignoring it. When we got to the house and Edward was yelling at

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her to open, she yelled back that we could as well go back and get more goats. For who in their right mind goes to buy a goat at 4.00 in the evening and comes back at 6.00 in the morning with the goat and expects to be spoken to decently? Not her, she said. And then she opened the door and we stumbled in.

Edward was standing there sheepishly trying to explain what had befallen us when I saw the first slap land on his face. And then some more slaps and kicks rained on him. And all this time, he stood there and received the slaps as a little baby will. He didn‟t protest, just stood there. And I too stood there mesmerized by the sight of the little woman beating up the tall big man and him pleading with her to stop. I decided that this was becoming too embarrassing for me and was trying to sneak away when she yelled at me to stop right where I was.

“Why are you doing this to me, Edward?” she yelled as she took a shoe and hit him. Edward stood there taking the beating. And I was wondering which America is this I had come to, where a tiny woman beat up a man and he took it without a word.

“What‟s wrong with you, Edward?” Another slap. “You think you are going to marry me and treat

me like dirt? Leaving me in the house everyday with the baby while you go out drinking like a fool? Did I make this baby on my own??”

A punch and a kick.

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That was the day I learnt the power of 911. A woman could beat up a man and then call the police and they would come and take away the man because he posed a danger to the woman, never mind that the woman had just thoroughly whipped him.

Edward was pleading for forgiveness and promising that if she didn‟t call 911, he would reform his ways and the first thing that was going to happen was that I, the bad influence would get out of their house.

“If this woman doesn‟t leave now, (me), I am calling 911 on you!” she told him.

Edward looked at me trying to explain using his eyes. I packed my one bag. I had long ago given the skirt suits to the Goodwill second hand shop so I had only my new clothes to carry. As I looked through the window, while I was packing and saw the ground all white covered in the snow which had fallen two days before and had not melted, I felt heavy depression settle on me. I didn‟t know where I was going.

But as I have previously mentioned, Edward was a chap chap guy. He put me on the Greyhound to Minnesota to go live with a different distant cousin. I was going to babysit for free as I waited to get my life together.

Minnesota was the coldest place I had ever been, colder than Iowa, and there my hatred for snow and winter and all things cold, strengthened.

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I continued to babysit. And spent a lot of time crying and wondering how I was going to get my life together.

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Chapter Four (Encounter with a Serial Killer)

After I was thrown out of my cousin Edward‟s house by his wife, Edward had called a different distant cousin who now lived in Minneapolis and she had said I could go live in her house on condition that I took care of her child for room and board. It was in the middle of the winter and I had nowhere to go. I didn‟t want to return home yet. I felt that since I was here the least I could do was work at it instead of returning home in disgrace and have to start from scratch again. By this time, my baby had moved upcountry and lived with my mother. She was slowly adjusting to village life and they had enrolled her in the village school.

My very distant cousin, Rachel, a nurse was married to Joseph, a relationship that I found very peculiar. He was also in nursing school. Everybody I had met from my country so far was a nurse or a caregiver or in nursing school. He had asked me what I had studied back home and I had with great pride informed him that I had a Master of Arts degree.

And he had then gone on to pompously inform me that he too had been a primary school headmaster when he was back home and I really needed to do myself a favor and just keep away my certificates and forget about them if I was ever to succeed in America.

“These people here don‟t recognize African certificates, my friend. Forget you ever went to school. You are starting afresh. Keep that in mind and you won‟t get too depressed.”

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I was amused. I remembered talking to my mother telling her I was coming to Edward‟s diploma graduation and she had asked me, whether Edward had restarted his education from grade one when he landed in America. Because he had taken almost twenty years before he was finally graduating. At the time I had laughed hard. But slowly I was coming to understand why Edward had taken twenty years to complete his diploma. And with each bit of information that contributed to my finally understanding, I had felt like I was being hit by an invisible hammer into the ground and it was going to take me forever to get up and crawl from the hole that I was sinking into.

Rachel and I had sat down and had a woman to woman talk about my problems and she had agreed that she definitely understood my predicament, having been there herself and finally marrying the former primary school headmaster, Joseph, a man she would not have looked at twice but had ended up looking at suggestively because he had been in America for a long time and had become a citizen.

I was thus introduced to a cousin of Joseph, who had travelled from the city of Benson to view me, his prospective wife. He had then said that he didn‟t have time to discuss the matter because he had to work that evening and I should get into his SUV and go to the city of Benson for a day so that we would have ample time to discuss what would be expected of me in this arrangement. Joseph had suggested that we might work out a buy my citizenship from him type of arrangement,

47

where he would marry me and I would get my papers and I would pay him the staggering sum of $20,000 over a period of 2 years.

“Don‟t worry.” Joseph said. “You will make more than that in the two years especially if you work double shifts the way I do. In fact since you don‟t have a family, you can even work three shifts at different jobs. Go with him and work out the details.”

And thus I had gotten into the SUV and had found myself in Benson. Joseph‟s cousin had gone out and bought some takeout and had suggested that I freshen up. I was surprised that we were in a one-bedroomed apartment because he had indicated that he lived in a two bedroomed apartment.

“Don‟t worry.” He had said when I looked perplexed. “It‟s only for a night. I will sleep on the couch as a good host and you can take the bedroom.”

I had made myself comfortable. Taken a shower and changed into my pajamas, watched a bit of TV, discussed the forthcoming marriage and agreed that I would pay him a certain sum monthly until the sum was cleared.

With a smile I had gone to bed. This was a man from home and he was going to help me. Even though he was charging me, it was going to be alright.

I had dozed off, when I felt him get into the bed and begin to cuddle me, groping me and trying to pull me towards him. I sat up and asked him what the hell he was doing.

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“Atieno, we are going to be man and wife, we better start getting used to each other.”

“What do you mean by getting used to each other? I am paying you for this. Nobody mentioned that sex was going to be a requirement.”

“I am a lonely man. How do you think I am going to survive and yet I have to carry on the impression that I am a married man? I can‟t date anyone if I am married to you. Someone could report me to the government and we could both go in for a long time. You do know paying someone to marry you is illegal, don‟t you? Allow me to help you.” He said as he reached for me.

I had learnt the power of 911. “Leave me alone or I swear imma dial 911.” I

said to him. He stepped out and went and lay on the couch.

In the morning he took me back to Rachel‟s house. “This isn‟t going to work.” I heard him tell

Joseph. “This girl is too tough headed.” I explained to Rachel what had happened and

she suggested that I try online dating. And this was how I came to find myself, riding in the night in a serial killer‟s white van. I met the serial killer online.

He had arrived at Rachel‟s apartment the exact time we had agreed on, if anything he was five minutes early and found i wasn't ready. Being new in America and still operating on Kenyan time, those ones of keeping a guy waiting for hours, he found i wasn't ready. I told him to wait outside and quickly jumped

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into the shower. I didn't have enough time to make the magic happen on my face, as in I hadn't put on my face and changed and discarded ten outfits. Anyway i finally went outside and there he was standing patiently. In the dim light he smiled at me as he helped me into his white van and i was instantly smitten. I am a sucker for smiles that start from inside the heart, not those fake ones that are instantly plastered.

We spent a few minutes talking about where we would go for the evening. I think he sensed my slight reluctance so he spoke to me gently, and asked me to decide where to go for dinner. As i was a newbie i told him anywhere he chose was fine. So he helped me into the white van and then we drove off. We conversed for some time, talking about the weather and all that nice stuff, niceties, you know. Civilized people do those. Then out of the blue he asked...

“You are not scared of me, are you?” he asked. “Should I be?” “Well, it's not every day that a young woman gets

into a stranger's vehicle in the middle of the night.” “What if I was?” He didn't respond. We were racing through the

night in the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota, heading downtown towards the Old District where all the night clubs were located.

At least that's where he had said we were going. Since I didn't know the city too well, I could only sit back and try to relax and think about what emergency measures I had in place to save my life should it come

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to that. Which in truth were none. I had taken a chance and come out with this stranger and here I was in his white van riding away in the dark towards only God knew where. But he had seemed like a good man. We had been emailing back and forth for a while.

The thoughts racing through my mind sent chills down my spine as I imagined this old man stopping and parking his white van by the roadside after branching off into a dirt road and chasing me for miles as I tried to escape and finally managing to grab me by the throat and tying me down and throwing me on the bed at the back of the van and raping me and then strangling me and dumping my body by the same muddy roadside. I probably wouldn't be found for weeks since nobody would report me missing for weeks.

We drove in silence for a mile or so. This was awkward first date but perhaps after a few sips of tequila it wouldn't be so and we would relax enough to get through the first date interview questions, what do you do, where are you from, you got any kids, you come with any baggage, are you clean, any crimes in your past and all that.

“Do you know anything about rednecks?” he asked.

“No, I don't.” I wondered why he was asking me about

rednecks. The little i had heard of them from fellow blacks about them, was you best keep off them. They hate blacks and want America to be all white and have done some shitty stuff against blacks, talk of shooting,

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gorging out eyes, torture etc. I didn't say anything. I was suddenly chilled. Could this sweet guy be one of em reds?

“Well, I do. And I am going to tell you the story of one redneck that used to be my friend.”

“What are you talking about?” “You didn't think you were going to get off easy?

Now, did you? Little flower, you are now in the big league. You join the wolves, you gotta roll with the wolves.”

I shifted uncomfortably. I hoped he couldn't smell the fear. My armpits were soaked, dripping wet and I could feel the wet red shirt that I was wearing sticking to my skin. I had used my trusty Arm and Hammer deodorant but in the small stuffy white van, I was scared to death and could smell the sweat. What had I done? This was certainly going to be my last night. I had picked a random stranger from the internet and here we were racing through the dark night.

Never mind that the advertisement on Match.Com had said that it was free for the first month of sign-up and here I was taking advantage of the free month trying to meet as many strangers as I could. This was the first one I had dared to meet in person. I was furiously flirting with 30 others through email and text and couldn't even keep them straight but I was taking notes on my mini-laptop. Microsoft Excel was helping me get through the nightmare of keeping the men straight in my head. After every conversation I

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laboriously took notes so that the men would think they were the only ones I was interested in.

I reached for the Kleenex on the dashboard and wiped my wet palms. I hoped I did it surreptitiously enough so he couldn't see that he had gotten me all creeped out. What was wrong with me? The white van should have been the first clue that this was a psycho. Hadn't I read enough news items of people being murdered by the elderly man in the neighborhood who kept to himself and drove a creepy white van?

We drove along in silence. I was now desperate. My heart was racing. My tummy was turning over. I felt like i was going to diarrhea. But i struggled to put on a brave face as i began to plot my exit. My mind was furiously spinning on how i would extricate myself from this quagmire. I thought of my poor mum in Africa. Who would explain to her that i, a grown woman took myself and entered a car whose owner i didn't know?

The uncomfortable silence continued for a few more minutes.

“Amber Hagerman” he said loudly breaking into my thoughts.

“Who is that?” “Oh, now you are going to pretend you don't

know Amber Hagerman? Everybody knows Amber.” I tried to search my memory, limited as it were of

American history and dinner table anecdotes. Then I remembered. One morning my phone

had shrilled loud enough to wake the dead.

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Simultaneously the other four phones in the apartment had shrilled. A kind of siren. So i had asked my sister why all the phones had made that strange noise and she had explained that it was an Amber alert. Whenever a child is reported missing or kidnapped an Amber alert is sent out on all the phones in the State to pass on the news of the missing child so you can all be on the lookout. The Amber alert is named after a little girl who was later found raped and tortured and murdered. I believe her parents set up the service in her memory. Anyway...

“Amber!!” he repeated his eyes fixed on the winding road as he increased the speed.

Idly I wondered what my chances of survival were if I jumped out of the moving van. Probably end up as a broken corpse. Too messy. Perhaps it would be better to let this play out to its logical end. What the hell? The old guy would rape me and then if I was lucky he would leave me in the forest through which I would stumble for half a day somehow managing not to get eaten by any wild animals and like a movie star heroine, I would stumble into a police station and they would rush me to hospital, ambulances and fire-trucks in tow with sirens blaring. But the problem is I would have my face splashed all over the newspapers the next day. But no, they didn't do that, did they? There must be a law somewhere to protect victims of rape.

I crossed my legs instinctively. Perhaps it was too late to cross my legs.

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“Amber” the old man continued. “She was the abducted and murder child whose tragic story prompted the establishment of the Amber Alert system. She was riding her bike in broad daylight when a man stopped and threw her screaming into his truck.”

“What's that got to do with us? This evening?” “Well, the man that did that was my best friend

Eddy Washington. He just got out after 23 years. Let out for good behavior. Doesn't have to do life after all. I went to see him yesterday.”

I didn't say anything. I shifted uncomfortably once more and reached out for another napkin. Wiped my face and my palms.

We continued driving. By now I wasn't talking. I had decided that whatever would happen, there was no way to stop it. I wasn't going to struggle. I would cooperate and go to my Lord gently. This was my fate.

“Ted Bundy!!” he shouted and laughed maniacally. Funny, I thought. I hadn't realized what a weird laugh he had.

“I don't know Ted Bundy either. But I suppose you are going to tell me?”

“Of course, my little flower.” “Why are you calling me little flower?” “That's what I called them all. I am Ted Bundy.

Don't you recognize me? Oh wait, they only have old pictures of me now. I did change my name when I got out. Edward Johnson suits me, wouldn't you say?”

“It's a nice name.” I said. I wasn't about to goad this stranger any more than I had to.

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“I will tell you about the time when I was Ted Bundy. My early life. How I miss it. I was in law school at Georgetown. Good old days. Over 39 women. That was my best time. I used a baseball bat.”

Okay this was it. I knew there had been something wrong with this man. Scratch that. I hadn't seen the clues. I had been so naive, now here i was in a van with a wild man cruising at dangerous speeds and he was confessing to me that he had killed 39 women, served many years in jail and had just gotten out. Once a killer always a killer, i thought. The taste for blood never goes away. I would be his 40th victim.

I remembered something i had read somewhere. If you're in a captive situation you should talk to your captor. Keep the conversation going. Develop a rapport. As he speaks you might discover something that will help you escape.

“Why?” I asked. I wanted to know more in case I was going to be done in. I might as well know why this man had chosen me. Out of all the millions of women in the world, why had it been my fate to cross Ted Bundy's path?

He turned and stared at me. At the speed we were racing I thought we would both surely die through road accident. Perhaps my ending might not be so macabre after all.

“You do resemble her. Same chin. The way you tilt your head. The same frown. Oh you are as pretty as she was, little flower.”

“Resemble her? Who?”

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“Why, oh why! You truly are ignorant.” he shook his head like he was really mad at me. Banged on the steering wheel with both hands.

“My first. The first girl I murdered.” I shivered and wrung my hands in despair. This

was it. I was riding through the night with a murderer. This man had killed over 39 girls? Through the corner of my eye, I studied him. If I ever got out of this alive, the Police would need me to help draw from memory a picture of the man that was going to kill me tonight.

“I already did time for all of them. Don't you worry your pretty little head. But look where we are today? You resemble her.”

“Who?” I asked again. “Rita Springsteen. The love of my life. When she

tried to break up with me, after I had dedicated five years of my life, I just had to do it. My arm was in a sling that cold December night. I asked her to carry my textbooks. The rest was easy. I used the baseball bat. Well, as they say the first one is the hardest. The rest were easy. I kept getting better with each hit. But as I said, I have paid for my crimes. All I desired was to live a peaceful life. You know? But you came along. You resemble her. It's got to be done.”

We came to a stoplight. The light turned red. Here was my chance I thought. I quickly snapped open the car seat belt. Reached for the door handle.

“It's locked.” he said. “I am afraid you are stuck with me.”

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The light turned green. We resumed the race. Then he pulled into a parking lot. He was going to kill me in the well-lit bright parking lot.

“Come on.” he said. I followed him. Remember I had said I wasn't

going to struggle? I would go in a calm dignified manner. She was a lady to the end. People would say. My feet were so heavy I was dragging them. He took my hand.

“Let's hurry. We are late.” We entered through the backdoor. He was half-

dragging me and then suddenly I found myself resisting. If i was going to die i should at least put up a struggle. Why make it easy for him? So i started trying to wrestle and get out of his grip. He held me tighter and dragged me forcefully and pushed me through a door in the back alley.

And suddenly there we were. In a beautiful restaurant. Surrounded by people. The hostess came up to us.

“Table for two, Mr. Johnson?” She was smiling widely. “He didn't scare you too much, did he?” she

asked me. I looked up at Edward. He was smiling. Then he

burst out laughing. “You got some spunk.” he said. “I like that. So,

Tequila, is it?” “No. No Tequila for me.” I smiled. “I am going

to need some Jack Daniel's...

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We had a beautiful dinner. But that was the end of my short dalliance with internet dating for that moment. It turned out, as Johnson explained, that we wouldn‟t see each other again. His thrill came from meeting women once and giving them the ride of a lifetime.

I continued working for Rachel. And I continued going to Church. Rachel and her family went to a Church that was frequented by the African population of Minneapolis.

That is where I met Matt.

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Chapter Five (I Meet Matt)

Matt. Easily 6 feet 3 inches. Blue eyes. Ivory colored skin. A replica of what I had pictured in my mind as I voraciously devoured Harlequin Romances back in the day. When I was younger and innocent. Really innocent. He was the second white man I ever really dated.

I met him at church. At a black peoples' church where I had gone to take all my sins and cast my burdens to God in the hope of starting the next week on a clean slate. Believing that I wouldn't have to carry the sins and troubles back with me and that I would find a magical solution at the tall grey building, outside of which all sorts of cars were packed.

The women were wearing what is best simply described as Sunday best. Dresses and big flowery hats. The men had on black suits and mostly white shirts. A few of the men, the more daring ones, wore pink shirts. It was at the height of the awakening of the sexual revolution featuring the new sensitive man. The man that could wear pink and get away with it and have other men drooling over him and remarking how well he carried the pink and the ladies thinking what a sweet sensitive man they had stumbled upon. In short, pink for men was the new black.

Well, Matt wore a pink shirt. And I was wearing a dress and a large hat. We couldn't have looked better together. A perfect couple.

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At the time, on the material day, on the warm Spring day that I met him, I didn't know that Matt constantly hounded these churches looking for prey.

And I was the ideal prey seeing as where I was with in desperation. It's hard not to be convinced that it's a sign from God when you finish praying for a man and then when you open your eyes, you look up into smiling green eyes.

Matt was easily the most intelligent man I have ever met. And the most deceitful. But I didn't know that. For when I met him, from where I stood, he was the epitome of gentility, and well-bred people, opening doors and considerate gentleman.

“Hi...” he said “You look familiar.” I rolled my eyes at the classic tired line. But then

he added a twist to the line. A twist that drew me in immediately. And made me like him from the get-go.

“No, really I am serious. There is a girl I know, her name is Kwamboka. You have a certain resemblance to her. Are you related to anyone called Kwamboka? She is in her 30s and she comes to this church too.”

Matt was a master of psychology. By mentioning the name of a woman from my country, he led me into a state of disemboweled senility where I instantly believed and hang onto his every word.

See, meeting a white man in his 40s who could actually pinpoint what country I was from in the vast continent of Africa was startling. Too many times I had been forced to deal with and explain to too many

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people that Africa was not a country but a continent with various countries of which Kenya was just one, among the many. To stumble upon someone that knew I came from Kenya was truly a sign from God.

I looked up and favored him with my sweetest smile.

“No, I don't know her. But that name definitely sounds familiar.”

Well, that wasn't a total lie. Every Kenyan girl's name sounds familiar to me. Atieno sounds familiar. Adhiambo sounds familiar. Heck, even Moraa sounds very familiar.

And then he smiled and weaved the web further by asking me if I was from Kenya and mentioning that the most beautiful girls he had met were from Kenya. I glowed under the compliments and fell beautifully into his trap. Intrigued by all the knowledge he possessed of my country. So much knowledge.

A few days later, Matt and I were on our first official date. He had called last night and we had agreed to meet at the corner Macdonald's nearest to my house.

“What kind of girls you like?” I asked him in the silence engulfing us.

“All girls. Black girls.” he responded. “You?” “I don't like girls. I like boys.” “What kind of boys you like? Black boys?” “Yeah, black will do.” “You married?” “No.” “You?”

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“No.” He smiled. That same magical smile that had me

captivated from the first day I met him. We were on our first official date at the neighborhood McDonald's. He had driven down from where he lived to my neighborhood in Richfield and as I didn't want to go too far, I had chosen the neighborhood MacDs.

“Just thought we should get that out of the way. So that we can settle down and enjoy our friendship.” he explained as he threw the next rapid fire question.

“You ever dated a white boy?” “Nope, you are my first. It was taboo in my

country. We left the white men to the harlots and prostitutes. Very indecent to date a white boy, it was.”

“Honored.” he smiled. “Delighted to be your first.”

“Your turn.” I said. “My turn to do what?” “Oh don't be coy. You ever dated a black girl?” “Why?” he asked. “Because I don't want you experimenting with

me. I heard that it is the white man's sport to go with at least one black girl during their lifetimes. Something about having a go at the slave.”

“That's so screwed up. Where did you hear that?” he asked.

“Read it on an online journal.” “Tell me more about it.” “The theory was that white males like to

dominate. But they are unable to dominate fellow white

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women because they have been emancipated for so long and know their rights. They know exactly what they want. And white men can't stand that. But black girls don't know their rights so much. And they don't have so much self-esteem. So the white men take advantage.”

“That's the most cock-eyed bullshit theory I ever heard. Look at me do I look weak in any way to you?”

I looked up and admired the man seated opposite me. Green eyes, blonde yellowish hair cut to hang to slightly below his ears. Good nose, chin that was not too strong. Lips that were not too thin. Not the regular lips I had seen on so many white guys.

“No you don't.” I murmured. “You are definitely not weak.”

I looked up at him and continued admiring his ribbed shoulders and arms. He was wearing a white vest. The type that is commonly referred to as the wife-beater vest. I have no idea why it is called that. But I do find it an interesting concept that the vest is called the wife-beater.

We sit in silence for a while. There is something so companionable about our silence. It is not awkward. We shift from topic to topic like we didn't just meet last week. If I were the romantic type, which I am, I would say that Matt and I will soon find out we are soul mates. Meant to be.

“You ever had your pussy ate?” he asks. I am startled. And the look on my face reflects

my bewilderment. He is struggling to hold his laughter.

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Then he bursts out laughing. A deep laugh that begins in his belly and spreads to his face and makes me join in the laughter.

“Gotcha.” he says. “You are all so prim and proper. And living in such a shell. I want to crack open that shell and help you crawl out.”

I am smiling widely. It's gonna be a tough battle for him. I don't know if I want to be drawn out of my shell. It's taken many years to develop this calm serene composure that I carry around. Nobody looking at me would imagine that I have so many problems. Serenity must be maintained at all costs.

“We are going to turn you into a sexy little vixen.” he says while glancing at my butt as I stand up.

I smile again. I have smiled so much this afternoon, I think my jaw is going to break. All the attention that this lovely man is paying me has me distracted from what I must do. I am not sure whether I am merely intoxicated by the compliments or I am falling head over heels with this stranger.

“Once you go black, you don't go back.” he says. “Is that right?” “Yes, oh yes.” he says. We walk silently to his car. It takes us a while to

find it. A red corvette. Very fitting. All the while he keeps glancing at my behind and making lewd faces. Funny enough I don't feel like a sex object as I normally would. He has a distracted clinical way of looking at me.

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“Sugar butt.” he finally says. “That's what we are going to call you. Sugar butt.”

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Chapter Six (Obama is Black)

We had been up for many hours. He had made me breakfast and then washed the dishes and put them away, taking care to line them up exactly the way he always did.

I was sitting on the couch staring blankly at the TV screen.

"Obama is NOT black.” he yelled as he slammed the bathroom door.

I waited till he came out so we would resume the argument. We had been going at it since dawn and I was determined to have the last word. I am a woman after all.

"Yeah, duh, everyone knows Obama IS black ." Now, Matt, again I have to emphasize was one

of the most intelligent guys I have ever met. With a high IQ. And I am one of those women that are easily trapped by high IQs. Brilliance on all levels fascinates me.

Matt could recite facts and stories and could talk nonstop on all topics under the sun. He had a way with words. The way he weaved ideas was not just intriguing but it drew you in because he had the ability to explain tough stuff and simplify it. Tough stuff like how the American political system worked. The Electoral College. Who were the conservatives and who were the Democrats? And how a typical Republican looked and how you could recognize one just by looking at him. When we went for evening walks, we played the game

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of identify a Republican. The American flag on the patio definitely belonged to a Republican. An owl on the porch belonged to a Democrat. An annoyed look at us belonged to a Republican. Heck, he even taught me how to recognize a Republican from their drawl. Southern drawl? His ancestors owned slaves. Definitely a Republican.

And Matt, you know, didn't make you feel foolish while he explained this hard difficult stuff. He was a talker but also gave one time to chip in and ask questions and participate and feel like they were a part of his secret amazing world of knowledge.

I can't remember how many nights I sat by Matt's feet listening to him. Worshiping at the loins of his knowledge. And wishing he would stop talking and just take me to bed because he was so brilliant and I was so drawn to him and I was so enamored of him and his wit and his intelligence even though he had already confided in me that he only had a bachelor of arts in communication degree and that all the other knowledge and brilliance was self-taught and self-absorbed.

“I just have a brain that retains everything I read” he explained as he sat on the couch one evening and whipped out his penis and started masturbating. I watched the rapid up and down movements fascinated, by the long thick dick and how it seemed to have a life of its own. Rising and falling rhythmically.

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“No, just sit over there and watch me.” he said as he rubbed more vigorously. “This really blows my mind.” he said. “It's just the bomb.”

By this time, my pussy was seriously soaked. He hadn't ejaculated yet. He continued the rapid movements as he talked. Two months we had been dating and we still hadn't done it. Had never had sex. Two months it was running into.

“You know they calling Obama black? Right? But look at his skin. Does that look like a black skin to you?”

“Of course it is. He is as black as I am.” “Oh no, he is what we would call Caucafrican.

That's a new race. If you and I were to have a baby it would definitely be Caucafrican.” he continued as he reached out for the Vaseline. Rubbed some of it onto the sensitive tip of his penis, with gentle motions that I watched eagle-eyed. I was completely fascinated.

“You know what I like about you?” he said. “What?” I asked. “A white woman would never let me get away

with masturbating in her presence. But you African women are perfect. You don't like sex that much. So it is a win-win situation for the both of us.”

“Mmh...” I said. We don't like sex, us African women, he had said. I could have responded to that. But I didn't feel like contradicting him. Because then he would start quoting textbook knowledge of how Africans only copulated to have babies, each baby coming precisely 10 months after the last baby and with

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the women needing to have sex helpers because they didn't like sex so much and therefore prepared to share the burden.

I was turned on, I would have to use the dildo afterward. He had bought it for me at the first sex store I had ever been to. AmErotica LLC it was called. I was embarrassed to be walking into that store but he was sensitive enough to offer me his shades. Under the big dark glasses I was shielded from both people and sin. And anyway I figured that I wouldn't run into anybody I knew in the heart of Wisconsin.

We had deliberately crossed the State line to go buy stuff in Wisconsin. And before we went, he told me he had to call his brother and tell him that he was crossing the State border and get his permission to use his car. Well, that was how he explained it to me. He couldn't take the car across the border because he wasn't sure if the insurance covered it. So he had to get permission from his brother.

That's a story for another day. But I will have you know that I felt and thought more highly of him, when he offered to drive more than 50 miles across the State just to get me the dildo. He said he didn't want us to run into anybody who might know me. Well, as I said that was his explanation.

The shop attendant, a buxom blonde, wearing a red lace lingerie set that showed her in all her glory briskly strutted over to us, slightly stumbling in her almost ten-inch red heels to match.

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“Feel free to ask any questions.” she gushed. “Are you buying anything in particular or do you just want to browse around?”

“This is her first time.” Matt explained. “Oh, a virgin!” she smiled. “Well, in that case I

would recommend the All American Whopper Flesh, which comes in pink and a dark brown. Or the Average Joe bartender. That one is shorter and thicker and most of the people of your color, and I certainly don‟t mean to be offensive, they just don't like it. You probably want the Whopper. Do let me know what size you want.”

“Size?” I asked innocently. She looked amused. “Yes, the inches. The length. You must know the

perfect fit for you.” Matt sensing my discomfort took over. I did

point out to you how sensitive he was, didn't I? “You will have to show us some samples and

then we will just pick from there. We don't know how many inches we going to need.”

“Are you going to need some lubrication with that?” she asked.

I moved away. And let him choose what size Whopper we would need. And what color.

“We are going to take the pink one.” he firmly decided. Taking charge. That was my soon to be man, Matt.

But I digress. On this particular day, we were still on the couch. Actually, let me rephrase that. I was on

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one couch. And he was on the armchair next to the couch. And by this time, I could see that his movements were about to pay off. Then he interrupted the rapid movements and said he would take a short break.

“I need to smoke something to relax me. Besides it is best to postpone the pleasure. Never have it all at one go. That's my motto. Please close the windows.” he requested.

I stood up and went and closed all the windows. And put off the lights. We had to do this just right. Transcend into outer space through inhalation. The room was pitch black. The silence was just right. I knew not to say anything at this moment. For to say anything would be to jinx the very procedure that would help us to quickly achieve a psychotic state under which we understood the nature of the world so much better and clearer. Pot by any other name made our reality so much clearer. For him the direct whiffs. And for me the second-hand sloppy whiff.

In the pitch dark room, he lit the joint that he kept hidden under the sink. And the little apartment was filled with torrid air that stung the nose and eyes a little until one got used to it. Three puffs later he put it out.

“Everything in moderation.” he said. “One must not be too much of a glutton.” How very brilliant this man was.

“So, as I was saying, Obama isn't really black you know.”

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“Oh yes, he is.” I insisted. “The way I have been told is that if you have even a tiny amount of black blood, then you are black.”

“Well, you are entitled to your view. I have heard a lot of bullshit like that from black people but I am telling you right now he is Caucafrican.”

He slumped down onto the armchair and whipped out his penis from his shorts to continue with his rapid movements. He was working up quite a sweat. His shiny brow glowed and his eyes glowed in his revered state. His mouth was open, drawing in gasps of air like a drowning man. Not that I have seen a drowning man, but I like to imagine if I were drowning, that would be the way I would breath my last.

But then quite suddenly, he seemed to be losing interest.

“I think I am a bit tense today. It's gonna take some work.” he said “Honey bunny, do you think you could come and use that sweet little mouth of yours to finish me off?” he asked.

“Of course not.” I said. “You can put it in me. But I am not putting that thing in my mouth.”

“That thing? You know you are emasculating me.” he said.

I looked at him and burst out laughing. He looked perplexed. How could I explain to him that he was emasculating himself by masturbating in front of me instead of taking charge and giving it to me like a real man?

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For a moment he looked hurt and then he recovered swiftly.

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Chapter Seven (That Girl Was Wahala)

One month later Matt and I had sex for the first

time. The next day as we took our evening walk, Matt

surprised me by getting on his feet and crying that he couldn‟t live without me and that we should get married immediately. I said yes. He was the only man who had ever got down on his knees and proposed to me.

Having spent my childhood and my teens reading about the most romantic proposals and finally here I was getting one, it was only right to say yes. I would live with Matt for the rest of my life. I would be his best friend and I would look out for him and I would be all woman and there for him.

It wasn‟t so much of a surprise. I could see the proposal coming.

Matt had been acting all wired up and strung out. He couldn‟t get himself off, however hard he squeezed and pulled during his masturbation episodes which were more regular, and he had been pacing around the house and I asked him if there was any way I could help him and he said there was no use, it just wasn‟t working out and many many times he asked if I could help by using my mouth and I said no as frequently as he asked and he said we would have to get someone and he said he knew a girl and that‟s how the girl came to our little apartment.

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The girl, an African American, Keisha, and him had been friends for many years but she dated his friend and had a baby with him and lived with him.

So, I said yes, since I am not going to help you out with my mouth, well, you can get someone. As we waited for her to come, I imagined what was going to happen. Would she come dressed in black leather carrying whips and handcuff him to the bed and give him a thrashing?

When Keisha arrived I was already tipsy, having had some alcohol to help me get with the new experience. But I was surprised to see that she was just a simple girl in her mid-20s wearing a decently long dress and normal heels and had her hair tied back in a ponytail. Americans would call her the girl next door.

Matt offered her a glass of wine which she gulped down like a pro.

And then she asked him to take off his clothes and he took them off and lay in all his naked glory on the bed and I sat by the side of the bed as I watched fully clothed Keisha take my man in her mouth and work him rapidly with her fingers and her mouth.

And he groaned and thrashed around on the bed furiously and screamed all sorts of obscenities and finally came into her mouth and she swallowed and he patted her on her back, got up and strutted across the room and got his wallet and gave her 20 dollars for her cab fare and 20 dollars for her trouble and she left after gulping another glass of wine to get the taste of sperm

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out of her mouth so that her man wouldn't smell another man on her lips.

I sat there for a while sipping more wine as my man continued to lay there on the bed all sprawled out in naked glory but now very relaxed and smoking a regular cigarette.

“Come here.” he finally said to me, when he put off his cigarette. “Lie down.”

And I lay down and stared at the white popcorn ceiling and he pulled me closer to him.

“I don't mean to hurt you, but this had to be done. And it will be done again if we continue being together, I really need you to understand that. There are some things you can't do for me and I would need someone to do them for me.”

And I nodded my head in agreement because I didn't know what to say and I was too tipsy and tired and just wanted to close my eyes and sleep. But Matt was not done yet. In his now relaxed state, he was able to become intimate with me and open up and talk about his past and I listened.

He told me about his ex-girlfriend a Nigerian girl who had left him and gone to university in Tennessee after he had taken out a loan for her and which loan he was still repaying and how she had immediately dumped him as soon as she cashed the check.

“That girl was wahala” he said. And I asked what wahala was and he said that

everywhere they went, men just kept staring at her and he had nearly gotten into fist fights but his anger

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management classes had won over and he had somehow remained calm and let the men stare to their content.

“Why did they stare so much?” I asked. “Well, it was her camel toe.” he said. “Camel toe? What is that?” “Stand up. Just move over there.” he said. I stood up and walked to the middle of the

room. I was still wearing my tight jeans. He looked me over as I twirled around for him.

“No, you don't have it.” he pronounced, connoisseur of camel toes that he was. “But you do have something else.”

I took off my jeans and lay down next to him. “I like you.” he said. Without waiting for a response he jumped up on

me and without preamble slipped his penis in one rough move into me and pumped up and down and screamed my name and pumped some more and it was over as quickly as it had begun.

And then I lay there wondering what had just happened and thinking that Matt had finally fucked me instead of making love to me. We had waited for three months and instead of making love to me he had fucked me and I had allowed it and I wasn't the least bit disgusted. Disappointed perhaps but not disgusted. Was this what I had waited for all this time? Is this what I could expect with Matt if I continued to be with him?

“I like you so much.” he repeated.

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And then he turned over and went straight to sleep.

The next morning I woke up early. Feeling a little sore from the rapid pumping but remembering that for the first time, Matt had been able to get it up and get it in. Never mind that it was terrible. I noticed that I was bleeding slightly and I walked into the bathroom and started to wash off the previous night's disappointment. And I was crying and the warm tears mingled with the water and I cried more and scrubbed myself vigorously and cried some more.

It had been done and from here it could only get better...

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Chapter Eight (Life with Matt)

I was a stay at home girlfriend. Matt was also a

stay at home boyfriend. I don't know if i mentioned this before but he was drawing unemployment welfare of about $1200 every month and we had to make ends meet somehow after paying rent of $600. Our weed needs had to be catered for, our food, gas for the car etc. So basically we were on a shoestring budget. Matt had been working when I met him. At least that's what he told me. But when i moved in, he said he quit his job to be with me because he couldn't bear to spend time away from me. I was his best friend and he mine.

Matt had two laptops in the apartment. And throughout our affair, which had now lasted slightly over three months, I had only been allowed to touch one of the laptops.

“Don't touch the black laptop.” he insisted. “It's a business laptop and I don't want any links to appear on it that would reflect badly on me.”

“I only want to go on Facebook.” I had told him. “Especially Facebook.” he insisted. “You can't

do Facebook on that black laptop. Use the gray one for any of your internet needs.”

And I tried to respect his wishes as much as he demanded. I never ever opened that laptop which he kept in a corner of the living room and which he logged onto once a day and stayed on for a few minutes and

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then quietly logged off and used the gray one the rest of the day.

To be fair, I had ignored all the red signs. When there were red flags that demanded questions, I quickly talked myself into hushing.

Earlier that week, we had been to see his brother Jack, who owned a big jewelry store, in the middle of a posh suburb. I wanted to sell one of the many pairs of earrings that I had collected on my journey across the country. We walked into the jewelry store, Matt and I on a cold July morning.

“So did you start your new job?” asked Jack of Matt.

There was silence. Ominous silence as I suddenly perked my ears and listened. What was this about Matt starting a new job? He hadn't mentioned it. I knew he had been on paid leave for the last two months but that didn't seem to have any fiscal impact as he was able to buy our food and pay the rent.

“No” he said uneasily. I could sense the cold wind flowing through the room. “They did a background check and found there are some things I failed to disclose.”

A little side note here for you to follow the story. In America before you're offered a job they do a background check. Anything you have done wrong will turn up. These guys are very good at keeping paperwork. Big brother knows everything. Did you steal a pen from a store when you were a teenager? Did you cause an accident? Everything is on your records

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and disclosure when you apply for a job is very important. You can be hired and fired when information turns up.

“Why didn't you disclose?” His brother asked. “You know they will always find out.”

“I just took a chance.” Matt replied. ”Well, they found out and rescinded the offer.”

“So you are out of a job again?” his brother asked.

“Well, I have got prospects. There is a different job I have been offered.” Matt replied.

I didn't say anything. It wasn't my place to interrupt a family discussion. At least that was what I considered it. Even though Matt and I were engaged to be married I still wasn't part of the family and I had to keep my place. A step behind.

“What was Jack talking about?” I asked Matt later as he turned over the steaks on the barbeque stove at the park where we had gone to spend the afternoon.

“Oh, nothing important.” he answered. “I was offered a job and then it didn't pan out. But don't worry your sweet self about it. I am getting another job in a month's time. And anyway, I am glad that they took away their offer because the new job I am expecting is better. I will be paid more. In fact you don't have to work. You can stay home and be a sweet little housewife. Wouldn't you like that?”

“Yeah I would.” I said. “I do like a man that can provide.”

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“Well, then this is a godsend.” he said. “In fact I see it as a sign that we should be together. I am going to earn more and be able to take care of you and your child. So don't worry. And please let's not talk about it anymore because it's stressing me out.”

I let it go. I had a man that looked out for me. He had been offered a job which he was going to take in a month's time. Never mind that he hadn't told me about the rescinded job offer. Which I later came to find out was a made-up story to hoodwink me and his family.

We ate the steaks. And drank the wine. And spent an altogether pleasant afternoon and evening at the park. Then slowly walked home and sat down to watch TV. A pleasant evening. Relaxed. Undemanding.

Much later on, he moved onto his usual activity of wanking. By this time I was used to it and didn't even notice when he began and stopped. It had become part of the landscape in the room. He would wank away on the armchair while I stared at the TV.

Once in a while he would ask me to look at him and I turned my eyes slightly as I looked past him and concentrated on „The Housewives of Atlanta‟. Nene was being a bitch to the other wives and giving them hell with her loud mouth and loud attitude. When he finished, which didn't happen often, we would drift into bed. Some days he would try to get it up for me. But too often he failed and it was a disappointment for me. He didn't seem bothered by our lack of love-making.

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“You have to find ways of satisfying yourself.” he said to me often. “If you have to depend on me to satisfy you then I am going to start feeling cornered and it's going to be too much for me and I could easily have a nervous breakdown. I have had some breakdowns in the past.”

And because I didn't want my man to have a nervous breakdown I kept my desires to myself. I couldn't unleash them in case my man had a nervous breakdown.

The next afternoon Matt left me in the apartment. As he left, he appeared nervous and kept looking at his watch and pacing up and down the little apartment.

“I am a little nervous.” he confirmed. “I am meeting with a future business partner and I don't know what he is going to say, whether he will take me into partnership for his new product, you see.”

And I agreed that it was normal to be nervous before a big business meeting. And I comforted him and told him that I believed in him and that he was going to do good and be the best and that I knew he would have the breakthrough that he was expecting.

“Remember not to touch the black laptop.” he emphasized as he stepped out the door.

As soon as Matt left, I got down to cleaning the apartment. Matt was meticulous on the cleanliness of the apartment and things had to be just right. Each place had its specific nook and he expected me to wipe off any dust that he didn't. He folded his shirts in a

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particular way and just couldn't stand it if they were folded in a different way.

Now y'all know if you tell a child not to touch something, obviously they will. On his way out to his "big meeting” Matt had stressed the importance of not touching the laptop.

The black laptop. I kept thinking of it. I would go into the bedroom back to the living room squat on the toilet bowl and all I was thinking about was the laptop.

Finally I gave in... Having done the dishes and mopped the floor, I

turned on the black laptop, which I was NOT allowed to use.

The first page that came up as I opened Opera was his Yahoo email. Evidently he had forgotten to log out. I popped over to the tab wanting to log out so I could sign into my account.

But, the first email that I saw froze me in my tracks. It was from his ex-girlfriend the Nigerian girl, Tsitsi, she who had caused him so much wahala and whom he had sworn he was no longer communicating with because even the thought or mention of her name caused him severe depression...

The email was short, direct and knocked the wind out of me...

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Chapter Nine (The Emails)

As I said, the email was short. I read it within half a minute and then re-read it again and again just to be sure that I had got the right message. I looked at the address line to confirm that it was addressed to my new fiancé Matt, whom I was set to marry in two months' time. Matt, this is the last time I am telling you not to contact me again. You perverted son of a bitch. I don't owe you any money. You are the one that stole my money and that's why I had to get away from you. I have no intention of continuing to deal with a known sexual offender and you better keep your distance if you know what's good for you. Who do you think you are, you bloody rapist? Your own brother's child? Perverted son of a bitch, if you contact me again, I shall report you to your probation officer. Tsitsi

And then as the message sank, the fear began at

the pit of my tummy and spread slowly to the rest of my body and then I was feeling cold and balmy and sweating all at the same time and my tongue was dry and I was gasping for breath and even though I was seated, I felt dizzy and faint and my heart was beating fast and then I was warm again and my head was throbbing and the veins were jutting out and once more I couldn't breathe.

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I finally got hold of myself, calmed down and decided there must have been a mistake. This girl Tsitsi, Matt had been so good to her and loaned her college fees and even put her on the plane to Tennessee and this is the way she was repaying him. The ungrateful bitch. How could she do this to my man? Putting him through so much pain and then treating him with so much disdain like he didn't have any feelings.

I wasn't going to stand for it. I made up my mind I would confront Matt as soon as he returned from his business appointment and we would put this bitch in her place once and for all. If it meant calling her sister who lived about ten miles from us, I would do it and tell them to stop harassing my man. Obviously these emails were the sign of a demented tortured soul who had just realized that Matt had moved on and was now about to get married. I knew something about women's psychology after all. As soon as a man showed that he had moved on, then the woman would come storming back into his life trying to disrupt it so that he would take her back. I would certainly put this woman in her place.

Those were my first thoughts. My first reaction was to defend my man from this unscrupulous filth of a scumbag woman. That wahala was trying to disrupt our beautiful life once again.

As I just said, those were my first thoughts. I got up and cleaned the house, dusted everywhere, poured disinfectant liberally on every surface and washed away the presence of this wahala who had occupied this little

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apartment before me. In a fit of rage, I stripped bare the bed of its entire bedding, the mattress covers, the sheets, the duvet and laundered them. I sprayed disinfectant on the mattress and crawled under the bed and furiously scrubbed away the wahala from our apartment. Matt wouldn't have to deal with the wahala alone. I would protect him. He had suffered too much. It seemed everybody was on his case accusing him of one thing or the other.

Everyone seemed to have a grudge against Matt. Just last week, we had gone to his estranged

daughter's birthday party and I had helped him put together some gifts and we had purchased the most beautiful birthday cake and we had gone to the birthday party. On our way back her mother had telephoned Matt and his face had gone pale and when I asked him what was wrong he had said that there was a diamond ring missing from the house and they were sure either he or I had taken it even though he had not gone near the bedroom and that they wanted to report us to the police and that reluctantly he had agreed to pay them 500 dollars so that they wouldn't do this even though he knew we were both innocent

“I just hate to deal with the cops.” he explained. “The last time I had to deal with them, they were just a pain in the butt. I had to go bail Mike after he was hauled in on a DUI, a Driving Under Influence charge. Sons of bitches.”

And I had agreed that obviously it wasn't worth it, having to deal with the police. Besides it was his

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daughter that was accusing him of theft. Perhaps she was trying in a strange way to get his attention and make him pay for all the father-daughter games and dances that he had missed out on. Teenagers have been known to lash out. Strangely, I was the one who was finally urging him to send the money and get it over with.

“I just hate it when people take advantage of me.” he moaned.

“Honey, it is your daughter. Let it go. Perhaps this incident will show her how good a man you are and hey who knows she might even invite you to her prom in September.” I consoled him, as he shook his head and looked like the entire world was hating on him and trying to beat him down.

My poor man. I recalled all these events that had taken place as I furiously scrubbed the apartment. I wanted to wash away the smell of wahala.

By this time I was done cleaning with the bedroom. It was spectacular. I moved to clean the bathroom and as I scrubbed away the body-wash that had splashed on the walls, the feeling of fear returned to the pit of my stomach. A great uneasiness began to settle on me and like a cold blanket I couldn't shake it off. I felt dizzy again so I sat down on the toilet bowl. Then with a struggle, I got up and went and turned on the laptop and read the message in the inbox once more.

Then out of curiosity, and feeling the need to settle this once and for all, I looked through the other

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mail folders and found one named “naija” and I opened it and literally collapsed as I read the tens of email exchanges between Matt and wahala and each email was like a slap on my face as I saw Matt pleading with her to come back as he missed her so much and telling her he couldn't get over her and that she was wrong to have run away because he would never harm her and that he liked her too much for that and he just didn't understand why she was scared of him and didn't she know that he absolutely adored her and he would do anything for her.

And in the return emails she laughed at him and told him she would never see him again since she didn't think the probation officer would let him cross the state border and she said how lucky she was that she had discovered in good time what a scumbag he was and how dangerous he was and she pitied any girl that he would deceive as he had deceived her and she mentioned that she was lucky she had stumbled on his secret and asked him how long he had hoped to keep it from her and once more she threatened to report him to his probation officer and she confirmed that she had his name and number and gave it to him.

And in the next email Matt was pleading with wahala and telling her that he would keep off and he wouldn't contact her again and that even though she had extracted this promise she ought to realize how hurt he was that she was scared of him and that he would never hurt her and that he had explained how he came to be charged with rape and she ought to

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understand because in her heart she knew how gentle he was and he would never rape anybody.

And in the next email she was laughing at him and reminding him of the time that they had tried to visit his brother and as soon as they stepped through the door, his brother's wife had told her young daughters that the “monster” was here and that they should run and hide before he devoured them. And wahala asked him if that was the life he really wanted her to lead.

A life where she would be embarrassed to be seen with him and anyway he couldn't help her and over and over she threatened to report his harassment and over and over Matt begged and begged for reconciliation. I looked at the dates of the emails and saw that some of them were as late as the last week and that the email prompting my sudden discovery of his other life was dated yesterday.

After reading the emails I felt strangely detached as I began to put pieces together in my mind. Things that had seemed odd suddenly became crystal clear. Like why Matt had no friends and I was the only one constantly by his side.

Like why he had been turned down for the job for not disclosing “certain information” as he had said to me and explained that it was all an honest mistake, he had just marked the wrong boxes and that next time he would be more careful with his job applications and be sure to tick the right box.

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Like why his brother's eyes had watchfully followed us everywhere as we walked around in his jewelry store and why his other brothers never bothered to call him.

Like why he didn't know where his sisters lived because nobody had invited him after they had changed houses.

Like how he had had to ask his brother‟s permission for us to drive across the state border when we had gone to Wisconsin to buy my dildo from the sex shop. How we were never invited anywhere.

I shivered in the hot June weather as it dawned on me that I was living with a violent criminal. He couldn't be, could he? Not my gentle Matt who didn't even like sex. Weren't rapists supposed to be sex maniacs at the very least? As a basic qualification?

My hands trembled as I closed the laptop shut and even though I hadn't eaten all day I had no appetite and I was feeling thirsty but didn't have the strength to get up and get a bottle of water from the fridge and my mind was racing as I thought of the information that had been thrust on me.

How quickly life had changed in the last few hours. How devastating a few hours could turn the world upside down.

Matt still hadn't come back by 6.00. But he had texted me and told me he would be home by 6.30 and he couldn't wait to see me since the business meeting hadn't gone so well and he needed some loving and

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some attention and couldn't wait to jump into the hot shower with me...

I sat in the dark room and waited calmly...

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Chapter Ten (I confront Matt on Emails)

I was determined to get to the bottom of the matter. I would do this over the next few days before we got married in two weeks‟ time. I needed to start the marriage on a clean slate and right now my mind was on a roll.

I sat in the dark room and waited. I knew I was going to confront Matt about the emails that I had read and more particularly about his ominous past that I had learnt of, courtesy of my snooping through his laptop which he had implored me not to touch.

In my whole entire life I had never confronted a criminal, let alone a violent one, but for some reason I wasn't scared. I loved this man. He had always been gentle with me. I saw no reason why he should act differently from expectations. So not only did I not have a game plan but I also hadn't told anyone of what I had stumbled upon. I was not going to diminish the value of my man in anybody's eyes, least of all people who thrived on gossip. The Kenyan community met once a month to raise funds, barbecue some goat meat and catch up on gossip from both abroad and home. They were all up in each other's business craving every scrap of gossip and devoured every morsel thrown at them. Nope. Not me. I would not tell anyone.

At 6.30 Matt strode in briskly. And as always my heart did a leap of joy. My man was home. I turned to smile at him then I remembered and my heart froze. I am not a good poker player, never have been. All my

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facial expressions tell the story, often without saying any words. My friends have often said the right words, the expected words come through my mouth but the truth lies in watching my face.

"Babe, what's wrong?” he asked. "I want to apologize first of all. I didn't mean to

look through your laptop. .." He didn't let me finish. He raised his arms in the

air and I thought the worst was going to happen. This man was going to beat me to a pulp. I was standing in front of him, kind of blocking the door to the bedroom.

"Move aside..." he said " I need some space" Jolted by the response I tried to move towards

him, in the frozen atmosphere that had engulfed the little apartment.

"Don't touch me." he said as he walked slowly into the bedroom. He didn't shut the door.

I watched him from the safety of the living room as he took off his shoes and slumped onto the bed, with his face covered by the pillow. After five minutes I followed him into the bedroom and sat beside him on the bed. I gently lifted the pillow and saw the streaming tears. I lay next to him and held him as he sobbed. I spoke words of endearment as he cried, with his head on my bosom, I gently massaged his head running my fingers through his hair. Finally the heart wrenching sobs which were tugging at my heartstrings stopped.

"So what did you read?" He finally asked. "All of them.” I said.

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"Then you know what kind of pressure I have been under. That girl is wahala. She's been trying to cause trouble for me ever since I broke up with her"

"I am more interested in the crime” I insisted. He smiled. The smile that said, don't worry

about it. "It was all a misunderstanding. I was walking in

the park one day and I had this sudden urge to go to the bathroom. So I moved to the edge of the cluster of trees and as I was relieving myself a woman passed by and she screamed her head off. Babe, that was the worst day of my life. I was charged with indecent exposure, also known as flashing. I was given a suspended sentence of one year and also ordered to do some community service. That was many years ago, when I was 25"

"That's it?" "Yes honey, surely you didn't believe those

emails did you?" "And do you have a probation officer?" I asked. "Yes I do." "You have a probation officer for so many

years?" "No. That's for something more recent. I was

afraid to tell you because I don't want to lose you." "What's it?" "I am going to look very foolish in your eyes.

Remember when I told you that I quit my job? Well I didn't. I was fired. I made a mistake in some orders which cost the company $50,000. It was on a day that I

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was really stressed. I was having anxiety attacks and I wasn't seeing right. The company pressed charges. Long story short, I ended up being put on probation again and so yes, I do have a probation officer "

"Is that whom you went to see today?" "Yes." We lay there in silence for a while. It was getting

dark. He turned on the lamp on the nightstand. Then he moved closer to me and told me he was so glad it was all out in the open now and I couldn't even begin to imagine what a tremendous relief it was for him not to worry about it anymore.

I let him draw me closer. And we lay arms and legs entangled, clinging tightly with our thoughts. Then we made love. Note here that I said we made love. And I was never more deeply in love than at that moment. We both fell asleep. It was much later that I got up, insomnia had come screaming and I crept into the living room and turned on the TV so that I could catch up on reruns. Many a girl has been in that position. Drowning or burying their own lives under soap operas because their own lives were much too scary to pursue.

As I sat there watching and lost in the reruns, watching an old episode of the Golden Girls where Rose was being her usual cute dumb self, and Blanche was going yet after another man, I had this eerie feeling that someone was standing behind me. My hairs stood on end and I turned round. I felt his hands go around my neck at the same moment that I screamed.

When I screamed he let go quickly.

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"Babe, I didn't mean to scare you. I couldn't sleep and I have been thinking. Instead of waiting two months, after all there is really nothing we are waiting on, why don't we get married in two weeks‟ time?"

"Okay.” I said. And he went back into the bedroom as silently as

he had come out. That was odd, I thought. The way he had crept up to me silently. I knew he was light-footed but sometimes it still scared me.

I remembered a month ago when I had been taking a shower and I was all soapy and I was singing away and then suddenly I had had that same creepy feeling that someone was watching me and when I opened my eyes, there was Matt's face inside the shower curtain just staring at me. That day I had also screamed and he had apologized profusely and said he hadn't meant to scare me and he had just wanted to peek at my beautiful body. On that day, I was sure I had locked the bathroom door and I kept wondering how he had gotten in. In the end I had decided that I was tired and my mind was playing tricks on me. I must have left the door open.

Nevertheless, as I sat there this night, I was greatly spooked. It was at that point that it occurred to me that I hadn't believed the story Matt had given me of him being a flasher. I would have to, nay, must investigate before I tied the knot.

I alternated between despair that something wasn't quite right and certainty that I was doing the right thing. Matt was a good man, I said to myself as I

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watched him faithfully make our meals, do our laundry, clean up after me. I was being treated like the queen bee and being smothered with love and attention. At some point I did begin to think that he was watching me too much.

If I was in the bathroom for more than a minute he would knock on the door and ask me if I was alright. I tried to go for a walk alone one morning, leaving him in bed, so I would have time to compose my thoughts and be clear on what plan I had to get the necessary information that would give me peace. I wanted to get onto the national database on criminals and dig up the information but that required a credit card and I didn't have one. As I rounded the bend in the cluster of trees, I had suddenly found him standing before me. Apparently, he explained, he had also left the apartment right after me because he was restless and he had taken another route. In my mind, I was thinking he had followed me but I quickly dismissed the thought. And I couldn't reach out to anyone because I didn't want to give them fodder for gossip.

That Wednesday morning an opportunity I had not anticipated, presented itself. Matt had to go see his probation officer. He couldn't put off the meeting because he would be in deep trouble. So he left, after beseeching me to stay home. I told him I would have to go to the video store.

"Will you be going anywhere else?" "Nope"

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After he drove off, I took a quick shower and slipped into jeans and a t-shirt and practically ran out of the suffocating apartment. I ran and walked the two miles to his brother Jack's jewelry store. Lucky for me, he was there and the shop wasn't busy.

He ushered me into his office and asked if I wanted some water or a Pepsi. I accepted the Pepsi gratefully for I was all hot and sweaty from the run.

"You don't look fine. What's wrong? " Quickly I told him about the emails and

expressed my fear that Wahala was making up so many lies and was trying to put Matt into trouble and she was trying to break us up. I then asked him what Matt had done.

He said that I needed to ask Matt about all that stuff. As for him and his family they had forgiven him and they were trying to move forward.

"Forgiven him for what?" I persisted. "I am afraid you will have to talk with him about

that. It's not my place to do so." I finished the Pepsi and left. This time I walked

slowly. When I got to the apartment I found that Matt had returned and he was busy preparing lunch.

"So did you see anyone interesting today?" He asked.

I guessed that his brother had called ahead of me, so I told him that indeed I had seen his brother. Matt clenched and unclenched his fists. I could see he was clearly agitated.

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"Don't worry. He didn't say anything. There seems to be a conspiracy of silence. But tell you what, Matt I am not getting married until I know everything. Allow me to make an informed decision. Tell me what happened. "

Matt looked relieved. "This is really hard for me. Please promise you

won't leave me after I tell you. I love you so much" "I can't make that promise” "Okay. I totally understand that. Anyway, when I

was 25 I met this beautiful girl. She was 16 and we were totally in love. We had consensual sex. I never forced myself on her. I would never do that. Unfortunately we were a bit careless and she became pregnant. She told her mother about it and that's when the shit hit the fan. I was charged with defiling a minor and everything went downhill from there. Please forgive me. I didn't know what I was doing. I was in love with her and she with me."

"Was she your brother's child?" "Technically no. She was the daughter of his ex-

wife by another man. My brother married her when the girl was already fifteen. I knew her for a year before she became my girlfriend. After this incident my family, all my brothers and sisters and my parents put me out to pasture. I have been on my own since then. It's really tough on me. I feel terrible that my brother and his wife divorced after this misunderstanding. I do take responsibility for that ."

"I see."

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Silence followed. I was trying to wrap my mind around this new story. A week ago it had been about a flasher. Today it was consensual sex with a much younger girl. I thought about it and I remembered having read somewhere that having sex with a girl under seventeen was an offense, whether she had said yes or not. The American law was an ass I thought. A man couldn't have sex with a woman legally until she was eighteen.

"You're sure that's all?" "Yes." My heart was at peace. I would be getting

married in a week and a half. But there was still one loose end to tie up.

Out there somewhere, was the lunatic Wahala. I would have to call her and talk to her about leaving us in peace....I would settle this once and for all.

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Chapter Eleven (I Confront Wahala)

After a great deal of thought and going back and forth I had finally sent Wahala an email message through my own email account and explained the situation. I had decided to open my heart and just talk to her woman to woman. Therefore, I had told her that I had accidentally read her emails to Matt and I was concerned that Matt had a horrible past and I didn‟t want to get trapped and if as a sister from another mother in Africa, she could help me, I would forever be in her debt.

Wahala had replied and given me her telephone number and she had said I could call her. We had talked about the technicalities and she had said that she understood that I could be in great danger if Matt knew I was calling her. Anyway, we had agreed on the time and it was therefore with great trepidation that, as soon as Matt was out of the apartment, I dialed the number she had given me.

“Hello?” I said. “Hello my sista, who is this?” she asked in a very

soft voice. At long last I was speaking to Wahala. I had

waited till Matt left for a dental appointment before I could get the chance to speak with her. I had sent an email to her and explained why I needed to talk to her and she had promptly given me her number, which in my book was bad. This girl truly wanted to break us up. I knew she would tell me bad stuff about my man, I just

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needed to know how far she was prepared to go to ruin him.

“This is Atieno on the line. I sent you an email that I would contact you, remember?”

“Ooh ooh, yes, I now remember but you know I don't want to get myself involved in any trouble at the moment. I am done with Matt. That man is an evil person with wicked spirit, which I can't deal with.”

“Well, I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me. I am really disturbed about the emails that you sent and I really do need your help in getting to the bottom of this mystery. Nobody will say anything on this.”

“Yes ooh my dear, nobody will know about it ooh. Trust me on this now ah ah! I learned the hard way around, like how now tell me: Shaybee you know dey I like to know it all.”

“Well, can you tell me about it?” I asked her. “It is a long story my sista and I am going to

class now. I am really busy. Do you mind if I call you back after I am through with class?”

Obviously I minded but I couldn't object. I just hoped she would call back before Matt came back home. I said it wasn't a problem and implored her to just make sure to call me back. She hang up and I wiped the sweat off my forehead. It had taken a lot to make that call. I hadn't known what to expect. From the emails she had sounded really hard-core so I had been startled to speak to a respectful girl who sounded fairly young.

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One and half hours of nail-biting and floor-pacing followed before she eventually called back. I answered the phone on the first ring. I needed to get this over with before Matt came back home.

She quickly started to tell her story and I listened without interrupting.

“I met Matt in church, that church on Wayside Drive, the All Africans Church. I was in the choir there. And I also used to go for youth fellowship every day. That's where he came also. He gave a testimony that moved me. He said that for some weird reason the devil was keeping away friends from him and he was very lonely and he knew that he had come to the right church and he would be blessed and he would make friends. Later, after the fellowship, as we stood outside the church greeting each other, he came up to me and introduced himself and after a bit of chitchat, he said, that he had never met anyone like me and connected so quickly, so immediately like this. He said that God was really on his side this time because he had been fasting about it and he could feel the blessings pouring on him from heaven. I said Amen with him. He then asked me out and he took me to McDonalds which was about 200 meters from the church. He left his car in the parking, after showing it to me, it was the red Corvette he had come with. We walked there and he bought lunch. I continued to see him on a daily basis after the fellowships and we grew closer. Then he asked me to move in with him after two weeks. I was going through a rough time at my sister's house, she is very strict, she

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was really keeping track of my movements and making noise so I thought, oh ok, good opportunity, nice guy, I can spend some nights at his place. Slowly I moved in and gradually after four months I had completely moved in.”

She paused. I thought she had disconnected then I heard her voice over the line again.

“My sista, you are from Africa, just like me, that's why I am telling you all this. I want you to avoid what I went through. I have suffered so much at that man's hands. When I moved in, Matt was all sweet, you should know that. He did all the work, he cooked, he did the laundry. He used to work those days but he would rush home from work to attend to me and we were like we were in Heaven. I am telling you ooh. I was on honeymoon.

Then one day, Matt came home earlier than usual. He found I had not cleaned the house. He got very upset and slapped me. A very hot slap. I was shocked! Then he quickly apologized but I was so mad, I told him no no ooh, I was going back to my sister's house. He said I wasn't going to go back and I asked him how he was going to stop me. He said he would make sure he destroyed my life completely, he was tired of girls making use of him, taking advantage of him and then leaving him. From then on, my life became hell, he watched my every move. I couldn't go anywhere or do anything. I became a prisoner in that apartment.”

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“But wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Why didn't you just leave? Surely he wasn't locking you up in the house. You could have just walked away.”

“Oh my sista, he didn't lock the house. The door was open ooh. But there was no way I could leave. Somehow Matt had hacked my email address, and my Facebook account and he had read everything there. I was shocked when he told me that he knew I was an international student out of status. As in my student visa had been cancelled because I didn't have money to pay for two semesters and I was in danger of being deported.

I had never told him that. I know that for sure. I never tell anybody that because my sista you don't know who is Interpol now. He said he had known from the first week and that if I left him, I would be on the next plane back to Nigeria. I have nobody there to go back to. My sister, she lives over there next to your house. And my brother is in California. All my other sisters and my parents died. Both of them died five years ago.

I feared I was going to be deported so I obeyed everything he said. I just wanted time to plan my next move and get out of the lion's jaws. I stayed and did a lot of nasty stuff for him using my body. In fact, I feel very dirty when I remember some of the things.”

I had been listening silently. Everything she said seemed to make sense. Little things that Matt had mentioned in passing.

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“Well, what about the rape story? What happened there? Who was the victim?”

“Oh my dear, I don't have too many details about that. One day, Matt hadn't turned up for his counseling sessions, and the next day I was in the bathroom and Matt had gone out. A policeman came to the door and I nearly died from shock, I thought he had come for me. My heart dropped to the floor but I pretended to be cool about it. I asked him how I could help him and he said he was looking for Matt. Obviously Matt wasn't there so he said he would come back later if he was unable to contact Matt on phone.

But before he left, he was looking at me strangely and I asked him what was wrong. He asked me if I knew that I was living with a registered sex offender and what was my relationship with him. I said I was his fiancé. The shock I got I can't explain in words. I said I wasn't aware and he told me I should tread carefully.”

“Did he say anything else, this policeman?” “Yes, he told me that I had done nothing wrong

but I should be very careful. My curiosity was killing me so I insisted on knowing what Matt had done and how he came to be a registered sex offender.”

A short pause followed. I sipped some water from the bottle on the side table. Then I heard some noise on the stairs and thinking that Matt had returned, I quickly ran to the window and looked down at the parking lot. Matt's car was not there.

“This man, my sista, is dangerous.” “Whom did he rape?” I asked fearfully.

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“His brother's child. She was in her room doing her homework and he pounced on her. Her parents were over at the jewelry store. You have met his brother Jack?”

“Yes I have.” “Well he raped that 16 year old child and gagged

her with a curtain as she tried to scream. She was not taken to hospital. She stayed home and a private doctor came to treat her. Afterwards, after one week had passed, Jack took a gun and drove to Matt's house and wanted to kill him but he had already run away. When he finally came back after one year the family had got together and decided not to press charges. That's really what upset Jack's wife and she filed for divorce and took half of what Jack owned and moved to Montana with her daughter.”

“So was that the end?” I asked as I went back to the window and glanced at the curb. Still no car but I was shivering in the house which was so cold right now. Outside the sun was shining brightly.

“Unfortunately for Matt, there was the small matter of the little girl.” she continued. “The 9 year old girl that lived in the same apartment complex. I am not sure if he raped her because the policeman wouldn't say much. He just mentioned it in passing and told me to worry about my life and that I was taking a risk and I might be found dead one day.”

“So did you ask Matt about it?” “Oh my sista, who asks a lion what it wants to

eat? Not me. I didn't ask Matt. I was already so scared, I

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was plotting how to get out of there. I was biding my time from the right moment. Instead I began listening more carefully to conversations that he had with people. When he spoke with his brother I listened, when he spoke with his mother I listened keenly. And the tobacco seller, that one over on Bridgewood, his friend. You should listen.”

“How did you finally get out?” I asked. “My sister and brother managed to take loans, I

opened up to my sister and told her the trouble that I was in. With the loans, they registered me in college and we made sure it was in a faraway state because Matt can't travel. Once I was registered, my visa was renewed for five years. They booked me on a flight out of there. One day when Matt had gone to work, they came for me. I waited at the airport for a whole day and then got onto the flight. And so I am here now, very comfortable.”

“So you didn't borrow money from Matt?” I asked.

She laughed. She had a laugh that made me want to laugh back. I could see why Matt had loved her.

“No.” she said. “Matt's job wasn't paying that well. He has never even saved $500. Where would he get $10,000? Think about it. Because you are my sista from Africa, I will just advise you to get out of there, as fast as you can. Your life is in danger. It's up to you to believe it or not. That's all I can say to you. Your life is in great danger. Let me give you my sister's number, she might be able to help you. I will tell her about you.”

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With heavy feet, I walked across to the kitchen countertop and picked up a pen and wrote the number that she was offering.

Wahala hung up the phone after giving me her sister's number and wishing me luck. After hearing her story I knew that I would need my wits and a lot of cunning to get myself out of the lion's mouth.

Since she had told me exactly how she had managed to get away, I thought I would use the same method. No use reinventing the wheel, the wise ones have always maintained.

I was thinking of which State I would go. Then I remembered two of my mum's cousins. One was in Maryland and the other was in Alaska. I didn't care for Alaska because they have nights that run into 24 hours during the winter. Something to do with their placement on the earth. I tried to imagine life without the sun, complete darkness for three months and it was just depressing.

But I quickly realized I was being petty when I called my mum's cousin in Maryland and was tersely informed by the answering service that the phone number I had called would not be operational for the next two months. Meaning he had suspended the services and was probably traveling out of the country.

I dialed the Alaska number. She picked up on the second ring. Without going into details I told her I needed a place to stay for two months. She didn't ask any questions. Obviously a woman who had seen a lot of desperation.

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"Sure, my niece. You can come any time. I will cancel the babysitting services and I can pay you some of that money. "

I sent up a silent prayer of thanks. She asked if I had any money for the bus. I told

her I didn't. She said she would book for me the Greyhound whenever I was ready, even if it was the next day.

With my plans now firmly in place and having decided i would carry the least luggage possible, a few underpants, maybe two pairs of jeans and a few t-shirts, I decided to put these together so I could get out at a moment's notice. I went into the bedroom and flung open the closet. The first thing I shouldn't forget was of course my travel documents that's my passport, my vaccinations certificates and my educational papers. I opened the drawer where I had kept them last week.

The drawer was empty. Completely empty save for a packet of cigarettes. I frantically began to tear down the house looking for them while trying to maintain order. Matt would be home anytime. Half an hour of looking under every nook and cranny merely confirmed my fears that Matt had moved them.

I got out from under the bed and was startled to find Matt staring at me. I wasn't sure how long he had been standing there.

"Are you looking for something? " he asked. "Nope. Just arranging the shoe boxes under the

bed. Long overdue.

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I was surprised that my voice was so calm. The calm before the storm.

"You forgot your phone on the table and it was ringing as I walked in, so I picked it up to bring to you. Whoever it was rang off"

"Thanks. " I said as I stretched out my hand for the phone.

"Any interesting phone calls today? " I looked up and met the sly look on his face. He

smiled. I could see he was baiting me. He had obviously gone through the phone.

I could have slapped myself right at that moment. I had saved Wahala's number and her sister's number too. I hadn't used their names but Matt has a photographic memory. I knew I was in trouble. Everything was happening as Wahala had described. I felt a chill in my bones.

"You Africans tend to stick together, don't you?" "What do you mean?" "I will tell you what I mean," he said as he

stepped forward and swung at me. I saw his hand too late. As it landed on my face, I heard a loud crack and my first thought was that all my teeth were broken and I couldn't afford a dentist.

Then he sat down by my side on the bed. I was gingerly massaging my face trying to make a layman's assessment of whether anything was broken.

“I didn't know how to tell you. I swear to God, I meant to bring it up every single day we have been

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together. I just didn't know how.” he said as he wiped the tears from his cheeks.

And I sat there looking incredulously at this grown man in his late 40s crying silently and begging me to stay and not to walk away because I was his best friend in the world and I was all he had and if I walked away his entire world would collapse, I couldn't help but feel a little detached. Much like a stranger observing the scene from outside one's body.

Several days passed. We didn't talk much. He stayed a lot by my side. He cooked, cleaned and took care of my needs like nothing major had passed. The few hours he was out of the apartment, I used for looking for my documents. I still hadn't found them.

And every evening he asked me what I was thinking. And he begged me not to give up on him.

We had been going through this same scenario for the last two days, using much the same words and always ending up at the same conclusion. A non-decision on whether to move on or to stay in limbo in an untenable situation

“Well, you know I can't marry you now.” I said. “But why? What changed? I am the same person

that you said you loved last week. Nothing has changed. I love you.” he whispered in desperation.

But a lot of things had changed. There was no turning around.

“We can still get married.” “No, we can't. Please let me go.”

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“But you don't understand, I love you more than I loved Tsitsi.”

“Stop lying to me Matt. The problem with you is just don't know when to stop. Every minute you come up with a new lie. How can I ever know when you are telling the truth? How can I even trust you if you don't tell me the truth upfront? With you it is one lie after the other. And then you try to cover up the lie with another. And when I discover, you add another. Lies, lies. I am so tired of these lies.”

“I am not lying. I have told you all that there is to know. I swear on my mother's grave that everything I told you is the truth.”

Matt and I were at the public park at Riversdale. The apartment had suddenly become too tiny for the two of us and we found ourselves constantly at the park. I would try to go to the park on my own so that I could sit and breath and just think about what to do but each time, Matt followed me. I think he was scared that I was making plans to leave the apartment and the wretchedness that he had cast us into. The apartment was gloomy and an unhappy atmosphere pervaded the little space.

Last week, Matt and I had gone over what he told me were the missing pieces that he had neglected to tell me. And which I had inadvertently stumbled upon. How could he have thought that I finally wouldn't know?

I thought of the seriousness of the crime that Matt had committed. Being a sexual offender had

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serious consequences. For example, he had to be registered as a sexual offender which some judge somewhere had once wittingly called a “modern-day scarlet letter”. The same judge had said that “A person who is required to register as a sex offender is subject to numerous burdens, including registration with local law enforcement for at least ten years, notifying law enforcement of any change of address, posting the offender‟s name, address, and photo on the sex offender website, as well as notice to the community.” The judge had concluded that the sex offender label, unlike the mere conviction of a misdemeanor, “changes the offender‟s status and acceptance in society” and such sex offender status is “life-altering.”

As I sat there at that park on that warm balmy afternoon, events that had seemed out of place began to make sense. Before our trip to Wisconsin to buy the dildo, I remembered him telling me that he had had to ask his brother for permission to take the car across the state borders. Now it occurred to me that Matt had been talking to his Probation Officer to get his permission. There had never been any brother involved.

When we had gone to see his brother at the jewelry store, the looks from his brother and staff were wary because Matt had stolen from the store at one time. They hadn't reported him because he was family. But he, Matt, had told me not to worry about finances because his father and mother had started the jewelry store and it was run by the one brother but profits were

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shared equally between all the siblings. There was no such arrangement in place. Matt helped himself to a ring every once in a while and sold it on the black market.

To think that this was the same brother who was busy trying to help him get a job so he wouldn't need to dip. Perhaps one day he would be truly exhausted and just haul him off to jail.

Obviously I would have to leave. But how?

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Chapter Twelve (Matt Gives Ultimatums)

What is love? I have always questioned myself. Fortunately I am not alone in seeking answers on what love is. From time immemorial man has always sought to define this feeling, nay, an obsession that we call love. The definition that works for me is the one given by Captain Correlli in Mandolin.

He says:

When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No... don’t blush! I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. LOVE ITSELF IS WHAT IS LEFT OVER. WHEN BEING IN LOVE HAS BURNED AWAY...

Why am I defining love as I understand and feel

it? I am trying to explain to you and myself, Matt's obsession with me. After I had found out about his scandalous past, he had continued to deny that he had ever done anything wrong. And he continued his protestations of his love for me. And I was feeling

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suffocated and I wanted to get out of that apartment and begin a new life without him. When he touched me, and somehow it had now become more frequent, I pushed him away physically and barred him from my mind emotionally.

What I needed to do next was as clear as night and day. I couldn't afford to be with a felon. Not just any felon, but a sexual offender.

The previous week I had gotten hold of Wahala's email and had written to her and she had instantly replied and gave me her number and I had called her and she had told me that for my own good I should run away as soon as I could. She had told me how she had tricked Matt into taking her to the airport and had disappeared so that he would never find her again.

“My sister oooh...” amid a jargon of pidgin she had told me how she had met Matt in church, the same church where I had met him and she had instantly been captivated. But then like me, she had begun noticing several lies, things that didn't quite fit and then suddenly one day she had stumbled on the big secret when the probation officer had come to the apartment because Matt had failed to turn up for one of his weekly counseling sessions. She had then gone behind his back and interviewed several people who had told her exactly what he did. “My sister oooh, you can either leave now or you can wait to find out.” she ended our conversation.

But back to the moment. Matt and I were sitting in the apartment and he was smoking his weed and I

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was watching TV and trying my best to remain sane as I planned my escape. I was trying to keep to our routine as best as I could under the circumstances.

“I didn't do it.” Matt kept telling me. “Why won't you believe me? I gave you the benefit of the doubt when nobody else would trust you. I agreed to give you my name and give you what you desire most.”

“And what's that I desire?” I asked. “Citizenship.” he said. I gasped. And was silent as I pondered this. How

had Matt known that one of the reasons why I had really wanted to marry him was so that I could get my citizenship?

I continued staring at the carpet. Studying the stars and circles on it. Wondering what the designer had been thinking to create such a mishmash. I knew it was supposed to be cool. But I had never understood cool. The new cool was just too weird.

Anyway, I was stalling for time so that I could think of a suitable reply as I thought of a new game plan. To say the truth, shocked is an understatement of how I felt at that moment. I could feel the goosebumps on my arms. How had Matt known this? What else did he know about me?

I looked up and found him staring at me intently. With a small smile, hardly reaching his eyes as it always did. His eyes had grown smaller. How had I never seen this mean look before?

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“You remember when you first moved in? I looked through all your stuff. I didn't know whether to trust you.”

“You didn't know whether to trust me?” I laughed. “Look who's talking. You are a known felon. I am an innocent woman. And you are daring to say that you couldn't trust me?‟

“Well yeah!” he responded. “And you know what I found?”

My knees were shaking, I thought he could hear them from across the room as they knocked together, but I managed to steady them.

“Isn't your visa expired? You are now here illegally, aren't you?” he asked.

I didn't respond. I was playing for time. Giving him silence so that he would tell me exactly how much he knew about me that I hadn‟t told him myself.

“Oh you are not so talkative now, are you?” he jeered. “That's what I thought!! Well here's what we are going to do, Miss Thang!”

I waited with bated breath to hear his demand. I thought of the worst that could happen. He would hand me over to Homeland Security and before I knew it, I would be on my way back home. Sent away. Disgraced. Probably in those awful foot chains, and my hands cuffed behind me. The only time my hands had ever been cuffed was one time when I was playing a silly erotic game with an ex-boyfriend, and he had tied me up, and I had been yelling, oh please give it to me, oh Mr. Cop, you are such a bad policeman, and my

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boyfriend had been slapping my butt as he slammed into me and I was yelling, please forgive me, don't take me to jail, big bad cop, you are my daddy now...

I smiled at the memory, and the smile went away when I met Matt's cold eyes...

“Here's what's going to happen. The tables have turned. You are going to continue to stay with me. And you and I are going to get married and have a family. I have always longed for a family and I am totally in love with you.”

I nodded. There was no use saying anything different at this point. Matt wouldn't listen to reason. And I wasn't ready to be handed over to the Homeland Security. At least not until I had a firm footing...

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Chapter Thirteen (Missing Documents)

At this point I had confirmed that Matt was a scandalous man and for my own sanity and to stay alive and healthy, I needed to get away fast. My travel documents were still missing.

Having decided not to reinvent the wheel and thinking that I could do exactly as Wahala had done, by just moving away to another State, I had called my mother‟s cousin in Alaska and she had agreed that I could stay in her house and take care of her kids and make some money thus. She had even agreed that she would pay for the Greyhound to transport me across the country.

Later I had called her to tell her that I was now ready to leave any day and I had asked her to pay for the Greyhound to Alaska as agreed, and she said she was at work and would have to call me back. After that, she never took my calls. The phone rang endlessly and I finally got the hint and stopped calling.

I had nowhere to go. If you have dealt with people from the motherland you know what I am talking about. It's easier for someone to give you $50 and get rid of you than house you in their homes. It's easy to become homeless and sleep in the streets. Ironically if you die in the same streets, the Kenyan community abroad will be quick to raise $15000 to ship back your body. It's not dignified for a Kenyan to be buried abroad, they say. One must rest at their

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Nyalgunga. But I digress. I only emphasize on this to show you how I had come to the end of my rope.

So it was that only this outcast from society was willing to shelter me and take care of my basic needs. For which he was now demanding that we get married immediately. He had decided unilaterally that we should bring forward the date of the wedding. And I just didn't know what to do. The pressure was mounting. Matt was demanding that we either get married immediately or I move out. I didn't know if he was bluffing and I was stalling for time as I worked out my next move.

I knew it didn't involve getting married to Matt. Having done quite some extensive research of my own on the internet I had come across the Adam Walsh law. This law alone squashed any thoughts I had of forgiving Matt for his past discrepancies and forging a life with him. It just wasn't workable.

In brief the law says that a felon, a criminal, and especially a sex offender cannot import a bride. A few years back a lot of felons had imported brides and they always ended up mistreating them. That right was taken away by the law. So now such felons can only marry regular Americans. Technically, I was an imported bride.

If I got married to Matt I would spend many years petitioning the government to recognize the marriage. Some of these marriages have been recognized but it takes a lot of years, resources and commitment to fight to the end.

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I didn't have the time, nor the resources to fight with the government. What I needed to do was to marry a regular American and within three months and at minimal cost, I would have my residency. . Since the day Matt had finally laid his cards on the table and threatened to expose me, we had settled into an uneasy coexistence. Thus three weeks had passed since the earth shattering discovery about Matt's past.

Matt and I alternated between yelling at each other and sitting down to talk about the situation.

The solution to my problem as I have told you was to find a decent regular American to get married to. But I was stuck. Whichever way I racked my brains, I came to a dead end. I didn't want to stay on the streets. Bite me if you will, but I preferred living with Matt than being on the streets. Winter was fast approaching and Minnesota is one of the coldest places on earth with temperatures going to below zero. It's not kind weather. The previous year it had snowed for six months. Freezer of a place.

Matt had gone back to treating me kindly and was still trying to get me to marry him.

So it was quite a surprise when Matt himself was the one that came up with a solution.

One day we were at the park, us two caged animals, Matt and I, thrown together by circumstances, him by his past, and I by my current transgressions. It was a public holiday, Memorial day. Families were gathering around their laden dining tables. Others were

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scattered around the park doing their barbecue thing. Matt and I were not being left out, the previous night we had gone to the food shelf and picked our ration for the week. We had our ham, our beef, potatoes and Matt was going to turn this into a feast as always. His culinary skills were at par with any five star chef.

We left the beef on the grill and hand in hand walked to the lake and gingerly got onto the bridge. It swayed gently beneath us. I threw a few breadcrumbs at the ducks that were swimming under the bridge and Matt took pictures of them. And then he pulled me towards him and on their gently swaying bridge he kissed me deeply, first on the lips and then on the forehead and then he started nibbling my neck.

And I looked into his eyes and saw the love reflected in them and I asked him what we were going to do, where would we go from here. I felt as Romeo and Juliet must have felt. A deep love doomed to end badly.

And it was at that point that Matt became the bigger person and said he was going to release me. He wasn't going to pull me further into his quicksand and he wouldn't grasp at straws that perhaps in time we might have a normal life and be accepted in the society. The genteel society that frowned upon us.

"You have to leave me and find someone else. We can't go on like this. I know you want to go on with your life and I totally get that. It's gonna be really hard for me to get over you but i need you to leave. I ruined my life. I won't be responsible for ruining yours."

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And I held him tighter and said I couldn't bear to go on without him and maybe we were meant to be together. But deep in my heart I knew I needed to extricate myself from the mess that I was in. Back home several people were beginning to wonder why I had gone mute. I wasn't utilizing the Western Union. I wasn't responding to messages except to confirm that I was alive and they should not expect a body yet.

Many were the nights I had lain beside Matt either plotting my escape or wondering if I should turn myself to Homeland Security who would book for me the next free flight to Africa.

"I will help you find the right man" he said. "And you can meet him while you're still staying with me. You don't have to leave. "

"Why are you doing this?" I asked him, my this-is-bullshit antenna on high alert.

"Because I love you and I want you to be happy. God must have put me on this earth for a purpose. And perhaps my purpose is to give you a chance at happiness. "

"Okay. " I said. I wanted to gather my thoughts together and

find out what the new angle or twist was. With Matt's cunning mind, there was always something going on and I needed my wits to cope with everything he threw at me. I had come to think of life with Matt as a game of chess. He would make a move and I would make another move to stay ahead of him.

"Okay. " I repeated.

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"So it's settled then. I will help you meet a man who can make your dreams happen"

Matt had offered a solution. He would help me find a suitable man that I could get married to and get residency within three months. And he was doing this because he loved me. LOVE.

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Chapter Fourteen (Matt Agrees To Help Me)

For the last few weeks, Matt and I had been

living acrimoniously, hating each other but clinging to each other as we only had each other. The tension in the little apartment was palpable. But once he offered to help me find a solution and get back my life on track, I began once more to see the good things about him.

Matt and I continued staying together. We still shared the bed. Once in a while we would spoon all night. Now that we had agreed that he would help me achieve my goal, we were peaceful. We never yelled at each other. We discussed stuff like two adults.

He had helped me create a dating profile on Christian Mingle as we had mutually concluded that it was easier to connect with someone who was already putting himself out there and telling the world, look here, I am single and I really do want to meet someone.

Matt took pictures of me. Let me backtrack a little and say that at some point we started to have sex again. Two lonely souls clinging to each other. Soul mates in another era. Not this one.

We were playful the whole day. We resumed the banter we used to have before it became such a mess. After we made love, I would dress up and he would take perfect pictures of me. The afterglow from sex on my face, those were straight down the best pictures I

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have ever taken in my life. I looked serene and totally loveable.

Many guys were hitting my inbox and Matt was helping me scrutinize and vet them. Matt being so brilliant knew exactly how to vet the love interests. He dismissed them based on their profile pictures, their names, and he explained to me ever so gently that big_penis and gonna_do_you_till_you_scream weren‟t ready for marriage. Perhaps we might settle for soulmate_for_you and lonely_heart as proper marriage material.

Finally we decided on who would be my first date. The lucky fellow was a guy named Ben. Ben had been divorced for several years and he described himself as wanting to settle down, tired of being alone, wanting a good woman that would love him till his dying day. He sounded sweet. I could do sweet. I know how to act sugar and chocolate and a little spice. Matt and I picked my outfit with care, criteria being decent yet sexy enough to show the curves of future promise and alluring mysterious nights.

I was to meet Ben at 1.00 for lunch. We had arranged that he would come pick me up at the apartment that I shared with my gay friend Matt. How else could I explain sharing a one bedroom apartment with a man who wasn't my brother? Matt and I had had so much fun discussing my convincing story. The interview story, the getting to know each other story, that I would give potential suitors.

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Ben as I have said was coming to pick me up at 1.00. I was ready at 12 and was sitting in the living room having a pleasant conversation with Matt. He was giving great perspective from a guy's point of view, on what generally turned men off and what kept them hooked and craving more.

At 12.45 Matt told me there was one last thing missing in my arsenal. He took my hand and walked me into the bedroom. He then started kissing me and mumbling words of love, and poetry and how I was going to get everything I had dreamed of. The kisses moved from my face to my neck and then he unbuttoned my shirt and took my now erect nipples into his mouth and then I was kissing him back fervently and pleading with him to give it to me.

And then there we were on that bed and he was humping me and we both came simultaneously and I looked at the clock on the wall and it was one o'clock and my phone was ringing and Ben was on the phone telling me that he was outside the apartment. I told him I was running late and could he give me ten minutes? I then jumped into the shower and Matt stayed in the bedroom and picked some different clothes for me to wear. And then he told me that I was going to be just fine since I now had my desires in control and would rule this date.

Ben turned out to be a nice guy. We had a wonderful lunch and I knew we were making a connection. And then he dropped me back at the apartment and we agreed on the time for the next date

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and he hugged me and said he was really pleased about meeting me and what were the odds of him meeting such a delightful creature as myself.

I looked up at the window and saw Matt looking down at us and he waved and blew me a kiss. Ben got into his car and drove away smiling. I then went upstairs and Matt debriefed me. I told him everything that had taken place and how pleased I was that there was going to be a second date. He wanted to know when this date would be. One of the things we had agreed to in our living arrangement was that we would keep each other informed. Matt insisted that he somehow felt responsible for my welfare since he had failed to give me the thing that I craved most.

We spent the rest of the afternoon perusing potential prey. We went over each profile with a toothcomb and before we retired to bed that night, I had a date for the next day which happened to be a Wednesday.

I was going to meet Kyle who described himself as outdoorsy loving activities like skiing, snowboarding, and skating. He even liked rollerblading. Heck, I am a couch potato but I could definitely do outdoorsy for Kyle. I hoped he wouldn't want to do any of these activities soon. Kyle was coming to pick me up at 12.00. At 11.00 I was ready and as you've probably guessed, at 11.45, Matt and I were banging away.

Our formerly repressed sexuality had transformed into something uncontrollable.

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"I desire you so much. The thought of other men wanting you, my beautiful one is driving me crazy."

We spent a lot of time having sex. Suddenly I was leading this fairytale life where I was having my cake and eating it. I was being wooed by a series of suitors who all seemed to find me most engrossing and enjoyable company and wanted a future with me. And on the side I had Matt literally trying his best to help me find my dreams that I had just about given up on.

I had many dates in rapid succession which seemed to go well but then I began to notice that nobody was turning up for the second date. Strange, I thought. I could have sworn, without being vain, that those guys I had met had been panting for a second date. I shrugged my shoulders. Oh well, we would have to fix it.

From all the ten guys I had gone out with, Ben had seemed to be the best bet for a quickie marriage. And yet he had bounced me for the second date which was supposed to have been the previous Saturday. I would have to take matters into my hands. Sometimes a woman must do what she must. When I went online I tried looking for his profile and I couldn't find it. Weird, maybe he had deactivated his account. I still had his phone number so I quickly typed a text telling him how happy I had been with our first date and how disappointed i had been that he didn't contact me and I hoped he was well.

The reply was swift and screaming

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STAY AWAY FROM ME, PSYCHO BITCH... I was startled by the response. Perhaps he didn't

know who was contacting him. I tried to call his number severally but I kept getting a busy tone.

I decided I would contact Kyle. Let's just say his response was more graphic than that of Ben and he even went so far as to say if I contacted him again he would have to seek police protection.

Another three numbers, same response. I was confused. What had I done to these guys?

I could have sworn they had all wanted to see me again. ...

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Chapter Fifteen (Never a Second Date)

I had gone out with several guys and none of them ever called me back for a second date. Puzzled, I had decided to take matters into my own hands and contacted them one after the other.

Ben the most promising prey had responded with a text that made me cringe. Kyle had threatened to bring the police to my doorstep if I so much as glanced his way again. Charlie had just disconnected the phone when I identified myself.

Another three numbers, same response. I was confused. What had I done to these guys? I could have sworn they had all wanted to see me again. ...

But I was lucky on one more call. Jake was a realtor who had taken me for dinner one night because he couldn't make lunch. Matt had seemed very uneasy when Jake came to pick me up. Jake had told me he had a master's degree and was working on his PhD. You all know I have a high affinity for men with brains. He turned out not to have so much brawn, he was really slim but it was alright with me since he was tall. Now I should backtrack and mention that all my other dates had been high school leavers.

Matt had tried to insist that Jake was wrong for me and didn't look like the type of person that could do a quickie marriage.

"Look at him, look how polished he looks. He's not going to do this. He's too savvy. What will you even talk about? "

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We had argued over Jake and Matt had been incensed and frustrated when I had insisted on setting up the date. To his annoyance it had then turned into a dinner instead of lunch. And on that evening I had rejected Matt when he was ready to service me before the date as per norm.

Dinner with Jake had been awesome. We had great conversation. I do know how to have a conversation with a man, most of the time all you have to do is repeat his last sentence and add a question mark and he will continue for the next hour.

Jake wanted to go dancing afterwards but I knew Matt wasn't going to sleep before I returned. So I said no. On the doorstep he didn't give me a swift hug like the other guys had. He took his first kiss.

When I went into the apartment and showered and finally allowed Matt to touch me, all I could think about was Jake. Afterwards, Matt had said there was something different about me. He asked me questions about the date and I answered over and over. Then exhausted he finally went to sleep after saying that there was something I was leaving out, he couldn't quite put a finger on it but it would come to him shortly.

Jake hadn't called back. When on this afternoon I called him, he said he had been meaning to call me and talk about some communication he had had with Matt but he hadn't found a suitable time since he was in Chicago for a conference. But by way of summary, he told me he had wanted to tell me to move out of Matt's

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apartment because he was going to take him down and he didn't want me caught in any crossfire.

"Do you have anywhere else you can stay?" He asked.

"Why do you think I need somewhere else to stay?" I asked.

"Atieno, you don't have to pretend with me. I already know the fix you are in. Listen, read the emails Matt has been sending me and then when I come back we can meet and talk some more. Meanwhile please take care."

I brought out Matt's black laptop, that day he had been hired by his friend that sold tobacco and I knew what time he would be home. I took time finding them, but i finally did in a hidden folder. There were easily over fifty emails, a back and forth between the two gentlemen, I use the term gentlemen here rather loosely. They bickered and threatened each other and Matt said he would do stuff to him that he had only seen in movies if he didn't keep off me, his fiancée. Jake had responded that he didn't care for the threats and I was a free woman and I would have to decide. At some point Matt appeared rather desperate and had pointed out that I was only in this for the visa. To which Jake replied that if it came to that, he could easily marry me.

I gathered that Matt had gone down to Jake's office but Jake was absent that day. And Jake had then told Matt that if he pulled such a stunt again he would go ahead and have him arrested for violating his probation. Note here that one of the rules for Matt's

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probation was not to use the internet in any way. He had violated this, he ran over ten Facebook accounts, several email addresses and online dating profiles.

Armed with this information and by now understanding that I had to be ready to move yet another piece on the chessboard, I did not say anything to him that night. I was instead, super sweet to him and we made love and talked for a long time. I was learning to keep my facial expressions under control, my poker face was a work in progress.

Next day Matt wasn't working and he wanted us to go through more profiles and set up another date. I told him I was feeling a little discouraged because nobody had turned up for a second date.

"Is that it? I think you have a crush on Jake. " he said.

"Why are you saying this to me?" I asked. "You know Jake hasn't even called me for a second date."

"That's good. He wasn't right for you anyway. I had a weird feeling about him. If anything I have learnt to use my instincts."

"Well that's fine. I will meet someone else." I would do the waiting game again. Jake would

be in town in a week's time. While I was waiting, something happened that

week that threw a spanner into the works. Matt was at the tobacco shop where he sometimes worked. I was catching up with Single Ladies and enjoying the foreplay between Keisha and Malcolm when the doorbell rang. I stood up reluctantly to go peep and see

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who was visiting us. We didn't have any friends. We didn't have any visitors.

When I saw who was on the doorstep, my heart fell into my stomach and I felt my knees give way as I collapsed. ...

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Chapter Sixteen (Enter Jim Spencer) As I sank to my knees the policeman pounded the door again. "Police! ! Open up!!" I thought of jumping out through the window

but that would mean broken legs or a broken neck. I unlocked the door.

"Matt here?" 'No." "Good. It's you I wanted to see." "Me?" "Here. .." he said as he handed me a business

card. "That's the number of the boss. Call him" "Today?" "I would highly recommend that." He said as he

walked away. Through the window I watched him get into his

car and drive away. Then I dialed the number. Better to get it over with.

“Yes?" I identified myself. "I would like you to find a way to get out of that

house and come and see me without Matt's knowledge. You don't know what you are getting into.”

Exasperated, I flung the phone in my hand across the room. Fortunately it landed on the couch. I immediately stood up and walked across the room and swiftly redialed the number. Perhaps it was better if I

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knew what everybody kept hinting at. So far, nobody had been direct with me.

“Glad you called back.” Jim Spencer's gruff voice came through. “You have to get out of that house. I can't go over it on phone. Find a way to come and see me.” he repeated.

“I can't get out of here. Why won't you tell me what this is about?”

“I don't want to talk on phone. It's too dangerous for you. Trust me on this. Just come and see me.”

The next day I took the bus to Mancato. I had to get directions and bus numbers using the internet and I ended up using a route that took me three hours instead of one hour to get to the destination. The stops were many and feeling the pressure of my escape from the little apartment, I sweated profusely and arrived looking quite disheveled.

The shabby extensive house was on a hill some distance from the bus stop. Luckily I had worn flat shoes so I walked briskly. As I approached the dark gloomy house, my pace changed and I took almost ten minutes to cover the quarter mile winding road. I glanced warily through the trees expecting Matt to jump out of the thin forest and stop me.

I knocked on the brass handle and a large black man with a receding hairline let me in. He had a rather small head and a very large tummy that hung almost to his knees.

“I am here to see Mr. Spencer” I said

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“Come this way.” Without preamble he led me down a long

passageway to the back of the house where the office was located. I sat down at the outer reception and waited. As I looked at the art on the walls, I recalled the first time that I had visited this place.

That was a month ago. Matt had been desolate that I was packing my bags and had insisted on bringing me here.

“I need you to see the psychiatric half-way home where I received treatment. If you talk to the counselors, they will assure you that I am safe to live with and that I would never harm you.”

“How can they do that?” “By telling you about the treatment that I went

through. And how different people who go through the program come out. And how they become useful members of the society.”

“I certainly don't want to meet more sexual perverts. Do you even know how scary that is?” I asked

“Don't call me a sexual pervert!” he yelled. “They are people, just like you. Don't be so stupid.”

I waited for half an hour before Jim Spencer rushed in and profusely apologized that he had kept me waiting.

“Always an emergency around here. Always something new.” he said by way of apology.

“It's alright.” I reassured him. “I am here now. So, why am I here?”

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He walked round behind his large rectangular desk and sat down. He pointed at the armchair and I assumed I was being ordered to take a seat. Then from one of the desk drawers he pulled out a file.

“This here is Matt's file on his stay at this institution. It also details the crime that he committed, and the court proceedings, his sentence, his treatment and follow up treatment outside the institution.”

I looked up startled. “Why do you look so surprised?” he asked. “Well, I didn't know he was still going through

treatment.” I said “Strictly speaking, it is not treatment. At this

stage we call it management and it merely involves drugs and a monthly visit to a psychologist. But we take it very seriously and we document everything. What I am going to tell you is strictly confidential but you have to trust me. For your own safety, you need to move out of that house today.”

“Why are you telling me this? What is your interest?”

“I have a request of you.” “Okay, tell me the story first.” I sat back and in my heart whispered a fervent

prayer that he would corroborate the story that Matt had told me. He picked up the folder, leafed through a few pages.

“Well, in the early afternoon of January 1995, nine-year-old Kim Walker was swimming in the pool of the apartment complex where she lived. This was the

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same complex where Matt lived. Kim claimed that while in the pool, Matt came up behind her, put his hand inside her bathing suit, rubbed her “front private part,” and asked if she liked it.”

“What? Are you sure?” I asked “Matt told me something different.”

“It gets worse.” he said. “Allow me to get to the end. Matt, on the other hand, claimed at the trial that he had been swimming in the pool when Kim jumped in on top of him. He admitted to then grabbing her by the ankles to pull her off and dunking her under the water two or three times but maintained he never touched her in the genital area.”

“That's it? He touched her genital area?” I asked trying to hide the shock and nausea that I felt. We were talking about a nine-year-old little girl. Not the sixteen-year-old woman that Matt had told me about.

“I am afraid there is more. The next day Matt followed Kim to the pool and lured her back to his apartment on the promise of baking for her some apple pie. At his apartment, he carefully removed the little girl's clothes and had vaginal and anal sex with her. He tore open that little girl and it took three months for her to heal.”

“What happened after that?” “As you probably know by now Matt was found

guilty and sentenced to ten years in jail. But he only served one year of that and he was then sent to this institution which was a pioneer of sexual repression treatment. At the time, there was scientific evidence

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that pointed to some men being biologically inclined to only find sexual pleasure through force. The government funded this program. Several inmates who had been charged on sexual offenses and who were considered treatable were released into this program.”

“But why are you telling me this?” “Because I don't believe Matt should have been

released to this program. He was too violent. He should have remained in prison. The government made a mistake in this. He was one of the many that were released into the program whom we believe we couldn't treat and whom we were forced by the government to release back into society before they were fully treated.”

“You didn't finish telling me about the trial.” I reminded him.

Jim Spencer continued to leaf through the file as he talked.

“Matt is deceitful. He offered evidence that Kim had been touched by other male relatives before him and he called an expert who testified about general behavioral characteristics exhibited by child victims of sexual abuse. The expert said he was aware that Kim had been seriously molested by at least one other adult male both before and after the incident with Matt, and that such a child might develop “hypersensitivity” and thus misconceive the nature of any physical touch by another adult male. The expert also testified that such a child could have a negative reaction to a quite innocent, non-sexual touch.”

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“What you are saying is that you can't be sure that Matt had sex with Kim?”

“No, I am sure he did. I worked with Matt for many years. I know he did it. But the prosecutors were unable to prove the major charges that would have put him away for life. Anyway, the psychologist nonetheless rendered an opinion that Matt suffered from a mental disorder making him likely to engage in acts of sexual violence. He suffers from a paranoid personality and pedophilia. Based on this opinion the court sentenced him and ordered that Matt be re-evaluated every year.”

The silence in the room was loud and palpable. I could feel my heart pumping hard and I thought I was going to collapse.

“Coca-cola or Mountain Dew?” Jim Spencer offered.

I took the Coca-Cola that he offered and gulped it like a drowning man. I was thirsty and felt like I was being strangled. I stood up slowly, and then collapsed back onto the armchair. I simply had no strength. Idly I wondered how I would manage the bus-ride back to the little apartment and how I would leave. Should I confront Matt with this new knowledge or should I just leave? I wondered. But he would just lie. Over and over he had lied. When I thought I was finally coming to terms with the situation and could move forward, I would stumble upon another lie.

“I still don't understand why you told me all this stuff.” I said.

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“Because Matt is dangerous. He sexually assaulted his last girlfriend but we couldn't get her to testify. She ran away and we have been unable to bring her back.”

“What was her name?” “Tsitsi. Has Matt mentioned her? Her sister

reported her suspicions to us but Tsitsi ran away before I could get to her. Now I need you to testify against Matt. He is a dangerous man and should not be out there. You my dear young lady are going to help me correct this mistake that was made.”

“But Matt has never assaulted me." Then I decided on impulse to add a lie because I didn't like this man. "In fact we have only had sex twice over the last six months.”

“It's just a matter of time. It will either be you or someone else that he will visit the indignity upon. The place for pedophiles is locked away, not out there mingling with normal people. Think about it.”

Jim Spencer paced up and down and his face contorted into a fierce mask. His white skin seemed whiter and his bulging eyes seemed whiter and wider. It was a terrifying sight indeed.

“I need you to decide right now. Can you testify against him or not?” he repeated savagely.

“He hasn't done anything against me.” I responded.

“Have it your way.” Jim Spencer said as I started to turn the door handle to let myself out. “You can either cooperate and save your skin or not.”

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I stopped in my tracks. “Tsitsi was an illegal immigrant. So are you. You

ignorant piece of shit. You come to my country, this great country and become involved with criminals and you think you can get away with anything. I expect an answer from you within the next 24 hours or by God, you will know who Jim Spencer really is.”

I opened the door and fell out into the passageway. The large black man who appeared to have been eavesdropping was startled by my fall but he steadied himself and grabbed me, helped me up and led me down the passageway. At the main door, he handed me a piece of paper, which I quickly stuffed into my purse as I ran from that shabby house. Later on when I got to the apartment, I read the note.

CALL ME, TEL 713 3330000. I CAN HELP YOU.

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Chapter Seventeen (Matt’s Pounding)

The bus dropped me off at the bus stop by the Dairy Queen down the street from Matt's apartment. I walked heavily towards the apartment. But as I was about to open the door I noticed the light in the living room was on. I decided to go take another long walk to clear my head. Not that I needed it. All afternoon as I rode the bus back I had been thinking of the new developments.

Jim Spencer was going to nail me if I didn't find a way to turn over Matt to him. I had seen the venom in his cold face and I knew there was no escape. If I didn't turn Matt over, then Jim Spencer would turn me over to the Homeland Security department. He had made that clear. I would have to sacrifice Matt if I was to survive.

I walked back to the Dairy Queen and bought a large Coca-Cola. Strode into the park and sat on one of the benches, idly watching the group of baseball players. They seemed young and without a care in the world.

My phone rang. I shuddered as I glanced at it. Matt was calling. There was no need to hide any longer. Sooner or later I would have to go into that apartment and just find the evidence that Jim Spencer needed. Part of this evidence would definitely involve stealing the black laptop and giving it to Jim Spencer. Matt was under clear instructions not to use the internet and especially not to use any social media. But I had

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constantly seen him use Facebook under many false aliases. All I needed was to sneak out the laptop to Jim Spencer and let him download the data.

I wondered what else I could do to incriminate Matt.

“Yes Matt?” I answered the ringing phone. “Where are you? You've been gone for so long.” “I am over here at the park. I will be home in

half an hour. Just watching the baseball players.” “I will be right over.” he said and hung up. Too bad, I thought to myself. I would have to

face Matt sooner than later. Might as well be now. Five minutes later Matt strolled into the park and

sat by my side. He slid his arm across my shoulder and pulled me close to him. I didn't resist. I needed the warmth of another human being. Even if it was this guy I was plotting to betray in the next few days. It was for my survival, I reasoned. It was either him or me. And he had survived tougher times so obviously he would survive this one more betrayal.

“How was your day? I was worried about you.” he asked.

“Not too bad. I went downtown and spent the day just walking through the maze. The maze that connects the Minneapolis buildings.”

“Yeah, I know it. Often walked there myself when I needed to think and just lose myself observing people.”

“Really, you need to do that sometimes?”

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“Of course. I remember when Sue divorced me and took everything I had. Remember I told you that story of my first marriage? Well, I spent a lot of time walking that maze and walking around Lake Calhoun. It's amazing how walking ten miles a day will help you refocus your energies.

We continued watching the baseball game in silence. Then he resumed our conversation.

"But tell me, did you meet anybody interesting?” he was studying me in a strange way. His eyes glazed over, like he didn't want me to know what he was thinking.

“Why do you ask?” “Because, I am still waiting for you to give me an

answer. You still haven't said whether we are going back to our original plan of getting married next month. Atieno, I still love you.”

"What the hell are you talking about? Aren't you supposed to be helping me meet someone? "

"You don't seem to be making any progress there."

"You are right. Nobody seems to invite me for a second date. Give me some more time to think about it. But truthfully, I don't know what to do. The recent events have really thrown me. Give me some time to grow to trust you again. If you have told me the entire truth, I am sure we can get past it. But I do need time.”

“Anything you need to know, please ask. I am desperate to have you by my side for the rest of our lives.”

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“Matt, you have told me the entire truth, haven't you?” I asked him once more.

I wanted to give him one more chance to tell me the truth, now that I had heard Jim Spencer's version of the truth. One thing I had learnt in life was that there were always three sides to the story. In this case, there were ten or more versions. There was the version that Matt had told me. There was the version that Jim Spencer had told me. The one Wahala had told me. And somewhere in there was the hidden truth.

“Yes.” he responded. “As I trust you have.” “I have nothing to hide.” I said. “Are you sure about that?” he asked. “Yeah.” “I cooked. Let's go back to the house.” “What did you cook?” I was surprised that I was able to carry on the

mundane conversation. In the distance I saw the baseball players packing their stuff and getting into their cars ready to drive off. The sun was slowly setting and the orange sky was absolutely beautiful.

“Made some meatloaf and salad. Chocolate cake and ice cream for dessert.” he replied.

“Sounds good.” Matt and I walked slowly back to the apartment.

On the way he talked about his new job-hunting activities. He told me about a gas station that was run by a certain Arab friend of his and which he had swung by that day and Ahmed had said that he could start working three mornings a week.

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“I am so happy for you.” I said genuinely pleased that he had gotten something.

Even three mornings a week was enough to put food on the table. I didn't much care to continue scrounging on him as he fed me and I plotted against him. I desperately needed something good to happen to him so that I wouldn't feel so guilty as I finally stabbed him.

My mind was made up. I was going to betray him. It was just a matter of finding the right opportunity. Which had suddenly presented itself. If Matt was at work the whole morning, I could take the black laptop and sneak over to Jim Spencer and be back before Matt returned from work. And in the meantime I would reach out to a girl from Zimbabwe who worked as a nanny and who had said she could get me something similar. She had room and board and three days off.

Suddenly life seemed brighter. I could do this and get out before Matt became suspicious. And Matt could take care of himself. He had known Jim Spencer for many years. I didn't see why I had to be the sacrificial lamb in their duel.

We entered the apartment. He turned on the light. I looked around. Seemed like he had been doing some cleaning. The apartment was spotless. Instinctively my eyes turned towards the spot where the black laptop normally sat. There was nothing there. The black laptop was gone. My heart missed a beat. I looked up. Matt was studying me. His eyes were cold.

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“Looking for something?” he asked. “No.” I said. “You cleaned up pretty well.” “You sure?” he took a step towards me. I took a step back. He took another step towards

me. “I am only going to ask you this once. Are you

sure there is nothing you are looking for?” “Yeah. Place looks good.” Matt was swift on his feet. I didn't see the slap

coming. I only felt it as it almost dislocated my jaw and blood spurt out of my mouth. He slapped me again hard.

“Atieno I didn't go to work this morning. I followed you to Jim Spencer's office. What did Spencer want from you?”

The beating continued late into the night. He alternated between slapping my face and punching me. He took a belt and I felt it cut into me. But I didn't scream or cry. I whimpered in self-pity. I didn't want the neighbors to hear any commotion and call the police. After all, as soon as they got here, they would ask for my papers and they would call the Homeland Security. And I would be on the first available plane back to Africa. Where I didn't have anything to return to.

“Here is what we are going to do.” Matt said. “In two days‟ time, you are going to do as Jim Spencer asked. But first, we have to get you looking like your old self. No sense in him thinking that something

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happened here tonight. Are you going to tell him about tonight?”

“No Matt.” I whimpered. “Nothing happened.” Matt took the medicinal alcohol from the First

Aid box and swabbed my wounds. I didn't scream as I felt it burning into my cut skin. But silent tears streamed down my cheeks.

“Stop crying my love.” Matt said as he wiped away my tears. “It's going to end well.”

And then with one rapid movement, he lifted me up and placed me gingerly on the bed. Took off my clothes. I didn't struggle. Just wanted to die. But not yet, I thought. Not until my child was in a good place. I lay back and didn't struggle as he swiftly entered me. I took the pounding that he gave without flinching.

This was one of those times that Matt had been turned on without resorting to the use of porn or his normal wanking or thinking about other men wanting me. And he was hard for almost three hours.

I took the pounding as it was given. Without a whimper...

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Chapter Eighteen (Enter Devon)

For the next four days I lay in that bed with Matt nursing me, he bathed me and medicated my wounds. He had been to the pharmacy and bought some creams with which he massaged away my pain. He cooked, he cleaned, he apologized over and over but my mind had somehow blanked him out.

All I heard were words coming from his mouth and I didn't have strength to respond. Finally, exasperated he said he wasn't going to plead with me anymore to forgive him but he hoped I knew what the right thing to do was.

He reminded me that he was the only one who had been there for me in times of difficulty. And he kept telling me how much he loved me. He cried on some days, he cried for the two of us because I was dry eyed. Not a single tear fell from my eyes. I guess I was in shock or denial or both.

All I knew was that I wanted to die. But then I kept remembering my little girl whom I had left in Africa and I knew I had to be strong for her. I had last seen her when she was three years old and she was bidding me goodbye at the airport and she was asking me why I was going without her, why couldn't I hide her in my handbag and go with her? And I had explained that I would be back in December to get her. That had been in July.

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Two Decembers had since come and gone and every time I spoke with her, she asked me if December had reached or when it would reach. At the beginning I used to call her every week, then I changed to every month, and finally I had just stopped calling because it hurt so much when she asked me when December would reach. The last time I had called, was when she had been hospitalized for Malaria and I had been so terrified that she would die before December reached and I would have wasted all those two years without her, without giving her the things that I really wanted to give her but which just weren't within my means at the moment. She wanted a scooter and I didn't have the money to buy it and I couldn't even explain to my sisters why I couldn't buy the scooter, which was approximately $50. How could I tell them that I didn't have the $50? When I had left home, I used to be able to afford stuff like that for her and we lived pretty decently and now I couldn't even send $10 for my child.

So, I spent that week healing my body and trying to harness my spirit so that I could plan for the next move. I knew I couldn't make any move until I was completely healed so I settled back and let Matt nurse me back to health.

As I have said, he was extremely attentive and treated me with a lot of tenderness and apologized constantly. On the second day he had reminded me to call Jim Spencer and tell him that due to unforeseen circumstances, I was unable to go to his office and that

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I had not found anything worth delivering. As fate would have it, luck was on my side. I was informed that Jim Spencer was going to be out of town for a month and did I wish to leave a message or did I want to try calling back in a month? I said I would call back in a month and I breathed a sigh of relief that I had one more month before I had to deal with Mr. Spencer.

Matt had to resume work the next week since we were running out of food. He had been to the food shelf, the place where we picked some free food every week, but there were things that the food shelf couldn't provide, so he had to put in some hours at work whenever someone offered him a few hours of work. Getting a job was a nightmare for him. Not many employers will willingly take on a sex offender as part of their staff, because even though people politely say that they are willing to give others a second chance, when it comes down to the actions, they would rather not. So employers shied away from him and at some point, he had just stopped applying for jobs. His unemployment check of $1200 was still coming in but that just covered our rent and the utilities. I was bringing in no money. I had become more estranged from the Kenyan society as I sank into deeper problems and couldn't reach out to any of them.

On the day Matt resumed work, I dialed Jake's number and I talked to him. Our conversation was brief, I merely wanted to know when he would be back in town. He was still in Chicago and said that he had been given an unexpected assignment there that would

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cover another two months but I was constantly in his thoughts and he would contact me as soon as he got back into town. He asked me if I had as yet moved out of Matt's apartment and as I hadn't he said he was still urging me to move because at some point he did want to get back at Matt and he didn't want me to be caught in between.

Despair hit me like a brick, when I was through with the call. I hadn't realized how much I had counted on Jake being my escape plan. I lay there staring blankly at the TV screen as I thought of whom else I could call. Then I remembered that piece of paper that the black fellow at Jim Spencer's office had given to me. There was no harm calling him. I retrieved the piece of paper from under the mattress where I had hidden it and quickly dialed the number.

He answered after seven rings when I was about to give up. I found out that his name was Devon and that he had worked for Jim Spencer for several years and he said he had been listening on Jim's conversation with me, even before I came to that office and he had decided he would help me.

“Why are you wanting to help me?” I asked him. “Because you are black. And I can't stand by and

see a black woman suffer in the hands of yet another white man. It pains me that our black women are being mistreated by white men and they don't even see it. They continue to grovel before the white man. Slavery ended a long time ago but sisters are still worshiping the white man. It's stupid.”

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“How can I know whether you are for real? Why should I trust you?” I asked.

“You will just have to take a chance. It's up to you.” Devon said. “I can get you out of there this week. There is a white woman over in Burnsville who needs a nanny, she has two children and will pay you $400 a month and give you your own room and you would have three days off. Does this sound interesting to you or would you rather remain where you are?”

Sure it sounded interesting to me. I don't know why I was stalling instead of leaping at the idea. But I had become wary of men who said they wanted to help me. Everybody wanted a pound of my flesh. True, I know there's never anything for free but I needed to know Devon's price and see if it was too great to pay. If it was sex, I was going to pass because I couldn't bring myself to even like him or stand him that way.

“How long do I have?” I asked, stalling for a few more minutes to think.

“What exactly are you waiting for? What is keeping you that you can't leave tomorrow? The lady can take you in today.”

“I don't have my travel documents and my certificates.” I explained. “I think I need to get those first.”

“Why? Really? Are you travelling anywhere? Are you in a position to use those papers?”

“No.” I reluctantly admitted. Our conversation ended on the note that he

would come pick me up on Thursday when Matt was at

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work. I was to leave everything including my clothes in Matt's house and I would start afresh. The lady, my silent benefactor, would give me some of her clothes to start off with.

Matt was home promptly at 5.30. Matt is always on time, if he's going to be late even if it's five minutes he calls or texts. He made dinner as I slumped in front of the TV. He cleaned up and then he came to sit by my side on the couch.

Since I knew I had already made firm plans for moving away, I was good to him. I hadn't completely forgiven him for the beating but knowing that I now had an escape route somehow made it easier to talk with him. We discussed everything under the sun. It felt like the first days when we had just met and I was deeply in love with him. In many ways, I still was. But I knew the two of us were doomed as a couple. We just couldn't hack it. There was too much happening. Too many outside forces that wouldn't give us peace.

That night, I allowed him to pull me into his arms and I allowed him to kiss me and then he made love to me in the most gentle way that I could remember. At some point he was crying and finally all the tears I had held back over the past week, began to roll. The thought of a better future, allowed me to love him deeply that night. I was thinking that the past was the past and that night I forgave him for everything. I hadn't been a saint myself, I had lived off of him, I had plotted against him, and still he continued to love me. I knew it was going to be hard to move on, I knew I

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would never meet someone that would love me as much as Matt had loved me. But I would move on because I needed to.

Matt stayed home the next day and I stayed in his arms and we made love the whole day. I think he sensed that something had changed but he didn't ask me what it was. He took of me as I gave.

“I will move on, God give me the strength to move on.” I kept saying to myself. “I really do love this man, but I need to move on.”

On Thursday morning, Matt left for work. His last words to me were that he loved me and he would do anything for me and he hoped I loved him back the same way. And I told him I loved him and I couldn't wait to see him that evening.

Then I sat back and waited for Devon to come and take me away to freedom. Even though I knew I was leaving Matt, I went through my normal routine. I sat by his side and we had breakfast together and I was having difficulty swallowing and I was wondering whether I would ever meet someone else who would cater to my physical demands and needs as he had done. I was looking back at the eight months that we had been together which had been filled with love and tenderness, a connection of two souls, a deep love lately fraught with accusations and suspicion and recriminations, but which still hadn't turned to bitterness. If there was a magic way to wipe away the past this was the one that I would want by my bedside as I lay dying.

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He was my best friend but I was about to take away the "forever" part by running away from him without telling him. I so wanted to say goodbye and wish him the best. Instead I hugged him tightly and claimed one last kiss and watched him walk through the door to go and hunt for our food.

And then I cleaned up as I waited. I noticed that the black laptop was back in its usual place and I looked at it with regret. The idyllic world I lived in had started going downhill the moment I started snooping and couldn't stop.

Devon was prompt, right on the minute as we had agreed. He took the interstate 35 and soon we were in Burnsville where he drew up to a townhouse and the lady of the house thanked him and led me to my bedroom to settle down. She brought me some clothes and new underwear and toiletries that she had bought for me that morning. The room was small and was furnished with a twin bed on which a dull brown duvet was spread. The walls were cream and bare of any decorations.

I felt as though I had entered a cell and I settled back to start my jail term.

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Chapter Nineteen (Babysitter Duties)

The Thursday I was leaving Matt, I went through

my normal routine. I sat by his side and we had breakfast together and I was having difficulty swallowing and I was wondering whether I would ever meet someone else who would cater to my physical demands and needs as he had done. I was looking back at the eight months that we had been together which had been filled with love and tenderness, a connection of two souls, a deep love lately fraught with accusations and suspicion and recriminations, but which still hadn't turned to bitterness. If there was a magic way to wipe away the past this was the one that I would want. The man that I would have laying by my side, on my deathbed. The man that I would want buried next to me so that we would be together even in the afterlife.

“Remember to vacuum the carpet and put away the children's toys. It's very disappointing for me when I come home and find the house messy."

"Of course. ," I said politely. "I shall clean up!" What I longed to say was that her children were

mean inconsiderate undisciplined brats. But I held my tongue. I needed to stay on this job, not just for the $300 that she was paying me but mostly for the room and board. I didn't have anywhere else to go. Dionne was a good woman. She had strikingly blue eyes, long blonde hair and a figure that belonged to an African woman.

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Perhaps it was for this reason that she had gotten three children from three different black men. Only one of the men regularly supported his child and therefore she was forced to work two to three jobs at a time to cater for her family's financial needs.

After two days I had mentioned something about the children throwing the toys everywhere after I had cleaned up yet again. I was cleaning up every thirty minutes on top of trying to keep them entertained through painting, puzzles, and reading to them. There was no TV in the house. Dionne had this rule that her children would not be raised by the box. The children were of course bored and they went through the house like a hurricane and broke a lot of stuff. Not having TV meant that I was completely isolated from the world. But my trustworthy Facebook was active and I was getting news from home. I had informed my sisters of the new development in my life, and I had also asked them to send me copies of my passport and my birth certificate so that I would use these to apply for new travel documents through the Kenyan embassy in Washington DC. I had of course given them my new address.

Dionne had said she might have to charge me for the stuff if I didn't get the kids under control. I could understand her anger, she was working almost 24 hours to buy that stuff. And yet the paradox was that she wouldn't let me discipline the children in the only way I was accustomed to. She wanted me to make them take timeouts and stand in the corner and think about

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what they had done. Having been thoroughly unsuccessful at this, I had now virtually become a slave to the children.

Often I thought of the easy life I had led at Matt's house. And I missed him so much. I didn't have any adult conversation. I still didn't know where my future was heading. I had no concrete plans and was just taking it day by day.

I had been living with Dionne for two months now. During these two months I had never gone anywhere. I had been in that house 24/7 and thought I might run mad. I didn't have any dating life to speak of. One time a man I was talking to, a certain Stephen had driven almost 200 miles to see me on my day off. When he got out of his Cadillac and came forward with his hand outstretched to meet me it took everything in me not to turn away and tell him to go back home.

On the website he had described himself as a six-footer with athletic body. His voice on phone was pleasant and I had listened to him talk about giving me erotic massages that would drive me over the moon. He was in his 50s and he had been looking for his queen his whole life and when he saw my pictures he knew immediately that I was right for him. He had said he wanted to get married as soon as we arranged a physical meet and sparks flew.

So anyway when he stepped out of the expensive car, I was shocked to find an old very thin wiry man that barely came up to my waist, and I am not even that

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tall myself. I remembered my manners and almost slapped myself for not keeping the end goal in focus.

Atieno, if this old boy-man here is not a criminal, get your head out of the clouds and be your charming self and seal the deal, you're not here to marry for love, I kept pinching myself to keep that in mind. With a grim smile I had stepped up and we had driven to the Mall of America and he had bought me clothes worth about $500 as he pinched my ass every moment he got.

Finally I had cut short the date pleading that Dionne had sent me a text that she was going to work and needed me back home. He drove me home while talking about how he was so turned on by me and couldn't wait to sample the cookie before we got married. I told him in Africa we got married before we gave away the cookie. When he tried to touch my hand I told him us Africans didn't appreciate public display of affection.

Deep in my heart I was still craving Matt. I thought of him constantly and on some nights I would wake up crying wondering why everything had gone so wrong. I wondered where he was and what he was doing and whether he had met someone else at church and whether he missed me even a little. Except for a lot of texts on the first day that I ran away, he hadn't tried to get in touch with me. I missed him so much, the ache in my heart was palpable.

Soon it was Thanksgiving day. I had now been with Dionne for two and half months and my misery had increased tenfold. I had lost a lot of weight and in

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the mirror I was seeing an old haggard woman with unkempt hair. I had stopped trying to meet anyone and was in the worst limbo possible. Dionne hadn't been home for two days. She had taken to picking extra shifts because I never went anywhere. She didn't pay me extra for staying the days I was supposed to be away.

On Thanksgiving day, I made a decision to take back the grip on my life. The following is an excerpt from my diary:

"It's 6.00am. I am floating in that place between dreamland and awake. I can hear and feel what is going on around me. But my body is still too weak and disjointed to actually get up. After all it is 6.00 am. And there is no school today. So there should be no reason for normal children to be up this early. It is one of those days that normal children would sleep in till 10.00 am. But not these ones.

So, I am hearing the voices of the kids. There is Bailey , the oldest of the children. 9

years old. Quite mature for her age. Then there is Naomi, the middle child. 6 years

old. Overweight. Looks like she could be 10 years old. Angry as hell with the world. Yells and kicks and screams and threatens all the time. Then acts sweet the next minute and tries to hug the person she has just been mean to.

The last of the three is Ruthie, 2 years old, going on 30. Intelligent, sweet, kind of reminds me of my own baby. She is the one I like most.

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"Should we wake the nanny up?" asks Ruthie. "No, let's just go downstairs. I will make your

breakfast." says Bailey . "No, mummy doesn't like it when we go

downstairs on our own. Let's wake the nanny up." says Naomi.

"Ruthie, could you go into the nanny's room and wake her up?" asks Bailey.

"Hell no! Well, I am going to wake the nanny up. I am not

afraid of her. I need my breakfast now." says Naomi. All this while I had been lying in my bed. In what

was supposed to be my room, my refuge. But since it had no lock, it didn't exactly give any privacy.

Naomi came into the room. More like stomped in. Threw aside the duvet that I had covered myself with. Onto the floor. I was exposed. I couldn't pretend to be asleep anymore. Hoping that they would go back to bed and sleep like normal kids till 10.00 am.

"Bailey is being mean to me." she said "No, she is not!" I said "You have to come and stop her. That's what a

nanny is supposed to do. To take care of me. You should put her on time out. She is being really mean!"

"No, she is not!" I insisted... I had been listening to their conversation while I

was half asleep. Nothing of the sort had been going on. But Naomi likes to make up stuff. It‟s like she lives in her own world, some crazy world. And suddenly she began yelling at the top of her voice.

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"You need to come stop her!!! That's the work of a nanny!!! If you don't stop her, I am going to tell on you to mummy!! And you will get fired!!"

I looked at the 6 year old child yelling at me. And thought of yelling back at her. Back home, I would have spanked this child. But over here, they take such a child to a therapist. A grown up, who sits there and tries to talk and reason with the child. I don't know how you can reason with a 6 year old child. Never mind that, that's just the rambling of my discontent mind.

"Get up now!! Bailey is being mean to me!! You have to stop her!! YOU ARE THE NANNY!!!"

Yes, indeed. It dawns on me. I am the nanny. I drag my heavy feet out of the bed. Another nightmarish day begins at 6.00 am. I am going to put in the hours. Because I need the money. To send back home to my family.

"Did you wake the nanny up?" I hear Bailey ask as the kids all march downstairs.

I don't hear Naomi's response. But I hear her yell...it's loud enough to wake up the neighbors.

"Come on down here!! YOU ARE THE NANNY!! I need my cereal now!!"

It's Thanksgiving Day. What have I got to be thankful for? I am not sure.

I took out the cereal and put in bowls and poured in some milk.

"Why are you giving me cornflakes? " Naomi demanded. "I want cocoa puffs”

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At which point she threw the bowl of cereal at me. Some of it landed on my face and as I stood there with a paper towel wiping my face and having an angry child yell at me, I knew I had come to the last straw. This wasn‟t working out for me. Hadn‟t from the beginning. Never would. In Africa I had had a babysitter for my child. And I had never allowed Danielle to treat her so monstrously.

The bowl of cereal. .. On that Thanksgiving day I decided to get rid of

the depression that had settled on me like a wet blanket and get my life back together. I called Jake and set a date for the next Saturday. And then I went to the basement where Dionne kept the treadmill. And I got on it for one hour every day. And I forced myself to eat so that I would put back the weight I had lost. And I went to Wal-Mart and bought some lipstick.

I was going to meet Jake that Saturday.

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Chapter Twenty (Enter Jake)

Jake and I had our first date on a Saturday. I had never taken advantage of the three off days that I was entitled to so Dionne was a bit miffed that I had decided to go away for the entire day.

"That means I can't work this weekend. " she grumbled. To which I calmly responded that I hoped she didn't mind but henceforth I would be taking my three days off as I had met someone and I felt I needed to work on the relationship. As I was telling her this, I hadn't gone out with Jake yet but I wanted to keep my options open in case Jake and I hit it off.

Jake was prompt. He arrived at 8.00 am as we had planned. He had said he wanted to show me his favorite parts of the city. So we set off for the Minnehaha Falls, a scenic waterfall surrounded by lots of trails for lovers to walk and talk as they explore nature.

Right by the falls is a restaurant where people buy drinks and carry along on their walks to quench their thirst as they drink of each other. November was cold. Luckily it hadn't snowed this week and it was a little sunny though still fairly cold. We bought some coffee to go. Walked down the over 100 stairs to the bottom of the waterfall and then got on the trails.

Jake did most of the talking after I had explained that my current state of isolation meant I wasn't aware of any current world politics and couldn't even tell him whether Osama Bin Laden was still alive or that had

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been another man's sandal that had been found floating at sea and which Facebook jokes had presented as evidence of the burial at sea. I was that secluded and ignorant of anything happening beyond the four walls of our house.

He talked a lot. There was no relapse into awkward silence. I will give him that. But the easy camaraderie that I had had with Matt was lacking. Oh well, I needed to stop comparing every man I met with Matt.

He talked a lot about himself, his achievements, his past in terms of his career and the progress he was making and his goals for the future. But even though he spoke so much, I felt that there was a lot he wasn't saying. It seemed like he was presenting a carefully detailed brochure of himself, emphasizing on certain selling points. Kind of rehearsed and polished over time. I certainly hoped I would be able to scratch below the surface in time.

Lunchtime was soon here and he took me to an Ethiopian restaurant where he ordered some injara for himself and I contented myself with French fries and a burger as I continued to listen to him chat about the economy and current politics. He was very middle ground about everything, neither a democrat nor a republican. He said the right statements on race relations. He was for equality of everything. Yet I found myself listening for chinks in the armor, a crack that would show his humanity.

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I didn't find anything until that evening when he wanted to take me dancing. We went to the Blue Nile a popular Kenyan restaurant which is no longer so popular because of the frequent territorial fights between Somalis of Somalia origin and Kenyans. But I digress.

When we got to the pub he immediately got onto the dance floor and was swaying to the Lingala music and everyone was calling him by his first name and a lot of the ladies were dancing with him. It was here that I first found out that he was a teetotaler. He didn't touch a drop of alcohol and hadn't done so in twenty years. I definitely do not encourage heavy drinking but my antenna always goes up when I meet someone who doesn't take alcohol. Our social drinking would thus be limited to Coca-Cola.

I am one of those creatures who only become great dancers when sufficiently inebriated so that evening I spent a lot of time seated and watching his interaction with the people at the pub and more especially with the ladies on the dance floor. Later as we left the club at around four in the morning, he explained that he had drunk too much in his youth and had broken his mama's heart so he had decided to make it up to her by giving it up.

We drove to his house. I had been determined not to go back to Dionne's house until the next evening just so that for once I would spend some hours away from the children. I wasn't going to go for the 90 day rule but I would definitely hold out till the second date.

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We slept. I tossed and turned. I find it hard to sleep well even in hotels. Until I acclimatize to a place I am normally restless and uneasy. He was a gentleman. Stayed on his side of the bed and I on my side after a precise clinical kiss.

At 6.00 am I was quite surprised when he woke me up and said we had to get up and go to the gym. He duly informed me that it was routine for him to go to the gym every morning. I didn't understand why he wouldn't let me sleep in and go to the gym on his own. Having had only two hours of sleep I was quite fatigued but I quickly got going. We stayed at the gym for about four hours and I sat on one of the benches and watched him. Later we went for breakfast in a hippie restaurant where we had large pancakes with a dash of cream and pancake syrup. Then we proceeded to his office where I sat once more and watched him work.

With Jake I was soon to learn that it was all about him. He planned his day to the last minute and slotted people in. He didn't just drop by at his mother's house. Or at his sister's house. He planned ahead. Our future dates were planned ahead to suit his schedule. When I think of Jake I am reminded of one of those German trains that run precisely to the second. He took me back to Dionne's house later that evening after making sure that I had carried everything that I came with. No earring was going to be left behind to mark the territory.

The next week was much the same. I spent the week running after the children and when Saturday

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came around I was quite ready to escape to Jake's house. Our weekend was pretty much the same, dinner, dancing, gym, breakfast, me watching him work in his office, back to Dionne's. The only difference was that on the second weekend I gave up the cookie which was taken in a rapid very mechanical very clinical way and at the end as he collapsed on me and held me closer, I imagined he must have been following a set of instructions. Touch here, kiss here, say this, insert here type of instructional sex.

On the second week after I began dating Jake, on a Tuesday I had a surprise visitor. I heard the doorbell ring as I was trying to vacuum the house quickly with the intent of going back to bed to grab some well-deserved shut eye. The kids had all left for school. The littlest one had finally started going two mornings a week. So I was home alone with Dionne having gone off to pick up some extra hours.

I opened the door to find a smiling Matt. My first instinct was to jump into his arms and hug him and never let go for I had often thought of him and missed him so much. I curbed this as fear spread from my heart through my bones and I was sweating hot and cold at the same time.

"I need to talk to you about Jake." He said simply. "I won't come into the house even though I know you're alone. Let's go over down to that Subway on the corner and have a sandwich. "

I didn't object. For what could I say? The man I had been hiding from for many months had traced me

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to where I was. Once we were seated, I asked the burning question.

"How did you find me?" "It doesn't really matter but if you must know,

Wahala also worked for Dionne at some point. I have known from the first day where you were."

"Why didn't you ever let me know that you knew??"

"I have wanted to many times. But I thought I should wait until you come back to me on your own. I will wait for you."

We sat there in silence for some time. He was studying me intently.

"Are you okay? " he asked. "I worry about you. I want you to realize your dreams. That's why I am here today. "

"Really? " "Yes, you need to stop seeing Jake. He's wasting

your time. He can't marry you. The IRS is on his back for unpaid taxes. He owes them $50,000. How do you think he's going to pay that back? How many years are you willing to wait? And one more thing, you're not the only woman he's sleeping with. You my dear Atieno are merely his weekend girl"

I stood up. I wasn't going to listen to this nonsense anymore. Matt as per his usual interfering self was trying to ruin everything.

"Open your eyes." He said as I stormed off. “Stay away from me." I yelled at him as I walked

away.

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"Look out through your window sometimes and wave at me. I hate it when I sit out here waiting to catch a glimpse of you and you don't come out of the house. See that spot under those trees? That's where I like to park."

Later that week, on Friday morning as I took out the trash, I looked at the spot and indeed Matt's car was parked there. He rolled down the window and waved at me. I stood there frozen for about two minutes. Then he reversed his car and drove off. I ran back into the house and collapsed onto the couch. Matt was back in my life.

The immediate problem as I saw it was on how to tell Dionne, a mother of three little girls that a known sex offender was hanging around her house. I felt that as a mother I would want to be warned if such a character was hanging around my house. But my survival instincts immediately took over. I would not tell her. Instead I would be more vigilant with the little girls. They would not come to any harm under my watch.

That weekend Jake picked me up as usual. We visited the routine joints. However at the club I asked for alcohol. I needed to have an excuse for being left behind in the house when gym time came. Next morning I was running to the bathroom and vomiting furiously.

Jake looked very inconvenienced as he left with his gym bag. I knew I had very little time. But I knew what I was looking for. Matt had told me to go through

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the mail. It took but five minutes to find the letters that came from the Internal Revenue Service. It was exactly as Matt had said. Except that he had been slightly off on the amount. Jake currently owed $67,000 inclusive of interest. His home would be sold in a few months‟ time if he didn't make the payments.

I went back to bed and slept. I didn't want to think about it then, but it seemed like fate was conspiring against me. I was meeting men that couldn't be the stepping stone that I needed.

I went back to Dionne's house without saying a word to Jake. If I had learnt anything from my recent past, it was to closely guard any knowledge acquired through snooping until your victim gives you a trigger to ask about it.

I continued to be Jake's weekend girl. I simply needed a place to go to get away from Dionne's house.

Christmas morning is here and I have no plans. I

am all alone, like an orphan cast aside even from the welfare home.

I wake up from my twin bed. The room is eerily quiet, a welcome relief from the noise that the children make. Not my children. The children that I normally take care of as a nanny. They are not here today. They have gone to their grandparent's house. And as much as I have grown to hate my job today I miss them. I need human company. I desperately crave it. But there is nobody in this large house.

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I finally crawl out of the bed. As my feet touch the cold marble floor I shiver involuntarily. I am not going to cry. It is Christmas after all. And I should be thankful that I have lived to see another Christmas. I could have been with the few Kenyans that I have finally reached out to in this foreign land. But my mistress wanted me to stay because she picked up on a double shift. I understand. She has to make the money to meet the rent and also pay me. She is a single mother after all.

How did I land in this situation? I keep asking myself. I get into the shower. I am going to be cheerful and get on the phone and wish my family a merry Christmas. Not that they have much to celebrate or look forward to. I know they already told me they have nothing major going on. Meaning their food shelf is not full. And they have no plans to go anywhere. They have no money for transport. So they are just going to hibernate and hope that nobody will notice that there was no celebration going on. It is the same thing I am doing. I want to crawl under my bed, much like an insect crawling under its little rock and never get out.

Jake, the guy I am currently seeing, I have been with him for 2 months now, suddenly withdrew the invitation to spend Christmas day with his family. I feel like a moron. I should have seen it coming from the way he evasively held his eyes as he fed me the bullshit line that he thought I should be with my own family.

“Christmas is a day when you should be with your family.” he said. Like he was doing me a favor and

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imparting wisdom that I didn't know. But the catch was that I didn't have family. And he clearly knew that. Being privy of all my secrets. He knew that my family was still back in Africa.

I was tempted at the time to force him to say out loud that he was uninviting me for whatever reasons that he had and that he ought to stop the bullshit lines that he was feeding me. But I held my tongue. I wanted to keep the relationship going. I certainly didn't want to be alone. I hated being alone. I wanted to die whenever I was alone.

So it was with great amazing strength of will that I picked myself up and went into the bathroom and took a quick shower. And cried as I showered. I had honed the skill of crying in the bathroom.

The New Year was here. Nothing significant had happened. I continued working for Dionne. Matt continued to sit in the parking lot. The only difference being that he had started to text me before he came. I would look out and see his car and if Dionne was home I would silently pray that she didn't notice a strange car hanging around.

I was still Jake's weekend girl. We continued in this mode until February when Jake decided to break up with me.

“It's over.” he said. I looked up, startled. This wasn't what I had been expecting to hear. Was it then just this morning when he had been talking about me moving into his house so that we could share bills and get engaged after staying together for six months?

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“It's over.” he repeated. “It's done with. We can't do this anymore. This nonsense has gone on for far too long. And I am done.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Your friend Matt. I don't want to deal with him

again. You gave him information about me and he came after me and threatened my business and my employer and I don't want to be involved in your shit anymore. Sort it out for yourself. I am going to drop you wherever you want and I don't want you to contact me again.”

We were standing at the park looking out at the lake. I didn't say anything. I continued looking out towards the lake. Counting the Hmong people as they walked by. Trying desperately to gain my composure. So that I wouldn't cry in front of this man that had so cruelly just come up and told me “pack your stuff, you are leaving my house. I don't want to see you anymore, I have had enough.” Not that I had much stuff there. I had finally been allocated one drawer in which I had two pairs of jeans a t-shirt and some underwear.

He hadn't even been so tactical and polite and caring enough to give me the usual bullshit line that ladies and gents have come to expect. “It's not you, it is me.” Which would have given me a semblance of dignity and calmed me down as I would predictably take weeks to mull over and wonder what I had done. Instead he came straight to the point. “I am done. I can't take this nonsense anymore.”

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I couldn't cry. My heart suddenly went into self-protection mode. I would not cry.

He wasn't worth it. The relationship, if you can call it that had been

fraught with pain and difficulty from the day we met. You might say we met in exceptionally difficult

or different circumstances. And perhaps that's why it was coming to such a bad end. It was predestined to end badly. For it began badly. Without a shred of honesty on both our pats. We were not being forthright with each other. At least I wasn't .

And knowing him as I had come to know him over the last several weeks and having ignored all the red alerts I had only myself to blame.

From the day I found out his issues with the IRS I knew he hadn't been forthright and honest and anything else with me. He had used me and then conveniently dumped me. As I looked into his gray cold eyes and white face, and slightly balding hair brushed forward in the most unusual manner such that it formed what most people would consider like the little helmet that a chicken, or is that called a crest that the chicken, cock has on its head, as I looked into his eyes, dead of emotion and looking like a killer's eyes, I knew I had made a terrible mistake and should have listened to my first instincts about him. I hesitate to call him a human being because he had the heart of a cold gravedigger. And he was throwing me headfirst into the grave.

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Jake, 57 years old, married once, divorced, picked every woman that he could, preying on women that were in a vulnerable position, picking them from nightclubs and from dating sites. I had met him on a dating site and egged on by the man that I lived with at the time, who had said that he wanted what was best for me. Even though I still lived in Matt's house, I went ahead and put myself out of there. And that's how I had come to meet the scumbag that was now in my face and telling me that it was over and I should move on.

My knees were about to give way. So I moved to the bench a few feet away and sat down. My heart was hammering like crazy.

What would I do next?

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Chapter Twenty One (Jake Leaves, Enter Michael)

Jake had said he didn't want to see me anymore. I didn't see any reason to fight his unilateral decision.

Jake and I went back to his house and I packed my few belongings and I swung the light bag on my shoulder and I did the final walk of shame with grace and dignity. In the car, I maintained my composure and chatted cheerfully. From the time I had discovered the unpaid taxes I had known there was no future here, but I had needed his company for the weekends just so I could have somewhere to stay.

When I settled down at Dionne's house on my little twin bed, it occurred to me that once again I was all alone. Matt telephoned me later that night to find out how I was doing. I knew he was behind this breakup since Jake had been very clear about it. We talked a little and he said he would forever love me and was looking out for me. Angrily I told him it really was time to stop looking out for me.

"Babe, I will always be here. Now that you're out of the picture, I can finally hit back at Jake for trying to snatch my girl. You were not supposed to fall in love with him. Don't you remember that? You and I were going to be lovers forever. "

He hang up after telling me to hang in there. To this day I don't know what he told Jake, but suffice it enough to say that on Tuesday, Jake called me and practically begged me to forgive him and could I please

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continue to see him. I knew it was a fight between the two men and I was being used to settle a grudge. I didn‟t really care at this point but I knew I would need a place to go for the weekend to escape the madness in Dionne‟s house, so I said yes, he could pick me on Saturday as usual and yes, we would spend the weekend together and he would bring me back on Tuesday morning.

Somehow I got through the week. It was difficult chasing around the kids. They had become used to my inability to discipline them. Dionne was getting more frustrated with me. I knew this arrangement couldn't survive another six months if we both stretched it. I would have to look for another job or restart my search for a husband.

I had started talking to more guys online. I was still using the same website but I had changed my profile. One of the guys I was talking to, Michael lived about 50 miles away and somehow because of his work commitments we had been unable to set up a date.

Who is it who said when a door closes, then several windows that you hadn't thought about open? But the thing is, you have to be proactive and open the windows yourself. So it came to pass that I was going to see Jake on Saturday and then he would bring me back on Sunday evening and on Monday I would go out with Michael.

On Saturday Jake was prompt. I was ready. He always found me ready as I craved escape from Dionne's house. I had always taken the backseat on our

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dates and let Jake take control and plan each minute. This time I knew I had nothing to lose.

So I said we were going shopping. And shop we did. He carried the parcels from shop to shop and I did the diva walk as I picked and discarded and his credit card was swiped over and over again.

Then when it came to time for going out I said nah ah ah no more Blue Nile. Let's head to Eden Prairie. Whence we club hopped. Mark you he was paying a fee at every club. And I wasn't on Coca-Cola. I was choosing wines based on price. When we finally got home and he tried his usual clinical styles I decided I was going to take charge and grab my pleasure.

Lately I have learnt that there's a style known as snake style. If I had known it at that time I would have used it. I was taking and taking and pleasuring myself. In the morning Jake was too tired to go to the gym, and for the first time in our relationship, he drove to the store and bought some eggs and miscellaneous foodstuffs and he cooked and served me as I slept in.

We stayed home and played scrabble and talked and played more scrabble. I then put together all my new items and mockingly asked him if there was anything I had forgotten. He went across the room and opened the drawer that he had taken back from me and said that if I wished I might leave some clothes to wear the coming weekend. I said no it was alright I would just come back with them. He dropped me back at Dionne's and I told him it was fine I would see him the next weekend. I went into the house and the kids

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followed me. By this time I had learned that gummy bears and gummy worms can turn kids into ardent fans. Those $2 gummies had fast become my best friend in managing the kids.

Next morning Michael came to pick me up for our date. Michael had driven 50 miles to get to where I was. He lived in an area up north where he was surrounded by corn farms. He arrived looking rather shabby but I sensed that he was wearing his best, being a country man and all.

“So, what do you usually do for fun?” he asked. “Not much.” I gave the one word response. Michael and I were on our first date and he had

brought me to the old District. We walked past a few of the pubs and found

ourselves in a dark Arabic themed place. He ordered for the drinks. I didn't know what to choose. All the names sounded pretty much the same to me. The cocktails, the screwdrivers, the hellbenders, the only difference seemed to be in the cost and even that wasn't much of a pointer of what to expect. A few cents' difference between each of them.

“We should get married. Marry me.” he said as he studied me intently.

“I accept.” I said trying to make it seem like a joke. But in my heart, I was thinking, oh shit, I wish you really meant it. I would marry you tomorrow you old twit. I really would.

Okay stop here and take a long pause. That really was how the proposal happened.

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At the time I thought he was joking but as we continued talking on phone, now on a daily basis, Michael said that during our next date we would work out the details of our coming wedding. I was alternating between despair and hope. Hope that he would marry me, and despair that he would find out something about me, perhaps from Matt who was still actively stalking me and then he would do a disappearing act on me.

The next weekend, I had thought I would see Michael and we would start to plan for our wedding. But that Friday he called and said he had to go to Texas unexpectedly. And he wouldn't be back until Wednesday. Oh there we go, I thought. Another one takes off.

On Saturday Jake picked me and we spent the weekend with me taking control once again. I was finally beginning to have fun with him. Not once had Jake ever told me he loved me. The nearest he had come to this was one time when he had said he cared deeply about me. And that he liked me. I had responded in a similar fashion. Laden with shopping bags I returned on Monday evening to Dionne's house and of course said that yes I would be quite pleased to see him over the weekend.

On Wednesday evening Michael called and said he was back in town and if I could get time off the next morning, we could drive down to the license office and pay for a marriage license. I pleaded with Dionne to let

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me have the day off. Since she hadn't been planning to go to work, she was okay with it.

At the License Office I was required to show identification papers. It was lucky for me that they accepted the papers my sister had sent me which had been notarized as true copies of my lost originals.

I had the marriage license in hand. But the wedding hadn't happened. It's not over until the fat lady sings, isn't that what they say?

On Saturday morning I called Jake and told him that Dionne had picked up extra shifts and I had agreed to stay home. And I got into Michael's car and drove to the countryside. And we spent the weekend touring the country, looking at the farms, stopping at lakes and eventually ended up at a winery where they had some wine tasting going on.

I believe one is supposed to swirl it around the glass and then sip it and speak using terms like mellow, sweet, tangy, earthy, corky as one contributes to the intelligent discussion on the body of the wine. What the hell? Tasting is for the birds, I thought, as I swirled into my mouth instead of around the glass.

I was therefore suitably mellow as I let Michael have his way that night. We were not going to wait for the honeymoon night after all.

A week later I bought a hat. For my wedding I had decided I would wear one of the dresses that Jake had bought for me. I hadn't seen him for three weekends now. Every weekend I had told him that I couldn't make it because Dionne was working. And I

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had enjoyed hearing him plead, saying couldn‟t I just tell Dionne that I needed just this weekend off? Knowing how Jake scheduled his weekends to the second, I knew he was at a loose end and extremely inconvenienced at the lack of a weekend girl. But I didn‟t care. I was on a mission to get married to Michael. And if it didn‟t work out, if for some last minute reason the marriage was cancelled, I would go back to being Jake‟s weekend girl.

So that weekend, I had instead spent time with Michael putting the last details together. I didn‟t have any guests to invite but Michael had about ten friends and family that he wanted to bring along.

"Speak now or forever hold your tongue" On a bitterly cold wintry April day, .the lady

officiating the wedding said. She looked around at the small audience of ten people gathered solemnly in the cold chapel.

It was April , and it was biting cold. I couldn't feel my toes, my legs were about to give way and the cold frosty air working its way into the depth of my stomach and my very soul was suffocating. Here I was at my own wedding getting married to a man I had known for barely a month. I gasped for breath and looking up found everyone eyes were on me. This wasn't going well, i thought.

"Speak now or forever hold your tongue." the lady repeated and gave the audience a big smile.

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Eeh... I began and involuntarily my hand started to go up. Then I did a slight gasp. I put down my hand quickly and managed a bright smile.

My entire life I had dreamed of my wedding. Postcard picture perfect it would be. A thousand guests. The crème de la crème of society would be in attendance fawning over me, paying their respects, jostling for pictures with me, the ecstatic bride. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. This hidden away hole that we had reserved for $50 and the wedding officiator that we were paying $19 an hour to declare us man and wife.

"You're such a joker. I love that about you, weird sense of humor."

"Yeah right." I agreed and fixed my smile. I looked at the man standing next to me, my new

husband. And then I laughed hysterically. I had nearly stopped my own wedding but as I had thought to say something, Matt's s imploring eyes begged me not to ruin it. My whole miserable life depended on getting through the ceremony and getting the piece of paper. From now on, it would be easy.

The ten of us walked out of that gray chapel and my new husband held my hand and helped me walk across to the car.

As I got into the car, with my husband holding open the door, Matt who had been my only guest came up and gave me a neatly wrapped present.

"Congratulations. " he said simply as he melted away.

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Later when I opened the gift, I found my passport and my certificates.

There was just one final task that I had to do. I logged onto Facebook and changed my status from "single" to "married".

Sat back and waited. And within ten minutes there was a text from Jake "What are you talking about? Did you really get married? How? Why didn't you wait for me? I told you I only needed six months."

I didn't text back. I sat back and waited to lead my new life.

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Chapter Twenty Two (Room Outside The House)

Michael and I had been living together for five months. This evening he had returned from work and found me sitting on the patio.

“Let's move to Miami, Florida. I want to be closer to my daughter and help her out. She is not doing so well right now.” he says to me.

I don't say anything. Instead without a word I turn around and enter my room. Yes, I do have my own room in this house. It is not really a house in the sense of the word. It is a shack that was put together by the man that I have lived with for the last five months.

There is no running water. It is the only house in the whole of America which has no running water. We have to fetch water in Jerri cans from the lady next door. Sometimes when I am carrying the water, I truly believe I am back in Africa. But even in Africa I had running water. Of course that was at the discretion of the City Council but at least on a few days I had some running water and could store enough for till the next time.

But here we have to ferry the water every day. And most of the time they, Michael and his daughter, they leave these chores to me.

“Strong woman like you from Africa. Sure you can manage it! Haven't you been doing that all your life?”

I crawl into my bed and squeeze myself into the fetal position. I feel safest in this position. From where

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I am laying, peeping with one eye through the covers, I can see him standing out there. The room has large windows. There are no curtains. He wouldn't allow me to buy any curtains. In the entire house there are no curtains.

“The view of the lake in the morning is so refreshing.” he insisted.

He looks perplexed. He just doesn't understand why I won't talk about it. I watch him walk away. Slowly. Like a defeated old man with lots of weight on his shoulders. He looks so exhausted. Tired. The face of a dying man. He walks through the front door and gets into the living room. And I am left out here in my room, which is outside the house.

I know he is going to get out the blood pressure thing and read his pressure. And swallow some pills to calm himself down. Remembering this I suddenly feel guilty and jump out of bed and follow him into the living room. I don't want to be the death of anybody.

He is checking his blood pressure. As I predicted.

“Are you alright?” I ask him. “Yeah” he says. “Do you want to talk about it?” “Not now. Can we do this tomorrow?” I ask

him. “Whatever you wish my little flower.” he says. As I stand there the silence fills the room. It's

just the two of us but we can no longer talk to each other without it ending up as a yelling match. Who's going to have the last word? We have become two

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strangers living together. Two strangers that are clinging to each other through a bond of depression and failures and low self-esteem and inability to change the situation.

He wants us to move across states to join his daughter. After two months of missing and never contacting him, never a phone call or email, her whereabouts unknown, she has finally gotten in touch. And she is demanding that her old man move across many states to go help her out. She doesn't have a job. Has never been able to keep one. And she needs him again. He missed out on many years of her life. So he is willing to jump when she says jump. But I am not going to jump anymore. I have had it up to my eyeballs.

“Little flower, please listen to me...” he starts. “Not now...” I say and run out of the living

room. Outside the main house and into my room. Let me tell you about this room that I keep

calling mine. This was an addition to the main house. The main house has two bedrooms and a living room and a kitchen. When we got married and I brought my stuff over from Dionne's house where I used to stay, and was busy hauling it into the bedroom which I thought we would share, the bedroom that we had shared as we were dating, I was surprised and taken aback when he told me.

“No, don't bring your luggage into the house. Leave it in the tool shed over there. I want to fix you a place to put in all that stuff.”

“Oh, ok, there is no room in the bedroom?”

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“Nope, I want to fix you a new big bedroom with closets to accommodate all that stuff.”

“Why? We already have a bedroom.” “No, you can't use that. I come from work so

tired, sometimes I just want to be on my own. So a new big bedroom for you, little flower. With walk in closets for all those clothes you got there.”

“Sounds reasonable.” I said. And so I left my clothes and belongings in the

toolshed while he worked on the new room. Which as I have said was an addition to the house. It was outside the main house. As you walked into the yard, that was the first room that you would meet. He did live up to his word. He put in a walk-in closet to accommodate my stuff.

So, on this super cold September evening, summer just over and winter quickly setting in, I was lying out there in the unheated room. It was getting slightly chilly, but he wouldn't have me heat up the room.

“It's too hot...” he would yell. “We are not rich folk!! No no, you don't need to be wasting electricity and running up big bills around here.”

He came out of the living room and stood on the patio. Looking across at the lake, in deep thought. I lay there under the cold blankets piled on me, heavy, choking me. After a while he shook his head and trudged heavily back into the main house. And as soon as I saw that he couldn't see me through the glass window any more, I let the tears flow. Huge hot tears

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streaming down my cheeks and blinding me for a minute. My chest heaving and feeling really tight. And I was trying to calm down and at the same time feeling sorry for myself and crying and asking myself why I was doing this and why didn't I just go back home to Africa where I belonged.

And then pinching myself and telling myself that I had come too far to turn back and it would be unfair to everybody who was depending on me to be a success to now throw down everything that I had spent chasing over the last four years and crawl back in shame to start afresh.

I must have fallen asleep for it was after midnight that I had him crawling into the bed besides me and fumbling with my clothes and asking “Are you ready to do your wifely duties?”

And I rolled over on my back and held him as he climbed over me and began kissing me and then suddenly I felt him insert his penis into me and he was pumping and heaving and pumping and heaving and sweating and breathing heavily and then he jerked as he came into me and then rolled over and kissed me on my cheek, threw on his old bathrobe and walked away back into the black of the night and through the front door and into his bedroom.

I lay there for a while and steeled myself not to cry. I had spent too many nights crying in that little room where it felt like I was a prisoner of some sort.

I was a prisoner. I couldn't leave without putting into jeopardy all that I had put in motion. I had filed

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my application for a green card with the immigration department. We hadn't gone for our immigration interview yet. Also I had filed for a green card for my daughter. My little girl whom at that point I hadn't seen for four years. The last time I saw her was at the airport as she bid me goodbye and asked me why I hadn't wanted to go with her.

And she said to me “Mummy please hide me in your purse. I want to go with you.”

If only it were that simple. I looked into her eyes and told her

“Child, I shall be back soon to pick you. And we shall live together.”

“Mummy, when will that be? December?” “Okay” I promised her. “I will be back by

December.” Several Decembers had gone by. I regularly

spoke with her on phone and on each conversation she would ask me.

“Mummy has December reached? After how many days will it reach?”

And I didn't have any answers on when December would reach. But since everything was in motion, I knew December would be here soon. At one point she had been in hospital as an in-patient suffering from pneumonia. I didn't have money to pay for the hospital bill when they finally let her go. And I walked around in utter desperation, stopping to kneel and pray several times. I don't think I knelt consciously. I just kept falling to the ground as my stomach muscles

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tightened and my heart beat faster thinking what if she died and I never saw again and I couldn't even bid goodbye to her because my passport had expired and I didn't have the money to renew it and I didn't have any airfare since my ticket had long expired and if I went back I wouldn't be able to come back and I would have lost everything that I worked for my entire life and...

Thinking of all that brought another stream of hot tears... “Keep it together, Atieno ...” I told myself. “Keep it together girl, things will soon be alright.”

What kept me going was the knowledge that she would be here soon as all things had now been set in motion.

The next morning I woke up early and went into the main house and helped him prepare his breakfast and packed lunch. He was off to work, wearing his work clothes. To call them work clothes is to honor them. He wore a tattered shirt and shorts that were clearly falling apart and which were of an indiscernible color because of all the paint that had been spilled on them and hardened without being washed

“I don't see any need of wasting clean clothes.” he had once told me. “No need of ruining them.” I watched him walk away. Looking like one of the Nairobi street children that we called chokora in Kenya. I turned away nauseated. What would people think of me if they knew I had married a man that dressed like a chokora?

“Bye little flower.” he said. “Remember the plants. Make sure they are watered.”

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I turned away. I didn't want to risk bursting into tears in his presence. We had had many long talks. And he couldn't understand why I wasn't adjusting to the life that he offered me.

As soon as he left, I logged onto Facebook. My only means of communication with the outside world. I couldn't make any telephone calls because I didn't have any international credit. And I posted something like how happy I was and how my hubby constantly surprised me with his goodness. And my friends on Facebook said wow, we envy you. Please introduce us to someone similar. The men in Kenya are killing us. And I responded, yeah I should totally hook you up, my hubby has so many cool relatives.

Logged off. Went back into the main house to collect the Jerri cans so I could make the trek to the neighbor's house. I would make four trips with the 20 liter Jerri cans in order to water the plants. The plants were at the back of the house, hidden from public view by a high wooden wall.

Marijuana plants. Five large plants that took a lot of water.

As I trudged back and forth bringing the water for his precious plants I sighed out loud. How could I ever tell anyone that I was in America watering weed? Who would even believe me? The educated girl from Africa didn't have a job and was staying in a shack with no running water and taking care of weed...

I stepped into the house. And the girl sitting on the couch began to scream and yell at me “F#!$ng

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bitch, get out of my house!!!!!! What do you want?? Why won't you go away?? Stupid"

When I had gotten married I knew there was a stepdaughter involved. What I hadn't counted on was that she was deeply addicted to drugs. I had expected to deal with a teenager who had regular problems.

I didn't say anything. I wanted to tell her that I would soon be out of her and her father's life but I held my tongue. My biggest consolation was that at some point I would be reunited with Matt after a quick divorce.

I turned back and crawled into my room outside the house, got into bed and lay in my fetal position. I listened to her movements from the main house as she threw the pots and pans around and continued cursing. I crawled further under the covers and tightened my fetal position and pulled the covers tighter around me and in the blessed darkness I said to myself over and over again “relax Atieno , stay calm, don't lose it”

I slept. Later when I woke up in a panic I looked at my phone and noticed it was four o'clock. My husband would be here any minute now...

I rushed into the main house and straight into the kitchen and began to do the dishes. And at that moment he walked in...and looked around

“Why is nothing done in this house?” he yelled. “I go to work and come back and find you have done absolutely nothing. What good are you people? Fuck this shit!!”

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His daughter walks out of her bedroom where she has been blaring loud rap music.

“Hi daddy!!” she hugs him. “Hi Atieno !!” she smiles at me as she hugs me. I cringe and take a step back. My husband sees

my movement. He lifts a questioning eyebrow. Later he pulls me aside and says “I really want

you to try to get along with her. Why are you being so hard on her? She has had a difficult past and she is really trying. And she has told me she really loves you. Why won't you be nice to her?”

I have no answers for the rapid fire questions. “Atieno, let me make it clear. If my daughter

were to leave my house because of you, I would never forgive you. Try to get along with her. My ex-girlfriend adored her. She is a good person.”

“I understand” I say meekly. He goes into the living room. I follow him there.

But I find that she has already taken the extra chair in the room and has turned on the TV. She is watching something on ABC, something that I am not inclined to watch. But even if I were so inclined, I couldn't watch. Because there is no space for me to sit in the living room. Unless I were to sit on the floor. But I won't do that. The room has exactly two large armchairs. It can only accommodate two people. I have asked that we bring in another chair from the toolshed. There are some extra chairs there. But my husband has constantly declined.

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“I love the living room just the way it is now.” he says “It's been like that for years. I would be uncomfortable changing it.”

So, I walk back outside the house and go into my room. And climb into bed. I haven't eaten anything today. I only succeeded in quickly gulping down a glass of juice while I was doing the dishes. I am hungry but I can't bear to go into that house where they are sitting and laughing hysterically. I feel so alone. I can't talk to him about her. She puts on a totally different act when he is around. And the more I complain, the more I look like the horrible person. The one who wants his loving daughter out of the house.

I log onto Facebook. “Hey guys, you know you could make your woman happy by doing simple things for her. Today, my boo boo cooked me a fabulous meal. So sexy, a man cooking. Ladies choose your man wisely. I did.” My post gets 20 likes and the women still hope that I can introduce them to someone like the fabulous guy that is mine.

He goes into the living room. I follow him there. But I find that she has already taken the extra chair in the room and has turned on the TV. She is watching something on ABC, something that I am not inclined to watch. But even if I were so inclined, I couldn't watch. Because there is no space for me to sit in the living room. Unless I were to sit on the floor. But I won't do that. The room has exactly two large armchairs. It can only accommodate two people. I have asked that we bring in another chair from the toolshed.

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There are some extra chairs there. But my husband has constantly declined.

“I love the living room just the way it is now.” he says “It's been like that for years. I would be uncomfortable changing it.”

So, I walk back outside the house and go into my room. And climb into bed. I haven't eaten anything today. I only succeeded in quickly gulping down a glass of juice while I was doing the dishes. I am hungry but I can't bear to go into that house where they are sitting and laughing hysterically. I feel so alone. I can't talk to him about her. She puts on a totally different act when he is around. And the more I complain, the more I look like the horrible person. The one who wants his loving daughter out of the house.

I log onto Facebook. “Hey guys, you know you could make your woman happy by doing simple things for her. Today, my boo boo cooked me a fabulous meal. So sexy, a man cooking. Ladies choose your man wisely. I did.” My post gets 20 likes and the women still hope that I can introduce them to someone like the fabulous guy that is mine.

At midnight, he comes into my room. Since he came home at four he has been sitting in the living room giggling and laughing with his daughter, and I have been alone in this room. Alone with my thoughts. Alone from the rest of the world. Nowhere to go. We live in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of white farmland. I don't have a TV in this room. I have been laying here with my morbid thoughts wishing this

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situation would end soon. As I hear the laughter, which she makes deliberately loud, I sink into more despair. I am truly alone.

“I missed out on a lot of her growing years with her.” He once told me. “She lived out over with her mother and for many years I didn't see her. I want to spend a lot of time with her.”

I have turned out the light and I am laying as still as I possibly can. There is nothing as hard as feigning sleep. Your breath suddenly becomes louder and you can hear it in the room. He moves next to me and starts to pull off my clothes...

“Hey little flower, you sleeping?” It's hard to pretend anymore. He pulls me closer to him. I can feel how hard he is against me. He kisses me violently and with passion and I really don't want to do this but my body starts to betray me as I feel the warmth creeping up and he grabs my butt roughly and arches me up high and begins to thrust deep and deeper. And I forget the bad day I had in the heat of the moment and he says he loves me and kisses my forehead over and over and says how lucky he is to have me and how he would do anything for me and how everything is going to be fine and how I should be more patient with him and...and then as he finally comes I begin to think that maybe I could make this marriage work, perhaps I should try to be friends with his daughter and everything would work out and we would be one happy family...

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“Goodnight little flower.” he says as he puts on his old bathrobe and walks back into the main house and into his bedroom.

I am left out there in the room. The room outside the house...

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Chapter Twenty Three ( Matt Dies)

It had been six months since my wedding and this morning I was sitting out on the patio idly watching the birds on the lake. They looked a little like flamingos but were not. Upon enquiry when I woke up one morning and saw thousands of birds on the lake, I had been told that they had just come in from Canada.

I was quite lost in thought when I felt two tiny hands reach up and cover my face and happily yell "Mummy guess who?"

And I smiled and played along. She had only been here for a week and I hadn't stopped smiling. True she was a little wary of me but I thought, or hoped that she was still learning to trust me again and would finally do so once again.

It had taken three Decembers to get her here. But she was here now and we would rebuild our life.

Having gotten my resident's card and my employment permit I was finally working as a receptionist. It wasn't much but I didn't care since it was a big improvement from being an illegal nanny. I would soon start to rock it, I was sure.

Idly I turned the page on the Minneapolis Courier that I was reading and I landed on the obituaries. A picture stared up at me. I gasped and clutched at my chest as I felt breathless. I held onto the couch nearby to steady myself.

"Breathe Atieno breathe." I said to myself.

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Words fail me. I cannot describe the magnitude of loss I felt when I saw Matt's face on the obituaries.

My best friend forever was dead. How could I go on without him? True I hadn't seen him since my wedding but at the back of my mind I always fantasized that I would soon divorce Michael and reunite with Matt. In my fantasy dream world he hadn't met any lady and was faithfully waiting for me to get through fixing my situation first. I hadn't reckoned on death.

I called his brother Jack and expressed my condolences. Jack informed me that the funeral was going to be held the next day. When I asked him what had happened., had Matt been sick, he curtly informed me that Matt had jumped to his death from the 20th floor of a building in downtown Minneapolis. He then said he had to run several errands and would talk more with me after the funeral.

I sat there in silence for a long time thinking of the man who had died. Finally I decided to head to the mall to buy a suitable dress. Matt had loved me in short dresses. I would buy a short black dress.

There were surprisingly many people at the cemetery. At least 70 at a rough estimate. I was later to learn that they were mostly family. I hadn't met any of them except for Jack.

I thought of the man we had come together to honor. Matt.

We had shared all the love and laughter that we possibly could. As George Strait would say he was the miracle that made my life complete. He was the one

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that I would have sacrificed all my dreams for. And even though I say this now, I had been too selfish to love him as he deserved. Sure, he had made some mistakes but who hasn't?

I looked up at the priest who was conducting the burial service and I remembered something funny that Matt had done.

One day we had been arguing over something insubstantial and Matt had pulled me to my feet and bundled me into the red corvette and he had driven across town like a madman and he had finally stopped at a Catholic church which had a cemetery by its side. He had dragged me through the graves and we had stopped at a fresh grave which had the name April M Ross and he had told me that his mother had died the previous week and nobody had bothered to tell him and he had only found out when he stumbled on that grave. And I had asked whether his mother's name wasn't Margaret Ross and he had said she preferred to go by her middle name of April. And he had hugged me and I had held him tight and forgiven him for whatever we had been arguing about. The next week his mother had telephoned and I was quite shocked to hear Matt chatting with a ghost. I smiled at the memory. Matt had played endless pranks on me, which weren't so funny at the time.

"From dust to dust. ..ashes to ashes" the priest concluded and everyone walked away. I caught up with his brother Jack and he greeted me warmly. We were

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walking towards the cars and I was leaving Matt back there in the cold soil on this bitingly chilly day.

Jack told me they were having a family dinner as a last sign of respect and suggested that I might want to come. I said I would be honored to finally meet the rest of the family.

So it was that I found myself sitting beside Jack that late afternoon with my little girl by my side. And we were discussing Matt and sharing anecdotes and suddenly I had the courage to ask him once more what crime Matt had committed.

"Didn't Matt tell you about that?" "He did but I didn't believe him. Please just tell

me what happened.” "I am a little puzzled here." He said. "Why

wouldn't you believe him? He was your man. He loved you deeply. He wanted to dedicate the rest of his life to you."

"I know. And there are so many things I regret. If I could go back there are so many things I would do differently."

"Well, the first time Matt flashed himself at a woman in the park. Allegedly, that is. Matt maintained that he had been relieving himself and it was by sheer bad luck that the woman had been passing by at that moment and had caused so much drama leading to his arrest. He was given a suspended sentence of one year for that. And community service."

"Why did he go to jail then?"

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"While he was still serving the suspended sentence, he happened to be swimming with Kim and her mother when he accidentally touched her."

"That's it?" "Well he had been dating Kim's mother and the

relationship was going badly. So when he tried to break up with her, she went to the cops. Matt had no chance since he was already serving a suspended sentence. The judge slapped him with two years and time off for good behavior. He was let off after six months and served the rest of the time at the halfway house where he was taught how to repress his sexuality. That place made him pretty messed up as you probably know."

"So you are saying he didn't rape Kim and tear her up pretty badly?"

"Whatever gave you that idea?" I didn't respond as I sipped the wine

remembering the visit I had made to Jim Spencer's office which had led to our final explosion and break up.

"What about your daughter? " "My step daughter. She was a little whore who

chased Matt endlessly until he gave in. Beautiful girl. Cheerleader. We found out when they got careless and she was three months gone. Her mother, my ex-wife took her down to the clinic and they got rid of the baby. Then she wanted to draw blood. Our marriage was already on the rocks but Matt accelerated it."

I sat there stunned. Sipped more wine. And my bones were chilled and I sipped more of the wine. Jack

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had told me the exact story that Matt had tried to tell me over and over. But I had chosen to believe Wahala and Jim Spencer's versions. I had never even demanded to read through the file that Spencer had said contained Matt's life. At the time I had only been focused on saving my skin. How very selfish I had been. I had judged and condemned Matt on the strength of two people that I didn't know. What was the connection between Wahala and Spencer? I had to know if all the pieces to the puzzle were going to fit.

"Tsitsi was Spencer's girlfriend for many years. He wasn't in a hurry to marry her. Then she met Matt and moved in with him."

"They met in church then? " "No. At the halfway house. She used to visit

Spencer in his office. As you know by now, Matt used to go for counseling once a week. When two men are fighting over a woman, there's no knowing what will happen. At one point Tsitsi was dating both of them."

"How about Devon? What's his role here?" "He's married to Tsitsi's elder sister." "So why did he do this?" I asked. “Why did Matt

kill himself?” "He was depressed. He didn't have friends.

Every woman that he loved left him. He couldn't get a job. He was lonely and alone. Loneliness is the worst thing that can happen to man. It eats up your mind. You become an animal. He suffered anxiety attacks and he was put on stronger medication. Three months ago he stopped going anywhere. He stopped taking his

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medication. He didn't even go out to buy groceries. He was totally secluded. "

I sipped some more wine. All the pieces had fallen into place. I had rejected the man I loved based on lies from people that were playing games. Matt and I could have got married. And our petition for recognition wouldn't have been that tough because he hadn't been a violent man.

"Now it's my turn to ask you a question. If you didn't believe Matt, why didn't you check the felony database? " Jack asked.

"Because I didn't have a credit card." I responded.

True Matt had made some mistakes. But who hasn't? What right had I had to act such a holy Mary when I wasn't perfect?

That night I finally cried for Matt. I cried in self-pity for the love I had lost. I cried for Matt whom society had refused to forgive and eventually driven to taking his own life.

I eventually slept around 4 in the morning after making a decision that I would visit Matt the next day and apologize.

The next day I passed by a florist and I picked out some fake rose flowers. I wanted to leave him something that would last for a long long time.

My little girl skipped gaily by my side as I briskly walked to Matt's final resting place. The tombstone had already been laid and it simply read his name, date of birth and the date he had expired. There was no flowery

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speech on whom he had left behind. A few flowers lay on the grave. I placed mine beside them.

Then I spoke to Matt silently. I told him I was angry at him for doing this. I asked him why he hadn't waited as we had agreed. I asked him how he expected me to go on. And without any people staring, I let my tears flow. I quite forgot myself until i felt the little girl tag me.

"Mummy, let's go. It's really cold. I am cold." "Alright sweetie.” "Who's in that grave?" She asked. "My best friend. " Some silence followed as we walked towards the

car. "Will you get a new best friend? " she asked. I turned and hugged her. "Yes, I hope someday I shall get a new best

friend. But just in case I don't find a new best friend, will you be my new best friend?

"Yes mummy, I will be your best friend. " I turned the ignition and started the car and

drove away and left my best friend under that cold earth. And I hoped he was finally at peace.