Ema Babikwa
The evening he comes to my place, I start the day early. At the first warmth of sunlight, I draw the curtains. I have not drawn them since he left. My eyes engorge. I feel them do that; that is how all of the sunrise can fit in one eye and pour into the other. I brush my teeth harder than I have the whole week. I rinse gargle spit. Rinse gargle rinse spit. Ha! Into my palm. I’m good to go. I put his toothbrush back onto the rack beside mine, my sister’s, and my best friend’s. I have not seen those people in a while. All three of them.
I take out the other two brushes and put his next to mine. His is purple. Mine is blue. He will like this. The toothbrushes standing next to each other for hours in the rack. I give the cactus at the window some water, even though he doesn’t need it. He sits next to the sink so when I remember to do the dishes, I remember to water him. I have not done dishes in a while. I promise it didn’t smell as bad in here yesterday—did I come to the kitchen yesterday?
There is suddenly so much to do. Shave. Do dishes. Cook. I apply the shaving cream, wash my hands in the bathroom sink and walk to the kitchen, the smell of metal and hair treatment pomade rising up from my mid-section to my nostrils. My feet are so far away from my head, I wonder how I have never noticed. I restore order at the sink. Cups in first, cutlery to the side and the greasy wet plates on the kitchen counter by the rubber rim of the sink right where it touches the marble countertop. The saucepans. Well, fuck the saucepans.
Fifteen minutes, the shaving cream label says fifteen minutes. I have used up sixteen which is still fairly okay. The trick is not to scrape it off using the plastic stick; the trick is to wipe using a cloth. The skin irritation that happens with regrowth is significantly less. The faucet in the kitchen is still running. I waddle out of the bathroom leaving a trail of foam and water droplets behind. Someone in the neighbourhood is frying eggs for breakfast, the-brown-about-to-get-burnt kind. The kind he likes, with egg crust. The other kind—the runny eggs and omelettes that normal people eat—still taste raw in his mouth. Cooking is taking the raw out of food. Speaking of cooking. It’s my turn to cook. I have zero supplies and haven’t called Abbaasi, the bike guy, yet. I have not left the house in ages. Not for walks. Not for work. Not for my own groceries. I hate how the people outside look at me.
“Abbaasi, hello. Gyebale.” “Nawe gyebale ssebo.”
“Kale. I’d like you to bring me some things. Three matooke clusters. Tomatoes for 3k, a ripe avocado, a big soda, Fanta and beef—one kilo from the new market.”
“Kale ssebo, kedo, sooda, nyaanya, nyama, matooke?”
“Yes, yes. Please get good meat—”
He hangs up before I finish. I hope Abbaasi heard that last part. Joyce is a picky eater. I thought I was until I met him. He eats meat, but it must be a certain way. All his food must be a certain way. The meat he eats must be well trimmed. No gristle. No fat or tendons. No cartilage. He hates when his cookies are sandy or too chewy. He hates warm fruit. Anything with a gruel texture: porridge, any form of soup, fish and potatoes. He calls them off-putting because they feel and taste like a mixture of all manner of things. I like porridge. I have some tucked away in the cabinet for when he isn’t around.
The thing about standing up after long bouts of inactivity is how quickly lightheaded you get. I don’t know if other people deal with this. Sugar often helps. The healthiest way to consume sugar is to have it in tea. Chamomile tea is what I have. Joyce got me a box and I use at least one tea bag weekly so he knows I’m using them. The tea is very soothing. I should have it more. I put one spoonful of sugar less. He is teaching me that loving my body is part of loving myself and the things I put in my body are my love language to it. So, less sugar, healthier body. He is young and he is wise.
The dishes at the sink are staring at me begrudgingly. They should grow up and wash themselves. Funny thing is, they could say the same thing about me and they wouldn’t be wrong. I mean, there’s still foam between my knees. I’ll need that extra spoon of sugar. Just as I sit the sugar bowl lid on the counter, I hear Abbaasi at the door.
“Oh! Hey Glasses. Are these new?” I quiz him, looking at the silver rims of his eyewear. I’m not sure what look he is trying to go for and whether they’re prescription glasses or lightly tinted shades, but he is quite the vision.
“Thanks, boss. Here’s everything,”
“You got everything?”
“Ye.”
I transfer the money to his phone. He leaves. Today, I didn’t crotch- watch. I do it sometimes. It’s mostly harmless. I mean if I wasn’t supposed to see bulges, my eyes would dim if I looked there. He has caught me looking before. Once. We never talked about it.
The meat is good but there is a big bone. I don’t know why they do that. Butchers! I’ll cut it out. I forgot to tell him to bring the matooke pre-peeled. That means more work for me and the time to do it isn’t there. Dishes. Dishes! Let me do the dishes. An I’ll be there at 4 pm ish text glows on my phone screen. I should shower first.
*
He is usually late. Not today. I smelled him before he passed his hand through the little gate to let himself in. He glides through, two plastic bags dangling from his arms. I like that he never shows up empty handed. Who taught him that? Another soda, a cake slice, oranges for me. It feels good to be thought about, to live in another person’s mind.
He found me cooking still, towel hanging from my teeth. “You’re still suffering, haha!”
“Let me tell you!”
The meat is cooking. The matooke, I was really hoping he would come and help with, and he is here. We shall eat really late today. While he cooks, I go put the room in order. My house is a mound of things I have to reshuffle each time he comes by. I don’t want him to see me like that. Luckily, I have already swept myself out of here. The floor is pristine. The sinks are dry. The bathroom too. He always complains about the bathroom. How I never have any stuff he can use. I tell him to carry his own when he is coming over. The air is dotted with Febreze, detergent, and him. My house always smells like him. I’m going to tell him to shower first before he comes to the bed and leaves himself all over my sheets. I walk into rooms when he isn’t here and the abruptness of his cologne throws me off. I do not like surprises.
He leaves something here from time to time. He thinks I don’t notice. I do. He knows I do. Socks the first time, a bar of petunia-scented soap a month ago. Last week he left a pair of boxers. Severely teddy-beared. Cotton. The kind with the front pouches. I fold them and put them in the closet which I leave slightly ajar for him to find easily. They are right on top of mine. He is becoming someone I can read. Part of me thinks he does this as a territorial antic. Guys do such things. I wish he knew that even him in my space is one person too many. I have no room for anybody else.
*
I put a Bluetooth speaker next to his heart as if to wake it up with vibrations of Hozier. We listen to him together on heavy rotation. We scream “Darlin, I would do it again ah ah” into each other’s mouths before he leaves the bed to wash the kitchen off himself. He returns to the bed a few minutes later, sits and his thighs flourish, plump as partridges. He has that shiny ripeness you only see on some fruits. He lathers himself with body butter as I watch.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Heh, nothing. I’m just looking. For the sake of looking.”
“Suit yourself, ‘Good Sir!’”
He says it with a glow in his eye. He knows how I am around him. He is aware of the power he holds. He goes on to talk about his day—his parents want to ground him. They say he gets back home late too often. They don’t like it. He is a finalist at the State University and they want to hold onto him for as long as they can. I remember having these kinds of problems when I was younger and still living with family. Problems I don’t have any more in my late twenties.
“It all works out in the end. You’ll soon be out of there. You’ll be comfortable. Independent. In your own space.”
He is quiet after I say this. I’m quiet too, for a few seconds. I’m not sure if this is a genuine lull in the conversation or a result of the edible we shared when he arrived. A small guilty pleasure we indulge in together. We all have our vices but I don’t drink and neither does he and we both share a strong dislike for smoke. Another reason he could be quiet is we have talked about him moving in with me. Both of us were enthusiastic about it at first. The next time it came up, he was still excited. Me, not so much. I don’t know how to live with people. I tolerate him, I guess, more than most. I’m not sure if this is a version of love or like.
I can’t live with him though. Not daily. I don’t know how to explain to him that one of the reasons we connect so well is because we aren’t around each other all the time. I need him. In small doses. When he asked if he could stay with me an entire week. I told him he couldn’t because a “relative”—I don’t remember whose name I used in the lie— stays with me during the rest of the week. I’m alone during most of the week, waiting for the weekend.
He is talking again. I can’t hear what he is saying. The words are getting more and more distant like the dying notes of a church bell. All I’m looking at is the divine endlessness of his mouth.
*
Ha! It’s almost always noiseless. This is why I prefer men. My experience with women wasn’t that different. It’s just that with women, the sounds, they threw me off sometimes. I haven’t been with a woman in years. I told the last one that I couldn’t date her because of my mental health; that there was a sadness I couldn’t get rid of and I would only suck her energy. She didn’t buy it. Neither did I.
I cup his behind in my hands. Handfuls, hands full of smooth firm roundness. I love how he smells. His hair is always coconuty, his skin— citrussy, almost metallic but not that. A secret ingredient they put in men’s scents. I inhale him. Lungfuls. Lungs full of him. He is here.
“I missed you!”
“Ha!” Joyce moans.
“I missed you so much.”
“Ha!”
His eyes are closed. His hands are above his head and his body is splayed across the bed, like a giant ornament. My heart beat leaves my chest. Thuds groinwards. I keep talking to him as my body rams into his. He replies in small gasps. My phone rings. We ignore it. Three times. Flowers plays on the television as background noise. Amy Flower calls her old female lover a “champagne mirage.” That’s what Joyce is. When he leaves, I will change his contact name to that. He gives himself to me so easily. I wonder what it feels like to give yourself to another person like that.
“Stop!”
“What? Are you okay?”
“First, stop.”
“Okay.”
“Listen.”
I cannot hear a thing.
“Listen closely,” he breathes, cocking his head to the side. Still nothing. I try to re-engage. When I lean in again, I hear something.
There are people surrounding the house. We are surrounded. He looks at me and I look back at him. He looks at me and I look back at him and we non-verbally agree, amid strings of slobber, that we are hearing the same thing. We are hearing the same thing. Someone—no, people are outside. So close to us. Only the 9–9 bricks, concrete and a thin coat of grey paint is standing between us and a mob. Is it still called a mob if they haven’t touched you yet? They can lay their hands on me all they want; I won’t let them touch him. I will not—how do I make sure of that?
I have no weapons in the house. I am not a violent person and this isn’t the kind of thing you call the police for. Not here at least, and not with the new law looming above our heads. They would in fact deliberately take their time to arrive. They’d only be coming to clean up after the mob. That is a thing they do well, ferrying bodies to morgues to find out what people died of, knowing exactly what they died of. And I know no one in the forces. There is absolutely no one to call.
I pace. My footfalls get louder with each lap around the room. The outside, the shouts, the voices are getting loud too.
“What are we going to do? What are we going to do—what am I going to do?” I mutter under my breath. Joyce is seated on the bed. Hasn’t moved an inch. The baby blue blanket is sprawled across his heaving chest. He is mute. He doesn’t know what to do—I don’t know what to do. How did we get here? How do we not be here anymore? How do we escape this house without getting out through the door or the windows—we cannot even use the windows; they are burglar proofed. The roof? How do you leave a besieged house through the roof? On what ground do we land? What? Who will be there to catch us?
The noises keep spawning inside, outside, everywhere. The racket grows around us like mushrooms out of the ground. We have been nabbed. Salem style. Witches? No. Faggots. He heaves. I pace. Still naked. Flaccid. There is a bang at the door. I jump into a dirty pair of shorts and charge out of the room.
*
Hi there, I’ve not heard from you much this week. Hope school’s good.
We could do something different this weekend. Outdoors maybe? It’s been five days and I still can’t wash you off.
I hit send. This is the third text I have sent him this week. The first was to thank him for helping me scour the pans. The one after that, I unsent because the combined embarrassment of him not responding to them both gnawed at my hand. Thrice. Seen. No response. How else can I try?
*
There was no one at the door. I don’t know where that noise came from. Must have been the upstairs neighbour. Maybe she had slammed something down on the floor—my ceiling. We must have been too high to realize what was happening. There’s no other way to explain what happened. Joyce is still in the room, gathering his breath. He has also just realised that the chaos was in the room with us, not outside it.
We are quiet for many minutes. Our bodies are blue in the light of the television. Amy Flower and her orchestra of girlfriends play Baumgaertner in a field of dead grass as our bodies rise and fall out of tempo with the music. He sits up in the bed, rests his weight on the headboard then on my chest.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“How’re you feeling?”
He is quiet, walking the length of his mind to gather the words. There are none. He scratches his scalp like what he can’t say will miraculously fall out of his hair.
“I don’t know. I feel like—a line. A flatline.” What does one reply to that?
I walk to the kitchen, still naked. The matooke falls out of the banana leaves onto the plate like soft sun. A bowl of greens. A bowl of stew. Twice on two trays. A big Coca Cola—the one he brought with disposables. I carry them all in, like the eight-armed thing I can some- times be. I give him his tray and he rests it on the dresser. I sit on the edge of my bed and dig into my plate. He is still very quiet. I’m sad. He doesn’t feel safe. Where can anyone ever feel safe? Where can I? The first fork hits the melamine plate. We haven’t looked each other in the eye since the whole thing. He is behind me, making music from eating sounds; fork hits plate hits teeth, carbon dioxide hisses out the soda bottle. Bottle foams at the lid. Cup hits dresser. He swallows, long and loud.
In between cuddles and silence, the evening slips away like rain clouds. He has an early morning. He has mass tomorrow with his family. I admire guys like him. For whom God and the love of men can exist in the same body without one out-singing the other and throwing one of them out. Soon I hear soft snores. I pick the trays and dump them in the sink. I cover him with a bed sheet. It’s a chilly evening. I feel good enough now to do the dishes and clean his shoes.
*
A week, then a month, then three other months go by. It is rainy and cold outside. I have not been outside. Abaasi still delivers my groceries and I cook when I can. No one likes to eat alone. I leave leftovers at the foot of the front door so the neighbour’s cat can find them. She knows I’m generous. She licks all the bones clean as if to avoid offending me. Not that I am someone who easily takes offence but I am sensitive. Animals know stuff like that.
I stopped checking our messages. Well, who wouldn’t after sending tiers of texts across a variety of media only for them to be delivered, unread and unacknowledged? I drafted three different follow-up paragraphs in my Notes App. One to release him. One to beg—the most demeaning. Third, to check on him “casually,” just to see how he’s doing. I won’t send any of them. I wonder how he is feeling. How I feel doesn’t matter because I can handle that. How is he feeling? I don’t want him walking with that weight or fear. Terrible things have happened to men in our predicament and prison is not the worst one. Besides, the ordeal itself wasn’t real but his silence is, and it hurts. He should talk to me, though. I was there too.
I am actually used to this, being by myself. I’m getting used to Joyce not being a body I once held but a silhouette in the distance. I am used to all this and there is more I’m yet to learn but how alone can lonely get?
It is midday and he still hasn’t communicated. Not Joyce, but the new one I’m talking to. The phone dings and lights up with an I’ll be a bit late but I’m still coming DM. I shower and wear Joyce’s boxer shorts. The ones he left behind—nothing else. I slip into bed, roll over to the side with the socket and pick my phone to reply.
It’s okay. I’m going out. Don’t come. He reacts to it with a thumbs-up emoji.