I would never wish anyone ill. But when Beatrice died I was glad. OK, let me explain.
I have lived a quiet life, listened to my mother's teachings faithfully and went to Sunday School regularly. In school I heard the bigger girls talking about their exploits with boys, whom they let, or whom they froze out. I had no idea what these phrases meant. Daudi was a tall athletic boy, whom I liked very much. He liked me a lot and would spend time with me, sometimes helping me with Mathematics homework, while I did the same for his English. He did not have the rough ways of other boys in our class. Some of them tried to grab me, but I fought them off; I had no idea what they wanted to do after grabbing me like that. Some tried to touch my growing breasts, but so clumsily that it was painful. Daudi never did these things to other girls, and certainly not to me. Perhaps this added to my liking of him.
He took me on a picnic to Rowallan Camp. He told me to prepare snacks, while he would handle drinks. You may think that unfair but that was our relationship. At other times he would pick the more difficult task and let me off the hook. It never caused any comment. Though I heard my mother telling my sisters off for being seen with that boy or the other, she seemed to have a blind spot where Daudi was concerned.
That day dawned bright and beautiful. The birds sang in the trees. I put on a light dress that played in the wind, because I was feeling so gay. At Rowalllan, we found a good quiet spot under an old tree. We spread the Masai blanket on the thick, green grass and put our basket at one edge.
We could never stop talking. I was telling him how my mother used to punish us if we did not do as she ordered. He brought humour to those tales, as to the ones about his own growing up.
"You know Beatrice Karago? Her mother used to bring her to our home while she was still young. Yet my sister was so much younger than Beatrice."
I replied that I have never really trusted Mrs Karago. "Whenever she meets me, she somehow manages to find something unkind to say. Even when she is only telling me to retie my belt, if it had become loose."
"She has never stopped the kiddie talk she used to give about Beatrice getting married in our home. What kind of talk is that when we were still primary school kids? Whenever she visits my mother she has to bring her daughter along. What could her motive be?" he wondered.
"Maybe she still believes you will marry her. That could be why she does not like me, thinking I am a rival to her daughter."
We moved away from such unhelpful topics and enjoyed the rest of our day out.
One day in the new term, there were screams in the Karago homestead. "Thief, thief!" People rushed towards the home, to find Beatrice's mother pointing inside the banana plantation. "That girl was stealing my daughter's clothes from the line. And they were still wet; I had just finished washing them!"
"Which girl?"
"The short one with a loud voice," she replied sharply.
"The Kimani daughter or Rahab's daughter?"
"That single mother has never taught her daughter manners!" Mrs Karago said in a shrill voice.
"Where is she now? What clothes was she wearing?"
"Do I know? She is capable of changing now that she has been caught."
"Where were you at the time?" another neighbour asked.
"I was rinsing the last ones, socks and towel, when I saw a shadow. When I lifted my eyes she was running into the bananas. I am sure it was that unworthy woman's daughter!"
The said thief was never found but my mother's name had been mentioned. Nobody ever accused me or my mother directly, but again nobody was sure that Mrs Karago had actually seen anybody.
On Christmas Day, the parish minister came to baptise, receive new members and to confirm those who had completed the catechism classes. Beatrice, Daudi and I were among the number to be confirmed that year.
It had been a gruelling one. The catechist was an old man from Rungiri. "Who is God," he would ask the class. If we did not reply immediately he went down the rows with his cane slashing right and left. "Do you have boiled heads? Did we not learn that last week, eh?"
Every lesson was followed by a verbal test much worse than those questions in lesson time. He asked five questions, and although there were nine of us children that year he seemed to expect all of us to answer yet he had not asked enough questions. I now think, with my adult outlook, that he was not qualified to do that job, but there was nobody else who could be found. So he employed these brutal tactics to hide his lack of ability.
During the confirmation service it was his job to call out names of candidates to come to the front so that the minister could perform the sacrament for that group. One year there was a fiasco when he called out the names of those to be confirmed, when the minister expected the baptismal candidates to come first. He had already baptised three before the error was spotted. The catechist was about to hit at the three. "Why did you come before you were called?" He remembered too late that he only brought his cane to class, but the whole congregation could see he had bungled that one.
On being confirmed, we attended our first Holy Communion. It felt so sublime, with the words the minister spoke before breaking the slice of bread that stood for the Body and lifted the goblet of wine, proclaiming it as the Blood. Sitting with adults during this service made Christmas very special for all of us. As we went home we even tried to walk like grownups!
