The Dream Chasers by Claudette Oduor Page B

yourself. We won’t be friends much longer, will we?”
    Muchai took a step towards me. “Look at me, Lulu.” He lifted my chin until I had to look, until my nose rubbed on his, and his warm breath became mine on my lips. His eyes were a plethora of colours and thoughts and old memories.
    The old memories smelt like the prim leather interior of his father’s old Volvo, like antiseptic after a knee bruise and the hibiscus-seed juice his mother had made us drink; like dried spit from secret handshakes, the sulphur oil in his sister’s hair, and his brother’s curdled breath after taking antibiotics thrice that day instead of twice as instructed by the doctor. I remembered a picture of four stick people drawn with a burgundy crayon whose caption, in a child’s wriggly hand, read: Friends forever and ever and ever. And ever. Says Muchai.
    â€œTake that back,” Muchai pleaded.
    Defiance was in my face. “No.” Tears stung my eyes. They weighed down on my eyelids; some of them spilled on to my tongue. They were as bitter as the aloe juice Mama made me take for colds. Muchai watched me as I did the same to him through my tears. His eyes felt like warm fizzy black currants on my face. Finally, he turned away, focusing on a point amid the rows of maize stalks in a neighbour’s garden.
    â€œI’m happy for you,” I said. “It’s just that … Mama has relapsed into her episodes.”

[Two]
    â€œMAMA, DID YOU PAY the electricity bill?” I asked. “It has been forty-eight hours; this is no ordinary blackout.”
    Mama ignored me. She continued to claw through the maize cob in her hand, dropping the grains into a sufuria .
    â€œYou should talk to Baba. He will give you money.”
    â€œYou know what they say, Lulu? Rain beats a leopard’s skin but does not wash out its spots.”
    â€œMama, those who can’t swallow their pride swallow stones for supper.”
    Mama threw the empty cob into a basin and stood up. She fetched a rag from the sink and wiped the table.
    I struck a match and lit a hurricane lamp. A jittery flame cast long shadows over the kitchen. I struck another match and held it to the gas cooker. It hissed but refused to light.
    â€œSee, Mama? No cooking gas either.”
    â€œUse the kerosene stove.”
    I shook the green stove to see if it had enough fuel. Kerosene swooshed against its rounded belly, spilling on to the floor. I lit the stove. It had a reluctant steel-blue flame that stayed below the stove head.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with that stove?” Mama asked.
    â€œThe wicks are too short.”
    â€œPut it out then. There is tea in the thermos. We shall drink it for supper.” Mama walked to the sink. She took a spoon and scraped the inside of a sufuria that had cooked gruel in the morning.
    Krr-krr-krr.
    She soaped some steel wool. The soap spread like margarine on the silver steel strands. She scrubbed the sufuria, collecting some remains of the porridge. She dropped the abrasive and picked up the spoon.
    Krr-krr-krr.
    I poured tea from the thermos into two ceramic mugs.
    Mama sipped hers and grimaced. “Lulu, did we pawn our tea leaves to the Shylock? You make your tea all wrong, like a Kikuyu.” She added two bags, which made her drink the colour of red earth after rain. Mama pulled out a chair and sat beside me. “Do you want to hear about my younger sister, Atsango?”
    â€œThe one who married a Kikuyu man and died?”
    Mama’s tea burned her tongue and made her eyes smart. “When Atsango was three, a car knocked her down, broke her neck in two, and disgorged her innards. People said that she was a witch; that she cast a spell on the angel of death, and he let her come back.”
    â€œReally, Mama, you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
    Mama shrugged. “I know her skin had large pores, and her face had been pasty, like shiny sourdough that had sat too