Blood & Milk (7 page)

I dressed hurriedly, and before Damu could walk away, I grabbed his arm. “Damu.”

He wouldn’t look at me. His eyes were fixed on the ground to the side of us.

I wanted to touch his face so he would look at me, but I didn’t dare scaring him off even more. “Don’t be embarrassed. You don’t have to be ashamed of your body around me.”

He shook his head and pulled his arm from my grasp, but he didn’t step away. He seemed stuck for words but eventually settled on, “No. No.”

Was he worried he’d offended me? Or was he worried that I would tell someone else? “I don’t mind, and no one else needs to know.” I motioned between us. “Just us. Just us.”

His gaze shot to mine then, his eyes filled with fear and uncertainty. “Forgive.”

“There’s nothing to forgive. You did nothing wrong.” He squinted his eyes closed, like I’d just told him the sky wasn’t blue. I said it again, this time with more conviction. “You did nothing wrong.”

He took a step back, and I knew this conversation was over, for now at least. He turned and walked away. I pulled on my sneakers, which wasn’t easy, given my feet were still wet. I needed to change the subject, to let him know things were still good between us.

“Hey, Damu,” I called out. He stopped walking and begrudgingly turned to look at me. I pointed to the line of trees further up. “Should we grab some sticks and branches for firewood?”

He looked at me for a long moment, then relented with a nod and a small smile.

I picked up a branch and then another, and soon Damu was beside me. “Figured it’d save us a trip back here,” I said as we collected wood together. “And if anyone wonders why we were so long.”

I dropped my sticks to the ground and pulled my shirt over my head, laying it flat on the ground. I piled the wood across my shirt and after we’d collected a decent amount, I wrapped my shirt around the firewood and tied it off. It made it so much easier to carry. It also made me shirtless.

Looking down at myself, I could see my shorts were now far too big for me. Even with the waistband doubled over, they still hung low on my hips. My abs were noticeable, which was funny because I never realised I even had abs.

“You
aronkenu
,” Damu said, holding up one finger. “No fat.”

“Skinny,” I said with a laugh. “Or are you saying I was fat when I got here?” I was hardly overweight when I arrived here―hell, my weight loss in the last twelve months had been a concern for my doctor. He’d almost certainly keel over if he saw me now. Ideals of body shape were vastly different between my country and Damu’s. I grinned at him and tapped his visible ribs. “Not as skinny as you.”

He jumped. “Ah!”

“You’re ticklish?” I laughed. “Good to know!”

Ignoring his shy smile, I picked up the stack of wood and slung it over my shoulder so it rested on my back.

“You wish me to carry?”

“No. It’s fine. Come on, we better not be too late.”

We’d walked about a quarter mile when I nodded toward the ridge line. “Will you take me there one day?”

“Into Serengeti?”

“Yes.” I mean it wasn’t far, and the Serengeti itself was huge. Technically this land was part of the Serengeti, but I meant into the valley. “Where the animals are.”

“If you wish.”

“Do we need permission from Kasisi or Kijani?” I asked. I wasn’t sure on what the actual protocol was for leaving the kraal for anything other than chores.

“No permission. I tell them I take you, but ask when it be good time. It must not interfere with everyone.”

Okay, fair enough
, I thought. Everything everyone in the kraal did was always in fair consideration of everyone else. It was how the Maasai lived. As a whole entity. United.

“I would like that. I would like to see elephants and giraffes.”

Damu smiled. “I ask for you. The moran will leave soon for
Eunoto
.”

“What is Eunoto?”

“Warrior ceremony.”

“Really?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. Or my curiosity. “What happens at the Eunoto? Who will go? Will Komboa go?” I doubted he would, he was no older than six… but I had no idea.

Damu chuckled and shook his head. “Always with questions.”

“Always.”

“Komboa is wrong age-set. Nampasso’s age-set will go.”

“All of them?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

He held up four fingers. “Moons.”

“Four months?”

Damu laughed again. “They will go with other warriors and learn their ways.”

“Where do they go?”

“Away from kraal. Many days walk.”

“Will Kijani take them?”

Damu smiled again, knowing very well why I asked. Four months without Kijani sounded pretty good to me. Damu nodded. “Kijani will go for some, not all of this. One or two moons only.”

I couldn’t help but smile. Hell, even one month without Kijani sounded good. But then something dawned on me. “Who will protect the kraal if he and the other warriors are not here?”

“Not all go. Kasisi will see who stays.”

It had to hurt knowing his father and brother were tribal leaders and he was completely disregarded. He acted like he didn’t mind, but I had to wonder just how well he hid it. “Did you go to Eunoto?”

Damu shook his head. “Not for me.”

We walked in silence for a while, and I couldn’t help but think of something I’d read… But it wasn’t like I could just come out ask something like that.

“You have questions,” Damu said, smiling at me.

“I do, but it is very personal.”

Damu looked at me warily, his smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “You will ask it anyway.”

My smile was slow spreading. “You know me so well!”
What the hell?
“If you didn’t go through a warrior ceremony, why are you circumcised?”

Damu surprised me by bursting out laughing. He playfully pushed my shoulder, causing me to lose my step. He covered his mouth with his hand. “You pay attention?”

“It was hard not to notice,” I told him, grinning widely. “You have a very… um, what is the Maa word for elephant penis?”

Damu stopped walking and his mouth fell open. This time I pushed his shoulder, and we both fell about laughing.

I noticed then that Kijani was watching us from the gate of the kraal, but I didn’t care. Damu and I laughed the rest of the way home.

Kijani watched us again that afternoon, when we worked patching the roof of our hut, and he watched me again as I sat with the women, making beads and darning clothes. It probably didn’t help that Momboa sat on my lap begging me to sing the alphabet song with him again and again.

When Kijani called Damu over to where he and Kasisi were watching, I stood up too. I wasn’t sure what I could do or say to defend him, but if they had an issue with my asking permission to teach the kids, then they could speak to me about it.

“
Awúên, awúên
,” Amali said.
Sit down. Sit down
.

Kijani and Kasisi led Damu away, where no one could hear them speak. The longer he was gone, the more I worried.

“He be fine,” Amali said.

I tried to smile for her, but my concern was too great. “I don’t want to cause him trouble.”

She waved me off with a smile and went about her chores. Soon they were singing again, but I remained silent and kept looking for Damu to return. The sun was getting lower and lower and the light was almost gone when Damu returned. He found me waiting outside our hut, and I was so relieved to see him.

“Are you okay?”

He took my hand―a Maasai gesture of friends, I reminded myself―and led me inside. It was, as always, dark inside, but when we sat facing each other, I could see his face. “I am fine. They have decision on school.”

Oh.
“Really? Well, what did they say?”

“They say, yes.”

My relief and grin was instantaneous. “Really?”

Damu laughed. “Yes. Condition, they have condition.”

I wouldn’t expect anything else. “Of course. That’s fine. When can I start?”

“Tomorrow. We start tomorrow.”

I couldn’t help myself. I was so excited and happy, I acted without thinking. I leaned up on my knees and hugged him. “Thank you!” I pulled back. “Sorry.” I put some distance between us, as much as the small hut allowed anyway. “Here, let me cook the ugali,” I said, scooting over to start the porridge. I busied myself with dinner, but when I risked a glance back at Damu, I found him looking at me with a smile that might have been half shy, half smitten.

I handed him his bowl. “Let’s eat.”

Jarrod smiles as he picks up branches. He looks different under the Tanzanian sunlight, brighter somehow, like a light shone from within. The women help me build an open shelter, the children too, and there is singing and humming as a constant background noise.

Jarrod lifts one branch, laying it flat on the roof, while Amali and Yantai weigh the leaves down with mud. I can’t stop staring at him, much like I always did. Feeling my eyes upon him, he stares right back at me. He gives a pointed nod to Damu and chuckles like he knows something I don’t.

“What’s so funny?” I ask.

Jarrod’s smile slowly fades, his gaze never leaves mine, as though he’s speaking to me with his mind. He’s so close, I reach out to touch him, but my hand feels nothing but air. “Say something,” I plead. “If I can just hear your voice.”

The corner of Jarrod’s lip curls upwards and looks fondly at Damu. And with a wistful smile, he disappears like he was never there. The man I loved, the man I lived for, is gone.

Again.

“Alé.” Damu’s voice was low, his breath warm on my neck. He shook me gently. “Shhh.”

I realised I was asleep in his arms again, on his tiny mattress. My heart was hammering, and I knew immediately my dreaming had woken him. My eyes burned with tears and my throat was thick. I breathed in a ragged sob, feeling Jarrod leave me all over again bore with it a physical ache.

It was still dark outside, I could see through the doorway, and I reckoned it was about three in the morning. I should have scrambled over to my bed of dirt in the corner, but I couldn’t bring myself to move.

Instead, I pulled Damu’s arm tighter around me, snuggled right back against him, feeling the safety of his hold, and closed my eyes.

* * * *

I woke before Damu. His arm was still wrapped tight around my waist, his soft breaths at the nape of my neck, and his red shuka draped over us like a blanket. I could also feel his cock pressed against the crack of my arse.

It felt so good. Hot and hard and right there. It was something I hadn’t felt in over a year, physical intimacy, sexual attraction.

Not since Jarrod. Not since that awful day… we’d woken up, like any other normal day. Sex before work wasn’t that unusual. It was usually just a quick fuck or mutual blowjobs or handjobs in the shower. We saved our lengthy lovemaking sessions for night time when we could, and quite often did, spend hours in bed.

He’d woken me that day by pressing his lubed up fingers inside me, nipping teeth at my shoulder, pleading with me to “wake up, baby” before he slipped his cock into me. Afterwards, he made me coffee and toast, told me he loved me, stole a bite of my peanut butter, kissed me, and went to work. Just like any normal day. Work was normal, and we went to the pub for dinner after work, just like normal.

Everything was normal.

Until it wasn’t.

Nothing was normal again after that day. Not one thing. Not me, not my life, not the stars or the moon. Not the air I breathed, not how people looked at me.

Nothing.

And when the memories brought with them their leaden weight of loss and grief, they brought with it something new.

Guilt.

Guilt for breathing, for surviving. Guilt for living when he does not. Guilt for lying in the arms of another man.

I didn’t dare move.

I wanted to grind back harder. I wanted to grip his hips behind me and pull him closer still. I wanted to feel him slide between my arsecheeks. I wanted him inside me.

I wanted to feel… something.

Anything

Alive, mostly. I wanted to feel alive.

But I didn’t move. Well, not the way I wanted to. I peeled Damu’s arm off me and crawled out of the hut. The sun was rising, shedding strands of brilliant golds over the horizon. The air was crisp, the birds were singing their praises, and the kraal was waking.

It wasn’t long until Damu stood beside me and stretched the kinks out of his back. “Excited for this day?” he asked.

“What?”

He eyed me cautiously. “Start school for you.”

“Oh,” I said. There was no point in pretending I hadn’t forgotten. “I had other things on my mind.”

Damu nodded slowly. “He speak to you,” he said, looking over the kraal. “In your dreams. The one you left behind.”

I swallowed down my heart and breathed hard against the cage that squeezed my lungs. "He doesn’t speak. In my dreams, he doesn’t speak. I would kill to hear his voice. Just one more time. I would give anything―” my voice cracked “―I would give
anything
, just to hear his voice, but he never speaks. And I didn’t leave him behind. He left me.”

I was on the verge of tears and tried blinking them back but had to scrub them away with my hands. Damu put his hand on my shoulder. “We get water.”

I nodded, and ducked back into the hut to grab the bucket, and it was then I noticed Kijani had come out of his home. Damu was clearly making sure Kijani didn’t see me upset. I doubted the brave warrior would take my tears as anything short of weakness.

Not that I cared what Kijani thought of me. I cared about what Damu thought of me. “Sorry about this morning,” I said to him as we walked to the river.

He shrugged it off. His ever-silent way of saying ‘no problem.’ He held up the empty bucket. “Need more water to make school.”

My gaze shot to his. “We’re
making
a school?”

Damu laughed. He put his hand up, flat, then upright. “Roof. Side. Block sun and wind.”

I put my hand on his shoulder and bounced with excitement. “We’re making a school!”

Damu laughed, and it turned out to be the best thing ever. Distraction, purpose, and a real sense of belonging.

For the next week, myself and Damu, along with the women of the manyatta and even the children helped us build a basic shelter. It was exactly as Damu had said. Roof and sides, and not much more.

But it was ours. We built it. We did it together. We sang and hummed as we trussed a frame, then just as my dream had shown, we fixed dried branches and leaves and weighed them down with mud and cow shit. The only thing missing from my dream was Jarrod. But somehow he was here with me. I couldn’t explain it, but I felt closer to him now than I had in twelve months.

And every night, I didn’t bother lying down on my dirt bed. Damu lay down on his thin mattress and I melded to him, my back to his front. I used his arm as a pillow and wrapped his other arm around me. He pulled his shuka over us, and we slept.

We never spoke about it. We never questioned it. I couldn’t afford to: he was my only comfort, and it would seem I was his only comfort too. In a world that turned without me, Damu was my fixed point. He was the only shining light I’d had in twelve months of empty darkness.

Even when I’d wake with my face buried in his neck or resting on his chest, his arms were always around me. He couldn’t hide his body’s reaction to the contact, and neither could I.

At first I thought my body betrayed me. The physical reaction I could justify―my body craved touch, it was as simple as that―but my emotional reaction to him was one I simply wasn’t prepared for.

I wasn’t ready for that.

I was certain I never would be.

And I didn’t know what was worse. Having dreams of Jarrod that were so vivid, so real I swear I could almost touch him.

Or not dreaming of him at all.

Whether it was sleeping next to Damu, in the comfort of his embrace, or whether it was the exhaustion from working from sun up till sun down, I didn’t know. But my sleep was absent of dreams. I didn’t know if that was me letting go of Jarrod, or if it was Jarrod letting go of me… I’m not sure which one hurt the most.

* * * *

“What are you doing?” Damu asked.

I had emptied out my backpack and found the notepad and pen I had in there. It was the size of a journal, and I had intended to keep notes or an itinerary of my travels but never had. I had now been in Tanzania, living with Damu and his people for three weeks. It felt like both a lifetime and the blink of an eye and yet, I hadn’t written a word about my being here. My stay in the kraal, no matter how long it ended up being, would be something I’d need time to process before I started to document. I’d need time to decompress, to appreciate and evaluate everything I’d experienced. So knowing I wouldn’t be using the notepad made the decision pretty easy.

“I’m going to use this,” I said, holding up the notepad, “to help teach.” It was ridiculous how basic my resources were, but that made me even more keen to do it. “We need more things,” I admitted. “A chalkboard, paper, pencils.”

Damu looked at me like I’d told him we needed free wifi.

Good Lord, the Internet seemed a century ahead of time. I guessed, out in the Serengeti plains, it was.

Or was it…?

“How far away is the closest market?”

Damu blinked back his surprise. “One day walk.”

“When I came here, I walked with Joseph and Mbaya and some goats. Had they been to market?” Joseph and Mbaya, as it turned out, quite often went to market and did the bidding set out by the senior elders. It was quite often a two-day venture, apparently. “Can you and I go to the markets?”

“No, no, I not go,” he said quickly.

“Why not?”

He rocked back on his heels, shook his head, and wiped his hands on his clothes. Even the thought of going to the closest town was daunting for him. “I cannot.”

“Will you not be given permission?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I have not ever.”

“Would you like to?” I asked. “Go to the city?”

He laughed incredulously, like I’d asked him if he’d like to go to the moon.

I held up two fingers. “Two days. Just two days.”

Damu bit his lip. He was clearly torn. “You will go even if I not go?”

He didn’t want me to go on my own, either for fear of my safety, or because he didn’t want to not be with me. I liked that, more than I should. “I would not want to go without you,” I told him, my voice soft.

He fought a smile and a slight blush tinted his cheeks, and I could see I almost had him won over. “Will we cross the Serengeti?” I asked.

He nodded. “The way you came. Did you not see it when you walked through it?”

“It was dark, and I was following two strange men with goats. I wasn’t exactly paying much attention,” I reasoned. “I want to see it with you.”

Damu’s gaze met mine and his eyes swam with unspoken words. Eventually he nodded. “I will ask.”

I grinned at him. I was ridiculously excited about the prospect. The two days of walking not so much, but I wanted Damu to experience life outside his tribe, even for just two days. I wanted to be with him when he stepped out of his comfort zone, to show him there was a whole world on the other side of that acacia thorn fence. I wanted to be with him when I saw African wildlife roaming free on the Serengeti.

I clutched my notepad. “I will tell the children,” I said, before leaving him with the arduous task of asking his brother and father when we could go.

I had six kids in the lean-to, under the watchful eyes of their mothers, of course. “We will have a chalkboard,” I told them, waving my hand at the wall. “Where we can write and draw. And we can have paper and pencils for writing,” I held out my notepad and pretended to draw with my pen, and the excited smiles on their little faces matched my own.

Until I saw Damu talking to Kijani. It was pretty clear what the outcome would be by Kijani’s tone. I didn’t need to know what Kijani had said to him, because the look on Damu’s face as he walked back to the classroom said it all.

No.

My words trailed away and the kids followed my line of sight. When Damu realised we were watching him, he tried to smile, but it didn’t quite work. He gave me a small shake of his head.

“Momboa,” I called the young boy to where I stood. “Can you sing the alphabet song for the class?” I asked. I started him off, singing ABC, then once he was in full swing―and probably getting the letters mixed up―I walked over to where Kijani was standing.

God, didn’t he have some fucking goats to herd or something?

I tried to keep my tone neutral, but it was strained at best. “I wish to request items for our school,” I said to him. I half expected him to push me over or spear me through the throat, I wasn’t sure. But I held his steely gaze. “If it pleases the elders, I want to buy school items. I have money to buy such things. I will pay for it. If Damu and I can’t go, then I will give the money to Joseph and Mbaya and they can get them. I can make a list.” He hadn’t killed me yet, so I kept on going. “This is not for me. It is not for Damu. It is for the children.”

Kijani stared at me, amused. In the same way a lion might be humoured by the bravado of a field mouse.

I bowed my head. “I would be most grateful.” And with that, I turned and walked back to the classroom. The children were singing, blissfully unaware, but Damu looked worried and cautious. Amali, Nashuru, and Yantai watched on curiously, warily.