All Waf’s Exes Are Crazy VI
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Thank you for your time.
If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is be present in the present…gratefully. -Maya Angelou
Chapter VI: Peace Be With You (Winona Michaels)
“Did you see Peace? How is she?” I stared into blank, expectant eyes. “She must be older now. Prettier too, I bet. She always had glorious skin, you know? Like Asians–glass-like, but dark. I always thought it was stunning. Black as night. I hope she has grown to love it as well, has she?” I didn’t know where to start. I couldn’t divulge any information to Winona, but the way she asked, the genuine longing in her voice, confirmed her deep care.
“Peace is well,” was all I could give. I was here to hear from her.
I could see she was jumpy, excited. I doubted she found people to chat with often. Seeing that I didn’t add anything, she calmed herself a little. “You can’t tell me. I know. It’s rough, being here. Sometimes I just want someone to tell stuff but everyone else is just so glum and I can’t handle it. Today’s a great day, though. When Penny mentioned you I knew I just had to come. So, about Peace. Wow, where to start. Peace and I were friends literally from the womb. Our moms were besties. They met at the maternity clinic in PGH.”
“You mean the Provincial General Hospital?” I interrupted her. “It was renamed.”
“Really? To what? Don’t tell me a politician’s name because I will cry and pull all my hair out I promise you–” Instantly, I regretted interrupting her flow.
“It’s now the Nakuru Level 6 Hospital.”
“Oh,” she placed her index finger on her chin, feigning deep thought. “I guess that works. What’s the other levels?”
“Health care facilities are classified in levels now. From level one to–”
“Our beloved PGH. Sorry, I mean Nakuru Level 6 Hospital. Well deserved too. I can’t tell you how many times we walked down that road to the Showground from Milimani and back simply because we were bored out of our damn minds.”
“Winona.”
“Yes?” I allowed the silence to fill the air and return us back into the story. “Right. Me and Peace. Besties.”
Peace and I. I corrected her in my mind to avoid another tirade.
“So we grew up together. Same schools. Deskmates. Walked home together. Till I joined boarding school and Peace didn’t, because, and hear this, her father refused her wishes. That’s what she told me when I was being shipped off, well, I joined the same school we were in. It still stung when she would pick her backpack at four and leave me at school. Boarding school was her idea in the first place. She said she was going and I had to go. It was obviously easy to get my mom to agree to it. Then Peace picks her bag on the first day of Class Four, after I had enrolled the previous day to her absence, claiming she would join the next week, then the next term, then Waf said she wasn’t even planning on it, hadn’t broached the subject with her dad. But he told me this the day of the party so,” she sighs, long and deep. “I hated having to taste the food made at home, the weekend stories, the movies I only got to watch through her telling, and I’ll have you know, that girl can’t tell a story to save her life. We drifted apart a bit. We still sat together, walked together, shared items. We still bought beads for each other’s hair, got our periods at roughly the same time and shared lunches. However, we couldn’t stop the secrets. Well, I’d say the end of it all started with me. I developed a crush.”
She stared into the distance, as if looking at the horizon but not really seeing it. I remained silent, simply because I wanted her to go on. There is no room for deviation when you encounter a rambling brain. You only have to give it grace. Instead, I watched her as she remembered.
“I’m not sure if the crush would have developed if I never went to boarding school. I never wanted to go, you know. But my parents were rarely there and the commute was insanely long and there was no time to start teaching me routes to take and which public means to choose because everyone was busy at home. It was always something about the election.”
Her mother was either planning for it, recovering from it, thinking of plans to take when the electioneering period approached. “There were campaigns, travel plans, issues with political opponents, which strategies to use and how did they compare to what the other parties were doing, post campaign meetings, pre-campaign periods. I had to stay in school, and I did, despite hating it. I hated being away from Peace. We had made our lives one from childhood. It would be easy to just say doing that was hard. Sometimes, before boarding, we even slept in each other’s bedrooms on school nights,” she shifts the conversation. “Waf only came home during the holidays and he was always so serious looking so we rarely bothered him. However, at school, my parents asked him to take care of me when I joined. My mattress was still folded, the metal box beside it as sweat covered my palms, my mother made him promise to take care of me. He was in class six and had spent all six years in boarding school, so he joked about being a true expert in the field. I remember all his jokes because they were the most corny shit you ever heard.”
“Most people join boarding school at class four or five. How old were you?” “I was nine. I guess my parents were normal. Peace said Waf went to boarding school because their parents didn’t want him damaged by their divorce. He was five. I don’t know about that.”
Winona’s eyes, still fixed on a distant memory, softened further. “Parents do things to kids, whether they know it or not. The crush, it was Waf. Of course. He was in Class Six, so much older, so much cooler. At school, he was different. Not like the serious Waf at home. He’d spend time with me in the library, talking about Harry Potter, even though I knew he probably thought it was childish. He’d help me with my math homework, his patience a surprising contrast to his usual dismissiveness. I’d try to make him laugh, to impress him with my quick wit, but he’d just give that small, knowing smile that made my stomach flutter. I knew he was just being nice because my mom asked him to look out for me, but a girl can dream, right?”
She paused, a wistful smile playing on her lips, then leaned in conspiratorially, as if sharing a sacred secret. “Peace and I were still close then, before… everything. I remember one afternoon, we were sitting on my bed, flipping through a fashion magazine. I was telling her about Waf, probably for the hundredth time, and I said, ‘You know, if I ever married him, my name would be Winona Wafula. Winona Wafula! It’s written by the gods in alliteration! It’s meant to be, right?’ Peace just stared at me, then rolled her eyes so hard I thought they’d get stuck. ‘You’re insufferable, Winona,’ she muttered, then snatched the magazines and started flipping through each one aggressively, pretending to be engrossed. From my window, we could see Lucas in the yard, leashing the guard dogs for their evening run, their barks echoing faintly. Peace didn’t even glance up. But I knew. I always knew she hated it, even then.”
A shadow crossed her face, and her gaze shifted, a flicker of genuine worry. “But then Peace… she changed. It started slowly, after she got involved with that Dr. Owuor’s congregation. Her clothes… they just kept getting longer, more layers. Her hair was always covered, even when she came to visit. She started looking at me differently. Like my clothes, my music, my jokes… they were all wrong. Unholy. I remember one time, I was wearing a new pair of jeans, and she just looked at me, her eyes so cold, and said, ‘You look like a man, Winona. God doesn’t want women to dress like men.’ It hurt, you know? We used to share everything. Now, she just… judges. I tried to talk to her, to understand, but she just says I need to find God. It felt like I was slowly losing her, and I didn’t know how to get her back.” A faint tremor touched her voice, a vulnerability that resonated with my own understanding of loss. “She even noticed my crush on Waf. She pretended it didn’t bother her, but I could feel her irritation, like a prickle in the air whenever I brought him up. I think she hated it, actually.”
The party was in full swing when Lucas, Winona, and Wafula arrived, the air thick with the scent of cheap perfume and teenage exuberance. The sprawling Upperhill house, usually so quiet, pulsed with a controlled chaos. About twenty kids, mostly from Friends Academy, mingled in the living room of one of the houses in the street and spilled out onto the patio. Music thumped from an unseen speaker, and groups huddled, whispering secrets and sharing laughter. There was soda, crisps, a few awkward attempts at dancing, and the usual teen-appropriate games. Winona, usually so reserved around Wafula, seemed to blossom in the crowd, her laughter a little louder, her movements more fluid. Lucas observed the subtle glances she cast at Waf, the way her eyes lingered on him when he wasn’t looking. Wafula, for his part, seemed to revel in the attention, a casual king holding court, his polished charm on full display.
As the night wore on, the two oldest girls, both Class Eight leavers, announced their departure. “Winona, you coming with us?” one of them called, already halfway out the door.
Before Winona could answer, Wafula stepped forward, a possessive hand lightly on her arm. “She’s with us,” he stated, his voice smooth, leaving no room for argument. “Patricia asked us to look out for her, and that’s what we do.” The girls shrugged, exchanged knowing glances, and left. Lucas felt a familiar prickle of unease. Wafula’s control, even over something as minor as Winona’s departure, was absolute.
Minutes later, an older boy Lucas vaguely recognized from Form One, a known troublemaker, emerged from the kitchen, two dark glass bottles clutched in his hands. Gin. The air in the room seemed to shift, the innocent buzz replaced by a sharper, more dangerous energy. “Got these from… a friend,” he slurred with a triumphant grin.
Wafula took one of the bottles. “It’s fine,” he announced, his voice carrying over the music. “My dad lets me drink with him. We’re cool like that.”
Lucas felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. He hesitated, his gaze darting between the bottle and Wafula’s confident smirk. This felt different. This felt wrong. But then Winona, her eyes bright with a dangerous excitement, reached for the second bottle. “Come on, Lucas,” she urged, her voice a little too loud, a little too eager. “It’s a party!” Her support was an unspoken challenge that sealed their fate. Lucas stayed.
The next thing Lucas knew, he was waking up, a jarring jolt into a profound, suffocating darkness. The music was gone. The laughter, the whispers, the very presence of others – all vanished. He was alone. The house, once vibrant, now felt hollow, haunted by the echoes of a party long past. A chilling silence pressed in on him, broken only by the frantic pounding of his own heart. He felt a cold dread as a premonition of something being terribly wrong, seized him. He fumbled for his phone, the screen a dead black. Panic, cold and sharp, began to claw at him. He had to find them. He had to find Winona.
He stumbled out of the house, the night air a shock against his skin. He was naked. The street was empty, eerily so. He walked, then ran, the familiar path home stretching endlessly before him, each step fueled by a growing terror for his friends. His mind raced, replaying fragmented images of the party, of Winona’s eager face, of Wafula’s casual arrogance. What had happened? Where were they? He stayed in the shadows and used the back gate to the servant quarters he shared with his mother.
When he finally walked around the main house to Winona’s gate, his lungs burning, a strange sight greeted him. There were people. Many people. Huddled figures, hushed voices, a sense of urgency in the air. He pushed through the small crowd, his eyes scanning frantically, searching for a familiar face. And then he saw him. Wafula. His face was pale, his eyes puffy, red-rimmed, a mirror of his mother’s on that morning years ago. He was leaning against the gatepost, his usual composure shattered.
Lucas stumbled towards him, a desperate question forming on his lips. Before he could utter a sound, Wafula looked up, his gaze hollow, and the words, thick with a raw, unfamiliar pain, fell from his lips like stones.
“Win is hurt, Luc. Badly.”
And in that moment, as the words hung in the cool night air, Lucas and I feel a chilling resonance echoing of the past and a terrifying premonition of the future. The same darkness that had consumed Penny, that had claimed his own life, now reached for Winona. The threads of their lives, so intricately woven by Wafula’s presence, were beginning to unravel, one by one.
***
Kids, we’re behind schedule, I know. We’ll fix it.