All Waf’s Exes Are Crazy

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.

All I’m trying to do, all the time, is just open people up so they can let themselves be open to someone else. – Nina Simone

---

Chapter I: In Summation

Wafula gained a scar when his parents separated, an invisible etching that surfaced whenever he felt the walls closing in. He couldn’t have been older than seven when he was hauled to boarding school. His younger sister, Peace, a fragile echo of their fractured home, had her small heart tethered to their father even as her body was uprooted to Kakamega with their mother. Their older brother, a silent witness to the unraveling, found his only solace in their mother. This comfort was shattered the year he faced his crucial class eight exams. For weeks, he’d worn down their mother’s resolve, begging for a glimpse of his biological father. The encounter left him hollowed out, having spent hours in a sterile office lobby while his mother’s hushed pleas remained lost on a secretary whose disdain was a palpable barrier. The biological father, the architect of half of John’s being, remained behind an unyielding door. John returned home, his hand a loose weight in their mother’s tight grip, and the subject remained entombed in silence.

In the stark, echoing halls of boarding school, Wafula’s scar manifested as a quiet certainty, a shadow self that whispered reassurances when the world felt hostile. The youngest among boarding students, he navigated a landscape of both petty cruelty and grudging assistance. It was a precarious balance that kept the small boy tethered to sanity, a fragile thread of hope in a world that threatened to consume him. Yet, this inner voice, this shadow, often eclipsed reason. When older boys pinned his slight frame against the cold porcelain of the toilet bowl, a detached voice within him would ramble on about his mother’s imagined domestic bliss, his older brother back from school for the day playing with Peace, awaiting a father who was no longer there.

Meanwhile, back in the reality of their former home, two-thirds of his family were engaged in a silent battle for survival, attempting to sway Wafula’s father’s kin to offer them sanctuary. When no offers came from her husband’s relatives, she made the only logical decision. In the rigid social architecture of the Luhya community, a woman did not simply return home, especially not one who had once possessed a capable husband. In Were’s eyes, it was an affront, this woman bringing her illegitimate firstborn and her legitimate youngest back to the fold. The absence of Wafula, their recognized first son, the namesake, was an even greater anomaly. His mother, however, a woman forged in the fires of stubbornness, simply hoisted her youngest onto her hip, took her oldest son’s hand, and walked back to her father’s compound. Her head was held high, whether by pride or the precarious balance of the suitcase, no one could truly discern.

She entered the familiar space, a compound she had avoided for the decade since her father joined the ancestors, finding his wives already orchestrating the evening meal around open fires. Her belongings remained untouched, silent sentinels until darkness cloaked the homestead. The oppressive quiet from the women was so profound it startled even the normally boisterous crickets. Without a word, she retrieved her suitcase and ascended the cracked stairs to her father’s abandoned hut, the door sealed since his death. Cobwebs, intricate and undisturbed, draped every surface, mirroring the tangled tales his wives would soon spin throughout the year. She was home.

When the school term ended, Wafula was dispatched to his father’s new life, to Lucia, the woman who now occupied his mother’s former place. Years later, recounting this fractured childhood to a revolving door of girlfriends, he would casually dismiss any suggestion of trauma. The separation, he’d insist, had barely registered. Even as he presented a carefully constructed facade, a polished shell, he maintained that he had emerged unscathed since he was away at school, conveniently overlooking the years spent away from what he termed “drama”.

His intellect, however, shone brightly, a beacon in the turbulent waters of his adolescence. He navigated the KCPE and KCSE exams with remarkable ease, securing a coveted spot to study electrical engineering at the University of Nairobi. Wafula’s mother, in her own way, fostered a sense of independence in her children, a legacy inherited from her own father. She prioritized their image, ensuring their needs were always met, their social lives vibrant. Freedom, within the carefully constructed boundaries of appearances, was her gift. She encouraged them to spend time with friends and ensured they had enough money to buy whatever they wanted during these excursions.

Growing up, Wafula cultivated a habit of convenient untruths, small fabrications that smoothed over minor inconveniences. His backpack? Stolen, of course. The missing kitchen scissors? Surely Peace had seen him in the bathroom, a fleeting glimpse behind the shower curtain, snipping away, the evidence neatly deposited in the trash. But Peace, even at three, understood an unspoken loyalty. Waf was her anchor, her true brother. Of the two, he was her sun, and she instinctively orbited him. School was an agonizing separation, a void created by his absence, a feeling amplified when they relocated to Nakuru Town. The year in Kakamega held a certain magic, a hazy nostalgia that paled in comparison to a Nairobi she barely remembered. Their mother had secured a teaching position at the Rift Valley Institute of Science and Technology (RVIST), uprooting them from her ancestral home to a fledgling existence along the Nakuru-Kericho highway. The Ngata area was still a wild expanse when they first arrived. Peace watched silently as the men her mother paid cleared the dense bush to erect the makeshift shed that offered their first night’s shelter. The cold that night was a visceral memory, the mud walls of their temporary home yielding to her curious poke, the rain a relentless torrent that defied gravity. They huddled together, her mother’s gaze a silent reassurance, a familiar warmth that transcended the downpour. John, however, remained an enigma, his expression unreadable. Yet, his new school uniform lay neatly pressed, a testament to a resourcefulness Peace couldn’t fathom. She eyed the charcoal iron box amongst his things. It was a prized possession of her Kakamega grandies. The women had fought over the device countless times and its acquisition was shrouded in a quiet mystery. Angry phone calls from the accusing women were deflected by their mother’s practiced ignorance. Adamantly, she denied having seen the iron box, even after she found it wrapped in John’s school sweater.

Wafula’s fabrications extended to school life, a tapestry of minor deceptions that somehow never entangled his stellar grades. The teachers, blinded by his academic brilliance, often overlooked the inconsistencies. His deskmate, Lucas, learned early the futility of reporting him, especially in the precarious lead-up to exams. There was a brief window between the initial tests and midterms when consequences might materialize, but even then, Wafula’s carefully cultivated network, the strategic placement of imported snacks in the matron’s room, the discreet deposits with Mr. Odinga, the calculated generosity towards key individuals, often shielded him. Outside that narrow timeframe, he was untouchable. A KitKat, a Snickers bar, a packet of macadamia nuts from the airport; these were the currency of his untouchability. Lucas’s attempts at justice ceased the morning he opened his locker to a wave of acrid fumes, his textbooks soaked in what his nose identified as ammonia.

“Were you in the lab?” Wafula inquired, his voice devoid of concern as he opened his own locker, the offending liquid still dripping onto the linoleum.

“What happened?” Lucas whispered, his face contorted in disgust.

“I think someone was playing with some chemicals around here.”

“What?”

A dismissive shrug was his only reply before Wafula’s attention returned to his Science encyclopedia. Lucas spent the entirety of morning preps salvaging his waterlogged books, leaving them to air outside, and scrubbing at the persistent stench within his locker. The smell of ammonia became an unwelcome constant in his academic life. By the second week of that second term, he had pleaded with his father for a new locker, relegating his old one to the back of the classroom, a silent testament to Wafula’s unseen hand.

When their classmates, sensing an injustice, subtly encouraged Lucas to retaliate, he declined even offered assistance, becoming a tightly wound spring of resentment. Not until the last day of school, after the final Physics practical, did Wafula finally break the silence. He approached Lucas, a predatory glint in his eyes, and whispered, “I did it.”

Did what? “Your locker. I peed in it.”

Lucas stared at the smug curve of his mouth, his deskmate of fourteen years, and a hollow smile touched his lips. “Did you hear me? I know nobody believed you. You were right, that whole time.” He drawled the last sentence, mimicking a southern accent he knew grated on Lucas’s nerves. Lucas’s gaze remained fixed on the abandoned locker at the back of the room. The rest of the Form Four class was gathered around a bonfire near the pit, a chaotic conflagration consuming unwanted remnants of the academic year. Old sweaters, ill-fated love letters, forgotten textbooks, even threadbare blankets were set aflame. Some students, in a symbolic cleansing, burned nearly everything they owned, save the clothes on their backs. Lucas could see the flickering flames rising above the basketball court, sparks ascending like fleeting memories into the twilight sky. He shook his head, not believing his friend.

“I’m not stupid,” Wafula stated, turning to leave.

“That’s not what I meant.” It was the precipice of their shared history. The last day of high school. “I…don’t know.”

“That was always your problem, Luc. A lack of balls. It will be the end of you. You don’t trust yourself enough.”

“I do. You peed in my locker in Class Six. I said it was you. You denied it, called me a liar, said I did it myself. You said you saw me,” his voice trailed to a whisper.

“I know.”

“No! You don’t know. How could you know? Waf, I only wanted a friend.”

“I know.”

“But you have many.”

“What?”

“I knew,” Lucas repeated, his voice barely a whisper.

“I don’t know what you…”

“Waf, it’s okay.”

“No!”

Lucas recoiled. “Okay, okay.”

“No, Lucas. You don’t get to do that.”

“What?” His bushy eyebrows drew together in confusion.

“You don’t get to come here and say things like that.”

“Like what? What am I supposed to do with this information? I can’t tell anyone, it’s the last day of school. I just want to go home tomorrow and forget these things ever happened.”

“You don’t mean that.” Wafula narrowed the distance between them, getting closer to Lucas in the aisle between lockers.

“It’s true. I don’t want anything to do with the memories at this school, with everything that happened, the humiliation,” his voice cracked, the carefully constructed facade crumbling. “I can’t do it. I’ll probably have to talk to someone about it.”

“Someone, what? Someone like who? Who will you talk to about your little problems? Poor Lukey had it bad, huh? Poor Lukey. Who will you talk to, Lukey?” Wafula’s voice dripped with mock sympathy.

“Stop!” Lucas’s voice cracked with desperation. At the gate, Bad Boy, the towering watchman, straightened himself and began his deliberate march towards the classrooms.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Wafula sneered, a flicker of annoyance crossing his features.

“Let him come. At least Bad Boy will know the kind of person you are.”

“I’m warning you, Lucas.” Wafula took three deliberate steps, his frame now looming menacingly over the smaller boy.

“It’s the last day. Let’s just go home and leave this alone.”

“I bet you’d–” His words were abruptly cut short by the sharp rap of the watchman’s baton against the doorframe. “Vijana mwondoke mpatane na wenzenu,” Bad Boy urged them to join their peers by the bonfire, his deep voice resonating in the sudden quiet.

Wafula turned with exaggerated gentleness, facing the imposing figure of the Masai watchman. “Of course, I was just telling Lucas the same thing.” He sauntered towards the door, his gaze lingering on the vibrant red and white checks of the man’s shuka. “By the way, Bad Boy, I have a new shuka that I’m sure you’d appreciate. My mother insisted I use it as a towel. She seems to think, apparently, my whole body needs to be shrouded when I emerge from the bathroom. It makes me look like a wizard. I’ll have my dad bring it to you tomorrow when he picks me up.” He was out the door before the watchman could formulate a response.

Lucas offered a hurried greeting to Bad Boy before trailing after his departing classmate. “It’s really nice of you to give Bad Boy a shuka.”

“It’s been living in my locker for years. Time it got some use.” They walked towards the distant glow of the bonfire in strained silence.
The next morning, as the Form Four parents picked students from their now alma mater, minutes after Bad Boy had carefully placed the pristine checkered shuka, still encased in its plastic wrapper, on his weathered wooden bench in the small shed by the gates of Friends Academy Secondary School, its red and black vibrant in the sunrise rays, a frantic summon called him to the Form Four East classroom. Lucas Bosire’s body was already cold.