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Minutes of Glory 1
Her name was Wanjiru. But she liked better her Christian one,
Beatrice. It sounded more pure and more beautiful. Not that
she was ugly; but she could not be called beautiful either. Her
body, dark and full fleshed, had the form, yes, but it was as if it
waited to be filled by the spirit. She worked in beer-halls
where sons of women came to drown their inner lives in beer
cans and froth. Nobody seemed to notice her. Except, per-
haps, when a proprietor or an impatient customer called out
her name, Beatrice; then other customers would raise their
heads briefly, a few seconds, as if to behold the bearer of such a
beautiful name, but not finding anybody there, they would
resume their drinking, their ribald jokes, their laughter and
play with the other serving girls. She was like a wounded bird
in flight: a forced landing now and then but nevertheless
wobbling from place to place so that she would variously be
found in Alaska, Paradise, The Modern, Thome and other
beer-halls all over Limuru. Sometimes it was because an irate
proprietor found she was not attracting enough customers; he
would sack her without notice and without a salary. She
would wobble to the next bar. But sometimes she was simply
tired of nesting in one place, a daily witness of familiar scenes;
girls even more decidedly ugly than she were fought over by
numerous claimants at closing hours. What do they have that I
don't have? she would ask herself, depressed. She longed for
a bar-kingdom where she would be at least one of the rulers,
where petitioners would bring their gifts of beer, frustrated
smiles and often curses that hid more lust and love than hate.
She left Limuru town proper and tried the mushrooming
townlets around. She worked at Ngarariga, Kamiritho, Rironi
and even Tiekunu and everywhere the story was the same.
Oh, yes, occasionally she would get a client; but none cared for her as she would have liked, none really wanted her enough to
fight over her. She was always a hard-up customer's last
resort. No make-believe even, not for her that sweet pretence
that men indulged in after their fifth bottle of Tusker. The
following night or during a pay-day, the same client would
pretend not to know her; he would be trying his money-power
over girls who already had more than a fair share of admirers.
She resented this. She saw in every girl a rival and adopted a
sullen attitude. Nyaguthii especially was the thorn that always
pricked her wounded flesh. Nyaguthii arrogant and aloof, but
men always in her courtyard; Nyaguthii fighting with men,
and to her they would bring propitiating gifts which she
accepted as of right. Nyaguthii could look bored, impatient,
or downright contemptuous and still men would cling to her
as if they enjoyed being whipped with biting words, curled
lips and the indifferent eyes of a free woman. Nyaguthii was
also a bird in flight, never really able to settle in one place, but
in her case it was because she hungered for change and excite-
ment: new faces and new territories for her conquest. Beatrice
resented her very shadow. She saw in her the girl she would
have liked to be, a girl who was both totally immersed in and
yet completely above the underworld of bar violence and sex.
Wherever Beatrice went the long shadow of Nyaguthii would
sooner or later follow her.
She fled Limuru for Ilmorog in Chiri District. Ilmorog had
once been a ghost village, but had been resurrected to life by
that legendary woman, Nyang'endo, to whom every pop
group had paid their tribute. It was of her that the young
dancing Muthuu and Muchun g'wa sang:
When I left Nairobi for Ilmorog
Never did I know
I would bear this wonder-child mine
Nyang'endo.
As a result, Ilmorog was always seen as a town of hope where
the weary and the down-trodden would find their rest and
fresh water. But again Nyaguthii followed her.
She found that Ilmorog, despite the legend, despite the songs arid dances, was not different from Limuru. She tried
various tricks. Clothes? But even here she never earned
enough to buy herself glittering robes. What was seventy-five
shillings a month without house allowance, posho, without
salaried boy-friends? By that time, Ambi had reached Ilmorog,
and Beatrice thought that this would be the answer. Had she
not, in Limuru, seen girls blacker than herself transformed
overnight from ugly sins into white stars by a touch of skin-
lightening creams? And men would ogle them, would even
talk with exaggerated pride of their newborn girl friends. Men
were strange creatures, Beatrice thought in moments of sear-
ching analysis. They talked heatedly against Ambi, Butone,
Firesnow, Moonsnow, wigs, straightened hair; but they al-
ways went for a girl with an Ambi-lightened skin and head
covered with a wig made in imitation of European or Indian
hair. Beatrice never tried to find the root cause of this black
self-hatred, she simply accepted the contradiction and applied
herself to Ambi with a vengeance. She had to rub out her black
shame. But even Ambi she could not afford in abundance; she
could only apply it to her face and her arms so that her legs and
neck retained their blackness. Besides there were parts of her
face she could not readily reach-behind the ears and above
the eyelashes, for instance-and these were a constant source
of shame and irritation for her Ambi-self.
She would always remember this Ambi period as one of her
deepest humiliation before her later minutes of glory. She
worked in Ilmorog Starlight Bar and Lodging. Nyaguthii with
her bangled hands, her huge earrings, served behind the
counter. The owner was a good Christian soul who regularly
went to church and paid all his dues to Harambee projects.
Pot-belly. Grey hairs. Soft-spoken. A respectable family man,
well known in Ilmorog. Hardworking even, for he would not
leave the bar until the closing hours, or more precisely, until
Nyaguthii left. He had no eyes for any other girl; he hung
around her, and surreptitiously brought her gifts of clothes
without receiving gratitude in kind. Only the promise. Only
the hope for tomorrow. Other girls he gave eighty shillings a
month. Nyaguthii had a room to herself. Nyaguthii woke up
whenever she liked to take the stock. But Beatrice and the
other girls had to wake up at five or so, make tea for the
To be continued |
