Hiti was lost in his little thoughts. Ten years seemed a century. Missing father,violent uncles,pinching grandma,a mystical mother and a pack of mischievous cousins. An only child, his troubles transcended his age. He couldn't fit in his own pond of thoughts.
Sometimes,he questioned his curiosity and critical head. He believed he had missing washers and a few loose nuts. Not that he had a problem with it,no. In fact he mesmerized the idea of the perceived uniqueness.
His appetite for knowledge and a curious note dawned as soon as he could speak. The grandma, a traditionalist who missed an excellent opportunity to marry the richest tycoon -Waithaka-was always bitter with her generation. She took too short a time to suggest their names(her descendants). She hated and couldn't understand how her late husband could die at a tender age of forty. She wept over his death. She wailed on his coffin. She lamented on his grave. She hated her soul for falling for a nice voiced man, a poetic,romantic brat with negligible skills of making money. Hiti asked why he was named Hiti (hyena,a gluttonous,slanting ugly creature). She compared him to the granddaddy.
"Your gluttonous grandfather tricked my sorry youthfulness to his worthless art. He talked,sang and composed of heavens, only to land me in an empire of lack and poverty. And what a rabbit are you to question my intelligence?"this was followed by coloration of inner thighs by the blackened fingers. He didn't expect less,the price of knowledge. At least he knew more than his cousins.
His head was clear,he was suffering an ancestral wrath of his no making. His mother's spirituality wasn't making anything better. Her attempts to exorcise him made him keep off her paths. She could act weirdly,she needed exorcism than he did. She once shared a story of his father. Then, Hiti was at ease with her. She appeared composed,normal, realistic and for the first time he noted her beauty. She glowed. She cared. She smiled.
" The day I met your father, a gentleman of no comparison,I was on my way from the river. At that time, the boys knew no meaning of underpants. To say the least, fathers were lucky to have two. He stood by the roadside. A stranger in his homeland, he had left the village as a boy to study in Nyaikuru. He only reappeared during circumcision and left as soon as the ceremony was over. His studies in secondary school was a prove of his enormous brain. On that day, he ensured I got his attention by helping carry my pot. A good orator,he explained school for me. A real school, not our muddy skeleton on the hill. A school that had electricity! Brick classes, glass windows,painted and cemented! That school, had big shelved office for books,very many,plenty he said." She had a nostalgic pause. She spat a huge foam,coughed slightly staring in the sky as if clicking on the restore memory button.
"He talked of watered pitches. Very flat,worked on by big earth shaking machines he called...graders. They had leather balls and jerseys as those I once saw on the newspaper that wrapped the meat I brought from uncle when I was thirteen years old. Then he stopped the narrative. He carefully placed the pot by the road.He looked into my eyes, held my hand gently. He breathed heavily and said that he wanted me. He would have me. I had no choice. That day, by the roadside,I carried his seed."
The following segment had nothing much interesting. He had heard from the elder uncle. How their sister was duped,denied and how they vowed to avenge.
Unfortunately, the man's influence and affluence grew unexpectedly. He despised and dismissed to have ever slept with an illiterate village girl. If anything, he couldn't mind sending a few upkeep bucks for the 'alleged' bastard. The deal was silently sealed. Save for the grandma, no one else had an idea. Was it not rumoured that the mother 'jumped' her head on realisation that the gentleman turned crook?
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