JACOB'S CROSS

Old Memories…….

When they sent Jacob to Mathare Mental Institution in Nairobi , I thought I would never have to see or think about him again. Twenty years later, Grandfather died. No one but Grandmother and I turned up to mourn his passing. I had never given much thought to how sour things must have turned for him and Grandmother since the day Jacob was committed to mental institution for the alleged bizzarre murder of our father.

Grandmother took her time before she recognised me. When she did, joy obscured the grief in her eyes for a moment.

“Elina! I thought I had lost you forever!” she cried as she clasped me to her. I could feel her tears on my shoulder and the familiar palm scent of her skin oil. She walked me to her hut, which seemed even smaller than I remembered it. While she rattled around her fireplace trying to heat something up for me, I studied the old black and white photographs all over the earthen walls. I found only one with Jacob and me together with father and mother. In it, I am a smiling plumb child and Jacob is this skiny little boy with a nice smile, I remember mother telling us to smile for the photoman. Father looked ready to burst with pride as he stands behind Mama, enveloping us with his arms. Mama is looking beautiful in a flowered dress and she is tilting her head to one side, her eyes on father. One could see the love between them. Grandmother caught me looking as she came and gave me a bowl of soup she had heated and bread. “He was such a lovely little boy that Jacob. Easy to love, always smiling. And always so eager to help me with everything. I worried it was because he wanted to make sure we wouldn’t stop loving him. As if we would or I could! Even after one does the unthinkable... You always love your flesh and blood, no matter what ,” she said as she urged me to take the soup.

“There was a lot of whispering that it was us, the family’s fault,” she said.

Her eyes were dull and sad as though years of shame had drained the colour out of them. “We brought him up, after all. Others blamed your mother, saying she left without bringing her children up to adulthood.. Your mother was always quickly angered, but she didn’t start acting strangely untiil the shock of losing your father to another woman caught up with her.. You could hardly say it was her fault, but people always want to put the blame somewhere. How is she now?” she asked.

“Physically well. Very strong, in fact,”I said

“We never heard a word from her since she took you away. For a long time I thought she might get well enough to come for Jacob. As time went on, I hoped she might come to see him at least,” her eyes darkened I could see a flick of anger there.

“How is Jacob?” I asked, not out of any genuine interest but because I couldn’t talk to her about mother.

“I haven’t been to see him since last month,” She said, “I hear the doctors are saying he is responding well to treatment and that they might release him soon.”

I frowned.

“Are they sure they’re going to let him out?,”I asked

“Yes. They think he’s ready. He told them he accepted he did it and that he is ill. Apparently he’s doing well with his treatment. But,” she hesitated. I might be family, but she hardly knows me well enough to confide in me she and I were never close. Perhaps it was out of the need to want to confide in someone that she continued anyway, “He told me something.”

“Something... bad?,” I asked

“I think he’s telling them what they want to hear. I don’t believe he’s really any better, I think he will do it again,” She said a worried look on her face.

“Shouldn’t you tell someone at the hospital?” I asked her

“I can’t,” she looked down at her tightly-clasped gnarled hands with veins criss-crossing the backs of them creating green ridges. “It would be a betrayal. He trusts no one in this world except me. I don’t know what it would do to him if he were to find out I’d told you or anyone.”

“But you think he should stay where he is?”I asked her.

There was a long pause before she mouthed the word ‘Yes.’

“But he’ll be released if you don’t say anything,” I probed

“Yes.”

After studying her hands for a while longer, she looked me in the eye, “You could do it,” she said, before I could list my excuses: he doesn’t know me; it’s a long way; I have responsibilities.

She said, “He told me he can prove he is innocent. He says he’s got evidence now that he plans to take to the authorities as soon as he’s out. You should have heard him rambling on about how DNA could never be wrong and that forensic science is now advanced and it was easier to prove innocence by comparing someone’s DNA from the crime scene.”

Now that set me thinking.

Barred windows….

Before I could meet Jacob, a stone –faced female nurse searched me with a thoroughness that allowed no room for modesty, then escorted me through a maze of shiny-floored corridors and white doors. We marched out into the lush green of the hospital grounds. I quickened my pace as we passed the looming grey structure of the main building , it could have passed for a campus dormitory but the Hundreds of small barred windows staring down at me with sightless black eyes and the secured entrance was a dead give-away. It was what it was, a mental institution.

The nurse matched me step for step as she spoke, “Jacob ni kijana mzuri, amepona sasa na atatoka hivi karibuni.” Jacob is a nice young man and he is now healed and will be released soon.

The nurse showed me around as she explained that only their low-risk patients were housed in that building. The nurse then led me into a cosy living room for patients and their visitors and went to fect Jacob.

The knot in my stomach tightened while I waited. I wondered if it would be like the last time. Seeing Jacob then had stirred memories buried so deep and long ago that I had thought they were dreams. Memories of happier times, before Father married the other woman, and before mama ceased to be the good old loving mama I used to adore. Before Jacob and I were separated and the harmony of our lives shattered.

Beautiful brother……

The doors opened and I stopped breathing. The moment I laid eyes on him I let out a breath and the knot in my stomach unravelled. Now in his early thirties, he still had the face of an angel with the his dark soulful eyes, he was still my handsome twin brother.

Jacob sat in the sofa opposite me, shifted about, then relaxed back into the leather cushion. I smiled at the male version of me, my saviour.

“Wow Elina!,” he said. “You’re beautiful, my beautiful sister, a female version of me.”

I wanted to tell him how the soft deep sound of his voice, brought to mind images of our father and transported me to a carefree happier past but I couldn’t.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

“I can’t believe you’re here, after all this time. I always dreamt of meeting you one day. I never thought it would somewhere like this,” He said his eyes never leaving mine.

Jacob put his hand in his pocket and brought out a coloured picture of us. Him and me. It was

“What about mother, will she come to see me?” He asked

“No. She’s too unwell. I’m sorry,” I told him feeling a tightening of my throat, I felt sorry for him and I blamed myself, I would have been the one he was coming to see. The guilt washed over me, I should have come more often.

I would have been the one in Mathare Mental Hospital.

“How’s Grandmother?” he asked at last.

“Ok, considering. She told me all about you growing up, grandmother loves you .” I told him

“I still remember him,” He said.

I knew he was referring to father.

“I don’t remember much about him; his voice was kind and his laugh was loud. we were only eight when he died,” I said

“ When you killed him, you mean.” He said but there was no trace of anger or blame in his voice, he said it casually.

“You know he deserved it,” I said

Jacob said nothing.

“It was a terrible time for mother,” I continued. “She was so ill with grief and didn’t even know you were there half the time. She still misses you and father,” I lied.

Mother is no longer capable of remembering, much less missing, her once beloved husband and son. She has been affected by murder of father.

“Why did she only take you?” Jacob’s voice quivered a little.

“To protect you, I suppose. It was difficult for her to take you knowing what you had done,” I said.

“What she thought I had done, you mean,”he said.

“Has it been hard on you in here?” I asked

“I’m warm, well fed and I’ve plenty to do,”Jacob answered., “I feel safe in here, no one is condemning me here and baying for my blood. No one is concerned with the other here.”

“Why did you do it Elina? Why did you kill father?,” He asked, “and it was terrible, the knife wounds, the blood”

“You know what he did, Jacob? You what he did to mother first then to me,”I said the old rage rising up in me.

“And I paid for your sins all this years,” He said, “ I knew you would take your own life if you were cooped up here like me. You have no idea. It has been difficult.”

“I could have paid for them myself if you had let me. Swift justice I call it.What makes you want to give me away now..? “ I asked,“Grandmother says you got evidence, what is it you got?”

To Be Continued............