Writing Lives

Like Datsun

45 Amai Bettina’s nagging desire to witness the evangelical miracles taking place in the sports stadium, gave rise to a most remarkable day. Not only was her wish unfulfilled, but events unfolded in a manner that left Amai Bettina – generally known for her outspokeness in the face of tribulation – forever suspended in a state of wonder. Had she been capable of speech on reaching her small bungalow in Unit G, Seke, when asked by her ever-solemn child how her day had been, Amai Bettina would have responded with gusto, ‘Bettina mwana ’ngu! What I saw today?’ A shake of the head, palms clapped together, ‘You would not like it. Never in your life!’ And, this prelude over, she would begin her story from the most logical place – the beginning. ‘Do you remember Bettina, the year your father’s relatives came here to pay reparations for all the wrongs your father inflicted upon me?’ Bettina did remember because what had followed was a confusing period in which her mother had suffered an unmanageable surplus of funds. Amai Bettina, never having had so much money before, had not known what to do with it. She did not have a bank account – she did not know anyone who did – but her real problem was that if the money were to serve its purpose, it should be spent on herself and her relatives, Like Datsun Blessing Musariri 46 Writing Lives but not on her children, who were considered as one with their father. The trouble was that Amai Bettina had long fallen out with her relatives and was not prepared to entertain any ideas, which they might have had, about sharing her fortune – though whether it was good fortune, was increasingly questionable. So, despite Bettina’s need for new uniforms and textbooks, Amai Bettina was eventually forced into giving generous bequests to those relatives whose offences she re-evaluated as pardonable. ‘Amongst many of the misdemeanours of your father – the only person ever, to see the end of my patience, is the issue of Datsun 120Y.’ Inexplicably, Amai Bettina always referred to the rusty yellow heap of metal on wheels as if she was talking about a person – naDatsun 120Y uyu, she would say, instead of neDatsun 120Y iyo – a thing. Everyone simply adjusted, as they did to all Amai Bettina’s peculiarities, she was simply that kind of person. ‘Anyway, your father left the house saying he was going to the store to buy jam. Did I tell you this story before, Bettina? No I don’t think so.’ She had. Many times, but Bettina knowing better would hold her silence. ‘Anyway, he came back, naDatsun 120Y uyu. That by itself was not a crime. Ayewha! No, there’s no crime when a hard-working person uses his money to improve his life. But your father wouldn’t have known hard work if it crept into his trousers and said a nice hullo. No! So he stood there, proudly showing me Datsun, and telling me that he’d found a good use for the money I’d been saving – my money, from my groundnut harvest. Mine. From which, amongst other things, I was going to buy blankets for my mothers.’ On that day, after chewing off her husband’s ear with cutting precision and a mild attack of the dramatics – rolling around on the ground and wailing to the neighbourhood at large about the misappropriation of her funds – Amai Bettina rallied and roundly declared, ‘Datsun uyu ka, is going to be the death of me.’ It was said with such conviction, it was almost a promise. And, had she been capable of speech on her return from her outing, she would have said, ‘Bettina, mwanangu, I never spoke a truer word that day! Now, you saw me get up this morning, like I do every day, ka? Eh- 47 Like Datsun by Blessing Musariri he-e. So I said to myself, ‘Amai Bettina, today is the day that you will go to this new church and see for yourself, gold and diamonds falling from the sky to cover the congregation. You can hear only so much from other people before you have to see with your own eyes. Didn’t you tell me Bettina that you heard about women’s skirts falling off their bodies because the pastor had performed a weight-loss miracle? What about those...