SHIMANI BREAKS HIS GIRL

“Who is this brown, tall, ample bosomed girl, who dances as if she has no bones? Shimani wondered to himself.

The girl had a pale, copper-colored skin and a curvy bounce step that seemed to connive to compel men into thinking dangerous thoughts. She, predictably, got Shimani doing that, wanting her so desperately that he forgot that he was a newcomer, a stranger in a strange land.

When the song ended, the girl stood in the glare of the bonfire to spread her beauty for all to see. In a melodious tone that matched her features atom by atom, she thanked the audience for the applause. Then with a small bow, she went to join other girls seated on reed mats.

But it was hard for her to sit down, everyone wanted to pump her hand and shower tons of praise. When she finally managed to sit down, it was next to a short brown girl with alert, cruel eyes of a snake. She reminded one of a chaperon. Shimani could not contain himself; he plucked some courage and hurriedly went for her, fearing to lose the girl to another man.

He surveyed himself mentally, pushed his deerstalker to one side, and folded one rim to reveal a portion of his brown face, his trademark brown face from a Sotho mother. He blew some air while tightening his lips around an unlit cigarette which he dangled carelessly to one side of his mouth. With a Johannesburg strut, he walked towards the girls.

“Hi girls!” he greeted the girls casually, trying to sound social.

“Hi sir!” they answered almost in chorus. But there was this light-skinned girl who was answering more hotly than the others. Her name was Penelope Bongo. He ignored her completely as he turned to Beatrice, the dancer, seated a bit further to the other side.

“Nice evening ha!” he tried to grab her attention, beaming a big smile. When she did not respond in a coy way, he decided a more direct approach would harm no one.

“Beatrice! Excuse me?” he called for her attention. She raised her eyes to look at him with every indication that as far as she was concerned he did not exist. The fact that he had got the correct pronunciation of her name was no more shocking than seeing a lizard pretending to be a crocodile in a circus.

“Yes! What is it with my name?” she enjoyed public acclaim delivered at a distance in an impersonal way. She did not approve of people intruding into her little personal world, people breaching her well-designed security guarding her private life. This man was attempting to do just that.

“Yes Beatrice, can I talk to you just one minute?” he asked picking her right hand and tagging her to stand in a friendly gesture.

Beatrice’s big eyes white eyeballs looked at Shimani, surveying him from head to toe before she twisted her lips in contempt. In a tone totally inconsistent with her beauty, she threw him her rejection;

“Why should I talk to you, I don’t seem to know you?” she said rather rudely, keeping her eyes drilling his like someone who really didn’t care.

“My name is Shimani,” Shimani said trying very much to impress her. “I just arrived from South Africa last week.”

“I have heard about Shimani,” she said. “But it is either you have similar names or you a useless liar.”

“Why do you say that? Shimani’s heart was now racing; the girl would be a hard nut to crack.

“You are far from the picture of Shimani I had in my mind,” she said. “And please let go of my arm, get lost.”Beatrice shook off his grip violently almost attracting the attention of bouncers. They looked at Shimani as if they would start tearing him to pieces.

Just then the MC shouted “Hello Shimani! Come and sit here. I want to know about…Oh sorry.”

“Hi, Fle…” he couldn’t finish because he saw the girl leaving him.

He was extending an arm when the shout brought Beatrice to a standstill. She looked at Shimani and put a hand to her mouth like someone who had offended fate.”Mamaaa!” she said.

 “Please Beatrice talk to me, just a bit,” Shimani was now frantic.

 “But I am talking to you, aren’t I?” Beatrice said, now with a hooker’s smile playing on her big lips. Her eyes were the latest ponds where twinkling mischief was swimming delightfully.

“Ok, but let’s talk there where even mosquitoes become blind,” he said, pointing at the back of a tent with his right forefinger.

“No you,” Beatrice refused weakly; her eyelids started dancing, whether to tantalize or scare only the moon witnessing the event might have the answer.

“Please Beatrice, just a little talk,” Shimani felt an overpowering desire for the girl, so he pulled her towards the back of a grass-thatched tent with eaves almost touching the ground.

“But I want to dance,” she protested weakly like a broken leaf on water. “Will you let me come back to dance?”

“No problem,” Shimani said baiting her, “in fact, I want you to dance with me, but first things first.”

Beatrice cut her reluctance, followed Shimani towards the shadows of mango trees like a lamb.

“You, let’s talk just here,” she said when they reached the shadows, a few yards from the dance floors.

“Alright, this place is good enough,” Shimani said but expertly pulled her further than the shadows, leaned against the wall and pulled her close to his body, no he pulled her into his body.

The girl crushed into his body without saying anything. Her body started getting hot and her breathing came in gasps. Her arrow-shaped breasts stood hard stabbing Shimani’s chest like sweet thorns. She almost collapsed into his arms, but quickly pushed him away before saying; “Tell me why you brought me here; I don’t trust men, especially you.”

In answer, Shimani tried to plant a kiss on her moist lips beaming an invitation two inches from his. Beatrice dropped her head to avoid the kiss. Then he said;

“You are cute, babe.” 

“I already know that,” Beatrice said now drawing arcs on the ground.

“I want you to be my girl,” Shiman said.

“I don’t want,” Beatrice said but was avoiding the man’s eyes.

“Why don’t you want?” Shimani’s heart was now galloping in fear.

“I don’t love you,” she said, her neck still broken, head looking down. But he lifted her face to look directly into her eyes.

“You are lying, why don’t you love me?”

“You are very ugly,” she laughed, “you look like a fox?”

“I need a more sensible reason, not that,” Shimani said lacking all originality.

“That reason is good enough,” she said with a dangerous smile. “If you have nothing more to say I am going back to my friends.”

“Beatrice please, be serious,” Shimani was now pleading.

Beatrice looked at him, realized he didn’t know how to present a scientific manifesto. “I have told you already that I don’t love you, let me go now,” she said “I can’t take no for an answer,” Shimani said menacingly, “I love you too much.”

“Today you will take it, I am sorry.”

“Why do you say that?”

“How can you love me so much when you have just met me tonight?” she asked incredulously. “Does love grow that fast, like hunger?”

“I have seen women before but none ever pruned the feathers of my peace as the present one,” Shimani said reading from one of the novels he read for literature before his expulsion from school.

 “That is nonsense you think I am a fool right?” Beatrice asked and immediately pulled away before Shimani could stop her. Beatrice tried to swim further into safer waters away from the deep waters infected with sharks attacking her like kisses. “How can he choose me out of all the girls around, he thinks I am cheap, right?”She was now thinking.

Shimani remained alone nursing a wounded pride. Then he remembered what grandpa had told him. In fact, he was carrying it in his pocket. He lit it and pulled two or three times while mentioning Beatrice’s name and then went for her again.

 “Beatrice, I’m in love with you,” Shimani whispered the words with a musical tone exactly the way he heard one singer do it. “Please give me a chance to be your boyfriend.”His heart was beating very fast fearing what the girl’s eyes were trying to say.

“What is that in your hands?” Beatrice asked. She had seen the cigarette, it was still smoldering. It was something she strongly disapproved of.

“It is a cigarette,” Shimani answered without the slightest hint as to where the question was leading to. In fact, it was not even a proper cigarette. It was love medicine which boys smoked when they wanted to conquer girls.

“You smoke cigarettes with your mouth; the same mouth which is saying you love me, right?” she asked.

“Yes, do you disapprove of cigarettes?” Shimani was baffled by the kind of response from the girl. She was either childish or uncivilized.

“I am a Christian girl and my family is full of SDA Christians who have no interest in cigarette smokers, please let me go now,” she flung words at him in a final refusal.

Shimani panicked, “So this thing doesn’t work at all” he complained. He threw it away and decided to use raw power instead. He followed her one more time.

Meanwhile, Beatrice was also in despair. “This Shimani doesn’t know how to break a girl fast enough, sure?”

She was still musing things to herself when he gripped her shoulder and pulled her into the shadows again.

“I am sorry Beatrice, but this act shows how much I love you,” he said.

 “Aaa, you also, why persist like this? Beatrice said. “I will tell my boyfriend.”

“I love you deeply that is why,” Shimani said. “I won’t stop until you agree to be mine, whether you have a boyfriend or not.”

“Okay, I have seen that you are serious,” she said, “but I need time to think about your love proposal.”

 “How much time do you need, darling?”Shimani was happy that finally, the no mountain was crumbling.

“Maybe two weeks,” Beatrice starting the ceremony of flicking one finger after another while tossing her head sideways like someone solving a maths problem.

“Two weeks is too long…..” Shimani answered.

“No, time is never long if you really love someone,” she said.

“That is fine with me,” Shimani was elated. “But I want  you to dance with me tonight?”

“Okay,” Beatrice said, said while looking down, her toe started scratching the ground like a chicken scavenging for food

Shimani was just about to try a kiss when Magwaza, the local champion came to start fighting, spoiling everything.