Free The Gloaming by Melanie Finn

Dorothea peers out. Her hair is undone completely, an afro arcing round her face. She is wearing pink Winnie-the-Pooh pyjamas. I think they were probably intended for a child.
    She smiles in a small way, ‘Friend, you have come to visit me. Come, come inside, yes.’ She says something to Samwelli, finds cash in her handbag and sends Samwelli off. He comes back shortly with Cokes and sweet sponge cakes. This country runs on sugar.
    The main room is packed with furniture, all of it backed against the wall, nothing placed at an angle. The positioning reminds me of my room at the Goodnight; and how, if I move the chair to a 45-degree angle, Gladness returns it to its original position, so it stands to attention, like a soldier, flush to the wall.
    Dorothea has several large, heavily varnished cabinets which glower over the room. They are so big that there is barely a passage between them and the coffee table. The cabinet tops sprout vases of plastic flowers, teddy bears and other stuffed animals, a ceramic Jesus statue and a set of praying hands. The sofa and two armchairs are faux velvet, pale gray, decorated with electric-green crocheted doilies and antimacassars.
    â€˜Sit, sit,’ Dorothea directs, taking out the cakes and opening the Cokes.
    â€˜I’m not disturbing you?’
    She smiles, ‘No, not you, I am glad you came, you are my good friend.’
    â€˜I thought you might be upset about the other day.’
    â€˜Me? Oh, I am fine. Sure. Fine, fine.’
    â€˜The way that woman died. I keep thinking about it.’
    â€˜It is why these people believe in the
mganga
. Because I cannot help.’
    â€˜But they also believe in you. They brought her to you.’
    â€˜Therefore it is worse when I fail. And I cannot help because I have no car, no radio, nothing, just a white coat.’ She gives me a practical smile and pushes the cakes toward me. ‘You still have the box with those terrible things?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜You know, at first I was very afraid. I thought it was for me. From my husband,’ she says. ‘Isaac is really full of such hate.’
    Dorothea takes a dainty bite of her cake. ‘I left him. He was always going with other women, even with prostitutes. So I took the boys to live with me. We were in Dar es Salaam. He was so angry. He wanted to kill me. But he did something worse.’
    She gets up, and as she unlocks one of the cabinets I feel a sense of intense alarm. What will she show me? What product of hate? Will its toes be smashed, its severed ears wrapped in newspaper? Will it be in a report?
Atrocity
. But instead she brings out a framed photograph of two boys. The picture is staged with the hokey, drab background of a studio and stiff performance smiles.
    â€˜My boys,’ she says. ‘My lovely boys. That is Luke, the big one. He is seven. And Ezekiel, the young one, the baby. He is five.’
    Bright faces, earnest smiles: they wanted to please the photographer. ‘They are very handsome.’
    â€˜Yes,’ she says. ‘But this is an old picture.’
    Again, the alarm sounds. What did Isaac do to them?
    Dorothea takes the picture for herself and touches their faces with her fingertips. ‘Isaac took them, he took them from me. To Kenya, to his tribal place. He is Luo, from north of here, maybe three hundred miles. I don’t know the village. Isn’t that strange? We were married and I never knew the name of his birth village.’
    How easy it would be to nod and smile in agreement. What we don’t know, what we never ask, what seems un-important. Instead, I say, ‘Why did he do that?’
    â€˜Because he could.’ Dorothea frowns. ‘And then he laughed. Isaac called me on the phone and he laughed at me.’
    Ha ha ha. He must have known the pain he was causing her. And he found this amusing. Had he always been this way and she’d just never seen deep enough? There, in his spine, in