A Rose for Kayla

In London during summer, the sun doesn’t go down on time, it lingers long after the children have gone to sleep. In the morning, it peeks out a little too early. I was used to an equal division of time between day and night. But for the first time in weeks, I was grateful for this early appearance and late departure of the sun. I was also grateful for the searing heat. As I sat on the park bench watching parents reluctantly push their kids on the swings or cheer them as they swung on the monkey bar, I over analysed, like an aged professor, the events in my life that led me to that bench. There I sat, surrounded by happy people who couldn’t see the tears in my eyes or the bruises that were so visible on my dark skin.

Then a frame blocked the sun that my bruised body so desperately needed. I had not eaten for days and a dose of vitamin D was my only hope for nutrition.

“Hi!” he said.

I looked up with one eye squinted. There stood in front of me a tall man who appeared to touch the sky. His whole appearance – from how he was dressed to his manicured hair – told me he was way above my league. But I didn’t want to be rude. “Hello!”

“What happened to your face?”

“I fell!” I answered with a hint of anger in my voice. I mean what did it matter to him that I had a bruised and wounded face.

“You fell?”

"What do you care?” I asked angrily. All I wanted was to be left alone with my thoughts. However, for a few seconds, I worried he might be the police. My heart raced. I did not want to be deported looking like a boxing heavy weight. I was about to tell a lie when he spoke with a kindness that caught me off guard.

“I am a doctor and those are not injuries from falling. But…. I can help you.”

The tears I’d been holding for weeks threatened to flow and wreck my already ruined face. I tried to speak, but the lump in my throat rendered me incapable of speech.

I stood up ready to walk away with whatever dignity I could manage.

“I can help you,” he said again. This time his voice was that of concern. I stopped.

“Thanks,” I said.

He extended his hand, “my name is Mark, nice to meet you.”

“My name is Kayla, nice to meet you too,” I said as I extended my swollen hand.

The night before I was held captive by a group of women, women who I thought were my trusted friends – I’d known them since childhood. I was held captive and beaten to within an inch of my life by these friends. I couldn’t go to the police; I couldn’t call my family – they were thousands of miles away and besides, there was nothing they could do. None of them, (my family and my friends), knew I was in London. My best friend, Stella, knew where I was, but calling her was futile too – there was nothing she could do from Nairobi.

A few weeks before that night, I landed at Heathrow Airport one May morning, the London sky glittered with silver and golden rays: I was full of hope. My trusted friends picked me up. Our first stop was a fancy restaurant for breakfast where my friends regaled me with tales of how they’d made millions of Kenyan shillings. Of course, I believed them because I had watched as they transformed their parents’ mud huts into bungalows with tiled roofs. I had watched as they, effortlessly, educated every one of their siblings. I had watched as they, effortlessly, set up businesses for their brothers – I, too, wanted my hand in that honey jar. As we ate half-cooked eggs, the four women complimented me on how classy I looked.

I had travelled light as advised by the women: – I wasn’t overly made up or dressed inappropriately or wearing cheap weaves, I looked every inch the businesswoman I told the embassy officials I was. I had one medium-sized suitcase and my carryon was simply an oversized designer handbag I’d spent a fortune on in Toi market. Other than my passport, every document in that designer bag was fake, but proof that I owned a thriving business in the capital. Nothing about me said I was a simple receptionist earning less than £10 a day.

The £2,000 in my purse was loaned to me, by the women, in case the border immigration officers asked to see “cash on you”, otherwise I had business account statements showing I had millions of shillings. The nice immigration officer who interviewed me was more impressed by my age and beauty than the money. It didn’t strike him odd that a twenty-something person could have millions of shillings in some bank – later I heard mine was peanuts compared to most rich young Nigerians who visit the UK every day.

Mark, the kindly doctor-stranger said he would get a first aid kit from his car and I was to stay put. I smiled a crooked smile as every muscle on my face hurt. I watched him as he walked to his car: he was tall and muscly, and he walked with authority. His legs were thick like those of a rugby player – maybe he played when he was not saving lives, I wondered as I watched him disappear behind the park gate. For the first time since I arrived in the UK, I felt the rays of the sun on my skin.

I’d heard of a first aid kit before but had not seen one. Mark returned lugging behind him a green suitcase bigger than the one that carried all my UK possessions. It was like a mini-hospital – it certainly had more medical stuff than my local dispensary back in the village.

As it turned out I needed a few stitches here and there. I gladly let Mark stitch me up like an old sack. His hands were delicate and gentle. His voice was soothing and reassuring.

I told me him I had other injuries in other parts of my body that I couldn’t show him in the park. I knew then, he knew what had happened to me.

“I could take you to a hospital,” he said.

“No! I can’t afford a hospital visit,” those words came out of me before I could think of the consequences.

“You don’t need to pay,” he told me.

I wasn’t interested in the details of that statement, but it reminded me of the words of the immigration officer: “during your stay in the UK, you are not to access any public funds or services”: I was sure free hospital visits were the ‘public services’.

“Maybe you can examine me and decide if I need hospital treatment,” again those words came out of me before I could think of the consequences, it was like I was on fire for all the wrong reasons, reacting to him more than to the current situation.

I couldn’t tell Mark I was a visitor on an expired VISA, or that I owed people thousands of pounds, or that I had no money for food let alone anything else, or that I hadn’t eaten in days or any of the millions things I needed to share with someone.

It was for these reasons I did not hesitate when he asked me to go home with him. As we walked to his car, he plucked a rose from a nearby bush and gave it to me.

To be continued….