The Bull vs. the Housekeeper

Odwar fought to hold back the yawn ballooning in his chest. He clenched his jaw, sealed his lips shut, and tried to force his body to stop drawing in air. But his lungs continued to fill up. Loudly. His nostrils flared and hissed like two mini hoovers, trying to suck up all the air in the room.

Hoping to muffle the sound, he raised a balled fist to his mouth and pressed it up against his nose. But that didn’t work. In fact, it made things even worse. With his airways partly blocked, the hiss turned into a loud, high-pitched, nasally whistle.

He quickly dropped his hand and ping-ponged his eyes nervously between the two other people seated at the dining table that morning. With Mum being away for work, it was just three of them at breakfast: his dad, seated at the head of the table, with his brother Gor next to him on the right, and then Odwar, several empty seats away from them both.

Two sets of eyebrows — one raised in surprise, the other wrinkled in disapproval — met his darting eyes. And in that moment, it struck Odwar how identical the faces at that table actually were, including his own.

How they could look so similar and yet be so different baffled him. Like his dad and Gor, he had smooth, dark skin and a chiselled face, and he wore his hair in a neat fade. Like them, he had an athletic build and stood almost a foot taller than his mates. The three also shared the same magnetic personality, the kind that made them wildly popular in school, or in the case of their father, popular in the Kenyan government.

Yup, they were alike in many ways, but now, all that seemed to matter was the one thing that made Odwar different from the two of them: his newly acquired gift.

This gift had created an invisible wall, separating him from the men in his family. A wall that seemed to grow wider and taller with each passing moment. It made every situation tense, awkward, painful.

And so, in the room filled with dark elegant woods, surrounded by richly-coloured drapery and with a dazzling chandelier overhead, the only sounds to be heard were the clinking of metal against porcelain as the three ate in rigid silence.

Then came The Yawn.

One shrill, oxygen-sapping breath in.

One long, ear-popping breath out.

Odwar froze.

Maybe it wasn’t that loud. Maybe Dad hadn’t heard. Maybe he’d be grateful the air had come out of one end and not the other.

“Do you know what yawns are?” Dad’s voice boomed across the table.

Maybe not.

Odwar winced as he sank deep into the cushioned dining chair, wishing the plush velvet would swallow him whole. He knew what was coming next: one of Dad’s lectures.

“I asked you a question,” Dad rumbled, impatience etched into his voice.

Odwar swallowed hard on a spoonful of millet porridge.

“Y-yes, sir. Yawns are a sign of laziness,” he answered. Gluing his eyes to the porridge in front of him, Odwar sighed inwardly. He’d heard his father give this particular speech more than a few times in his twelve years of life.

“Correct. They’re a sign of laziness. Laziness of the mind or of the body. Which one of those are you suffering from, son?”

Dad smoothed the corners of his raven-black moustache, then planted his palms on the table and leaned forward. He turned his head to one side and pointed at his right ear, a gesture that always prompted quick replies from those it was directed at.

Odwar scrambled to think of an answer that would put an end to the scolding, or at least not make things any worse. But nothing came. Even though he had been in this situation more times than he could remember, his mind was completely blank. His friend Maina called moments of utter confusion like these brain farts, always seeming to get them when teachers called on him in class. This was Odwar’s biggest brain fart of all time.

Desperate, he sent a pleading look in his brother’s direction, but Gor kept his eyes fixed on the table. No surprises there. Nothing had been the same between them since Odwar had acquired the one thing Gor had wanted all his life — a superpower.

Only one of them could get it. Only one child in a generation could inherit the superpowers of their legendary ancestor, Lwanda Magere. Everyone thought it would be Gor. Even the name given to him at birth was special: Gor, named after Gor Mahia, the most powerful magician to ever live amongst the Luo people. It was the perfect name for the boy who everyone thought would be the superhero of the family.

Except, he wasn’t. It was Odwar who was gifted with supernatural powers. Odwar: the younger, smaller, far-from-perfect brother.

Everything had changed once it was clear that he was the chosen one, and Gor wasn’t.

There was a time when Gor, who was eighteen years old and looked like Odwar’s taller twin, would have jumped to his rescue at that table. He would have come up with some way to distract Dad and ease the tension. Afterwards, when they were alone, Odwar would have thanked him, and his brother would have slapped him on the back and told him that that was what brothers were for.

But that was then. Now? Now, Gor didn’t even spare him a look.

“I asked you a question,” Dad said, raising his voice. “Is it your mind that’s lazy or your body?”

Odwar dared to look up at him. “Neither, sir. Sorry, it won’t happen again.”

Father and son held eye contact for one more painful second, before the former blew out an exasperated sigh and returned to reading the newspaper in his hands.

Odwar slouched back into his seat and brooded as he gulped down almost-cold porridge. Dad was always picking on him, like it was his fault that fate had chosen him instead of Gor. His fault that he was the gifted one. His fault that his superpower had manifested at the same time as three other kids’, something that had never happened before.

Dad had been harder on him ever since he and his friends had discovered just how special they were. All four of them were Intasimi, a word meaning magical charm. They were the chosen ones, the ones who would carry on the magical legacies of their legendary ancestors. What was more, Odwar and his friends weren’t just a bunch of kids with powers. They weren’t just Intasimi descendants. They were Intasimi Warriors, a group of kids with magical strengths who were all exactly the same age. Together, they were destined to use their powers to protect the world from evil.

None of it was his fault, and yet it seemed like Dad punished him for it every day.

He was still stewing in the unfairness of it all when the housekeeper shuffled through the large French doors that led into the dining room. She was a petite woman with tight cornrows in her hair and wore a standard black housekeeping dress with a starchy white apron tied at the waist. In her hands, she held a silver platter with Dad’s porridge bowl on it. His breakfast was always the last to be served, straight from the cooker and lava-hot, just the way he liked it.

It must have been this housekeeper’s first day of work because Odwar had never seen her before. And judging from the way her hands trembled as she gripped the dish, she had already heard about Dad’s quick temper.

The other house staff called dad “The Bull”. And although nobody would dare call him that to his face, Odwar found the nickname to be remarkably accurate. Just like a bull, Dad raged when he was mad, mauling everyone in sight with the brutality of his words.

Beads of sweat dribbled down the housekeeper’s forehead, sliding past her lips which she licked nervously. Her approach towards the table was painfully slow while still managing to be devastatingly wobbly, like the worst possible contestant in an egg and spoon race.

Odwar noticed that the bowl she carried was far too full of porridge. She, far too nervous. There was absolutely no way she was going to stick the landing without a disastrous spill.

He watched as his father folded away his newspaper and then rapped his fingertips impatiently against the table, eyes flicking from the housekeeper’s pinched face to the tray she held out in front of her.

And then it happened. She took one final, jerky step, hesitated for a brief moment and then, seeming to make the decision to get it over with as quickly as possible, lurched forward and slammed the tray onto the table.

The result was, as Odwar had predicted, a complete catastrophe. The silver dish clattered onto the table, causing the bowl atop to bounce and spin on its base. With each whirl, heavy dollops of porridge splashed into the air and landed on every surface, including all over Dad’s shiny suit. After what felt like hours, the clamorous spinning mercifully came to an end, leaving behind stunned, pin-drop silence in the room. It was so quiet that when a glob of porridge dripped from Dad’s nose and landed on the table with a splat, it sounded like someone had just been slapped on the cheek with a fish.

The wide-eyed confusion on Dad’s face was priceless and Odwar had to purse his lips as a bubble of laughter floated up his throat. He would have burst into a fit of uncontrollable giggles if, just then, the housekeeper hadn’t let out a terrified whimper and slapped a trembling hand over her mouth. Her eyes were frozen open and she was shaking like a tattered flag in a storm.

Odwar’s amusement was quickly snuffed out. He knew he had to act. Dad’s face was already twisting, making him look so much like a raging bull that horns were likely to sprout from his head at any moment. His chest was heaving...