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The day Mama threw a cooking stick at Kagonya was a November day so hot that the ripened bananas hanging on sisal rope from the kitchen roof were beginning to turn black Mama had been sitting on a low stool staring at the sufuria as the pumpkin leaves boiled off their green, humming along to Cha Kutumaini Sina on the radio Baby, two years old, sucked on Mama’s sagging left breast I was bent over our blue bucket, washing utensils because the duty rota on the wall said it was my turn   Our maid Kagonya had arrived with Mama in the clove of the season, when the heat shimmered on the tarmac road We heard a knock on the front door that we scurried to open because it was about Christmas time and we knew Mama would be carrying a box full of Zesta jam and Tropicana chapati flour and maybe even orange Treetop juice   Kagonya had fit in so neatly, at first Like a slip stitch, she hemmed herself into our lives and patched up our torn She got to work, teaching us to save mango seeds, peeling the skin of nduma tubers so thinly and smoothening out our loose She worked like clockwork, waking at four in the morning, moving noiselessly through every chore But then something changed Her interactions with Mama became eggshell brittle, leading to a moment when everything cracked   *   Because he slept on the sofa in the sitting room, my brother Kuka was the first to overhear our parents’ plans of moving house Baaba, a secondary school teacher, had received a transfer letter from the Teachers Service Commission His new posting was in Kakamega and we were to move into a big blue house in Amalemba with a toilet inside and a bathtub even   ‘I heard Baaba describe it I swear, Bible red!’ Kuka licked the tip of his index finger then raised it to the sky ‘Haki our new house is not small and weepy, like this one It has a veranda, three bedrooms and a small garden’   I nodded excitedly Everything Kuka overheard always came