My feet are killing me by Lydia Mutuku

Published in Qwani 02

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Would you look at that? I am levitating in space.

This, this is a vessel. I am a vessel; I am a ship, and within me is a crew. A classic Captain of the Caribbean’s Black Pearl floating in an empty jar, oblivious to the entirety of the real world; the real true world. Who is my captain? A two-legged, eye patch-wearing, sword-wielding Capt’n Barbossa. I am a ship; I am a big sailor’s ship and I am floating about in the mystical waters of life. No. The mystical waters of space. No, I am a ship, floating in an ebbing void inside my mind, we are about to come ashore. Is this what an overdose of fentanyl does to your mind? I can hear all my thoughts at once, I can see you watching me, listening to me, judging me, are you going to jump in and save me?

Would you look at that? I am levitating in space.

Look at me, a weightless blob floating about in a pool of chlorine and piss dissolved in warm water. There is a strange serenity in being submerged in water. You are completely free of sound. It is the perfect way to pull the mute switch on life. The feel of your body moving concurrently with the sporadic, tender waves; It is like your body is becoming docile, accepting and saying, “Take me as I am”. My wheelchair is already on the floor of the deep end of the pool, completely free of the duty of serving an undeserving master. It’s looking at me in its glistening glory, relaxed and waiting for the same thing as I am. We are both tired, tired of carrying around this blob of a body. The strangest thing is, I can still feel my feet, and if I close my eyes just for a second, my body won’t be dissected. I won’t have two grotesque stumps on my thighs, rather I will have my feet, my long caramel legs attached to two sets of perfectly pedicured feet. This isn’t exactly what I meant when I said I wanted to cut weight a year ago.

If I close my eyes just for a second, a sixtieth of a minute (probably half of the time I have left), I will float back to 20th September, 2014. I will swim, just with my long, caramel legs to a memory I have locked in a chest buried in the deepest structures of my heart. I will swim right into the K1 clubhouse in Parklands, Nairobi on a Friday night when my feet couldn’t maintain balance. I would sway right and left as I tried mighty hard to beat the alcohol in my system. The music would be loud. I would be hot as hell and I would fix my eyes on the bleary sight of a girl in blue dancing in the crowd. Her hair would be golden just like the color of her skin; her warm flush skin and her smile would be the color of a song; a booming Burna boy song reverberating its captivating rhythm, its bass pumping similar to the beat of my heart, similar to the beats of our hearts. My Vans-wearing feet would take a single step at a time, concurrent with the rhythm as they moved me closer and closer to the girl in blue.

Oh, my Angeli, Angelina

Oh, my Angeli, Angelina

She would welcome me by swaying her hips subtly towards mine as her long braids brushed against my black tank top. Her large brown eyes would look into mine as she worked them down at her swaying hips, grinning at the effect of her hips against mine. I would stand there, completely oblivious of my surroundings, despite the hundreds of bodies brushing past mine. I would be alone with her on that dance floor and we would be in space just floating to the familiarity of being On the low. I would greet her with my hands on her hips ushering her closer and closer as my feet slowly brushed against hers; my exuberant feet waiting to pull stupendous moves on the girl in blue. She would turn her back on me and bend over as she thrust her hips steady to the beat, as she stroked my pelvis just with her backside.

On the low

On the low

On the low

My hands would be on her mellow posterior as I strived to maintain consistency. Out there in space, our warm sweaty bodies would be brushing contemporaneously to the thumping bass as we focused on nothing but our rhythm, the music, the connection, the empty space. She would slowly get up and dance with her back brushing against me as I leaned close in her ear, I would be out of breath and my feet would be worn out, “I’m tryna put the ring on your finger too,” I would utter in her ears stuporous to whether she could hear me or not. I would close my eyes as I savored the moment.

Oh, my Angeli, Angelina

Oh, my Angeli, Angelina

My pristine feet have a coquet shade of burgundy, or is it chocolate? They have ten toes attached to them; the big left toe almost massacred by a large blister. My feet are slender, the right kind of slender, the kind of slender you see with white women running on the beach, putting on socks, doing ballet. The kind of slender that makes you think, “Does it hurt”. My long, burgundy, ten-toe, slender feet have been to places. Places like that hike I went with my girls’ scout troop when I was thirteen. My feet were strong and they kept me grounded as I navigated through the slippery boulders of Mt. Kenya. Back then, a naïve little trouper with a zeal to collect as many badges for my sash, all I ever wanted was to go further and further up the mountain devoid of any spatial awareness of danger lurking.

I reached out to the rope cast down to me by the other troupers, “A scout is always prepared,” was the only single thought in my mind as I miscalculated my arch to get a hold of the rope. As I leapt into a hazy cloud of unconsciousness, I remember a sharp pain on my right ankle and a lot of squeamish faces of my troupers. My feet have taken me to places, places like the ER.

Look at me, I am a rock floating in space. I am devoid of pain, regret, and strength. I have no obligation to feel. I am just a rock bombarding into stars in space, one star at a time; one lifetime at a time. I am a rock, just a rock, nothing but a rock. A large deformed mushy rock. I am exactly where I belong; levitating in space. This water tastes salty and revolting. It has an obscurely slimy texture that I don’t like and it burns, oh it burns. It burns just like the scorching sun rays of August 2005 at Diani. My feet were one with the sand. The sand was wet, soft, and warm. A little rough between my toes and very pliable to the weight of my body through my feet; my warm relaxed feet, hungry for the beach, hungry for the water, and hungry for the breeze. Ready to swallow the beach in whole, in one whole gulp of ecstatic adventure.

I would take a single step at a time closer to the water as the reeds brushed past me concurrent with the waves. The sun on my face would motion me to hold my right hand over my eyes as I blocked the lacerating rays from scorching me alive. I would be in my purple juvenile bodysuit and blue hand floaters. My feet would slowly carry me whole to the warm vigorous water and as they made immediate contact, an abstract wave of emotion would spark from the tips of my toes all the way to my throbbing heart. My little family would already be in the water; my father exploring the tides as my young brothers played around, they would be making memories. They would motion me to join them and I would try to rush, try and be part of the memory. I would be in a hurry to reach them and connect with them. It will feel like the very first time.

I am levitating in waters I used to navigate myself through just by flapping my limbs around and sometimes accentuating the movement to commensurate with a mermaid; a mythical creature that would be appalled just by catching a glimpse of my gruesome anatomy. I look like a lizard without a tail. Heck, lizards with no tails aren’t as strange. Lizards with no tails could still walk, they could probably swim and they could flee from danger, lizards with no tails could grow their tails right back. I can’t grow my legs back but if I could I would walk into my memories. I would walk right through them with a smirk on my face and a heart spread out ready to take it all in again.

I would walk into my favorite coffee shop in town; Café Kaya in Westlands. I would walk right through the door, and this time, no one will have that look on their face; that look they give you when you are missing a part of you and it’s out there for people to see; it’s like pity with a hidden shred of disgust, blatant disgust that they try to hide but you can still see it with your eyes. I will be free of people pulling their legs back in from under the table as if I am actually going to snatch their legs from them and run away. I will be free of my stupid, black electric wheelchair that clearly creates a statement. My stupid wheelchair that cannot navigate its way past a fifty-millimeter obstacle. I will be free of it all. I will sit on the brown leather seats of Café Kaya as I wait for the waitress to make her way to me and take my order. Meanwhile, I will take my laptop from my tote bag, open it, and resume writing my novel. I will tap my feet and say, “Let’s go places, you and I, together.”

I will march through the blue, colossal gates of Hillside High School and right to my favorite class; third form, with a literature book in my right hand and a whiteboard marker on my left. I will have my favorite black, thrifted, Steve Madden kitten heels on and I will set them free to cackle against the school corridor tiles just to alert my students that I am on my way to them. I will walk right into class, not sitting on a foreign machine this time but standing on my Steve Madden heels. My students will have the comfort to raise their hands high to ask a question or crack a joke, the energy of the class will be amiable and serene, it will be comforting for them and not awkward and dull. They will be comfortable enough to ask me about the latest pop culture news and tell me about the matron’s banal hair extensions and we will have a good laugh about it and I will pretend like I wanted them to stop, “That’s enough guys Wairimu is an independent woman who will do whatever she pleases with her hair.” All this fatuous talk will go on minutes after the bell. They wouldn’t mind a bit and neither would I.

They won’t have to watch me get pushed into the classroom in a wheelchair by my average-looking assistant Stacy, who doesn’t understand that asking a student for help to lift the wheelchair over the doorstep completely contradicts her entire existence. They won’t have that startled look on their face every time I show up to class. I wouldn’t have to sit there reading the same boring lines from a 19th-century literature book in silence with my fingers shaking and sweating at the eyes lingering all over me and ripping me apart. I most certainly won’t have to save myself the embarrassment of my students being set free by the electric bell. I won’t have to sit there and watch them collect their things as fast as they can to save themselves the trouble of feeling utterly and completely sorry for me.

I will walk to my all-time favorite place. A place I derived so much comfort in. A place where wheelchairs have quite the hard time navigating through; Serene Heights. I will let my feet guide me to the fifth floor of house F12. I will ring the doorbell of the luxuriant apartment and wait for a tall, slender woman in her late twenties to open the door. She will open the door dressed in sweats and a huge knitted sweater, she will lean on the door frame and inspect me from head to toe as she asks, “You seem pretty confident for a person who is about to get their ass kicked again” She will spark a corny grin on my face. My feet will walk me to her living room; our living room, where we will spend hours playing board games, getting drunk, and touching each other tenderly. I won’t have to be worried that she will see me all fragile and weak. I won’t have to listen to her new, piteous voice over the phone as she deceitfully told me how she won’t be around for the weekend. I won’t have to save her from the sight of me sitting like a potato on a stupid piece of metal. I will have her all to myself all over again, playing board games, getting drunk, and loving each other tenderly.

Look at me; quaking and trembling into defeat. I look like a character out of an A24 film; a very horrific figure of a woman, no, half-woman quivering into defeat. Drowning on fentanyl was not as poetic as I thought it would be. I should have Hannah Baker-d my way out of this one but, what about the originality? What about the context? What would law enforcement think? What would you think? I am doing this for you. I am performing this scene just for you. Wait, who are you? Who am I? This doesn’t really matter. What matters is you know how it feels to have your lungs suck in chemical water instead of air. Air; cool, cathartic air in my lungs, a little cold but in whole. A huge gulp of air is what I need, I need it in the form of a breeze. A breeze exactly like the one in the countryside of Machakos in December 2007 when I just graduated from elementary school and I wanted nothing more than to celebrate by riding my little red bicycle up and down the slopes of the countryside with the breeze on my face.

My feet would move up and down on the pedals as the large black spiraling tires moved concurrently with the speed of my feet. I would have a poker card taped on one of the spokes and they would make this cathartic noise that commensurate a dirt bike engine. I would go faster and faster as my father’s voice echoed in my mind, “We don’t pedal down the slope, we hit the brakes.” I would let the idea of adrenaline rushing through me get a hold of me. I would rebel just like any other kid with a red bicycle and I would pedal faster and faster down the slope and I would hit a hidden rock that would send me flying; levitating in space for a moment and, at that moment, I would swear that my entire life flashed through my eyes. This would be before I broke my right leg and my right hand. My father would have me sat on the passenger’s seat of his Toyota as he scolded, “Your feet will be the end of you”

My feet are the end of me. Look at me, dying willingly in the deep end of my father’s pool all alone. I think it’s quite ironic that more than once in our lifetimes, we see the one thing that will lead us to our death, and we obliviously turn a blind eye. Sometimes you can almost hear the sound of death telling you how he will take you, just like how I heard him in Machakos as I levitated in space and utter silence. I could hear him tell me, “This, this is it.” I could almost certainly hear him a year ago, on 21st June 2022 flipping in my new Toyota Passo on my way to work. Flipping there in a confusing, incessant motion of metal against metal against earth, I could see the same space I saw when I was riding my little red bicycle. I could hear the same ethereal silence with a hint of, “This, this is it” And as I rolled down the steep camber, I could hear the honking of the yellow truck that had swerved to avoid the collision between me and the reckless boda-boda rider.

And right there, in a chaotic accident clearly playing out, one friction at a time, I became an innocent child with a little red bike experiencing thrill and fear all at the same time. I watched as my entire life played out on a VCR in my mind. I watched it stop the moment I woke up with a disgustingly dry mouth and a sore body on a hospital bed as I tried to understand if I was dreaming or if I did in fact lose my long burgundy legs. And even now, the memories will stop at that dreadful memory of me screaming at the feel of absence in my own body; literal absence that my impulses could pick up. I can see my family amidst the nurses trying to cool me, I can see them holding back the tears and pain of knowing I will never be the same again. I can see them now, only that this time, I am walking toward them in the Ocean. I can see my brothers prepping to splatter the salty water in my eyes. I can see them, vivid and clear. It feels like the very first time.

Look at me, walking into my own death with no feet at all.

Would you look at that? I am levitating in space.

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My name is Lydia Mutuku!! (pronounced as a scream) and I am not quite sure I know much about myself other than I was a warlock in my past life and I like lying around on cold, flat surfaces. Thank you for indulging in my work and so much love to the feet community:)

To communicate with the writer:

Email: Lydiamutuku333@gmail.com

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Photo by Pranjall Kumar