Always

Thirteen

Thirteen

I feel like I have too much free time. I feel restless and it's as if my body is begging me to do more. I always had something to do back in Dar, I had my farm to look after, real estate to invest in and anything I wanted to do was an option. Here I am trapped with only the places I have visited left to revisit. I can’t explore the places that aren’t shown to me (I'm too much of a chicken).
So finally after weeks of contemplating I decide to look up Noah. I don’t want to record a track or anything but I just feel like doing vocal exercises couldn’t hurt. It wasn’t like I would suddenly decide to become a singer but I just want to feel comfortable when I sing to myself in the kitchen or in the bathroom.
Noah directs me to some guy who has an office close to where I live. It all seems perfect. I join the vocal trainer, Lisa Yarligh for classes twice per week. Her fees are acceptable.
I find a whole new rhythm by the end of spring. I feel completely settled in by the time summer arrives. My voice is clear, much better than I ever expected it to be. I am not an incredible singer or anything but I am fairly happy with my vocal capabilities. My vocal range is E3 to C5, but I can go as high as D6 when exercising. Lisa tells me it’s impressive but I feel that she simply likes to encourage her students. It has been fun being able to sing Beyoncé songs correctly, I mean without any squeaking.
I still feel lost and confused sometimes but life has steadied itself a bit.
I also notice a positive correlation between my mood swings towards Niko and my period. I hate him when it’s that time of the month, it's nature's way  of balancing how much I love the fella.
But I have been trying to channel my negative thoughts into something else. It just happened at random one day, I was at Lisa’s studios and we were talking about having bad days and off moods. I was kind of surprised because Lisa is always happy. Her blond hair and bright smile always remind me of a sunny day. And she told me that she simply liked to turn those negative energies into concrete words.
So I started out small. I started with poems. They were more like verses really but then one day I wondered what one of them would sound like if it were a song. So I started trying to write a song. It was very tricky because most of the songs I listened to were Swahili songs and others were African jams from all over the continent. So I found myself expressing myself in varied languages and styles. It made my songs seem messy.
But I had one idea that I wanted to pin down and once I felt it was right I might look Noah up, might being the key word.
Niko thinks that I should seriously try being an artist. He says that even though he didn’t think of it, it might give us the chance to move our plans further along, much quicker than he had initially planned. The way he spoke was as if all I had to do was decide to be an artist for me to be one. It was absurd. And anyway I was more interested in getting a degree than becoming a musician.
But the thing that makes me most happy about time flying by is that my relaxed hair has completely been removed my scalp. I now have a healthy natural afro that I wear whenever I define my curls. I wear it in all manners but I currently have it in finger twists. The warm weather is very good for it.
“Hey,” I say as I join Ridley on the grass. We are on campus and some of our class mates are with him. There is even that other Tanzanian girl - Jackie. She glares at me like usual and I ignore her.
“The singer has arrived,” Ridley teases and I shove him, Jackie gives me a look.
“As if,”
“Did you know that Noah has been keeping tabs on how you’re getting along,”
“I did not,” I realized early on that Rid did not like Noah as much as he seemed to like everyone else (which was a lot because my friend was definitely a people person) so I never talk about him.
“Yeah, he wants you to drop by his studio and do a track with him,”
“Oh,” I take my books out so we can start the discussion for the group assignment “Cool,”
“So will you?”
“I got the impression you didn’t like Noah too much when you introduced us, why are you talking about him so much all of a sudden?”
“I don’t like him,”
“But?”
“It’s complicated, sometimes you don’t like family sometimes they don’t grate you so much.”
“Let us start,” Jackie says taking her usual position as the group leader.
 “I think Jackie is into you,” I tell Ridley after the discussion ends, she’s still giving me a death glare but I smile at her.
Ridley looks from me to her and proceeds to collect his books. We’re making our way to the parking lot when he finally says “I don’t like Jackie,”
“So you have to like girls to mess around with them?” I stare at him then proceed to look ahead “I got the impression that you were a player but you haven’t done anything player worthy so far.” It felt like maths, cute people person like him had to have ladies all around him. Well, in a way he does but he isn't having sex with me or Stella.
“I have never been one…but...it's just that...”
“Hmm?”
He holds my hand so I stop walking and then look up at him but he has that look in his eyes, the same look I’ve been pretending not to see. The same one that makes me end our conversations abruptly. I look around for anyone I know so I can end this conversation as well but no luck. Just Jackie and her friends - why are they all glaring at me?
“I like you,” he says his eyes downcast and then seeming to of have gathered more courage he looks directly into my eyes “I really like you.”
“Yeah,” I take my hand back and continue walking.
“That’s it?”
“I know.”
“You know?”
I shrug and start fishing for my keys, why do I never seem to remember to set them in the side pocket inside my bag.
“I have someone in my life, so you telling me how you feel doesn’t change anything.”
“Oh, your imaginary boyfriend?”
“I like to think of him as my Zaddy,” because Niko seems to care about the age difference between us.
He laughs and I know that we are done with this, I’m thankful that he is a guy and he has probably gone through rejection before. I tell myself he's used to this. I am also glad that he only said that he liked me. Recently I started getting the feeling that his emotions were ran much deeper than that.
“What’s his name then?”
I shrug the same way I do whenever they ask me about my mystery calls. Ridley doesn't as many questions as my friends back home. Just this afternoon they all asked me to say hello to my man, to which I told Saleh to say hello to his woman. And that pretty much made Aisha come up with a new conversation. At this point, Naomi and I had our own personal convos about them.