Ex Nihilo

“Their names are all very boring.” Oakley mutters around the unlit cigarette, lips barely moving. “I mean, no offense or anything.”

Farai’s nods solemnly.

“I’m not offended,” she says, voice firm. “I know this. I didn’t want them to stand out, or anything.” It’s the bare truth; she can’t really say anything else to appease Oakley’s curiosity.

The woman, slightly younger or slightly older than Farai – it appeared to be different each day – throws a quick glance towards the room Farai’s daughters are sleeping in, then shrugs. She offers the barely-touched pack of cigarettes to Farai and she refuses with a smile. She has stopped smoking a while ago.

There’s a stretch in the silence within the room, because Farai didn’t expect to see Oakely tonight at all, but she busies herself with making tea for herself and coffee for the other woman. She knows how that ends – lukewarm and then thrown down the drain once Oakley leaves, so she makes coffee thin, nearly see-through. It’s not like the other will notice the difference.

“I sent you a message.” She says once she’s back into the living room and seated. “I’m going to need you tomorrow. If you’re free, I mean, and if it’s not bothering you.”

One of these days, she’s going to pay Oakley back somehow, when she manages to get enough spare cash for it. It has confused her thoroughly how the woman wanted nothing from her but to crash for a day or two weekly in Farai’s small apartment. It was, perhaps, rather shady – but Oakley looked out for her girls without a hitch and she looked out for Farai as well.

They met in a rather unusual way too. It was to be expected.

“Graveyard shift in a graveyard? Do you need me to come with you?” Oakley stumbles with the lighter that doesn’t seem to work, and she bites her tongue and curses out. The children are not around to hear it; as it is, they’ve probably heard more than enough of her. In front of Farai, they have not repeated woman’s words.

Farai shakes her head, then gets up and smoothes her dress down before she rummages through the nearby drawer. With slender fingers, she fishes out the lighter and then tosses it to Oakley. The woman catches it effortlessly, her arm rising up almost lazily.

“I need help with the kids actually. I mean—I could get somebody else to look after them I suppose.” It’s Friday night tomorrow. Her colleague said she would help if needed, but Farai felt reluctant about asking the other woman, even if the other did owe her a favour.

“I don’t know.” Oakley lights her cigarette easily now that her lighter switches on. “It’s Friday night and you’re called in for whatever—deaths are sudden you know, not pre-planned. I would like to go with you instead.”

Farai doesn’t know why Oakley does this, exactly. So far, the woman hasn’t had any ulterior motives. From their talk, however, Farai has realised that the pale female has no family that she wants anybody to know of, no family of her own, nothing that would make her a normal person by any standards. The most she knows about Oakley is that she’s half-Polish, has no accent to tell of it and that she has no home other than Farai’s.

None that she mentions at least.

She’s been strangely protective of Farai too, and she’s grateful. She’s not sure what she did to deserve the woman’s appreciation, but she’s incredibly grateful for having her in her life. It makes things a little bit brighter, a little more hopeful and she can at least be content with knowing that her kids are taken care of even when she’s not physically around.

She feels very safe with Oakley. That’s why she wants Oakley to stay with her children and not with her.

“You think it’ll be dangerous?” She asks instead. She’s a kindergarten teacher, for God’s sake. She doesn’t know all the things Oakley knows, that much has been made clear, and she’s working with the mortician because a friend helped her up with the side job. If she could get something better, something to get her out of the teaching and the graveyard-business, she would.

But things are a little bit tricky right now.

“Heard about some turmoil on the streets.” Before she’s had children, before she had to protect them, Farai wouldn’t even think of associating with somebody like Oakley. Somebody who’s so out there, on the streets, somebody who smokes in a house where children are present and swears in front of them and most likely gets in fights with people she cannot handle. Oakley has scars to prove this. “Children will be fine here. They won’t be fine if they have no mother.”

It always gets her, this sentence – they need a mother. It’s almost likely Oakley says it in jest, and then Farai looks at her eyes and she knows the other is not joking.

“You go with me then.” She nods, slowly, then looks over Oakley again – scrawny legs and slim body, ruined face and confident eyes.

There’s something wrong with Farai’s protector, but the woman finds comfort in not knowing what it is.