Kate's Kite

by Paul Chuks

Martin Blonk

Author's note: The universe is filled with stories about many things. but the less travelled paths have been that of the coincidences. This is mainly because many times the stories are so eerie, they could happen only in fiction, and one would be mad to believe they happened in the literal world. As the Poet turned rapper once quipped, "reality is stranger than fiction." Here's one of those stories:

Kate’s eyes were blue as though they were molded from the sky and plugged straight into her eye sockets. The black and white spots were an added spirituality. Her hair, plentiful, God would steal from it to vegetate earth. She was black in the way the night did not mean to be.

Kate was a year shy of completing her first decade on earth when she learned how to make kites. She was the only child of a father who had an irrational fear for sex. He claimed it was a crime Jesus wouldn’t forgive. He had dreamt of becoming a priest all his life until he accidentally fell in love with Kate’s mother whom he called “the most beautiful woman in the history of women,” the moment she sauntered into Saint Albert while he was lay-reading on a cold Sunday morning that promised to freeze every living thing. It got bad when a Bishop paid him a courtesy visit and caught them kissing. There, at that moment, his dream collapsed. It then became a figment of his imagination that'd subtly influence his decisions. He’d enjoy walking to church or any social gathering, hand-in-hand with her; he’d introduce her to his friends and colleagues as his song—instead of Agata (her name). When it came to bedtime activities, he’d shy away, remembering he was supposed to be a priest, saying it was what flunked his priestly dreams. She tried convincing him for the sake of Kate who needed a playmate, but he’d see it as her floundering excuse for sex and wouldn't bulge.

She resigned to her fate in frustration. Desperately wanting to make up for Kate’s boring life, she began playing with her dolls. They’d together braid Kate's doll’s hair and give it names like Taylor on days Kate pretended to be a pop star; Elizabeth on days she was regaled in pink or purple and her father called her “beautiful, just like your mother.’’ Kate enjoyed her mother’s company such that she’d get impatient in school when the teachers persisted in class, forgetting their time was up, and would refuse to spend time with her father who she feared not for his baritone voice or masochist structure, but for his beard that looked like a lion’s mane. She’d curl her toes anytime she looked at his face or came meters close. Her Mother studied physics in school and juggled it with her artistic career. She painted, sculpted, molded and at times, danced. Kate being Kate, learned all of this from her mother and put them to good use. Once, for practice, she painted a portrait of her father, who this time, had sandier beards, pointier nose and serving eyes. She hid it from him not knowing what his reaction would be, and so as not to fuel his already fostering thought that she despised him. The portrait painted this perspective of him that she hated to love. In it, he smiled and carried the look of a man who knew cheeriness was an ingredient for beauty—which was true of his real personality—but was always chalked behind what he yearned for—that made him the sad, stoic man Kate knew. He looked like an Elisha that mutated from Elijah.

In one of her adventures with her mother, she learned about kites, how far they could travel and how to make them. She knew kites, if flown well and at the right time, could fly 300 miles from ground level and land in another state. The first kite she made was a delta kite, strewn with a long thread and purpled all over it. The wind was at 12 mph when she set it free; it dwindled out below 5 mph in seconds. The kite landed on the roof of the house adjacent to hers. She frowned and bemoaned the misfortune that always befell her. It was the lip of rainy season, and the wind knew little about rage. She planned to fly another kite when the rainy season had matured—the wind, raging like a mother hen.

In August when the wind tore into town as though it were on a mission to leap everything skyward, Kate went outside with her parafoil kite that had a picture in it. Her intention was to make sure the kite traveled far where a person would pick it up and know that she existed. After she unhanded the kite, it swooshed through the air, dazzling beyond her view. She went inside, beaming, crouching at the window, watching the wind rage, distilling sand and upsetting dust, causing her to cough. She intuited that her kite had flown somewhere else and would do anything to know where.

The kite landed in a house in a nearby town, forty miles from Badagry, where she lived. A girl, also a year shy of completing her first decade on earth, also named Kate, also blue eyed, also black in the way the night didn’t mean to be, also blessed with plenteous hair that vegetated earth, picked up the kite and yanked it open. To her astonishment the picture in it was a carbon copy of her. She flung it and curled backward in fear. Nothing that spiritual had ever happened in her life. Her mother noticed through the window what was happening. She rushed outside and in silence, Kate pointed straight to the picture. She picked it up and widened her eyes at what she saw. She read the inscription that read “My name is Kate. I love you.” Too much to behold, her mother dropped the kite, yanked Kate off the ground and paced inside, as though a masquerade was en route her way. They crouched at the window, looking at the kite, computing the spookiness that just happened. Kate's mother would recount the event later in the day to her father. He'd throw his head backward, bursting into laughter, saying, wake up from this dream, it is not real.