Before the tap came to Gathitu, water was a thing you carried. My grandmother woke me at five, when the hills were still blue with cold, and we walked the red path down to the river with jerricans knocking against our knees. She never let me carry a full one. You will bend crooked, she said, and then who will look at you. So she carried thirty litres up the hill and I carried ten, and I thought this was fair because I was small and she was mountain.
On the way back she told me who owned each shamba we passed. This one belonged to a man who married twice and buried both. This one grew the sweetest sugarcane, and once, before I was born, she and my grandfather had stolen a stalk each on the walk home from their own wedding, laughing like thieves though the field was practically theirs.
When the county finally laid the pipe, a silver tap sprouted in her yard like something that had always been coming. Everyone said pole sana to the river, good riddance to the walk. My grandmother turned the tap on and off, on and off, watching the water arrive with no weight at all.
Now you will forget the path, she said. Not sad. Just naming it.
I live in Nairobi now, four floors up, where water comes and sometimes doesn't. When it doesn't, I fill every basin I own and feel, for a moment, rich in the old way. My daughter watches me and asks why I hoard it when the tap will only return.
I want to tell her about the blue hills and the cane and the woman who carried thirty litres so I would grow straight. Instead I hand her a small cup and let her carry it, spilling, across the kitchen. Not full, I say. You will bend crooked. She laughs like a thief. She has no idea what she is inheriting. Neither did I.