Golden Boy (19 page)

“Is there anything else you needed, Chatha?” Kweli replies.

Chatha sighs again and picks up the basket she came in with.

“Here's the bread I made you,” says Chatha, unwrapping two great round loaves from her basket and setting them on the table. “And Davu's jar of honey. There's butter in the little box.”

“You're going to make me fat,” says Kweli, smiling for the first time in a while.

“Well, you and the boy both could use a few extra pounds.
Kwaheri,
Uncle.”

“
Kwaheri,
Chatha.
Kwaheri,
Davu,” says Kweli.

“I'll come again soon and see you,” says Davu, but although her words are directed at Kweli, she's looking at me as she says this. I don't meet her eyes. Now that my secret is out, I don't think I'll be here when she comes back, no matter how happy Kweli is to have my help.

“
Kwaheri,
Davu.
Mama
Chatha,” I mumble.

“Kwaheri,”
says Chatha to me, but Davu refuses to say good-bye.

With that, they're gone. I watch the bright print of Chatha's receding backside sway left and right, bracing myself for the inevitable: Kweli will have to talk to me now.

But again, he surprises me. Instead of turning to me and demanding the truth, Kweli simply rests a hand on my shoulder as we face out of the doorway together and sighs.

“Well, well. A visit from Chatha is always an experience. Come, let's get dinner started.”

My mind is such a muddle, I feel like I'm moving from instinct only: building up the fire, pouring the cornmeal and water into the pot for
ugali,
spreading the butter and the honey on two large slabs of bread. I carry the bread out to where Kweli is sitting on his stool by the fire, tending the
ugali.
I hand him his slice. For a moment we both sit there, chewing. When he finishes, Kweli tilts his head toward me and asks the question I've been dreading.

“So, is what Chatha said true?”

I choke on the last bite of my honey bread. I stall.

“About what,
Bwana
? She said many things.”

“Don't be rude, boy! I've had enough of that for one day.”

I duck my head in apology, even though he can't see it.

“Ndiyo,”
says a small voice I only partly recognize as my own. “It's the truth. I'll leave in the morning, if you like.”

“No one said anything about leaving yet. You're one of these
zeruzeru
?”

“Ndiyo.”

“And what does that mean?”

At this, my head snaps up so quickly I bite my tongue.

“What? You don't know what
zeruzeru
means? I thought everyone knew.”

“There's no need to take that tone with me. What I know or don't know isn't the point. I'm curious to know what it means to
you.
”

“Well . . .” I trail off, not sure what to say, how to start. How do you explain something like that?

“Yes?”

“Well. A
zeruzeru
is—I mean, I am—an albino. Someone with all the wrong colors. My skin is white, and my hair is yellow, and my eyes are a pale bluish color.”

There is a pause.

“Let me feel your face,” says Kweli. Surprised, I lean toward him and close my eyes. His sculptor's fingers brush over my head and face. I realize, crazy as it is, that Kweli is seeing me tonight for the first time in all our weeks together. Kweli finishes touching my face and drops his hands.

“What else?” Kweli asks.

“Bwana?”

“What else, boy? Your color can't be the only thing. What else does it mean?”

I'm not sure what he is asking, but answering Kweli's questions has become automatic and, before I realize it, I'm talking fast.

“It means that I burn in the sun when other people don't, which means that I couldn't do the farmwork or play with the boys at school. It means that people stare at me everywhere I go. Even in my own home, sometimes Mother or one of my brothers will spin toward me in surprise when they see me out of the corner of their eyes, and then turn away. My eyes shake from side to side when I get tired, and I can't see well, and my father left us because of me, and then, in Mwanza, people tried to kill me like you'd kill an elephant for its tusks because they wanted to sell pieces of me to the
waganga
to make good-luck talismans!”

I'm barely conscious of the fact that I'm on my feet, shouting at Kweli, as I continue. “I don't know why they think being an albino is lucky! It's awful! Normal people point at you when you arrive. They whisper when you leave. Everyone treats you differently, and you get hunted like an animal! That's not good luck! That's a curse! A curse! Do you want to know what I know of Evil? Do you want to see it? Here! Feel what it's like to be an albino!”

I realize that my voice is shrill and wild, but for the moment I'm beyond caring. I run into the house and roughly grab my statue from where I had placed it tenderly only an hour ago when it was all I cared about in the world. Now I grab it like a runaway puppy, march out to Kweli, and slam the statue into his lap.

Then I burst into tears.

I splay my fingers over my face and sob like a child, rocking slightly on my stool. Kweli reaches an arm out to me, but I jerk away. The anger pushes out through my eyes and runs like the lava of the Ol Doino Lengai volcano down my face, through my fingers, and into the dust of the courtyard. With each sob I feel the tearing pain of not fitting into my own village, my own family, since the day I was born. All the hard words I didn't realize I had committed to memory hurl themselves at me again. The feeling of being a stranger in my own skin, because of my skin, wrings my heart like laundry.

When I finish crying, my laundry heart feels wrinkled and bruised, but clean.

I grind my fists into my eyes to squeeze out the last of the tears and then look at Kweli. He's sitting very still, holding my sculpture lightly, gently, not yet seeing it with his fingers, waiting for me to be done. It's only when I sniffle back the mucus in my nose and say, “Okay,
Bwana.
I'm all right now,” that he slowly lets his fingers trace my statue.

He starts at the bottom, running his fingers up the spikes of tall carved grass, over the bloated bulge of the dead elephant, finding the missing face, the gaping holes where the tusks should be. His fingers find the man behind the elephant, looming up, dwarfing the corpse. He feels the twisted features of the snarling face, feels the way the man is leaning forward, one hand reaching out, grasping, the other holding a massive knife.

His fingers brush over the top of the head and the tip of the knife and find the line of people that make up the background of the statue. To Kweli's fingers they're just a line of people, but I know the faces on each one of them: Mother, a shadowy man who could be my father, Enzi, Chui, the three men who kicked us out of our house in Arusha, Asu. Together they form a wall behind the madman with the knife. But none of them is seeing him, because they have all turned their faces away. Kweli's fingers still, and he raises his head to me.

He says nothing, and I feel the need to end the silence, so I say the first thing that comes to my mind.

“It's not a pretty carving,
Bwana.
”

“No,” he answers softly. “No, it's not pretty. But then, I don't think that the experiences that shaped it were pretty.”

“No.”

Kweli runs his hands over the sculpture one more time and then hands it to me. I take it softly, sorry for my earlier treatment of it.

“It's not pretty,” says Kweli as he puts it into my hands, “but it is good.” My eyes are dancing with exhaustion and he is slightly fuzzy in my vision, but I can see that he's smiling. “Well, Habo, it seems you have the heart of a sculptor after all.”

When I smile, the mask of dried tears covering my face cracks in a hundred places.

Later that same
evening, as we're wiping the remains of dinner out of our bowls with the still-warm ashes of the fire, Kweli surprises me by revisiting a conversation that I thought was finished.

“You say that your skin is all white?” he asks.

“Ndiyo.”

“Hmm.” He rolls the ash around and around in his bowl. I can tell, even from all the way over here, that the bowl is clean. I wait.

“The man with the knife, who was he?”

I look up at him, not sure what he's getting at.

“He's the hunter I told you about, the one that killed an elephant for its ivory.” I blush, remembering the half story I told Kweli that first night. “He's also the one who tried to kill me in Mwanza. He's the reason I ran away.” I finally get up the courage to ask the question that has been eating me out from the inside, like termites in a tree.
“Bwana?”

“Yes?”

“Are people going to try to kill me here like in Mwanza?”

Kweli turns his head toward me and considers my question.

“No, I don't think so,” he says. “We don't do that thing here in Dar es Salaam.”

That's the same thing that Davu told me, all those weeks ago. Maybe it's true.

“Are you sure?” I press. “You didn't even know what a
zeruzeru
was.”

“I knew the word. Just because I didn't know everything about the term doesn't mean I hadn't heard it before! In Mwenge, many of the shopkeepers have radios. I've heard the ministers of parliament talking about how the killings up in the Lake District have to stop. But,” he adds, “that doesn't mean you shouldn't be cautious. This is a big city, and you're a country boy at heart. There are plenty of people who would kill you here, or rob you, or kidnap you, just like they would anyone else. Take me, for example. People try to take advantage of me because I'm blind and I have to be very careful sometimes not to let them. Even if no one is hunting you here, you still need to live thoughtfully.”

I think about that, rubbing my hands absently over my face as I do. Just because no one is looking to hurt me doesn't mean that I won't be hurt. I don't know whether that's comforting or not, but I file Kweli's advice away. It's good advice.

“And the people in the background? Who are they?” Kweli asks, bringing the conversation back around to my statue.

I sigh. So much for being a boy of secrets.

“My family. And some people from Arusha.”

“Why did you put them in a statue of Evil?”

Something in his tone makes me think this is important to him. I answer as truthfully as I can.

“None of my family was ever truly cruel to me,” I explain. “Except maybe for my brother Chui.” I think about all the times Chui teased me and then give a weak laugh. “Though, really, he's just a brother.” Kweli stays quiet, waiting.

“They're part of Evil because they're looking away.” I tick off each one on my fingers. “Chui taught the other children to tease me, and then looked away. My father saw I was different and looked away from my whole family. I think this is what made Mother look away from me all the times she did. The men from Arusha wouldn't help us stay in our home. My sister, Asu . . .” My voice breaks, but I force myself on. “My sister betrayed me.”

“How did she betray you?”

“Alasiri told me he found out where I was because Asu was talking about me to her friends at work.” The fear and anger of being attacked bubble up in me again, and I take a deep breath to steady myself. “None of them are evil people, but when evil things happened, they looked away and let them happen. I put them in the statue because that's Evil, too.”

I finish speaking, and it's so quiet that I can hear the clank of dinner dishes from the house over the wall. Have I not answered Kweli's question? Is that why he's not talking? I try to think of something else to say, but I can't. So I sit in the gathering darkness and wait, knowing he'll talk when he's ready, or not at all.

I let my mind drift while I wait, listening to the layers of bug sounds, the soft hiss of the breeze through the tamarind tree leaves. I'm almost startled by Kweli's voice when it does come out of the darkness.

“And is this—this turning away, this hunting—is this why you've refused to go with me to the market?”

I feel my cheeks redden and I'm glad that Kweli can't see me.

“Ndiyo, Bwana.”

Kweli nods. “I thought so.”

“Bwana?”

“I knew you were ashamed to go out. I just wasn't sure why.”

“It's just . . .” I struggle to put words to my fears. “It's just that everyone has seen me as less once they knew what I was. Alasiri wanted to kill me and take pieces of me to sell. I was afraid,
Bwana.
” I need him to understand. “I was afraid that you'd want to get rid of me. Or that I'd meet up with someone who wanted to kill me.” I pause, considering, then I take a deep breath and ask, “
Do
you want to get rid of me now,
Bwana
?”

Kweli's laugh is a hollow, tired laugh.

“No, Habo,” he says quietly. “No. You are still welcome to stay for as long as you'd like. However!” He jabs a finger in my general direction. “There will be no more foolishness about your family. They need to know where you are and what you're doing. You can take a few days to think of what you will say, but you
will
let them know that you are all right. That is my one condition.”

I can't believe it. He knows, and he's not throwing me out. I examine his face closely in the firelight, looking for the lie, looking for the hate. I don't find it. I remember Davu's story about him and Kebwe.
No one should be condemned because of an accident.
Now, finally, I understand what she was trying to tell me. The lump of fear that has been lodged in my heart since I met him crumbles slowly.

“Ndiyo,”
I say.
“Asante sana.”

“Karibu,”
he replies. “And from now on, we will go into Mwenge together.”

I swallow hard. Keeping my color from Kweli is no longer an issue, but I still don't feel comfortable parading around in public.
What if they laugh at me? What if they ignore me because I'm not worth talking to?
Even if no one here is going to try to kill me, there's still no guarantee that they'll accept me. I look up through my white eyelashes at Kweli, sitting there, saying nothing, supporting me and waiting.

I take a deep breath and make a decision. He has been nothing but good to me, and it's time to show him that I'm grateful for his kindness in a way that matters to him.

“Sawa,”
I say. “Tomorrow, we'll go into Mwenge together.”

The next morning passes in a blur as we get ready to leave. I'm torn between wanting this whole day to be over with quickly and dreading the moment when my chores end and we'll have to be on our way. I think about coming up with one of my excuses again—I do actually feel a headache coming on, after all, and I didn't sleep well last night—but I stick to my decision.

I layer on my second shirt for sun protection and put on my hat with its long tail. I pick up the bag with our lunch in it and drag my feet over to where Kweli is getting ready.

“Here,” he says, and hands me a flat cardboard box filled with small sculptures padded in dried grass, old newspapers, and crumpled black plastic shopping bags. “Carry this. We'll drop these off at the shop when we go.”

Kweli picks up a small purse, puts the drawstring around his neck, and tucks it inside his shirt. I balance the flat box on top of my floppy hat the best I can and follow him out the door.

We don't retrace the path I took when I first came from the train station. Rather, to get to Mwenge, we follow Bagamoyo Road the other way until it turns into Old Bagamoyo Road. Walking slightly behind Kweli, I wonder what it would be like to walk up Bagamoyo Road blind. I look ahead carefully and, when I'm sure there's nothing threatening in the next stretch of sidewalk, I close my eyes and try to walk forward. Within five steps my mind has conjured all sorts of things about to hit me in the face and my eyes snap open. The road is as clear as before, and Kweli has gained distance on me, his stride not breaking as his stick skips over cracks in the cement. I can't imagine the bravery it takes to just go through one day not being able to see. I wipe the nervous sweat off my palms and jog to catch up to him.

As we walk past shops, houses, and
dala-dala
stands, people do double takes when they see me. With every person we pass I can feel the muscles in my shoulders tighten, and I wish I could tuck my head down like I used to so that I can't see them seeing me. But that would mean unbalancing my box, so I can't. My palms are sweating again as I imagine what they must be saying about us to one another. How, despite what Kweli said, they could be talking about what my death would be worth to them. Kweli, of course, simply walks on. I reconsider my earlier conclusion. Sometimes it would be just fine to be blind.

“Hey!” a man at a small roadside restaurant calls out to us. Kweli turns his head in the direction of the sound. I fight the urge to run.

“Who's that?” calls Kweli.

“Kweli! It's Chane. What are you doing on the road today? It's not your day to sell.”

A smile breaks out on Kweli's face and he turns off the sidewalk toward the voice. I follow reluctantly, trying to stay out of sight behind him.

“Chane! Hello, old friend. How are you doing?” I fume quietly under my box, wanting to move on. I'm sure the fat lady behind the counter is staring at me.

“I'm well,” replies Chane. “And who's this with you today?”

I wince. So much for trying to hide.

“This is Habo. He's been helping me around the house these past few weeks.”

“Sawa,”
says Chane.

“And do you see?” asks Kweli. “Can you see that he's white?” There is real curiosity in Kweli's voice. I feel terribly awkward, but Chane doesn't seem bothered.

“
Ndiyo,
of course I can. He is quite white.”

“He's a
zeruzeru,
an albino,” says Kweli. I'm ready to have the earth swallow me up whole like a fish swallows a bug, but no, it leaves me there as they talk about me.

“Is he now? That's interesting.”

“
Ndiyo.
Have you ever seen one before?”

“I know of a cabdriver who is albino, and of course I've heard about the problems in the Lake District, but no, I've never met one before. Hello, boy.
Habari gani?
”

“Nzuri,”
I mumble, embarrassed.

A bark of laughter from the other side of the restaurant interrupts our conversation. Three young men lounge by a small circular table covered in empty beer bottles. I wonder whether they've started drinking already or just never finished from last night.

“Hey, blind man! Look at us!”

I hear Chane grumble in anger, but Kweli just puts a hand on his arm.

“Let them be,” he says. “They sound drunk.”

The men don't like the fact that they're being ignored, and they start to yell out insults to Kweli. Then they see me and add in rude things about the way I look, too.

“Perhaps it would be better to talk another time,” says Kweli to Chane. “I think we'll go to the market now.”

Chane nods vigorously. “Yes, right. Go on. I'll make sure these idiots don't follow you.”

“Come on, Habo,” says Kweli.

Once we're out of earshot I explode. “How could you just stand there and let them say those things?!”

“What were my options?”

“I . . . I don't know! But you didn't even get mad! They were saying awful things. Why didn't you get angry?”

“Why choose to be angry? It won't change them, and then I'm angry, which is no fun for me.” Kweli chuckles. “Come on, let's go to Mwenge.”

I wonder how Kweli can be so calm around rude strangers and get so angry when Chatha tries to help him. I sigh. I don't know if I'll ever understand him.