Golden Boy (3 page)

I huddle into my long clothes and wait for the people to forget about me. Finally, over the sound of the boys outside our windows, I hear the clatter of the engine. The bus gives a great shudder, and a cloud of dark smoke pours in the rear windows. We're on our way to Mwanza.

As the bus travels I stare out the window, squirming to keep my exposed skin in the moving shade of the window frame. Every few kilometers, the sky is punctured by an enormous yellow Vodafone sign or red Airtel sign. I amuse myself trying to read them as we pass. Some of them have print big enough that even I can mostly read it. But after a few hours, my eyes feel grainy and my hair is crunchy under my fingers. The dust from the road gets so far into my lungs that even coughing doesn't clear it. For all that, though, I love the bus ride. Since I always had to stay hidden away at home, I've never been on a bus before. I stare out the window as village after village whisks by. I see children clustered around a water pump, joking while they fill their plastic containers; children carrying babies while running errands; children minding goats. I see Maasai boys leading long strings of humpbacked cattle across the dry fields to graze. It makes me smile to see that the cows wait for the boys' signal before they cross the road. I wonder how they trained them to do that. Our goats never listened to me.

Some towns are well off: rows of neat concrete houses with tin roofs. Others towns are small, thatched places that look like our home. When we take the turn onto the road that runs along the ridge of the Ngorongoro crater, we see only Maasai villages with their circular huts. The air up on the crater rim is cold and misty, and I shiver in my seat until we come down the other side.

I'm sorry when, hours later, I see the entrance to the Serengeti park because I know the ride is over and we have to get out. I reach over and softly jostle Asu and Mother's shoulders, waking them up. They nod and, when the driver pulls over at the first village inside the gate and looks at us in his mirror, we file quietly out of the bus.

The Maasai village just inside the Serengeti park gates is a small place, about ten circular mud houses clustered around a central cattle pen. When the bus pulls away, Mother, Asu, and Chui head into the village to buy some food. No one suggests I go along, not even Asu. In any village, strangers are unexpected enough. They don't need me there, stranger than strange.

I walk away from the village, just to make sure I don't complicate things for them. I find an umbrella acacia tree over a rise and I sit in its shade to wait. When I hear a rustling to my left and see a head duck quickly behind a bush, I realize I've been found by children from the village. They must be very young to not have chores or herding to do. I try not to let their muffled laughter bother me while I wait for them to go away again. Then a small rock flies out from behind the thorn bushes.

I can't believe it: They're throwing rocks at me for fun, like I'm a street dog. I want to shout at them to go away, but I remember my family inside the village, trying to buy things we need. I can't help them barter, but at least I won't turn the village against us, either. I cover my head with my arms and let the rocks bounce off. I begin to count in my head, slowly, to pass the time until they leave me alone.

Mmoja, mbili, tatu,
I count.
Nne, tano, sita, saba.
I can feel myself starting to bruise.
Nane.

I am at
thelathini,
thirty, when I finally realize that they are not planning to go away until they have made me do something. I'm sore and angry, and this makes me stupid. I pull off my hat and stand up. I let my eyes wave around without even trying to focus them. I make a wailing ghost noise in my throat.

“Oooh!” I say. “You've made me angry! Now I'm going to curse you and your families!” I start to walk toward the bushes.

The children drop their rocks and run toward the village so fast, they stumble going down the hill. I laugh a high and ugly laugh, making sure they hear me. For a brief second, I feel a flush of triumph. A minute later, I realize how much of an idiot I am.

Rumors of a witch-boy in the fields will make it impossible for us to stay here very long, maybe not even a night. I sigh and hunker down miserably to wait for my family.

Mother comes up
the hill with an armload of red and purple cloth and an unusual light in her eyes. The other two follow her. Asu looks disgusted, but Chui is smiling. I don't know what to think. I wasn't expecting them to buy clothing. Dumping it all in a heap, Mother pulls out one long piece of red-checked cloth and starts to wrap it around herself.

“I can't believe you're doing this!” Asu says to her. “You look ridiculous!”

Mother ignores Asu entirely. “Put some of these on,” she says to me. The sides of her eyes crinkle as she says this.

I stare at her, baffled.

“Why?”

“Just put them on. You, too, Chui.” She holds a piece of cloth out at arm's length. “Asu,” she says warningly, “do as you're told.”

Chui reaches into the pile and starts to drape a big purple thing around himself. Asu grabs the cloth from Mother and glares at her.

“This is a terrible idea,” she says, then turns her back on Mother and starts to wrap the cloth around herself, hiding the original color and drape of her
khanga
from home.

“
What
are we doing?” I ask again, although I, too, am following Mother's lead, dressing myself in a red cloth with thin purple stripes.

Asu sighs and looks over at me.

“Mother has decided that it would be a great idea for us to sneak through the Serengeti on foot.”

“And hitch a ride if we can,” adds Chui, nothing but a voice from the middle of a big purple mess.

I'm glad we're not going to stay here and try to earn bus fare, but this plan doesn't make sense to me.

“Why do we need new clothes to do that?”

Mother turns to me, that light I don't recognize in her eyes again. She clutches the red-checked cloth so tightly in her fingers, I can see her knucklebones popping out against her skin.

“We're disguising ourselves as Maasai,” she says. Her voice is higher pitched and fuller than normal. “That way we can make it across the parklands without paying entry fees or being stopped by rangers.” A smile darts across her face like an animal crossing a road: quickly, unsure of itself.

I finally puzzle out her tone. My mother is having fun. I layer on the unfamiliar clothes without another word.

Soon we're walking along the Serengeti road, a slightly too short Maasai family of four with all their worldly belongings balanced on their heads.

Mother, Asu, Chui, and I walk late into the night, heading north. We stay on the road for safety and so that we don't get lost, but even after dark Mother insists we leave our Maasai robes on. I feel silly dressed up as something I'm not, but the extra layer of cloth does keep me a little warmer in the dark. Only when we're all stumbling from exhaustion does Mother lead us off the road a little to sleep under a tree. We take turns staying awake, holding a big stick, just in case any wild animals show up.

This seems like a great idea when it's my turn to sleep. But when it's my turn to sit there, squinting into the darkness with my bad eyes, holding nothing but a piece of wood and looking for animals with giant teeth and claws, I think it's really, really stupid.

Dawn finds us stiff and cranky. Since we didn't unpack last night, we just get on our feet and keep walking north, in the direction of my mother's people, away from Enzi and home.

By midday my throat is parched and the sun is blazing down on us. Even though it's the dry season, it still gets hot in the middle of the day. The land is grassy all around us now, with few trees. By the time we find one to shelter under during the hottest part of the day, I'm feeling dizzy from the heat. The backs of my hands and the tops of my sandaled feet are burnt, and even my face is pink under my hat. We all collapse in the shade, and soon the others have fallen asleep. But I can't sleep. I'm hot and miserable and there's nothing quite as lonely as being the only one left awake. When I can't stand it any longer, I lean over my sister and whisper her name.

“Asu!”

She stirs on the ground.

“What is it, Habo?”

“Will you tell me the story of when I was born?” I ask.

“Oh, Habo, not now! Go to sleep,” she grouses.

“I can't sleep. I'm burned.”

For a moment Asu is quiet, scowling sleepily up at me. The light and shadows of the leaves flicker over her high cheekbones and highlight her dark brown eyes. I'm afraid she'll say no again. But instead, she pushes herself up on her elbows and opens her pack. She takes out a little gourd full of aloe and takes my burnt hands in hers.

“Fine,” she grumbles, rubbing the sticky stuff into the angry red welts over my knuckles as she talks. “You were born on a hot, cloudy day, right before the long rains. Mother was inside the house with the
mkunga,
the midwife, and Father stood outside with us, waiting. Then that
mkunga
screamed so loudly that we all poured in through the door of our house to see what was the matter. I was only six at the time, but I remember it. You should have heard her, Habo—she shrieked like a baboon!”

I smile. The
mkunga
in our village is a cranky old lady, dried out like a banana skin left in the sun. “Where was I?” I ask, even though I've heard the story a hundred times before and know exactly where I was.

“You were lying on the floor, bellowing,” says Asu.

“No one would pick me up.” I got this detail from Chui, though he was only two and probably doesn't even really remember it.

Asu scowls. “
I
picked you up,” she says, and scoops more aloe out of the gourd for my other hand, “and Mother wasn't awake, so you can't blame her, either. Just Father and the
mkunga.
” She crinkles up her nose at me. “You're welcome to blame them.”

The aloe is heaven on my hands. I sigh, content. Asu goes on.

“You'd be amazed, Habo, if you could remember it. Everyone was arguing about what you were. The old men thought you were a ghost of the ancestors. That stupid
mkunga
was wailing on about demons. I think Father figured you were the son of one of the white men who come to climb Mount Kilimanjaro or take a
safari.
All those people, arguing back and forth, and no one paying attention to the fact that you were acting just like any other newborn baby.”

I look down at my white and red hands nested in her even brown ones. I wonder again, for the thousandth time, why I'm so different.

“And then I looked at your white skin, your yellow hair, and your light eyes, and I said to them,
‘Yeye ni mtoto dhahabo!'
”

“I was a golden child.”

“
Ndiyo,
and so we called you
Dhahabo,
gold.” Asu lets go of my hands, now shiny with aloe, and puts the gourd into her bag. “Now let me get some sleep, Golden Boy. We have a lot of walking ahead of us.”

“
Asante,
Asu, for the aloe,” I say.

“Karibu,”
she says, and lies down again.

We continue walking that evening, pushing as far as we can in the failing daylight. We all keep a lookout for the plume of dust that means a car is coming along the road—that might be the park rangers. Anytime we see one, we find a place to hide until it has passed us. We get so tired that everyone starts snapping at one another. Then we get so tired that everyone stops talking to one another altogether. When darkness falls, we settle down for another uncomfortable night. Tonight I can hear the animals—grunts and coughs in the distance, and from time to time the vibration of many hooves hitting the ground at once. We avoid the long grass and the trees and lie down on the road itself, in a line. It's uncomfortable to be on the packed earth. No matter how much I brush my palms over the surface, there are always little rocks I've missed that jab into me as soon as I try to lie down. I'm having trouble getting comfortable enough to fall asleep.

“I'd rather sleep in the grass,” I grumble to no one in particular as I squirm.

“Cars have headlights,” Chui whispers, “lions don't. Go to sleep, Habo.”

That thought doesn't help me relax. No matter which way I face, the waving grass is only a few feet away. The darkness plays tricks with my mind, and I keep thinking I see a whisker or a tail. It takes me a long time to fall asleep.

In my dreams I'm being stalked by a huge lion. I'm running down the never-ending road, alone, and I can hear the whisper of its movement through the grass as it stalks me. No matter how fast I run, I get no closer to the end of the road, and no farther from my hunter. With a great roar, the lion jumps onto the road behind me, its teeth bared, its eyes glowing brightly. As it pounces I think, foolishly, that this lion does have headlights. And then I wake up.

For a moment I'm not sure if I'm still dreaming, because I'm blinded by yellow light and there's a shadow looming over me. I cry out and put my hands up in front of my face.

“Easy!” says a man's voice. “Do you think I'm going to hurt you?”

I blink up at him in confusion. Then I look behind him and see the rest of my family gathering their belongings and pushing them into the back of a battered white Jeep. That's the source of the light that's hurting my eyes.

“You sleep like the dead, boy. Come on!” And a dark hand extends down out of the light and pulls me to my feet.

By the time I'm awake enough to figure out what has happened, we're flying down the road, the headlights showing the world in swaying patches, the wind whistling in through the open sides of the Jeep and making my eyes water. It had been Asu's turn to stay awake and hold the stick when the Jeep came up the road. The driver had gotten out and asked her what she was doing on the road in the middle of the night. She told him that she and her family were traveling north and we had nowhere else to sleep. The man said he was driving north to a hunting base camp and offered to take us as far as he was going. From there it was a simple matter of packing the belongings, waking the boy who slept on even when the car's lights hit him in the face, and squeezing in between our things and the man's gear. It's uncomfortable, but it's so much better than walking that none of us complains. I watch the tall grass zip by on either side of us and think to my dream lion,
Take that! I'm ahead of you now!

I'm just dozing off when laughter wakes me. Asu is talking to the man as he drives. Even Mother seems amused. “What?” I ask.

Asu turns to me with a smile. “We're in the car, at night, with the entire day!” Mother laughs again, but I still don't understand. The driver takes pity on my confusion.

“My name is Alasiri,” he says, and waits for me to get the joke.

“I understand now,” I say.
Alasiri
means “late afternoon” in Kiswahili.
Asubuhi,
my sister's name, means “morning.”

Alasiri's white teeth shine in the darkness when he smiles. I'm not sure why, but I'm reminded of the lion in my dream with the shining face, and it makes me look away from him. But Asu turns toward him and smiles back.