Golden Boy (7 page)

“Where will we go?” asks Chui, the exhaustion plain in his voice. I'm surprised that he's so sure that we will all move to ensure my safety, and I feel bad for what I thought earlier. He's trying to protect me even when he's so tired. We've been traveling for days, sleeping on roads and under trees and bushes. I'm tired, too. Tiredness has sifted into all my joints, making them feel like they are filled with hot sand. For those few minutes before Auntie saw me, it felt like we had found a good place to stay. But, as usual, I've messed everything up, and now we have to move on again.

“Will we go home?” Chui asks.

Home,
I think, remembering.

It's early evening, the sun just sinking behind the hills, and we are all sitting together outside, waiting to eat dinner. Enzi is leaning against the wall, talking with Mother as she cooks. They're both smiling. I'm too young yet to think about going to the little village school, and Chui and Asu chat away about their day and what they learned. I sit quietly and let the others' talk swirl around me like smoke, watching as Mother pounds the
ugali
around and around in the battered pot, spreading it up the sides to cook, and then pushing it into a ball so it doesn't burn. A last ray of sun slices through the air around us and it looks like all the dust of the world has turned into gold. When this happens, Asu scoops me up into a hug and kisses my head before settling me in her lap and finishing her conversation with Chui. I know then that the long-shadowed light of the setting sun has reminded her of me, her golden brother. I sit there, safe in her lap, and watch the gold dust settle over us all.

“What would we go home to?” Mother's voice snaps me into reality. She's right, of course. “Home” is our little village outside of Arusha. But we didn't have enough money to stay there in the first place, and now there's nothing to go home to. No house, no farm, no father.

“How much money do you have?” asks Auntie.

Mother tells her. It's a pitiful amount. Auntie crunches her forehead into her head scarf again and plants her hand on her hip. Her other hand swishes the tea around and around in her cup.

“You won't get two streets over with so little. And with three children? How did you even stay alive on your way here?” It's not a question that she expects to get an answer for, and none of us gives one. Auntie gets up and begins to pace. “I don't have any money to give you,” she says, answering a question we haven't asked. “We saved for two years to pay for Adin to go to university so that he can become a manager at the VicFish factory. If you had arrived a week ago, I could have given you that money. But it's already paid; he has already started classes. We only have enough for the food we need to eat now.”

“What will we do?” Mother asks in a whisper. She is rocking slowly where she sits. “What do we do?”

I am beginning to think that we will have an entire conversation made up of questions that don't get answered, but, surprisingly, Auntie answers this one.

“You should go to Dar es Salaam.”

My family's faces are almost funny in their disbelief. Chui's mouth has dropped open, and he looks like a fish. I close my own mouth.

She must be joking. Dar es Salaam is hundreds of kilometers away from here, halfway across the country, on the ocean. It's twice as far as the journey we just took, days and days of travel. There's no way we can go there. We don't know anyone there. Who would we stay with? How would we live?

Auntie continues on, as if it wasn't like talking about going to the moon.

“Nowhere in the Lake District is safe, and you cannot farm without a man to help you. Yes, Dar es Salaam is the only place for you to go. It's an enormous city, filled with people of every kind. You can get jobs there in cleaning or something. There have been no albino killings there. They even have albino members of parliament. One is a lady albino MP, at that.”

“Killings,” Mothers whispers, as if she didn't hear anything else Auntie said.

“Hmph,” says Auntie. She clatters over to the stove to boil more water for tea. The others must have been able to finish their cups. Mine sits, cold and still, at my feet. I can see small hairs and dust have settled on it, pinching the surface like water bugs' feet. I want to vomit. Auntie bustles into the room again with the tea.

“So,” she says, “you must leave as soon as possible, but you can't leave until you have more money than you do now.” She runs her eyes over us again. “You'll need train fare and enough to get started in the city. At least two hundred and fifty or three hundred thousand shillings.” She pauses, considering. “More would be better.”

It's a number so high that it's lodged in the cracks between the stars. Mother starts to cry again. “We will never be that rich,” she sobs.

“Well,” says Auntie, “you'll have to try to get that rich as fast as you can. You must work hard at whatever jobs I can find you until you have the money you need.” Then she turns and levels a finger straight at me.

“All except you,” she says. “You will hide.”

I crouch behind
the tall sacks of corn in the pantry, listening to the voices in the next room rise and fall. Auntie and the older cousins have arranged the sacks so that it looks as if they're thrown in a pile in the corner, but really there's a narrow space underneath. I can crawl in near the wall and pull a light sack of millet over the opening and then I'm hidden from view.

The first time I went into this space I was afraid.

“What if he dies in there?” asked Kito, Auntie's youngest son.

“He won't,” replied Chui, with a confidence I only wished I shared. It was cramped under the sacks; I had to lie on my belly with my arms curled under my head.

“What if he can't breathe?” asked Kito.

“He can breathe,” said Chui. “You can breathe, can't you, Habo?”

“I can breathe, and I can hear you, too, Chui,” I muttered through tight teeth. “There's no need to shout.”

“How was I supposed to know that? I can't see you.”

“Well, that's the point, isn't it?” snapped Asu from the doorway. She had initially refused to be a part of the construction of my corn cave, as the younger cousins were calling it, but all the talk of me suffocating had brought her into the room after all. Through a tiny crack I saw Asu surveying my hiding spot, standing with her arms crossed so tightly that her
khanga
pinched in at the elbows.

It was hot, and I could feel the moisture from my breath beading on my forearms. Mwanza is warmer than Arusha is, because it's not in the mountains. Even though Auntie and her family bundle up in the evenings, my family and I don't need to. Of course this means that during the day, it's uncomfortably humid and warm for the dry season. I began to wonder whether maybe Kito was right after all about suffocating.

“Can I come out now?” I asked.

“You should try to stay in there longer.” Auntie's voice came from somewhere beyond what I could see. “You can stay in the back room when it's just us, but whenever anyone comes by, you'll have to be in there. If they visit for a while, you need to be able to stay there without making any noise.”

That's easy for you to say,
I thought, but it turned out that Auntie had been right. People dropped by all the time and, every time they did, I had to hide.

The first day it felt like I was diving in and out, dragging my little millet sack behind me, all day long. I've gotten used to it over the past three weeks, but I also asked my cousins to help me rearrange the corn bags so there was a bigger space in the middle with more vents to breathe through. They were happy enough to help, even talking to me a little, but they still had trouble looking me in the face when they did it.

Now when I'm in my corn cave I still have to be lying down, but I can stretch out a bit and I don't have to be frozen in the same position for twenty or forty minutes while some stupid neighbor lady tells Auntie all about the latest goings-on in fish town.

Today the rumble of voices in the background belongs to Mother, Auntie, and the local schoolteacher. Every now and again I hear the younger tones of Chui or one of the cousins. I'm still having trouble keeping the cousins straight in my head, because I mostly have to memorize who's who just by listening. I don't get out much when everyone's home, because visitors are so much more likely. Most of my time out is during the day when they're at work and school. Even if I'm out with the family, when everyone's home they all talk at the same time, and figuring out names is really hard.

When I ask Mother or Asu or Chui, they give me useless advice, like, “Pili's the tall handsome one” or “oh, Kondo is easy to tell apart, he has a mustache.”

“And just what does a mustache sound like?” I asked Chui once, losing my patience. “And how does handsome sound, hmm?” Chui told me not to be so cranky—I had asked him, after all, and if I wasn't interested in what he had to tell me, I could just figure it out on my own. I've tried to keep my temper since then.

The only cousin I can tell apart from the others right away is little Kito. It helps that he has the highest voice and still sometimes uses baby words, but it's more than that, too. Out of all the children, Kito is the most fascinated by my secret cave. Because of this he got over his shyness around me more quickly than anyone else. When the people in the house aren't paying attention to him, he often sneaks away and whispers to me. I'm a little worried this will draw attention to my hiding place, but it's so nice to have someone to talk to when I'm buried under the sacks that I haven't said anything to him about it.

Kito can't reach his opposite ear yet, so he doesn't go to school. Which means that, instead of being invited into the main room to talk with the schoolteacher, he's sitting on top of my hiding place, telling me what's going on.

“They're talking about school,” he hisses through a crack, as if this was a major announcement.

“I figured they would, since he's the schoolteacher, Kito,” I whisper back.

“Oh,” says Kito. He's silent for a while, thinking that through. Then, “They're talking about Chui going to school.”

I sigh. Sometimes a five-year-old's grasp of what's news is a little hard to take. Especially when it's so hot. I feel like I'm roasting in an oven, and the smell of the dry, hot corn all around makes me hungry and nauseous at the same time. I hear the schoolteacher ask Mother how many school-age children she has, and I strain to hear her answer.

“Kito!” I whisper-shout. “Kito, what are they saying now?”

Kito listens and then says, “Your mother said that Asu's too old for school and Chui's the only other child she has here. She says her other sons stayed in Arusha.”

I wonder what it would be like if Mother's statement were true and I had stayed with Enzi to finish out the coffee harvest season. For a small part of a second I imagine how nice it would be, just the two of us, living together and working and making money. But then I sigh and remind myself of the truth: Looking the way that I do, I would never be allowed to work in the village, and Enzi never really liked spending time with me, anyway. The silly dream unravels.

I realize that Kito has been talking for a while without noticing that I'm not listening to him anymore.

“What did you say, Kito? I missed that.”

“The schoolteacher's leaving now, Habo. Your brother's going to start school tomorrow. Is school fun, Habo?”

I think about my old school in our little village. Every day during the midday break I would go sit under the wild mango tree at the edge of the school yard. I would close my eyes and focus on the feeling of the wind as it hissed through the grass and swept over me, and I watched the other boys playing. They ran and shouted around the sun-baked playing field. They held races. They kicked a tattered football around between two sets of goalposts. I would watch and watch, but could never join in. I hated watching.

When I was young enough not to know any better, I went home and complained to Asu, but what could she do about the boys in the yard?

“You're like a lion,” she told me, “golden all over. Does a lion run around playing with the little black antelopes? No. He sits on the hill and watches them. Nothing that's golden is common, Habo. You must stay uncommonly still.” And that was that. In the six years I went to that village school, I spent my days watching the antelopes play without me.

It's lucky that I'm still in my corn cave so Kito can't see the anger on my face. I keep my voice happy.

“
Ndiyo,
Kito. School is fun. You'll like it when you're old enough to go.”

“Do you wish you could go to school with Chui?”

“No, Kito. I can't go outside. I'm happy to stay here where it's safe.” Again, I'm glad Kito can't see my face as I lie.

“Okay, he's gone,” says Kito. “You can come out now.” I hear the
shush
of Kito's backside against the sackcloth as he slides to the floor and tugs away my millet door.

“Asante,”
I say, and pull myself slowly into the world of the real people.

Up until the schoolteacher's visit, Chui had been doing odd jobs in the neighborhood: picking up trash, running errands, shining shoes with a piece of old shirt. Everyone has been doing what they can to make money so we're not so much of a burden on Auntie. Four more mouths is a lot to feed. Especially when one mouth spends all day hiding instead of helping. But Tanzanian law states that all children over the age of seven have to go to school, and now the schoolteacher has found us out and Chui will have to go. I wonder if Chui will have trouble catching up. It doesn't seem like so much time has passed, but it's mid-August now and he's missed over three weeks of school. Now it will be just Asu and Mother who work to pay for our keep. Now it will take that much longer to save up the money we need to travel to Dar es Salaam.

Auntie has a job at the new Victoria Fish processing factory. She managed to get a job for Mother at VicFish, too, since her husband's uncle is the floor manager's stepfather, but she wasn't able to extend her influence enough to get Asu a job. Mother and Auntie take a
dala-dala
out to the fish factory every morning at five, before it is fully light.

Since she couldn't get a factory job with them, Asu had to find something else to do. It took many days of walking around the rich neighborhoods, knocking on every door, for Asu to find something. Being a farm girl with a different accent and hard hands made it impossible for her to get work as a housemaid or a nanny, which she was hoping for, but she finally found work as a laundry girl for a few rich families. Now, every morning, Asu gets all cleaned up and takes a purple
dala-dala
over to the fancy neighborhoods of Isamilo and Nyakahoja to work.

The first day Chui goes to school, the house is eerily silent. The two oldest cousins, Asu, Mother, and Auntie are all working out of the house. The two younger cousins and my brother are all at school. It's just me and Kito in the house until lunchtime, when the half-day schools let out. Auntie told me to watch Kito the best I can, but to hide when anyone comes. There's an old woman down the street who sometimes comes by to give him food and make sure he's all right, and sometimes a neighbor or two or a child skipping school will come in and play. I always have half my attention on him and half on the door. Even though there aren't that many people who come to visit, it still feels like I spend most of my time hiding under the sacks.

Albino,
I whisper to myself as I lie there, staring at the ceiling of dry kernels pushing out against the sides of the bag like babies waiting to be born. I roll the word around on my tongue, tasting it. Just like the long clothing Asu always forced me into as a child, the weight of the label is uncomfortable, but it fits and I have to wear it.
Albino.
After a few weeks of practice, I decide I like it. At least, I like it better than
zeruzeru.
That name meant “nothing.” At least being an albino is something.

Today, though, when I dive into the corn cave at the sound of the door opening, I'm surprised to hear Asu's voice.

“I'm home!” she calls.

“Asu!” cries Kito.

“
Habari gani,
sweet one,” I hear her say. Then, “Habo, it's okay. I'm by myself. You can come out.”

I wriggle my way out gratefully.

“Why are you home so early?” I ask. Asu is standing inside the door, a huge bundle of laundry tied in a sheet beside her. Beads of sweat dot across her nose.

“The washing machine in the Njoolay house is broken.” She grins. “And the repairman cannot come until tomorrow, no matter how much Mrs. Njoolay screamed at him on the phone. So that means that today”—she waves to the pile beside her with a flourish—“I'm going to be washing the laundry here.”

I smile. Having Asu home for the day is a rare treat.