by Ted Neill
The room was not the same without them. All the furniture had been removed and the place was empty, dead. Miriam looked around for the mirror that was once on the wall but it was gone.
The next week Evelyn woke Miriam up and told her to get dressed. She had laid Miriam’s first communion dress out beside her. Miriam obeyed and put it on although it did not fit as well as it once did. Miriam noticed that Evelyn had opened all the drawers of the dresser and had placed a number of Miriam’s clothes in a bag. Looking around, Miriam did not see her school uniform anywhere.
After a breakfast of mandazis and chai, Evelyn said they had to be going—they had a bus to catch. Miriam followed her, but felt dizzy as she stood. Evelyn was dressed in her nicest traveling clothes. She fastened her head wrap, turned to Miriam, pulled her veil down over her face, and told her not to remove it until she said so.
Evelyn wanted to walk fast but Miriam could barely keep up. Eventually they reached the matatu stage. Miriam was afraid she would have to stand up as they rode, but Evelyn was able to get them both seats.
They alighted at the bus station, and Evelyn sat Miriam down with their bags then went to the ticket window. She returned with two tickets and said they were going soon and that she would need to go to the toilet because it was a long ride.
Miriam wanted to ask where they were going but her head hurt and her mouth tasted badly. She did not even want to get up to go to the toilet because the walk and the matatu ride had tired her so much. She did not want to move from the seats the rest of the day.
But Evelyn insisted. Miriam got up and step by step approached the toilet. Many people walked by her as she did. She kept her face down. A woman said she looked beautiful in her dress. Miriam could not see her through the veil.
It was inconvenient to squat while wearing the dress. Miriam was sure to bunch it up to keep the ends from touching the ground. When she had finished and was walking out, she noticed a mirror on the wall. She looked at the entrance. No one was coming. Evelyn was still outside. Miriam took a few steps towards the mirror. Her face only appeared at the very bottom. She took a last look around, saw that she was alone, then lifted her veil.
She saw them: clusters of bumps all along her jaw, fat like peas, swelling, and spreading up her jaw onto her cheek. Just like her sister.
She pulled the veil down. She knew that wherever she was going now, she was going there to die.
A few weeks later, after Ivy had taken more medicine that made her feel stronger, Susan put Ivy and her brother in their best clothes. Ivy asked if they were going to church. Susan said yes but it was not just any ordinary Sunday. This Sunday David would find them a new family.
Ivy, Maurice, Ruth, Rebecca—the street girls—and Susan sat in the front row of the church this Sunday. Usually they sat in the third row beside the window, which Ivy liked more because the breeze would keep her cool. This Sunday she felt very hot and uncomfortable. She could even see sweat on the side of Father David’s face as he read from the gospel.
David’s sermon was about the holy family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. He talked about how they were refused room at the inn when Mary was about to give birth to Jesus. He said that there were people in our community today that needed shelter. He talked about how it was God’s plan to care for these people. Then he talked about how Jesus loved children and always wanted children around him. Finally he talked about the poor and the sick, and how Jesus said good Christians must take care of them.
Then he said that two children who were in need of help were with them that morning. That was when Susan made Maurice and Ivy stand up. Ivy did not like staring out at all the people and feeling them stare back at her. When Maurice started to fidget, she stepped on his toes and told him to stand still. When he looked as if he was about to cry, Ruth intervened by telling him to be quiet. He obeyed immediately.
Susan spoke next, saying that Ivy and her brother were very nice children. They were very good children too. She said Ivy was always helpful and that both worked hard in school. Ivy was happy she did not mention the fact she had been forced to repeat a grade and that she still did not go to school often when she was sick.
Father David asked someone to come forward that would take care of Ivy and Maurice because even though he had been left them, he could not take care of them. He talked about Ivy’s father. He mentioned how her father was a respected member of the community. He said that Ivy’s father had even helped to build this very church.
The room remained silent. Ivy noticed people looking around at the walls. She looked at them too. She had been unaware that her father had helped to build the church. She pictured a younger version of him lifting boards, hammering nails, and pushing up the corrugated walls.
The people looked around the church as well. They examined the walls, the ceiling, the floors.
None were looking at her.
They would not look at Father David either. Father David said nothing. He was waiting. But the silence went on. Children made noise playing outside. A baby inside cried. A few people coughed.
But no one stepped forward. Ivy examined the crowd carefully, looking for a pretty woman that might be her new mother, but all of the ones she liked remained silent.
Ivy’s legs were getting tired. Her mind drifted. She stared at a sunbeam and the dust floating in it. Maurice sat down on the ground.
Finally Father David spoke. He said he had faith in God that a home for them would be found.
Oliver now lived in a cottage with many other children and with a woman named Amelia that all the children called “Mum.” Oliver was supposed to call her Mum too. Bonaventure, or Bonava as everyone called him, had said that she was Oliver’s new mother and that she would love him very much. She had short hair, not long hair like his mother. He thought his own mother had been much prettier.
The other children ate with their fingers and with their mouths open. They did not always say please and thank you. Oliver found them very impolite.
The oldest girl in the cottage was the bossiest. Her name was Miriam and she would yell at the other children when they did not clean up after themselves, when they would not sit down for dinner, or when they made noise. She even yelled at Oliver once and when he cried, she yelled at him for crying, which made him want to cry more. Mum Amelia finally told her to be kind to him, that he already was a well-behaved boy.
He missed Babu. He asked Mum Amelia when Babu would be coming to visit but she said she did not know. He did not have much to remember Babu or his mother by, but he did keep his red cap, wearing it whenever he could—he knew it would be easier for Babu to pick him out when he did come to visit.
The home did have a school, but it was not like the schools he had gone to before. They did not wear uniforms and there were many children in the same classroom of different ages. Oliver was at first put with the younger children that were practicing tracing letters. He copied letters like he was told, but he already knew them all. When the teacher came by and saw that he had written his name on his own, she asked him if he could already write. Oliver said yes. She asked him if he could read. He said yes. She gave him an exercise book and asked him to read it aloud. He did. It was easy because it was at a level he had read two years before. Then the teacher asked him, in Kizungu, if he knew Kizungu. He said yes. She moved him into the next room.
Even in the next room he could read better than all the other children. Soon the teachers were making special lessons just for him.
He could not wait until his grandfather would come to visit. Oliver knew he would be proud of him. Mum Amelia was and so was Bonava. But Babu did not come. It occurred to Oliver that perhaps Babu would not come often and that it might be a long time before he saw him. Oliver decided that he would have to make better friends, so at night he found books on the shelf in the cottage and read them to the other children. He did what his teachers did: he would read a line then ask one of the children to read; this way he could teach them. In doing this he discovered th
at Miriam, even though she was one of the oldest, could not read. She would struggle to sound out words as if she were in grade one. When Oliver would be reading to himself, Miriam would sit down beside him and read books that were for very little children. If she became stuck on a word, she would show the word to Oliver, and he would tell her how to say it and what it meant. Then he would ask her to pronounce it herself.
Whether or not she did it well, he always told her, “Good job.”
The back of the dump truck was not comfortable. The floor was hard and there was nothing to hold on to, so whenever the truck went over a bump or made a sharp turn, all the hawkers would lean far over, and some would fall. Harmony held on to her mother’s hand. They sang a few songs to pass the time, the other women, as always, complimenting Harmony on her voice. After a while though, Harmony was hungry and too tired to sing. She said so to her mother. She and some of the women joked with each other that at least they would get meals in the jail.
Harmony’s mother’s best job had been in Nakumatt. Before then she had been a hawker. But the Nakumatt job was the best because her mother would bring home lots of food and sweets for her. But then she got sacked and went back to hawking.
They had lived in many places since then, Gigeri, Kangemi, Kariobangi and others places that were only named for the matatu stage. They were always moving, moving. Mean landlords evicted them, or cucus asked them to leave. Or they would tell them that Harmony could stay but her mother should leave. But her mother had always kept them together. She would have rather moved than separate herself and her daughter, which was why Harmony would follow her mother even to the police station.
One time they had gone to Harmony’s grandmother’s house in Kericho. It was a nice place. They had taken a very long bus ride to reach Kericho. The place was very green with lots of tea fields and few buildings. There were not many cars like in Nairobi and the air was clear so you could see the sky. This was the only time Harmony ever heard her mother speak about Harmony’s father. Harmony’s grandmother had brought him up and so Harmony later asked her mother about him.
She said that he was a mean older man with two other wives. She had run away from him when Harmony was little.
One morning they had to leave Kericho without saying good-bye to Harmony’s grandmother. Harmony’s mother said it was because her father was coming.
They never went back.
When things had been very very good, Harmony had been sent to school, but that had been a long time ago when Harmony had had a completely different set of clothes that she had out grown since. That had been before hawking sweets and cigarettes, before they had come to live with Loraine beneath a sheet of mbati set up between a green grocer and a mechanic’s shop. Loraine had been living there because her sister, whom she had been living with, had died. Loraine was a good friend to have because she had a jiko made out of an old paint can and would cook when they could find food and enough trash and wood to burn.
But Harmony preferred living in a house. It was more comfortable, warmer, and there were also no street boys. Street boys were very dangerous because they sniffed glue and would steal from you and if they could, they would kill you. Harmony avoided them. She remembered one time she saw one try to steal a light off of a car. Then a mob came and beat him. They punched him and kicked him and wrapped his arms and legs together with barbed wire. Then they beat him more. Harmony laughed when he tried to walk and fell over.
But then, after a while, he did not move and he was very red from blood and so was the street under him. It was sad because he had died. His face had also changed. He did not look like he looked before: his face had gotten big and his eyes were narrow, almost like he was Chinese. Harmony could not remember what he looked like before but she knew he had not been Chinese.
Finally the police came. The only people left were a few street boys with their bottles of glue to their noses. They had gathered around in a circle to stare. They stood staring, some crying, until the police took the body away.
Chapter 18
Thieves
Anika, who I could never get to like me enough and preferred to call me stupid, the girl with the almond-shaped eyes and the impish grin, is in the nursing room most days now. For a time, when treated for tuberculosis, she had seemed to recover. She even returned to school where, despite missing so many classes, she was number two in her class—a testament to her intellect.
But one day she took a turn for the worse. Her recovery was short-lived and she is sent to the nursing room for twenty-four-hour care.
The day finally comes that I see a tall, light-skinned woman standing outside one of the cottages—Sofie Waceera’s cottage. The woman looks like Sofie and when I glance across the playground, I see that Sofie is being led out of school by one of the teachers.
Sofie’s mother has died. This is a relative come to tell her, I’m sure.
I return to my preschool class. At the break I visit Sofie’s cottage to see how she is handling the news. I enter to find Sofie seated at the table speaking quite comfortably, swinging her legs over the edge of her chair, while the woman listens. I stand there for a moment then introduce myself to the woman. She takes my hand and says,
“I am Judith Waceera, Sofie’s mother.”
The experience of seeing a ghost must be like this. My sense of reality is, for a few moments, pulled apart as I look at someone whose continued existence I had long ago ruled out as impossible. Judith was on her death bed when they found her. She had Kaposi sarcoma lesions all over her legs. I think back to what the social worker had told me:
“She is probably dead . . . .”
But in defiance of all that, here she was, Judith Waceera, drinking tea right in front of me. She is thin and bundled in warm clothes although it is not cold. Her eyes are sunken and bloodshot, her nails are brown and crumbling, but she is undeniably alive.
“You know,” she says to me, “Sofie saved my life.”
Funny, I of all people know. Now through the Washington Post I have told the story to hundreds of thousands of people back in the US, with the sad ending of Judith being dead. I notice Sofie is happy, but I could hardly describe her as surprised. Of course she isn’t. She always believed her mother would return. I was the one who did not.
Judith starts coming to visit Sofie regularly. She explains to me that she ended up staying with an uncle who lived near the border with Tanzania. There was no cell phone reception there so she could not call or be reached. She said things became worse before they got better. There were weeks that she could not get out of bed. But she struggled, “fought,” she said, by thinking of Sofie and all she had done for her. She could never give up after that.
Her uncle took her to the hospital where she received treatment for her KS. After a year the lesions diminished. Although it was still painful she began walking a little bit each day. Her muscles had atrophied so it was like being a child, learning how to balance all over again. But each day the thought of walking to reach Sofie drove her.
Looking at Sofie and thinking about what she has accomplished, it occurs to me that no matter how much I work to care for Sofie, no matter how much I support the nurturing environment of the home, there is nothing that would make Sofie happier than simply having her mother back. Games, attention, affection, toys, she would trade any and all these things from us to have this one person that is so vital to her, alive and in her presence. Realizing this, as Judith leaves that first day. I walk her to the gate and say to her,
“Judith, I’m going to do everything I can to keep you alive.”
Rosa Maria has died. She was one of my volunteers and in the past few days as I’ve watched her deteriorate, I have done so with the knowledge that my actions led to her death.
Isabella, a seven-year-old at the home, asks me why Rosa Maria died. She thinks only children die.
“Then what happened to all your parents?” I ask her. A casual reader might be shocked at my candor, but many of the children, lik
e Isabella, don’t even remember their parents. The Rainbow parents are the only ones they have now, but they know generally that their birth parents are no longer in their lives.
Rosa Maria was a stooping woman with shoulder-length gray hair and skin that had been sunburned many times. Her eyes were sunken and rarely met my own gaze. She had a long nose that was as prominent as a shark fin rising out of the water. She usually wore jeans, a khaki vest full of pockets, and a baseball cap. She was clearly at that point in her life when attracting the opposite sex was somewhat low on her priority list. She dressed functionally. With that vest, she looked like another mzungu ready to take on the bush.
Rosa Maria turned out to be quite the eccentric. Her English was not great and she was unable to learn the names of the children except for one of the babies she took a liking to. The rest of the children she referred to as cukculuku, Kiswahili for “rooster,” and the children called her the same name back. It seemed appropriate.
The staff loved her. Kenyans seem to have an appreciation for eccentricity or even sometimes outright silliness. It’s a typical Kenyan trait to look past anyone’s faults as long as they make you laugh. I found it one of their most endearing national characteristics.
On paper Rosa Maria looked like the perfect volunteer. She was an Italian citizen. She was fifty-seven, retired, on a pension, and had worked as a UN volunteer in Burundi, Rwanda, and Kosovo, when those hot spots were at their hottest. So her resume made her look as if she was committed, flexible, resilient.
She was actually falling apart. She had a drinking problem. How long she had had it, I never found out. It never interfered with her work at the home. She would work from eight in the morning until five in the evening, often without a break. She would work in the kitchen, help in the nursing room, or dig in the garden. It was only three months into her six-month stay that I found more than two dozen wine and liquor bottles all thrown into the trash bin outside her room at once. One of her roommates noticed that she drank a glass of vodka like it was water before bed each night. She asked Rosa Maria why and she replied that after working in regions where there has been incomprehensible slaughter, she had nightmares about soldiers coming to kill her and mountains of dead bodies. The alcohol made her sleep more soundly.