“IDP camp,” Mom says. “For Internally Displaced People. Like being a refugee in your own country.”
Of course we have to troop downstairs to the computer and look up “Sudan IDP camp” on the Internet until we come up with a picture of a dreary, dusty plain packed with straw huts and tepee tents patched together from old clothes and plastic tarps.
“That’s the kind of place Nawra lives,” Mom says.
“I just don’t need any more homework.”
“What is so hard about writing a letter?”
“I hate writing.”
“You like talking,” she says. “You’ve got great ideas.”
Yeah, and when I have to write them down . . . it’s like I’m holding a big, beautiful lamp and it slips out of my hand, hits the floor, and shatters into a million pieces. I pick up all the little sharp-edged shards and put them on the paper, but they get all mixed up and I get fed up and who could tell there was ever any light in this thing?
Plus, I can’t spell. Todd says if they ever held a misspelling bee, I’d be national champ.
“I could be your scribe, Madame Cannelli,” Mom says. “Nawra has Adeeba, and you can have me.”
What did Nawra say? Adeeba is very clever but very bossy. So is Mom, but I can’t see her writing that down. She already types my papers, at least the big ones I can’t avoid telling her about. She makes so many changes I wonder sometimes if they’re hers or mine. Even if Mom wrote down exactly what I said, it wouldn’t be exactly what I wanted to say because a lot of things I couldn’t talk about.
Like being a loser.
“I’ll write the letters if you won’t,” Mom says, “but we need to let this girl know we’re paying attention.” She pulls out the scolding from Save the Girls. “As Martin Luther King said, ‘In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’ ”
“You write the letters,” I say.
Dear Nawra,
I am SO sorry. I screwed up, which is nothing new, so don’t take it personally. I have so much homework, and I’m always behind, and this letter thing was one more assignment I had to do. My mother—the real Madame Cannelli—kept bugging me, so I scribbled on the outside of an empty envelope, slapped on a stamp, and waved it at her as I ran to the bus. Then Save the Girls sent us a reminder, and Mom made me dig out your letters, and there you were holding hands with your sisters and scratching Cloudy’s back and listening to your mom sing to the mango tree. My mom knows the first three lines of every song written before I was born, but whenever she sings, Todd—that’s my brother—and I put our hands over our ears and wail. It’s not as mean as it sounds. Once Mom made it all the way through “Yesterday” and burst into tears, so it’s better that we wail than she does.
I wanted to send you a letter. Trouble is, I suck as a writer. I’m not allowed to say that, though. Mom is always telling me not to send negative messages to myself because they turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. I’m supposed to get up every morning and say to the mirror, “I’m smart, I’m confident, I’m good at . . .” Fill in the blank.
But I don’t have anything to put in my blank. Mom works at a temp agency, and this is one of those exercises she does with people before she places them in jobs. Maybe it works for them. Of course, Todd doesn’t have to lie to the mirror because all day long people tell him, “You’re smart, you’re organized, you’re God’s gift to high school.”
People tell me, “You’re worse than a mosquito!” At least that’s what Mr. Hathaway said yesterday when he told me to stop annoying people in my English class.
So I made Mom write you a letter, only she pretended she was me, only we’re totally different, so the letter didn’t sound like anything I’d ever say. I refused to sign. Then Mom and I got into a long fighty discussion about writing and what happens when I fail the SOLs, Standards of Learning, which are these huge tests we take every year but especially in eighth-grade spring to show which Stupid Or Lazy kids should be left behind. Mom kept saying “in the unlikely event,” but she’s done all this research, so she’s bracing for me to fail. At least you can still go to high school if you take summer school and your teachers recommend promotion.
“So stay on the good side of Mr. Hathaway,” Mom said, ha-ha, as if that man cared about anything except punctuation. You could write that you had a car accident on the way to your dad’s funeral after your house burned down, and he’d draw a big red bull’s-eye at the end of the sentence where the period should have gone. Minus 5.
Thanks to you, though, I might actually finish eighth grade! Mom heard about this software where you speak and the computer writes down what you say, and we ended up going to the computer store right then and buying it, the deluxe version, and a studio microphone, which is so unlike Mom since she usually never buys anything without a coupon.
Mom and Todd are helping me train it to write down exactly what comes out of my mouth (except for the “uhs”). I have to speak slowly and loudly. I really loved my grampers, who died two years ago, so I imagine the microphone as him, with hair growing out of his ears. I talk to him. It is AWESOME to see the words appear. I can talk my papers for school!
Unfortunately, Mom heard me say this—well, scream this—to my friend Emily on the phone.
First Mom told me to calm down. Then she said, “Good writing is really rewriting.” She is Queen of the Kibosh.
Gotta go. More later.
Dear Nawra,
Back again. Your village sounds so cool. I wish I could meet Cloudy the donkey! For the longest time I wanted a pony, but all we have is Purrfect, a cat who’s really fat and lazy. We just found out he has a thyroid problem, and Mom’s been sighing because the medication is really expensive—or else he can have radiation, which is even more expensive, but then we wouldn’t have to crumble pills in his food every day. “Just nuke the cat,” Todd says.
I have so many questions. How old are you? When’s your birthday? When can you go back to Umm Jamila? Mom always calls me a nosey parker. Your mom and your sisters are at the camp with you? I always wanted a sister. Todd and I used to play a lot together, but now that he’s a sophomore in high school he’s really into photography and chemistry and getting into college. What’s your brother Muhammad like?
You can carry firewood on your head! I’m so impressed. Back in fourth grade we tried walking with books on our heads to show off perfect posture, but they always slid off. I blamed my conditioner.
More later.
Dear Nawra,
I better finish this letter before it turns into a book.
About me:
I live in Richmond, Virginia, so I had only forty-nine other state capitals to memorize for the stupid test. It’s like every state picked a trick capital: “Kids have heard of Orlando, so let’s put Florida’s headquarters in Tallahassee, which nobody can spell.” Sorry—small rant. Richmond is about two hours outside Washington, the US capital, which is where my parents were living when they got married. It’s expensive and surrounded by traffic, so my parents kept on driving and bought this house. It’s small with the kind of problems that make mothers cranky, like a wet basement and drafty windows. Looking for a tennis ball once, I found a rolled-up blueprint in the back of the coat closet, and when I asked Mom what it was she said, “Broken promises.”
I don’t remember our apartment in D.C. Mom said Todd and I slept in the same bed, but now we each have our own room, thank God, though next door to each other, which is bad enough. Todd’s room is like a gallery of blurry black-and-white photography, shots of hands strumming guitars or feet kicking soccer balls or friends looking down and turning away from the camera, like he pressed the button just when they decided to leave. What’s wrong with getting someone’s eyes and a smile in the picture? He tells me I’m bourgeois, whatever that means, just because I happen to like Teen Nick and Taylor Swift. Todd listens only to classic rock, old people wailing that they can’t get no satisfaction.
My dad
lives in Richmond too, though as Mom always mentions, he’s got the better zip code. They’re divorced. He’s a top salesman for a big office supply company, so he travels a lot during the week. We spend every other weekend with him and his new wife, Sharon. They have a hot tub, but it’s off-limits. She’s still trying to make a good impression on us, so she bakes coffee cake and homemade lasagna and all this tasty food, which irks Mom, who’s always buying baked chips and burgers that look pretty good until you bite into them and realize they’re made out of soy protein.
When you mentioned that your dad had more than one wife, I thought that was really weird, but Mom pointed out that people here get divorced and remarried. In a way my dad has two wives, only my mom’s no longer the favorite. That stings. I know this from personal experience since I’m one of two children and not Mr. Perfect Todd.
My mom has always had a job, part-time when we were little but full-time now that she has to pay the mortgage by herself. She’s pretty much busy all the time. What I remember most about Mom and Dad being married is Mom always being disappointed. “No follow-through,” I overheard her say, which I’m sure is what she thinks about me, too, only you can’t divorce your daughter.
My mom never yells, but she has this calm voice with incredible shrinking power so that by the time she’s finished talking you feel about as tall as a worm.
I’m turning fifteen on August 10. I don’t feel almost fifteen. I don’t have a phone or a boyfriend or contacts. Supposedly six months after that I can get a learner’s permit—after I pass another stupid test—but Mom says she’s not letting me near the wheel of her car until I get my act together.
I’m always the oldest in my class because I got held back in second grade. “Everyone develops at her own speed,” Mom says, but I feel like one of those slow-go tractors with a big red triangle on the back about to turn onto the superhighway, which is Washington-Jefferson-Lincoln-Lee High School. Todd calls it Cover Your Bases High. I’m scared to death. Luckily, Emily is smart like Adeeba. I polled my class, and she’s the only one who knew where Sudan is. She’s faster than me at everything except the 100-meter dash, and she can read newspapers in Spanish. Although there’s no chance we’ll be in the same math class, we both put down world lit and American history, so we’re bound to overlap somewhere, and she can still check my homework. Unless she turns into the passing lane and whips right past me.
I know it’s really crummy that you didn’t get to go to school, but I wish I didn’t have to.
“What would you do all day if you quit school?” Mom asked me once.
Babysit. It’s not just the money, though I make a lot. I really like little kids, and they really like me. Mom says I have a gift. At least I have one.
What’s your gift, Nawra? Besides sayings—you know a lot of really good sayings.
Love, K. C. (I’m no madame.)
In the name of God, the Merciful and Compassionate
27 May 2008
Dear Madame K. C. Cannelli,
Peace be upon you. How are you? Are you strong?
Umar passed into the hands of God last night. Umm Hakim wrapped him in the tobe he had chased in the wind just a month ago because we have no burial cloth.
Some people think this is wrong because white is for death, all of us the same as we prepare to meet God. Yet the colors suit the children, who are the brightness in our life. Even here the children sing and clap and make mischief. The old women complain, like Kulthum bint Issa, who was always scolding Umar for stealing her spoons for his games and kicking up sand as he ran. But today she rocks silently on her mat.
A child is a child of everyone.
No one has donkey milk to give the children when they cough. So many have fevers, and when the flux comes, they dissolve, like sugar in hot tea.
Too much of anything makes it cheap, we say, except for people, who become more valuable.
All the khawaja talk about now is washing hands. They have organized some of the men to burn the donkeys and cows that collapsed near the wells.
The children cried because the smell of meat made them hungry.
Forgive me for burdening you with my sadness.
Your sister, Nawra
K.C.
MAY 2008
“Tell me one result of Prohibition,” Emily says.
“Mass production. The Great Migration.”
“Come on, K. C. Prohibition. Like prohibit . . . Like we’re not allowed to do it . . .” She holds her hand up in the air, tilts her head back, and opens her mouth.
“Fish! Feeding! Gargling! Karaoke!”
“I’m not playing charades.” Now Emily’s all prickly.
“What the heck were you doing?”
“Guzzling whiskey. Prohibition prohibited alcohol, Eighteenth Amendment—remember? All those bootleggers. So organized crime increased.”
Behind my back, my fingers find the indent between the cinder blocks. It reminds me of sixth grade and Jimmy Ladd, who liked to pin me against the hall wall when we were kissing so he could press his whole body against mine. It’s embarrassing to think how many people saw us. Maybe he was showing off, though I wasn’t anybody to show off. He scared me a little, and not only because I thought my glasses would fall off and smash. But at the same time the pressure was sort of exciting, that anyone could be so interested in me, though not really me, since Jimmy didn’t know anything about me, about how I felt, which was awful since Dad had just married Sharon and Mom was on autopilot. I thought if he pressed hard enough, he could squeeze out that awful feeling or at least change it, like coal into diamonds. We had just learned about that in earth science. Black crumbly coal turned into shiny sharp diamonds—I couldn’t get over it. Forget that whole caterpillar into butterfly routine. I made Mom put some real coal in a garbage bag in our driveway so she could run over it with her car.
“Remember when you caught me and Jimmy Ladd kissing?” I ask.
Emily shudders. “Why did you let him . . . chomp on your face?”
“I like alligators. Remember you said, ‘What are you doing, K. C.? Every time a guy opens his mouth you stick your tongue in.’ ”
Emily shakes her head. “Thank God Jimmy Ladd got suspended.”
“He thought it was some big secret, smoking cigarettes in the bathroom. Ha. He was even dumber than I am. He always reeked.”
“Where’d his mom move?”
“New York. She had a brother there. She was probably hoping he’d whip Jimmy into shape. Like you did me,” I say. I put my head on Emily’s shoulder. “When a tree leans, it rests on its sister.” I sigh. “I am so going to fail.”
“You got that right.” Air-dribbling past us, Chaz gives a thumbs-down. Jerk. As soon as Jimmy left, Chaz spent a year trying to feel me up. Now he tells everyone in our math-for-dummies class that I’m a slut.
“Shut up, you haboob,” I yell. The word tastes as sweet as a sourball in my mouth.
Dear Nawra,
My letter is going to come soon, I swear. I hate this gap. I want to know what you’re doing TODAY (which is May 28—sorry, I always forget to put that). Mom reads everything Save the Girls sends us, so I asked her what’s taking so long. She says Saida Julie flies back to your capital, Khartoum, every month—we measured with fingernails in our world atlas, and it looks about six hundred and fifty miles. Students there who speak English and Arabic do the translations. Good move. Here we can’t even find enough people who speak Arabic to tell the Iraqis we’re sorry, we really just meant to help.
Where was I? Mom says I have a mind like a kite; it follows the breeze.
Those haboobs sound awful. My granny lives in Florida, and she sometimes gets hurricanes, but those are wet. The Midwest gets tornadoes, which spin around like some hand blender from hell, picking up cows and cars and people who didn’t make it to the basement. I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen The Wizard of Oz. I showed your letter to Emily, and she said during the Depression a drought hit the Great Plains, where farmers had plowe
d up the grass and roots, so all the loose soil dried up. Then the wind whipped up black blizzards, and so much dust was flying that fish choked to death in streams and some cities had to turn on their streetlights in the middle of the day.
At least I’ll get a Dust Bowl question right on the SOLs. We just took the history and science ones. Speaking of science, you know what happens when you run over a gazillion charcoal briquettes with a car? A lot of black dust, no diamonds, and a flat tire.
I’ll write more later.
Dear Nawra,
I hope you don’t mind a wad of miniletters. Save the Girls limits me to one envelope a month. My mom’s been reading your letters to me, which I hope is okay. She’s better at deciphering the handwriting. Tell Adeeba her Arabic looks really cool! Do you get both letters too—mine and the translator’s?
Do you have a picture you could send me? I’m the one on the left with the glasses and the wavy hair. There’s this ancient song, “Brown-Eyed Girl,” and whenever it comes on the car radio, Dad turns it up really loud and sings along to me.
The blue-eyed girl next to me is Emily. We’ve been friends since second grade—well, my second second grade. She was the only good thing about getting left back. Isn’t her face a perfect heart? It doesn’t seem fair that someone can be so smart and so pretty at the same time, but Emily complains that people always take her for a dumb blonde. I’m the smart brunette because of the glasses. Ha. At least Emily gets lots of cavities.
Love, K. C.
Nawra
JUNE 2008
“You must take care of your health, Nawra, now more than ever,” Saida Julie says. Her hands hold my hands, and their warmth brings my tears.
Adeeba says, “This crazy girl spends her money on everyone but herself. She gives away demuria cloth as if she were queen of the land of cotton.”
Adeeba has no shame. Adeeba tells me I am too shy, but she is not shy enough.
The Milk of Birds Page 4