Three days later, Charles received a phone call from the ministry of mining. The minister himself was on the line, expressing his fervent congratulations. The deal was closed. By the afternoon, Charles had the papers in hand. Charles would tell Sarah about the acquisition in due time, when she was ready to admit that he was right to have bought it, just as she admitted he was right to run over the hen. Zuberi’s grin with black gums flashed in Charles’s mind.
Months of intense work followed. Charles gave instructions to build offices and a dining hall and to hire personnel. He planned to erect dormitories for workers who came from villages far away. Philanthropy, Charles thought. Sarah, what I’m doing is my type of philanthropy.
No one in that part of the country had ever heard of a mine owner investing in his employees’ lodging. Charles stood out from the rest of the renowned entrepreneurs. Hundreds of men came for interviews, hoping to obtain a position.
Those from the villages around Mwanza considered Charles a good spirit fallen from the sky. He had burned his wings when flying close to the sun and had tumbled to Earth to live as a man. Fathers told the story to their children. Men, grouped together under the stars in the evening, spoke of the legend and bet on who among them would be hired by the great, benevolent Mr. Fielding.
17.
It had taken most of the savings she had accumulated over the two rainy seasons since Adimu’s birth, but Nkamba had finally been able to buy the biggest umbrella she could find on Ukerewe to protect her grandchild from the sun. Adimu’s curiosity would often lead her beyond the shade of the umbrella, so Nkamba would weave palm leaves to create a larger shelter for her.
The grandmother saw how the sun blistered and bloodied her baby’s flesh. “Don’t you move from that shade!” she warned the child, shaking her bony finger, though Adimu rarely listened.
As Adimu grew, she investigated everything that her small world had to offer—a flower, an insect, a seed or leaf carried by the wind and left at her feet. A large part of her days were spent playing alone while Nkamba worked the clan’s small fields, supervising her granddaughter from afar.
“Jua[11].”
“What did you say?” called Nkamba, turning quickly toward Adimu.
“Jua, jua, jua,” repeated Adimu. It was her very first word. For many months after that, everything was jua: food, the chickens, the yellow earth in the yard, and even the cockroaches that squirmed on the floor of the hut.
Nkamba wondered if Adimu’s language skills were stunted because of her isolation. She never, though, questioned for a moment whether the child started speaking at such a late age or whether her vocabulary was limited because of her intelligence. Nkamba had raised a son and a number of Sefu’s cousins, and none of them matched Adimu’s innate brilliance. As far as Nkamba was concerned, Adimu was jua.
* * *
On Sundays, during Father Andrew’s Mass in the shade of the baobab in the center of the village, the elderly grandmother settled Adimu inside the trunk of the great tree where she was protected from the sun. Wrapped in the dim, benevolent light, Adimu never tired of touching the baobab’s porous bark, her small hands brushing over the wood, tickling the great tree that sheltered her. Her eyes could not bear the bright rays of the sun, and for this reason, she often squinted. In the dry season, when the tropical sun glared violently, her face became a single wrinkle. With it scrunched up, she appeared to be looking about suspiciously. Sometimes Adimu liked to view the world through the green glass of a bottle her grandmother gave her to play with. She held it up to her eyes and turned it slowly, observing with surprise as objects changed shape through the movement of her hand.
Often one or more children would slip away from the group of adults who were listening to the sermon and tease Adimu. They pulled her thin hair or pinched her skin, intrigued by its bright pink color under their touch. She cried in protest only when their insistence caused pain. Otherwise she interpreted their provocations as a game. Sometimes, at the end of Mass, her arms and legs were covered with small pink spots.
Father Andrew noticed that Nkamba left her grandchild in the tree trunk during the service. He conjectured it was due to a lack of faith or, even worse, from the elderly woman’s desire to keep the creature away from God. One Sunday, after having made small talk, he asked her, “Why do you hide her inside the tree rather than keep her among us in the arms of God?”
“My mjukuu is big now. She is in her third rainy season,” the woman replied, stopping her gaze at the religious man’s chest as if she wanted to talk to his heart. “Her presence could annoy the others, and we have enough problems.”
Father Andrew took her hands in his. “Adimu is baptized,” he said, to reassure her. “She is one of Christ’s lambs, like all the others. The color of a person’s skin is unimportant to Him, and He will be offended if you leave your grandchild outside the place where we listen to His voice.”
* * *
Six rainy seasons had come and gone since the birth of Adimu, and she was with her grandmother at one of the tiny grocery stores of Murutanga where Nkamba was bartering products from her field for small quantities of sugar, salt, and palm oil. The grocery was a white-plaster structure with a tin roof on which a giant satellite dish was secured. Plastic buckets of various sizes and colors were stacked outside—orange, blue, green, brown, yellow. On the four aisles of shelving were stocked basics that were grown by nearby farmers, fresh loaves of bread baked by neighbors, and a limited supply of household sundries. The local tailors had fabrics available, and there was a freezer filled with King Cone ice cream and Fruit Pastilles ice pops. Nkamba preferred to trade with neighbors for her basic goods and not bring Adimu to the busy street in Murutanga, but sometimes she was forced to visit a store.
While her grandmother negotiated with the owner, Adimu noticed a child who was smaller than she, the shopkeeper’s son. He was sitting in front of a mirror by the door, playing with a green bottle. Adimu drew near. She wanted to show him how interesting the world is when seen through glass.
“Can I have it for a moment?” asked Adimu, taking the bottle from the boy’s hands. “There’s a game I played when I was little.”
Adimu concentrated on the bottle, rotating it, admiring its smooth surface. She loved to touch objects. Her eyesight was weak, and her fingertips acted as a second pair of eyes—the smoother the texture, the greater her pleasure. She wondered why her skin—thickened by the sun where it was exposed—wasn’t smooth and cool like the bottle. And, above all, why her skin wasn’t black like the little boy’s.
The boy was mesmerized by Adimu’s pale white arm. After what seemed like enough time to walk to the lake from the village, he shifted his eyes to his own dark skin. He gazed at the mirror to take in how he and the ghost girl looked side by side, and then, moving as close to her flesh as possible, he studied the details of her features. Finally, driven by curiosity, he touched her knuckles with his fingers. Adimu pulled away, disturbed by the intimate contact.
At that moment, Adimu, for no reason at all, looked over her shoulder and there, in one of the grocery store aisles, was a woman, white as flour with hair as light as hers, a halo around her face. The blue eyes of Adimu locked onto the blue eyes of the strange lady.
Adimu returned to the present when she heard the little boy ask his mother, “Why is she white?”
White: it was the first time Adimu had heard that word referred to her.
Adimu dropped the glass bottle and left the shop, running under a nearby shade tree just outside the door of the grocery. She had learned important rules from her grandma: always play where she could be seen, never talk with an adult without permission, don’t get into a car or on a boat or walk with strangers, not even if they offer sweets. For this reason, Adimu kept her eyes glued on the shop door, though she wanted to run away, embarrassed to be “white” like the figment lady in the aisle.
“Never call out for help if you are in trouble. Instead, shout that someone is stealing cattle.
Don’t trust the people you know, and never trust strangers. They can jump out from behind bushes and take you away.” This was Nkamba’s litany that she repeated to Adimu daily.
Sarah had recently received a letter from a college friend, inquiring about her life in Africa. “What is the village like? The people, the food, the stores?” her friend had asked. Sarah was embarrassed to admit that she had not explored most of the mysterious island of Ukerewe. She had lived in Africa for eleven years and roamed freely around mainland Tanzania, but when at White House, she remained within the perimeter of her grounds. She’d spent her time being a homemaker. Recently she had gotten obsessed with floral design, had been making exotic bouquets using native flowers and vegetation.
Every once in a blue moon, she’d think of the baby who stole her heart all those years ago, with her chubby thighs and breathy coo.
That morning, when Adamma, the cook, told Sarah she was going to the grocery in Murutanga to pick up a few things for dinner, Sarah said she was coming along.
What a fortuitous trip to town! When browsing an aisle of the grocery, Sarah saw her baby “all grown up,” playing with a much younger boy. Could it have been that many years since she watched her sleep through much of the night? She must be nearly five, Sarah thought. And the love I felt then was real. I still love her. At that very moment, as these words formed in Sarah’s mind, Adimu looked up at her, and time stopped for Sarah. She was sure the child recognized her, though how could that be? She was barely a year old when her grandmother snatched her from her arms. She started toward Adimu and witnessed a quick exchange between the girl and boy, which resulted in the girl running out the door.
Sarah glimpsed the grandmother—more ragged and tired looking, if possible, than she appeared those years ago—speaking with a young woman in traditional dress and a hijab on her head. Sarah dared to approach the old woman who had been so hostile, as though she had been the one who kidnapped the girl and not the one who cared for her overnight. Might she remember me? Sarah wondered. And then she laughed to herself that of course she would. How many white women did the grandma have such direct dealings with? Not many, Sarah surmised.
Sarah asked Adamma to translate for her. “Tell her I want to buy her granddaughter an ice cream.”
Nkamba shook her head and smiled. Adamma told Sarah that Nkamba said that she, herself, would hand the sweet to Adimu, that she couldn’t allow her granddaughter to take treats from strangers, and she hoped Sarah would understand.
Although the word “stranger” felt like a sharp slap across her face, not a term that applied to her, the grandmother’s protectiveness was endearing. Sarah bought the ice cream cone and handed it to the old woman.
She watched Nkamba leave the store and, moving to the doorway, saw the old woman give the King Cone to Adimu. Adimu glanced into the store at Sarah. Sarah was sure Adimu understood. What a bright little girl, she thought.
That evening, Adimu asked her grandmother who “strangers” were. She understood they were a threat but didn’t know how she’d recognize them. What about the shopkeeper’s son? Was he a stranger? What about the ice-cream lady with the blue eyes?
Her grandma had called it “ice cream” and said she should eat it before it melted. Adimu had never tasted anything so light and cool. When she nipped at it, her teeth ached. Then she saved the rest of it in its wrapper. She held it up to her cheek and delighted in its radiating chill, the opposite of the sun. She held it against her arms and legs. She decided she would save it to cool her off the following day, and when her bibi wasn’t looking, she hid it in her pocket and snuck it under her mat before falling asleep.
The next morning, she pulled out the cone from under her pallet, but the ice cream had vanished. Adimu wanted to cry, though thought better of it. She would have to tell her grandma what had happened and that she hadn’t eaten it immediately as she had been instructed. She thought, perhaps, one day she’d find the white lady and ask her for another.
“Strangers are people that you don’t know,” replied her grandmother.
“If I know who someone is but I’ve never spoken to them are they still a stranger?”
“Absolutely.”
“What about the shaman and village chief? Are they strangers? Should I go with them if they call me?”
Nkamba wasn’t sure what to say. Her granddaughter had caught her off guard. “If they call you and I’m there too, you can go,” she said curtly. “When I’m dead and you are big, you can decide for yourself.”
Adimu was enjoying asking her bibi questions. There was one she had wanted to ask for a while though wasn’t sure if it was a bad question that would make her grandma sad. She heard other children use the word “parents” when they talked about the adults who sometimes hugged them and sometimes shouted at them. Just like her bibi did.
“Do I have parents, bibi?”
“Yes, you have. I will show them to you, but keep your distance. Parents behave in different ways and some can be bad, just as some children can be bad.”
One afternoon when they were getting water from the stream, Nkamba pointed to Juma. “That is your mother, Juma.” Several days later, she said to her granddaughter, “The man who is waving his arms is your father, Sefu.”
That dry season, Adimu began school, and that was when she saw her father again. After the lessons, her classmates rushed to play in the field next to Sefu’s land, and while the other children ran after a ball made of rags, she watched from the shade of a mango tree as the adult—her father—walked along a canal on the opposite side of the road.
Since Sefu kept from looking her way, Adimu was convinced that she was, indeed, that thing others called her: zeru zeru. A phantom.
Adimu invented a game. Every afternoon when school got out, she followed her classmates to the field where they played, and she waited for Sefu to pass. She wanted proof that he saw her, that she wasn’t a phantom, a nobody. One day, she stored all her courage in her stomach and sat on the side of the road where he customarily walked.
Though the sun beat down on her relentlessly, she waited until she saw a figure in the distance. Her heart jumped in her chest. Her father was coming! She told herself if she held her breath until he was only a step away, he would see her and say hello.
She inhaled. With her cheeks puffed out, she remained still. But Sefu walked past without even a glance. Adimu exhaled noisily. She must have made a mistake. She would try again the next day, and the day after that, and the one after that, until the day that Sefu saw her. Her grandmother saw her and so did the children at school. And the white lady with the gold halo hair definitely saw her and bought her the cold sweet. Sooner or later, she would become visible to her father.
On an afternoon when the single-minded sun baked the yellowish earth, Adimu began to hold her breath as soon as she saw her father’s outline appear on the horizon. The light was so intense that her eyes confused the line of the sky with the edge of the land, and her father seemed suspended in a vortex of dazzling ether. When he reached her, she let out her breath in one mouthful, and Sefu flinched. It was an almost imperceptible movement of his head, but for Adimu, it was enough. He had heard her!
Adimu didn’t tell Nkamba about her game and continued playing it. After several weeks, she tried something even more daring.
Her grandmother had told her she was big enough to graze the goats after school. She was proud her bibi trusted her with something so important. Yet she was saddened that the grazing place was far from her father’s land…unless she took the goats to graze on the path where he walked.
And that was exactly what she did.
First, Adimu took the little herd of three to the clearing where there was plenty of fresh grass and let them attack the green leaves on the spiny bushes that grew there along the shady side. Right before she knew her father would appear, she led them to the opposite side of the road, firmly holding the tether. Anyone who passed would be forced to slow down and step over the taut ropes.
Sefu appeared in the distance among the heat waves that rose from the ground and the clouds of midge flies that hung midair. Adimu stepped onto the path, pulling two goats along with her; she would pretend she was pushing them out of the way. She wanted to see her father up close; that way, she could look at his every wrinkle. And he could look at her small nose and full lips. She wanted to be seen. She wanted to be touched. When he approached, she was overtaken by an overwhelming shyness and lowered her eyes. Sefu hesitated; Adimu’s gaze wavered on the goats’ small hooves. She saw her father’s enormous feet and the giant shadow of an arm that rose slowly over her head. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting to be struck, though struck with joy because if her father punished her, it meant he saw her.
Sefu put a hand on the nape of Adimu’s neck and with a slight amount of pressure, pushed her to one side. The contact lasted only a moment. He stepped over the ropes of the tethered goats and continued on without saying a word.
Adimu watched him move away from her, waves of happiness rising in her throat. She smiled. She wasn’t transparent; she wasn’t a phantom! She leaned over the back of one of the animals, resting her cheek on its warm dusty fur, and watched the man become smaller and smaller until he mixed with the light and disappeared, swallowed up by the web of leaves and branches.
The moment Sefu walked through the door of his hut, he looked at his face in the mirror by the window. On his jaw, he placed the palm of the hand that touched his daughter. For a moment, he thought he saw Juma’s face reflected beside his. He turned around with a jerk and saw he was alone. Sighing, he shook his head and went back to looking at himself in the mirror. With the razor, he shaved off the shadow of beard on his chin.
PART TWO
18.
Then She Was Born Page 8