The Red Pencil

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The Red Pencil Page 4

by Andrea Davis Pinkney

reaching

  to become

  straight lines.

  Leila’s face:

  open,

  ready,

  steady gaze,

  dimple-cheeks,

  framed by a billowing tarha.

  Me:

  Amira Bright.

  Eyes like my father’s.

  Deep wells

  seeking

  hope on the horizon.

  Seeing the sun’s

  open hand,

  distant.

  ETERNITY

  Muma’s wedding toob,

  tightly folded,

  tucked safely away.

  My mother shows me the cotton sheath’s threading.

  A hibiscus flower,

  stitched in its corner.

  A special wedding gift

  from her own mother’s hand.

  My grandmother,

  passed on,

  now a memory.

  Muma lets me touch the toob’s delicate embroidery.

  These stitches are a joy-swirl.

  One of the lovely things

  about Muma’s long-held traditions.

  “Beauty,” I say.

  “Try it on, Amira.”

  Muma’s calloused hands

  drape the sheer fabric around my face.

  Softly she says,

  “Yours someday.”

  MELON BELLY

  I sprinkle millet in Nali’s pen.

  Today she’s more hungry than usual.

  She chomps fast,

  as if tomorrow will never come.

  Muma asks, “Do you see Nali’s gait, so lopsided?

  And her belly, so plump?”

  “Too much millet,” I say.

  “She’s becoming greedy.”

  Muma calls Nali.

  She bumbles slowly, waddling.

  Muma puts her hand on the roundest part

  of Nali’s middle.

  “Feel,” she instructs,

  guiding my hand to the same wide spot

  on my sheep’s body.

  At the place where my palm presses tight,

  it’s as if Nali has swallowed a melon,

  never having chewed it.

  “Nali!” I scold.

  “Soon your legs will not be able to hold you.”

  I start to draw my hand away,

  but Muma will not let me.

  “Keep it there, Amira.

  Wait for a moment.

  Close your eyes to feel what has come to Nali.”

  This is silly.

  I don’t want to do it,

  but I follow Muma’s directions.

  “All I feel is a too-full tummy.”

  Muma hushes me.

  “Quiet now,” she says.

  “Let Nali relax.

  Her ears are pressed down. She’s tense.”

  I open my eyes to see.

  Muma is right. Nali’s pink-tipped ears are wilted.

  “Rub the spot. That will help,” Muma suggests.

  “Help what?” I want to know.

  Before Muma answers,

  something from inside my sheep jerks,

  then presses back at my hand,

  telling me what’s inside Nali.

  I have felt melon bellies on our animals before,

  so I know.

  “Nali, you will soon birth a baby lamb!”

  Muma’s expression

  fills with as much expectation as Nali’s tummy.

  She rests her hand next to mine.

  Together we rub-rub Nali’s belly,

  ripe with new life.

  THE HABOOB

  I hear its thunder before I see its face.

  The sky is the color of a glistening onion,

  bulging brown at its edges.

  It brings a serpent of wind

  with a yellow tail

  trailing all the way to the horizon.

  The haboob crackles a warning

  as it spins from far off,

  then closer.

  I can smell its moisture

  swelling in the clouds.

  When I first see the haboob coming,

  I’m taken with its twisting beauty.

  I know these sandstorms are dangerous,

  but they are a giant wonder.

  “Look, Dando! The sky is spinning a rope!”

  DEMON!

  Dando does not speak.

  Not to me.

  Not to anyone.

  He’s scurrying like a busy cricket,

  rushing

  to cover

  our home’s open places

  with sheets of tin,

  clamped tight.

  Muma is inside our house,

  just as busy,

  laying tarps

  over washbasins,

  and our sleeping pallets.

  The other villagers are as frenzied as Dando,

  moving quickly,

  so frightened.

  Their worried shouts punch at the afternoon.

  Some are shrieking.

  I race to our livestock pen to find Nali.

  But she is nowhere.

  “Nali!” I call.

  I hear a neighbor’s plea. “Haboob, be merciful!”

  Our goats and chickens

  send their own prayers into the wind,

  bleating,

  squawking.

  I flap my arms in front of me,

  like so many hurried hens,

  shoo-shooing our animals

  under their tin-covered

  shelters.

  Soon all the other villagers have escaped

  to their homes.

  Dando and I are the only ones outside.

  Finally, Dando calls to me,

  “Amira, we must get with your mother

  so that I can cover the door! Hurry, child!”

  The land is now spraying its dust,

  flinging gritty bits

  of goz.

  The haboob’s wide-open mouth

  collects the sand,

  then spits it in all directions.

  As the storm hurls forward,

  I watch the grasses go flat

  under its weight.

  Dando’s voice

  is shrouded

  by the haboob’s stomp-noise.

  “This dust storm has the lash of a demon!”

  WORRY

  Dando’s gaze is stern.

  He yanks at me to follow him home.

  I rear back, refusing.

  “No, Dando! I must find Nali.”

  Sand rips at our clothing,

  at our skin.

  Stings the insides of my nose and ears.

  My father’s hair

  is doused in a powdery brown cap.

  So much flying goz.

  I hold tightly to Dando’s leg,

  forcing him to let me stay outside.

  “Dando, please. I need to look for Nali!”

  “There is no time for that, Amira,” Dando insists.

  Muma calls

  from the one uncovered opening in our house.

  “This haboob,

  she is roaring forward!”

  “Amira is being obstinate,”

  Dando calls back.

  Muma is trying to tell us something,

  but the wind’s moan has muffled her.

  Dando shields his face

  with the crook of one arm.

  Works hard

  to scoop me off the sand

  with his free hand.

  I can’t come.

  I won’t leave my sheep

  to be swallowed up in this

  monster’s wake.

  Through squinted eyes,

  I watch the haboob dance.

  “Nali!”

  DUST WALL

  I don’t know

  what the rippling curtain of yellow,

  corded in black,

  will do next,

  but I’m afraid it has taken Nali in its gri
p.

  This storm swirls

  like the fabric of a wind-whipped toob.

  The wall of dust

  made by its growing rope

  is now so thick,

  I can barely see.

  I’m wincing,

  praying to find my sheep.

  Dando has become very angry.

  “Amira!”

  He tries to pull me toward our house

  by dragging his leg.

  This won’t work.

  We’re sheaths of wheat

  against the haboob’s weight.

  I beg Dando, “Let. Me. Stay. To find—Na—!”

  The wind yowls.

  In just moments,

  the haboob will be up close.

  I bury my face

  at the tops of Dando’s feet.

  Then,

  as if the haboob has come to a quick decision,

  she swerves upward.

  Gathers her flailing wind.

  Hurls away in a sharp slant,

  a proud bird showing off her tail.

  I blink,

  brush at the crusty film

  now covering all of me.

  I’m coughing.

  Hard, hard coughing.

  BLEAT—RELIEF!

  The haboob is gone.

  The storm has left soft dune blankets.

  It has flattened our crops.

  It has coated our chickens

  in goz dust.

  It has dressed our goats

  and cows

  in sand-matted fur.

  Everything grows still.

  Leila wails from inside our house.

  My coughing turns to spitting dust.

  I hear a long bleat.

  Pained, but strong.

  I know that rounded bahhh… bahhh…

  Muma calls,

  “Amira, I tried to tell you, but the haboob’s

  noise had grown too loud.

  Nali is here. I’d managed to get her inside.”

  In one long breath,

  I release

  relief.

  My sheep and her unborn baby—safe.

  AFTERWARD

  We spend the rest of our day

  and evening

  cleaning sand

  from the tarps

  and anything they failed to cover.

  This is gritty work.

  The haboob’s powder rests inside,

  between,

  under,

  and on everything.

  Dando is silent while we work.

  Muma, too.

  Leila naps, but wakes often,

  startled.

  As night falls,

  Muma encourages me to settle on my pallet.

  She has allowed Nali to sleep beside me.

  My own sleep won’t come.

  Nali’s breathing is a soft comfort,

  yet I’m still enthralled

  by the haboob’s howling whirl.

  The memory of its twisting beauty

  is a dream-swirl in my mind.

  DANDO’S CONFESSION

  Muma rocks Leila, who, like me,

  can’t sleep.

  She’s fitful, cranky.

  I’m the opposite.

  I’m filled with the excitement that lingers

  after fast dancing.

  Dando tries to calm me,

  rubbing slow circles in my back.

  “You frightened me today,” he says quietly.

  “Dando, you are never afraid.”

  “I was this afternoon, Amira.

  I thought I might lose you.”

  “But Dando,

  I thought I’d lost Nali.”

  “I understand about Nali, but you disobeyed me.

  The haboob destroys. It is not a game.”

  “Dando—”

  “Enough, Amira!”

  I dare not speak after Dando.

  I find my own quiet

  by listening to our village birds

  settling after the storm.

  I pet Nali’s ears,

  rest my hands on her melon belly.

  As sleep’s veil spreads over me,

  Dando asks,

  “Where do you get such self-determination?”

  I whisper softly

  so that my father can’t hear when I ask,

  “Where do you?”

  LIZARD

  The haboob’s flying dust

  had blinded me.

  Leila’s ditty tells me this:

  “My sister is a lizard.

  Silly, slippery.

  Slippery, silly.

  Dancing in the windstorm.

  Dancing in the windstorm.

  Playing.

  Prancing.

  Playing.

  Prancing.

  Swirling at her own party

  with a haboob monster,

  while Muma and Dando

  scurry

  and worry

  for my

  silly,

  slippery

  swirling

  sister.

  Dancing.

  Playing.

  Prancing.

  In scary monster winds,

  my silly,

  slippery

  lizard sister

  only cares about

  her own tail.”

  To Leila, this ditty is fun to sing.

  But it doesn’t make me smile.

  It shows me I’ve been selfish.

  APOLOGY

  I race to find Dando

  in the far-off fields.

  He is silently tending his flattened tomato plants,

  buried in deep thoughts,

  frowning,

  wrapped in concentration.

  My shadow startles him.

  “Amira—”

  I allow Dando a moment.

  But my words don’t want to wait.

  I talk and talk.

  And blurt.

  And let it all tumble

  out of me.

  Like the haboob’s wild wind,

  my talking, talking

  flies every which way.

  I recount the storm

  as if it’s happening this

  very minute.

  My ears and neck

  grow warm in the retelling.

  I’m talking, talking.

  Fast, fast talking.

  I want to say so much.

  Dando gently places his palm

  at the top of my head.

  “Daughter, what is it you are trying to tell me?”

  I finally land on the words I’m meaning to say:

  “I’m sorry.”

  Dando scoops me into a hug,

  arms tender, and strong, too.

  Loving loaves,

  holding tight,

  he whispers sweetly,

  close at my ear.

  Kisses his obstinate girl.

  “Oh, Amira Bright.”

  NALI’S GIFT

  Nali has settled herself

  on a patch of dried grasses

  at the far end

  of our livestock pen.

  She rests on her side,

  panting, bleating,

  eyes half-closed

  to slits.

  Above,

  the sky has prepared for

  something special by

  decorating this night with

  star-spray.

  Speckled bits of silver

  against a blue-black cap.

  “It will be soon,” Muma says,

  and I know just what she means.

  “Can I stay here with Nali?” I ask.

  Muma cups my cheeks.

  “Let her be.”

  We return to our house.

  I try to sleep,

  but don’t.

  As soon as the tiniest finger

  of morning’s light peels back the night,

  I race to the pen.

  Nali is up on all her legs.


  So is her new lamb!

  The scrawny creature

  is a white-coated

  baby

  with sharp limbs,

  tilted ears,

  dark eyes

  pooled with wonderings.

  Nali looks pleased to see me.

  The lamb’s frail legs buckle,

  then fold.

  She lands, belly flat, limbs splayed,

  on the matted grasses beneath.

  Nali nuzzles her child,

  coaxes the lamb.

  Gets this newborn back to standing,

  then to suckling underneath her.

  I call from the pen,

  “Muma, Dando, Leila,

  come see!”

 

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