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The Red Pencil

Page 9

by Andrea Davis Pinkney

It happens to me.

  It happens to Muma.

  With a force all its own,

  it happens.

  Like the haboob, we can’t stop it.

  We can’t run away.

  It‘s here.

  A thick moan

  rolls out from deep places.

  It’s the same for each of us,

  but different, too.

  Muma’s is heavy,

  pounding

  like so much wind from the haboob.

  Mine breaks through a cracked patch

  in my throat,

  then rips through all of me—

  thundering.

  RELEASE

  For the first time since Dando died.

  For the first time since we left our farm.

  For the first time in a long time,

  Muma and I hold each other.

  And cry.

  Together.

  Muma’s arms,

  folded around me,

  so feeble.

  All of her is shaking,

  like from a fever.

  Both our faces,

  wet.

  Tears,

  on our chins,

  on our necks.

  Soaking the fabric

  of our wrinkled cottons.

  My arms,

  small beneath Muma’s

  but strong enough to show my mother

  she’s allowed to cry.

  Now,

  after so much time

  traveling through dry sand.

  Now,

  after so much walking among brittle dirt.

  Now,

  after working hard,

  like camels,

  to store all that’s inside,

  Muma and I

  surrender to something

  we’ve fought

  to hold off.

  Knowing that if we let it begin,

  we may never stop.

  Here comes gut-sound,

  starting slow,

  building,

  then melting to shuddered breaths.

  Until,

  finally,

  we sleep.

  HEALING

  I show Old Anwar my red pencil.

  “It suits you,” he says.

  “Such a bold color. Strong.”

  I share my drawings.

  Old Anwar looks

  closely.

  “Healing” is all he says.

  COULD IT BE?

  My pencil and tablet are gone

  from the tucked-under place

  beneath my pallet!

  I have lost so much!

  It’s hard to ask

  What else is possible?

  I don’t want to work

  at coming up with

  It could be.

  The game doesn’t work right now!

  I rifle through the folds of the

  two toobs I own.

  I search every reed

  that forms my pallet,

  praying my pencil is somehow

  stuck between.

  Hoping my tablet has slipped,

  and was kicked

  by unknowing feet

  to someone else’s sleeping spot.

  All day there’s a thump

  pounding hard through every part of me.

  I reverse It could be…

  to Could it be?…

  Could it be that I’m somehow

  a cursed girl

  who loses everything she loves?

  By evening, I’ve given up.

  But there’s good in this defeat.

  It brings back my voice,

  full-on.

  ROAR!

  First, grunts.

  Then,

  it’s a friend,

  returning,

  speaking up,

  shouting out,

  for me:

  “My. Red. Pencil!”

  I find an abandoned shanty,

  where I can let go.

  It’s dark when I enter.

  I hear soft humming.

  I lift my lantern.

  Leila!

  She’s hidden in a dusty corner.

  Her cheeks glisten like lighted fruits.

  Her hum-hum is happy.

  She’s with Gamal.

  They have my red pencil

  and my paper tablet.

  Leila can barely grip the pencil,

  but when Gamal’s hand guides hers,

  her fingers work.

  Both their faces

  are filled with determination.

  They’re taking turns,

  scribbling.

  A breath storms through me,

  rasping,

  fierce.

  I roar,

  “Give. Me. My. Red. Pencil!”

  I’ve startled Leila.

  Gamal, too.

  My sister sucks in a breath.

  Her eyes are brimming

  with giddy surprise.

  “Amira!”

  Gamal gently nudges Leila with his shoulder.

  A smirk plays on his face.

  He looks pleased,

  relieved.

  A lively frog,

  ready to jump at some fun.

  Gamal has gone from greedy

  to glad.

  He thrusts my straight-and-shiny friend

  right under my nose.

  “Amira, here’s your pencil back!”

  ERASE

  At the red pencil’s end

  stands a hard lump of clay.

  I do not like its green.

  So ugly, its green.

  And pointy.

  A baby snake’s head.

  A thistle’s pricker.

  A sick fish,

  this green.

  My speaking is still in snippets.

  I ask Old Anwar,

  “What to do with this clump?”

  He tries to explain.

  “An eraser.”

  He shows me how

  the baby snake’s head

  can fade the red’s bright lines,

  leaving smears

  on the yellow page,

  and green dust in its wake.

  “Erase,” he says.

  “Why erase?” I ask.

  “For mistakes,” he says,

  still trying to explain.

  Mistakes?

  My sparrow

  sees no mistakes.

  My sparrow sees only what

  it sees.

  Erase?

  To me,

  that is the mistake—to erase.

  SWEET INVITATION

  Old Anwar rests

  beneath a tree’s shade.

  His finger scrapes at dry dirt,

  writing carefully.

  When I come to him,

  he sees, right away,

  the wanting in my eyes.

  “Sit beside me, Amira.

  I am making a list of gratitude.

  Something I do each day as the sun sets.”

  A distant bird calls.

  Then crickets.

  Toads, too.

  Evening’s celebration song.

  Old Anwar says,

  “Land has its own memory, its own power.

  That is why I write on its tablet.

  To press life into what sustains us.”

  I watch Old Anwar put shapes into crusted soil,

  crafting beauty.

  My eyes are afraid to blink.

  I don’t want to miss a single bit of Old Anwar’s

  soil writing.

  “I want to learn letters,” I blurt.

  Old Anwar is silent, thinking.

  Quietly, he says,

  “Amira, there is talk

  of creating a full school at Kalma.

  Until it is here, I will teach you.”

  I lower my head. “Muma will never allow it.”

  I explain Muma’s warning about chasing the wind.

  Old Anwar lifts my chin.<
br />
  “I will instruct you in secret.

  At night, by lantern.

  Muma will never know of it.”

  Old Anwar’s promise,

  it is a sweet invitation.

  “But what of Muma’s warning?” I ask.

  Old Anwar says,

  “Amira, you are not chasing the wind.

  You are stirring it up.”

  TO…

  To craft letters.

  To see reading’s beauty.

  To write English.

  To recite the Koran, our holy book.

  To know reading’s music.

  To me, these are wondrous

  treasures.

  MY A

  Old Anwar wraps his knobby fingers

  around my hand.

  Guides my finger,

  helps me write.

  He shows me

  that in the English alphabet

  his name and mine

  begin the same—with an A.

  “Now you,” he encourages,

  watching the soil

  as I slice its surface

  to form the English alphabet symbol

  that starts my name.

  It’s a strong, handsome character,

  this English-alphabet A.

  My finger strikes two lean,

  angled lines,

  pressed

  forehead to forehead

  and holding hands.

  I make this A

  with my own special stroke.

  My A

  has long legs

  that walk forward on the sand.

  My A

  marches past anything

  that dares to block it.

  Old Anwar purses his crinkled lips

  into a smile that can only mean

  satisfaction.

  “Your hand already understands

  that writing letters

  and drawing are the same,” he says.

  “Letters are pictures that make words.”

  I see what Old Anwar means.

  My A

  lets me feel the truth

  of what he’s saying.

  But still, to be certain, I ask,

  “That is all there is to it?”

  Old Anwar’s nod

  shows me:

  Yes!

  MATHEMATICS

  Old Anwar likes arithmetic.

  He demonstrates a simple equation:

  1 + 1 = two hands full.

  An onion in my right.

  Stone in my left.

  I do not like filled-up hands.

  This counting,

  and holding on,

  prevents me from writing.

  Old Anwar tries to make me see differently.

  “You are adding up Allah’s abundance,” he says.

  I set the onion and the stone at Old Anwar’s feet.

  “Arithmetic is not for me.”

  I slide my pencil from a knotted tether

  at the base of my toob,

  settle my tablet on my lap, then quick-swirl shapes

  to make an onion-stone necklace.

  This math lesson has multiplied my desire to draw.

  FUNNY BUGS

  Old Anwar says,

  “Practice puts a shine on the mind.”

  We continue with lessons,

  each night,

  working to shine

  what is becoming my own precious jewel.

  The two of us meet in the empty shanty

  where Leila and Gamal

  shared my pencil and tablet.

  Old Anwar insists

  I learn more letters

  from the English alphabet.

  Strange,

  this English alphabet.

  The letter A,

  that was easy.

  But the English alphabet is filled with

  funny bugs:

  P N Y L

  Q G H

  J R X

  E S B O

  M C D

  The winking light from Old Anwar’s lantern

  makes the letters dance.

  FAVORITE

  Of all the funny-bug letters I know,

  the letter O

  is my favorite shape.

  Ya, O!

  Open.

  Unbroken.

  Eternal.

  Ya, O!

  POPULATION

  This time

  when we wait

  in the water giver’s line,

  I hear one tell another about

  so many thousands

  living at Kalma.

  That is a strange number.

  So many thousands.

  I try to make sense of it.

  So many thousands of everywhere bodies.

  So many thousands of nomads, wandering nowhere.

  So many thousands, torn from tribal villages.

  So many thousands of bellies, hungry for home.

  So many thousands, aching for safety.

  So many thousands of hearts, longing.

  Here is the problem:

  So many thousands of nomads + bellies +

  souls + hearts + wandering + torn

  + hungry + aching + longing =

  too many

  tragedies

  to count.

  Even Old Anwar’s

  knack for mathematics

  can’t add it all up.

  To me,

  this is a hard lesson.

  Math is useful,

  but makes my head hurt.

  BUTTERFLIES

  Gamal is quick

  to show me his own sheet

  of yellow-lined tablet paper.

  There is a picture,

  made in gray pencil.

  It’s of a boy

  with tears as big as butterflies,

  fluttering out,

  parading down

  from eyes shut tight.

  The boy

  is reaching toward clouds

  shaped like a mother and a father,

  his hands yearning for hugs

  from heavenly parents.

  “Gamal,” I ask, “you have drawn

  this?”

  He nods.

  I say,

  “It is a beautiful way to cry.”

  CNN

  The flicker box makes me stop and watch.

  Dancing, glowing letters:

  CNN

  But that’s not all.

  The lady inside the flicker box is speaking Arabic.

  She’s talking about Nyala!

  There are quick-moving pictures

  of Gad Primary School!

  Its walls,

  white bricks, and clean.

  Its door,

  as blue and as welcoming

  as a sunrise sky.

  The children have books

  as thick as those bricks,

  and baskets filled with pencils

  of what looks like so many thousands of colors!

  There are many girl students,

  dressed in matching toobs,

  and boys as young as Gamal,

  in white shirts and short pants,

  all crisp.

  They’re chanting the alphabet in English,

  singing out the letters together.

  They’re laughing!

  I look for my friend.

  Halima,

  are you there?

  So many faces,

  bright with excitement.

  Reading many books!

  Blessed with pencils!

  Paper tablets everywhere!

  Two women, writing yellow funny bugs

  on big boards,

  black as tar.

  The students are all reading together,

  out loud, for everyone to hear.

  CNN, wait!

  You dance too fast.

  Please,

  slow down.

  I want to see more.

  But—pop!—like a tooth suddenly gone,


  CNN’s moving pictures disappear,

  drowning in a cloud of static.

  SURPRISE

  Old Anwar has brought a gift

  wrapped in burlap.

  “This,” he explains,

  “is Allah’s strongest root.

  Like you, Amira, it pushes

  through the sand’s grittiest surface.”

  I peel open the coarse fabric.

  My gift is a roasted yam,

  heavy, bumpy,

  bigger than Old Anwar’s fist.

  Its skin glistens,

  as if Allah’s root has been polished

  with enchanted oils.

  “Where did you get it?” I ask.

  “Taste,” Old Anwar encourages,

 

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