Another thought follows that one the way a stray cat slinks in between the fence rails, knowing it will be unwelcome. If even going to the police won’t protect me, then I can’t stay at Auntie’s house any longer. For a while I just lie there and let the knowledge that I have to leave settle into my heart like a roof collapsing. Then I force myself to crawl out of the rubble and keep thinking.
This isn’t just about you, I remind myself. Kito nearly got killed today, too. If you stay there, you’re a danger to the whole family. This, after all, is the reason Auntie didn’t want us in the first place. I look at my blood-soaked sleeve and wish we had listened to her then, poor as we were, and just turned right around and left. I brush the wetness off my face angrily. It’s not as if I liked it there anyway. Stupid corn cave.
If I’m not going to Auntie’s, where am I going to go? Enzi is in Arusha. For a moment I imagine I could go there and live with him. But this is an old dream, already worn shabby by reality. There was barely enough work for the normal boys in our old village, unless it was helping on a farm, which I can’t do, and I’m tired of hiding in a house while everyone else works to feed me. When does the coffee season end, anyway? I try to remember, but can’t. Enzi had said he would finish working the harvest and then follow us to Mwanza. I’m pretty sure they harvest coffee all the way through the dry season, but I can just imagine, with my luck, showing up at our little village looking for Enzi after he’s already left. Alone, without a job, I would starve.
I stare up at the hull of the boat arching over me, despairing. Then, from a deep memory, come Auntie’s words, urging Mother to take me away: You should go to Dar es Salaam. There have been no albino killings there.
If they let albinos be ministers of parliament, then surely they would let an albino boy do other, smaller jobs. If I can get to Dar es Salaam, maybe I could make a life for myself. I try not to let the word alone echo too loudly as I think this.
Of course, the city is thousands of kilometers away. And I have no money.
Overwhelmed by everything, I curl into a tight ball in the point of the boat and fall asleep.
I wake to the sound of one of the few rainstorms of the dry season drumming on the wood over my head. I’m achy and famished. It’s full dark, and I can’t put off my decision any longer. I heave myself into a crouch and look out from under the boat. No one is on the beach that I can see. The market is deserted other than the ugly angular forms of the marabou storks, guarding the hills of dried fish. I briefly consider eating some of those fish, but under the glassy eyes of the storks, I can’t quite make myself do it.
The noise of the rain on the high tin-and-plastic roof of the pavilion covers any noise I make as I drag myself out from under the warm wood and let the rain soak me. Crouching in the shallow water of the lake, I soak the ripped-sleeve bandage until the dried blood in it dissolves and I can peel it off. When I do, I’m surprised to see that the cut, though long and ugly and painful, is not deep at all. The knife must have only glanced along my arm. I rinse my forearm in the water and press lightly against the fragile scab that has already formed over the cut. As long as I’m careful not to open it up again, I think it’ll be fine.
My shirt, however, is another story. Smelling like a rusty pipe, covered with dull brown bloodstains, and with one sleeve ripped off to make my makeshift bandage, it’s not a shirt I can wear again. Not only will it not protect me from the sun, but I can’t really hope to sneak out of Mwanza looking like a butcher’s apprentice. I’ll have to go to Auntie’s house and get the rest of my clothes.
And while I’m at it, I’ll get some food, too.
My bare white arm glows faintly in the darkness as I sneak through the fish pavilion, the hairs between my shoulders standing straight up. Fifty-pound sacks of dried fish are piled in neat columns four times the height of a man, some nearly as high as the roof. Usually this place is crowded with people shouting to be heard over their own noise. But when the rain shower ends as abruptly as it started, the rows between the stacks are filled with nothing but blackness and an eerie silence, broken irregularly by the harsh croak of the marabou storks. I slip between the columns, the dried corpses of thousands of tiny fish sifting under my feet.
Once out the other side of the pavilion, I duck from one boulder formation to another, hiding in the deep shadows of night as I work my way up the hill toward Auntie’s house and trying not to splash my feet in the puddles left by the short storm. When I get close, I crouch in the thin bushes across the path and observe the house.
All the lights are on and I can see shapes moving about inside. My first impulse is to run straight into the warmly lit rooms. I imagine throwing myself into waiting arms and letting them squeeze the terror of the day out of me like juice from a lime. It’s a tempting vision. What I wouldn’t give to be warm and dry and feel safe and surrounded by family again. But no, I won’t go searching for hugs and reassurances. I now know the feeling of safety is a lie. You can’t win an argument with a hunting knife. If I went in, they might try to convince me otherwise, and I can’t let them do that.
Instead, I watch for the glow of a lit cigarette, listen for an unusual rustle in the bushes. Anything that would indicate the presence of my hunter. I don’t see anything, but even so I stay hidden, motionless for an hour, two hours, watching, waiting, and arguing with myself.
I need money, food, and fresh clothes from the house. I have to go inside. But I won’t go in until everyone else is asleep. I will no longer be a coward, hiding behind women who take care of me. I will be a man and not put them in danger.
Besides, between the blood and the mess and Kito’s story, they probably think I’m already dead. It would be cruel to come back to life only to leave again. If they think I’m dead then they won’t follow me, won’t miss me, won’t be worried for me. I curl my head into my arms and wait for them to fall asleep.
Who knows? says a poisonous little voice in my head. Perhaps they’re relieved.
Night in the city is filled with its own noises. The wind through the trees is like the sound of distant rain, and dogs bark at one another constantly. The sounds of car and truck engines echo off the sides of the buildings when they pass. Music, upbeat and happy, swells and fades as people drive by on the main road down the hill, leaving the silence behind them a little lonelier. It’s hours after midnight by the time I creep across the road and around to the rear of the darkened house. The kitchen door with its destroyed lock swings open at my touch, and I sneak like a thief into the place I’ve been calling home for over three weeks. Just across the threshold I pause and listen. I hear even breathing from many mouths. This is good; I’ve waited long enough. Silently, I creep across the room.
The moon coming through the window throws the kitchen into harsh lines of black and white. I try to block out the images of what happened here this morning, but it’s difficult. I find that I’m standing still, shivering, reliving it scene by scene. I shake myself. Freezing like a terrified rabbit isn’t a good way to escape; it’s a good way to get caught. I force myself to move again.
After living in the house for weeks, I know all the places that Auntie hides the money that everyone brings in. There’s the jar with the screw top under the sink that holds small money: coins and little bills for shopping at the market and paying vendors who come by the house. I reach under and pick it up. Then there’s the bigger money, brought in by Asu and the older cousins; that’s behind a loose wall board in the main room. This is more difficult to get to because my family is sleeping on mats spread all around the room between it and me, but I need it as well.
I slip in on soft feet and move through the sleeping forms. I hope they’re all too exhausted from the stress of the day and cleaning up the broken furniture to wake up. Guilt coils in my stomach when I see that Asu has a deep furrow between her eyebrows and is tossing her head as if she’s having nightmares. I tiptoe past her and make it to the far w
all.
The next trick is prying the board up without making any noise. I grab the plank in both hands and begin levering it away slowly, oh so slowly. My injured arm screams at me, but the cut doesn’t reopen so I don’t listen to it. I twitch my muscles a centimeter at a time and wait for over a minute to let the wood relax into the new angle before moving it again. Sweat is pouring down the sides of my face and my muscles are burning by the time I have the board lifted high enough to reach a hand in and grasp the roll of shillings.
Slowly now, I tell myself. Don’t just let it snap down like an idiot would. Lower it slowly, the same way you got it up. My fingers are slick with sweat, but I manage to return the board to its place without a single squeak.
For a moment I just crouch there, trembling, clutching the money in my hands. I can’t believe I’m stealing from my family. No good boy would ever do such a thing.
You’re not a good boy, the voice in my head reminds me. You’re nothing but a dirty zeruzeru. And if you don’t get out of Mwanza as quick as you can with those shillings, you’ll be a dead zeruzeru. I get to my feet.
I was originally planning to take the biggest money from under Auntie’s mattress as well—the money from her and Mother’s factory paychecks—but my experience with the loose board makes me decide it’s not worth it. Instead of attempting a third robbery, I creep back through the main room. I’ll get some food and take all my sun clothes from their bundle in the corn cave. Then I’ll get out of here.
A part of me wants to kick something “accidentally” so that everyone will wake up and see how brave I’m being and talk me out of leaving. But the moonlight shows me bright lines on Chui’s face, like old snail tracks, and I don’t know what to think about the fact that Chui cried for me, so I go on to the kitchen, as quiet as a ghost.
The corn has been restacked against the wall, although a few stray kernels in the corners of the kitchen show that the mess is not completely cleaned up yet. I pull at the sack on the end and, sure enough, they have even taken the trouble to re-create my corn cave. I don’t know whether to feel touched that they hoped I’d come back or angry that they thought I’d crawl into a hiding place that didn’t work the first time.
I get down on my hands and knees and scoot into the cave to grab my clothes roll. I’m coming out, my head and shoulders still inside, when a hand touches me.
I jump up in alarm, banging my shoulders and neck against the roof of the corn sack cave. I shove myself out, my heart hammering, and whirl around to see who’s found me.
“Habo?”
I brace for an attack, my eyes darting in the darkness. Then I notice a small form huddled against the side of the nearest sack, shaking.
“Kito, you frightened me!” I whisper, hoping he’ll take my cue and keep his voice down.
“Is it really you? You’re not dead? Really not dead?” My prompting didn’t do any good: His voice is a high squeak, getting louder by the second. I hear a rustling from the other room.
The little boy is terrified, and I don’t want to make him scream, but I need to get him to be quiet. I reach out to him.
“Shh, Kito. It’s me. I’m okay.” He tentatively takes my hand. I pull him into a hug. I tell myself it’s just so that I can whisper in his ear and muffle his mouth against my chest, but it also feels good to hold someone.
“Shh,” I say again. “I got away, Kito, it’s okay.”
Kito starts to sob, and now I do use my shoulder to muffle his noise. Quickly, I scoop him up in my arms and carry him out onto the patio.
“Kito, Kito, shh. I’m not hurt.” Much. My arm still twinges with every move. Kito is blubbering.
“I thought you were dead! I ran and ran, and I found some neighbors, but only women, and you said ‘bring a man,’ and so I ran all the way to the police station.” He gasps for breath. “But the police wouldn’t believe me and I had to tell my story over and over, and then they called Mother from the factory and we all went home and everything was everywhere and there was blood! And you were gone! Gone! And—”
I cut him off. “Enough, Kito!” The boy is starting to wheeze from the effort of telling his story, and he’s getting louder, too. “You did a good job. Do you hear me, Kito? You did the right thing. All the right things. Asante.”
Kito sniffles and burrows his head against my shoulder. I look out over his hair and scan: the street for danger, the houses for lights, the sky for signs of dawn. My ears strain for a sound that tells me I’ve been caught. After two minutes that feel like forty, I gently push him off. I link my fingers through his and hold our brown and white hands up to his face.
“Look,” I say, “we’re a zebra.”
He breaks into a tear-streaked smile.
“Kito,” I continue, squeezing his fingers in mine, “I have to go.” His eyes widen in panic, but I can’t let him get worked up about this. These final hours before dawn are the only thing between me and a guarantee of being caught. I have to go now. If I don’t leave before the rest of the family wakes up, I’ll never make it. Seeing Kito is hard enough. I’d never manage to go if Asu was asking me to stay, or Mother.
“Kito, I have to. The bad man will keep coming if I’m here. The only way to get him to leave you all alone is if I go away. Then the bad man won’t come anymore.” I smile when I say these things. I don’t want the boy having any more nightmares than he already will.
“Will the bad man chase you?” he asks.
A thorn of fear pierces my throat. For a moment I can’t say anything. Then I swallow hard and keep talking. The fear scrapes all the way down, making my voice raw when I answer him.
“Of course not,” I say. “He’ll hunt elephants again.”
Kito heaves a sigh of relief. Then his brow wrinkles up. “But where will you go? And when will you come home?”
I take a breath. “Kito, I have to go far away. I’m going to try to make it all the way to Dar es Salaam. I’ll be safe there, and the bad man won’t ever be able to find me. But that means I have to stay away.”
Kito starts to cry again.
Think like a five-year-old! I scold myself. Going away is as bad as dying to him.
“I’ll call you on the phone!” The rash promise is out of my mouth before I can stop it. Punguani! my inner voice raves. Idiot! But Kito’s face has relaxed again, and I don’t dare take it back. “I’ll call all the time,” I lie. “I’ll call the phone in the store down the street, and when they answer it I’ll say, ‘Hello, my name is Habo. I’m calling from Dar es Salaam. I need to speak to Kito, please.’ And the shopkeeper will run all the way up the big hill, panting, wondering who is so important to be getting a phone call from the biggest city in all of Tanzania. And they’ll be so surprised to see it’s you! And you’ll walk down to the shop and talk to me on the phone, and everyone will be so jealous of Kito, the boy who gets phone calls.”
“I’d like that,” he says.
“I know. But if I’m going to call you from the city, I have to get there first, don’t I? So I’m going to get some food and then I’ll be on my way. But remember,” I say, putting a finger on his pudgy little lips, “we can’t make any noise at all.”
“Okay,” he says.
“And in the morning you shouldn’t tell anyone you saw me, either,” I say, hoping against my better judgment that Kito will be able to keep my secret, at least until I’m too far away for them to catch up to me. “That way, when I call, it’ll be a fun surprise for everyone.”
Half an hour later I’m again tiptoeing through the bushes on the far side of the street. But this time I have a pack of belongings and food balanced on my head, a fresh shirt, and money.
I’m on my way.
10.
Once past the house, I fade into the darkness, debating what I should do next. My first thought is to get away from people and find somewhere to hide, so instead of heading down int
o town I head up, into the wilder hillsides. The night air is cool and humid on my face, and at first while I climb I can hear the sounds of night in the city—faraway dance music and laughter, honking horns—but at the top there is no one to laugh, no music playing.
You’re alone, I tell myself. You can relax a bit.
But just as I think these things, my foot lands on something that squishes a little and twists my ankle under me. There is a screech in the blackness and I feel claws ripping at my ankles. I stumble and fall. A light, furry shape bounds over me, hissing and spitting. My heart gallops in my ears and I lie in the weeds for a minute, fighting down the waves of dread that make the edges of everything sharper.
It was just a cat, I tell myself. You just stepped on a sleeping cat, that’s all, nothing to lose your mind over. I pull myself into a crouch and look around for somewhere to hide. Surely all that racket will bring people running, and I don’t want to be here when they arrive. I huddle under a bush and wait. And wait.
No one comes.
A terrible thought occurs to me: If it had been Alasiri I had bumped into and I was the one screaming, no one would have heard me, either. Though I feel more comfortable hiding far away from people, it’s too easy to be killed here. I break into a sweat, even though the August night air is brisk, and turn around and head for the center of town.
I creep along the side roads until I get to Makongoro, the main road that leads from the airport to the center of town. I remember Asu telling me how she would take the purple dala-dala this way to work. I hurry along in the shadows and try not to think about Asu. Getting angry about what Alasiri said would just slow me down now.
As the night creeps closer and closer toward dawn, it becomes more and more difficult for me to move around unnoticed, but since my goal has changed from hiding to trying to be around people, I remind myself this is not a bad thing. Slowly, light fills the sky. I walk through the streets of the city, checking over my shoulder again and again to make sure Alasiri hasn’t suddenly appeared behind me.
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