Golden Boy

by Tara Sullivan

  I stare at him with a fondness that a part of me realizes is ridiculous. I flex my cramped fingers, and I’m just bending over to work on the details when Kweli hollers across the yard that it’s time to come for dinner. I push my dog into my pocket and go over to the tap in the wall to fill a bucket with the water that we’ll use to cook the cornmeal into ugali.

  When I join him by the fire, Kweli says abruptly, “There’s a woman named Eshe who lives a few streets away.”

  “Bwana?” I ask, confused.

  “She has a mobile phone,” Kweli goes on, “and she lets people use it for a fee. When you decide you want to let your family know where you are, you can take your money to Eshe, and she will help you make a call. Just walk to the right for three blocks when you go out my door, then left for a block, and ask anyone on the street which one is Eshe’s house. Everyone knows her.”

  So he didn’t believe me about my family knowing where I am. Still, that information is good to know. Even though I don’t plan on going anywhere near Eshe, I feel safer knowing that Kweli wants me to tell my family where I am.

  “Asante, Bwana,” I mumble, stirring the ingredients together. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Once the meal’s ready, I plow through my ugali, shoving handfuls of the cornmeal porridge into my mouth so quickly I burn my tongue, waiting for the question. Finally, it comes:

  “So, boy. What have you learned?”

  “I learned that you gave me a soft wood, so I have to keep the knife at an angle. I learned that if you break something a little, you can still work with it, but you have to change your plan, and”—I pause for dramatic effect—“I learned how to carve a sitting dog.”

  “Ha! Very well then, let’s have this dog of yours.” He holds out his hand.

  “Well . . . it’s not entirely finished yet, but here’s what I have so far.” I try to keep the pride out of my voice as I put the dog into his hand.

  “Hmmm,” he says, and runs his fingers over it. Suddenly, in his hands, I see every ragged edge, every skipped detail. I see how blocky the head and feet are, how out of proportion the head is to the chest. I see that I could have made the fur wavy with cuts; that, had I curved the tail the other way, it would’ve been more realistic. A vision of the beautiful, smooth, complex statues Kweli creates flashes through my mind. I realize, as I watch him, that I haven’t created anything special after all. My dog is just a badly cut piece of wood. I bury my face in my hands and brace myself for the criticism that is sure to come.

  I wait.

  And wait.

  Finally, I look up. My dog is sitting on the ground, and Kweli has gone into the house. I clench my fists. My dog was too poorly done for him to even waste words criticizing it. I stand up and, with a savage kick, send the dog flying into the far corner of the courtyard. Stupid dog! Stay there! I shout at it in my mind.

  I rub a piece of charcoal around my bowl without paying any attention to whether it’s getting clean or not, and then stomp into the house. I slam my bowl on the counter and barrel across the house toward my sleeping mat—and smash right into Kweli.

  The impact nearly sends both of us to the floor.

  “Goodness, boy! Watch where you’re going!”

  “You watch where . . .” I start, and then trail off, flushing with shame at my rudeness. I keep forgetting that he’s blind. “Sorry, Bwana,” I end, lamely.

  “Well, all right, but be a little more careful in the future. You nearly knocked me over.”

  I mumble something incoherent, wishing he would leave me alone.

  “I came in here to get this,” he says, and pushes something at me. I take it. Some distant part of my brain registers that it’s wood.

  “Tomorrow,” says Kweli, “make a cat.”

  The next morning, at breakfast, I’m savoring the feeling of safety that a full belly and a tall wall give me, thinking about how I’m going to carve my cat, when Kweli ruins everything by saying, “I need to go into Mwenge today. Why don’t you come with me and I can show you around? Then, on the way back, we can stop in at Eshe’s house and you can make your phone call.”

  I feel like I’ve swallowed a mouthful of river water, I’m so suddenly cold. No! I don’t trust the city; don’t know if people here will hunt me or hurt me. By now Alasiri could have caught the Sunday train and be looking for me here. The last thing I want to do is to take that kind of a chance. Also, if I go into town with Kweli, someone will be sure to say something to him about my unusual looks, and that will be the end of my staying here.

  “Um . . .” I start, but then don’t know where to go from there. The silence stretches as I race to think of something to say. Kweli tips his head to one side, like a bird.

  “Then again,” he says after a beat, “I suppose if you want to get a head start on your cat, you could stay here. Today I’m just setting up and running a few errands; Friday will be the day I need to work in my shop. I could head in alone today and then, on Friday, you could come in with me and help out.”

  “Oh, yes!” I say right away, without thinking it through. “That’s a good idea, Bwana.”

  “Very well,” says Kweli, and he gets up to gather his things. I shuffle around awkwardly, not sure what to do with myself. Kweli pauses in the doorway. “And Habo?”

  “Yes?”

  “While I’m gone, please think about when you’ll be willing to talk to your family.”

  I mumble something incoherent. Kweli gets his long stick from where it’s leaning on the wall and opens the gate. Before I close it behind him, I can see why. He rests the top of the pole on his shoulder and has the bottom part pushing along the ground ahead of him. He keeps one hand on the stick as he walks and sways it from side to side, showing that the path ahead of him is clear. The stick leaves a curved line in the dust like a snake track as he walks away from home and into town unassisted. I feel a pang of guilt for not going with him, but I close the gate firmly.

  Once Kweli’s gone, I try to focus on starting my cat, but I find that I can’t get the problem of Friday out of my head, or the question of my family. There’s no point in calling them until you know for sure what you’re doing, I remind myself, but the words feel hollow.

  I end up putting the cat wood to one side and hunting around the far corner of the compound until I find my dog again. I sit just outside the front door, aimlessly carving swirls into my dog’s fur, trying to think of how I’ll manage to convince Kweli that I should stay behind on Friday, too.

  Why, why did I agree to help him?

  I’m jolted out of my reverie by a sound: the scraping of a key in the gate.

  That was fast. Did he forget something?

  It’s only as I see the gate crack open that a chilling thought occurs to me: What if it’s not Kweli? It feels like I’m watching the door swing open in slow motion as that thought sinks in, and then I drop my dog and my knife and race into the house. Questions pelt the inside of my skull like hail.

  Who is it?

  Where can I hide?

  How do they have a key?

  Where are they less likely to look?

  I scramble inside and crouch down on my sleeping mat just to the right of the doorway, listening to the metal door in the outside wall creak open and closed on its rusty hinges.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid! This is a terrible hiding place: I have no cover and no ability to hide anyplace else, because by now the person will have walked into the compound and be able to see into the house through the open door I’m crouching behind. I can’t run across their line of sight and, unless the person coming in is as blind as Kweli, they’re going to see me if they come in the house.

  “Great-Uncle!” I hear a voice call out. “Great-Uncle, are you there?”

  I cower farther into the shadows of the corner. Great. Kweli has a family. I suppose this shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. I�
��ve pictured Kweli in my mind as if he was one of his own statues: tall and proud and standing alone, unconnected to anything around him.

  The voice is young and high: a girl or a very young boy. On some level I’m deeply grateful that the voice is not older, not male, and therefore could not possibly be Alasiri come to hunt me out of my hiding place again, but I’m not comforted very much. This person, whoever they are, may not be a danger to me in the same way that Alasiri is, but they’re related to Kweli, and if they see me they’ll tell him what I really am.

  I hear a soft clatter from the courtyard. A voice mumbles, “This doesn’t look like Great-Uncle’s work.”

  My dog! My knife!

  I start to sweat. Through my own stupidity, I am again hiding from someone who is holding a knife. The voice changes. Less welcoming now; wary.

  “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  No, I think desperately. No one’s here. Go away.

  “Great-Uncle?” I hear again. Definitely a girl. I shift my weight onto my heels to ease the burning in my calves. The mat underneath me makes a soft shushing noise as it moves under my feet.

  There is a pause where we both listen with all our attention, and then: “If anyone’s here, I want you to know that I have a knife.” There is a quaver in her voice now. I think she’s getting scared, too. She goes on: “And if you don’t come out, I’m going to call the police and have them search the house. Then you’ll be sorry.”

  I consider. That would be a bad thing. The police would definitely make me sorry. They would tell Kweli what I was for sure in their report. This person—Kweli’s great-niece, whoever she is—maybe I could reason with her, bargain with her. I haven’t been here very long, but already I don’t want to leave. But if this girl gets too scared and goes to the police, then I’ll have to grab my things and run away before they can get here. I’ll have to disappear. Without saying good-bye to Kweli. Without coming back.

  I’m so wrapped up in weighing my options that I stop paying very good attention to what’s going on around me. I’m startled out of my thoughts by a gasp. My head snaps up, and there, framed against the bright square of the doorway, is the figure of a girl.

  A girl with a knife.

  16.

  With the light behind her, I can’t make out her features with any clarity other than to see, from the way the folds of her khanga fall over her hips, that she is indeed a girl. In her right fist, she’s carrying my knife. In her other hand is a blocky shape that might be my dog.

  Great. I’ve given her two weapons. I’m disgusted with myself. But she’s a little bit shorter than me. If I had to, I could wrestle the knife away from her. I might get cut up a little in the process, but I’d win in the long run.

  “Who are you?” she asks, holding the knife out in front of her a little. “What are you doing here? Where’s my great-uncle?”

  Though not as terrified as I was a moment ago, I still feel shaky and empty. I can’t quite pull my mind together to answer her questions with anything except simple truths.

  “My name is Habo,” I say, standing up slowly. She keeps the point of the knife level with my chest, but she doesn’t move any closer. Of course, she doesn’t move farther away, either. “I’m here helping Kweli around the house. We met a few days ago, and he invited me to stay on with him until I make other plans.” I decide to leave out the fact that I was trying to take his dinner at the time and he beat me handily with a stick. “He’s in town right now, at the market, setting up and running errands.”

  I wait for more questions and hold my palms out toward her to show her that I’m not dangerous.

  “You look strange. Why do you look like that? Are you an albino?”

  I sigh. I hate meeting people for the first time.

  “If I tell you, will you put the knife down?” It’s uncomfortable to talk to someone when you’ve never seen their face, but they’ve seen yours.

  She considers this, her head cocked to the side. The gesture looks just like her uncle, or great-uncle, or whatever Kweli is to her.

  “No,” she says finally. “I don’t know who, or what, you are, and even if you looked normal, you would still be someone I don’t know, who I’m alone with, inside high walls. So no, I’m not going to put the knife down.” She pauses, forehead creased, considering. “But if you want to come out into the front yard, we can sit down facing each other. And if you promise not to come any closer while we talk, I promise not to use it against you.”

  I consider her offer. I wish I could see her face as she says these things so I could see her intentions. Is she someone like Chui, enjoying holding power over me? Someone like Alasiri, lying to me and waiting for the right moment to pounce? Whatever her motivations, I decide this is probably the best offer I’m going to get.

  “Sawa,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  The girl moves one careful step at a time so that she doesn’t have to look away from me to keep from tripping. I follow, pace for pace, a reverse dance to freedom. Finally, we’re out. For a moment I blink in the brightness, getting my weak eyes used to daylight again. Then I look at her. She isn’t like Chui or Alasiri. In her face I see a calculation, but no evil intent. In her crinkled brow I see intelligence. In the jut of her chin, stubbornness.

  And she’s pretty.

  In fact, if only she wasn’t scowling—which pushes a deep line between her eyebrows—she would be very pretty. Her cheeks and forehead are round, her hair is pulled off her face in little braids, her eyes are big and wide-set. And suspicious.

  “Well?” she demands.

  I take a deep breath to start answering her question and realize that I don’t remember what it was. Punguani! I thought it was hard to talk to an invisible girl, but I’m finding it even harder to talk to a pretty one.

  “What did you want to know?” I hedge for time.

  “Why do you look like that?”

  Oh, right, that was her question. Of course.

  “Oh . . . um . . . well, yes,” I stammer. “I’m an albino.”

  “Really? I thought so!” The girl squints at me, taking me in. “I’ve heard about that,” she informs me. “You’re all the wrong color, right?”

  “Ndiyo.”

  She stares at my face, interested. I look back at her, trying to seem honest and friendly. She looks to be about my age. I wonder where she lives.

  “Why are you the wrong color?”

  “I don’t know. I was just born this way.”

  She continues to study me for a minute. I’m pleased to notice that the longer our conversation goes on, the lower the knifepoint has dropped. She now holds it loosely by her side.

  “Really?” she says. “You don’t know?”

  I shrug.

  “My brothers are black, and my sister, too.” I see the question in her eyes before she has a chance to say it. “And both of my parents are black. And I’ve seen white people before. I don’t look like them, either.”

  “You’re right, you don’t.”

  “Well, that’s all. I’m the only one out of my family, the only one out of my village, like this.”

  She considers this a moment. Her fingers are now hardly gripping the hilt of the knife at all. I begin to hope I can get her to put it down entirely.

  “But it’s not just me, you know,” I go on. “I’ve heard that there are plenty of albino people. In the Lake District, they kill them. That’s why I’m here. I had to run away because a man there tried to kill me. With a knife.” She jerks her hand tight around it again, but I think this time the look in her eyes might be guilt. Her gaze flicks back and forth between the knife and me. She switches it to her other hand and wipes her palm on her khanga. I press my advantage. “Are you sure you wouldn’t be willing to put down that knife now? I promise not to hurt you. Why would I hurt someone who’s related to Kweli when he’s letting me live here and he’s
the only person I know in the whole city?”

  She tips her head to the side, chewing on her bottom lip. Finally she says, “I’ll put it in my pocket.” Then she glares at me again. “That way you won’t be nervous, but if you try to come at me, I can still get it.”

  “That’s fair.” You’re friendly and trustworthy, I remind myself. I smile at her.

  She carefully slips the knife into the loop of fabric in her khanga that serves as a pouch and then holds out her open palm to me as proof of her good faith.

  “What about my dog?” I point at her other hand.

  “Oh. This is your dog?”

  “Ndiyo. Kweli asked me to show him that I could carve a dog. I worked on it all day yesterday, and I’d rather you not take it.”

  She turns the dog over in her hands, considering it.

  “I knew it wasn’t one of Great-Uncle’s,” she finally says. “I mean, you can tell it’s a dog, but it just doesn’t look like his carvings.”

  That makes me mad. I know it looks nothing like Kweli’s beautiful statues, but I worked for hours on that! Who is she anyway to talk about my carving? Just because she’s related to a master carver doesn’t make her one.

  “Since it’s mine, not his, I’d like it back.”

  “I didn’t mean that in a bad way,” she says. “No need to get huffy. Here, catch.”

  I’m not being huffy! I think, but I’m too busy trying to catch the statue to snap at her.

  I’m terrible at catching things. It was one of the reasons the other boys never let me play with them, even after they all got over their fear that I was a ghost. I’ve always been useless at games that require you to judge the distance and speed of something and get in the right place for it. Which is pretty much every sport ever created. Even the boys who were willing to be a little nice to me wouldn’t risk losing every day by having me on their team. So I went and sat under my wild mango tree and let them win without me.