As usual, my bad eyesight takes over. I fumble with the dog for a split second, thinking I might have, for once, judged distances correctly, but I lose control and it lands in a small puff of dust by my feet. I bend down to pick it up, furious for no good reason. It’s not like this girl was testing me out to join her sports team. After today I’ll probably never see her again. Then I remember: She’s related to Kweli. The odds are I will see her again. It’s almost guaranteed that she’ll come see Kweli again.
I need to make sure she doesn’t tell anyone about me. But how? I realize I have to keep this girl around for a while, get her to trust me, get her to like me. Get her to keep my secret. How do normal people make friends? I squint at her, considering.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
I start. “Oh, um . . . I was just . . . thinking.”
“Thinking? Looks like it was a strain. Maybe you should stop.”
I scowl at her, ready to say something ugly, but I see the sparkle in her eyes just in time and realize that she’s joking. I quickly swallow my anger. I should joke, too. Maybe I can make her like me that way. I hold up my dog.
“I think almost as well as I carve,” I say, and, to my great relief, she laughs. Then she looks around.
“So, you said Great-Uncle is at the market?”
“Ndiyo.”
“Well, I don’t feel like walking all the way into Mwenge to find him. So instead, maybe you can show me how good you are at making tea.”
I smile and wave her inside like we’re already friends and it’s my house, instead of her having a knife in her pocket and me being a squatter.
“Just you wait,” I say. “I’m even better at making tea than I am at thinking.”
“I can’t wait,” she says. “And oh, by the way.” I look up in time to see the twinkle is back in her eyes. “I’m Davu.”
We walk through the house and head out into the backyard together, but as I rekindle the breakfast fire and pour the water into the pot to make tea, a silence begins to stretch and I’m not sure what to do about it. Davu is tracing patterns in the dust with the toe of her sandal. It’s pink leather and looks expensive.
“So . . .”
“Yes?” she says, looking up from her feet.
I have no idea where I was going with that. I force myself to make conversation. Something, anything, is better than this stretching silence. I pick up the wooden spoon and start to stir the tea leaves around, just to have something to do.
“So you’re Kweli’s great-niece.”
“Ndiyo . . .” Davu looks at me like maybe I’m a little slow.
“Uh, how old are you?” I ask.
“I’ll be thirteen next month.”
I was right. We’re nearly the same age.
“How old are you?” Davu asks back, spreading her fingers in her lap and studying her fingernails. They’re painted the same pink as her sandals. The ones on her right hand are chipped.
“Thirteen,” I say, happy to be older.
The silence starts to stretch again. Thankfully, Davu says something.
“How long have you been living with Great-Uncle Kweli?”
“Three?” I think for a second. “No, today is my fourth day here, if you count the night I arrived.”
“That would explain why I didn’t see you when I came by last week,” she muses.
“Oh? Do you live nearby?”
“Just a few streets over.” She stops playing with her fingers and looks up at me with sudden interest. “Where are you from?”
This stumps me for a minute, but then I think of a way to pull the pieces together.
“I grew up in a little village outside of Arusha, but recently my family moved to Mwanza. I took the train from Mwanza to get to Dar es Salaam.”
“Why did someone try to kill you in Mwanza? And why did you have to leave Arusha?” Davu leans forward.
I don’t correct her when she says we lived in Arusha. I also don’t tell her that we had to leave because we didn’t have the money to stay on our farm. Anyone wearing those sandals wouldn’t understand that sort of thing. I skip ahead to her other questions.
“We went to Mwanza to be with my auntie.” I take a deep breath. This is hard to tell, but if I want her help keeping my skin color from Kweli, she has to know why it’s important. “I left Mwanza because a man tried to kill me in order to sell my body to a mganga to make luck medicine.”
“Oh no! I had heard that they do that up in Mwanza, but I didn’t really believe it.” Davu looks down, frowning. “How did you get away?” she asks.
“Well, I was hiding in my auntie’s house, but this poacher found me anyway. He came after me with a hunting knife about this long”—I hold my hands up to show the length of the blade—“but he only managed to cut me once when I pushed into him to get out the door. See?” I roll up my sleeve and show her the long, puckered scab on my forearm. She looks at it with round eyes, then back up at me. I like that all this makes me sound brave, but I still feel kind of queasy when I think about it. I take a deep breath and go on. “I ran out the door and spent the day running and hiding. When it was night and I was sure he was gone, I went back to the house, got train fare from my family, and came here to Dar es Salaam because my auntie said there haven’t been any albino killings here.”
“That’s so awful.” Davu shudders and the little beads at the ends of her braids click together. Then her face turns quizzical. “Why didn’t your family come with you?”
“We only had enough money for one ticket, and I had to get away.” It’s not entirely a lie. I rub the palms of my hands against the sides of my pants. Talking about this has made me break into a cold sweat. I want to change the topic.
“You must miss them,” she says. Her dark eyes are wide and sad. “I can’t imagine traveling all alone to a place I’d never been before.”
I shrug, not wanting to talk about my family, either. I finish my story. “Well, once I was here, I found Kweli. He’s paying me in food to stay and help him around the house while I figure out what to do next.”
“Hmm.” Davu chews on the edge of her thumb, chipping the pink paint even further. There’s a faraway look in her eyes. “I guess that’s all right, then. I mean, it’s good for you that you found somewhere to stay. And it’s good for Great-Uncle not to be alone all the time. He won’t let us help him very much, and Mother’s always worried about him.” She focuses on me again, her gaze sharp. “How long are you going to stay here helping him?”
“Um . . .” Again I run up against the wall of not having a plan. “I don’t know. I’m happy to stay here for as long as he’ll keep me. I like helping him.” I gesture toward the wall. “Also, no one can see me in here. I feel safer that way.”
This comment is getting into dangerous territory, because it’s pretty close to my telling her that I’m lying to her great-uncle about what I am. I know I should push further and ask her to keep my secret, but when I try, I can’t. I sit there with my mouth open a little, waiting for the words that will clearly explain what I need from her, but they never arrive.
“You really need the wall to feel safe?” Davu asks, circling back around to our earlier topic. “I don’t think that people here kill albinos the way they do in Mwanza.”
“You think,” I say. “I’m not about to trust my life just to a thought!”
Davu nods in agreement. “I guess I can understand that,” she says. “But really, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that here. People killing people because they’re in a gang, yes. Or because they have a feud, or were doing something illegal. But I’ve never heard of anyone being killed here just because of the way they look.”
This is comforting, but it doesn’t change my mind about wanting to keep the way I look a secret. I try to move the conversation into safer territory.
“Anyway, I like
learning carving. Kweli is letting me carve, you know.”
“Ndiyo,” she says, smiling again. “Remember? I saw your dog.”
We both laugh.
“Me,” says Davu, “I can’t stand carving. Kweli keeps trying to teach me, but I don’t have the patience for it.” She wiggles her fingers in front of her. “You spend all this time on a silly piece of wood, and then something goes wrong and the whole thing is ruined. No thank you.”
“It’s not always impossible to fix,” I say. “I messed up a bit with my dog and I was able to make it work out.” I see Davu’s look. “Not perfectly,” I add defensively, “but better than a complete failure.”
“Hmm,” says Davu, but I don’t hear any judgment in her tone. I pull the pot off the fire and pour the tea. For a while we sip in silence. Then Davu says, “You know, I’m not sure why Great-Uncle is still willing to carve wood at all.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Well, because of how he went blind. You know.” She gestures vaguely.
“No, I don’t.” This is interesting. “He’s never told me how he went blind, just that he wasn’t always blind.”
Davu looks at me sideways, as if measuring my worthiness for the story. Then, apparently coming to a decision, she leans forward.
“One day, when Great-Uncle was about our age, he and his friend Kebwe were out herding the goats together and they needed switches. Great-Uncle picked one up from the side of the path, but Kebwe reached out to an animal fence to grab a switch.”
She pauses, her eyebrows arched high to tell me this should mean something to me. I think over what she’s said and figure out what it must be.
“Was it a manyara fence?”
Davu nods solemnly.
I know the manyara bush—every country child does. The sticks are lashed together for fencing to keep out wild animals. Though the sticks don’t have spines and aren’t particularly strong, no animal will cross them because of how poisonous the sap is. I had been warned away from the green wood of the manyara fences when they were fresh many times as a child. Your eyes are bad enough, Mother had said. You don’t need to hurt them further. Because the sap, the poisonous sap, blinds.
I gasp. “Did they know the sticks were manyara?”
“Kebwe knew what he was taking, but he didn’t think that it would be a problem since they were just herding goats. But then . . .” Davu drops her voice almost to a whisper. “Then the two boys started to play swords.”
She pauses again. I have to admit, Davu is a good storyteller. Her pauses and mysterious voice make me want to hear more.
“Go on!”
“So the two boys played. Great-Uncle’s stick was dry and worked better as a sword. Kebwe’s was still green. To make up for this, Kebwe struck harder, trying to win.” Davu waves her hands in front of her face, showing the frenzy of the fight. “Then Kebwe’s stick snapped in two”—she freezes, miming the action of a stick snapping—“and the sap sprayed all over Great-Uncle’s face.”
I’m holding my breath.
“And then he rubbed his eyes.” Her voice is no longer completely caught up in the story. Now she’s looking around at the simple house, the meticulously tidy yard of a blind man, and her voice is sad.
“Oh no,” I say. Even though I know how the story must end, I still want it to end differently. I hate Kebwe, hate him without even knowing him. “That’s awful.”
“Ndiyo, it is,” says Davu. Then she looks up at me and I don’t know how to read her expression. “But do you know the funny thing about all this?”
“No. What?” I feel like she’s trying to have two conversations with me, one with her words and one with her eyes. But I don’t know what she’s saying.
“Kweli still keeps in touch with Kebwe. He’s never once blamed Kebwe for making him go blind. He says it was an accident and no one should be condemned because of an accident.” She pauses, considering me solemnly. “You said you’d stay as long as Great-Uncle let you. I think, as long as you’re nice, he’ll let you stay as long as you want to.”
I don’t know what to say. I pull my gaze away from Davu and look down. After a moment the playfulness is back in Davu’s voice.
“Me, I would have beaten Kebwe up,” she says.
I have to laugh at that. “I bet, even blind, Kweli could have beaten him up. He’s really good with that stick of his.” And this launches us into another story about Kweli and sticks, but in this one, Kweli wins.
By the time the sun has sunk to about a hand higher than the top of the wall, Davu is no longer staring at me like I’m some strange beast in a game park. I feel warm and happy about this, and it feels good to talk to someone my own age, even if that someone is a girl. I’m only hoping, as I help Davu pull out the ingredients for dinner, that the slim friendship we’ve developed is strong enough to survive what I’m about to ask.
“Davu . . .”
“Yes?”
I pause. I should have been rehearsing how to say this all afternoon, but instead I got distracted having fun. Now I can’t put this off any longer. Just like when I stepped off the train into Dar es Salaam, I feel lost, anxious, overwhelmed. I’m kicking myself for not having thought about how to deal with this when I had the time. Nothing for it—I’ll just have to make it up as I go.
“Kweli should be home soon.”
Davu looks up at the sky. “Ndiyo,” she says. “So? You’re not going to tell me now that you really were an intruder all this time, are you?” Her voice is serious, but behind it her eyes are laughing at me. I take a deep breath.
“No . . . No, it’s something else.”
She tips her head to the side. “What?”
“Well”—here goes—“because Kweli’s blind he doesn’t know I’m an albino . . . and, well, I was kind of hoping that you wouldn’t tell him.”
For a moment Davu only looks at me, her face stony with disbelief. Her silence scares me. Before I know it, I’m racing on, filling the silence with too many words.
“You can’t tell him, you just can’t! I’m safe here. And Kweli may even be thinking about teaching me how to carve, but even if he never does, he’s letting me stay here and he treats me like a normal person. But if he knew I was an albino, he’d throw me out for sure, and I don’t know anyone else in the whole city, and I’d have to live on the streets. So please don’t tell him. Davu?”
She’s still looking at me, stunned.
“You mean you never told him?” she asks.
“No, and neither can you. Y-you don’t even have to lie to him if you don’t want to!” I’m starting to stammer. “Just don’t go out of your way to tell him. It won’t even come up in the conversation if you don’t put it there. I swear, Kweli thinks I’m normal.”
“I don’t think you know him as well as you think you do,” she finally says. “He probably does know you’re different. And anyway, even if I did tell him, he wouldn’t treat you any differently.”
This stupidity makes me mad, and before I can stop myself, I’m shouting at her.
“Oh, really? He would treat me just the same? Like you did when you saw me and asked what I was?” She looks away from my eyes when I say that, but I’m like a cart rolling down a steep hill with nothing to slow me down. “Like the kids in my village who never let me play with them? Like Alasiri and that mganga who decided I was a thing they needed to cut into pieces?” My face is hot, and I’m having trouble breathing. I hate myself, hate everyone. “My own mother has barely touched me in my entire life, and you think that this old man, this stranger who I barely know, is going to just say, ‘Oh, that’s not a problem at all, please, come right this way, Mr. Albino, and share my house and my work’? You’re the one who doesn’t know what she’s talking about!”
I turn away from her and stomp out into the courtyard. I stand there, taking big shuddering breaths until
I feel calm enough to go in again and keep talking. But I don’t get the chance to, because just then, I hear the protesting hinges of the front gate.
Kweli is home.
17.
“Habo? Are you there? Come help me with this!” In comes Kweli, his walking stick in one hand and a black plastic bag in the other.
I can feel the danger of Davu looming behind me, but I move automatically to help him.
“Sawa!” I say. “How was your day at the market?”
“About the usual,” he says, holding out the bag and turning toward the sound of my voice. “A few tourists shopping and gossip floating around like car exhaust.” He hands me the bag. “Here, look inside. I got something to go with dinner tonight.”
He sounds excited, and I peel apart the edges of the bag. There’s a fish wrapped in newspaper at the bottom.
“Very nice, Bwana,” I say. “Very fresh.”
“I thought we’d have a coconut fish stew tonight with our ugali instead of just vegetables. They sold one of my statues at the shop today. Even after I took out the money to pay the bills, there was still some left over, so I decided we should have a feast.”
“One fish is not much of a feast, Great-Uncle,” says Davu by my elbow. She has snuck up on both of us. “It’s lucky that you have me here to help you cook it.”
“Davu! What are you doing here?” A smile breaks out on Kweli’s face and he reaches forward. Davu leans her cheek into his palm and lets his fingers play across her face. “It’s wonderful to see you again! Is Chatha here, too?”
“No,” says Davu, leaning away and taking the fish from my unprotesting fingers. “Mother stayed home. She had some extra work to do, but today was a day off school, so she said I should come over and see how you were getting on.”
“Well, isn’t that nice. My own niece sending someone else to do her dirty work!”
Davu laughs lightly when he says this, but I thought his tone was a little bitter.
“I assume you’ve met Habo?” Kweli says.
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