The Paper House

by Lois Peterson

  Pendo brushed her hand away. “Do I know you?” Her voice was thin and mean.

  “Please…wait…” Safiyah stammered.

  Pendo turned her back on Safiyah. She linked arms with another girl and walked away without looking back.

  Safiyah stood alone in the middle of the alley with her hands hanging at her side.

  Suddenly, her hand was grabbed from behind. “You’re home!” Chidi hopped up and down and hung on to her arm. “Is your Cucu dead now? Are you all alone in the world, like me?” He grinned at her, as if he didn’t mind one bit.

  She shook her sore hand free. “She’s not dead! Anyway, you’re not alone. You have Rasul, and your aunt and uncle.”

  Chidi grinned. “Let’s go see your cucu. I bet she missed me.”

  “You were supposed to tell us that Rasul was coming to meet us at the clinic.”

  “I had to go to school,” said Chidi. He giggled.

  The little pest reminded Safiyah of the monkeys that hung from the trees in her village. A nuisance, but amusing. She couldn’t help smiling. “Don’t you know how lucky you are? I wish I could go to school.”

  “Lucky?” Chidi’s grubby fingers circled her arm as he pulled her along the alley. “School is boring. Two times two is four. Two times three is six. Two times four is nine,” he chanted. “It’s all tables and reading.”

  Reading! Even Chidi could read! thought Safiyah.

  “Come on,” he called, trotting ahead.

  At the house, Chidi darted along the wall. “What’s that?” He pointed at the bare slash where Safiyah had torn down Pendo’s pictures.

  “You ask too many questions.” She gave him a little push. “You wanted to see Cucu. So go and say hello to Cucu. But don’t wake her if she is sleeping.”

  Safiyah studied a few pictures that had survived the fire, and others from her collection that Pendo had added. Then in one corner she spotted the picture of the glinting blue swimming pool. The one Pendo had snuck into her pocket.

  Pendo had given up her favorite picture! And in return Safiyah had been mean and ungrateful. She leaned forward to flatten a loose piece of paper. Friendship was hard, she thought. And words were easy. Sometimes they made it too easy to hurt a good friend.

  But finding the right words to make up was going to be hard.

  After a supper of Mrs. Pakua’s groundnut stew, Safiyah and Cucu played mancala. Safiyah gave Cucu some water to wash down her pills, then wrapped the rest back in their paper and tucked them in the tin under her bed.

  She rolled her bracelet off her wrist and put it safely inside too.

  “The clinic mattress was better,” said Cucu, as she settled down for the night. “But it is nice to be home.” Safiyah was sweeping the rug when Cucu added, “Rasul left something under the bed for you.”

  A cardboard box was pushed among the clutter of pots and dishes. Inside Safiayah found a stack of brightly colored magazine pages. There were pictures of colorful gardens and women in smart clothes. Some showed fancy meals laid out on white tablecloths, while others showed city streets full of people looking in shop windows.

  Here were enough pictures to cover a whole wall, thought Safiyah. Perhaps even more.

  When she sniffed the paper, Safiyah could smell rotten food and smoke, oil and rancid water and dirty diapers.

  It must have taken Rasul a long time to collect all the pictures.

  Safiyah grinned. Chidi must have helped. That’s why there were no pictures of cars in the pile!

  Chapter Seventeen

  All the next day, Cucu sat like a queen accepting visitors. Some neighbors came with corn cakes, others with tea. Some stood outside the door chatting while many crowded inside until there was no room for Safiyah.

  She spent the hours papering the back wall of the shack.

  First she sorted the pictures into colors. She put the greens and blues together, then the yellows and the oranges and browns and the reds. She sorted all the whites and blacks and grays and made a pile of multicolored pictures. She squinted at the wall, deciding how to arrange them.

  The paste was dry around the edges of the jar. But there was still enough. She mixed brown and yellow pictures in a long slash from the bottom corner at one end of the wall to the top of the other end. To reach up high, she stacked an old crate on a chair with a broken leg. She tumbled off twice, but nothing stopped her from working on her mural. By midafternoon, her arms and neck ached.

  She shooed away the visitors and gave Cucu her pills. Then she settled her in bed for a rest.

  As she waited on the bench, Safiyah practiced what she would say to Pendo when she came by.

  She asked neighbors to come back later to visit when Cucu was awake. She smiled at the people she didn’t know who stopped to look at the brightly colored wall. She helped a woman pick up a bundle of pots and pans that fell off her head. A huddle of boys in tracksuits dribbled a soccer ball down the street. Three small kids in school uniforms dashed past.

  Maybe she had missed Pendo.

  Safiyah was about to run indoors to check on Cucu, when Pendo turned the corner. Today, instead of being surrounded by her school friends, she was with a tall white man with red hair. When she saw Safiyah, she ducked her head and said, “My teacher wanted to see what you are doing with the glue and the scissors.” She looked at the wall instead of Safiyah, as if she didn’t want to be there at all.

  Blond hairs peeked from the man’s sleeve when he put out his hand to greet Safiyah. “I’m pleased to meet you.”

  She wiped her hand on her shorts before she shook hands with him. Maybe Mr. Littlejohn had not seen her all those times she hid below the classroom window, watching everyone at work.

  He stepped into the middle of the alley while he studied the papered wall. “So this is the project Pendo told me about.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Safiyah.

  Pendo glared at her.

  Safiyah thought about what Cucu had said about words and friendship. And needing all their friends if they were to survive the hard life in Kibera. She moved closer to Pendo and said to the teacher, “Thank you for lending me the paste and the scissors.”

  Mr. Littlejohn just nodded and moved closer to study the wall.

  Safiyah took a deep breath and added, “Pendo helped me.”

  Her friend smiled slowly, looking as relived as Safiyah felt. Then Pendo looked sad again for a moment. “But I spoiled Safiyah’s design.”

  “It’s okay,” said Safiyah. “Look. I started the other wall.” She led Mr. Littlejohn and Pendo around the corner.

  “It’s a road!” said Pendo, pointing.

  “You’re right,” said Mr. Littlejohn. “It looks so hot and dusty with all those browns and yellows. And that patch of blue and green?” He pointed to where the wall met the crooked roof.

  “That’s my village,” Safiyah told him. “Far away in the country.”

  He nodded. “I see.” He scanned the whole wall. “But your mural is not yet finished.”

  “I have enough pictures for this wall. Maybe one other.” Safiyah looked at her friend before she turned back to her teacher. “But I don’t have enough paste.”

  “Paste?” Mr. Littlejohn turned slowly toward both girls as if he had forgotten they were there. “I’m sure I can find you more paste,” he said. “Then you can finish this wall. And what will you do on the next one?”

  “I don’t know yet,” said Safiyah. When she saw the hopeful look on her friend’s face, she found it easy to say the right words. “Pendo can help me decide. It was her idea to start with.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Saffy?” Cucu came round the corner, leaning on her stick. “All this chatter woke me. Who is this?”

  “David Littlejohn, missus.” He shook hands with Cucu. “Pendo’s teacher. She told me all about your granddaughter’s mural. You just be very proud of her.”

  Cucu grinned. “My Safiyah is a good granddaughter.”

  “And she has such talent.�
� The teacher nodded toward the mural on the back wall.

  “Talent?” Cucu frowned. “Saffy does have persistence. The time she has taken…”

  “Her work here is…” Mr. Littlejohn groped for the word. “Splendid,” he finally said. “In fact, for a ten-year-old, I would say she is gifted.”

  Cucu pinched Safiyah’s cheek and laughed. “Gifted?” She studied the mural that swept like a scarf across the wall. “Oh, my.” She clapped her hand to her chest. “That looks like…” She turned to Safiyah. “Our journey to the city? The road that went on forever?”

  “I tell you what.” Mr. Littlejohn’s voice was brisk, as if he wanted to distract Cucu from sad memories. “The school can spare all the paste Safiyah needs. And with Pendo to help, I am sure her mural will be finished soon.”

  Cucu gave Safiyah a look of surprise.

  Later she would tell her grandmother how she and Pendo were friends again, thought Safiyah. So easily, with just a few words.

  “But will you allow me one thing?” Mr. Littlejohn asked Cucu. “I would like to send a photographer to take pictures of the house.”

  “Photos!” Pendo jumped up and down. “Can I be in them?”

  “That will be up to the photographer,” he said. “And Safiyah.”

  “Saffy? Please say I can,” begged Pendo.

  “First you have to promise,” said Safiyah.

  “Anything!”

  “You have to put the pictures only where I tell you. It’s my mural.”

  “I promise.” Pendo linked arms with Safiyah.

  “That’s settled.” Mr. Littlejohn took Cucu’s arm and let her rest her weight on him as he led her back indoors.

  Safiyah watched them go. She scuffed the ground with her foot. “I’m sorry I was mean to you, Pendo.”

  “And I’m sorry I wrecked your picture.” The girls stood together for a moment, studying the mural. Then they sat on Cucu’s bench swinging their legs until Pendo’s feet were just as dirty as Safiyah’s.

  “Do you know how to play mancala?” asked Safiyah.

  “Of course I do.” Pendo’s tiny braids bobbed as she nodded. “My father plays with the church deacon for hours and hours.” She rolled her eyes. “While they talk about God.”

  “I thought only ladies played,” said Safiyah. “Cucu taught me when we were at the clinic. Shall we play now?”

  “I have to help Mr. Littlejohn find his way back to school first,” Pendo told her as she stood up. “Then I will go home and change—”

  “Those lovely clothes!” said Safiyah, sounding just like her grandmother.

  Both girls laughed.

  It was good to be friends again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It took almost three weeks to finish the paper house. Safiyah and Pendo worked into the early evenings, while the neighborhood filled with the bustle of people on their way home from work. The smell of fires and cooking suppers wove through the alleyways, and stray dogs curled up in the shadows with their noses twitching.

  The girls used two more jars of Mr. Littlejohn’s paste. But Safiyah did not need to go back to the garbage dump to find more pictures.

  One morning, a woman in a maid’s uniform stopped to admire the mural. On her way home that night she gave Safiyah a plastic bag full of old magazines. “My boss never throws anything out. He said I could have these,” she said. The man who collected cans often perched on his cart to watch them work. One day he brought a bundle of magazines tied up in string.

  Sometimes people left so much paper on her bench that there was hardly room for Cucu to sit down.

  During the day while Pendo was at school, Safiyah chose the pictures she wanted and cut them out. She moved them into piles, made new piles, then moved them again. Then she laid them out to figure out how to piece them together.

  Each afternoon, Pendo came to help after she had changed out of her school uniform and finished her chores. But now she waited for Safiyah to tell her where to put the pictures before she helped paste up any of them.

  At last all four walls were covered, even places so low down that they had to crawl along the dirty ground to reach them or so high they had to stand on the rickety chair.

  That evening, Safiyah led her grandmother along the mural. Cucu was stronger now. She didn’t need to lean on her stick as she stopped to look at her favorite pictures.

  “Now come around again,” said Safiyah. “But stand farther back. What do you see?” She held her breath as she waited. What if her grandmother couldn’t see the stories she had tried to create? What if they were just in her own head, and all she had done was make a patchwork of pretty colors?

  As they went round the second time, Cucu used her stick to point. “This is the long road we walked along after we left our home.” She waved higher. “Here is our village.” She leaned closer. “And the people whose faces we cannot see…” She spoke softly to herself. “These are the ones we left behind. Our friends, and others who are no longer with us… your mother, my only daughter, perhaps?”

  Safiyah nodded silently as her grandmother gazed up at the place that was too far to reach, as they both thought of the people who were now part of their old life.

  Cucu moved on until she came to a heap of mixed-up shapes and colors. “That is the garbage dump, I think. Where you spend so much time when you are not home with your old cucu.”

  Safiyah nodded, her eye on the gray clouds that hovered above it.

  Cucu turned the corner of the house. “And here is our street.” She giggled as she pointed at the wall. “The water vendor’s stand here. And Mr. Zuma’s bicycle shop, filled with all his bits and pieces!” She grasped Safiyah’s arm as her gaze swept farther along. “The fire!” She stared at the flames of red and yellow that licked up the wall.

  She led Safiyah quickly on, as if she wished to leave behind the fire, and its bad memories. “Ah. Here is the clinic,” she said. “All those white walls. Weren’t they wonderful. And what is that…?”

  “It is called a stethoscope,” said Safiyah. She had cut it from a page filled with shining medical instruments. “The doctor let me wear his when you were sick.”

  “And here we are home again,” said Cucu. She didn’t just mean her bench beside the doorway. She was looking at Safiyah’s mural of their house as it once was, just broken boards and sheets of rusted metal. Before Safiyah made it into a home full of color and life. “Pendo’s Mr. Littlejohn is right.” Cucu pulled Safiyah close and stroked her hair. “Such a clever girl. Talented, as he said. And just as he said, you are indeed a gift.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “But there’s still lots more paper,” Pendo said when Safiyah announced the next day that the paper house was all done. She flipped through the pages left in Rasul’s box. “Mr. Littlejohn has lots more paste.”

  “It’s finished, Pendo.” Safiyah put her arm around her friend’s shoulder.

  “It was fun,” said Pendo. “At first I when I saw all the mixed-up colors, I didn’t know it was a design. But now it’s like a story.”

  Kibera was a little like her mural, Safiyah thought. So much was mixed up and muddled and frightening if you looked closely. But from a distance, you could see the pattern to it. And every day that she lived here it made more sense and felt just a bit more like home.

  Safiyah and Pendo picked up the leftover scraps of paper that fluttered around on the ground. As they worked, people stopped to look at the house, to talk to each other and to smile at Safiyah and Pendo.

  Some asked questions. Others nodded and murmured as they looked at the long road that had led Cucu and Safiyah from their village. Some visitors told their own stories of coming to Kibera for work and a better life. They named people they had left behind and family members who had died or disappeared into the city since they arrived.

  She and Cucu were not the only people who were a long way from home, Safiyah realized. There were so many people with similar stories.

  When all the stray paper
was cleared away, Pendo asked, “Shall I tell Mr. Littlejohn that the photographer can come now?”

  Safiyah studied the house, wondering how it would look in a picture.

  “Or you can come to school tomorrow and tell him yourself,” offered Pendo.

  “No. You do it,” Safiyah said. Pendo had been the one to tell her about putting paper on walls. She was the one who had asked for the scissors and paste.

  “And I can still be in the picture?” Pendo asked.

  Safiyah hugged her. “It’s your paper house too.”

  “It’s everyone’s, I guess,” said Pendo. “So many people stop to look at it.” She handed Safiyah the jar of paste. “Do you want to keep this?”

  Safiyah took it from her. She made sure the lid was screwed on tight. She would keep it in the tin with the worn threads that were all that were left of the bracelet her mother had made her so long ago.

  The photographer was a tall young man with a big camera around his neck. He carried a bulging brown bag over his shoulder.

  “This is Mr. Amar Dhillon from the Kenyan News Service,” said Mr. Littlejohn. Mr. Dhillon shook hands with Cucu. “My card, missus.”

  She frowned at the little piece of paper he gave her before she tucked it into her dress.

  Pendo’s teacher introduced the photographer to Safiyah and Pendo. Even to Chidi, who had shown up when he heard that someone would be taking pictures. Chidi was so excited, he couldn’t stand still.

  Mr. Dhillon arranged Safiyah, Pendo and Cucu in a little group. “Here. Stand here. No you, over here.”

  “I want to be in the picture,” whined Chidi. Mr. Littlejohn put his hand on his shoulder to keep him still. But Chidi soon slipped away to peek into Mr. Dhillon’s big bag.

  Mr. Dhillon took photos of Safiyah by herself in the doorway looking out, and others as she stood looking at the house, first from the left, then from the right. He took pictures of Safiyah and Pendo with their arms around each others’ shoulders. Then standing with their arms by their sides. He told them to smile, over and over again, until their cheeks hurt.