The Twin Test

by Rula Sinara

  She rested her elbow on the door frame and let the wind wrestle her hair. She did slow down and point out a herd of gazelle at one point. The girls looked but didn’t lift their binoculars. Maybe she’d gone overboard. What did she know? Sure she’d been a girl their age once, and yes, she worked with kids, but she wasn’t a parent, let alone one of twins with double the emotional baggage load. She shouldn’t have raised her voice, but man, they’d worn away at her last shred of patience. She let the wind fill her lungs, and she held her breath for a moment before exhaling. No, she’d done and said what she had to. The girls needed guidance and boundaries for their own good.

  Did Dax understand where they were coming from? Had he just given up? Or maybe he didn’t understand the concept of tough love. She refused to believe that he didn’t care.

  Dust plumed around the jeep as she made a sharp right around the jagged remains of a tree and pulled to a stop outside the Maasai homestead’s thorny fence.

  “Miss Pippa? We’re sorry about the camera,” they both said.

  They’d apologized before for previous pranks. She had no idea if they were being sincere this time or not. Actually, she believed they were always sincere in the moment. They just had short-term memories when it came to life lessons. Which is why she was thinking that maybe a more hands-on approach would stick better. Mud for mud, in this case. She turned slightly in her seat and faced them.

  “Thank you. But remember, actions speak louder than words, so show me that you’re sorry by never doing something like that again.”

  She motioned toward the circle of domed huts fashioned with a practical blend of mud, straw and cow’s urine and topped with thick, thatched roofs. The familiar aroma of ugali getting stirred and cooked into warm grits mingled with the raw, green scent of grass, earth and goats. “This is a different village from the one I brought you to last time. I’ve known this family since I was a baby. If you help me review the alphabet with the younger children, we can do something fun and different afterward.”

  “Like what?” Ivy asked.

  “Like getting tattooed. One of the fifteen-year-olds here is very good at it. She tries to insist it’s in exchange for my lessons, but I usually bring something like a supply of sugar or tea.”

  Ivy’s eyes widened with interest. This was the girl who wanted to dye her hair black. She also wore a purple headband, which meant they hadn’t tried to switch identities on her today.

  Fern didn’t look as convinced.

  “We would get in trouble. And don’t they use needles to make tattoos? I’m not going anywhere near a needle.”

  “This is a special kind of tattoo. No needles involved. I wouldn’t do that to you. Have you heard of henna?”

  The girls shook their heads.

  “Well, you’re going to learn about henna tattoos. Just don’t put it in your hair. It looks like the mud you put in mine, only this stuff on your light hair would turn you into flaming redheads. I don’t think your dad would be amused.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Ivy said, nudging Fern.

  “No, girls. Just. No,” Pippa warned. The twins exchanged conspiratorial glances. “Consequences. Remember?”

  “Whatever,” Ivy said. “I’ll be old enough to do what I want, eventually.”

  “Key word, eventually. Not on my watch.”

  The villagers spotted Pippa, and they called out her name. The sound carried toward her, rising and falling like the soft hills and valleys to their west. She waved, then began filling Ivy and Fern’s arms with the supplies she’d brought as gifts.

  “Come on. They’re waiting for us.”

  “Do they speak English?” Fern asked.

  “Most of them do, along with Swahili and Maa. The kids you’ll be working with do for sure.”

  “You mean we’ll actually get to teach?” Fern asked. Her eyebrows lifted, and she looked up at Pippa as their hiking boots crunched against the dry ground.

  “Of course you will. I didn’t bring you along to daydream. And I expect you to earn the reward of body art.” That didn’t sound quite like she’d intended. Dax really would kill her if he heard her encouraging them to alter their bodies. Even their little ears were plain as a baby’s bottom—unlike the adorned lobes of the young Maasai girls who were hurrying toward them. One of their mothers nodded and flashed a bright, white smile in greeting as she sifted through grain. Her earlobes, stretched impressively by large loops, swayed as she tossed the small stones she found in the grain onto the ground near her.

  “How do we say hello?” Ivy asked.

  “Sopa.” The girls repeated the greeting after her. She figured one word would be good for now. “It’s also tradition and respectful to ask how the children are doing, if you’re speaking to a grown-up. Children are extremely important to the Maasai. If you get the hang of sopa, I’ll teach you the rest.”

  Ivy’s forehead creased at the mention of children being important. Pippa tugged her braid playfully and put a hand on her shoulder. Did Ivy doubt her and Fern’s importance to their dad? Boy. These two, for all their bravado, were confidence starved.

  “I brought extra teachers today,” Pippa said to the children who ran up to them. “This is Ivy and Fern.” Nashipi, one of the older mothers approached behind them. “Sopa. Kasserian ingera?” Pippa asked. “These are for you as a thank-you for letting Jaha do henna for us later,” she added, handing the tea and sugar over to her. Jaha was Nashipi’s fifteen-year-old daughter.

  “It is not necessary. It makes me happy, like you make the children. But I must say that a few of the children have been ill. My youngest grandchild is tired and resting. Nika is tired, too, but perhaps it’s the heat.”

  Pippa looked over at Nika, one of Nashipi’s grandchildren. She seemed fine, if a bit fatigued. She’d make note of the kids’ attention span and any obvious health issues as she taught them.

  “Okay. I’ll try to see when Dr. Hope will be out this way.”

  Pippa’s aunt, Dr. Hope Alwanga—now Corallis—was a pediatrician who routinely made medical trips into rural areas to provide care and vaccines to the tribal children. She had met Pippa’s Uncle Ben after he’d lost his wife to an accident the day he’d returned home from the marines many years ago.

  He’d been left with a newborn, a toddler and Pippa’s cousin Maddie, then ten, who’d stopped speaking when her mother died. Hope had not only helped them deal with their tragedy, she and Ben also ended up falling in love. It was hard not to love Hope. She was so giving, and many of the tribal families counted on her. Many wouldn’t have medical care without her. She’d definitely want to know if some of the children here weren’t feeling well.

  “For now, should we set up inside or out? There’s a lovely breeze in the shade. How about the tree?” Pippa asked. An ancient acacia sprawled just outside the homestead’s fence near the entrance, casting a shadow just large enough to shade the entire group.

  The beloved tree won by a majority.

  Ivy and Fern were surprisingly excellent helpers when it came to the lesson. Kids really made great teachers for their peers, and the benefits went both ways. Even Fern sat straighter, with her shoulders pulled back and that flicker of tension that she always seemed to have in her face faded away. Pippa was quite impressed. The two pranksters had a responsible side. Who knew? She wished Dax could witness it.

  But as the lesson went on, she became concerned by the attention span of some of the other kids. At first, she thought maybe it had something to do with the twins’ being there, but with the warning Nashipi had given her, she couldn’t discount it so easily.

  Apart from her concerns, the lessons went well, and hearing Ivy and Fern’s voices harmonizing with the sweet lilts of their new friends as they read aloud stirred something warm and blissful in Pippa’s chest.

  She watched now, as Ivy and Fern sat still, mesmerized by the ornate patterns
getting painted onto their left ankles.

  Jaha was quite skilled at henna for such a young girl. It pained Pippa to know that—as good a reader as Jaha was—she didn’t want to leave her family for higher schooling. Even Nashipi had tried convincing her, but Jaha insisted that she didn’t want to leave. She was a shy girl. The bottom line was that at least she had a choice. At least her grandfather, the Laibon, the medicine man here, had said that he’d let her go if she wanted. That wasn’t the norm in the Maasai villages, but he’d known Pippa’s family a long time now.

  “This is so not on our schedule,” Fern said. She grinned at Ivy, who seemed too enthralled with the design process to look up.

  “Call it art class.” Pippa spooned the olive green muddy goop into a fresh bag made of thin hide with a tiny bit of the corner snipped off. “When you’re done with your ankles, I’ll draw bracelets on you, then you can do my wrists after yours dry a little, so they don’t ruin. How’s that sound?”

  “Awesome. We really get to try doing this? This is so much better than playing with makeup.” Ivy admired her ankle and thanked the artist. “Do you really do this all the time, Miss Pippa?”

  “Only when I have time. It’s tradition here to paint henna tattoos for weddings. The brides get elaborately decorated. It’s pretty incredible and requires patience.”

  “I can totally be patient for something like this,” Ivy said.

  “Yeah. I can’t believe we’ve been sitting here so long. It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long at all,” Fern added.

  “That’s why they say time flies when you’re having fun,” Pippa said.

  “It’s so true.” Fern grinned.

  “Are you going to do this when you get married, Miss Pippa?”

  Wow. That hit a nerve. Ivy had no way of knowing about Pippa’s ex. She couldn’t have meant to open a wound.

  But after Ivy’s question, Pippa couldn’t help but wonder. Would she have celebrated her wedding with traditional henna designs...had Haki not left her? Would she be looking forward right now to going home to him at the end of the day? Or would she have been robbed of that joy because she knew, somewhere deep down, that he’d turned his back on his soul mate. Could she have ever been confident in his love after her cousin Maddie had reentered his life and she witnessed a connection between them that she could have never competed with?

  She glanced quickly at the twins and back at her bag of henna. Confidence. It was tricky, wasn’t it? Something the twins needed to build. Something she strove to instill in the Maasai girls she taught. And, yet, it was something that still wavered in her.

  Maybe if Haki had been The One, she wouldn’t have had to question any of this. Things happened for a reason...even floods and droughts. Her heart was suffering from the latter, but she’d deal with that any day over having it cracked and shaken to the core again.

  “I don’t know, Ivy. Maybe. Some things are better left to decide in the moment. Like right now. I’m deciding, in this very moment, what to draw on each one of you.”

  “Any chance we can get our ears pierced like the other girls? Not the giant stretch loops. I’m just asking for a tiny hole,” Ivy hedged.

  “That’s up to your dad, not me. I’m betting he doesn’t even allow makeup yet.”

  “Only nail polish.”

  “Makeup is overrated, in my opinion. Don’t be in any rush,” Pippa said.

  Pippa took Ivy’s wrist and smiled as she began designing a vine with leaves twisting around the girl’s hand like a bracelet. Ivy watched intently, then held up her hand and admired the intensely dark brown of the wet design.

  “Don’t let it smear. You need to keep your arm and hand still. If you twist your wrist, it’ll mess the design up. Let the henna dry a bit and you’ll be able to move a little. The longer we leave it on, the darker red the tattoo will be.”

  “I want it as dark as possible,” Ivy said.

  Pippa chuckled.

  “I bet you do. You’re next, Fern.” She took the other girl’s hand and made a tattoo bracelet of longer, multilobed fern leaves. Fern’s face lit up.

  “I love it! What about yours? Are you seriously going to let us paint on you after what we did to your hair? You’d trust us to tattoo a design on you? What if we mess up?”

  “I trust you.”

  Ivy’s and Fern’s lips parted. They looked at each other, then back at her.

  “For real? Even after all we’ve done? Like to your camera?” Ivy asked.

  Pippa sucked in a grounding breath.

  “Sure.” Was she? How bad could it be? Whatever they marked her up with, it would fade. Eventually. Right now, the lesson they were getting in trust was more important.

  That...and the fact that they wouldn’t be able to switch bracelets.

  * * *

  DAX SET HIS things down, hugged Ivy and Fern, then almost collapsed in the chair by his desk—almost. Heat crawled up the back of his neck when he noticed their wrists.

  “Girls, to your room, now. I need to talk to Pippa.”

  Their faces sank. They glanced at Pippa for courage, and she motioned for them to obey.

  “You’re overreacting,” she said, the minute their door closed.

  “You have no business telling me that. What in heaven’s name made you think that tattooing my daughters was okay? Who does something like that without a parent’s permission? What next? Ear piercings or purple and green hair?” He ran his fingers through his own and stood akimbo, towering over her. She’d covered his girls in body art!

  “Red hair almost happened, but I stopped it. On your account. They would have matched your ungodly shade of crimson right now, though. Maybe I should have let them do it.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “So am I. You know, I had my ears pierced when I was only a year old. I never understood the whole issue some parents have with that.”

  “Hard to understand a lot of things if you’re not a parent.”

  “Hard to understand preteen girls if you’ve never been one.”

  She was killing him. Why had he ever crossed paths with her? And what about her made him keep coming back for more? Masochism?

  “They’re henna tattoos. It’s all natural and it’s not permanent. Have you even bothered to look at them? Ivy on Ivy and ferns on Fern. And they can’t take the tattoos off and switch them around like their headbands or clothes.”

  He stood there and stared at her. He didn’t know what to say. That’s what this was about? Beating them at their own game? He took a deep breath and gazed at the floor a minute. Maybe she wasn’t orthodox, but she also hadn’t given up on the girls. She hadn’t quit and run off, like all the others had. And a minute ago, they’d actually looked to her for guidance before leaving the room. A huge turnaround compared with the mud head he’d walked in on yesterday. He scrubbed the stubble along his jawline.

  “I realize they’re not permanent. That’s not the point.” Okay, so he hadn’t really known they’d fade. They didn’t look like regular inked tattoos, but then, those came in colors, too.

  “Okay, what is the point? That they’re not allowed to have fun? That unless you approve the next molecules of oxygen they breathe, they should suffocate? Because, let me tell you, if you keep this up, they will. You’ll end up with teenagers who can’t wait to get away from home.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing. I’m trying to raise them right.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then looked aimlessly around the room. Anywhere but at Pippa. “You took me by surprise.”

  “Yeah, I picked up on that,” Pippa said, folding her arms and shifting her weight impatiently.

  “You weren’t trying to teach them a lesson, then?” he asked, sitting down and leaning forward on his elbows.

  “I’m not that petty. And if that’s what this was about, I wouldn’t have let th
em put designs on me, too.” She turned her arms so the inner sides faced up. She had a trail of flowers from wrists to elbows and what appeared to be a small elephant on each wrist. She’d sacrificed her skin to connect with the twins? Not that he’d really call it a sacrifice. He had to admit, he was raising budding artists and the designs looked good on her. They seemed to go with Pippa’s personality. Even matched her auburn hair. Henna tattoos. Totally something Sandy would have done. Maybe that’s why it had hit him so hard.

  “Not permanent?”

  It was meant to be a rhetorical question. She’d already said that they weren’t. But she was standing too close now and he had to say something to justify the fact that he couldn’t seem to stop looking at the smooth skin of her arm.

  “It’ll fade over the next week or two, maybe sooner because we didn’t leave it on that long. I’m sorry, but it was an in-the-moment thing.”

  Being in the moment. When was the last time he’d tried that? Sandy had always been that way: creative, expressive and spontaneous.

  But he didn’t have that luxury. The twins were his responsibility. He had promised Sandy in her last minutes that they’d be okay and he wouldn’t let anything bad ever happen to them. Sure, they’d had their fair share of scraped knees and flu bugs, but nothing worse.

  They heard the shuffle of feet behind the bedroom door. Pippa took him by the hand and pulled him up, then yanked him quickly outside the front door, presumably for privacy. She closed the door behind them and let go, but he could still feel her hand in his. She was standing close again. Close enough that she could lower her voice to barely above a whisper and he was still able to hear every word...every breath. He couldn’t help but notice the way her lips moved when she spoke.

  “Look, Dax, maybe I don’t have kids of my own, but I wasn’t that different from Ivy and Fern. I don’t know what it’s like to lose a mother, I’m lucky for that, but I do understand being spontaneous and free. My parents used to call me a little monkey. I did my share of disappearing and other stunts that gave them heart attacks. But I was simply trying to spread my wings and discover who I really was, knowing I had this safety net if I stumbled. You’re not even letting Ivy and Fern stumble. Here they are, identical twins, who need to embrace who they are as individuals. They want your approval. They want to be assured that they’re more than just the twins to you.”