The Snow Angel

by Lauren St. John

  ‘It’s already there, waiting. You just have to keep an eye out for it. Same with the fourth, fifth or twentieth. You’re in one right now. Or I am, anyway.’

  Makena was startled to find that she was too.

  By lunchtime, Snow knew Makena’s entire life story. Makena, on the other hand, knew little about Snow and was still too shy to ask. But in the middle of a competition to see who knew the most lyrics to the most songs, Snow suddenly said: ‘You’re wondering about me, aren’t you? How I got here.’

  ‘You can tell me when you’re ready. I’m in no hurry.’

  It was true. It was so long since Makena had had a friend to confide in that she was reluctant to leave the enchanted green space beneath the market cart to embark on the long, hot trek to Nairobi’s centre.

  However, when Snow started speaking, she could no longer contain her impatience. ‘Begin at the beginning,’ she said eagerly.

  But Snow started in the middle, when she was twelve years old, with her midwife mother taking her to the place where she’d been born: Sumbawanga in the Lakes region of Tanzania.

  It was election time, one year ago. In Tanzania, each new day brought a fresh report of Persons with Albinism being hunted down like antelope and killed or mutilated to order by witch doctors or their clients or apprentices. Politicians and other officials seeking power believed that albino body parts brought luck or riches.

  They were not alone. Fishermen kidnapped albinos for their hair. They wove it into their nets, believing it would bring a bigger catch. Miners ground up albino bones and buried the dust, convinced it would turn into diamonds.

  ‘Mama and Bibi, my grandmother, thought we’d be safest in our home village, away from the town where my mother worked in a clinic. We’d known these families all our lives. But on the first day the elders came to Mama and ordered her to dress me in black and leave me in a hut alone that night. They told her they wanted to perform a special blessing ceremony.

  ‘Mama knew right away that they planned to abduct me and maybe kill me. There are places in my country and in Malawi where the Tribe of Ghosts – that’s what they call us – are worth nothing alive. Dead, we can fetch as much as seventy-five thousand dollars. I’d sell a finger or a foot myself if I didn’t think I’d miss it.’

  Makena was aghast. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, much less that Snow was able to crack jokes about it.

  ‘What … what did your mama do?’

  ‘She told them she needed to go to a nearby shop to get some black items for me to wear. Then she disguised me and put me on a bus with Bibi. I was clinging to her, begging her to let me stay. It was the last time I ever saw her. Next we heard she was dead. Bibi smuggled me into Kenya. We got as far as Mathare Valley before her heart gave out. The slum was too much for her.’

  Inwardly, Makena was sickened beyond words. Outwardly, she showed little reaction. She had the feeling that that’s how Snow coped, by making light of things.

  Snow’s eyes were bright with hurt and fury. ‘She and Mama sacrificed their lives for me. One day I’m going to make them proud.’

  Makena wanted to hug her but held back. ‘You will make them proud. I know you will.’

  Snow bit into an iced bun. She spoke through a mouthful, spraying crumbs: ‘So where’s the jar now?’

  ‘What jar?’

  ‘Your jar of snow.’

  ‘Oh. The new people at my old house put it in the rubbish.’

  ‘Then you have to make it your mission to get another. Everyone has to have a mission. Without that, why would they get up in the morning – except to see the sunrise? That can be yours. One day you’ll fill a new jar with snow.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be same,’ Makena said sadly. ‘It wouldn’t be the snow Baba gave me.’

  ‘Tch! You wouldn’t survive two days in Mathare if you went around feeling sorry for yourself. In the slum, we kids are the rubbish. You have to look forward to a day when things will be different or you go mad. The gift your father gave you, why does it mean so much to you?’

  ‘Because he understood. He knew that there was nothing he could buy me from the mall – no music, clothes or even books – that would mean as much as snow he carried with his own hands from the summit of Batian. I’ll never forget it.’

  ‘If you’ll never forget it, then it’s not lost or broken. It’s in your heart for ever. That means you’re free to fill up another jar. Then you’ll have double the joy.’

  Makena stared at Snow. She’d never met anyone like her. Her words were bubbles of light, floating between them.

  A police siren banished their magic moment. The street erupted into chaos. A scream, yells and the whip-crack of bullets. Running feet swerved by. Something struck their cart with such force the tarpaulin fell off, exposing them.

  Makena ducked behind the rusty sign she’d been using as a backrest. ‘What’s happening?’

  Laidback Snow had gone. She was on high alert, watchful as a wolf.

  ‘Gang wars, that’s what, between the Taliban – they’re Luo, not the ones from Afghanistan, and the Mungiki, a Kikuyu sect. Some call them the Kenyan Mafia. They’re going head-to-head over who controls the chang’aa business.’

  ‘What’s chang’aa?’

  ‘Rocket fuel. That’s God’s honest truth. The gangs brew African moonshine out of molasses and millet or sorghum, then spice it up with jet fuel and battery acid. Sometimes they even use embalming fluid. You know, the stuff undertakers use to pickle bodies. It’s vile but there are plenty in Mathare who can’t get enough… Uh, we need to get out of here.’

  She gripped Makena’s hand. ‘Now! This second, not yesterday.’

  Makena tugged away. ‘I’ve got to get back to the city centre. I’m not afraid of the police. I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘You think they’ll believe that?’

  Two vans with flashing blue lights screamed past their cart. Tyres squealed. Riot police with shields and batons poured out. Muscular young men, buzzing like hornets, were massing at the end of the street.

  Snow gripped Makena’s hand and refused to let go. ‘If we stay here, best-case scenario we’ll be beaten, shot by mistake or taken away to the cells. Come with me to Mathare.’

  ‘I’m not going to the slum,’ cried Makena with real fear. ‘No way.’

  ‘You got any better ideas?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then run.’

  LORDS OF MATHARE

  Makena used her finger to rub her teeth hard with the paste she’d made out of wild mint and table salt. Snow had offered to share the snaggle-bristled toothbrush she’d found in a bin, but Makena drew the line at that.

  She wasn’t sure why. These days she routinely saw and did things that were so far beyond what she’d once considered acceptable they were on another planet. She even used ‘flying toilets’. Three weeks ago, if someone had told her that night after night she’d do her business in a plastic bag and sling it into the Mathare River because it was too dangerous to brave the alleys after dark, she’d have said she’d rather jump off a cliff. Now it was the least of the slum’s many challenges.

  Still, using third-hand toothbrushes that had got up-close and personal with decaying chicken bones was not all right with her. It was good to have standards, she supposed.

  Waiting in the queue to use the tap that smelled of sewage, Makena was almost glad her mother was dead. She’d never know the depths to which her daughter had sunk. That made no sense because if Mama were alive Makena wouldn’t be in Mathare Valley. At this hour of the morning, she’d have been putting on her freshly washed and ironed uniform, ready for school. She’d have enjoyed a hot shower and cleaned her teeth with Colgate toothpaste and her own brush. But few things made sense any more.

  On her first, mind-blowing evening in the slum, she’d had enough cash hidden in her shoes to keep her and Snow in collard greens, beans, rice, toothpaste and shampoo for a month, if they were careful and rationed treats. Snow had shown her ho
w to keep the money safe from the spying, desperate eyes that saw everything in Mathare.

  Actually, the money was gone in a day. With Snow trailing after her, pleading with her not to be such a mjinga-idiot-numbskull, Makena had blown the lot on all the buns, nuts and sweets she could afford. Fighting back tears, she walked the length of the slum handing it out to every hungry child she could find. Which was most of them. Next morning, she’d woken up hungry herself.

  The slum kids nicknamed her ‘Kissmass’, their way of saying Christmas. Most afternoons they came to her for stories. A couple of girls had overheard her telling Snow about Watership Down. The tale of a rabbit family who are forced from their burrow and have to battle General Woundwort and his red-eyed rabbit troops and endure great trials in their search for a new home was one every Mathare child could relate to.

  Next day, the girls who’d heard the story brought two friends and those friends brought others. Now no day passed without a story. Makena would perch on an upturned oil drum and tell thirty or more kids about Charlotte’s Web or Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing’s ascent of Everest.

  She ached for the mountains the way she ached for her mama and baba.

  The only mountains in Mathare were its rocky sides – the legacy of its past as a quarry – and the endless hills of rubbish. When it rained, the river overflowed and spread a toxic trail of plastic, broken glass and human waste. The smell was unspeakable.

  Every now and then charity volunteers would descend and haul some of it away in bags, but it returned with the next storm, often within hours.

  The sewage and chemicals leaked into the rusting, one-room shanty Makena shared with Snow and two other girls, Janeth and Eunice. Janeth’s father had bought it before he died. It was two metres-squared and on the banks of the filthy river, the area reserved for the lowest of Mathare’s low. When the river flooded, whole families were swept away.

  The four friends slept in an untidy heap on a pile of cardboard. At night, rats as big as cats nibbled the edges and skittered over their limbs. Once a week, the girls washed their clothes in a single bucket of foaming river water. Makena’s went in last. No matter how hard she scrubbed her sweatshirt and stained climbing trousers, they never lost their odour of sweat and despair.

  On washing days, Makena sat around with Snow in her only spare T-shirt and underwear, waiting for her wet things to dry. She and Snow were lucky to have anything spare. Janeth had to hide in the shanty in the nude until her clothes were partially dry. On rainy days, she didn’t leave the shanty at all.

  Few shanties were more than a hand-width apart. Makena could not only hear the woman in the shack on the left crooning to her baby or scolding her boisterous sons, and the man on the right snoring like a chainsaw, she knew the gossip of families who lived five doors down.

  She was aware, for instance, that the gaunt teenager who lived with his mother three shanties along was rather too fond of the local moonshine. Most mornings he could be found slumped outside his mama’s shanty, mouth open for the flies to inspect. After seven straight days of watching him sleep away the mornings and doze all afternoon, Makena joked: ‘I guess the last batch of chang’aa didn’t contain rocket fuel.’

  It was the only time she ever saw Snow angry. ‘You think it’s funny? All it takes is one bad brew and he’ll die. That’s what chang’aa means in Swahili: “Kill me quick.”’

  Within the week, the bad brew had happened. The youth was taken away in a box, his mama wailing behind it. The shock of his passing killed her days later. Death was so commonplace in Mathare that the neighbours barely turned their heads. An hour later, a new family had moved into their shanty.

  It enraged Makena that the gang members were allowed to get away with openly cooking up the spirit in jerricans on the banks of the river. They mixed the filthy water with chang’aa’s already lethal ingredients. The illegal brew was worth millions to the gangsters and the corrupt officials who let them get away with it. They swaggered around the slum in diamonds and gold jewellery: Lords of Mathare. Each was wealthy beyond his greediest ambitions. None cared that they were tormenting some of the poorest people on earth.

  Day after day, Makena rose fully intending to come up with a concrete plan to return to ‘normal’ life. She was convinced there was a solution. A family friend would take her in. Either that or she’d hitch a ride to Mount Kenya and live in the foothills gathering honey and firewood to sell, just as her father had in his youth. She’d save up until she could afford to go to school again.

  But the process of getting ready to face the world every morning was an exhausting one in Mathare.

  There was the daily struggle to find food with little or no money when half a million others were trying to do the same. Makena became an expert at spotting the lone onion or squashed tomato that had escaped under the table of one of the vendors on the roads beyond Mathare. Snow knew which shop bins had not already been raided for cartons of sour milk or blackened plantains.

  Whether they returned with two shrivelled carrots or a handful of monkey nut shells, Eunice would conjure up a watery soup with the help of a few dried beans and mchuzi mix spice. Janeth had occasional work as a maid and on those days she picked up nyama choma (roast goat) for herself and Eunice. Like Makena, Snow never touched meat, so Eunice brought them ugali or sukuma wiki. It was a rare indulgence.

  Some days they didn’t eat at all.

  They survived, after a fashion, but there was little energy for anything else. Eunice’s cracked mirror showed Makena that her hair was growing out in tufts. Her collarbones jutted. Her T-shirt hung loosely against her ribs.

  Whenever she tried to picture herself turning up at the International School to beg for a scholarship, her imagination took a holiday. Why would anyone take a chance on her? She kept putting off until tomorrow the long walk into town. She worried that tomorrow might never come.

  Finally, it was Makena’s turn to use the tap. She splashed her face and rinsed the mint and salt from her mouth, grimacing at the foul water.

  As she bent to scrub herself with a sliver of cracked soap, using the puddle at her feet as a mirror, a memory came to her. The sting in her cheeks as she washed her face in clear, sweet Lake Rutundu on Mount Kenya. The blur of water in her eyes and then, like a miracle, the bat-eared fox. It was so vivid; so real. She saw it lift its head and turn a fearless gaze on her. There were water diamonds in its whiskers.

  An inhuman growl blasted the image away. She swung round, heart thumping. Children were scattering like quelea birds before a farmer’s shotgun. One boy stayed long enough to tug at Makena’s shirt. ‘Kissmass, run. the Reaper is coming.’

  It was too late. The sun was blotted out. The Tree Man loomed over her. ‘You!’ He crushed Makena’s arm with a hot paw. ‘I remember you.’

  Makena screamed. Snow, who was in mid-yawn as she stepped out of their shanty, snatched up a broom and raced to her friend’s rescue.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Makena saw something spark and shimmer. The giant saw it too. His grip loosened.

  The soap on Makena’s arms helped her twist away. She took off, grabbing Snow’s hand as she ran. The albino girl knew the byways of the slum like she knew the lifelines on her own palm. They were out of sight in seconds. For ages afterwards, they could hear the giant stamping up and down in a rage.

  ‘That’s the Tree Man I was telling you about,’ Makena whispered to Snow. ‘The one who grabbed me in the storm.’

  Snow stared. ‘And you got away? That’s twice now. Better not let the Reaper catch you a third time.’

  A chill went through Makena. ‘Why do you call him the Reaper?’

  ‘Because wherever he goes, children disappear. He’s soft in the brain and only following orders, but they say he works for someone high up who knows exactly what he is doing. A man who drives a Mercedes with blacked-out windows and no number plate. In Mathare, they call him the Diplomat. If the Reaper is on the look-out for you, you need to watch your back. Stay close t
o me. As long as we’re together, you’ll be safe.’

  Makena experienced a jolt of déjà vu. Hadn’t Baba said the same thing when the hyenas were circling? He’d been so busy keeping watch over her that he’d forgotten he needed saving himself. Now he was gone. Would the same thing happen to Snow?

  Makena refused to allow that. If Snow was going to take care of Makena, Makena was going to guard her too. This time when the hyenas came hunting, she’d be ready.

  POPPIES

  It was Snow who remembered Makena’s birthday. There was a promotional calendar on the wall of their shanty, illustrated with photos of Kenyan wildlife. June’s animal was a warthog. When Snow blasted her awake on the third, belting out Stevie Wonder’s birthday anthem as if turning twelve in Mathare Valley was an event worth celebrating, Makena’s gaze went straight to the warthog. It looked the way she felt. If she’d had a pillow, she would have buried her head under it.

  But Snow was irrepressible. Even their roommates, rubbing sleep from their eyes, were smiling. They sang in Swahili:

  Afya njema na furaha

  Afya njema na furaha

  Afya njema na furaha mpendwa wetu, Makena

  Afya njema na furaha mpendwa wetu, Makena

  Maisha bora marefu

  Maisha bora marefu

  Maisha bora na marefu mpendwa wetu, Makena

  Maisha bora na marefu mpendwa wetu, Makena

  ‘Today is going to be a day of at least six magic moments, starting with the dawn,’ declared Snow after they’d wished Makena good health and happiness and a long and fruitful life. ‘I’ve just peeped out and the sun has put on his best scarlet finery especially for you. After you’ve watched his show, we’ve clubbed together to pay for a shower for you in the public bathroom. First, though, you have to open your gift.’

  She handed Makena a parcel wrapped in newspaper and tied with string.

  Makena was deeply moved. Snow had nothing. In fact, she had less than nothing. Makena knew how much thought and effort would have gone into finding clean newspaper and string, let alone whatever was inside.