Lost Girl Found

by Leah Bassoff

  “I don’t think I need the inhaler,” she says. “But would you be so kind as to prop me up on my pillows. It is easier for me to breathe this way.”

  I have never seen her looking like this, her gray hair flowing across her shoulders, free of her habit. Her face is even whiter than usual.

  “Would you like me to make you some tea, Sister?” I ask her.

  “Just a little filtered water, Poni, please.” Her voice is strained, but I am pleased to hear that she now knows me again. “Thank you. You have become my right-hand helper.”

  “You help so many people,” I tell her. Then, without knowing why, I reach out and brush some hair away from her face.

  “Good girl,” she says.

  I sit quietly with her, waiting for her breathing to return to normal.

  After some time, she tells me, “You may go. I think I shall sleep soundly now.”

  Sister Hannah rejected a life of luxury. She chooses, instead, to live as we Africans do. She has a sister, Greta, who raises a good deal of money on our behalf, but Greta wears fancy clothes and lives in Germany. Sister Hannah, on the other hand, stays with us all the time and owns nothing. When people ask her why she stays, she says, “God whispered in my ear.”

  Nyanath told me that Sister once was attacked by street boys carrying guns. They charged into the compound, despite the guard out front. All Sister and the other girls could do was pray. The thieves took all of the money that Sister had hidden away in her office, money that was earmarked to buy supplies. Sister hired more guards following this event, but that was it. She still wouldn’t leave.

  ———

  I KNOW THAT SISTER always has much on her mind, so many people depending on her for their safety and well-being. However, even after I have worked for her for several months, she does not discuss my schooling. Every day I wake up wondering, is today the day she will finally send me to classes? After all, a few of the other girls already attend school.

  I try to tell myself to be patient, but this is not my strength. I turn fidgety and restless. I develop a rash, one that is invisible to the eye but that makes me itch dreadfully.

  Finally, I can stand it no longer. The trouble is, Sister is always occupied. One day, though, I see my opening, see Sister sitting by herself at her desk.

  “Yes, Poni, you can approach,” Sister says to me. “Tell me what you want, and then you and I will go over the dinner menu for tonight. I will have one of the guards accompany you into town to purchase supplies. We will serve ravioli, I think, blackcurrant juice, and House of Manji shortcake biscuits for dessert. Then, from the kiosk, we need Kimbo, Simba Mbili curry powder, Peptang, kiberiti, chevdo mix and Lucozade.”

  I take her list, but then suddenly, as I sit and squirm, trying not to scratch at the back of my legs, the words burst forth from my mouth.

  “Sister, I am interested in continuing my schooling.”

  Sister stops what she is doing and looks at me. “Yes. Well, I did promise you this, didn’t I? When you first came to see me?”

  I try to read her thoughts. Does she consider me impudent?

  “Of course you should go to school. I fear I have gotten so accustomed to you doing everything around here that I forgot to send you.”

  “I can still assist you in the evenings when I return,” I tell her.

  “Naturally,” Sister says. “Give me another week or two, and we will get you started with classes.” Then she adds, “Poni, you were right to say something to me. God provides everything, but what he overlooks we must seek out for ourselves. You must hold people to their promises.”

  “I know it is easy for you to get distracted. You look after so many people.”

  “And yet you notice I only take in those people who are also willing to help themselves.”

  I nod. I cannot explain it, but at this moment, it is as if we are sharing some type of secret. Sister is a humble servant of God, but she is also the first woman I have ever known who is really in charge of running her own business, if you can call our compound a business. Sister is the one who hires workers to construct new buildings when we need them. She is the one who oversees our water pump and the one who calls Kenya Power to complain when the electricity generator goes down for hours at a time. “Liars! Stupids!” she screams at the men on the phone if they try to tell her they will not be able to turn the generator on this day.

  Sister’s kindness is known all over Kenya, yet there is a steely determination about her as well. She comes from a tradition of old-school missionaries and is not a woman who is afraid to give orders, to bark them if need be.

  As if confirming this fact, Sister points to some of the young orphan boys she sees urinating on the lawn.

  “Animals! Bozibozi!” she yells out the window. “You are no longer in the camps. I have told you to use the toilet like proper boys.”

  ———

  SISTER STAYS TRUE TO HER word, and a few weeks later I begin classes at the all-girls secondary school. Slowly, my invisible rash leaves me, and I am able to sit still once again.

  Imagine what it is like sitting in a real school. I sit up straight, my spine rigid, not wanting to miss a single word from the teacher. We sit on benches, wearing our red school uniforms, surrounded by white-washed walls. I have been given actual paper and pens but, being loath to waste these resources, I write with tiny letters. Occasionally, the electricity goes out, and when it does, our teacher turns on a big battery-operated lantern.

  The teacher is an older man with tired eyes and hair that is gray only around his ears. He tells us that we must work extremely hard, that not everyone has our opportunity.

  “Don’t be under the false impression that all of you will pass this class,” he warns. “Only the best students will rise to the top.” I nod and try to send a mental message to this teacher. I will do whatever it takes to succeed at my studies. Lokure showed me all things are possible when he taught me to read in the dark.

  I enter a happy yet exhausting routine. During the day I attend lectures, writing out my English exercises and memorizing historical dates, while during the evening I continue to assist Sister with cooking and organizing the stock room. Sister trusts me enough to hand over money to buy new supplies when needed. I do my writing exercises and read until I am holding my eyes open with my fingers.

  Yet when I finally lie down in bed, just when you would think my brain would slow, my mind continues to run. Nighttime is when I picture Lokure bent over his porridge pot, the way his face lit up when he caught sight of me. As if this is not torture enough, I allow myself to recall the feeling of his tall-grass fingers against my cheek. I stroke my cheek with my own fingers, but it is not the same.

  Sister has lived her entire life without the companionship of a man. She gave herself over to God instead.

  For a long time, I thought marriage was a land mine. The notion that anyone would actually marry for love escaped me. But now when I think about Lokure, it is with the wistfulness of something lost. Remembering Lokure is like running a shard of glass down the inside of my arm.

  You breathe through a memory. You make yourself forget.

  — 24 —

  IT IS DIFFERENT WAKING every day with a purpose, reawakening my mind that has slumbered for too long. When I have difficulty memorizing new facts, when I begin to pity myself, I think of Tihou and how envious she would be of my schooling. I wonder what became of her.

  In school, I copy notes from the cracked chalkboard, writing so furiously and clutching my pen so hard that I grow a thick knot of skin on my middle finger. Groping my way around the English language forces my once-tattered tongue to move in all different directions, to form words that feel like something hard in my mouth.

  A few nights a week, Nyanath, the Nuer girl, and I work in the orphanage. Our task is feeding the babies and placing the children in their beds. Rows and rows
of children who will grow up in Sister’s compound, not knowing that they came from Sudan, not remembering that they once had real mothers who risked their lives in hot birthing huts in order to squeeze them out into the world.

  Yet these children do not spend their days sad. They have learned how to care for one another. Even the little ones know how to quiet those children who suffer from bad dreams at night. Big girls carry around little girls, and little girls carry around even smaller girls. They fashion jump ropes out of spare string and toy cows out of the clay they find by digging in the dirt.

  I am always busy, but during the rare moments when I do have free time, I try to tell the children stories. I tell the story of how the tortoise got its shell, and I tell them how the cricket got its song.

  When the children demand more food, and we do not have any extra to spare, I remember Mama’s trick of making a small amount of food seem like more.

  “Would you like one piece of mango or five?” I ask the children.

  “Oh, five, five!” they all yell, and so I cut the mango into very tiny pieces. “There you are. Five pieces for every child. You didn’t think I would be able to give you so much, did you?” They nod happily, not noticing that the pieces are smaller.

  ———

  YOU WOULD THINK THAT all of us girls would bond together out of solidarity. We are the lucky few who have survived. Yet when there is not enough firewood or grain to go around, something in you changes. You begin to view even your friends as competitors.

  Sister Hannah tells us, “I don’t care whether your tribes were friendly or hostile with one another in Sudan. Here inside my compound you will treat one another respectfully. If not, I will provide you with a ticket and send you back to Kakuma. I will say goodbye and wish you well. Do you understand? This is a no-war zone, girls.”

  “Yes, Sister,” we all intone.

  “We, all of us, pray to the same God. We, all of us, are victims of the same war.”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  “Girls, you must always act in a respectable way. You know what I mean by this. I expect you to act like ladies. God expects this, too. Please feel my eyes on you at all times. Like God’s eyes, they are the eyes of judgment. If you do something, I want you to ask yourself, ‘Would Sister approve of my behavior?’ If the answer is no, then you shouldn’t do it. Guard yourselves, girls. Don’t be misled by boys.”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  “You girls are the lucky ones. You must do well, and then you must return and help your mothers, aunties and elders back home. You must return and help the weak ones.”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  I look around at the girls who now surround me, the other girls Sister Hannah has saved. I should try to make friends with them, should ask to study with the ones from my classes. Yet something holds me back.

  I hear the words of our teacher. “Not all of you will pass the class.” By helping others, will I hurt my own chances at success? Perhaps it is safer to trust no one.

  Sister does her best to maintain peace among us girls, to insist that we show gratitude, that we thank God and pray to him.

  “Without God we are nothing,” she repeats daily. “Let us pray for peace.”

  And yet we girls know an unfortunate secret. Peace only works on paper.

  It seems I am not the only girl who is distrustful. The other girls find ways to sabotage one another. But they do it carefully, so that Sister Hannah cannot catch them. Aduei, a girl with an antelope face, constantly treads on my heels when she walks behind me.

  When I turn to give her a sharp look, she says, “Oh, it was an accident.” But I know the truth.

  Other girls yank one another’s skirts when Sister’s back is turned.

  They gossip, too. “Do you see how ugly that one is,” a group of girls says, pointing to the girl named Josephine. “Her eyes are two different sizes. She has the eyes of a frog.”

  “Are you girls whispering?” Sister Hannah snaps.

  “No, Sister.”

  The girls are quiet in front of Sister Hannah. They are afraid of her. Still, they know that she cannot understand them very well when they switch into their own native dialects. This is how they continue their bickering, smiling brightly at Sister while secretly insulting one another in their own tongues.

  Growing up in the villages, everything was shared. If you had a piece of bread, you always broke it in two. However, the war destroyed this communal way of thinking and taught us to be for ourselves.

  Perhaps this is why I feel so lonely. I am surrounded by girls, but I have no friends.

  There is one exception. I end up gravitating to the girl with the personality most opposite from my own.

  During our time together in the orphanage, Nyanath and I talk to one another. Despite Nyanath’s beauty, there is something unassuming about her. Her posture is perfectly straight, and her voice is always slow and deliberate, as if she is trying to subdue those around her.

  If my personality is white, frothy waters, Nyanath’s is a calm lake. Being a town girl, I know the date when I was born, but Nyanath, who comes from a small village near Bentiu, does not know her actual age. “Oh, I am somewhere between twenty and twenty-three,” she says when people ask her.

  “Nyanath, why don’t you attend classes like some of the other girls?”

  “I already know I’m going to become a nun,” she tells me. “God already has a plan for me.”

  “But don’t you still want to pursue your education?” I ask.

  “I don’t need any studies except for the Bible.”

  “You are satisfied reading this same book over and over again?”

  Nyanath looks at me. “I think you ask a great deal of questions.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  I am drawn to Nyanath’s peacefulness, and yet I also want to shake her. How is she so calm all the time? So satisfied?

  “Why are the girls here so mean to one another?”

  Nyanath thinks about it and then says, “These girls have forgotten how to behave. They were in the refugee camp too long. They forgot what it was like to have parents or town elders.”

  “But not you?”

  “No. I have not forgotten.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever have a home to return to.”

  “God is your home, and he moves with you wherever you go.” I nod, but I wish I was convinced. I don’t dare confess to Nyanath how restless I feel most of the time. I worry she might accuse me of being ungrateful.

  Nyanath is the other girl to whom Sister Hannah entrusts the most important house duties. Because Nyanath is always at the compound, she is also privy to many pieces of news, yet when she conveys them she does so without being gossipy.

  During the rest time between our chores, Nyanath asks me, “Poni, are you thinking of leaving Africa like some of the other girls?”

  “Some girls are leaving?” This takes me by surprise.

  “Sister says there are better education opportunities in other countries.”

  “Like where?”

  “There are countries that will sponsor you. The most likely ones are Canada, Australia or the United States.”

  “Sister never mentioned the possibility of leaving to me.”

  “Sister only wants what is good for all us girls. You know this. But, I personally think that sometimes she gets attached to some people and wants them to stay.”

  That night, as I go to sleep, my mind spins with the possibility of leaving Africa. I can picture the map my teacher pulled out when I was a schoolgirl. I remember being astounded that such a large world existed. Yet Africa is the only life I’ve ever known.

  — 25 —

  EVERY DAY THE GUARDS who stand outside Sister’s compound have to shoo away the men who gather there. Some of the men pretend to be our uncles.
/>   “Please,” they call out. “My brother’s daughter is inside the compound. I’ve come to fetch her.”

  Do these men really think that we will be tricked in this way? Do they really expect us to go to them?

  Sister is not intimidated. She goes out and tells the guards to “make sure these men do not loiter.” Then she shouts, in less-than-godly terms, that if they do not leave, she will have them arrested. Though Sister is a short woman, she can puff herself up and appear larger than her real size.

  “Stupids!” she yells at the men, her insult of choice.

  Though I do go to the marketplace in Nairobi or Thika on Saturdays to buy food for Sister, I mostly remain within the Juja compound. Unlike Kakuma, Sister’s compound is no holding cell, but it is still a waiting place. With the exception of Nyanath, most of us girls are impatient, thinking about what our futures will bring.

  I try to force loneliness down my throat. I have swallowed far worse — water mixed with mud, mosquitoes, grass and bitter leaves. Why then can I not swallow this? At night, with no one looking, I run my hands across my body under the covers. I feel my chest ache with a longing I cannot place.

  Did I miss my one chance to be loved when I left Lokure? Will anyone ever long after my tattered body again?

  ———

  AT SCHOOL I CONTINUE to study as though my life depends on it. And doesn’t it? “Not all of you girls will make it.” This is what the instructor warned. I write lists of English words over and over again until I commit them to memory. When I have no paper left, I continue to write on my hands, my arms.

  Sometimes, when I don’t need to serve food at the compound, I skip my meals and study instead. Going without food, denying my body’s appetites, is something I am already good at. Eating is always the first thing I cut out when I am busy. In fact, now that I am no longer starving, keeping a small amount of sharpness in my stomach feels good and familiar.

  One day when I am attending classes, our teacher tells us that he has received several boxes of books donated by a Catholic organization.