Laugh with the Moon

by Shana Burg

  I wrap my arms around myself and shiver as Mr. Mbalazo slows down the car. I wonder if I’m losing it. I mean, I’ve been under a huge amount of stress for the last eight months, and I guess I’m finally going crazy. Nuts.

  Or, maybe I should say bananas. Because what I see out the window—well, what I think I see—is a monkey the size of a man. A very large man. It lumbers upright on two feet across the dirt road. And it isn’t just any monkey. It’s a thirsty monkey. It’s carrying a can of Coke—regular, not diet.

  The monkey stops right in front of us, tilts back its head, and guzzles. Then it crunches the can in its fist, chucks it on the ground, and disappears into the jungle on the other side of the road.

  “Ha!” Dad says. “What a world this would be if we could distribute medicine like they deliver cola!” Then he laughs. It’s one of those laughs that goes on and on forever, like a jumbo hot dog from Fenway Park. I don’t know why hearing my father laugh makes me furious, but it does.

  Mr. Mbalazo moves the stick shift into gear again. “This is chiyendayekha,” he says. “Big monkey.”

  I grab my phone to text Marcella about this bizarre place, then remember the thing is useless. Instead, I capture a rough image of the gorilla-monkey on my sketchpad, and when I’m done, I glance at my father. His eyes are closed. I’m afraid he might snore. Like most doctors, my father hardly sleeps, but when he does, watch out. For now, though, he’s breathing like a baby. I press my finger into his arm. What would Dad think of my little experiment? What would he think of me trying to touch the old him, to see if the part of him that used to care about me still exists? Before I can tell anything for sure, Dad shifts in his seat, so I yank my finger away.

  As predicted, a few minutes later, the rumbling begins. When Mr. Mbalazo hears my dad snore like a drunken sailor, he laughs a rich, hearty laugh. Then he says, “Soon we enter the trading center near to your home. Tomorrow you may visit there.”

  I shove my father hard, back and forth, back and forth, until he burbles, shakes his head, and wipes his eyes.

  I look out the window. It’s completely dark. I can’t see a thing.

  Mr. Mbalazo turns off the main road onto a narrow path. I wonder how he knows where to go. There aren’t any street signs with white reflective letters glittering in the night. I don’t even see any trees. But I do hear sticks and leaves scraping the windows.

  Mr. Mbalazo pulls into a driveway, takes out the key, and pops the trunk. “Here you are!” he says. Dad gets out to help him carry our luggage and supplies inside. I stay stuck to the seat like a stamp. I grind my teeth into my dented heart pendant while the sounds of the African night creep through the open car door.

  Once Dad and Mr. Mbalazo come back to the car, I get out and stretch and try to lose the feeling that I’m stuck in a nightmare. “Wishing you a season of good fortune,” Mr. Mbalazo tells us before getting into the driver’s seat. As he crunches backward over the gravel driveway, Dad and I wave into the glare of headlights. And when it’s completely dark and creepy again, I follow Dad into the house, which is the size of half a Pop-Tart.

  There’s nothing inside but two tiny bedrooms, a bathroom, a closet-sized living room, and a kitchen with a small round table. There are no pictures on the white walls, and the overhead lights are the fluorescent kind designed by some kook for places like hospitals and schools. Worst of all, the bedrooms have ugly canopies that are the color of dead fish. And aside from the twin beds with mattresses as thin as bitten fingernails, there’s nothing in either bedroom except a plain wooden dresser with three drawers and a window with a screen but no glass.

  Dad moves my luggage into the room closest to the bathroom. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  Before I can stop it—before I remember that a world record is at stake—a scream wells up inside me and blows right out of my mouth. “What’s wrong is that you pulled me away from my entire life right in the middle of my formative years!”

  Marcella told me that when a girl turns into a teenager—which I happened to do this past summer—she enters the most important years of her entire life. Now I pass the information on to my father, information I’m sure Mom knew by heart: “News flash!” I say. “In a girl’s formative years, her whole personality gets formed.” I look around. “In a place like this, mine will get formed deranged!”

  “What do you mean?” Dad asks.

  “What do I mean?” If he doesn’t get it, I can’t begin to explain. “Can you take down the canopy, at least? It’s disgusting.”

  “Oh.” Dad chuckles. “It’s not a canopy, Clare. It’s a malaria net. You let it hang around the edges of the bed when you sleep. Keeps the bugs out.”

  I don’t see any bugs. Still, Dad insists that we leave that ugly net up. I press my forefingers to my temples. “And these lights are giving me a headache,” I say.

  “That I can fix,” Dad says. He walks out of my brand-new bedroom and rummages through his bag that’s still in the living room. When he comes back, he’s got two flashlights. He presses a switch on the wall and turns out the overhead lights.

  All of a sudden, everything powers down.

  And even though the air is heavy and the house is tiny, I can hear tons of space between Dad and me. I can hear all the emptiness left by everything that isn’t turned on—computers and cell phones and beepers—all the things that usually chop up our time together and slice it into pieces so small they barely exist.

  Dad turns on the flashlights and hands one to me. “Let’s pretend it’s night,” he says.

  “It is night,” I say, and follow him through the dark house to the kitchen.

  “It’s nine o’clock here in Malawi, but in Brookline … only one in the afternoon.”

  When you’ve been traveling more than thirty hours like I have, it’s impossible to keep track of your life. When you’ve been plucked out of school right when you’re on the verge of getting your first actual kiss, you feel cheated. And when you’re glad you didn’t get that kiss because you don’t have a mother to tell about it, then you know things really are messed up.

  “Wait here. I’ve got to get something,” Dad says.

  Of course, I know he’s in the next room, so I shouldn’t be having a conniption, but I totally am. It’s scary in this place. There are all kinds of rattles, hisses, and hums. It sounds like a spooky percussion symphony. After a minute, though, the thud of my heart in my ears grows loud enough to drown out the sounds of the African night.

  When Dad returns, he’s got a package of peanut butter crackers, a bottle of water, and a white Malarone pill so I won’t get malaria. I put the pill on my tongue, but the second I take a swig of water, there’s a horrific screech. I splutter the pill onto the table.

  “If I recall, that’s the bush baby monkey,” Dad says. It’s been more than twenty years since my father’s lived in this country, but he still thinks he knows everything about it. “Bush babies usually give birth to twins.”

  “Exactly what I need!” I say. “Some monkey mother giving birth in my ear.”

  Dad chuckles and goes off to get me another pill. While he’s gone, I take three breaths in and out of my nose to try to calm myself down. It doesn’t work. I want to yell Hurry up and get back here already! But of course, I don’t. I can’t let Dad know I’m scared.

  At least pill number two goes down without a hitch. “Good job,” Dad says. And when I finish the crackers, he tells me to get ready for bed. “Remember to brush your teeth with bottled water. The tap water has all kinds of germs that could get you really sick.”

  I grab my water bottle off the table.

  After I brush, I go to the bedroom, where the moonlight is streaming through the window screen. I change into my pajamas and climb under the mosquito net. I’m trapped. Dad sticks his head in the doorway. “Good night, honey. Sweet dreams,” he says.

  And I decide right there and then that I’ve made a mistake by talking to him. If I have any prayer of getting back to Brookline anytime
soon, I’ve got to be more disciplined about the silent treatment. I’ve got to make Dad regret every second we’re here.

  Sunlight crashes through the window screen onto my head. I’m alarmed to see where I am. I lug myself out of bed, run to the bathroom, then pass Dad reading on the living room couch.

  “It’s already two o’clock, Clare,” he says. “Why don’t you grab something to eat, and then what do you say we get going to Mkumba?”

  As if I’m going to answer him! I march straight to the kitchen, where I tear into a box of wafer cookies. They make a great breakfast.

  “Cut it out, already,” Dad says, now standing in the kitchen doorway. “I thought you said you aren’t a little kid anymore.”

  I shrug. I wish Marcella was here so I could ask her what to do.

  Dad sits down next to me at the kitchen table. Suddenly, I’m feeling claustrophobic. He turns over the medical report in his hand and sketches a map of the village where he used to live when he was in the U.S. Peace Corps. “Doubt much has changed,” he says as he draws huts and labels them. “Families in the villages tend to stay put.” He draws arrows between the huts to indicate who’s related to who.

  Dad shows me where his friend Stallard lived. “Stallard and I were like brothers back in the day,” he tells me. “We exchanged letters for years before we fell out of touch. He used to always ask when I was going to bring you and your mother to meet him. You know, that’s why I wrote in September … to tell him the news,” he says. Dad shakes his head, like if he tries hard enough, he can toss the memory of Mom right out of it. I guess it works, because a second later, he goes back to his masterpiece with a little smile on his face and continues to describe his old pals. By the time Dad finishes drawing, there are about a hundred arrows shooting all over the place, and I can barely keep everyone straight.

  After I eat half the box of cookies, I go into the bathroom. Of course, it’s hard to see anything in the six-by-six-inch mirror hanging on the wall. Still, I’m almost confident that I’ve managed to scrunch curls from the nest on my head. I put on my cranberry dress with navy batik figures. It looks very ethnic. It’s my best hope of fitting in here.

  Next, I open the guidebook that I read on the airplane and rip out the page my father will need about manners, because manners aren’t his strong suit. In the past eight months, it has been my misfortune to discover that my father not only leaves shaving stubble in the sink, but he also leaves the toilet seat up and occasionally unflushed. These are the grisly things a girl is forced to learn when her mother isn’t around anymore to cover up.

  Dad’s waiting for me in the Land Rover that’s parked behind the house. Once I get in, he puts the stick shift in reverse, and we back onto the narrow jungle path. Soon we’re driving through the center of town. Unlike last night, today we can actually see what’s going on here, and it isn’t much. A lady with firewood on her head walks past three or four storefronts. The names of the businesses are painted right onto the white concrete buildings. There’s THE SLOW BUT SURE SHOP and THE AFRICAN DOCTOR. Above the English words are some words in Chichewa, the other national language in Malawi. The trading center lasts only a minute; then we pass through the jungle again and the shock of where I’m trapped truly sets in.

  When a cluster of mud huts with dried-grass roofs appears, Dad pulls off the dirt road. “Here we go!” he says. “Mkumba village.” His excitement bounces all over the Land Rover. “So remember, Stallard is the nephew of the chief. I lived in a hut next to his family’s.”

  The afternoon sun is high in the sky, and the shadow of an enormous tree at the edge of the field cuts a sharp line against the ground. I know that if Mom were here, she would make sure I was wearing sunscreen and sunglasses.

  I step out of the Land Rover, bare and exposed. The colors are incredibly bright—the yellows, the oranges, even the browns. I can almost picture Mom setting up her easel in the grass. I can almost smell her gluey acrylics as she squeezes them out of the tubes onto her palette. There’s a lump growing in my throat, until I catch myself thinking these useless thoughts and tell myself to forget it. Forget her. Be here now! I yell in my head. It’s what Marcella said I need to do if I don’t want to be a miserable human being for the rest of my life.

  I take the piece of paper out of the pocket of my dress and hand it to Dad. “What is this?” he asks.

  I shrug and he unfolds it. “ ‘Malawi Cultural Manners,’ ” he reads out loud. “How thoughtful!”

  But I’m not thoughtful, just selfish and practical enough to take precautions to avoid complete mortification at any cost. I stare across the field at the people carrying silver buckets on their heads between the huts and the narrow river.

  “ ‘Rule Number One,’ ” Dad reads out loud, “ ‘Don’t make contact with elders. Any married person is considered an elder.’ Uh-huh. Got that. ‘Rule Number Two: If you have guests, don’t sweep at night, as it is believed you are chasing them away.’ ” Dad chuckles. “We don’t have to worry about that one!” he says. And it’s true. The last time my father picked up a broom was … never.

  “And finally, ‘Rule Number Three: When shaking hands, support the forearm of your greeting hand with the other …’ ”

  Suddenly, a bunch of leaves flutter to the ground. I look for a bird or maybe a monkey rustling the branches, but instead I see a flock of little boys. They straddle the limbs of the tree, at least thirty feet above our heads. They point at Dad and me like we’re the last living dinosaurs on planet Earth. One boy sits on a branch, his bare foot dipping into the sky like it’s a lake. “Hello, azungu!” he calls.

  Dad smiles and waves. “They’re playing tag,” he explains, like that’s a perfectly normal place to do it. And of course, it’s never occurred to me to play tag in the trees, but all of a sudden, I imagine the other possibilities: upside-down tag, tag in the water, tag on the moon.

  “Azungu!” the boys in the trees shout. I hear a murmur. I look across the field and can’t believe what’s rushing toward me. I open my mouth and scream, but my scream sounds like a mouse caught in a trap under a dishwasher.

  The mob of children arrives. Their sticky fingers poke me, press me. Two tiny girls jump to touch my hair. “Ouch!” I rub my scalp. The girls shriek with laughter and run away, barefoot, across the field. “Dad!” I manage to yell. But he doesn’t hear me. He’s being attacked too.

  Sweat trickles down my forehead as a tall African girl wearing flip-flops elbows her way through the crowd. “Musiyeni mzanu!” she yells in a husky voice. She waves her hands and all the barefoot children turn and race back to the village—all except the boys in the trees, and an even smaller boy with a face as round as a full moon. His bright pink bottom lip rolls over in a pout.

  “Do not fret,” the girl with the husky voice says. “My brother does not desire a turn.”

  Dad steps closer, puts his arm around my shoulder. I’m so scared that I let him.

  “A turn?” I croak.

  A tear slides down the boy’s dimpled cheek and splashes onto the field grass.

  “A turn to touch azungu,” she says. “White people … you.”

  I point to the tiny boy hiding behind the girl’s legs. “Why’s he crying?” I ask.

  “My brother, Innocent, did only see a few azungu in all his life.” Her eyes are dark and serious. “He think you are ghost.”

  “Me, a ghost?” I chuckle. I guess Dad thinks I’m okay, so he takes his arm off my shoulder. But I’m not okay. Not yet. Doesn’t he know anything?

  Well, I can make people feel better even if my father, the doctor, can’t. The boy with the strange name is trembling, so I puff out my cheeks and bang on them. Then I suck the air into my cheeks all over again and curl my index finger, motioning to the boy called Innocent that it’s his turn.

  Innocent hesitates, but he finally comes close enough for me to take his shaking hands, touch them to my cheeks, and make a noise that sounds exactly like someone who has eaten way too many baked
beans. Immediately, his mouth drops open and a giggle flutters out, like a butterfly escaping its cocoon.

  “Nice work, Miss Manners,” Dad says.

  Innocent dashes away, the tall grass swooshing behind him. But I still hear giggles. I look up. The boys in the trees cover their mouths with their hands. Their shoulders shake. One gives me a thumbs-up.

  When I look back at Innocent, he is halfway to the huts. He passes a short man in khaki pants and red polo shirt who is running toward Dad and me. “Not again!” I shout to Dad.

  “It’s Stallard!” Dad tells me. “Moni, Stallard!” he calls as I sag with relief.

  When we meet, Stallard hugs my father and shakes my hand very formally while holding his own forearm. Then he looks at the girl with the serious eyes. “I see you have met Memory, the daughter of my sister.”

  “Ahh! Edith’s daughter,” Dad says, and smiles.

  Memory looks shyly at the ground.

  “Your mother was a terrific woman,” he says.

  Memory smiles. But my pulse pounds. Her mother was a terrific woman? What happened to her mother? Did she die like mine? How did she die? When?

  “So where’s Joseph?” Dad asks. “I’ve got to kick a ball with him.”

  “The previous hungry season,” Stallard says, and sighs. “My brother was weak.”

  Dad rubs the stubble on his chin. “The …? Oh,” he says, and winces. “I’m very sorry to hear that. Very sorry! How is everyone else?”

  “Fine, fine.” Stallard smiles. “They are most eager to visit with you and your beautiful daughter.”

  I feel my face turn redder than a theater curtain. Then Stallard and Dad stare in the direction of the huts while I look at this girl named Memory and she looks at me. The hair on my arms stands up and I get a psychic premonition. I know right here and now, way deep inside my bones, that the girl standing beside me is going to become my friend.