by Shana Burg
I’ve been getting premonitions for as long as I can remember. When my cat Sunny drowned back when I was in third grade, I had a really bad feeling the whole day in school—and that was before I even got home and found out what had happened. And when Mom bought a ticket for the state lottery, she let me pick the numbers. I got one out of four right, and we won five dollars. We would have won five thousand forty-eight dollars, but I put the numbers in the wrong order.
Memory and I follow my father and Stallard toward the drumbeat in the distance, where hundreds of villagers gather, and I quickly lose her in the crowd. “Our new chief,” Stallard says. He looks at a thin man with oversized dark glasses and a lavender shirt that says ROCK THE VOTE. I can’t believe the chief doesn’t wear a headdress. The only cool thing he has is a leather holster tied around his waist. I think there might be a knife in it—probably the knife he uses to defend the village from attack by enemy tribes.
The crowd parts and the new chief reaches us and shakes our hands. Then he claps three times, and men in white robes start to play the most bizarre instruments I’ve ever seen. One looks like a guitar made from an old gas tank. Two of the men face each other, carrying a pole between them. A drum hangs from the pole. The men bang the drum at the same time while the villagers dance and sing, and the women make high-pitched noises that sound like “la la la la la la la.”
When I turn around, I feel a fist right inside me. It’s a betrayal of the worst kind: my father’s shimmying too. And even though I feel selfish, part of me wants Dad to wait to be happy again. Wait until I’m ready. And I’m not ready. I don’t know if I ever will be.
Two village ladies lift my hands and try to dance with me, but I tell them “No thanks.” I bite my lip to keep the tears inside. I want the music to stop. I want the dancing to stop.
A few minutes later, my wishes come true. Well, most of them. The music finally stops, and the dancing does too, but my father’s still grinning like he’s having the time of his life.
A teenage boy leads a goat to the center of the circle. Villagers whoop and howl. The chief pulls out his knife.
I cover my eyes, but I can still hear the goat bleat out its final prayer. Even though the slaughter is over fast, the goat’s cries echo in my ears, sending a flurry of shivers up my spine.
Soon a fire rages in the middle of the circle. Flames lick the pastel sky and the smell of cooking meat wafts over me. I am hungry and sickened at the same time. Dad chats with a group of men while the women and girls move to another area.
I slink to the edge of the field. If I could climb the giant tree beside me, I wouldn’t play tag. I’d hide in the leaves and never get found.
“Beautiful, the baobab tree,” someone says. “Like the African elephant.”
I whip my head around.
“My village likes to … how do you call …?” Memory purses her lips together and scours the sky. “Party,” she says, and smiles. “My village desire to party.”
I nod.
“Yet you do not appear as if you desire to party,” she says. “Perhaps you like to visit my house.”
Across the field, I see Dad. I consider telling him that I’m about to disappear. But then again, he was hardly upset last month when I stayed at Marcella’s until ten o’clock on a school night, so I figure why bother. It might be good for him to get a little fright.
“Tiye tonse,” Memory says. She takes my wrist and leads me away from the clearing. “Home of my family.” She points to a hut near the river that looks like all the other huts in Mkumba village. As we walk toward it in the late-afternoon light, field grass whispers across my knees and that word—family—lashes my heart like a whip.
It’s like someone has taken a hunk of clay and molded an entire village from it. The red dirt rises from the ground to form the hut walls. The roof is covered with dried grass and reeds that droop over the edges. There’s no actual door, only a piece of bright orange cloth hanging across the doorway.
Memory kicks off her flip-flops, so I pull off my sandals and leave them beside her shoes on the ground. She pushes the cloth aside, and I follow her in. A second later, I feel like someone’s batted a line drive right into my stomach.
The place is half the size of my bedroom in Brookline. How can Memory’s whole family fit in here? There isn’t any furniture. Not even a bed with an ugly mosquito net. There are a couple of woven mats stretched across the floor, a few pots and spoons huddled in the corner, and some cloths draped over a nail.
And it’s snowing.
Well, it’s not snowing real snow, of course, but it’s snowing the kind of snowflakes you make by folding paper in quarters and cutting out all sorts of geometric designs. These kinds of snowflakes—no two alike—hang from six-inch pieces of yarn all over the ceiling.
I let out my breath. I’ve escaped the laughter and the music in the field. Maybe Dad’s looking for me now. But I’m hidden away here, where it’s dark and quiet like a cave.
“The snow is cool,” I say.
“Snow?” Memory asks.
I point to the ceiling.
“Ahhh … yes, very cold.” She wraps her arms around her chest and pretends to shiver.
“I mean it’s cool, as in I really like it,” I say.
“Zikomo,” Memory says. “I made it in the school the year we own sufficient paper. Are you hungry? Perhaps you desire nsima?”
“Is it goat?” My voice is groggy, weak. I’ve barely used it in days.
Memory laughs. “Nsima is not goat. It is grain. The goat shall take hours to cook.”
“Grain I can deal with,” I say.
“Nsima made from maize. I think you shall like. I hope you shall like, as here in Malawi, we eat nsima morning, noon, and night. In the case you do not like our nsima, you have troubles,” she says, and laughs. “Large troubles.”
Memory pushes aside a piece of cloth at the other end of the hut. Behind it is a tiny sort of closet. On the floor of the closet is a small pile of corncobs that look like they’ve been there forever, because the kernels are withered and dried. “The hungry season will end soon,” she says as she lifts the edge of her skirt and places eight cobs inside. “The harvest will come and our maize silo will be full again.” She carries the corncobs over to a clay bowl and drops them in.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
“A visitor for one minute shall hold the hoe in two minutes’ time,” she says, and hands me the bowl full of corncobs that’s much heavier than it looks. When I take it, my bicep throbs where I got all those shots for the trip.
I rub my arm while Memory rolls open a mat on the dried-mud floor. I plop down on it. She squats beside me and shows me how to tear off the kernels. Our fingers look strange beside each other’s. Hers are callused and rough, used to the job. I still have specks of red nail polish on mine.
“You do this,” Memory says. “I make the ndiwo.” She stands and walks two steps back to the hidden closet and pulls out an onion. She carries it to the mat with a knife and chops the onion into another bowl. “You will like ndiwo. You will see.” Memory presses the sleeve of her dress into the corner of her tearing eyes.
“I hope I can learn Chichewa half as bwino as your English,” I say, and squint. My eyes are burning from the onion too. But thanks to Marcella, I know how to solve this problem. Since kindergarten, Marcella’s taught me plenty of tricks. How to get rid of hiccups? Stand on your head and drink water from a straw. How to pop a zit? Steam your face over a pot of boiling water first. And how to cut an onion without feeling like your eyeballs are on fire?
“I’ve got just the thing,” I say. I reach into my knapsack and pull out a pack of Juicy Fruit gum that’s left over from the flight. “Here.” I hand Memory a piece. “It’s a trick. Chew.”
She unwraps the gum from the silver foil.
“Mmmm!” She smiles and pops it into her mouth. We both chew our gum, and our eyes don’t tear up anymore. “This magic gum from America work real good,” she says,
and we go back to work.
Once I’ve got all the kernels in the bowl, Memory uses a rock to grind them into a fine powder that looks like flour. She cuts up a tomato and some greens. Then she gathers supplies from the dark corner of the hut and tells me to follow her outside. Of course, I don’t want to go. It feels good inside the small, damp hut, but I can’t say that I’m staying put. I’m a guest, after all. And even though I’ve had a premonition, we’re not friends yet.
So I leave the hut through the curtain. While Memory lights her own fire, I watch the villagers across the field still celebrating our arrival. They are dancing and eating and singing, so happy that my father is back in the neighborhood.
Memory sets a pot on top of three stones, sticks the firewood underneath, and strikes a match. Once the fire’s lit, she picks up a bottle and pours the yellow Kazinga oil into the pot and fries the onion until it sizzles.
Something about that sizzling sound makes me realize that my bladder’s about to explode. I touch my tongue to the top of my mouth, roll my eyes to the sky, and bite the inside of my cheek. But this time Marcella’s trick doesn’t work. I still have to go to the bathroom. And I guess crossing your legs is an international sign for “When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go,” because Memory points to a small hut nearby and says, “The ladies’ is there.” So I buckle on my sandals and bolt across the dirt to a hut that actually has a door made of bamboo poles. I pinch my nose and push it open.
Inside, it’s completely dark except for a narrow rectangle of light at the top of the wall. My eyeballs reach, reach, reach for the light, and the light reach, reach, reaches for my eyeballs, and when the two finally connect, I figure out there isn’t a toilet in sight.
I pace in a little circle, trying to figure out what to do. My foot slams into something hard. Some kind of lid. I trace a metal square with my toe. I bend down and thread my finger through a loop on the top of the lid and try to heave it aside. It’s so heavy, though, I need two hands. Even though I quickly hold my nose again, it’s too late—the odor quivers inside my nostrils like a sour mist. But at least I think I understand how this “bathroom” works. Finally, I get down to business. And for a split second, I’m not worried about the dark, or the snakes, or the smell.
I just stare at the flies buzzing in the wave of dusty light shining through the window slit. When I’m through, I squint around for some toilet paper. My eyes have adjusted to the light and I can see a bit. But unfortunately, although I do have a keen psychic ability, I cannot conjure objects from thin air, and I especially cannot create toilet paper when there isn’t any.
“Hold your hands here,” Memory says when I return from the bathroom. She pours water from the bucket for me. “My turn,” she says, and I pour the water for her. Then we’re ready to eat. I take off my sandals and help carry the food back inside the hut, where we sit on the mats.
Memory tears off a hunk of nsima, rolls the dough into a ball in her fingers, and dips it in the ndiwo. “Do like this,” she says, and takes a bite. “The good report is you only miss five days of term two at Mzanga Full Primary School.” But then I realize that Memory’s good report comes with a bad report: We aren’t going to be setting down any plates or forks or knives or spoons. We’ll be eating with our hands. “Uncle Stallard explains you shall be in my class, standard eight. My brother Innocent attend this school also. He attend standard one.”
Even though most Global Health Project doctors who come to Malawi from the United States send their kids to the boarding school in Blantyre, Dad wants me to go to the local school. He says that way I’ll get the real village experience. “Besides,” he told me, “I want to spend more family time together.” Since when is two people enough for a family? At least Memory has a father plus a brother, so that makes a more normal number: three. Maybe she knows how long the pain lasts. Maybe she can tell me when I’ll stop waking up with tears on my pillow. But how can I ask her when we’ve only just met?
I rip off a small piece of nsima. I roll it in my hands and sniff. Surprise, surprise. It smells like corn.
“Do not worry,” Memory says. “This food I cook is not bewitched.”
“Oh, I, uh … I was about to dig in!” I sink the little piece of dough into the ndiwo and shove it into my mouth.
“In our class at Mzanga Full Primary is best students in villages,” Memory says. “Agnes is number two student. She bony and how do you say … satana?” Memory can’t think of how to say the word in English, so we move on to the other students: Saidi, Norman, and Patuma. “The girl called Patuma fancy the boy called Norman,” she says, before discussing the other girls: Stella, Winnie, and Sickness.
“Sickness? This is someone’s name?” I ask.
“Not a good name,” says Memory. “She supposed to die when she born, but she live. Her mum give her this name.”
“Oh,” I say, and take another bite of nsima with ndiwo. It’s getting darker in the hut, and I don’t see lamps or lightbulbs anywhere. “Do you have uniform prepared?” Memory asks.
I shake my head. “What uniform?”
She stands. “Tiye tonse,” she says. Even though that phrase wasn’t on the vocabulary list I studied before I left, I’m getting the feeling it means something like “Follow the leader” or “Better get a move on.”
Outside, Memory shows me a dress that’s hanging from a clothesline behind the hut. In the dusk, I can’t tell if it’s blue or green or gray, but I can see the shape of it just fine. I don’t mean to be rude, but it looks like a pilgrim frock. Still, I’m a firm believer in stretching the truth in the name of friendship. At this rate, Memory might be the only person I’m speaking to on the entire African continent, so I tell her “It’s sooo cool!” even though I’d never be caught dead wearing something like that myself.
“Do not worry,” she says. “The village seamstress shall fix you a uniform in two days. Now let us fetch your daddy.”
I put on my sandals and follow her across the field. Halfway back to the party, I stop in the moonlit grass to watch the silhouette of a grasshopper. The grasshopper wobbles across the dirt like an old African queen, until she remembers that she’s still young and jumps up as high as my eyeballs. I gasp and Memory just laughs as we trudge the rest of the way to the clearing.
I’m sure Dad is panicked by now. I mean, it’s dark and I’m missing and I could’ve been attacked by a wild beast. There are leopards and lions and zebras in this part of Malawi. Suddenly, I feel a little guilty. He was probably so worried that he sent out a search party to find me. I run to the smoldering fire, where he’s sitting with Stallard, the new chief, and another man. They’re all perched in carved wooden chairs, watching the poor goat cook.
I walk between Dad and the fire. Memory shuffles up behind me. At first, Dad doesn’t notice I’m there, so I pace back and forth a few times until he calls out, “Hey, Clare!”
I whip my head toward him, even though I don’t really mean to. And in the flickering firelight, I see my father grinning like he doesn’t have a care in the world. “Honey,” he says, “I’d like you to meet Bright Malola. Mr. Malola is the clinical officer at the hospital where I’ll be working. Bright, this is my beautiful daughter, Clare.”
I blush while the gap-toothed man beside my father stands and smiles. I quickly remember not to make eye contact because it’s considered rude. So I look off to the spit while my skin throbs in the muggy night. I blink a few times and grind my teeth into my pendant. But talk about rude! My own father didn’t even notice I was gone.
Dread.
I dread waking up more than I can say. And so I try my best not to.
For the third time, Dad reaches his hand under the net and gives me a little shove. “Rise and shine,” he says again.
I pull the pillow over my head.
He’s sniffing something. “Wow, Clare,” he says. “You still smell smoky.” He’s smelling me!
I groan.
“What did Memory cook for you over at her pla
ce?”
My eyes fling open. How did he know where I was last night? I consider breaking my no-talking policy to ask, but I don’t get a chance, because the strangest thing happens: a deep, throaty laugh rumbles through my bedroom like an earthquake.
The laugh throws me into a state of shock and panic. No way am I in the mood for a visitor!
“Put on your clothes and I’ll introduce you,” Dad says. I roll over.
“Might I remind you,” he says, “this is going to be a very long trip if you’re planning not to talk to me.”
Dad pulls the mosquito netting aside. Before I set my feet on the floor, I close my eyes and offer up a quick but heartfelt prayer: God, if you exist, please make Memory want to sit next to me in the cafeteria at my new school today. I beg of you! Then I stretch my arms over my head and yawn.
“So, guess,” Dad says. He’s trying to trick me into talking to him, but I’m not falling for it. Diamond-shaped shadows from the mosquito net dance on the walls. I trace their pattern with my eyes.
“C’mon, guess!”
Huge ants swarm the crumpled-up mini Hershey Bar wrapper I left on the dresser last night. No doubt they stumbled on the treasure in the bloodshot hours of the night and carried each other piggyback to the site, the entire procession hypnotized by the sweet scent. There isn’t anything left on the foil wrapper, but still, the ants massacre it with glee.
Dad clasps his hands behind his back and rocks on his toes. I can see he’s dying to tell me. Even though I don’t ask, he can’t stand the suspense. “The new maid!” he says. “This place comes with a maid. I didn’t even know it. It said so in the paperwork but somehow I missed it.”
I pretend I’m searching for something in the dresser, but really what I’m doing is thinking. I’m thinking that most kids would probably be completely stoked to have someone cook and clean for them, someone who’s around to take care of the house. Not me. That’s because I know better. I know you need a mother to make a house a home. No one else can do it, no matter how hard they try.