by Shana Burg
“Get dressed and come meet Mrs. Bwanali,” Dad says, and leaves.
I run to the bathroom and turn the faucet knob, and, lucky me, five trickles of freezing cold water spurt out of the rusty showerhead. While my hair gets wet, I think about all the people who tried to rush in to fill the empty spots during the past eight months since my mother died.
In the beginning, Mom’s friends came over with casseroles and lasagnas and meat loaves. They tidied up the kitchen while their kids watched TV or hung out in the playroom and tried their best to act like everything was practically normal, like I was still the same. But we all knew the truth: overnight, I had become a freak. I mean, there were plenty of kids walking around with divorced parents, but only a handful with dead ones. Grandma came from Sacramento for the whole month of August, and that was a little better. She took me shopping on Newbury Street and we baked lace cookies together. Of course, I totally love Grandma and everything, but in the end, she couldn’t replace my mother either.
Dad bangs on the bathroom door. “There’s no time for a shower this morning, Clare,” he yells. But he must be kidding! Does he really think I’d go to school smelling like smoke? I furiously rub the shampoo into my hair.
“Come on, kiddo. You need to get out right now,” he says.
I partially rinse out the shampoo and open the yellow bottle of something called après-shampooing lissant. I took it from the Paris hotel where we stayed last year when Dad had a pediatric surgery conference. I’m working the après-shampooing lissant through from the roots to the ends when Dad pounds on the door again. “Not only are we running late, Clare, but you’re probably using up our water supply for the next month!”
Okay, that’s a terrifying thought! Even though my hair is still coated with lissant, I get out. I’ll just hope the potion left on my head evaporates with the water as my hair dries.
Back in the bedroom, I pull on my magenta cotton V-neck tee, brown crinkled bedouin skirt, and earth-tone beaded earrings. It’s a million degrees here and women aren’t supposed to wear shorts. How messed up is that? I use my experience creating costumes for the school plays to make myself look respectable. I pin my hair back with four retro poodle barrettes I bought for the Pink Ladies in Grease, and when there are no obvious fixes left, I go into the kitchen to meet our new maid, otherwise known as the intruder.
Mrs. Bwanali is an enormous woman wrapped in a purple, yellow, and green floral-print skirt and a red paisley shirt. I squint to protect my eyes from the clashing patterns and colors. She’s sitting at the kitchen table with my father, a plate of orange squashy stuff between them. The only thing that looks worse than her fashion sense is her cooking. As far as I’m concerned, she can leave right now.
“Ahh … Clare!” she says. She smiles and the fat on her cheeks swallows her eyes. “It is a pleasure to meet you.” She stands and grabs my hands with hers. “A true and most superior pleasure.”
Dad is so excited about her that he forgets to chew me out about the shower. In fact, he’s acting rather civilized. “Clare, did you know that Mrs. Bwanali lives in Kapoloma village?” he says. “She’s worked at this house for sixteen years. She and her husband are originally from Zambia.”
“We are from Tanzania, then Zambia,” Mrs. Bwanali says.
But I have no idea where either of those places is. And does it really matter? This woman won’t be here long. I won’t let her.
“You are a precious girl,” Mrs. Bwanali tells me. “I do hope you enjoy boiled pumpkin. Dr. Heath looooved boiled pumpkin.”
Dad told me that Dr. Heath is the woman who lived in this house before us. She also worked for the Global Health Project. When she returned to England, she left a pair of gold hoop earrings on the living room table and a red umbrella next to the front door.
“I cook treats for Dr. Heath and I cook treats for you,” Mrs. Bwanali says. “You need good food, good story, Mrs. Bwanali is here.”
She sets a plate and a fork down in front of me. I stab the fork into a slice and flop it onto my plate. When I shove a small piece into my mouth, a shocking burst of sweetness cascades over my tongue. Before I can stop myself, I make a huge mistake by uttering one itty-bitty three-letter word: “Yum!”
“Yum?” Mrs. Bwanali leans over me. “Is this good?”
“Very good,” Dad says.
The damage has been done. Mrs. Bwanali stands up straight and grins until her eyes disappear into the folds on her face again. “A real Malawi girl, Clare. You and me, we are friends.”
Suddenly, my stomach is in more knots than my macramé handbag—the one in my closet back in Brookline.
“Do I need to bring a lunch to school?” I ask. I doubt I’ll be in the mood to eat later, but better safe than sorry.
“It is not necessary,” Mrs. Bwanali says. “This is the purpose of the big-size breakfast.” She turns on the faucet and sings as she rinses a pot.
“I don’t think you’ll need to pay,” Dad says. “I think they’ve got porridge for free. But take this just in case.” He opens his wallet and hands me a hundred kwacha. “It’s about sixty-five cents,” Dad whispers. I guess he doesn’t want Mrs. Bwanali to hear him talking about money. Maybe it would make her feel bad. I’m not really sure. “Should be plenty,” he says, and of course, I take it because I don’t have any Malawian money of my own.
When Mrs. Bwanali finishes washing the pot, she turns to me and says, “Miss Clare, do you enjoy the egg fried or mixed or with the sunshine side up?”
“No thanks,” I tell her, and pop another little piece of pumpkin into my mouth. “No egg for me.”
“You are a growing girl. It is a long day at the school. I must suggest you eat.”
I’ve had enough. I stand to head back to my room, but Mrs. Bwanali wedges herself in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. There’s no way around her.
“Yoo-hoo!” she calls, waving her hand to get my attention, never mind that I’m only one foot away. “Yoo-hoo, Clare!” she says again. She throws her head back and laughs. “I do like this word, yoo-hoo. Dr. Heath teach me this word. I have something for you. Stop there.” She takes two steps away from me, turns again. “No moving your muscle!”
I hold my hands up and freeze while she disappears through the kitchen to the veranda. A second later, Mrs. Bwanali’s standing in front of me, proudly holding a school uniform like the one Memory showed me last night. Except the bad news is that I can see it better in daylight, and it’s even uglier than I thought. Plus, it’s aquamarine blue.
“For you!” she says, and beams. “A gift from the fourth-born daughter of my sister Betty. This girl graduated Mzanga Full Primary last year. She is called Sakina. She said it her large honor to give you this dress.”
Not only is Sakina’s honor large, but her dress is too. It looks about six sizes too big for me, and it has at least four holes around the hem.
“I … I don’t know what to say,” I tell Mrs. Bwanali.
Dad’s eyebrows fly up and down, up and down super-fast. I get the text. “Thank you,” I mutter.
“You must hurry,” Mrs. Bwanali says. “Put it on. You shall look like every schoolgirl then, ready to learn your lessons.”
“Hurry up and change,” Dad says.
I bug out my eyes in protest.
“Now!” he growls.
So I take the dress from Mrs. Bwanali and run to my bedroom, where I throw off my awesome outfit, pull on the atrocious dress, and glimpse at thirty-six square inches of me at a time in the bathroom mirror. Then I sit on my bed under the netting and burst into tears.
“Come, Miss Clare,” Mrs. Bwanali calls from the kitchen. “Let us have a look-see, shall we?”
I wipe the tears on the back of my hand, blow my nose in the bathroom, and trudge back in there. As soon as she sees me, Mrs. Bwanali claps her hands together and says, “You are real Malawi schoolgirl. Gorgeous like a guinea fowl!”
My jaw drops. A guinea fowl!
Dad hands me a bottl
e of water and a tube of sunscreen. “Put it on in the car,” he says. He lifts the strap of his briefcase over his shoulder, and I follow him outside.
While we back out of the driveway in the Land Rover, Mrs. Bwanali stands in the doorway and shouts “Toodle-oo!” at the top of her lungs. She would wake the whole neighborhood, if only we had one.
Dad pulls onto a patch of dirt at the top of a hill. Below us, a bunch of long, skinny buildings with tin roofs stretch across the dirt like silver vipers. I’d be excited to leave this Land Rover, to escape from my father, except that now we’re at my new school. Dad gets out, walks around, and opens the door on my side. “Honey,” he says. “I know you’re scared, but I want you to trust me.” I look away, down the hill at the school. A chill runs through me. “I love you very much,” he says. “Your mother would be proud.”
I grab my backpack off the seat and step out. Then I walk behind my father, who lopes down the hill in his plastic clogs like a marionette whose puppeteer is busy scratching an itch with the other hand. If I was speaking to Dad, I would tell him that it may be my first day of school in a new country in the middle of nowhere, but that doesn’t mean I need him. I can make my grand entrance alone. But since I can’t talk and there’s no way to communicate such an important message through body language, I let Dad accompany me all the way there, like I’m a kid going to her first day of kindergarten.
We’re a few yards away from a small brick structure set off from the other buildings when a short man in a three-piece suit limps out of the door. A bead of sweat inches down the side of my face. I twist my hair into a short ponytail and let the air dry my neck.
“Welcome to Mzanga Full Primary!” the man calls out, and smiles. He pulls a red handkerchief out of his pocket. “Pardon,” he says, and pats it against the glistening skin of his forehead. “We are most pleased with your arrival. I am the headmaster, Mr. Kingsley.” He turns to Dad. “You may refer to me by my given name, Special.”
“Thank you, Special,” my father says without even cracking a smile.
No sooner has Mr. Special Kingsley shaken hands with us than a husky voice calls out, “Hello!”
I peek around Dad and Mr. Special Kingsley, only to discover Memory standing in the doorway of the headmaster’s office. She’s waiting for me. “Moni,” I say, using one of the words from the vocabulary list I studied.
“Memory tells me you visited with her in the village last night,” the headmaster says. “I asked her to greet you and escort you to class this morning.”
Dad checks his watch yet again. “We’re very sorry we’re late,” he says.
Mr. Special Kingsley looks at me. “School begins at seven-thirty a.m. unless there are quizzes. Then six-thirty a.m. Shall we say we will excuse it on this, your very first day at Mzanga? However, Clare, let us not make it a habit.”
“No,” I say. “No habit. No, sir.”
Mr. Special Kingsley chuckles and follows a rooster with frayed feathers into his office. The rooster pecks at our feet while Mr. Special Kingsley removes a black notebook from the drawer of a beaten-up wooden desk and asks Dad to sign me in on the school register. As Dad completes the information, I explain to Memory about Mrs. Bwanali’s sister Betty’s fourth-born daughter, Sakina, who gave me the uniform.
“Fantastic!” she says.
After Dad writes our name and address in the notebook, he actually rubs my head. “Pick you up after school,” he says. Then he shakes my new headmaster’s hand, completely forgetting to hold his forearm.
“I shall watch your daughter with care and kind wishes,” Mr. Special Kingsley says. After Dad leaves the office, my headmaster turns to me. “I would like you to know, Clare, that your friend Memory is a most shining scholar.”
But I don’t care if she’s smart, dumb, serious, or funny. I’m just happy she’s here.
“This girl also tends to the books for the entire school,” Mr. Special Kingsley says. “Each day, she carries all fifty-three books five kilometers to the village for safekeeping from rains and thieves.”
Memory stares at the floor. “It is nothing, sir,” she says.
But it is not nothing. It is something. It is something that she is standing beside me, the new girl, without caring what the other kids might say. It is something that she helped me survive the night and cooked me grain instead of goat, when she probably would have had fun at the village celebration with her other friends.
“Memory shall take you to class now,” my new headmaster says.
And even though being here with Memory is something, it is not enough. Not enough for me to want to stay at this school for another minute, let alone a whole day. I want to go back to Brookline, where I belong. Back to Brookline, where my best friend has known me since kindergarten, not less than twenty-four hours. Back to Brookline, where the principal’s office doesn’t have roosters prancing inside it.
But things only go from bad to worse, because as Memory leads me alongside the mud-brick school building, I make the unfortunate mistake of looking into one of the classrooms. It’s not like I expect to see recessed lighting and swivel chairs with a SMART Board. That said, what on earth can prepare a girl like me to see birds’ nests in the classroom ceilings?
“This is where my brother learns,” she says. “Standard one.”
“Standard one?” I croak. “Is that first grade?”
“The infant class. Inde, you can call this the first grade.”
I can only see a bit into the classroom. The teacher, a pregnant woman with a high head of hair, stands up front. The children are crowded together on the floor. All the girls have on the same sorry dress I do, and the boys wear khaki shorts and short-sleeved aquamarine button-down shirts. Their skinny legs stick out straight in front of them.
Now Memory speaks and walks faster. She’s heading for a classroom at the very end of the school building. “I shall now tell you again of the standard eight students. Saidi, bright spirit. Nice to see.” She smiles. “Winnie, small and surprising.” She takes a breath. “Most significant information is this: Agnes. Do you remember what I tell you about Agnes?”
I shake my head no.
“She is not satisfactory. She is number two student. Bony girl, and very, very satana.”
It hits me right then that the word satana sounds an awful lot like Satan.
“Ancestors curse me. I share table with this girl,” she says. “Our teacher request for you to sit between Agnes and me.” We reach the doorway. But I’d rather get my braces back on and eat taffy than go in there.
For a second, I’m relieved to see that there aren’t a million kids stuck all over the floor like pins crammed into a pincushion. Instead, there are about twenty students crowded onto wooden benches behind rectangular tables. The teacher is standing at the front of the room in a white, yellow, and gold dress. She looks like a piece of popcorn. When she sees me, she closes the book in her hands and lays it on the metal table. “Glorious! Glorious!” she says, and everyone in the entire room turns to stare.
All of a sudden, my whole body freezes. I’m not making up some sort of dramatic, hyperbole type of thing. What I’m saying is a serious fact: my heart actually stops beating, and my blood completely stops pumping, and my lungs totally stop breathing. I know, because as hard as I try to take a step, I can’t. Meanwhile, Memory holds out her hand like she’s the hostess at Zaftigs Delicatessen showing me to a seat. I know it’s Agnes sitting on the bench there, because she’s bony, like a lamb chop after someone’s eaten off all the meat.
After a couple of seconds, Memory grabs my wrist and yanks me forward. Somehow the spell is broken. I take out my notebook and purple feather pen, and I wiggle onto the bench beside Agnes. Then Memory shoves in next to me, so I’m the egg salad between two pieces of dark rye in a very squishy sandwich. There isn’t even enough room between us to slip in one sheet of lettuce or a thin slice of tomato.
“I am Mrs. Tomasi,” the teacher says, and smiles. “And you …” She
tilts her head slowly. “You are a blessing. A glorious blessing from America.” She puts her hands together in front of her chest in a prayer position, cocks her head to the side, and smiles.
“Thanks,” I mumble. Trust me, I’d much rather be invisible than a blessing. But I guess after that introduction, Agnes figures she’ll get another look at me. She turns her head for a quick second, and when she does, her lamb chop elbow pokes into my rib cage.
“Here in Malawi, we are fortunate to speak many languages,” Mrs. Tomasi says. “In fact, class, let us tell Clare our school rules.” Benches scrape against the floor. Everyone stands. Since I’m part of the Memory-Agnes sandwich, I have no choice but to stand up too while the kids recite this poem:
“We work hard,
Respect our elders,
Also we have one more rule:
Here at Mzanga Full Primary,
We speak English while at school.”
“You may be seated, class,” Mrs. Tomasi says, and the Memory-Agnes sandwich falls back onto our bench. “You see, Clare, Mr. Kingsley believes all the students shall do well to practice English. Our youngest students shall learn the English alphabet this year. Most of our students do speak Chichewa at home, as well as a third tribal language. What languages do you speak, Clare?”
Before Mom died, I was on the honor roll for three years in a row. The last thing I need is to be grilled on my academic achievement. “I speak English,” I squeak out.
Everyone giggles.
Okay, I guess that’s pretty obvious, but I’m not finished. “And Spanish,” I add. Why not? I already know my Spanish numbers, the colors, and the alphabet, and I can conjugate a bunch of verbs. So what if I can’t exactly speak a Spanish sentence yet? I seriously don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t count.
“Lovely,” Mrs. Tomasi says, her voice smooth as melted butter. “Boys and girls, we shall make an exception to the rule for our American student. We shall teach her Chichewa during her visit to Malawi. Then she shall speak three languages as all of you do.