The Brightest Sun

by Adrienne Benson

  These days, though, instead of trying to stare her mother into noticing her, Adia imagined her father. She had his face always in the back of her mind. She memorized the photo on the brochure, and she went over and over it, trying to see herself in him. She kept the brochure hidden in the biggest pile of clothes in the deepest of her dresser drawers.

  Her mother still hadn’t told her the truth. Right after her grandmother left, Adia purposely brought her father up in conversation. She’d asked her mother if he had hobbies. Did he paint? Ride horses? Take photos? At the time, she felt it was bold for her to ask these questions. Too bold, maybe. Surely her mother would see through what she was doing. But her mother answered with an abrupt adherence to the story she’d always told.

  “You don’t have a father, Adia. He died. I didn’t know him long enough to know if he had hobbies.”

  When she was little, Adia’s mother told her that her father was Kenyan, a rancher, or “Kenya Cowboy” as descendants of the British colonials were known. That made Adia proud. After that, she’d imagined her father often. She made him a brave man living in the landscape that she loved more than anything—the scrubby land near Loita. She imagined a man who would take her out on safari where they would sleep in tents and watch together as the sky turned orange and the enormous sun sank behind the horizon. They would light a campfire and let the glinting eyes of the curious animals not scare them at all. She wanted to be as brave and wild as this father she imagined, and she wanted to imagine him as the opposite of her mother. He wouldn’t be taciturn or silent or always working. He would shout her name and climb the tree with her. He would smile every time he saw her. He would look at her when she came into the room. He would be interested in what she had to say. Now, Adia had a real face to think about. Her father was a safari guide—a man of the land, just as she hoped.

  It was only because of Grandmother Joan that Adia knew the truth about her father. But Joan never spoke about him, either. Not when she and Adia went on their safari in Tsavo—about as far from the manyatta in Loita as they could get. To explain, Joan had only said that the other safaris were already booked up. This was the only one that had two spaces for the dates they needed. “Next time,” Joan assured her, “next time we’ll go to your neck of the woods.” She and Adia had weekly phone calls since Joan left, but her father never came up in those conversations, either. That he was really alive, somewhere out there, was a secret they all carried separately.

  * * *

  When Grace came over to her house the first time, Adia was surprised to see her mom with her. Adia’s own mother expected Adia to get where she needed to go on the city buses or the cheap overcrowded matatus. Adia felt a flush of shame when she saw Grace’s mother get out of the car, slam the door behind her and then stand, looking the house up and down, slowly turning to take in the view of the dried-up garden, the patches of dirt, the old broken bucket on its side and the wicker table and chairs. Adia was in the jacaranda then, and she felt too stunned to move when she saw Grace and her mother approach the front of the house and then disappear from her view. She heard them call out, and then she spied her mother through the window. From this side of the glass, Adia couldn’t hear if her mother said anything in reply, but she did see her look up, annoyed, and rise from her chair. Adia scrambled from the tree, then. She didn’t want Grace’s mother to meet hers.

  When Adia rounded the house, she saw Grace’s mother was tipped forward, her leather sandals’ toes barely over the threshold of the front door, and she was craning her neck around the doorsill. “Hello? I’ve brought Grace to play with Adia.”

  Adia was breathless when she reached them.

  “Hey, Grace! I was up in the jacaranda tree. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  “Wait.” Grace’s mother put her hand out to touch Grace’s arm. “I want to meet the adult in charge first. Adia, please get your mother.”

  “She’s working.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll bring Grace back when I can meet her. Grace, come on...”

  “No, Mom!” Grace tried to twist away, but the hand on her arm gripped tightly, her mother’s fingers turning her skin white.

  “No!” Adia pleaded. “Don’t go. I’ll get her.”

  Adia left Grace and her mother at the door, and disappeared into the darkness of the house. She thought about lying, telling them her mother was gone, that Gakaki was in charge, that he was babysitting. But she heard her mother’s study door open and the sound of footsteps in the hall. Adia had never considered her mother’s appearance before, but now she looked critically. Her mom’s hair was dark brown and streaked with silver. She wore it in two messy braids with a halo of escaped hair standing up in a fuzzy patch at the crown. Her face had tiny lines clustered around her lips and the corners of her eyes. She was barefoot and wrapped in a cotton skirt, topped by a white T-shirt that had a tiny drop of coffee exactly where her left nipple was. She glanced at Adia as she passed, smiled faintly and continued to the front door. Adia rushed to catch up.

  “Hey,” Adia’s mom said. She smiled and used the back of her hand to rub at a smudge on her cheek.

  “I’m Adia’s mom. Leona. Nice to meet you.”

  She waved her hand vaguely around in the air. “Grace is welcome to come in. I’ll be here the whole time.” Grace’s mother stood stiffly, her hand still on Grace’s arm.

  Grace’s mother made Adia look at her house differently. Grace’s house was neat, and Adia’s house was anything but that. When you walked through the front door, it was into a hallway piled with shoes and boots and slippers. Three Cape buffalo skulls were nailed into the wall, their horns used as lopsided coat racks with piles of old jackets and flannel shirts and key fobs hung over them. Sometimes there were clumps of dried red mud from the garden that would crush under your feet if you stepped on them and then cover your heels with fine, red dust.

  Leona didn’t clean the house much. She didn’t think about it. Gakaki (“That name sounds like a cat coughing up a hairball,” Grace said with a giggle that first day when she met him) was supposed to clean, but he never seemed able to make a dent in it. Little cobwebs decorated the corners of the ceilings, and papers and books were piled on every surface.

  It was more comfortable for Adia to go to Grace’s. Even though Grace’s mother and her stiff face and her questions made Adia nervous, she loved going to Grace’s house. She felt, when she walked through the front door each time, that she was an anthropologist stepping into a whole new world, and it made her see the appeal in the work her mother was so passionate about. Being different, entering an unknown and exotic culture, was exciting.

  Every time Adia went to Grace’s, she found new mysteries—the stacks of brightly colored boxes and packages of commissary food imported from the States, DVDs with television programs and movies that showed Adia the parts of American life she’d never even imagined before: happy families gathered in kitchens so shiny they looked unused, big fluffy dogs with no sign of mange that slept in special beds, piles of snow that kids threw at each other and made statues with. She could hardly believe the way people looked in the videos—perfectly clean, perfectly dressed and perfectly happy.

  The biggest mystery, though, the biggest draw to Adia, was Grace’s father. He wasn’t there most of the times she was. He traveled a lot, Grace said, and he worked into the evenings most days. But when he was there, it fascinated Adia to watch him. He didn’t look the way she pictured her own father. He wasn’t broad shouldered or blond. He didn’t have scars on his hands from bushwhacking, or a burned red neck. Grace’s father was slight. He looked a lot like Grace, with his dark hair, narrow, straight nose and slanted cheekbones. He wore crisp white button-down shirts with shiny glinting cuff links. In the evenings, the few times Adia was there when he came home, she noticed that the first thing he did when he walked through the front door was set down his briefcase, then unbutton his cuff links and toss them in a lit
tle ceramic dish on a table in the hall.

  He hugged Grace and her mom a lot. At first Adia found it uncomfortable. She wasn’t used to seeing families interact this way. But then she noticed the TV families in the States were like that, too—smiling and talking together, hugging and kissing. She added that to the list of what her own father would be like. He would hug her and kiss her cheek hello and goodbye. He would look at her as if she was the most wonderful thing in the world. That’s how Grace’s father acted with Grace.

  When they all sat down for dinner, he would ask Grace questions about school, about the things she was studying and what she liked best. The first time Adia ate dinner with the family, Grace’s father poured the water from the carafe into all the glasses and said, “Gracie, honey, how did that math test go today?” Adia couldn’t remember when, or if, her mom had ever kept close enough track of her schoolwork to know to ask that kind of question. She glanced at her friend. Grace rolled her eyes.

  “Come on, Grace.” Her dad seemed awkward, still standing behind Grace with the sweaty carafe in one hand. He leaned down to put the other hand on Grace’s shoulder. “I know you were having trouble with multiplying fractions. Did the stuff I showed you help?”

  Grace gave her shoulder a violent shrug and her father’s hand flicked up like a bug. “God, Dad. Can we not talk about math now?” She kicked Adia’s ankle under the table and made a face. Adia understood that she was to sympathize with her friend over the annoying, interfering parents, the myth she’d heard of but never experienced personally. Adia glanced at Grace’s father and saw that he was stung. He caught her eye, though, and smiled.

  “Our nickname for her lately is Grumpy Gracie.”

  Adia burst out laughing, and laughed a little harder when she caught Grace’s dark expression watching her. Adia knew she’d crossed a line with her friend; she should have sided with Grace, not her dad, but it served Grace right, Adia thought. She had a father. She had an interested, kind father who asked her questions and smiled at her. She should treat him better.

  Grace liked to have Adia spend the night at her house, but didn’t like sleeping at Adia’s. Adia didn’t blame her and wished, actually, that she could spend more time at Grace’s house. She wished she could stay there forever. Even Grace’s mom eventually became less scary. She took them on road trips sometimes, on long weekends, and let Adia and Grace sing at the top of their lungs as they whipped along the highway down to the Rift, the back seat windows wide-open and the wind hitting them hard, forcing them to shut their eyes and pulling the words from their lungs.

  At night, when Adia slept over, Grace’s mom would have them shut the TV off at 11:00 p.m. and get into bed. Sometimes Grace grumbled and muttered curse words under her breath, but she always did as she was told. She’d find her parents in the living room, where they would be curled up at opposite ends of the couch, each reading a book. Grace would lean down and let each parent give her a kiss good-night and a hug. Adia would stand next to the coffee table and wonder where to put her hands. It wasn’t the affection her friend received that made her uncomfortable, but rather the desperate ache she felt inside. Her father would do that, too, once she found him. It was on the list now, in her imagination. He would hug and kiss her good-night every night. She would sleep well, knowing he was in the house, watching over her.

  One night, Grace was talking about a boy from school that she liked. It was late, and Grace was laughing about something the boy had said, and so Adia heard it before she did—the rise and fall of Grace’s parents’ voices from another room.

  “Shh,” Adia whispered from her nest on the floor. “What’s that noise?” In the dark Grace’s voice trailed off and she was silent. The Morse code of Grace’s mother’s voice tapped a constant discourse while her father’s interrupted with deep intermittent thumps, his words like things thrown against the wall, thudded and mean.

  “I guess it’s my parents talking,” Grace mumbled. “They’re just talking.”

  “Sounds like they’re fighting to me,” Adia answered. She couldn’t help but feel at once terrified that her perfect idea of a family included parents who fought, and gleeful that the shine of Grace’s life at home might have a ding, after all. But she hid the possibility of relief that Grace’s life wasn’t perfect, and she sat up. She found Grace’s hand and squeezed it.

  “Grace,” she said, thrilled with the thought that had only just occurred to her. “If your parents got a divorce, maybe your dad would marry my mom. Then we’d be sisters!”

  Grace was silent. Adia could hear her breathing, and she could hear, too, that the angry voices from the distant room had quieted. The argument was over, presumably. Adia let go of Grace’s hand and lay back on the floor. She hugged the pillow and pulled the sleeping bag close. She was just drifting off—listing in her head, as she did every night, the attributes she knew her father would have—but she heard what Grace said. She heard the tiny, choked voice from under the covers in the bed above her, and she let the message settle around her like dust. She didn’t reply. She hoped Grace assumed she was asleep, that she hadn’t heard.

  “I would rather be motherless than have your mother.”

  In the dark, Adia was filled with the shame of knowing that she understood exactly what Grace meant.

  She knew Grace was angry, and it scared her. Adia loved having Grace as a friend and she didn’t want to lose her. She flipped through her mind for something she could say to make it better—to make Grace like her again. And then it slipped out; the secret she wasn’t sure she was ready to tell. “My father’s not dead, anyway. He might marry my mom. I know where he is.”

  It worked.

  “Holy shit!” Grace flipped over to face Adia and leaned over the edge of her bed. “How did you find out?” Her face was so close to Adia’s that Adia could feel hot breath on her cheek.

  Adia shifted her body away from Grace and sat up. The sleeping bag slid down her back and pooled on the floor. The air was chilly, and Adia pulled it up over her shoulders again. She hesitated to explain. She knew the story made her mother look dishonest, and she didn’t want to give Grace fodder that would deepen her distaste for Leona. But she couldn’t think of a lie that would work. “I just heard my mom and grandma talking about him.”

  “And they said where he lives?” Grace was breathless. “Why didn’t your mom tell you sooner?”

  “My mom saw his picture in a brochure. He runs a safari business. She didn’t know before now, either—she thought he was dead.”

  “I wonder if they would get married? If they met again?” Grace asked. And the idea of that made Adia shiver with wishing.

  Grace turned over onto her back and was quiet for a minute. Adia wondered if she was asleep already. But then her voice rose again, quieter now, but firm, less breathless.

  “You have to find him, Adia! I’ll help you!”

  Adia didn’t sleep well, and when she saw that the sky was lightening, she got up slowly. She didn’t want to wake Grace. She put her clothes on and shoved her pajamas into her backpack. She went to Grace’s desk and scrawled a note: “Forgot! My mom wants me home for breakfast! Call me later!” She wondered if Grace would believe her lie. She thought they both knew that Adia’s mom would be asleep until noon. That she never ate breakfast anyway, let alone worried if Adia had.

  Adia crept past Grace’s parents’ closed bedroom door and down the stairs. She hoped Selestenus wouldn’t be in the kitchen yet; she didn’t want to risk Grace or her parents hearing them converse. But she was lucky—the whole downstairs was still and empty. No coffee percolating yet, no smell of eggs and toast.

  Adia shifted her pack on her shoulder and slid back the bolt on the front door. There would be a night guard on duty; she’d have to get past him, but if she greeted him quietly, nobody inside the house would hear. She opened the front door and was about to step out into the chilly morning air when she c
aught the glint of something on the table by the door. Just where he always left them, Grace’s dad’s silvery cuff links lay in the ceramic dish. Adia looked at them for a minute; she picked them up—just to feel the smoothness of the metal, to run her fingers over the carved design on the face, to touch the place where they might rub against Grace’s father’s wrist.

  She heard a noise and turned. From the kitchen the coffeepot gurgled into life. The back door opened and shut again. Selestenus’s footsteps echoed softly down the hall. Not wanting to be seen now, she slipped out quickly and quietly shut the door behind her.

  The night guard was at the gate. Someone—Selestenus maybe—had brought him a steaming cup of chai, and he sucked it loudly as he opened the gate for Adia. He nodded his greeting and smiled like there was nothing unusual, nothing at all, about a young white girl walking up the road alone at dawn. Adia turned once to look backward, to see if there were lights on yet in Grace’s house, if there was anyone who might know she was gone, who might worry. But the windows were dark. Even the night guard had disappeared back into shadows. Adia turned to the road. She slipped her hand in her pocket and felt the cool metal of the cuff links, smooth and firm. They felt good under her fingers. If she ever did find her father, maybe she’d give them to him. She was certain he would like them.

  By the time Adia saw Grace again, early Monday morning at school, Adia had almost forgotten the secret she’d shared. But Grace hadn’t. Adia was sitting at a table in the open-sided cafeteria when she saw Grace’s mom’s car pull up the circular driveway in front of the administration building. The car had barely come to a stop when the back door flung open and Grace leaped out. She shouted goodbye to her mother and slammed the door behind her. When she saw Adia, Grace broke into a run.

  “Adia, I have the best idea!” Grace slammed her backpack down on the table next to where Adia was sitting and took a deep breath. “I’m pretty sure it’ll work.”