The Brightest Sun

by Adrienne Benson

  “You are lucky, toto! You are lucky because you lived.” Adia heard his words, but they rattled in her brain without finding footing. They didn’t make sense at all. She tried to push past the man and board the bus again, but he was large and had long arms and a passive face. He gestured to a woman who stood nearby, and the woman came closer and took Adia’s hand.

  “Come here to sit with me. Help will come soon.”

  Adia let herself be led away. She was tired. More tired than she’d ever been. She wanted to sit under a tree with her head in this kind woman’s lap and fall asleep until everything was normal again.

  Adia and the woman sat. Adia was thirsty and tried to open the straps of her backpack to get her water bottle, but somehow she just couldn’t make them work. Her fingers had forgotten how to function. Another woman approached. It was the mother in her pink dress holding the baby. One of the mother’s eyes was crusted over with a thick layer of blood.

  “They need kangas,” the mother said to the woman next to Adia. “The flies are too bad now. They have to cover the dead.”

  The dead. The dead. Those words, too, flipped into Adia’s brain without taking root. They echoed and echoed and she looked up and saw that, yes, there were lines of people lying on the earth as if they were sunning themselves on a beach. Those were the dead. A couple of women had gathered extra kangas and market bags and were carefully covering the bodies to keep flies from licking up the drying blood. One of the women who’d just draped a cloth over someone stood up and moved, and in the space she’d vacated, Adia saw a pale arm peeking out from under a plastic bag. No. That was wrong. She stood and walked to the line of people and pulled the bag off the girl who lay underneath. It was a mistake. Grace wasn’t dead. Grace wasn’t dead. Grace wasn’t dead. Adia sank down and stretched out next to her friend.

  * * *

  “Jesus!” John cursed loudly, and Leona pulled up her sunglasses and looked in the direction he was pointing. Up ahead in the distance, the road was crawling with people. There was a crowd. Where did they all come from? Leona wondered for a split second, until she registered the black smoke billowing up and heard the people shouting and crying. By then, they were close enough to see that a large, crowded bus had collided with a truck loaded down with supplies headed from Nairobi to Narok and too heavy to be easily maneuverable. Both vehicles were badly damaged. The front of the bus was crushed and the windshield shattered. There was blood on the glass, and the swarms of people, the survivors, were frantically pulling bodies from the bus—some seemingly alive, some dead, all broken.

  John swerved the truck to the side of the road and jerked to a stop. Leona and John flew out of the car and ran toward the bus. They saw the muzungu body. Then another. A young girl, her hair matted with blood and her limbs completely still, and a blonde girl lying so close to the first, and so still, that together they looked like a carving. Something like electricity snapped in Leona’s brain and a deep shock of fear tore through her so violently that she stumbled and fell. She couldn’t gather the strength to stand, and so she just watched John stride ahead of her, speaking in rapid-fire Swahili, demanding information, asking if someone had called an ambulance. Leona had been a distant mother, unemotional, but she knew the singular curve of that blonde girl’s shape, she knew that body almost as well as she knew her own. John didn’t know, Leona thought. He didn’t know that girl was his girl, that the way her expressions folded on her face sometimes reminded Leona of him. That the blood on her face, the salty blood he was dabbing at with a handkerchief, was as much his as it was hers. That girl was the two of them, swirled together. Leona didn’t pray. She was impatient with the concept of God. But just then, at that moment, she closed her eyes and murmured a wish. “Please let them have a chance to know each other. Please don’t let her die.” And she imagined the wish, her breath made into whispered speech, floating up to the outer limits of the sky, where maybe, just maybe, God would hear it.

  GIRL IN THE SHAPE OF AFRICA

  Letting go a little was Paul’s idea, but Jane agreed. Part of her knew she had been holding Grace too tightly for too long. Paul and Jane had both had mostly regular American childhoods; being independent was part of that. Their parents hadn’t been their friends, like Jane was with Grace. When she and Paul grew up, they taught themselves to ride bikes and spent whole weekends only seeing their parents for meals. That’s the way it was for all kids back then. Jane told herself she was more protective of Grace because they lived overseas—Grace was not at home, and dangers were different here. But Jane knew, somewhere inside herself, that that wasn’t really the truth. This was Grace’s home, after all. Jane was the one in strange territory. Jane clung to Grace because she needed her daughter more than her daughter needed her.

  When Adia began spending the night at their house, coming over after school to do homework, Jane felt like she was doing a service for the girl—feeding her nutritious food, making sure she minded her manners. She didn’t entirely trust Adia, who’d foraged in the pantry for food without asking permission, and Jane still wondered if it had been she who’d taken Paul’s cuff links, but Jane thought it was better, much better, to open her home to Adia, rather than have Grace going to Adia’s house more than she did already. Jane’s skin crawled at the thought of that grotty place.

  But when Grace finally did beg to spend the weekend with Adia, Jane said yes. Jane knew there wouldn’t be as much supervision as she herself would provide. She’d seen Leona’s distracted parenting, the way she let Adia traipse around the city on matatus. And Grace had even mentioned that Adia caught buses into the Rift Valley to visit her Maasai friends sometimes. All alone. Jane couldn’t imagine doing that as an adult, let alone allowing her child to. But she told herself to trust Grace. She’d raised her right, hadn’t she? Grace would make responsible choices over the weekend because she was a responsible girl.

  It was evening and the balcony was cool. Jane was sitting in the chaise, trying not to worry over the fact that she still hadn’t heard from Grace, and that Leona hadn’t called back, either. Paul had stepped out onto the balcony, too, and handed her a glass of wine. “The bats,” he said, and Jane nodded—they were blooming from the innermost branches of the banana trees like velvet flowers and speeding across the sky. Paul reached down and caressed Jane’s shoulder. They were rarely alone anymore, and even through her fear, a tiny ember of gratitude lit inside Jane. She didn’t want to cry now, not from fear or thanks for her husband’s gentleness. When the ringing phone jarred the silence, Jane started so violently that Paul’s hand was flicked off her shoulder. “You’re as nervous as a cat,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

  The noise, the gasp-turned-cry her husband made, would, for years, visit Jane in her dreams, shocking her awake at least once a week, stealing sleep for the rest of those nights. She always thought that if there were one moment in her life when she would have chosen to be deaf, it would be that moment. She’d never heard Paul sound so helpless, so broken. It was as if she were an auditory witness to the second his life dipped into darkness.

  * * *

  Someone ran to the nearest village to find transport to Narok. Luckily, someone there had a motorcycle and sped off to alert the clinic that wounded and dead were coming. Another flatbed truck appeared from the horizon and had room for the bodies. The dead were gently laid in the truck; the wounded that could sit hunched in the truck bed, too. Then a smaller car, a tourist Jeep, pulled up. John was busy guiding the remaining survivors into the spaces on the truck, so Leona just gestured at him, called in a voice scraped raw that she would take this girl to the clinic in the Jeep. He didn’t need to know. Not now. For the first time since Leona had pulled Adia from Simi’s grasp all those years ago, Leona wanted her daughter to herself.

  The two tourists in the Jeep, and their driver, were silent. The tourists had ashy, shocked faces, and their staring eyes kept returning, time and again, to the odd and bloody
girl. Leona had to close her eyes because she was afraid that she’d suddenly leap up and smack them. Their sad faces and their pity. She hated them. Now and again Adia became overcome and leaned down, face in hands, and keened. A whistling breath escaped her lips, and she rocked back and forth, not sobbing so much as moaning. It was a dry, heaving call, something from another world.

  * * *

  It was dark by the time Grace’s parents arrived. They came with a little team of people from the American embassy. By then, Adia was curled in a corner of the crowded clinic’s waiting area, fast asleep. Leona sat on a bench that rocked on uneven legs and occasionally stood, forced herself outside to buy tea from a stall, where the milk was boiled over a charcoal brazier that gave the tea a smoky taste. Leona had just returned to the bench with a fresh cup and sat, exhausted, with her head tipped back against the wall and her eyes closed. She wondered where John was.

  A woman’s voice, strained and raspy from sobbing, cut through her thoughts.

  “This is what happens...this is what happens when you aren’t careful!”

  Leona lifted her eyes and saw a face hanging above her, big and red and raw as meat. It took her a moment to recognize the face as the one belonging to Grace’s mother. Now the face was as swollen and haunted as Adia’s was before she drifted off.

  “This is what happens!” The woman sobbed through the gasping of her breath and the tears and mucus that slicked over her face and choked her words so they were staccato, hemmed in by quick, ineffective breaths. The sounds felt like stones pounding Leona’s ears. Leona stood up, her legs shaking. She saw that the noise had woken Adia, and now the girl was trying to stand, her face stricken and gray.

  “They were too young to have that kind of freedom. You may not care about your daughter, but I care about mine. I’m a real mother!”

  Adia pulled herself up off the floor and moved to Leona’s side. She took her mother’s hand and squeezed it. The squeeze was welcome but unfamiliar. They didn’t hold hands, Leona and Adia. They hardly touched at all. There was a man behind the screaming woman now. Dark and slight, he wasn’t crying but looked as empty as a shell. Leona thought he must be the husband, Grace’s father, whom she’d never met. His face was slack with shock, his eyes red-rimmed and bewildered. Still, he was calm. He pinched the woman’s shoulder blades and whispered into her ear until she turned and stumbled away through a doorway into a room behind her. The people who’d come with her followed. Later Leona discovered they were the embassy doctor, the consular officer and the duty officer.

  * * *

  Once Grace’s parents arrived at the clinic, there wasn’t a reason for Leona and Adia to stay. Instead, Leona led Adia through the nighttime streets to the Chabani Guest House. Leona couldn’t quite believe they were back here—and stranded—after all this time. Without a car, they’d be dependent on the same bus to Solai that Adia and Grace had ridden. But Leona couldn’t parse out their options or make a plan. She was too exhausted. Instead, she tucked her daughter into bed and went to the bar for a beer. Matthew, the barkeep, was there, and his familiar face was comforting. After she emptied her bottle, too fast and on an empty stomach, she told Matthew that if he saw John, to tell him she was there, too. Then she’d climbed, light-headed, off the stool. She was not in control anymore. She didn’t want to be, either. It was too hard and too lonely. Under the fluorescent light outside the door to their room, Leona looked down and noticed there was blood—Adia’s blood—on her shirt. She fought the urge to lift it to her lips and taste it.

  In the morning, John was there. Leona stepped out of the shower and dressed quietly. She didn’t want to wake Adia, who had slept fitfully, once even waking herself up with sobs. Now, although relaxed in sleep, her face was still swollen and red. The light tapping on the door startled Leona. She pulled her dirty T-shirt over her head and cracked the door an inch, not knowing who to expect. John’s face was scrubbed clean and pink, his hair combed with a wet comb. The look of hope on his face told Leona everything she needed to know.

  “I’m sorry,” John whispered as Leona stepped into the hallway and pulled the door closed behind her. “It never crossed my mind that it was her.” His face looked as excited as a boy’s. “I immediately went into emergency mode and it never occurred to me. Matthew told me last night. I couldn’t sleep. Is she okay?”

  Leona was prepared to be, she expected to be, annoyed by this early morning visit and its emotional impact. But instead she felt a ripple of relief shiver through her. This was what it was like to share the burden of something heavy.

  “She just wants to sleep,” Leona whispered. “She’s been sleeping on and off—mostly on—since we found her.”

  “What a crushing thing to happen to a kid.” John’s eyes were dark with sadness. “She’ll be grieving this for a long time. What about the other girl? Her parents...” John trailed off. Then he said, “I just can’t imagine.” In his mind he thought suddenly of his own mother, who had also lost a child. How did she get through it? How would the parents of the dead girl he’d loaded into the back of the truck yesterday get through it? The body he’d carried was so light, the face, bloodied as it was, so smooth and young.

  John looked at Leona. Her hair was wet from her shower, but her clothes were rumpled and dirty and a little bloodied.

  “Of course we’ll go back to Solai today,” John said. “She’ll recuperate at my house. Nairobi is too far to take her in this condition.”

  * * *

  The ride from Narok to Solai was quiet. Leona was right; Adia curled in the back seat with her eyes closed and didn’t say a word the entire time. John didn’t know whether she was asleep or just hiding from the bone-crushing pain of her new reality. He understood that desire to hide. He’d felt it himself a time or two.

  John slowed down when they passed the buffalo’s body. Had that only happened yesterday? It felt like years ago. He didn’t stop—there was still flesh on the animal’s bones, still vultures feasting. He didn’t want the skull anymore. Today was the real beginning of his life.

  When John pulled the Land Rover up the last hill, Adia roused.

  “Where are we?” she whispered.

  “Home,” John answered.

  Leona turned in the passenger seat to look at her daughter. She watched her daughter’s face, the tanned cheeks, the strong jaw and the hollow sad eyes. The saddest eyes Leona could remember seeing. They were a puzzle, the two of them—two pieces that never seemed to fit. It was her fault, she knew that. She’d never really tried to be a decent mother. She took a deep breath, and she felt the familiar feeling of guilt sliding under her flesh like bits of broken glass. She wasn’t, she hadn’t been, brave enough to be a good mother. She hoped she was brave enough for it now.

  Leona closed her eyes tightly. She was aware that John was still there with them, his wide shoulders almost brushed hers. But he was their third, her daughter’s father, and he had a right to be there when she told Adia the truth. “I’ve been keeping a secret, Adia,” she said.

  “I already know, Mom,” Adia said quietly. “My father’s not dead. Grace and I were trying to find him.”

  Leona reached out and clasped Adia’s hand. “You found him, Adia.”

  Adia’s face was calm, and she turned to look up at John, who’d shifted so he could face her. Adia didn’t move her hand from under Leona’s, but her lips curved up in the barest feather of a smile and she watched John as she said, “Grace and I were coming to find you. She would be so happy.” Then her face crumpled again, and she began to cry. “I just can’t believe it.”

  Leona sat there holding her daughter’s hand tightly. She wished she knew what to do.

  “Let’s go inside and eat.” It was the only thing she could think of to say.

  Leona remembered where the kitchen was, and soon began opening cupboards and taking things from the fridge. She pulled out a frying pan and eggs an
d was cracking them, mixing them with a little milk.

  That’s how John found them. Adia sitting at the table, and Leona at the counter.

  “How’s her cooking?” John asked Adia.

  Adia looked at him, and then at her mother, who she’d never seen acting quite so maternal.

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I can’t remember the last time she cooked.”

  John smiled at her and pulled three glasses off a shelf. Then he bent down and retrieved a bottle of whiskey from a cabinet.

  “Then we’ll probably need a drink.”

  He poured two glasses half full of whiskey and placed one on the counter for Leona. He splashed a bit of whiskey in the third glass and then added water. He set it on the table in front of Adia. “It’ll help a bit,” he said.

  The sky outside the window was golden. Leona watched shadows playing on the grass underneath the magnificent baobab. “I sat under that tree with your mom,” she said. “Years ago. She told me you were dead. I believed her.”

  “She was confused like that for ages before she died. Alzheimer’s,” John answered. “She told me that she told you I was dead. She said you went home after that, to America. I never looked for you. I never thought I’d find you. But still...something...something made me do a double take, get my hopes up, every time I saw a woman or a girl who could have been you and—” now he turned to Adia “—Adia, a good Maasai name.”

  Then Adia spoke. “We’ve been in Nairobi the whole time. Mom found out you were alive recently, a few months ago. Your brochure was in a hotel. She didn’t tell me, though.” Leona winced and flipped the eggs onto plates John had set beside her.