“Holy shit,” her roommate whispered.
The lion was roughly thirty feet away, and in the shadowy light the dawn was bringing, they could see her clearly. The cat was lying prone in the hollow base of a rotten tree. Her head was resting on the ground, and her legs were outstretched. The sounds were not the huffs and grunts of a cat enjoying its kill, but rather the sounds of pain. The cat raised her head and chuffed. She rolled over and struggled to a standing position. She stood, trembling, head down, legs splayed.
“I told you, she’s pregnant. She’s having her babies.”
Her roommate’s eyes grew wide and the two girls knelt in the dirt and clutched one another’s hands as they watched.
* * *
In America, there were rules Adia had to learn. There were rules about when to be certain places, when to eat, when to study and when to turn off her light at night. Adia had to clean her room in a certain way on a certain day, and she was forbidden from leaving the grounds without permission. She had to ensure she remembered the rules the school imposed. Forgetting meant she was singled out and reminded, or given extra study hall or a demerit as punishment. The official school rules were hard enough to understand and follow, but the unwritten social rules were far more complicated and dangerous. There were certain invisible lines that shifted and moved that you had to keep your eyes on. Crossing these lines meant the punishment of sidelong looks and the subtle shifting away of sweatshirted bodies in the halls or cafeteria, and the pervasive sense that made you feel your own body, any touch from you, was poison to everyone else.
After watching the lion together and slipping safely back into their room before the dorm-mother caught them, Adia felt a sense of camaraderie, of having shared a danger and survived, with her roommate. When the bell rang for breakfast that morning, Adia was eager to finally have a place to sit, to chat with the other girls and actually eat hot food, drink cocoa and orange juice, instead of escaping the cafeteria with pockets full of bread and fruit. She hadn’t eaten a hot meal in days. She followed the crowd of girls into the enormous room and weaved herself around the chairs being pulled out and the plates of eggs and pancakes being carried precariously between tables. There she was! Adia made her way toward the table where she saw her roommate just sitting down. There was even an empty chair. Adia reached for it and gripped the back, ready to pull it out and sit down. A thin-faced girl with sleek blonde hair looked up.
“Not so fast, lion tamer. That chair is reserved.”
Adia glanced at her roommate, who sipped her glass of juice and smiled into the middle distance, refusing to look at Adia.
“This table isn’t for zookeepers,” the blonde said. Adia’s roommate laughed.
Adia froze with embarrassment, all the hope and the flicker of happiness drained out of her. She made herself turn; she bit her lip to stop any tears and didn’t even try to grab a yogurt or a bottle of water. She only wanted to leave. At the door of the dining hall, she turned once to see if anyone was watching her go. Just then, the dean of students stood. Spoons tapped glasses and a hush fell. Now it was too quiet for Adia to open the creaky door unnoticed.
“Some of you know that a cougar was seen in the woods. Everything is fine, nobody was hurt and these animals don’t want to hurt you. They’re way more scared of you than you are of them. That said, we’re responsible for your safety so, for now, no one, absolutely no one, goes to the lake or the woods until the animal has been caught,” the dean said loudly. “We’ve called the Park Service, and they’re going to do what they can to remove the animal.”
Adia wondered if that meant they would hunt the cat down to kill it, or simply catch it and take it elsewhere. The lion had brand-new babies. Four had been born while Adia and her roommate watched, three healthy and one stillborn. Adia’s eyes welled up and her breath constricted.
The lake was shiny under the clear sky and the moon was almost full. Adia was grateful. She’d forgotten to bring a flashlight, and although the lion didn’t really worry her, she did think about the possibility of snakes. She wasn’t sure how many poisonous ones might be in this part of the States; she didn’t like the idea of chancing it. She found the dock and walked all the way out onto it, her footsteps on the wooden planks dull and hollow. She lay down on the wood and looked up at the stars, wondering what time it was in Nairobi, in Loita. What would everyone she loved be doing? She shivered. September was cool here. She sat up and pulled her backpack close. She wanted her blanket.
The shot was loud, close enough to make Adia shriek in surprise. She stumbled to her feet, but kept her body low, and still. Another shot rang out. Then she heard footsteps and a voice from the woods just behind the dock where she hunched.
“Got it!”
Adia’s heart pounded in her chest, and adrenaline surged through her. She didn’t think at all. She pulled her pack onto her shoulders and ran toward the sound of the guns and voices. She felt fingers grabbing at her forearm and felt the nearness of bodies as she passed the thin beach into the low bushes that bordered the lake. She shook the hand off and kept running.
She scrambled through the thickening trees, heading in the direction she’d last seen the mother cat. She was grateful, again, for the moon illuminating the tree roots and rocks, and she leaped over them, running all the way to the hollowed-out tree.
Her breath was ragged and painful in her chest, and she stopped just beyond the small clearing where the tree was. There was no sign of the mother cat. She kept her eyes wide and tried to look in all directions at once. If she was wrong, the mother could attack. Nothing was more dangerous than a mother with babies, and she could be lurking anywhere, ready to pounce.
The three cubs were snuggled into a little pile of kitten fur in the farthest curve of the tree trunk. They were still blind from birth, and they mewed and stretched their tiny arms, paws splaying with needle-sharp claws. Adia knelt down and reached into the tree. Their fur was so soft. One cub blindly took the tip of her pointer finger and began to suckle it. Wishful thinking, Adia thought.
The men found her quickly. She’d only been there a couple of minutes when they crashed loudly through the bushes nearest her and said, “You could have been killed!” One of the men pulled her up by her shoulder and she saw they wore uniforms. Matching hats and jackets, matching badges on their chests. Their flashlights cut the gentle darkness like knives.
“You killed her! You killed her and she has babies!”
“What, now?” one of the men said, and the other knelt down on the ground and shone the beam of his flashlight into the hollow tree.
“By God, would you look at that?” he said quietly. “Kid’s right. We’ve got ourselves a couple of cubs right here.”
“Better take ’em out. We’ll have to deal with them. Make some calls when we get back.”
He looked at Adia and added, “Yeah, had to get her out of here, so you kids can have your woods back. Been a problem around here lately, anyway. Couple of dogs got taken last week up at the houses down the street. Don’t want you all getting hurt.”
The light was coming up slowly, stretching out above the trees, filling in the spaces between the dark branches and coloring the woods a watery gray. The light here, in the midst of these trees, wasn’t the hard-as-glass light Adia still hadn’t gotten used to. This was the kind of light she understood, malleable and soft. Adia watched as the men pulled heavy gloves over their hands and reached in to grasp each of the cubs, one by one, and carried them to the truck parked on the lake road. One of the men pulled a small, empty cooler from behind the passenger seat and opened it wide. The two men nestled the kittens all together in the bottom. When they opened the back of the truck to load the new cargo, Adia saw the body of the mother lion slack on a tarp. She stepped close enough to see the scars pitting the short fur on the lioness’s cheeks and around her wide-open, bead-green eyes.
“We’ll take ’em somewhere
nice, girl,” one of the men said. “They’ll be treated well, I promise.”
Adia thought of those cubs growing up motherless, and she started to cry. Once the sadness was exposed to the air, she couldn’t turn it off. Huge, painful sobs rushed through her like waves. She thought she’d never cried so hard and so suddenly and so loudly. She hoped the babies wouldn’t be taken to some zoo or animal sanctuary. She hoped they would be let free. Wild. She hoped they would never come back here, but instead find a place far, far away from people. She pawed the tears from her eyes, wiped her face with her sleeves, but the sobs kept coming.
“They’ll be fine,” one of the men said, shifting his weight from one booted foot to the other. He glanced uncomfortably at his partner. “You just take care of yourself now, girl.”
“Wait,” Adia said, and her voice was ragged and cracked. “Let me wrap them up.”
She slid her pack down her arm to the ground and pulled the blanket out. It smelled like everything she loved, and she knew she’d miss it. The men watched as she leaned into the truck and carefully tucked the rough cloth around the little cats. They wiggled and mewed and nestled together. They would need to be fed soon.
Adia watched the men climb into the truck and disappear up the dirt road, away from the lake. When she couldn’t hear the engine anymore, Adia picked up her empty pack and walked slowly up the wooded path to the large empty lawn that stretched out across the length of the school’s main building. Lights were turning on in windows; she could hear voices and other sounds, hair dryers and laughter. She turned her back to the building and sat down in the damp grass. They would find out soon she wasn’t where she was supposed to be.
The open green extended all around her, up to the imposing building behind her and down all the way to the woods where the sun was cracking the sky open now, and the rays were long through the trees.
Her face was raw and pink, and she knew the tears weren’t yet gone. She didn’t care. She was tired of invisibility. She stretched out on her back and watched the sun continue to rise. She was cold without her blanket, but she didn’t need it anymore. She pressed her bare palms against the grass, and dug her fingers into the dirt beneath her. She bit her lip and tasted blood. It mixed with the leftover tears that crowded her throat. The sobs came again and she didn’t try to stop them. She didn’t care who saw her. She didn’t care who heard. She was a wild thing, testing out her fangs.
A FATHER, FOUND
Leona loved that first moment she could see the curve of the hill up to the house in Solai. How long ago it had been since she’d come here first, but how satisfyingly familiar the land was. There were the chipped concrete posts that marked the driveway; there in the distance was the hill and the silhouette of that massive baobab. After all these years in Kenya, Leona was still impressed with its size. She’d never seen one as big.
They rounded the last curve of the track and pulled up next to the stone patio.
“Here we are.” Leona flicked the engine off and wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. “Your dad’s probably inside.”
“It feels weird.” Adia spoke hesitantly, but with a smile that belied her excitement. “So weird to have a dad.”
All that year, while Adia was in America, she lived for the letters she received from her mom and Simi, Joan and John. John’s were her favorite. He wrote her funny memories of his boarding school life and descriptions of the tourists he took on safaris. Adia wrote back about how much she missed Kenya. She saved every letter she received from Kenya. She tucked them in a box she hid at the very back of a dresser drawer. The idea that her roommate might find the letters and read them made her nauseous with fear. When she felt most alone, Adia took the box out and carried it down to the lake. Sometimes even in the middle of the night. She read and reread the letters so often she could almost recite them. John’s were the ones she reread first.
Now, though, with him bounding out of the house and across the patio toward Leona’s car, Adia felt shy. She opened the door and stepped out hesitantly. John didn’t feel the awkwardness. He flung his arms around Adia so tightly Adia’s feet left ground.
This is what it feels like. The thought flashed into her head without prelude. This is what it feels like to have a father who loves you. And she sent up a silent thank-you to Grace. All of this was because of Grace, and Adia never, not once, let a day pass without thanking her friend.
* * *
That night, tucked into the narrow bed she’d slept in twice before, Leona couldn’t sleep. She’d grown used to Nairobi and the urban night sounds. Here, it was all different. She heard elephants growling low and deep as they lumbered up the hill, and the whooping of hyenas somewhere in the distance. Finally she slipped out of bed and down the hall to the kitchen. Maybe tea would help her sleep, or warm milk. She loved the view from this window, how wide and open the world looked from here. In the silvery dark of the half-moon, the grasses and trees, the anthills that rose narrow and as tall as a man from the earth, all looked magical. Leona had been feeling restless recently. Her teaching job was not as exciting as it had been in the early years, and the work she’d been passionate about—preserving Maasai herds by increasing grazing land—had gone as far as it could go. Things were still very bad—the land was still dry and the animals still hungry, but there was nowhere else for them to go, the green lands were shrinking as the dusty ones were growing.
She stirred her tea in her cup and thought about Adia, how she’d been pulled from Kenya and sent to make a life somewhere as foreign to her as the moon. She wasn’t sure, if their roles were reversed, that she’d be able to do the same. When she got back in bed later, she curled up under the blanket, and in that second between waking and sleep, she had a flashing thought—she’d never been as brave as her daughter. She’d lived her whole adult life hiding from the things that scared her most. Not animals or loneliness, but the far more dangerous risk of connection—of allowing herself to know and be known, all the way through, even the darkest parts.
The next morning, bleary from lack of sleep, Leona padded across the patio to a wicker chaise. The paving stones were smooth under her bare feet and she clutched a mug of coffee in her hands. She hardly ever woke up early, and she wanted to take the opportunity to see the sunrise. She didn’t see John until she’d settled herself down. When he spoke, she jolted in surprise, sending a splash of coffee down her sweater.
“Ah, fuck!” He apologized, “I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you’d seen me!” He rummaged in his pants pocket, pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to Leona. Then he leaned back in the chair and was quiet.
Leona watched the orange orb slip from behind the horizon and climb up the sky, tossing orange-and-yellow light across the wide-open land as it moved higher and higher. It stunned her, and without pausing to think, she said, “I saw a photo of you once, that time I first came here. It was in the dresser in the guest room. A photo of two little boys. I assumed one was you—it looked just like she did when she was a baby. But maybe it was Thomas. I didn’t know about him then.”
“You saw that picture?”
“It was in a dresser in the guest room. There were baby clothes in there, too. Lovely things.” She paused and looked at John, and then down the hill to where giraffe were beginning to nibble their breakfast of acacia leaves, and a tawny eagle called from somewhere she couldn’t see.
“Where’s that photo now? Adia might want to see it. She should know about her family.”
John nodded, but didn’t answer. Leona continued, pushing hard against her own reticence to talk, her own discomfort at probing the deeper parts of other people with her questions. She was good, so good at this in her professional life, but it terrified her when it meant something personal. Still, she was determined to pave the way for her daughter to have a real relationship with John, and since Adia didn’t know what questions to ask yet, she had to ask them.
&nbs
p; “If possible, I’d love for her to see that photo. Or any others that you might have of you as a kid, or of her relations on your side.”
“I have all that stuff somewhere. I packed it up when Mother was dying. I didn’t want to look at it then, and I assumed I would take the sentimental stuff to the Karen house. Never occurred to me I’d stay here.”
“Why did you stay?” Leona asked. “The business?” She knew he’d done well, and the town of Solai had become a bustling place, with markets catering to the tourist industry that, though not as big as elsewhere, was all due to John’s work.
“No,” he said. “The business is good, yes, but it would be better in Nairobi, or elsewhere, Tsavo maybe, Amboseli. I stayed because, once I got here, once I learned about my mother and the awful life she lived here...I didn’t want to leave her alone again. The way she stayed for Thomas? I think that’s why I stay, too. For her.”
* * *
Adia woke late, a combination of jet lag and adolescence, and when she made her way to the kitchen to find breakfast, John was sitting at the table, buttering bread for his lunch.
“You’re awake!” He grinned. “Sleeping beauty.”
“Where’s my mom?” she asked. It was one thing to read John’s letters and write letters back to him, and to imagine what it would be like to be with him, father and daughter, but now, here, Adia felt shy and awkward. The only father she’d ever really seen being a father was Grace’s dad. And he and John were not the same at all.
“In Solai, gone to pick up groceries and put gas in her car. Make you some toast?”
Adia’s stomach was empty. She was starving, but it felt weird to sit here, just her and John. She didn’t know what to talk about.
“I’m okay. Going to go for a walk, I think.” She motioned out the window. “Maybe up to the tree.”
The Brightest Sun Page 30