Laugh with the Moon (10 page)

On Sunday, I celebrate the fact that I didn’t get torn to shreds by a lion by transforming my bedroom into a place where someone with a pulse can actually live. But what to use? I rummage through the dresser and pull out seven scarves. I collect scarves because Marcella told me that a teenager can never accessorize too much. I tie them end to end until I’ve got a bright strip of orange and gold swirls, blue stars on purple, and rainbow stripes. I drape my
creation over the top of the dresser. The colors pour down each side. Next, I take a white T-shirt and stick all my earrings through it to make a dazzling splash. I put the T-shirt with my jewels on one of the six hangers in the house. And voilà!

Dad knocks on the door and says he wants to head over to the village and see his friends. He wants to know if I’d like to come.

“Notice anything different?” I ask.

But of course he doesn’t. He’s a man.

So I give him a little tour and he pretends to be impressed. “Very nice use of color palette and contrast,” he says, although it’s clear he’s only throwing around words my mother and I always used. “And remember your hat,” he says.

I feel warm inside. I can’t believe Dad said that. I can’t believe he told me to remember my hat. I put on a skirt, T-shirt, sandals, and of course, my Red Sox cap. It’s a relief to be wearing something other than my school uniform.

When we get to Mkumba village, he walks with me to Memory’s hut, where an old woman missing her front teeth comes to the door. She smiles and her eyes water. Then she kneels in front of my father and says,
“Moni, adokotala,”
and talks to my father in Chichewa.

“This is Memory’s grandmother,” Dad tells me.

“Moni,”
I say. Dad translates while Memory’s grandma points to the river and says that Memory is there with her friends. I glance behind the hut and see their bright-colored dresses in the distance. “Why don’t you go visit with them,” Dad says. “I’m going to find Stallard. I’ll meet you at the clearing before sundown.”

“It’s a plan,” I say, and mosey down the path. I hope they don’t mind me crashing their party. They’ve probably known each other since they were born. And now here I am needing some company. Why should they bother with me? I’ll be flying back to the United States in two months anyway.

When I get closer to the river, I see that it’s Sickness and Patuma there washing dishes with Memory. Sickness sees me. She smiles and says, “Visitor! Hello!”

The Malawian people are so polite and friendly. Even if they don’t want you tagging along, you’d never know.

“Hey!” I say. No sooner do I reach the bank of the river than Sickness yells, “River battle!” And Memory fills a pot with water and throws it at me. At first I stand there, shocked. That’s not polite. My hair is dripping and there’s mud on my clothes. I think it might be some mistake. Maybe Memory tripped and fell.

But then Sickness says, “Go water her!” And she hands me the biggest pot she has. Well, I’m not one to refuse a good old water fight on a day as hot as this one, so I step into the river with my sandals still on, fill the pot, and dump it on Memory’s head while Sickness holds her in place. Patuma’s flat on her back on the bank, squealing with giggles as the rest of us splash each other until we’re completely drenched and laughing till we cry.

Then we lie out in the field in our wet dresses and dry off in the sun like raisins, and talk about boys in a mixture of languages because Patuma’s English is pretty bad and my Chichewa’s almost nonexistent. By the end of the conversation, we’ve established a few basic facts: Memory not only loves Saidi, but she also plans to marry him one day.
Patuma loves Norman and Norman loves Patuma back, although they’re both too shy to admit it.

“Do you date Norman?” I ask Patuma. Despite the sunscreen, my cheeks are really starting to burn.

“What is date?” Sickness asks.

So I explain and Memory says, “A Malawi girl do not do this thing called date. When a boy is ready to marry, he go to the villages and ask, ‘Is there a girl in this village who can marry me?’ Or, in the case that there is one certain girl the boy watch and know from school, he ask that girl. If the girl accept, the uncle of the boy shall meet with the parents of the girl to map the way forward. Then the wedding.”

Sickness giggles and says, “The golden rule is if the boy and the girl meet in secret—for example, the boy find the girl down by the river as she do dishes or boy and girl talk much at school—this boy and girl must not allow the parents to discover the relationship.”

Then Patuma pipes up in Chichewa, and Sickness explains, “Patuma say that even though she do not marry Norman yet, she look at Norman in the eye one time and Norman look right back at her. Patuma say this is how they talk in secret at school.”

I glance through the leaves at the clouds gliding by and feel a pang in my chest, because I know my mother would love it here. No matter where we used to travel, she always found a way to escape into nature. In Quebec, while Dad attended lectures, Mom rented a scooter and we rode out to Mount Pinnacle and spent the day hiking. And the time he had a meeting in Miami, we took a moped out to Everglades National Park, where we picnicked and
laughed at the alligators and turtles. I wonder if Memory thinks about her mother all the time too. I want to ask her, but I’ve only known her a week. How long do you need to know someone before you can ask the most painful question there is?

Soon our throats are itching with thirst, but the river water is too muddy to drink in the rainy season, and I didn’t think to bring a water bottle with me. “Shall we fetch clean drinking water?” Sickness says.

And I say, “Of course! Why not!”

So the girls collect pails from their homes and Memory gives one to me. An hour after we set out for the borehole, we finally arrive. I don’t think I can take another step, though, because my left foot has blistered by my ankle.

After we fill our buckets and gulp down some clean water for ourselves, Memory splits a plant leaf and rubs the gel inside it onto my blister, and then we head back. The moon is high in the sky. I’m surprised to see it there, like an unexpected visitor in the last light of day.

My arms tremble from the weight of one water bucket, even though the other girls each carry two—one on their heads and one in their hands. And when we finally return to the village, the sun is setting behind the curtain of the earth, so I say goodbye to my friends and meet my father in the clearing.

E
very cloud has a silver lining, but take it from me, if that cloud has a thunderbolt pointed straight at your head, the silver lining won’t give you much comfort.

Monday morning I decide I might actually come out of this whole adventure alive. But by the afternoon, I reconsider. During science class, Mrs. Tomasi puts a bunch of materials on each table: a single leaf, a strip of brown bark, and a yellowish oval-shaped melon that’s about the size of a cantaloupe. I’m tempted to eat it. My stomach is growling. No matter how big a breakfast Mrs. Bwanali makes me or how much water I drink during the day when no one’s looking, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to eating lunch after school. I pick up the different things. The fruit has a rough circle where the stem was attached to the tree. The leaf is cool and smooth. And the bark is wrinkly, like an old man’s skin.

While we feel the parts of the tree, Mrs. Tomasi tells us that the fruit of the baobab tree has more vitamin C than an orange. “If there is a drought,” she says, “you can cut the trunk of a baobab tree and suck out seven thousand five hundred liters of water with a grass straw. This tree can live for thousands of years and grow twelve meters in diameter. Sometimes people live right inside the trunks.”

“Cool!” I say.

Memory nods in agreement.

When the school bell chimes, we gather our science materials and carry them up front. Memory sets the baobab fruit on Mrs. Tomasi’s folding table and picks up the large cardboard box that’s on the floor in the corner. “Innocent and myself shall meet you on the hilltop in quarter hour,” she tells me. She leaves the classroom behind Saidi, Agnes, Patuma, and the others while I go back to my seat and pull out my sketchbook to pass the time.

After Mrs. Tomasi wipes the vegetable chalk off the board with a rag, she collects her notebook and pencil.
“Yendani bwino,”
she says. That’s one of the phrases I got right on my quiz yesterday. It means “Have a safe journey.” In fact, the only word I missed was
utawaleza
. It means “rainbow,” but for some reason I thought it meant “grain silo.”

I wave to Mrs. Tomasi. “
Yendani bwino
to you too,” I say.

The second Mrs. Tomasi leaves, a cold wind blows through the classroom and the hair on my arms stands up straight. Something doesn’t feel right, though I have no idea what it could be, other than I’ve got to sit here in this classroom alone for the next fifteen minutes. But what’s so
scary about that?
Chill!
I tell myself. I try to breathe in love and breathe out fear, which is what Marcella does before she goes onstage, but it doesn’t work. Instead, I draw a picture of Agnes as a
bongololo
.

When I’m done, I grab my backpack and head outside. Innocent and Memory are halfway up the hill, and all the textbooks owned by Mzanga Full Primary are in a box on top of Memory’s head. I’m only a few feet outside the classroom when suddenly, the wind howls and the trees sway. Then,
crack!
A bolt of lightning strikes the ground right in front of my feet. I tremble from head to toe. Memory and Innocent turn to race back down the hill to school. “Over here!” I shout through the wind. There’s a train pulling into a station—a station inside my head! And I’m not sure if they can see me. Except for the flashes of bright white light, suddenly, it’s as dark as night.

I hurry back to my classroom and wait for Memory and Innocent while the air blinks like a strobe light and water drips—
splat! splat! splat!
—through the small holes in the ceiling. Good thing Mrs. Tomasi keeps a stack of empty cans in the corner. I grab them and put one beside the doorway, one on my table, one by the board. Soon I’m out of cans but not out of leaks.

The rain thunders down. My thoughts crash into each other, totally out of control.
Where is Memory? Where is Innocent? Why aren’t they here?

Boom!

I scream.

Aiiee!

I can’t hear my scream. That terrifies me, makes me scream more.

I run to the doorway. Through flashes of lightning, I see a huge sheet of metal. It cuts across the field, shiny like a bullet.

My sneakers slosh through a puddle until I see where the metal came from—the standard five block. My pulse thunders in my ears. The roof flew right off the classroom, sharp and dangerous like a weapon.

The rain turns to mist while mosquitoes whine all around me. Thousands band together in big black clouds. Mosquito armies attack my arms and legs. I slap them away. They come right back. Questions bite me all over:
Where is Memory? Where is Innocent? Is anyone hurt? Is anyone dead?

The mosquitoes are ferocious! They claw me, pinch me, pierce me. I whimper as I scratch. I plead with them to stop, but they won’t. I run to a banana tree and scratch my back against the bark. I stay there quivering and sobbing until finally, the thunder stops, the lightning stops, and the sun showers down and convinces the critters to find another source of blood.

Then it’s over.

But inside, the storm doesn’t stop:
Where is Memory? Where is Innocent? Is anyone hurt? Is anyone dead?

Out of nowhere, I hear a voice.
“Wabalarika eti?”
I look up.

Saidi is holding a ball made of garbage bags and string. “Are you scared and confused?” he asks.

I nod. My brain is whipping around like sugar in a cotton candy machine.

“I am sorry to tell you, Clare …”

I brace myself for the worst. The very worst.

“Upon my exit from the shelter of the standard three classroom where I waited for the rains to leave, I examine the situation with a great and careful eye,” he says.