Laugh with the Moon (11 page)

I quake with fear.

“Yes, it is true,” Saidi says.

“What? What’s true?” I ask.

“
Bongololo
bugs are dead now on floor.” He smiles. “Do not worry, Clare. There was no person in standard five block. No person on the field in this place. No teacher. No children. Only
bongololo
bugs. You cry for
bongololo
?”

I shake my head no and swat an evil mosquito from my arm. Got him!

Then I spot Innocent walking toward us, Memory behind him. I choke out a sob. They’re drenched. We all are. Innocent’s teeth chatter. Memory rubs his back, tries to warm him up. We meet in the tall patch of field grass, all of us scratching our bites like mad.

“Don’t cry,” I tell Memory. “Everyone’s okay,” I say. “It’s only the
bongololo
that’s hurt.” I chuckle through my tears.

“I do not cry,” she says, and quickly wipes her cheek with the back of her hand. “The rains soaked the books is the problem. The box rip in the rains. I forget the plastic bag for the box. We run to standard one room. It is more near.”

Memory looks at the ground and turns silent. Innocent and Saidi do the same. “Thank you, Lord, who keep the children of Mzanga safe. We beg of you, our parents, our Lord: protect our books. We leave them to dry in sun behind standard one classroom block. Please do not allow the thief to steal them in the night. We do thank the spirit
of
amayi
and
abambo
, our mother and father, for seeing us through the difficult rains,” she says.

My heart stops. All of a sudden, I get it. This is a prayer. A prayer to Memory’s mother. And her father! They’re both dead. Gone. It’s too terrible to imagine. I want to ask Memory how she does it. How she survives. But then Saidi says, “Enough tears, my friends,” and my chance is gone.

Saidi tosses his garbage-bag ball to Innocent and says, “Let us have some fun.” The ball crunches as Innocent catches it. He throws the ball back to Saidi, who dribbles it on his head as he leaps away over the puddles back to his soccer game. Mr. Special Kingsley and teachers walk out of the headmaster’s office. Mr. Special Kingsley and two of the teachers circle the field, checking on students. The rest of the teachers gather around the roof. It looks like they’re trying to figure out what to do with it.

And even though Memory and Innocent no longer need to drop the books off at the trading center, they will still walk past the turnoff to my house on their way to Mkumba village. So together we scratch our bites and trudge up the muddy hill. Heat shimmies off puddles, turning the schoolyard into a foggy dream. When we get to the top, there it is, arching gracefully over the muddy road:
utawaleza
—a little bow of God. The rainbow is bright and vibrant. I’m sure we’ll walk right through it on our way back, but we never even get close.

At home, Mrs. Bwanali greets me with sugared tea and boiled pumpkin. After I cover myself in calamine lotion from head to toe, I sit at the table and draw scenes of the storm: a can catching leaks, the ripped book box, the roof in the field.

When I tell Mrs. Bwanali how awful it all was, she throws a dish towel over her shoulder and turns to me. “Clare, it is the rains that bring us flowers. A life without rains is ugly and dull.”

I sip my tea. I know what she means, but still, I didn’t like the storm.

E
ven though Mrs. Bwanali walks to the house in the mornings, Dad insists on driving her home when she’s finished with work. She always tells him she isn’t tired, but we can just look at her face and see that she’s exhausted.

One evening after Dad gets back from driving Mrs. Bwanali home to Kapoloma village, he calls through the veranda that I should come outside. “Got a present for you, Clare!” Ever since our visit to the game park, things have been much better between us.

As I pull on my sandals, I wonder what Dad’s gift could be. A set of paints? A poster for my wall? I run outside. “So, how do you like her?” he says, holding up an old black bicycle that doesn’t have a kickstand. It looks like the one Saidi rides to school.

“Awesome!” I say.

“Yeah, I figured now that you’re a teenager, you might like a little freedom. She’s rickety but she’ll get you down to the village, and back and forth to school.”

I touch the black tape on the handlebars and look for the gears. “How many speeds?” I ask.

“Oh, uh, just one,” Dad says.

“That’s okay. It’s perfect!” I say, and hug him. “Where’d you get it?”

Dad strokes the stubble on his chin. “Someone left it behind.”

“Behind where?” I ask.

“You know, at the hospital.” Dad checks out the stars winking in the baby blue sky.

“Well, did they say you could have it?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” he says, and sighs. “My patient won’t be needing it anymore.”

I shiver. I don’t really want to ride a dead person’s bike. Then I sneeze.

“You okay?” Dad asks.

“Just exhausted, and my throat sort of hurts.” I’ve been tired ever since we got here. “When is this jet lag going away?” I ask. Besides, I don’t want to tell him his gift is giving me the creeps.

“It’s probably allergies,” Dad says. “Those’ll wipe you out.”

Dad puts his arm around me and we go inside, where he looks down my throat and up my nose with a flashlight and says, “Yup, allergies. Nothing to worry about.”

We light the oven to heat up the chicken Mrs. Bwanali made earlier, but before the chicken’s even cooked, the electricity goes out. Once again, we have to change our
dinner plans at the last minute. Instead, we eat leftover
nsima
and cold pumpkin by candlelight, and I ask Dad more about his work.

“The Global Health Project can’t keep up with all the disease here,” he says. “There are cockroaches climbing on the hospital beds and walls, so that doesn’t help matters. There’s not enough medicine. Today a boy came in with a violin spider bite. Flesh on the leg was rotting. I had no hydrogen peroxide—had to clean the wound with a rag and a bottle of vodka. He may need an amputation.”

I put down my fork of cold pumpkin.

“The life expectancy is only fifty-three here,” he says. “Can you believe that?”

Well, my mother was only forty-four when she died. And she lived in one of the richest countries in the world: the United States of America. And I still can’t believe that! I feel my eyes bursting like little plastic bags full of water, the kind I used to take home from the school carnival with goldfish inside. My chair screeches against the floor. I run through the minuscule living room to my bedroom and climb under the malaria net in the dark.

When Dad comes in, he apologizes. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t realize that would upset you so much.”

“It’s not your fault,” I say. And it’s not. Not his fault that my mother died. Not his fault that he brought me here. Not his fault that in a country like this, kids with dead parents are a dime a dozen. “I love you,” I tell Dad. A breeze blows through the window screen and ruffles the net like a sail.

For the rest of the week, Dad drives me to school, because I just can’t get behind riding a dead person’s bicycle. It doesn’t seem right. And besides, I have other plans for this piece of machinery. Dad agreed right away to let me do it, so this weekend, I’m going to give the old bike a brand-new life.

On Friday, after assembly, I’ve just begun walking back to class with Memory and telling her about my plan when our headmaster appears beside me.

“Clare,” he says, “may I have a word?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, yes, sir.” As if I have a choice!

Memory runs ahead to catch up with Patuma and Winnie.

As Mr. Special Kingsley talks, he limps across the schoolyard, away from my classroom. “Clare,” he says, “the District Education Office is always troubled to supply teachers in the bush. The assignments in cities are sought after, but here, we do not have the housing. Many teachers do not speak our tribal languages. Even though the request for the standard one replacement was sent months ago when the teacher married and became full with child, the District Education Office cannot find a teacher to send to the country. All the young teachers want a city placement. Zomba. Blantyre. Lilongwe. Yes! But the bush? ‘No
zikomo
!’ they say. One and the next and the next.”

While Mr. Special Kingsley babbles on, kids lean out of classroom windows to gape at us. The American girl and the headmaster together, after classes have already begun? Clearly something unusual is going on.

“The other day, the standard one teacher and her new
husband and the girl child moved to Kenya, the homeland of the husband. We are improving as a nation. Yes, this is true. And every student here at Mzanga Full Primary must do a part. I have been filling in the lessons myself, but it is not a practical consideration for the headmaster to do so for each and every subject.”

My throat closes as it occurs to me what this is all about: Agnes has ratted on me. She must have found Mr. Special Kingsley during chore time and told him it isn’t fair that I get to study vocabulary words instead of sweep the floor just because I’m American.

“I shall like to request for you to teach the English to the standard one children,” Mr. Special Kingsley says. “One hour each morning while your standard eight classmates practice their English reading.”

“Teach?” I say. “I can’t … sir … I, uh, I don’t know how!”

“It would be my great honor for you to educate these students,” he says. “Only until the district sends a replacement. As I explained, the teacher has moved to Kenya with her new family.”

“How … why …?” I can’t even string a sentence together, never mind teach English to kids who only speak a few words of it.

Mr. Special Kingsley dabs his forehead with his handkerchief. “Clare, I ask you to help our school.”

“But I’m just thirteen years old,” I say. “I’m barely even a teenager, sir!”

“Many of our assistants are younger than you, Clare. I shall be teaching the remaining subjects to the students
myself. However, I shall need a moment each morning to tend to my other responsibilities. I cannot teach and run the school all at the same time.”

“I don’t know, sir,” I say. After all, it isn’t my fault that the standard one teacher up and left in the middle of the school year.

“Clare, please ponder this request during the weekend. Bring me your answer at assembly Monday morning. I promise you, Clare, I shall understand your choice, no matter if it bring flood or flower.”

As I cross the field back to the standard eight room, the water level rises higher and higher in my mind. There’s going to be a mighty flood all right! Sure, the standard one students behave when Mr. Special Kingsley is around, but what will happen when he isn’t? Chances are I’ll be covered in spitballs in five minutes flat.

Memory loves the plan, so Saturday morning, I fill my backpack with wire hangers, a bottle of water, an umbrella, a wrench from Dad’s tool kit, and some medical tape, although Dad will only give me a tiny bit. He says it’s too valuable in the hospital.

I walk the bicycle over to Mkumba village, where Memory is outside bathing Innocent. As soon as Innocent sees me, he jumps out of the tub and runs into the hut to put on his clothes.