Laugh with the Moon (2 page)

The sound of a blaring radio blends with the people trying to hawk anything they can grow or make. And there are kids everywhere, pacing the sidewalks, selling dolls and toy cars with long pull handles made from scraps and wires.

Dad speaks to the vendors in a mix of English and bits of Chichewa he remembers from when he used to live in Malawi. He loads up on strange-looking fruits, bottles of water, grains, and a loaf of bread. Mr. Mbalazo is helping him negotiate a better deal on a bag of nuts when suddenly, five little boys hurry toward me.

The boys are holding their palms open for money.
“Kwacha. Kwacha,”
they say. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t even see my father anymore, so I reach into my backpack. There’s my phone, my gum, my barrette, and finally, finally, a quarter.

Change. I need more. I need some coins for each of them. Their stomachs are swollen. Their belly buttons look like plums. They need to eat. They need new clothes. Where are their parents?

My fingers dive back into my bag frantically, but they come up empty.

So I hold the quarter. Who should get it? That boy with the torn shirt? Or that one, pulling a toy car made from twisted hangers and bottle caps? It’s impossible to choose.

Then I don’t have to: a small hand pries open my fist and scrapes the coin out of my palm.

“Clare?” Dad calls. The boys scatter.

I’m shaking. How could he bring me here, to one of the poorest countries on earth? How could he think this is an okay place for a kid like me? It’s a good thing I’m not speaking to him, because if I let loose the string of curse words on the tip of my tongue, I’d be grounded until I turn seventeen.

Dad hands me one of the plastic bags full of groceries to carry. “You okay?” he asks.

I glare.

“Just think,” Dad says, “maybe you can write about it for your project.”

I groan as I follow my father and Mr. Mbalazo back to the car. Even though my school in Brookline is all the way across the ocean from here, I guess I’ll never really get away from it. Mrs. Middleton, my school principal, dragged me into the office a few days ago and gave me the most atrocious assignment of my life. I have to prepare something to share with the entire grade about what I learn here.

We put the grocery bags in the trunk. No sooner do I get into the backseat beside Dad than I do what I do best lately: I conk right out. And at least for a while, I leave behind everything that’s wrong with my life.

When I open my eyes again, the sky has changed from slate-gray to the color of an old bruise. We pass farm after farm after farm, and hundreds of women carrying buckets on their heads and babies on their backs.

Mr. Mbalazo slows down as a herd of furry brown creatures with spiky horns charges across the road. It’s crazy, but I’m jealous. Jealous of how they know exactly where they’re going. Where? I have no idea, but obviously they do. They have a purpose. A life.

I haven’t felt like sketching in days, but now my fingers itch for charcoal. Still, I’m too lazy to actually bother pulling out my pad, even though it’s right there in my bag. I want to remember these unscrewed-up gazelles, but since I haven’t drawn them, I’ll probably forget they even exist. I forget everything these days, like why I used to think my father was cool, why I used to love to read, and my mother.

And tell me, who does that? Forgets her own mother? I knew her for thirteen years, and even though there are pictures of Mom all over the house, when I close my eyes, I can only see her in pieces. Her spray of freckles. Her light green eyes. I don’t know what kind of brain damage I have, but for some reason, unless I’m staring at her photo, I can’t picture her face whole.

Sometimes I wonder if I have a tumor, because my memory’s getting so bad. A few months ago, when I was sleeping over at Marcella’s house, I told her I was scared. Being in the dark made it easier to talk.

“Ginkgo,” Marcella whispered from her bed.

“What?” I asked from my cot.

“Ginkgo. It’s this herb that fixes your memory,” she said.

Hope twisted in my chest for the first time in so long.

“My grandpa takes it. We’ll get it tomorrow. You’ll be fine.”

I sighed and looked at the clock. It was already past midnight. In less than twelve hours, I might be cured. I could hardly sleep from the excitement.

In the morning, we went straight to the pharmacy on the corner of Beacon and Harvard streets. I took ginkgo biloba capsules every morning for a week, but when I closed my eyes and tried to see my mother, it was the same old thing: her perfect teeth, her long lashes, her dangling red earrings. The reception was still bad and I couldn’t get all of her to appear.

By the end of the week, I started to panic. But when Marcella asked how it was going with the ginkgo, I told her great and thanked her for the excellent suggestion. I didn’t want her to think I wasn’t happy. Why would Marcella want a friend who isn’t happy? Everyone wants to hang out with Marcella—she’s the captain of the field hockey team, she’s pretty without looking like everyone else, and she’s smart—and I don’t want to take any chances and give her up to someone like Crystal, who’s always inviting Marcella to parties and trying to get her to join the superpopular crowd.

Now Dad takes out the loaf of bread and a bottle of water. “Hungry?” he asks.

I nod and he tears off a hunk. I only manage to eat a few bites before we pass a man with a stick over his shoulder. My stomach lurches. A bunch of plucked chickens dangles from both ends of the stick.
Don’t think about it!
I tell myself.
Forget you are here
.

I drop the hunk of bread on my lap and grab my cell phone out of my backpack. I need to text Marcella to tell her what I just saw. I need to send an SOS. I’ve got to get
out of here! I press the power button. I tilt my phone away from Dad, but the words “no signal” appear on the screen.

Did I groan? I must have, because Dad snaps the cap back onto his highlighter pen and peeks over my shoulder at the phone. “Excuse me, Emmanuel,” Dad says. “I had heard that there’s phone reception in Malawi now.”

“Near everywhere,” Mr. Mbalazo says from the front seat. “Here in the southern bush, most especially in the rainy season, I do fear it can be spotty.”

“I was planning to get you a chip,” Dad says to me. “But I guess it’s not going to work.”

I swallow. Even without reception, I can open the photo of Mom and me at the lighthouse on Marblehead Neck. There are hundreds of sailboats in the harbor. The sun is dripping silver sparkles across the ocean like fairy dust. Mom’s arm is around me. I tap the tiny screen and enlarge the photo. I stare at the place where her arm touches my shoulder until the photo turns blurry from my tears.

Dad grabs my hand. “It’s okay, honey,” he says.

I pull my hand away, hurl my phone into my bag, and feel myself choke.

We drive for miles and miles while the grainy dusk settles in and the colors disappear from the sky. There are no condos. No buses. No restaurants. Just jungle on both sides of the dirt road.

“You shall be home in an hour’s time,” Mr. Mbalazo says. I know he means well, but I want to scream:
Home? My home is across the ocean, more than seven thousand miles from here!

Then again, I should say my
house
. My house is across
the ocean, more than seven thousand miles from here, because I don’t have a home anymore. I know I don’t look like your average homeless person. But that’s what I’ve become. I mean, we still have a house on Russell Street, but it’s just brick and wood and plaster now. There’s no smell of cinnamon toast in the morning or paintings set on easels all over the living room. There’s no one shouting out the questions to the
Jeopardy!
answers on the TV. And there’s no one learning to play the banjo, rather badly, while I’m doing homework. These days, when I’m in that house where I have lived my whole life, I feel the wind and chill of winter as much as the man who sleeps on the church steps on Beacon Street.

I wrap my arms around myself and shiver as Mr. Mbalazo slows down the car. I wonder if I’m losing it. I mean, I’ve been under a huge amount of stress for the last eight months, and I guess I’m finally going crazy. Nuts.

Or, maybe I should say bananas. Because what I see out the window—well, what I think I see—is a monkey the size of a man. A very large man. It lumbers upright on two feet across the dirt road. And it isn’t just any monkey. It’s a thirsty monkey. It’s carrying a can of Coke—regular, not diet.

T
he monkey stops right in front of us, tilts back its head, and guzzles. Then it crunches the can in its fist, chucks it on the ground, and disappears into the jungle on the other side of the road.

“Ha!” Dad says. “What a world this would be if we could distribute medicine like they deliver cola!” Then he laughs. It’s one of those laughs that goes on and on forever, like a jumbo hot dog from Fenway Park. I don’t know why hearing my father laugh makes me furious, but it does.

Mr. Mbalazo moves the stick shift into gear again. “This is
chiyendayekha
,” he says. “Big monkey.”

I grab my phone to text Marcella about this bizarre place, then remember the thing is useless. Instead, I capture a rough image of the gorilla-monkey on my sketchpad, and when I’m done, I glance at my father. His eyes are closed. I’m afraid he might snore. Like most doctors,
my father hardly sleeps, but when he does, watch out. For now, though, he’s breathing like a baby. I press my finger into his arm. What would Dad think of my little experiment? What would he think of me trying to touch the old him, to see if the part of him that used to care about me still exists? Before I can tell anything for sure, Dad shifts in his seat, so I yank my finger away.

As predicted, a few minutes later, the rumbling begins. When Mr. Mbalazo hears my dad snore like a drunken sailor, he laughs a rich, hearty laugh. Then he says, “Soon we enter the trading center near to your home. Tomorrow you may visit there.”

I shove my father hard, back and forth, back and forth, until he burbles, shakes his head, and wipes his eyes.

I look out the window. It’s completely dark. I can’t see a thing.

Mr. Mbalazo turns off the main road onto a narrow path. I wonder how he knows where to go. There aren’t any street signs with white reflective letters glittering in the night. I don’t even see any trees. But I do hear sticks and leaves scraping the windows.

Mr. Mbalazo pulls into a driveway, takes out the key, and pops the trunk. “Here you are!” he says. Dad gets out to help him carry our luggage and supplies inside. I stay stuck to the seat like a stamp. I grind my teeth into my dented heart pendant while the sounds of the African night creep through the open car door.

Once Dad and Mr. Mbalazo come back to the car, I get out and stretch and try to lose the feeling that I’m stuck in a
nightmare. “Wishing you a season of good fortune,” Mr. Mbalazo tells us before getting into the driver’s seat. As he crunches backward over the gravel driveway, Dad and I wave into the glare of headlights. And when it’s completely dark and creepy again, I follow Dad into the house, which is the size of half a Pop-Tart.