The Camel Bookmobile (25 page)

But small ones were not easy to find. Mididima’s children had vanished like Egyptians gulped into the Red Sea. The whole settlement, in fact, felt on the edge of disarray, as though a wind were about to gust, the kind that tears threads loose from fabric and sends flatbread flying. No one had followed the rules. The goats had been taken out late, and what happened with school? Women were scattered in the distance, their bright clothes like markers, as though none had maize to cook or mats to weave. Men’s voices seeped from the
kilinge
, normally left deserted during the day. She knew they had lit the fire and would keep it burning to appeal to the Hundred-Legged One to bring rain, and that the oldest among them had begun to gather themselves for a trek to the mountains to beg for water to fall from the sky.

But the disquiet had another cause, too; she whispered a name to herself, and hoped Kanika had resolved it.

She finally found two girls playing a game with sticks, and told them to come, and bring their library books. “Don’t spend the whole time chattering,” she said. “One can practice reading while the other watches for birds.”

Then she began circling the settlement, searching with growing urgency for Kanika. No one seemed to know where her granddaughter was; and this only heightened her own sense of bubbling uneasiness.

Kanika must have reclaimed the overdue books, Neema told herself. Not only was Kanika determined and persuasive, but Scar Boy would listen to her. Even if no one else noticed, Neema had seen what his face revealed, those few times he’d emerged into daylight to visit the Camel Bookmobile. She saw what he felt for her granddaughter.

At last she spotted Kanika at a distance, laughing with Wakonyo and Thegoya. That was unusual—Kanika generally had little to do with those girls. They weren’t being raised as her granddaughter was. Wakonyo had even been circumcised.

“Kanika,” she called. Kanika turned, waved, and bent her head close to the girls, talking one more minute before loping toward Neema.

“Peace on you,
Nyanya
,” Kanika said cheerfully.

So then, all was well. Neema stroked her granddaughter’s cheek. “You and Miss Sweeney got the books.”

Kanika squatted and poured dried millet from a bowl onto a cloth.

“You should let everyone know that the lion’s dry breath is no longer on our necks,” Neema said.

Kanika didn’t answer, didn’t even look at Neema.

“Was Scar Boy sorry? Did he say why he kept them?”

Kanika used both hands to sift through the millet, removing pebbles as though it were a job that demanded full focus.

“Kanika?”

“Yes?”

“Miss Sweeney has the books?” Neema put her hand to her stomach, feeling it contract now that she’d been forced to turn it into a question. “Doesn’t she?”

Kanika didn’t reply.

Neema put both hands to her head and sank down on her heels. “What did Scar Boy tell you?”

“Sc—” Kanika broke off. “Taban sent me away,” she said. “He and Miss Sweeney talked alone.”

“They can’t talk alone,” Neema said reasonably. “He can’t send you away.”

Kanika shrugged—where had that shrug come from? Neema didn’t think she’d ever seen her granddaughter make that gesture before.

“So
she
got the books,” Neema said.

“I didn’t talk to Miss Sweeney about that. Matani was gone this morning, and when Miss Sweeney came back, she helped me teach.”

“She didn’t say anything?”

“She taught us songs—one about a spider, another about our ears hanging down, and tying them in a knot.” Kanika looked up at the sky and giggled.

“But she would have told you, if she didn’t get the books,” Neema said. Kanika lowered her head back into
her task. After a moment, Neema added, “Why would Scar Boy send you away?”

Kanika threw aside a handful of pebbles and stood. “
Nyanya
, I will finish this later, with your blessing. I told Wakonyo I would help her gather firewood.”

“Wakonyo?” For the first time, Neema wondered if Kanika spoke the truth. She remembered her daughter Dahira slipping away to meet the man who would later become her husband, using some story about fetching water. Neema hadn’t doubted Dahira for a moment because she’d always been so obedient. More obedient than Kanika.

But Kanika didn’t want these boys. Hadn’t she said that, not two nights ago? And Neema wanted Kanika to be out in that larger world; she knew it was right despite the ache she felt in her own chest when she thought of growing nearer to death in the void left by Kanika’s absence.

“You and Wakonyo are friends now?”

Kanika shrugged again. “We’re getting firewood.”

As she strode away, Neema noticed her granddaughter’s legs—they had become so long that the span of her steps might already equal Neema’s. In another year, Kanika would be the age that Dahira was when she’d married. Time couldn’t be restrained. Nothing should be hastened; nothing ever could be slowed.

Neema sat and picked up Kanika’s job with the millet. She liked the feel of the warm grains shifting in her palms, and the pebbles, irregular and slightly cooler. Usually she could sort millet with her eyes closed—in fact, that’s how she preferred to do it.

Now, though, she couldn’t settle her mind. It leaped from one worry to the next. She covered the millet and rose.

A white woman should not be so difficult to find in Mididima; she should stick out like a pile of glowing beach sand. But Neema wandered everywhere unsuccessfully. When she asked about Miss Sweeney, many gave her odd looks that made her uneasy and left her certain that the people of Mididima were running out of patience—but not with Scar Boy, as it should be. With the bookmobile. With Miss Sweeney.

“The white woman should leave,” one woman, Chicha, said outright. Neema waved her hand to dismiss the remark, but finally gave up the search and returned home. And there in front of the hut was Miss Sweeney, leaning back on the bag she’d brought, eyes closed.

That wouldn’t do. Neema had already stretched her patience farther than it would go, waiting to find out what happened with the books. She picked up a tin bowl and spooned
ugali
into it, allowing the spoon to bang noisily against the metal. When she turned back, Miss Sweeney’s eyes were open. “Eat now.” She handed Miss Sweeney the bowl. “Food skirted your mouth this morning.”

Miss Sweeney took the bowl without speaking and sat up. Neema squatted across from her. She waited for as long as she could. Miss Sweeney still had not taken a bite. But Neema had to speak. “The books,” she said.

Miss Sweeney looked into the bowl, then set it on the ground.

“I’ll go to him,” Neema said, suddenly loud, unable to
contain her frustration. “He is not a handful of water that can’t be grasped.”

“It won’t help.”

There were words Neema knew in English, but didn’t quite understand as they came from Miss Sweeney’s lips. So the camels wouldn’t come again? Even with Scar Boy’s books returned? No more of the books that had saved her life, that would advance her granddaughter to another, more modern place?

But why?

“Maybe the council of elders can find a way to show Mr. Abasi that we are a people of light and not darkness,” Neema said, knowing the elders would not stoop to try to persuade Mr. Abasi of anything.

“Or maybe I can convince him.”

To doubt Miss Sweeney would be rude. But Miss Sweeney had already told them that Mr. Abasi had more power than she. Mididima’s fate would lie with the librarian from Garissa, and he didn’t strike Neema as merciful.

Miss Sweeney lifted her water bottle and held it against the blue sky. She took a long sip before speaking. “Don’t worry, Neema,” she said.

More words that didn’t quite make sense.

Perhaps, at least, Neema could ease the way for her granddaughter before it was too late. “You and Kanika taught today,” she began tentatively. “You can see that she will have much to offer in the Distant City.”

Miss Sweeney said nothing. Her eyes were closed and she looked pale. She was useless right now.

“Eat,” Neema said, gently shaking Miss Sweeney’s arm. “Eat while I watch.”

Miss Sweeney opened her eyes. Neema waited until Miss Sweeney took a bite. She watched the white woman hold the pasty mixture in her mouth and then swallow it.

“More,” said Neema.

Miss Sweeney smiled. “Will you talk while I eat?”

“Of what?”

“Your life.” Miss Sweeney stirred her
ugali
. “Kanika’s mother was your only child?” she said slowly.

“No. I lost two before that,” Neema said. “Both in childbirth. It was a curse that came from sitting on a rock.” The rock her cousin sent her to, the one that did not change her enough to avoid circumcision but made it so she had trouble giving birth.

“I’m sorry,” Miss Sweeney said.

Neema waved a hand. “It was difficult then, but it’s long since I’ve thought of those two small ones. Dahira, I still miss. It comes to pass that the one who fetches water with thee is more difficult to lose than the ones who are but possibilities,” she said.

Miss Sweeney put down the bowl, but Neema lifted it and handed it to her again. She waited until Miss Sweeney took another bite. “My daughter was my mother reborn,” she said. “Both more gentle than I. I lost my mother a second time when Dahira was killed.”

Miss Sweeney took another bite and put the bowl aside. “What happened exactly?”

Neema looked away for a moment. “I don’t speak of it,” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not to spare me that I’m silent. It’s to spare Kanika.”

“Then you may be wrong.” Miss Sweeney reached out to touch Neema’s hands, as though to soften her words. She looked even wearier. “My mother kept her secrets, too, and I didn’t feel it as a gift,” she said. “I’d rather have known. It was my history as well as hers.”

Neema tipped her head and considered this pale woman before her. “Why should I burden Kanika with a sadness that doesn’t belong to her? She’ll have enough sadness of her own, finally. She doesn’t need mine.” Then Neema gestured toward the food. “Eat more.”

Miss Sweeney tipped her bowl, showing Neema that it was empty.

Neema rose, stood behind Miss Sweeney, and began to run her fingers through the white woman’s brown, curly hair. “I’m going to braid thee,” she said. Let one thing be set to order on this day of anarchy.

Miss Sweeney leaned her head back a little. “Talk while you do it? Please?”

Neema gathered the hair from the scalp, feeling its texture. It was a strain to speak English. On the other hand, the stories she’d read of others’ lives over these last few months had left her with a greater appreciation for the thread of her own life: a childhood spent at the ocean, then, as a young woman, bewitched by a man traveling from the desert, a man of beautiful skin and gleaming eyes who brought her to live among his tribe and left her too soon a widow. Through her own will, Neema had become the
only widow in Mididima to manage a family herd. She’d cared alone for her daughter and then her granddaughter. Now she was setting Kanika on a path that would gain her many stories of her own.

But soon, Neema would be leaving this place. Sudden recognition of that fact shot through her. Without the bookmobile, her time would come near again, she felt sure.

If she didn’t tell her stories now, she never would.

“A discord over water rights,” she began, speaking slowly. These were more words in English than had been required of her before. “That’s why my daughter and her husband were killed at a water pan. Our men vowed revenge. They swelled to the settlement of the other tribe. But once there, they fell weak in the face of judgment. They settled for eight cattle and four goats for my son-in-law, three cows for my daughter. Since I was caring for Kanika, I got all the animals. Not much for a daughter’s life.”

Neema had never worked with hair the texture of Miss Sweeney’s. The strands were fine; the braids slipped out easily. She would use less hair, she decided, and make the braids narrower. She moistened her fingers on her tongue and gathered the wispy curls near Miss Sweeney’s right temple.

“I did not agree with what our men did,” she said. “Compromise does not bring peace to the heart. A year after Dahira was killed, I fed one of my cows the poisonous root of the
chuchi
plant and then slaughtered it right away, so the poison would hold in the meat.”

She paused, remembering how she’d led the cow away from the settlement one early evening; drained a potful
of blood from its neck; and then, as the weakened animal lay breathing heavily, sawed beneath its chin. She remembered the immediate rush of relief that came from the act of taking another’s life, and how that release taught her something she never forgot.

Miss Sweeney stirred, tipping her head to look up at Neema. “Keep still,” Neema said, and waited for Miss Sweeney to settle herself again.

“The men wanted to know why I squandered the cow,” she went on, “but I told them what I did was within mine own basket. I went to the well where they killed my daughter, and there I gathered firewood and roasted the meat. The young girls of the tribe that slew Dahira came to fetch water, and, seeing a stranger, they fetched the young men instead.”

She’d developed a rhythm now. Her hands were moving across Miss Sweeney’s scalp like hips swaying to music, making neat rows where before there’d been a tangle. Miss Sweeney’s head was tipped back, her eyes closed.

“The men came with their ugly tones,” Neema said. “I spoke in my dead daughter’s docile voice. I said, ‘I’ve come to leave meat for a child I lost, and with your permission, I would place the offering by the well so my child could drink while eating.’ They were young. By the way I spoke the word ‘child,’ they thought I meant a little one, and they imagined they would gain more than they would lose to such a small spirit. They laughed at me, and they agreed.”

The braids were wrapped around Miss Sweeney’s head now. Neema worked on the hair that remained at the back of Miss Sweeney’s head.

“I made the meat as delicious-smelling as I could,” she said, “and then I left. It took the passing of one full moon before I heard two of them died of poisoning.”