The Camel Bookmobile (21 page)

“How?”

“A gun. The first our tribe had ever seen. He traded two cows for it. And today he’s honored for this. He is among our sacred ancestors. He righted a wrong.”

“If you believe the matter was set right, why would this lead to the drought?”

“The punishment came too late,” Matani said. “By the time the man was dead, the drought had already bared its claws and taken hold.”

“What happened to the woman?” Miss Sweeney asked after a pause.

“She was not held blameless. Her life, too, became misery. Eventually she offered herself to a passing tribe and left.”

Miss Sweeney still had half of her bread left. She set it down on a square of cloth spread on the ground.

“And you,” she said. “What do you think causes drought?”

Matani hesitated. “I’m a modern man,” he said. “Still, I
struggle with this. I cannot fully discount the idea that our misdeeds can cause catastrophes of all sorts.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. He watched Miss Sweeney push her fingers through her hair. She had so many questions, more questions than he ever knew one person could pose. The people of Mididima, it occurred to him, didn’t have that much to ask about. Some had wanted to know of Nairobi—or the Distant City, as they insisted on calling it. But a sentence or two usually satisfied their curiosity. And in school, the children sometimes asked questions, although just as often, he got wandering eyes and silent tongues. In general, none of his neighbors seemed to dream of elsewhere. By adulthood, they were instilled with a confidence that there existed no important knowledge they didn’t already have.

He was curious, though. He was curious, for instance, about Miss Sweeney.

“Of all the places you might have gone,” he said, “why here? Why Africa?”

She didn’t answer immediately. A mixture of expressions crossed her face at such speed that he wished to stop and freeze each one until he could decipher them. “I believed the bookmobile could change lives in settlements like this,” she said finally. “I still believe that. But it was personal, too. I knew something existed beyond my world, something important. Like a flavor I had to taste if I wanted to be fully alive.”

Her words stilled the breath within him. He thought he understood precisely what she meant. Matani had known, even as a boy, that he would follow his father’s path and
study in Nairobi as his father had done. He’d also known he would return home to help his tribe, as his father had done. But Nairobi had shown him that there was much to experience beyond Mididima. This was the dream he nurtured for his son. His son would study in Nairobi, too. But he’d made a private vow: his son would not return to the arid desert, where there was rarely enough food and never enough water, where a man could not rise in the middle of the night to turn on a light and sit in a comfortable chair and read. His son would stay beyond Mididima, and taste the world.

Miss Sweeney stood. “Scar Boy,” she said.

So lost was he in his own thoughts about his own son that Matani felt momentarily confused.

“Let’s walk first,” she said. “And then we’ll go reclaim those books.”

Of course. She wasn’t here to talk to him and rescue calves. She was here, this woman who listened so intently, for the library books. She was here and soon she would leave.

The Girl

B
ADRU GREETED HER AT THE DOOR
. T
HAT TOOK HER ABACK
. Without thinking about it, she’d expected Scar Boy to be alone. That’s how she always saw Scar Boy—alone. But, then, she’d never come during the day before.

“Kanika,” Badru said. He breathed her name in a way that irritated her. She felt as if flies covered her body or mosquitoes hovered over her head.

She knew Badru, of course, but she’d never paid him any attention. Now she saw he looked as Scar Boy might have if a hyena hadn’t attacked him. His skin was the shiny warm brown of dampened soil. He had wide shoulders—in fact, she thought they were the widest of anyone in the tribe except Scar Boy. His cheekbones were high and defined, his eyes clear. His lips jutted forward, glossy as though they’d been polished. She stared at them a moment, rotating her face a little to see if she could pick out her reflection the way she did in Miss Sweeney’s mirror.

He shifted on his feet, waiting, unsmiling.

“I’m here to speak with your brother,” she said.

He didn’t move to the side. “My father told us no one should come in while he was gone.”

She laughed, to put Badru in his place. “He didn’t mean me,” she said.

Badru didn’t contradict her, but he didn’t move. Had she and Badru ever even spoken before? If so, she couldn’t recall. Now she got the sense that he was as stingy with words as Scar Boy.

“Your brother would want to talk to me,” she said.

“Let her in,” came Scar Boy’s voice.

Badru eyed her a moment more, searchingly, from head to foot, and then stepped aside. Kanika gave him a look that she’d give one of the kids who wasn’t trying during school time—though they mostly tried with her.

Scar Boy was sitting on a grass mat, straight-backed. It startled her to realize she’d never been in his hut before—they always met outside. It was messy, she saw. Metal bowls tossed in one corner, clothes into another, nothing neat. The books could be under any pile. Abayomi should have remarried. Kanika couldn’t think of another man who’d lost a wife and hadn’t.

Scar Boy grinned at her and then, glancing at Badru, closed down his smile. “Hello,” he said.

She sat before him. “I came as soon as I could get away. It’s important.”

“Badru,” he said, dismissal in his voice. Kanika did not turn to look at Badru. She watched only Scar Boy’s face.

“You need someone with you,” Badru said. “Both of you do.”

He was right, Kanika knew. It was taboo for a young couple to be alone together in a hut. Though she couldn’t imagine that anyone would suspect Scar Boy of being
part of a “couple,” Badru was nevertheless trying to save his younger brother from any possible accusations. Badru’s point was reasonable, so why did he make Kanika feel so prickly?

Scar Boy hesitated, then nodded. He turned his attention toward Kanika.

“They’ve begun wearing amulets for rain,” she said. “Two of the elders are traveling to Mount Surina for special prayers.”

“Superstition,” Scar Boy said. “You don’t believe that?”

“Don’t you?” she asked. “But never mind. It doesn’t matter what we believe. If it gets even a little drier, they are going to want to find something—someone—to blame.”

Scar Boy looked at the wall to his left as if words were written there. “Maybe there
is
something that punishes,” he said. “Something evil and half-alive that strikes down little children or pregnant mothers. But a specific human sin that blows away the rain clouds…” He paused, and shook his head.

“I don’t want them to blame you,” Kanika said. “You have to give back the books. Now it’s not only for me.”

He reached out his hand as though to touch hers, then pulled it away. “You think of me,” he said softly.

“Of course I do,” she said, letting her voice snap. There would be no show of warmth, not with Badru listening to every word. Besides, somehow Scar Boy had turned her kindness into permission to act ridiculous. “I think of you,” she said, “and I think of me and I think of the whole tribe.”

Scar Boy was looking at her with something soft and
aching in his gaze. Whatever it was, she didn’t want it. She stood up and allowed her voice to go cold. “Give back the books.” Then she turned to Badru. “That’s all I wanted to say to your brother. I’ll leave now. And you can go back to guarding the door.”

Badru shifted. “You and I,” he said. “We used to play together. When we were little.”

“I don’t remember,” she said, her words clipped where his were slow.

“That’s only because you were littler than me,” he said. “You liked it. You liked playing with me.”

She understood suddenly why Badru irritated her so. In his glance, his tone, he seemed to speak of intimacy between them. No one else dared look at her like that, not even Scar Boy.

“I don’t remember,” she repeated.

“You used to climb on my back,” he said, “and I’d take you for rides. You squealed, I remember that. I bet if you think about it, you’ll remember too.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You will.” He touched her arm lightly, his expression serious. And then, standing there facing the door with her back to Scar Boy, she felt something run between them, something she couldn’t name because she’d never felt it before. It was elusive, like a blast of hot wind or grass brushing against her leg. It confused her.

She pushed it away, whatever it was, and half closed her eyes as she stepped out the door, so she didn’t see him. She ran directly into Abayomi, her head bumping into his chest.

Abayomi looked even more startled than she. He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Kanika,” he said. “Are you fine? What scared you?”

Kanika didn’t answer. Let Scar Boy and his brother say what they wanted. Before she left, though, she looked directly into his face. She wanted him to see there was no apology there. As she looked, she saw where Badru came from. Abayomi’s lips had the same shape; his eyes had the same color and were just as wide. Only—and here came the unbidden thought—only he wasn’t quite as beautiful.

She would not, she vowed silently, come back to see Scar Boy during the day again.

The American

T
HE WALK HAD STRETCHED ON
. T
HEY’D BEEN TALKING
almost as much as breathing, in fact, for most of the afternoon, a patchwork of overlapping topics. When they paused near the monkey tree, she asked him about his mother. She didn’t know where the question came from, exactly, and he hesitated before answering. The heat that had been pressing down on their heads and shoulders was just beginning to lift.

“All I know about her is a green fabric with red flowers,” he said.

Something in his face reminded her of the fleeting scent of honeysuckle. It made her want to take that moment and hold it. She stayed very still.

“When I was little,” he said, “my father would pull out that material from where he kept it wrapped and stored in a corner. He would lay it on his lap and smooth it with his hands. Sometimes he would hold it to his face.”

Then he grew silent, and she waited a long time; she waited until she was afraid he had stopped on this topic for good. “Did you ever find out…” She let her words trail off.

“It was my mother’s, but more than that, he never told
me. I wanted more; I wanted a memory of my mother, since I had none of my own. But my father said memories made it harder.”

“Harder,” she said, “but sweeter at the same time.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.” She was thinking of her own mother and her father. Of the memories she had and the memories that, like Matani, she had been denied. She put her hand on the trunk of the monkey tree, which felt surprisingly cool despite the heat. “After today, I think I should carve ‘I was here.’” He looked puzzled. “It’s what people do sometimes. Graffiti, it’s called. They make their mark on a special place, and it’s the bridge that connects them to everyone else who comes by later.”

“It’s a nice custom.”

She laughed. “They don’t always think so in my country. There are laws against it.”

He smoothed the tree trunk with his hand. “Come,” he said finally. “I’m going to show you a plant that repels
mbu.
Juice-drainers. What you call mosquitoes. Kanika told me you brought a net.”

He led her just beyond the huts to a group of small, grayish plants that grew close to the ground. The leaves were the size of thumbs, and nearly as fat. He pinched off half a dozen. “Put out your arm,” he said, so she did, and he broke the leaves, one at a time, to release the liquid within, and stroked in long sweeps, his dark fingers moving from her shoulders to her wrists and back up again. She watched him while he worked, his concentrated face, the rhythm of his hands. The moisture from the leaves cooled her skin,
made it tingle. He put some on her shoulders, and then her neck, moving her hair to one side.

“I smell like onion,” she said, laughing.

“But now you won’t need the net.”

“I’ve learned something new.”

“I’ve thought before,” he said, smiling, “that the teaching must go both ways.”

They walked to Scar Boy’s hut, falling silent, a little awkwardly—the way people can, Fi thought, after they’ve shared some unexpected intimacy and aren’t sure how it’s changed them. But of course, this intimacy had changed nothing. Within an hour, Fi would have the books. Tomorrow morning she would watch Matani teach again, and maybe even help—she’d been imagining taking the kids through a rendition of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” Then the next day, she would leave.

Matani called out as they reached Scar Boy’s hut. The man who greeted them at the door was surprisingly muscular; his arms were those of a laborer, and Fi realized she’d become accustomed to the typical lean Mididima body type.

“Taban’s father, Abayomi,” Matani told her. And then she heard Matani pronounce her own name.

As Matani spoke, Abayomi kept shifting, looking at his feet, then his hands, then up into Matani’s face, then away again. First thing, Fi decided, she would tell him not to worry, that it was no one’s fault, these things happened. That in America, patrons sometimes built up enormous fines before the library finally revoked their cards, only here the supply of books was so meager, the possibility of col
lecting fines so unlikely, that they’d decided on a stricter policy—too strict, in truth.

But when Matani paused in his speech for a moment, Abayomi blurted out a few words in a rush. Matani shook his head and gestured toward her. Abayomi spoke again and Fi, without knowing the meaning, could hear the insistence.

“He wants to speak with me alone a moment,” Matani said. “I’m sorry. Our people are not accustomed to strangers. I’ll be back quickly.”