The Camel Bookmobile (27 page)

Hovering at the door of the hut, she answered him with one step forward.

Part Six

B
eware the mosquitoes; they swarm at finales. They are present at deaths, when blood is free-flowing. They flourish at the finish of summer. They will remain, the final taunting life form hovering above the final water puddle, after the last misguided human is gone and the world has ended.

—Black preacher from Heaven’s End cult
Corner of Bourbon and Conti,
New Orleans, June 2003

The Girl

G
ERTRUDE
B
ELL WAS A GREAT WOMAN
.” K
ANIKA SPIT
onto her hand and wiped it beneath her arm before turning the page. “She went everywhere and met everyone. She climbed mountains, visited ruins, gave advice to leaders. She was a
spy
.” Kanika gave special emphasis to the last word, although she had only the vaguest idea what it meant. “There are many ways for a woman to be powerful,” she said, tapping one finger on the page. That had been a discovery. Before, she’d thought Neema’s was the only method.

Wakonyo, sitting across from Kanika, shifted impatiently. “You read so much, Kanika,” she said. After a moment she added: “But maybe that is good. It takes your attention away from here. It has not felt right here since the white woman arrived.”

Kanika shook her head. Miss Sweeney was not causing the tension in the air. Scar Boy was the problem—Scar Boy disrupting schedules, souring everyone’s mood, dominating grim talks among the elders. Kanika thought everyone in Mididima knew that by now. But she didn’t want to discuss it with Wakonyo. She sighed. “You should read this book,” she said. “A paragraph or two at a time.”

Wakonyo played with one of the braids at the back of her head. “All I want to learn to read are the signs in the Distant City.”

Kanika looked at her sharply. “You want to go there?”

“I doubt it, but I want to be able to read the signs.” Wakonyo laughed. After a moment, she added, “They say the camels will not come anymore, anyway.”

Wakonyo was fine for some conversations, and she knew how to swing her hips and extend her arms when she walked. She had a flair that Kanika lacked. Sometimes she wore her necklaces long in the back, a style that she said she’d invented and that the boys found alluring.

Some discussions, though, just weren’t worth it. Kanika stuck her face more deeply into her book. Miss Sweeney was like Gertrude Bell, a little at least. She would find a way to continue the Camel Bookmobile. And next time, Kanika had already decided, she would borrow a book about the ocean, any ocean as long as it was like the one Neema had grown up next to, one that was large enough to encompass an entire world. She wanted to read about the creatures that stuck to rocks or faded into seaweed, revealing themselves only when a swimmer got too near. She wanted to read about the currents that brought things close and then took them away again.

Wakonyo began chatting nonsense rhymes to the goats, so Kanika had to concentrate hard on the words in the book. By the time she realized someone was speaking her name, she knew it had been said more than once. She looked over her shoulder.

“What are you doing?” said Badru.

Wakonyo giggled, winked, and moved farther away.

Kanika stood up hurriedly. Why was he here, outside his home? She’d thought that if she didn’t go to Scar Boy’s hut, she wouldn’t see Badru.

But that had been a silly idea. Scar Boy was the one who stayed indoors.

He was smiling, and that startled her. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him smile. His teeth were white and small. She was determined to speak before he did, to hide her confusion. “The men are angry with your brother,” she said.

“I heard.”

“With all of you.”

He nodded.

“I don’t know what they’ll do.” Her voice, to her ears, sounded too concerned. She took a step backwards. “Probably not much, in the end,” she added with exaggerated indifference. “That’s what Neema says.” She didn’t mention that Neema disapproved of leniency toward Scar Boy, that Neema favored a stern punishment and “repentance.”

Kanika tucked her book under her arm in a gesture of finality. She turned slightly, but didn’t walk away. Badru looked at his feet, giving her a second to study him. His skin reflected the light, making its darkness richer and deeper. It was the same color as the ocean’s depth, Kanika thought.

“How’s your brother?” she asked, mainly because nothing else came to mind.

“You’ve not been to see him,” Badru said.

Kanika felt her cheeks grow hot. She knew Scar Boy
had been drawing pictures of her. Miss Sweeney told her. Kanika wondered if Badru knew, if he’d seen the sketches.

“Is that why you came?” she asked. “To tell me to go see him?”

“No,” he said, his tone surprised, but she’d already begun walking then, not away from Mididima, not toward it, but parallel to the cluster of homes and people, the core of what she knew. She moved quickly. Badru caught up with her in two long steps. He matched his pace to hers.

“I heard from Wakonyo that you might go away.”

“I might,” she said, wondering when Wakonyo had spoken of this to Badru.

“What would you do?”

“Learn to teach.”

“You already know how to do that.” She looked quickly to see if he teased her. “Will you teach me to read?” he asked.

“Me?”

“I can’t learn from Matani.”

She walked a few more steps, conscious of the sensation of mosquitoes buzzing in her stomach, exactly what she felt before the bookmobile came. “If you want,” she said.

“Would you come back?” he said. “Like Matani did?”

She stopped and faced him. “It’s too early for these questions. I’m not even sure I’ll go yet.”

He smiled. “Kanika,” he said after a moment, “why don’t you ever come to the dances? Whoever walks can dance; whoever talks can sing. You know about the dances, don’t you?”

Of course she knew. Some evenings she’d even imag
ined what it would be like to slip outside the thornbushes that wrapped around Mididima and join his peers as they pounded on drums borrowed from the
kilinge
and sang their own songs, different from the grown-up songs, and danced as long as the moon floated across the sky. Why hadn’t she ever gone? Because Neema didn’t want her to be ordinary? Unfair. She hadn’t wanted that, either.

“They’re fun,” he said. “Wakonyo goes.”

She knew they danced at the farthest water pan, where the children sometimes took the goats. There was a fire pit, and a hut. She thought about Badru there. The adults were a little afraid of him, because he was Scar Boy’s brother, and because he carried a kind of fierceness about him. But he was popular among the young. He was probably one who led the chants, in fact. She imagined the flames playing off Badru’s face, and Wakonyo watching him sing, Wakonyo swaying with her necklaces down her back. It gave her a strange feeling, as if something inside her were unraveling, or as if she’d thought she had finished a chore and had then discovered it undone.

“I have to go,” she said. “Miss Sweeney is leaving today. I’ve made a goats’ hair bracelet to give her and the children are—” She broke off, then started again. “I have to go.” She turned away.

“I’ll come to you tomorrow,” he called.

That stopped her. “What for?” she asked.

He pointed at the book still clamped beneath her arm. “To begin to learn to read.”

The Teacher

T
HE SURPRISE OF IT, THE UNEXPECTEDNESS, THE SHOCK
, actually, like a rare cold morning. He hadn’t planned on any of it.

And the magic, each framed by the other: dark on light on dark. The sweetness that freed something that he’d been holding tight for weeks, months, maybe longer. For a moment, he was afraid he might weep.

She saw it, and touched the bone beneath his right eye.
What?

He shook his head without answering.

But she wouldn’t let him stay silent. Nothing, in fact, could have prepared him for how she made him speak. With Jwahir, all had been restrained, reined in, even his breathing; he hadn’t known any other way. With Miss Sweeney, the words came spilling out even as their bodies neared and merged, making everything that happened between them exotic, slower, more intense. The words took on a dreamlike quality, blending and then leaking through the walls of the hut. He imagined those words rolling over in the dust, traveling in every direction until they met again in her country, on the other side of the world.

When you touch me there…
She sucked in her breath, then stopped and traced his eyebrows with a finger.

He stroked her neck, diving below the collarbone.
And there
. She kissed his fingers.
Why do you like to teach?

He stared at her, making himself focus for a heartbeat. “The speed of their minds.” His own mind was slowing.

She met his rib cage.
Your mouth, your tongue
. She arched away, then stretched forward to murmur in his ear.
What made your father brave enough to leave here?

“His grandfather’s spirit told him to go.”

Their feet entwined, and the sight of them joined startled him anew. Before he could get used to it, she had another question.
And if you could go anywhere, where?

He hesitated longer over this answer. “Perhaps your America.” He raked his spread fingers down toward her thighs and then up again.

Then, as she inhaled in musical gasps,
Will you sing for me? One of your songs
.

“Sing? Now?”

Yes
.

“I need,” he said, the words halting. He concentrated. “I need someone to echo.”

Shuddering slightly, she pushed him away, slowing her own breath so speech could come, her tone determined.
Do it in English. I’ll echo.

His laughter came out large and loose, as unfamiliar to his own ears as weeping would have been. “Many of ours are made up on the spot. Let me see if I can do it.” He shook his head to clear it and then used his thigh as a drum.

“Gather, people, and listen to me,” he sang, and she echoed.

We met beneath an unlikely sky; let the sun stay down.

The earth divided to make a path; let the sun stay down.

Now the taste of honeyed rain; let the sun stay down.

Will linger always on our tongues; keep the sun down.

When he got to the last line, she held still a moment, then started touching him from the top again, his eyelashes, his cheeks, his shoulders. This time, she was silent until he rose above and parted her. Then her words were jagged.

Drinking honeyed rain.

In all the topics they touched on, before and during and afterward, they did not speak of the future. Not any part of it. Neither of them asked or offered what would happen next—to the Camel Bookmobile, to Mididima, to them. Matani was glad for that. He didn’t want to try to explain how the fear of coming drought made his tribe harsher. In other places, places not so far away, people spoke about the weather in casual tones. Rain came, or it didn’t; an event was delayed; a man took off a garment, or maybe added one. In Mididima, after too many cloudless seasons people began to droop with the certainty that they were being punished. The old men set out on long treks across the bush and up into the mountains to get closer to the Hundred-Legged One and beg forgiveness, while those who stayed behind tried to settle on what precisely had to be forgiven. The books, Scar Boy, Matani himself—who knew when the suspicions would end this time, or where the
blame would finally land? And while they debated, Matani knew, the ground as far as one could see would relentlessly turn the washed-out color of a white man’s skin, and the animals would be the first to die.

How could he talk to her about that? Not now, when they were squeezing the last bit of preciousness from the day.

Then he didn’t even think of it anymore. It disappeared—the dry dust, the vacant sky, the ruined books, the son he’d wanted. All of Mididima. He found that he didn’t miss it.

The Hundred-Legged One betrayed him, bringing morning’s rays too soon, the light buzzing with warning. He held her hands in his, kissed each palm. On the way back, they paused at the monkey tree. He took her arm to stop her, and touched the center of her chest above her heart. “I was here,” he said.

Then she went to Neema’s hut, he to the
kilinge
. He heard no noise from within, so he was startled to find Jwahir’s father there. He wasn’t ready for this, not yet. But he had nowhere else to go. He steeled himself for the lengthy greeting.

But Jwahir’s father simply looked at Matani’s feet, his legs, and then his eyes. “Scar Boy’s books,” he said.

“Yes, they’re gone.” Matani sat to rest his legs and arms. Before, he wouldn’t have said it so baldly. He would have found a way to soften it.

Jwahir’s father paced. “I didn’t want to believe until I heard it from you,” he said, and Matani could tell by the iciness of his gaze that he was trying to decide where to place blame. “Gone forever?”

Matani nodded. “Scar Boy tore out some pages, drew on others.”

“Did you tell him the rules?” Jwahir’s father asked.

“Of course,” Matani said.

“Then, what—”

“None of us could have known what he was doing.” Matani hesitated, making Jwahir’s father wait, wanting to appear more reluctant than he was. “None except his father,” he said.

“Abayomi.” After a moment, Jwahir’s father turned toward the fire. “The elders have gone, but I don’t think they will be able to persuade the rains to come this time,” he said. “The foreign woman leaves today. After that, we have work to do.”

“Of course.”

“Now I’m sure your wife awaits you.”