Walking Home (13 page)

“I was told of the plan, but it is not right to separate family,” he said.

“Do you …? Do you think that perhaps you could …?”

“Ask that they reconsider their plan?”

I nodded.

“I could ask, but my words would fall on deaf ears. I am merely a sergeant. Besides, the chairman looks at me and sees not a soldier but a Kalenjin, and he is Kikuyu. He will not change because of my words.”

“Then there is no choice.”

He looked at me hard, as if he were trying to look inside my mind.

“I hear your words agreeing to this, but I am not sure I believe them. The boy I know—the one who has cared for his mother and sister all this time—would not so easily agree. You have something else in mind, I think.”

I wanted to lie, but even more I needed to trust somebody and he was all I had.

“In the morning I will leave the camp with my sister. We will go to the village of my mother, to the village of her family.
Our
family.”

He shook his head. “You cannot do that.”

“I have no choice. I cannot allow my sister to be taken away.”

“No, you should not allow her to be taken, but you cannot wait until morning. By then it will be too late. I have been told that the matron from the children’s residence will be here at first light to take your sister.”

“But … but …” I buried my head in my hands. “I do not know what to do.”

He bent down until I could sense that his face was right beside mine—I could feel his breath. “You will not wait for morning. You will leave now.”

“But the gate is closed. No one is allowed to leave. Are you going to let us leave?”

“I cannot let you out in front of other soldiers or I will be punished.”

“I don’t want you to be punished.”

“And I do not want you or your sister to be punished either. You will not leave through the gate. You will leave through the back. There is a spot where you can squeeze under the fence.”

“
Under
? But how can I find that spot?”

“You will find it because I will be there to show you.” He got up. “You must gather your things and then go to the back of the camp. I will be waiting outside the fence at the correct spot. Do you know where you are going?”

“To the back fence,” I said, puzzled.

“I meant after you leave the camp. Do you know the way to travel?”

“To Nairobi, then to Machakos and finally to Kikima.”

“That is far, but it can be done,” he said. “You must be strong and you must be brave.”

I didn’t feel either strong or brave, but what choice did I have?

“You need to move quietly in the camp. You cannot be discovered as you leave or they will stop you.”

I suddenly felt a rush of emotions swelling up inside of me—fear, uncertainty and, strangest of all, hope. I wasn’t going to let anybody stop me. I would do whatever needed to be done. Maybe I was stronger and braver than I thought.

M
y sister had a blanket draped around her shoulders. Not only did it provide her with warmth against the cold air, but it was dark red and so it would also help her blend into the night. I had a second blanket tied off in a knot and inside was everything we would take—the pot, our supply of food, three bowls and three spoons. I knew we didn’t need the third bowl and spoon, but they had belonged to my mother and I couldn’t bear to leave them behind. They were all we had left of her.

Everything was in that little bundle—everything except the water container, which was too big and heavy, and the little knife. I’d wrapped the knife in a piece of cloth and then tucked it into the belt of my trousers. I wanted to have it close if I needed it, but I couldn’t think of much that could be solved by my
little knife. I just wished Jomo had left me his machete. That would have been something.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“I want to sleep more.”

“There’s no time for sleep. We have to leave now.”

“Why?”

What was I supposed to say to her? She didn’t know the reason we had to leave.

“Um, I can see it best at night—the string.”

“Really?”

“The string seems to reflect the soft glow of the moonlight even better than it does the bright rays of the sun.”

“Does that mean we have to travel only at night?” she asked.

I hadn’t thought of her asking that. What was I going to answer? “Um, right now we are very far away from where we are going, so the string is very thin. As we get closer, I’ll be able to see it by sunlight.”

I threw the bundled blanket over my shoulder and picked up the water container. It was full, which made it heavy, but there was no telling where or when we would find clean water.

“It is time to go.”

I offered my sister my hand and helped her to her feet. She stood up, leaving the cot empty. It seemed strange to think that my mother wasn’t there, lying
hidden in the shadows. We were leaving her behind just as we had left our father behind in Eldoret. Just as we’d left behind our grandparents and aunt and uncle and cousins. They were all gone. It was just me and my sister moving forward.

The air outside the tent was cool and quiet. Everybody was asleep, and all was still. Even the wind seemed to have stopped, as if it were waiting for what we were going to do. Carefully I did up the buckles to seal the tent closed. I was hoping that when they came in the morning, they would think we were still asleep and perhaps not enter as soon, and that would give us a little more time to escape.

“Do not be afraid,” I said.

“I am not,” she replied. “I am with you.”

That made me smile. She trusted me. I just hoped that trust was justified. And I hoped even more that she couldn’t sense the fear inside me.

“We want to move as quietly as possible,” I said. “We don’t want to wake anybody up. That would not be
polite
.”

“I will be as quiet as a mouse.”

We started off, and then I stopped and turned around. Even a few steps away, our tent seemed different now. It was the same as all the other tents in the camp, and it would soon be occupied by another family. It would no longer belong to us—it no longer belonged
to us now. All it held was a bed—just a simple cot and a mattress. Would the bed even remember that we were once there? Silly. It was just wood and stuffing and cloth sheltered underneath a piece of canvas. None of those could remember or forget.

But
we
could remember. Jata and I could remember our time here, our mother, our father, what had happened to us and where we had come from. We could not forget our lives in Eldoret, but now we were setting out to do something more—we would return to where our mother had come from. Even though we’d never been there we were going to be walking home.

“Why are we waiting?” Jata asked.

I couldn’t tell her what I was thinking. “I was just waiting for a cloud to pass overhead,” I said, gesturing to the sky, “so that the light from the moon will show me the way. Do you see the string now?”

She seemed to be straining her eyes, tilting her head slightly, looking for the string that would guide us. “I think I see it.”

“I can definitely see it,” I said. “Strange, though—it is leading us away from the front gate.”

“It is? Before you said it went through the front gate.”

“Before it did, but now it doesn’t. Just keep holding my hand and I’ll keep my eye on it.”

She tightened her grip on my hand and I squeezed hers a little tighter too. I was never going to let go of
her, not ever. She was all I had left and I was all she had left, and nobody was going to separate us.

Carefully I chose our route. I wanted to stay away from the administrative tent in case I ran into somebody who knew us. I was sure the chairperson was asleep—did he even sleep in the camp?—but we were known by other people. I didn’t want to be asked any questions that I couldn’t answer. As well, I wanted to stay away from the hospital. My fear wasn’t just that some of the nurses might recognize us, but that we might see something we shouldn’t. How would Jata react if she saw them moving our mother’s body? It was in the middle of the night when I’d seen them throw those other bodies into the back of the lorry. I couldn’t think about them doing that with her. I couldn’t.

The nurse at the hospital had told me that our mother would be “laid to rest” at a cemetery they’d created outside the camp. She’d also told me that family members weren’t allowed at the burials. All goodbyes had to be said there at the hospital. So that’s what we’d done, leaving her in that bed.

“Is everybody asleep?” Jata asked now.

“Almost the
whole
world is asleep.”

“Is Mommy sort of asleep?”

I felt my heart rise up into my throat. “It’s like being asleep but never waking up again.”

“
Never
?”

I shook my head. “She’s with our father. She’s at peace now and has been reunited with him. We are doing what she wanted us to do. We’re following the string.”

“And you can see it?”

“It’s faint but I can see it. It’s leading us to the fence at the back of the camp.”

“Are we going to climb the fence, Muchoki?”

“It’s too high to climb, and anyway the razor wire at the top would stop us,” I said.

“Then what will we do?”

“There will be a way. The string will lead us. Just have faith, okay?”

She nodded. It was important that she have faith so she didn’t have fear. I didn’t want to lie to her, but the truth wasn’t as secure or as certain. The truth was far from either of those. I wished I had somebody who would lie to me so I didn’t feel the fear and the uncertainty.

“There’s the fence,” Jata said.

We were coming up to the edge of the camp. The wire of the fence glistened, catching the rays of the moon the way I’d described the string reflecting the light. Now, I saw the fence differently than I had before. Rather than a ring of protection, keeping us safe from the outside world, it was a barrier standing in our way. What would we do if the sergeant wasn’t there? Would I be able to find the one place where we could squeeze under the fence? Surely we couldn’t climb it, and I had
nothing to cut it with. In fact, the only tools I had were those three spoons and my knife. A shovel would have been better, but if I really needed to, I’d just take that little knife and one of the spoons and dig my way underneath. I wasn’t going to be stopped before we had even started. Not by the chairman and not by a fence.