The Camel Bookmobile Page 18

  Jwahir did not meet Leta’s gaze as she rose. “We’ve time for milk?”

  Leta studied her friend. “You slept poorly,” she said. “Perhaps you have something small and warm within?” She touched Jwahir’s belly and smiled.

  Jwahir went out to the goats. Her body, which had been so fluid deep into the night, felt stiff now. Leta followed.

  Jwahir hesitated in front of a goat. “I remember…” she said.

  “What?”

  “I remember loving Matani like a fire burning.”

  Leta said nothing, but gently pushed Jwahir aside with her shoulder and took over the job of milking the goat into a cup, her long arms moving gracefully despite the bundle attached to her chest.

  “Every drop of blood in my body felt alive,” Jwahir said. She squatted heavily. “I used to think I could die watching his face as he spoke. He had passion.”

  “He still does,” Leta said evenly.

  Jwahir rubbed sleep from her eyes. “Yes, but mostly about why we have to be educated in this other, trivial way.”

  “And about having a child, I believe.” Leta finished with the milking and gave the cup to Jwahir. “Drink.”

  Jwahir took a deep swallow. “Even from the beginning, when his talk enchanted me,” she said, “I wasn’t sure I believed. At first I thought he wanted our people to gain this skill so they could get jobs that earned cash. A practical reason. I thought even my own father might grow to accept that idea.”

  “Your father!” Leta shook her head. She took the empty cup from Jwahir and drew more milk from a goat.

  “But it wasn’t for cash,” Jwahir went on. “Matani wanted the books for their own sake. He insisted that this Camel Library come, Leta. Insisted. So what results is his own doing.” She stared at her friend as if daring a contradiction, and then handed Leta the cup.

  “It’s not his fault that Scar Boy is as he is,” Leta said. “Matani shouldn’t be blamed for that.”

  “I’m not speaking of Taban.”

  Leta looked into her cup of milk. “Jwahir, I’ve meant to tell you. I’ve begun to learn to read.”

  “Leta, Matani didn’t come home last night.”

  Leta glanced up sharply. “Well, even the great Matani chews too much khat one evening,” she said after a moment. “Maybe we should go round him up.”

  “I didn’t want him to come home.”

  Leta rocked the cup with a circular motion, making the milk rotate. “And what,” she asked lightly, “has he done to annoy you?”

  “Annoy!” Jwahir tossed her shoulders. “It’s not such a light thing. I love—” Leta’s baby began fussing and Jwahir’s voice, which had started out strong, suddenly became quieter. “Someone else,” she said, so softly she was sure Leta couldn’t have heard over the infant’s squall.

  Leta rose, bouncing her baby. “She never wakes at this time,” she said. “The mood in Mididima is odd today.” She whispered to the baby, unintelligible words that Jwahir knew were a blessing from the ancestors.

  Within a moment, the baby quieted again. Leta remained standing. “Jwahir,” she said, “watch that you don’t get tangled in your own nonsense.”

  Jwahir hated Leta’s condescending tone. She wanted to shake her, to hurt her. “You can be so infuriating,” she said.

  “Me?”

  Jwahir paced around the goat, her body suddenly full of excess passion. “You remember when I was pregnant, and I told you I felt something wrong with the babe.”

  “It was a hard quarrel between us.”

  “But you finally agreed to help me end it. You brought me the anchi.” Jwahir remembered swallowing the ground tuber that the women gave cows that had just birthed calves. It helped the animals expel the placenta. She’d heard the women whisper that anchi would also end a pregnancy. None had whispered, though, about how much it would hurt—the cramps that doubled her over from one evening to the next afternoon, even after the unborn child inside her had fled.

  Leta’s face was downcast. “Why bring that up now?”

  “I lied,” Jwahir said, giving each word its own weight.

  “I know.” Leta looked unhappier. “I still wish you hadn’t hidden your pregnancy from Matani.”

  “I don’t mean to Matani. I lied to you.”

  “What?”

  “I never thought anything was wrong with the baby,” Jwahir said. “I just didn’t want a baby. Don’t want one.”

  “To me?” Leta turned abruptly and walked once around Jwahir’s hut, eyes lowered, stroking her infant’s head. When she returned, she stopped in front of Jwahir. She sighed, a heavy sound intended to show that she’d worked hard to regain her patience, and then she spoke. “Everyone fears motherhood,” she said, her voice tight but resigned. “It’s not so scary once it happens. In fact, your life feels—”

  “Fear?” Jwahir snorted. “I’m not afraid. I don’t want my breasts to lose their stuffing and grow flat, Leta. I don’t want my face to wrinkle from worry. I don’t want your intimacy with exhaustion.”

  Now that she had Leta’s attention, now she would speak her full truth. She stomped her foot, an involuntary gesture that she immediately regretted because of its childishness. “I love Abayomi,” she said loudly, relieved to have said it.

  Leta’s mouth fell open, and Jwahir was briefly gratified to see that her news brought surprise. Then Leta shook her head scornfully. “Abayomi? He’s an old man.”

  “Your husband is only ten years younger.”

  “Abayomi is of another age group,” Leta said. “He makes drums that talk, but he doesn’t know how to talk himself. He will soon bore you. Why would you want him instead of Matani?”

  “He talks to me.”

  “When have you even—?”

  “When the Camel Bookmobile is here.”

  Leta took a step toward Jwahir, reached out a hand as though to shake her by the shoulder, and then let it drop to her side. “Do you really want to shame Matani in this way? Do you want to risk the penalty you will face for shaming Matani?” She shook her head. “I hope for your sake that whatever you have done can be reversed.”

  The two women stared at one another a moment. “We are the last of this, you know,” Jwahir said. “Soon women will know it is not family that is sacred, but their own lives.”

  Leta made a low, scornful sound. “That which eats you up is in your own clothing, Jwahir. It’s always been that way with you.”

  “No. I’ve grown up since I married Matani. Abayomi and I understand each other.”

  Leta laughed. “I can imagine the language you and Abayomi speak. The talk of honeyed rain.”

  Jwahir covered her ears. “I’ve been loyal to you forever. Why can’t you do the same now?”

  Leta pulled Jwahir’s hands from her ears. “You favor tradition when it suits you to speak against the library, and oppose tradition when you think you want some other man.”

  “They are two different things.”

  “You’ve the heart of a chanter who loves one song at sunup and another at sundown,” Leta said. “Don’t you see that both are part of the same day?”

  “No,” Jwahir said. But her voice sounded flat, even to her own ears. She was suddenly tired. So this is what she would face, just a taste of what would rain down on her. She turned away from Leta, putting the last of her energy into her voice. “I’m done with this discussion,” she said. “The goats wait. Let’s go.”

  Those, she vowed, would be the last words she would ever speak to her childhood friend.

  The Girl

  KANIKA WOKE IN A FOG. THE SKY WAS CLOUDLESS, THE COLOR of ash, and her step felt less solid than it should, as if she might at any moment stumble. As if somehow during the night, she’d lost track of herself. Kanika who? That feeling stuck tight as she prepared a bowl of boiled maize and handed it to Miss Sweeney. It stayed as she felt Miss Sweeney’s hand at her back, and even as Miss Sweeney began to speak, so it wasn’t until a request had been made and repeated, until Miss
Sweeney lingered, waiting for a reply, that Kanika became alert enough to try to remember what had just been said.

  “But now? You don’t want to wait for Matani?”

  Miss Sweeney looked into her bowl with an indecipherable intensity. “I…” She hesitated before finishing. “I think he’s busy this morning.”

  “Oh, no, Miss Sweeney. He’d want to go with you.” Kanika stopped, knowing the implication was that she did not. “I’ll find him,” she said after a moment, and turned eagerly to search for Matani, so that she wouldn’t need to visit Scar Boy’s home today.

  “Wait, Kanika.”

  There was a curious urgency in Miss Sweeney’s voice that caused Kanika to stop. For the first time, it occurred to her that perhaps Neema was right. Maybe there were cultural differences that were not translatable, that were in fact irresolvable. Maybe she shouldn’t go to the Distant City after all—the strength of that unexpected thought surprised her.

  “He was—he was ill last night,” Miss Sweeney said. “Perhaps he sleeps in today. So I’d rather—won’t you take me?”

  Kanika looked at the cooking fire and imagined pieces of herself drifting away with the smoke. What could she say except yes?

  “You’ll finish eating first?” she asked. Miss Sweeney nodded, leaving Kanika relieved to have even a brief respite.

  Kanika went back inside, ran her fingers over the hair braided close to her scalp, and straightened the necklaces that rested on her collarbone. She picked up Miss Sweeney’s gift, the mirror, and studied her eyes—one, then the other. She had never examined herself like this before. Instead of looking to see what she would find in herself, she was trying to catch a glimpse of what someone else would see.

  She heard her grandmother behind her. “I’m glad you go with Miss Sweeney,” Neema said. “A fly with no one to advise it follows the corpse into the grave. But you’ll be able to talk with Scar Boy. You’ll get the books from the boy.”

  The unnatural shine in her grandmother’s stare surprised her. “He’s not a boy anymore,” Kanika said lightly.

  “Truer than you know. And the right word from you will be sharper than a razor.” Neema pushed Kanika out the door. “Go,” she said. “Swallow nothing from him.”

  When Kanika and Miss Sweeney got to Scar Boy’s home, no one greeted them at the door. That meant that Badru was not home. Scar Boy was alone. Kanika felt instantly more relaxed. “Ayayaalaa,” she sang out playfully as they entered, letting her voice roll over the sounds as if she were chanting within the sacred enclosure.

  Scar Boy did not look lighthearted. He didn’t even greet them. He sat on his mat, eyes downcast, hands limp in his lap. He must have heard them coming and guessed their purpose. How could he not? Kanika had warned him over and again that he had to turn in the books. She looked around, imagining for a second that the books would be sitting somewhere, one stacked atop the other, waiting. What were they again, these books Scar Boy was so reluctant to relinquish? One about other peoples’ religions, she thought, though she couldn’t recall for sure. At any rate, there was no sign of them.

  “We’re here, Taban,” she said unnecessarily, and though she was irritated, she felt sorry for him too, because he’d let himself be cornered, he couldn’t stop playing this game even when the moment had become serious, when a foreign woman had come all the way to Mididima and the elders had made it clear to Abayomi—and Abayomi had surely made it clear to his son—that the books had to be returned.

  When Scar Boy finally looked up, though, the last of her sympathy evaporated. His gaze was remote and cold and held not shame, but an accusation. One she couldn’t interpret, except to understand that it was aimed at her—maybe because she was the one, in the end, to bring the white woman.

  “It would have been Matani,” Kanika said, “but we couldn’t find him. Miss Sweeney can’t wait any longer. She asked me to come and translate her request, so she can go back and this can finish.” Scar Boy continued to stare at her, his glance heavy with a meaning she did not understand. “This is not my fault. I warned you over and over.” He didn’t move. “Please,” she said. “Tomorrow you may again be as talkative as a grain of sand. Today, it’s time to speak. Tell her where the books are, and then I’ll take her away.”

  Scar Boy cleared his throat. “My brother,” he said slowly, “is handsome. Isn’t he?”

  Kanika’s heart thrust into her throat. Her fingers began dancing nervously on the beads around her neck. “The books. Where are they?”

  He touched the outside corner of his scarred eye. “My brother Badru,” he said.

  Why was he doing this? Maybe he had a reason. Had he seen something in her that she was refusing to see in herself? Maybe they could talk about it, alone together at the edge of the settlement, but not here, not now. Now he was violating everything between them by throwing out these words in front of a stranger—even one who didn’t understand their language.

  “You’re a man,” she said. “You’re almost a man. You’re not a child.”

  He rotated his left shoulder. “Do you…” He broke off, settled his shoulders, and lengthened his neck. “You like him?”

  “Why are you saying this?” Kanika cried. “What’s happened to you, Scar Boy?”

  A raw look came over his face. He stared for a long hot beat, and she stared back, just as angry. “What did you call me?” he asked.

  It wasn’t until then that she realized what she’d said. Her eyes widened and she took in a quick breath of air but she didn’t answer.

  “You’ve been the one,” he said, each word measured, “the only one I’ve counted on never to call me that. I believed that you wouldn’t call me that even in your mind. I believed that in your thoughts, you had other words for me.”

  “It’s today,” she said. “I’ve been—”

  But he wasn’t listening. He turned toward Miss Sweeney, who still lingered by the door. Kanika had practically forgotten her. “I will speak with her alone,” he said, lifting his chin.

  “You can’t. You need me for that. You share no language,” Kanika said. She said it softly, as a mother might speak to a child she has punished too severely. OK now. Let’s go on.

  Scar Boy gestured to Miss Sweeney, urging her to come closer, to sit. “Leave us,” he said.

  “This is foolish.” But Kanika knew he would not bend. Scar Boy had a powerful determination. She’d always known that about him.

  Miss Sweeney, sitting now, looked at Kanika with a face full of questions. But Kanika couldn’t think of what words to use to explain in English—in any language, it occurred to her—so she said nothing. She raised her shoulders, let them fall, and left.

  Scar Boy

  THE MINUTE KANIKA WAS GONE, TABAN COULDN’T HELP wondering at what he’d done. He, who had always avoided people, had insisted now on being alone with someone—a woman, and a stranger—who spoke a language he could not begin to understand. He stared at this foreigner without knowing what to do. He stared until the moment grew unbearably long, and then he stared more.

  At last she reached into a bag that she’d worn in on her back, and she pulled out a book, and she held it up as if to show it to him. The cover was a wonderful color—red, but not a shade he knew, not rich as the earth could be, or raw like a cow’s severed flesh. It was a deep red, full of promises and unexpectedly shiny. He wondered if he could find a way to re-create that color. He could have uses for it.

  And she was talking in a voice he didn’t mind. He could almost visualize it, dense and textured and a little hoarse. Of course, it lacked the light music of his Kanika’s voice—but here he corrected himself quickly, not his Kanika. And he was about to begin thinking of that, and of the pit in his chest that was flooded with his own bitterness, when she surprised him, this foreign woman, by opening the book and extending it toward him, talking all the while.

  She’d opened it to a page that showed a sketch of a humanlike figure clasping its chest. In pain, or in passion—he was left
to wonder. It was a simple drawing, but like food for the starving. He wanted to stare at it, to study each line, see how it had been done.

  But, too quickly, she pulled the book away again and opened to a page and began to read, her own hand at her neck. And as he watched her, following the movement of her voice, he began to understand that books meant to her what his drawings did to him. They were (he struggled to put it into words in his mind) an escape—no, more—a place to hold that mystifying rush of human emotions, from his gratitude at being alive to his frustration at the hardship of life—no, more—an expression of the need to separate from his own narrowness and join with the Hundred-Legged One, the rays of the sun.

  And so he reached behind him and pushed aside a straw mat. He decided, and in a single second. He didn’t have the words to explain to this woman that it was wrong, what they’d done. How uncivilized it was to bring an unsolicited gift from their world and then dictate how it must or must not be used.

  Lacking those words, he would instead reveal what he’d earlier intended to show only to Kanika. The pages and pages of precise and vivid images that had flowed from his center, through his limbs, out his fingertips and that had allowed him—a mutilated, solitary island of a boy—to speak of his dreams.

  He’d show her what had become of the Camel Bookmobile’s overdue books.

  The Teacher

  MATANI WOKE TO THE SOUND OF BOYS LAUGHING. NOW HE would never have a boy; that was his first thought. Not to cradle, not to guide, not to set on his father’s path of bringing the modern world, little by little, to Mididima. His ambitions had not been so grand, after all. But now it would end as badly for him as it had for the pearl diver in the book Miss Sweeney gave him. Without a son, he would be shamed before his people. Even more: he would never be remembered as a son remembers, never a particular man’s sacred ancestor. And so he would die more thoroughly than men with sons. He would pass more quickly into the void of nothingness.