Golden Boy (14 page)

“What are you talking about?” The muscles in his arms relax a little, and he rests the stick against his shoulder.

I'm so grateful to see him lower the stick, even a little, that I start to blubber.

“I was hungry, and I didn't know where to go. I don't know the city and I don't know where to get food, so I decided to take some from someone . . .” I see his hands tighten on the stick and I rush on. “But not to steal it! I was going to leave money on your stool, enough money to pay for the meal. Really, I would have, it's right here in my hand. See? I was going to leave that and take the food because I was hungry and didn't know where else to go, and your food smelled so good from the road and . . .” I realize I'm rambling and beginning to repeat myself, so I just trail off. I extend my hand toward him, shaking a little. “You can have the money anyway if you like,
Bwana.
Just please don't beat me anymore. I wasn't trying to steal, I promise.”

Nothing happens for a moment as I hold my hand up in the air, clutching the fistful of shilling notes, and he stands above me, still as a statue. I'm afraid he's going to start hitting me again. I push the money out against his leg.

“Take it,” I say, cringing.

The moment I touch his leg, one of his hands darts down from his shoulder and grabs mine. I gasp. I definitely picked the wrong old man to rob. This one has the strength of an ox. His large, calloused fingers close over mine like a trap, tight and hard. Then his eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

“What's this?” he asks.

“The money,
Bwana.
The money I was going to leave for the dinner. See, I wasn't lying.”

The old man makes a funny noise in his throat. It might be a growl. It might be a laugh. I shove the shilling notes into his hand and pull my arm over my head again in case he decides to keep beating me. Instead, he raises the shilling notes to his face and sniffs them. I watch him, baffled. Then he lowers the stick to his side, one hand still leaning on it, but no longer outwardly threatening.

“So, you really were going to pay for the food?”

Now that my initial terror is over, I can feel every burning welt left by his stick on my sun-tender skin. My arms and back scream with pain, and my forearm with the knife cut from Alasiri has started to bleed again. I begin to feel annoyed at this man. This man who hits so hard with a stick and then is too stupid to see the money I'm holding right in his face.

“Ndiyo!”
I snap, a little more curtly than is probably wise. “I said I was. You have the money, you can see for yourself!”

“Hmm,” says the man. I can tell from the way he's holding his shoulders that he still doesn't believe me. “No, that still doesn't make sense. If you're so willing to pay for food, boy, why didn't you buy food from a street vendor? Why steal an old man's dinner in the dark? No, that is the work of a thief.”

This really makes me lose my temper, and before I know what I'm doing, I'm scrambling to my feet and yelling at him.

“I. Am. Not. A. Thief!” How dare he insult me, even after I've given him the money? “How am I supposed to buy something,
Bwana
?” I snap. “I have no idea what the people in this city think about people like me. I couldn't just go up to a street vendor.”

“What do you mean, boy, people like you?”

I stare at him dumbly. I know it's dark, but we're right beside the fire, and even I can see the slight glow coming off my white skin. Then I understand. This old man is mocking me. He's standing there, holding my money in one hand and a stick to beat me with in the other, and he's playing word games with me. I begin to hate him.

“If you can't see for yourself what I mean, then I'm hardly going to tell you!”

The old man cocks his head slightly at me, hearing my hostility.

“Well then, I guess I won't ever know,” he says. Slowly, he stretches out his arm and offers my money to me. I hesitate for a moment, then take it. It may be a trap, but I need that money. He lets me take it, then drops his arm to his side. I clutch the money tightly against my chest and start backing up.

“What do you mean?” I ask when I'm out of range.

“I mean, boy, that I will never know. You have just said you will not tell me, and I cannot see for myself what you mean.” His sudden smile surprises me. It's as if he's about to tell a great joke and is anticipating the ending. “I am blind.”

I stare at him with my mouth hanging open like a fish. Of all the things I expected, this was not one of them. Not from a man who could hit so hard and so accurately. Not from the man who, just a moment ago, had me curled on the ground, begging him to take my money. My brain cannot process what he just said.

The old man's laugh fills the silence like the October rains: a quick burst, then gone. He shuffles to his stool, using the stick to find it, and then sits down.

“So, boy-f-of-secrets-who-is-not-a-thief, would you like to join me for some dinner?”

I can't help it. I laugh. And although it stretches my bruised shoulders painfully, it feels so good, I do it again. The old man's smile catches the firelight.

“Ndiyo,”
I say, hiccuping. “Thank you, I think I would.”

I lower myself
gingerly onto the dirt beside the old man's stool. He serves out a portion of his dinner for himself, and then scoops some into another bowl for me. It's killing me to wait until he's done eating, with the bowl sitting in my lap, filling my nose with dreams of goat, chilies, and corn, its warmth seeping into my thighs. I try not to drool. And then I laugh, realizing I could drool all I want: The old man is blind!

“What's so funny, boy?”

I collect myself quickly. “Nothing,
Bwana.
It's just that my evening isn't turning out at all like I expected it to.”

The old man smiles. “No, I'm sure it's not! It's not every day that a young boy like you gets beaten so soundly by an old man like me.” And now he's laughing, too, and even though it's at my expense, I join in. Then he says, “So, you're a polite boy; I can hear that you're waiting to eat until I'm done.”

“Ndiyo, Bwana,”
I say, surprised.

“Hmph. Excellent. Well, while you wait, you should do something with that mouth of yours. If you won't fill it with food, fill it with words.” He waves his left hand in my general direction. “Keep your secrets if you want, but tell me something else.”

“What else,
Bwana
?”

“Smart boy like you should be able to come up with something. Tell me about yourself.”

I am momentarily baffled. I'll keep my secret, but without saying I'm an albino, I don't know what to tell him about myself. It has always been the first thing everyone saw about me, the most obvious way I thought about myself. To tell my story without talking about the way I look is strangely difficult. The old man gives a little grunt to remind me he's waiting. I shake my head and begin talking.

“Well, my name is Dhahabo, but everyone calls me Habo for short.” I pause.

“Gold,” the old man grunts. “Unusual name.”

I don't explain why I have it.

“My name is Kweli,” he says. “Everyone calls me Kweli for short.”

I can't help but laugh again. Somehow this makes it easier to go on.

“My family and I used to live in a small village outside of Arusha, but my father left when I was young.” I feel like I'm telling only half the story and the pieces fit together oddly, forming a picture I barely recognize. “When our farm failed in the drought, we had to go to Mwanza, where my mother's sister lives with her family.”

“That's a long way. How did you get there?”

This part is easy. Our trip across the Serengeti doesn't have much to do with me, and so I tell him all about Enzi staying behind to finish the coffee picking, running out of money for the bus, and walking across the game lands until we met Alasiri. I choke a little on his name, remembering too late that some people believe saying a person's name can call them to you from far away. I don't know if I believe that, but it doesn't hurt to be cautious. I curse myself for being so stupid. Kweli notices my stutter.

“You didn't like this man?”

“No, I didn't. I don't. He came and found us later and tried to hurt me.” Again, half the story. I rush on before the holes in my story seem too big.

“So I left my family and took the train from Mwanza to Dar es Salaam. I arrived yesterday and I've been walking around the city since then, and tonight I tried to take food from the wrong old man.”

Kweli's laugh barks out again at that.

“And what, boy, did you plan to do here in the largest city in Tanzania, other than steal dinners from helpless old men?”

My mouth is open, but no words rush out. The weight of a thousand unplanned days crushes my lungs. My voice, when it comes out, is high and fragile, like a small child's.

“I . . . I didn't have a plan.”

“What?” Kweli's head snaps up. “You paid good money to travel halfway across the country with no plan?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any family here?”

“No.”

“Any friends?”

“No.”

“Any skills other than dinner thieving?”

“No.” My voice is barely a whisper. “And I'm not even very good at that.”

Kweli chews in silence for a moment while I study the fire. Then: “Does your family know where you are?”

This is a dangerous question. I barely know this man. To tell him that I'm all alone in the world and no one knows where I am seems unwise. It would highlight just how vulnerable I am. I lie.

“
Ndiyo,
they do.”

Kweli gives another
hmph,
this one in a tone that tells me he doesn't quite believe me, but he doesn't challenge me. For being blind, this old man sees far too much.

“Eat,” he says when he finishes his bowl, and I do.

The food is as delicious as it smelled, but I don't appreciate it nearly as much as I should. My brain is still too busy thinking about the problem Kweli has set in front of me to be able to completely enjoy the stew. I chew in silence, and for a while there is nothing but the soft hiss and pop of the wood in the fire and the bellowing of tree frogs in the bushes.

I'm nearly finished when I hear a sigh. I look up in surprise. I've been so sunk in my own thoughts that I had almost forgotten the statue of a man sitting next to me in the darkness.

“I can't believe I'm doing this,” I hear him mutter. Then, loudly, to me, “Boy, what kinds of work can you do?”

I think quickly. “I can fetch and carry things. I can take care of animals and vegetable gardens . . .” I trail off, hopeful. “Why,
Bwana
? What do you need done? If I haven't done it before, I'm sure I could learn. Quickly.”

“Maybe you can. Maybe you can't. We'll see.” There is a tree-frog-filled pause, and then, “It is possible that I have a few days of work you can help me with. You can stay here and I will feed you in return for your work. That will give you a few days to figure out what you're going to do and give you a chance to contact your family again.”

I can't believe my luck.

“Thank you,
Bwana
! Thank you very much! That will be a great help to me. I'll work hard,
Bwana,
you'll see!”

I realize I'm babbling and shut my mouth, but I can't suppress the enormous grin that splits my face. Somewhere to stay! Food! And a little more time to figure out what to do with myself now that I'm on my own. As to what he said about calling my family . . . emotions tangle inside me and I don't know how to sort them out.

There's no need to rush into that,
I tell myself.
Best to leave things the way they are until you know exactly what you're doing and have something definite to tell them.
I'll wait a few more days and call them then. That's all I need, I'm sure of it. A few more days to figure out whether Dar es Salaam is a safe place for me to stay or whether I need to keep running.

When I wake up the next morning on a blanket just inside Kweli's front door, I'm still smiling. The sun is a bright band on the dirt a few inches from my face, but I can tell from the silence of the house that the old man isn't awake yet. I suppose sunrise would make no difference to a blind man, but to me it feels like a holiday to still be lying in my blankets when the sun is already up.

I stand and stretch slowly, letting my bruised muscles uncramp. Even though the packed-dirt floor was hard, I slept better here than I have in days. Every time I woke up in the middle of the night, frightened, confused about where I was, braced to run, I remembered the high wall around me and the fact that there's no trace of my path through the largest city in Tanzania, and I would smile and go back to sleep.

Today is the first day I will be doing work for Kweli. How I'm going to do enough work to earn my keep without burning my skin is something I'm not sure about. But, for the first time in a long time, getting burnt is not my main concern. If I have to get burnt to keep my end of the bargain, so be it.
No matter what,
I tell myself,
you have to stay strong and get the work done here. This is too much good luck to pass up just because you're afraid of a little sunburn.

Perhaps,
responds a voice in my head, sounding remarkably like Asu,
but there's still no call to be silly about it. Go put your hat on!

I smile, remembering the thousands of times Asu snapped those words at me when I was little, and go put on my hat, my long pants, and a double layer of shirts just like yesterday. I peel the makeshift bandage off that I tied over my arm after dinner last night. The cut has scabbed over again, so I leave the bandage off. After poking at the cut, though, I'm no longer smiling. Asu is the one who got me into this mess, by telling her friends about me. It's how Alasiri found out where I was.
He would probably have found me anyway,
I remind myself. But the betrayal still stings like lime juice on a wound. I don't like thinking bad thoughts about Asu, but I can't make myself think good thoughts about her just now, either. So I think about something else. It's daylight. I can look around at Kweli's house and belongings. I slip out to explore.

The house itself and the front yard are fairly normal, but when I walk around the house to the backyard where we ate dinner last night, I catch my breath in surprise. The things that were just shadows in the moonlight now have hard edges and color. There are tools of all shapes and logs of all sizes leaning up against the wall. In the far corner of the yard, a blue plastic tarp is stretched as a roof between four tall poles. Under it is a large log, almost a tree trunk, partly peeled, with a hatchet embedded into the middle. There are wood chips all over the ground. But what really makes me gasp is what I see in a lean-to attached to the house. There, protected from the weather on three sides, is a collection of carvings more amazing than any I could ever have imagined.

They are all made from a dark wood, polished so smooth they glow. People and animals twist and knot about one another. They stretch for the sky, screaming, or bend double and curl around, laughing, weeping, grinning. They are beautiful. They are horrible.

I find that I've crossed the yard without realizing my feet have moved. I'm up close, staring at the tortured leer of a mask. I feel slightly dizzy, surrounded by the writhing forms. I take a step backward and run into a man.

I shout in surprise, turning around and punching at his chest while trying to get away, my eyes still filled with the screaming masks and my body reacting on instinct to feeling trapped. Hands close over my flailing wrists like manacles, and my hands are wrestled down to my sides.

“What's wrong with you, boy?”

I look up, startled, and see that it's Kweli who has me, not Alasiri. I sob with relief, and then shame.

“I'm sorry,
Bwana,
so sorry. I was frightened. I thought you were someone else.”

His face softens. “Well, that's some greeting you gave me. If I let you go now, will you try to strike me again?”

“No,
Bwana.
”

He drops my hands. I rub my wrists. I'm going to have bruises there, too, now. This old man is a rock.

“So, what were you doing out here? I woke up and went to find you and you were gone.”

I wince, realizing what that would have looked like, how he must have thought I'd abandoned our agreement and run off in the night, maybe even taking some of his things with me.

“I'm sorry,” I say again. It feels like I'm saying that a lot to this man. “I was just taking a look around and I got distracted by these carvings.”

“Ha!” Kweli barks. “And? What do you think of ‘these carvings'?”

I pause, not sure what to say. Clearly the old man collects them for a reason, so he must like them, but I can't help but feel uncomfortable around them.

“I . . . don't know,” I say, but Kweli is shaking his head, telling me that answer isn't good enough. I try again; decide to be honest. “They're very good. I used to do little carvings for my cousin, and these are much better than those were. But . . . I don't know if I like them. They're too . . . They show too much feeling.” I curse my clay tongue, not knowing how to say what I feel. “They seem aggressive or something.” Still not right. I give up. “I don't know,” I say again.

This time, though, Kweli is nodding. “
Ndiyo,
you're right.”

I look up in surprise. I had expected him to defend the statues, tell me that they were wonderful. Though I suppose, being blind, maybe he doesn't know?
Why would a blind man collect statues anyway?

“I am?”

“
Ndiyo,
they're aggressive. They are Makonde sculptures, the sculptures of my people. They show us how we really are: the raw emotion of humanity. Good. Evil. Love. Hate. Everything. They aren't supposed to be pretty little carvings. You have good eyes.”

I
don't
have good eyes. I have stupid, worthless albino eyes, and I want to ask him how he can know that I have good eyes when he's blind and can't see the wretched statues anyway, but I keep my mouth shut.