Golden Boy (18 page)

Tonight marks a month since I tried to take a blind man's dinner: four weeks of safety, work, and good food; four weeks of spending time with Davu; four weeks of bad excuses that Kweli has accepted without comment. The September breeze whispers to me that this can't last, and deep down I know that's true. Every day for weeks I've braced myself for Kweli to finally say he has had enough help and send me on my way instead of giving me a new carving assignment, but so far that hasn't happened. I've found as many ways as I can to help Kweli around the house, doing all the things that need eyes. It makes me feel good to make his life easier. But, though he hasn't kicked me out, Kweli hasn't invited me to stay with him and become his apprentice, either. I try not to think about this too often.

Tonight is no different. As soon as my thoughts start to stray into dangerous territory, I discover I feel like a second helping of dinner and strike up a conversation while getting it.

“Your sculpture is coming along well,
Bwana,
don't you think?”

“I suppose.”

“I think it looks good,” I say, scooping more stew out of the pot and into my bowl. The tin ladle clanks against the side of the pot and Kweli stretches out his bowl. I put another ladle-ful into his bowl, too. “What will it be when it's done?” I ask.

“What does it look like?”

I pause. Though no longer a long, scaly crocodile, I have trouble translating the ropy, knotted shapes of Kweli's sculpture into a word.

“I'm not sure.” I discovered quickly that honesty is the best idea around Kweli. “There are so many twists in it; it still confuses me.”

“Ha!” he says, and mumbles something that sounds like “good eyes.” For a moment I think that will be my only answer; it often is. But Kweli goes on: “It's ‘Justice.'”

I scowl into the remains of my dinner. Sometimes I think I'd be better off if Kweli didn't answer my questions. I have no idea what he's talking about half of the time.

“What, boy? No answer? No impatient questions?”

I snort in response, sounding eerily like him.

“Justice,” I mutter, but I think he hears me. I want to move the conversation along, but I know I have to give some variety of apology. I heave a sigh and say, “
Bwana,
I don't understand how you plan to carve justice, but I will continue to watch how you do it. Maybe when you're done, I'll know what you meant tonight.” I leave a pause that is only slightly shorter than what is polite, and then ask, “What's my carving assignment tonight,
Bwana
?”

Kweli hands me a large block of wood and a knife. My eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Kweli's assignments have always progressed in difficulty: The wood has become harder and more temperamental, the knives duller and more oddly shaped. But this is the buttery-textured wood I carved my first dog from, and the knife is perfectly shaped and sized to fit in my hand. I am so confused by the ease these materials will lend me that I don't at once notice that Kweli has started talking again.

“Sorry,
Bwana
! What did you say?”

“I just gave you your assignment, dreamer!”

I try to force my brain to remember the last sounds it heard.

“A weevil? I'm supposed to carve a weevil?” I think of the tiny bugs that burrow into the grain and float to the top when you boil it. I have no idea what they look like up close, but I could try to find one. I'm thinking hard about how to copy the exact shape of the little bug when Kweli corrects me.

“No, silly boy! Not a weevil! Hmph. I said: Your assignment is to carve Evil.”

“Evil? How can I carve something that's not even real?”

“Evil isn't real? There's none of it in the world?” His questions snap in the darkness like branches in a storm.

“No, that's not what I meant! Of course there's evil. Of course it's real, but . . . it doesn't have a body or a shape, like a goat or a truck does. How am I supposed to put something into wood that has no shape?”

Kweli stares off into the distance and I think I've won. But instead, he says, “This is the next step. You have shown me that you're a carver—even, sometimes, a good carver.” I flush with the praise. “But you haven't sculpted anything yet.

“A sculptor,” continues Kweli, “does not carve a thing, but a meaning. You've seen my sculptures. They aren't all pretty. Some of them are not even all that accurate, if you're expecting them to show you a cow or a girl. But each of them is the most accurate rendering I can manage of a thought or a feeling. This is the next stage. I need to see whether you are only a carver or whether you could be a sculptor.”

As he gets up, he takes pity on my panic and adds, “The way we give shape to an idea, boy, is to show its shape in our life. Show me what you know of Evil. If you succeed, perhaps I'll ask you to show me what you know of Love, or Happiness, or Pain. But for now, show me Evil.”

And with that, he walks away, leaving me dumbfounded in the dark.

That night, I have trouble falling asleep. With this one assignment, Kweli will decide whether or not I'm a sculptor. He may use it to decide whether or not I can stay with him any longer. If I can impress him enough, maybe he won't keep asking me to contact my family, won't even care that I'm an albino. I want this normal, useful life to continue so badly that the wanting is almost painful.

I roll toward the wall and see Kweli's face as he tells me to carve the impossible. I turn to the ceiling and the weight of what I have to prove with this block of wood pushes down on me until I feel I can't breathe. I turn toward the room and its emptiness mirrors what I feel capable of. Finally I turn onto my face and try to smother my fears in my blankets.

A minute later I jolt up, gasping. It's no use. I have to find some way to carve a physical image of Evil. Should I carve a demon? I think of the Makonde masks in Kweli's storage hut. They've always felt faintly evil to me. Should I make a mask? I crawl off my pallet and across the moon-streaked floor to the bench where I left the wood and the knife. Not wanting to wake Kweli, I slink out of the house, into the night.

Stepping into the yard, my senses pop as the air opens up around me. I can only see gray shapes in the blackness, so I walk slowly, cautious of where I'm putting my feet, not wanting to step on things in the dark that could bite. When I reach a spot in the center of the swept yard untouched by shadows, I sit on the ground and hold the tools in my lap. I let the moonlight wash over me.

I sit and I think. Some distant part of me knows I'm going to regret this tomorrow when I'm tired and Kweli wants me to bound around like an antelope, doing errands, but I don't care. I need to figure out how to carve Evil.

It's as I sit there, waiting to know what to carve, that my eyes fall on the shine of the knife in the moonlight. And it hits me all in a rush. I do know Evil. My hands are shaking as I run them over the block of wood, tracing with my finger the lines my knife will carve.

Yes. It will fit there.

Yes. It could curve here.

Yes. I can do this.

When I pick up the knife and lay it gently against the side of the block, my hands no longer shake.

It takes me just under a week to finish my carving. I work during lunches, every day when Kweli takes his naps, and late into the dry September nights when there is enough moon for me to see my fingers. I try to apply what I've learned from watching Kweli. That first night, I only carved the edges off the block, leaving a slab a little longer than my forearm and three times as wide in the rough outline of the shape I wanted to work with. Over the next few days I slowly whittled that blocky outline down, one layer of detail at a time. Today I finished it. I pull the knife down the long places to liberate the last curls of smoothness and dig the tip in firmly where I want texture and depth. I take a long look at it. Yes, it will do.

I glance over to the corner of the yard. Kweli is sunk deep in his own work, finishing “Justice,” so I decide not to bother him now. I walk inside the house and set my statue down on my pallet. Tonight I'll give it to him and see what he thinks.

Realizing I'm thirsty after a morning of carving, I trot out the front of the house to get a drink of water from the tap.

“Who are you?” a shrill voice demands.

I freeze in my tracks, panic washing over me. I have walked out of the house without checking first and have walked straight into a woman who has come in looking for Kweli. The keys for the gate still sway from her fingers.

“Well? Who are you? I asked you a question, boy!” The woman is holding a large basket on her head with one hand, but now she plants the other deeply into the fat of her left hip and glares at me. The keys disappear entirely. I try to answer, but nothing comes out. I feel frozen in my body, unable to control it, like when you try to scream in a nightmare and can't. A distant part of my mind registers that Davu has just followed the woman through the door and is closing it behind her.

The woman looks past me and bellows into the house, “Uncle! What are you up to? What on earth are you doing with a mute
zeruzeru
in your house?”

And with that, I can almost hear the sound of my whole world crashing down around me. In my mind's eye I see myself being hated again, chased again, hunted again. I see my dream of staying here and becoming a sculptor wither like a seedling planted too late in the summer. I stare at the woman in despair, but she doesn't notice. She's too busy bellowing out questions that are destroying my life. Behind her I see Davu wince. Then Kweli appears in the door of the house.

“What's wrong, Chatha? Why all the shouting?”

“You tell me what's wrong!” Chatha booms, loudly enough that I'm sure the neighbors two streets over can hear her. “Why is this
zeruzeru
boy here? Are you picking up strays again?”

“Calling someone a stray is very unpleasant,” says Kweli coldly. His lips have thinned, and the skin on his hand is tight where he's gripping his cane fiercely.

Chatha huffs in exasperation. “Unpleasant or not, the question stands! Who is this boy? Where is his family? What is he doing here with you?”

“Mother,” Davu whispers to her, “you promised you wouldn't fight this time.”

“Hush, Davu!” the big woman snaps, but Kweli's face clears slightly.

“Is that Davu?”

“Ndiyo.”
Davu darts a look to her mother, then smiles at Kweli. “Hello, Great-Uncle. Mother and I brought you some fresh bread, and I found you a jar of honey in the grocery store.”

At the mention of such civilized things as bread and honey, Kweli seems to collect himself. “Let's not talk in the yard like peddlers,” he says. “Come in, Chatha, and let's have some tea while we talk. Habo, please go get some water.”

Kweli and Chatha disappear into the house. Davu runs over to me and grabs my arm.

“I'm so sorry!” she whispers. “Mother decided at the last minute to come with me. I had no way to warn you.”

I look at her with glassy eyes, not quite able to focus on either her face or her words. Her fingers are warm against my skin that has suddenly gone cold. That same faraway part of my mind that noticed her in the door earlier comments quietly that this is the first time Davu has touched me.

“Habo? The water?” Kweli's voice from inside the house breaks the spell on me and, mind whirling, I follow his instructions. Davu follows, but I'm too stunned to talk to her. Surely Kweli heard what Chatha said; she was yelling it loudly enough. Could it be that he doesn't know what the word
zeruzeru
means? No, he lives in a huge city, not on some dusty little farm like my family used to. Why didn't he say anything?

Maybe I should just run away now, before he has a chance to throw me out.

But I don't. Instead, I let Davu guide me and the bucket of water around the house. Kweli and Chatha are sitting rigidly across from each other on stools by the fire. I see that Kweli has a pot on the fire, and I pour the water from the bucket into it. The metal is already hot, and the first water to touch it instantly hisses into steam. A hot billow clouds my face, but I pour the water in smoothly until the pot is nearly full. When Kweli hears the empty
thump
of the bucket on the ground, he reaches forward and drops in a handful of tea leaves and spices. Chatha watches this little ritual with hard eyes. You can see that holding her words in is a strain. But she's well-raised enough to wait for her uncle to start the conversation now that they're sitting down.

“So,” says Kweli finally, stirring the tea leaves in the warming water with a long wooden spoon, “how is the family?”

“I'm well, Great-Uncle,” says Davu, rolling over an uncarved log from Kweli's work area and sitting down on it. She pats the spot beside her for me. I sit, mechanically. “And my brothers are nothing but trouble, like always.”

Kweli chuckles.

“They're fine, Uncle!” Chatha bursts out. “We're all fine. Now tell me about this boy. Where is he from? Why is he here?”

“Chatha, I'm surprised at you. You've seen me work with young people before.”

“But always boys and girls we knew. Not mute albino strangers!”

“I'm not mute,” I growl.

“Oh! He speaks!” She rolls her eyes as if this is some kind of miracle, crossing her arms tightly over her orange and red
khanga.
She glares at me. I glare back at her.

“He speaks,” says Kweli flatly, still stirring the tea. “Sometimes quite a bit. Do you remember Ngonepe, who worked with me a few years ago? There was a boy who hardly ever spoke. No, Habo here can be quite a talker when he is not stunned into silence by running into my niece at my door. Why, I am almost mute from the shock myself.” He gives her a thin-lipped smile. “You haven't been by in weeks, Chatha.”

“I was busy with getting some construction done in my house,” says Chatha, smoothing her big hands over her sweat-wrinkled
khanga.
“
Ndiyo,
it's been a while. But now, today, I have come by to see my favorite uncle.”

Kweli gives a dry laugh. Davu is perched nervously on the edge of her seat beside me like a bird, looking back and forth between Kweli and her mother.

“Chatha, I'm your only uncle.”

Chatha's laugh transforms her face, twisting all the lines just slightly, changing them from scolding to mirth. I can suddenly see how she's related to Davu. When she's smiling, Chatha has a face I could almost trust. Almost. I go inside and find four cups for the tea.

“And that's the only reason you're my favorite, old man! You are far too much trouble.” I hear from inside as I gather things to drink from.

“Too much trouble? I take care of myself. I'm no trouble at all!”

I'm back outside with the cups in time to see the happy lines leave Chatha's face again. “That's exactly why you're too much trouble. You can't keep living here alone,” she says.

Kweli stiffens on his stool, his face hardening into an ugly mask. He pulls the pot of tea off the fire with a calloused hand.

“The tea is ready,” he says flatly.

“I'll serve, Great-Uncle,” chirps Davu with false cheeriness. Pushing her sleeves up over her elbows and using the hem of her
khanga
to hold the edges of the pot without burning herself, she pours tea into each of our cups. Her hands shake slightly as she pours. I feel bad for her, but I'm grateful for the argument because no one is talking about me anymore.

For a few minutes everyone sips at their tea.

“What work have you been doing on your house, then?” asks Kweli. “A fancy new kitchen for you? A pool for the children?”

I think this is progress in the conversation until I see Davu shrink down beside me.

“I finished your rooms,” says Chatha, lifting her chin.

“My what?”

“Your rooms. The workers finished building them last week, and I painted and decorated them for you. You have a bedroom and a bathroom at my house now.”

I'm imagining what it would be like to have a bedroom and a bathroom to myself, and wondering what Chatha's house must look like on the inside, when Kweli answers.

“Absolutely not.” The cold fury in Kweli's voice can't be mistaken.

“Oh, Uncle!” Chatha is losing her patience. “What if you fell and hurt yourself? What if you became ill and no one was around? You can't even see and you've holed yourself up in this walled compound. It's dangerous for you to be alone!” She rubs her temples as if this whole conversation is giving her a headache. “I should make Davu talk sense into you! You listen to her better than you ever listen to me!”

“She needn't bother herself,” says Kweli. “Now that Habo's here, he helps me with everything I need.”

I look up in surprise. I didn't know that Kweli thought so highly of my help. It makes me feel proud, but I'm not so happy to be brought into this conversation. Chatha notices, of course. I'm getting the distinct impression that she is just as shrewd as her uncle. She opens her mouth to say something and then thinks better of it.

“Well.” She narrows her eyes. “When he moves on, I want you to let us know right away, not wait a week and a half like you did when Ngonepe left.”

“Hmph” is Kweli's only reply.

“And you, boy.” Her sharp gaze swivels over to me. “Take good care of my difficult old uncle. The slightest problem at all, I want you to come get me. Is that clear? If he isn't doing as well as he is now the next time I visit, you'll have me to answer to.”

The force of her gaze makes me dip my head. “I'll try,
Bibi,
” I whisper.

Chatha fans herself with her hands, then sighs and heaves herself to her feet. Davu shoots a concerned look at me, but jumps up and follows her mother.

“Very well. I'll leave you for today, Uncle, but please do think about what I've said.” Chatha looks at Kweli, and for a moment I see what she sees: a stooped old man, leaning on a cane. Blind and alone. I can understand why she's trying to make him go live with her.