Golden Boy (8 page)

“We'll help, won't we, Kito?”

We head out to the back patio, where the fire pit is. Kito helps Asu lay the fire, and she hangs the big laundry kettle over it.

“You stay there,” says Asu, filling the kettle a bucket at a time from the tap in the side of the house. I try not to bristle at the fact that the tone she's using is the same one I use when I'm talking to Kito.

“But I want to help you.”

Asu shakes her head. “No. It's too dangerous.”

I peek around the door and calculate angles.

“If I crouch down behind the woodpile, against the wall, no one will be able to see me from the road,” I argue.

Asu chews on her lower lip, thinking about it.

“And I'll still be in the shade, so you don't even have to worry about me getting burnt,” I add.

For a few moments, Asu just stands there, considering. I inch out and settle myself behind the woodpile, not waiting for her permission, pleased to see that I was right about being invisible and shaded.

“See?” I say. I know Mother and Auntie would kill me themselves if they knew I was out in the yard in the middle of the day, but I want to get out of the kitchen, and the chance to finally be helpful outweighs my unease. Anyway, I want to show Asu that I can look out for myself.

From my hidden corner, I reach out and start feeding dry corncobs into the fire. I smile widely up at her. She sighs.

“Oh, all right,” she says, and goes to get another bucket of water.

I don't say anything more but inside I'm crowing in triumph.

When steam rises off the top of the pot in great billows, Asu throws the soap flakes and sheets into the pot and starts to beat them around in the water with Auntie's laundry pole. I'm in all my usual long clothes, and Asu is standing right over the laundry pot. Both of us are sweating a lot. Mwanza is not only hot but sticky too, even in the dry season. Kito doesn't seem to notice the heat. Right now he's chasing bugs around the edges of the fire. When he catches them, he brings them over to Asu or me. We tell him what a clever little boy he is.

“Asu, tell me about your day,” I say.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” I grumble. “I'm stuck in a pile of grain sacks for half the day, and I've never seen Mwanza except the night we came in the pitch-black. Tell me everything. Then I'll be able to think of that when you're gone.”

Asu looks off in the distance for a moment.

“Well, today is a Tuesday, so I work for the Njoolay family. But let me tell you about the Msembo family, because they're more interesting.” She winks at me and continues. “When I'm going to work at the Msembo house, I take the purple
dala-dala
from the corner of the fish market and ride down Makongoro Road. We turn onto Uhuru Street and cross the city, heading away from the wharves. People get on and off. I can smell the food from the street vendors.” She puts a hand on her belly, dramatically. “I always want to eat, but I don't want to get my clothes dirty before work, so I don't. In the center of town I switch to the yellow and blue
dala-dala.
This gets me to Isamilo, and from there I can walk to the Msembos' house.”

Asu pauses to heft a steaming sheet out of the kettle with the paddle and put it into the rinsing bucket. She beats it around in the cold water there until all the soap is gone from the cloth, then lifts it out again. She takes one end and I take the other and we twist the sheet between us, making sure it doesn't ever touch the dirt, until most of the water is gone out of it. Water drips off Asu's elbows as she lifts the sheet over the line. Then she's at the soapy pot, beginning the process again with the next sheet.

“Once I get to the front of the Msembo house,” she continues, “I'm still not inside. It's a very grand house. There is a huge garden around it on all sides, so green it hurts your eyes to look at it. And around the garden, there's a great, tall wall with broken glass and barbed wire along the top. To get into the house I have to go up to the gate and talk to the man on guard. He stands there all day with his big gun on his shoulder and opens and closes the gate for people.”

“Is it scary to talk to the guard with the big gun?” Kito asks.

Asu flashes him a quick smile. “I bet he's almost as bored as Habo in the grain sacks,” she says, “standing there all day long in his little hut, not able to go anywhere or talk to anyone. No, he's not so scary.”

Again she moves the sheet through the washing and rinsing process. My sleeves are wet now from helping her wring the laundry dry, and I shove them up past my elbows so they don't annoy me as much. My white arms gleam wetly against the white sheets as I twist.

“Once you're in the house, what's that like?” I ask, to get her talking again.

“The house is huge. It's probably bigger than all the houses on our street put together. Mrs. Msembo likes it clean, and there are seven girls who work there every day to make sure everything gleams. Even though I'm only supposed to be doing laundry, I help the other girls in the house when I can, because otherwise it would just be too much to do. Mrs. Msembo checks the work, you know.”

“How does she check it?” asks Kito, letting his latest bug crawl up his wrist.

“She'll come up and hold her hand over a table or counter.” Asu purses her lips together, puts one hand on her hip, and holds the other out in front of her, palm up, miming Mrs. Msembo's actions. “And if she can't see the reflection of her hand clearly enough to see the rims of her fingernails, you have to clean it again.”

As we slowly work our way through the pile of laundry, Asu tells us all about the Msembos: Governor Msembo, who has eyes like a lizard and is up for reelection in a month's time, and the two children, who are spoiled and throw tantrums and break things when they don't get what they want. She tells us about the room full of hunting trophies from Mr. Msembo's
safaris,
the room full of fine china and crystal that Mrs. Msembo uses to host great dinner parties, and the cabinet full of magic talismans that she discovered one day when she was dusting.

“I wonder if any of Alasiri's elephant ended up in that cabinet,” I say when she tells us all the things she found there: animal feet and teeth, powders rolled in snakeskin, bundles of twigs tied together with strips of hide.

“Your elephant, too, remember? You and Chui were hunters that day,” Asu reminds me.

I make a face at her.

“Me, I would never feel right with that much luck medicine in my house,” Asu continues. “You can bet I closed up the cabinet quickly and went on with my dusting!”

As the sun creeps across the sky and the rest of the family begins to return home, Asu tells us about the gleaming modern kitchen with its two large refrigerators to keep things cold all the time and the large electric ovens and stoves where the girl who cooks prepares meals for the family. She tells us about the pet dog that yaps and bites, but that Mrs. Msembo treats like a third child, insisting it have its own plate of food at mealtimes.

“And they have meat at least once every day, sometimes twice! Can you imagine?”

I can't.

Asu tells us then about the other girls she works with: Halima, the shy cleaning girl, and Aisha, who complains so loudly you can hear her from three rooms away, but whose cooking is so good that Mrs. Msembo will never fire her. She tells us about the gardeners and the guards who come in and share lunch with the house girls, and how they all chat about their families and plans for the future when they're rich. Asu talks and talks, and although my hands are wrinkled and sore from wringing wet sheets, I'm happy because my mind is finally full of images of a world beyond the kitchen of Auntie's house.

The next morning, after everyone has left for the day, I'm sunk into a daydream where I'm walking with Asu through every bizarre and beautiful room of the Msembo house when Kito comes up and demands my attention.

“I'm bored, Habo,” he says. “Make me something.” He's holding a piece of firewood and a knife.

I smile. This has become a familiar game for us. Those first few days I was in the corn cave I was so bored that I whittled pieces of wood into chips to use as fire starters, nothing more. But a few days after we arrived I saw Kito looking out the window at a boy playing with a top and decided I would make him a toy. I made a very bad top: It was not at all balanced and kept falling over to one side, but you would have thought I'd given Kito the world. His eyes lit up and he rolled that lopsided top across the floor for hours.

That's when I started whittling in earnest. I tried to make him a truck and, when that failed, I turned it into a boat. I made two more boats so he could have a fishing fleet. He put corncobs in the boats, pretending they were fishermen, and brought me millions of imaginary fish. I carved him a little dog to accompany the fishermen. Again, it wasn't any good, but again, he loved it. So I kept carving.

Now, nearly a month after we started this game, Kito has a little village of houses, and donkeys and dogs and cats, and a dozen little wooden fish for his corncobs to catch in nets we made out of spare string. On my fifth try, I even managed to make him a truck.

“That piece won't do, Kito,” I say, taking the wood out of his hands. I hold it sideways for him. “See, there's a big hard knot here, and bugs have made trails through the rest of it. It'll crack the minute I put a knife to it.”

Kito frowns. I heave myself onto my feet and take his hand.

“Come on, let's go pick out a better one.”

I take Kito outside the house and over to the woodpile. I put the termite-ridden piece on top. “Look for one with no bugs,” I tell him, and we hunt around for a better piece of wood. Soon, I've found one. It's straight, with no bug holes or knots, and it's not so dry it's splintering.

“Here, this one's good,” I say. I turn to Kito to ask him what he wants me to make for him today, and find myself looking into a familiar shining smile.

“Hello again,” says Alasiri softly.

No, he
can't be here.
I watched him return to the wilderness. He can't be here, leaning against the railing of the side yard, looking at me with a smile that is like coins in someone else's hand, all shine and no warmth.

Yet here he is.

At the sound of Alasiri's greeting, Kito whirls around from where he was digging in the woodpile. His eyes go wide as he sees the tall man talking to me, seeing me. No doubt his mind, like mine, is replaying Auntie's many warnings about not being seen, about the importance of hiding. Of what could happen to me if I'm found.

Auntie's voice shrieks in my head, reminding me that it's the middle of the day and I've come outside without checking first to make sure the road was empty. That I simply walked out, as if I didn't have a care in the world, playing with bits of wood for everyone to see. Alasiri or no, I have to get inside. It's not safe for me to be out like this in Mwanza.

Kito must have come to the same conclusion, because he runs up to me and starts to push me toward the house. His little brown hands pushing against my belly are almost comical, but the fright in his voice is not.

“Habo, go!” he whispers loudly. “Go! Hide!”

I retreat a few steps until the tall woodpile and the side of the house shield me from view of the road. In the doorway I stop and look at Alasiri. He's still leaning on the fence, and now he's laughing.

“Why must you go hide, Dhahabo?” he asks. “Have you no hospitality to offer an old friend?” His use of my full name,
gold,
makes my skin crawl.

“What do you want?” I ask. It's not polite, I know, but I deeply feel the danger of talking to him like this. Every second we stand out here talking is one more chance for someone to walk by and learn my secret. Kito is tugging at my shirt, trying to pull me into the house. But I don't want to go inside until I've made Alasiri go away. The last thing I want is him following me.

“What do I want?” His voice is soft, and I have to lean forward to catch his words. He pauses for a moment, looking down at his feet. Then he looks up at me. “What I want, Golden Boy, is to know where your mother is.”

“What do you want with Mother?” I ask. His eyes never leave mine. The small hairs between my shoulder blades are standing up.

“I told you. I want to know where she is.” Alasiri hasn't moved from the gate, but somehow the fact that he's talking so softly makes it seem like he's getting closer and closer.

“She's at work,” I say without thinking. “So go away. She won't be home until later. If you want to talk to Mother, you'll have to come then.”

I wait for him to leave. I imagine him pushing off from the fence, dusting his hands on his pants, and walking away. I will the image to come true. But it doesn't. Instead, Alasiri examines his long fingers.

“Ahh, she's at work,” he continues in that same soft, smooth voice. “She won't be here until later.
Ndiyo,
I see.”

“So you should go,” I repeat. Alasiri seems not to have heard me. He continues.

“No doubt she's at work at the factory where your aunt got her a job. Your auntie is at work, too, isn't she? I watched your pretty sister arrive at Governor Msembo's house this morning. So she, too, is at work. Your brother is at school. And your cousins are not in the house or that little one would have gone to fetch them by now, am I right?” He flicks his eyes to Kito, who ducks behind me. I can feel him shaking where his hands are fisted into the material of my shirt. I don't like that Alasiri knows so much about my family, and I don't answer him.

“So it seems, Golden One, that you and I are alone with only this little boy for company. Am I right again?” His eyes start to sparkle, and I feel sickness curl through my stomach. A distant part of my brain identifies the feeling as fear. Because I've seen that look in Alasiri's eyes before. It's the look he had during the last stretch of our ride to the elephant, when he was close enough that he could see the kill.

For a moment, neither of us moves. Then, slowly, Alasiri pushes open the gate and walks into the yard. Finally following Kito's advice, I race away into the house, slamming and locking the door behind me, and run frantically toward my corn cave.

Kito is pasted to my side, crying openly in terror. I stand in the middle of the kitchen floor, frozen for a moment, wondering whether I should bring Kito into my hiding place with me. I can hear Alasiri rattling the doorknob.

I have only seconds to decide. If I leave him outside, Alasiri could make Kito tell him where I am. If I take him in with me, I don't know if we'll both fit. A foot sticking out would give us away. Also, if Alasiri found me, he would find both of us and could hurt Kito. No, although it terrifies me to be alone with the poacher, I decide I have to get Kito out of here. I will not be the reason he gets hurt.

Whirling, I grab Kito by the arm, hard, and push him away from me. He cries out in alarm.

“Kito!” I say to him in a harsh whisper. “Kito, stop crying! You have to go run and find help.”

“No!” he practically shouts at me. “No, don't make me! I'm scared!”

“Shut up!” I shake him roughly. “You have to go, Kito. That man is not a nice man.” I can hear a rasping sound as Alasiri pushes a blade through the doorjamb to trip the lock. “Run down the road until you get to the fish market. There will be many people there. Tell them a man broke into your house and scared you. Try to find a man to come with you, or the police, before you come back into the house. Now, go!”

I shove him in the direction of the front room, just as I hear the
snick
of the latch giving in. I dive toward the wall and burrow into my cave, pulling the little sack of millet in behind me. My one consolation, as I hear the poacher enter the kitchen, is the scuffling sound of Kito's little feet as he runs out, slamming the front door behind him.

With a curse, Alasiri sprints across the house. He's beyond what I can see from the vents in my hiding place, and I hold my breath so I can hear what he's doing.

I hear the squeak of his shoes against the floor when he pulls up in front of the door, the protesting of the door on its hinges when he yanks it open to look after Kito. There's a brief beat of silence when all I hear is my heart pounding loudly in my ears. Then there's a soft
thunk
as the door closes gently, and the snap of the bolt being thrown.
He's locking us in,
I think, and my breaths—in-out in-out—are too fast, and I realize I'm making a wheezing noise.
Quiet, Habo!
I scold myself.
Stop it!
I close my eyes and try to return my muffled gasps to their normal rhythm.

“So, Golden Boy, you're still in here. Somewhere.” My eyes snap open. Alasiri's footsteps in the other room are slow and measured, like his words. Without realizing I'm doing it, I start holding my breath again.

“Your little cousin was running as fast as his stubby little legs could go. So you know, we really don't have much time for this,” Alasiri's disembodied voice continues smoothly. “You should just come out from wherever you're hiding, instead of making me come find you.” I hear a crash. He must have turned over the table in the front room.

“You should have known there was only one way for this to end, your little hiding game, your ridiculous little life. You didn't possibly think that you could stay hidden, did you? You couldn't possibly have thought that you'd be safe here, in Mwanza of all places?” His voice is honey poured over hot stones. The sound of a knife slicing through Auntie's mattress is like a scream of pain on a dark night. I pull my knees up against my chest as I lie there and try to think myself into invisibility.

“You and your mother and your pretty sister all should have known.” His voice is closer, clearer. This is a problem with Auntie's house. Although her family is much better off than we ever were, and her house is bigger and better built than ours was, it's still a small house. Once he finished with the front room and the two small bedrooms, there's only the kitchen and the yard left for him to search. The light behind my clenched eyelids flashes, and I know his shadow has passed over one of my peepholes. I gather my courage and look out.

Alasiri is standing in the middle of the kitchen with his head up, arms held loosely at his sides. He is scanning the room leisurely, taking in possible places I could be hiding. In his right hand is a long hunting knife, the same one that he used to cut up the elephant.

It's that detail that finally gets my brain working again. He has a knife. A hunting knife. This is no game of hide-and-seek. This man means to kill me. He means to kill me, cut me up into pieces, take the pieces that interest him, and leave the rest of me lying on the floor to bloat in the heat, just like the elephant carcass in the bush.

Anger bubbles up in me like boiling water. I'm furious that this man should come into Auntie's house to try to kill me so that he can sell bits of me to that horrible
mganga
with the crazy eyes. I'm not a game animal. I'm not a thing. Black spots dance in front of my eyes, and without thinking, I shove myself out of my corn cave, stand up, and hurl one of the sacks at his head. Alasiri is facing away from me, kicking open the cupboards as I come out, but at the sound of my movement, he whirls around. The sack I threw hits him in the chest and he slashes at it with the knife, reflexively. Grain sprays everywhere and, in the confusion, I manage to climb over the rest of the pile and grab one of the bigger stools. I hold it out between me and Alasiri.

“Fine! I'm out, you stupid monster!” I have no idea what I'm saying. My anger is a haze at the edges of my vision, and I shout with all the breath in my lungs. “What are you going to do now? Kill me? Are you going to kill me? Well, I won't let you!”

For a brief second, Alasiri looks surprised. Then his smile is back, stretching across his face like an open sore.

“Well, well,” he says, “so you do have some spine after all. I thought I was going to have to kill you where you hid, like a boy hunting frogs.”

“I'm not a frog! Get out of here!”

Alasiri starts walking slowly toward me, swinging the knife loosely in his hand.

“
Sawa,
not a frog. Now you're a snake, squirming away and bearing fangs at me. But I'm still bigger than you are, little snake, bigger and stronger. Eventually, I'll win.”

My anger is fading and my fear returning.

“Get out!” I say again, but with less force this time. Alasiri moves closer and sideways, and I see he's trying to corner me. I step quickly to the left and away from him, so that I'm lined up with the doorway to the front room. Somehow, I have to get out of this house and into the street. Surely he wouldn't threaten me with a knife in the street.
Would he?

As if he can read my thoughts, Alasiri says, “Why are you running, Golden Boy? Do you think you'd be safer out there? Do you think that anyone in the street would stop me from killing you?” He pauses and takes an appraising look at me. “Do you even know what you're worth?”

If I just keep backing away, I can reach the door before him. Surely I can unlatch it and get out before he could lunge at me with the knife. Surely he's lying. Surely.

“Don't think I'm lying,” he says, again reading my thoughts. “Your hands and hair alone are worth more than a year's salary. Your skin is enough to buy a car. Your legs—ah, your legs.” He looks down and I realize that my legs have stopped moving. I force myself away from him with a lurch. He laughs and continues his slow prowl toward me. “Your legs are worth a great deal more than all the rest of you put together. Because it's your legs, Habo, that will win Mr. Msembo this next election. Your legs will get me a position in the government, and a nice house. No more tourists for me.” He smiles, and I feel a little bit like I'm going to faint. I'm remembering how Asu told me about the cabinet of luck medicine she found while cleaning the Msembo house. I have a sudden, terrible image of Asu cleaning around a cabinet that contains bits of my dead body, never knowing it. I feel vomit climbing up my throat and I force it down.

“You're lying,” I manage, weakly.

“No,” Alasiri says simply, taking another slow step forward. Then, “Did you know it was your sister who helped me get this job?”

I stare at him with my mouth open.

Alasiri smiles. “Oh yes,” he says. “Let me tell you a story while we dance across the room. It's a story about a silly older sister who works in a fine house.” He takes another step toward me and I step away to match him, out of habit. My brain is no longer working.

“One day, this silly sister tells the other maids about her little albino brother. Isn't that sweet?” Again, we take matching steps. “And who should overhear but the mistress of the house? Now, it just so happens that this particular mistress of the house has been looking for news of an albino. She has heard of a wonderful magic made from albino legs that can guarantee an election victory for her husband and so, when she hears this silly sister talking in the kitchen, she contacts her favorite
mganga
and promises him any price for this medicine. Are you following along, Dhahabo?” I jerk the stool up to my chest from where it's been slipping when he says my name. Alasiri just smiles and keeps talking in that low, singsong storyteller voice.

“The
mganga
agrees and calls up his favorite hunter. He's pleased when he learns that the hunter already knows this boy. And so it's agreed. For a very great deal of money, in American dollars, the hunter will bring the boy to the
m
ganga,
and the Msembos will have all the luck they need.” Alasiri's eyes muse over me once again.

“Your family named you well when they called you Dhahabo, for you might as well be made of gold. Pure gold,” he says quietly, as if to himself. His eyes lock onto mine.