Beverly Hills Maasai (6 page)

“To win,” he repeated.

“But … but … why didn’t you just stay in Kenya and run?”

He laughed. “There is no money to run in Kenya. Here is money.”

“Money?”

He reached into his pouch and pulled out that yellowed flyer announcing the marathon. He placed it in front of me and tapped his finger against the advertisement. There, at the bottom, was a list of the prizes for the event.

“Oh, wow!” I gasped.

“What is it?” my mother asked.

“The person who finishes first gets $250,000!”

“I had no idea,” my mother said.

“Second place is worth $150,000, third gets $100,000, and fourth place receives $75,000.” I turned to Nebala. “You’re running for the money?”

He nodded.

That didn’t make any sense. Maasai didn’t collect money, or cars, or houses. All that mattered were cows. The more cows a warrior owned, the richer he was. Wait … maybe that was it.

“I understand! If you win, then you can buy more cows, right?”

He shook his head.

“Then what are you going to use the money for?”

He picked up his glass and held it out toward me. “Water.”

“Sure, we can just ask Carmella for another bottle.”

“No, no, the prize money is for water.”

“You’re going to buy … water?”

“We will dig a well so that we have water for everybody.”

“I’m confused,” Olivia said. “You mean, you
don’t
have water now?”

“The rains did not come this season—again. The river has dried up. There is little water … not enough. What water we have is not good.”

“And that’s why you came here to compete in the marathon. That’s why you need the money,” I said. Now it all made sense.

“Yes. People are sick … cattle are dying.”

“Have you had cattle die?” I asked.

“I have no cattle,” Nebala said, his words barely audible.

“Of course you have cattle … you even told me how many cattle you have.”

“Had,” he said sadly.

“All
your cattle have died?” I gasped. “That’s awful!”

“All my cattle have been sold.” Nebala gestured to Koyati and Samuel. “We all sold our cattle. That is how we got money to fly here.”

“I just can’t believe you’d do that,” I said.

I knew that to a Maasai, his cattle were second in
importance only to his family. I couldn’t imagine a Maasai selling his cattle.

“There was no choice. Without water
all
the cattle will die.” He paused. “People will die.” He paused again. “And that is why we
must
win the marathon.”

I shifted my weight in bed and turned over onto my other side. I’d drifted off a couple of times but hadn’t really been able to get to sleep. Too many thoughts, too many surprises. In my wildest dreams I had never imagined that Nebala—and two other Maasai—would be staying in my guest house. This was all beyond belief.

I sat up in bed and tried punching my pillows. If I could get them in just the right positions maybe I could settle in and get to sleep. My father always joked that I was like “The Princess and the Pea” and needed my bed to be just perfect.

I snuggled back into the pillows and kicked at the covers until my feet were free. I had to get to sleep, which meant I had to forget about Nebala and go to my “happy place.” Not that I wasn’t happy about
Nebala visiting … I was. It was just that it was all so strange and unexpected. And my thoughts drifted back, of course, to my summer in Kenya.

Who would have thought that a shoplifting charge, combined with an angry judge, would have landed me in Kenya with a program to build schools? And if it hadn’t been for that, I never would have met Ruth—“my Maasai sister,” I called her—and I would never have learned to look at the world in an entirely different way, and … This wasn’t helping me get me to sleep.

I rolled over again to face the window. The breeze felt soft and cool and … Where was that breeze coming from? I looked over. My window was open. I hadn’t left my window open. I
never
left my window open. I opened my eyes as wide as I could to try to capture whatever light was coming in through the window—through the
open
window. Trying not to move much, or more important to be seen to move, I slowly turned my head so I could look around the room. It was dark. I could see only shadows and—Was there somebody standing in the corner? I stifled a gasp and felt a scream rise in my throat. Wait … it couldn’t be a person. My imagination was running away with me.

Our house had an elaborate alarm system. We’d always had an alarm—who didn’t?—but after my father moved out my mother upgraded to a system that most banks would have been envied. Since then, she’d been much, much more relaxed. Still, she always armed the alarm when she went to bed. I was safer sleeping in my own bedroom than in a bank vault.

So what if my window was open? I probably hadn’t latched it properly and the wind had just blown it open … although the wind did seem pretty gentle. But so what? It wasn’t like anybody could get in through my window anyway. I was on the second floor—really almost as high as the third floor because of the way the ground below was landscaped and dropped off—and there was no way anybody could climb up the side of the house. It was a straight drop.

I didn’t like heights, and I didn’t like looking straight down from my window. If you ever fell it would be one big drop to the ground. You’d probably break your neck, unless some of the shrubs below cushioned your fall.

There was a tree not far from my window, but it wasn’t close enough to climb up to my room. There was no way. I knew that for a fact. The security experts who’d installed the alarm system upgrade had also done a full security audit of the property. Based on that, they’d removed some of the shrubs, installed motion-sensor lights, and trimmed branches from the trees that were too close to the house.

Carlos had been
so
angry. He treated the trees and shrubs as if they were members of his family, and he just couldn’t believe that these security guys had hacked away the branches. He called them a bunch of butchers. I think he would have taken a chainsaw to
them
if he could have got away with it.

Now you’d have to be a leopard to leap from that tree to my window, and this wasn’t Africa. There was nothing more dangerous here than a chihuahua. But
that shadow in the corner was a lot bigger than a chihuahua, and it certainly didn’t look like a leopard. Not like a leopard … but it did look like a man. Paranoia was back for an encore.

I tried to focus my eyes on the shadow. If I stared harder maybe I could see better. This was stupid. Why didn’t I just turn on my bedside lamp? Then this whole thing, my imagination running wild, would dissolve in the light.

Unless it really
was
a man standing in the corner of my room … standing there watching me sleep … waiting for the right moment to—The shadow moved!

Slowly I moved my hand from under the covers, inching it closer to the light. I fumbled around on the table, trying to find the switch, and—

“Alexandria.”

I froze in fear and—Wait … that voice. “Nebala?”

“Yes.” He stepped forward.

I switched on the light, and Nebala used his hand to shield his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” I gasped.

“Scared?” he asked.

I almost said no but realized my reaction had to be etched on my face. How could I not be scared? I’d have liked to see how
he’d
react if I suddenly showed up in
his
hut in the middle of the night. Probably by pulling out a machete or tossing a spear at me. That would be very bad for me. The worst thing that could happen to him was me pummelling him with one of the stuffed animals that lived on my bed.

“How did you get in here?” I asked.

“Window.”

“But it’s twenty-five feet off the ground. How did you get
up
to the window?” I was wondering if he’d found a ladder in the garage.

“Tree.”

“You used the tree? Okay, but how did you get from the tree to my window?”

“Jumped.” He pantomimed jumping.

“Nobody could jump that far. That’s impossible.”

“Possible.”

I wanted to argue, but since he was standing right there I had to figure it really was possible.

“Okay, you jumped.”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to give me anything except one-word answers?”

“Maybe,” he said, and then he smiled.

“In that case, let’s not worry anymore about
how
you got here.
Why
are you here?”

“Promise.”

“Sure, what do you want me to promise?” I asked.

“Not
you
promise.
Me
promise.” He pulled out an envelope. “It is from Ruth.”

“Ruth sent me a letter!” I exclaimed. “That’s wonderful!” I took it from him. “Thanks so much for bringing it all this …” Then I had a terrible thought. What was in this letter that was so important it couldn’t wait until tomorrow? Had something happened to Ruth … or baby Alexandria? I knew that babies in Kenya sometimes did not survive—that was one of the reasons my father had paid to build the clinic.

“Is everybody—Ruth …. little Alexandria—is everybody okay?” I asked.

“I do not know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I am here and they are in Africa,” he answered. “When I left they were both well … but now? I do not know.” He shrugged. “I have no gift of far-sight.”

From almost anybody else that comment would have seemed strange, sarcastic, or even psychotic. But Nebala was just saying what he meant.

“I’m glad they were fine when you saw them,” I said. “But what’s so important that you had to bring me the letter tonight?”

“A promise to Ruth and her father that I would give this letter to you at the time of our greetings.”

“And you forgot.”

He nodded and his eyes fell to the ground. He had forgotten and realized that he had broken his word. To a Maasai that was a terrible, terrible thing because their word was part of their honour, part of who they were. Breaking his word to Ruth was bad, but even worse, he had also given his word to her father—and he was a chief. I knew Nebala would feel awful, even ashamed. It wasn’t his fault. With all the travel and everything new and different, he must have been exhausted, confused. It was easy to understand, but excuses like that wouldn’t make him feel any better.

“You know,” I said, “by bringing the letter to me now you have brought it to me on the day of our greetings, so really, you did keep your promise.”

He suddenly looked relieved.

I held out my hand. “Hello, Nebala. I offer you my greetings.”

He held out his hand and smiled. “And I offer my greetings to you,” he replied. “Thank you. Now I must go.”

“Sure. I’ll let you out.” I didn’t want him to set off the alarm system or we’d have my mother up, the security company scrambling, and a call from the police department at the very least. “I’ll turn off the alarm for the back door.”

“I will go through the window,” he said. He walked over.

“No, you don’t have to go that way. Let me get the—”

He put a foot up onto the ledge and then jumped out the window!

I sat there, too shocked to move, my mouth hanging open. I struggled to get out of bed, rushing for the window, and I crashed to the floor with a loud thud—my feet were tangled up in the sheets. I kicked them free and crawled and scrambled to the window, pulling myself up and steadying myself as I looked down to the ground. He wasn’t there.

I looked over. There he was in the tree, standing on one branch and holding the one above to steady himself.

“See? It’s possible,” he offered as a brief answer to my unspoken question.

“I can see that.” Although I still didn’t believe it. “Be careful, you could fall and get hurt.”

“I will not fall. I am Maas—”

“Even Maasai can fall, and unless you’re a bird you can’t fly. Be careful.”

He chuckled. “I will be careful. Good night, Alexandria.”

“Good night, Nebala.”

I watched in awe as he climbed down the tree, disappearing into the branches and foliage until I could make out only little glimpses of him. And then he just disappeared into the darkness. I thought I could hear him—faintly—and maybe I heard him drop to the ground, but I couldn’t be sure. I kept looking, waiting for him to set off one of the motion-sensor lights so I could confirm that he was down and safe, but it didn’t happen. Apparently Maasai could not only climb a tree like a monkey and leap like a leopard, but also move with such stealth that they didn’t even trigger a motion sensor. He was like a ghost. Or a dream. That’s what it was like—a dream.

I stood there, thinking that even though I’d seen him, spoken to him, it all still could have passed for a dream because it was nothing short of bizarre. I could just imagine the conversation I’d have with somebody who didn’t know about any of this: “Oh yeah, by the way, a Maasai warrior climbed a tree and jumped into my room last night … No, no problem … No, of course I was scared. Wouldn’t you be scared? Well, he was just there because he was delivering a letter …” The letter. I’d forgotten!

I grabbed the sheets and duvet and pulled them aside—there it was! I picked it up off the floor and turned it over. On the front, in graceful lettering, it said, “To Alexandria, my sister.” That made me smile.

Ruth was Maasai, like Nebala. She lived with her nine brothers and sisters in Kenya, in a village, in a little
hut made of mud and cow dung. We’d known each other only a few weeks, and other than a couple of letters we’d had no contact for the past seven months. We had absolutely
nothing
in common—nothing except the fact that we were friends. Good friends.

I opened the envelope and took out the letter, and something fell to the floor. It was a picture. I bent down and picked it up. It was a picture of Ruth holding Alexandria—her baby sister, my namesake. Ruth was smiling and Alexandria was laughing. It looked as though they were sharing a joke.

I stared at the picture. Alexandria was now almost seven months old—which meant she was almost seven months older than when I’d last seen her. I’d been there when she was born, right there. Ruth and her parents believed that if it hadn’t been for me, Alexandria wouldn’t have lived. Maybe they were right. I’d basically stolen a car to get them to the clinic, and then bullied and threatened and bribed my way to make sure Ruth’s mother—baby Alexandria’s mother—got the right medical care. Who would have thought that threatening, bribing, bullying, and grand theft auto could have led to something as beautiful as Alexandria?