Bingo's Run (26 page)

There was silence between us then. I stretched out my hand to her business style. “You and me partners,” I said to Mrs. Steele.

Her hand was smudged black from Krazi Hari's garbage. She shook my hand—no trick, no scam, no hustle. “Partners,” she said back.

“No contract with us,” I said.

Mrs. Steele smiled. “No contract.”

I had worked it out; it was obvious. I needed Mrs. Steele the way she needed me. I could never get a Gihilihili export license without Mrs. Steele. I cannot sell things in America; I am not American, don't have perfume, wear dresses, or have breasts.

Outside Hunsa's house, a child sat beside the DHL truck painting happy faces on it with discarded cans of Hunsa's paints. The caretaker slept in the driver's seat, and the white pipe dangled from his mouth as if glued to his thin red lips.

Slo-George and Rhino were gone. A horrible thought came to me, but I pushed it out; anyway, no bed would be strong enough.

Mrs. Steele stood on the red-sand street staring, past the black Mercedes and the blue van, at three other children kicking a can to one another. They were little—two boys, one girl. They laughed as they kicked. “Football,” I said to Mrs. Steele's back, but she did not speak.

I watched her back as she stood in the hot street. Maybe five minutes, maybe twenty minutes passed as the old can was kicked and kicked again. It was peaceful. Some people came onto the street; others left it. The children played, Mrs. Steele watched. No one was going anywhere special. Workers would soon come home. I took off my black leather shoes. I wanted to feel the heat on my feet, like Mrs. Steele.

Noise came from Hunsa's house—it sounded as if he was
moving the paintings. He often did that—look through his pictures one after another. They were like his children. I heard the Masta talking to his children, painting after painting. Mrs. Steele turned to me and spoke. “Bingo, come with me and let's choose the first ten pictures to ship to the States.”

“Ten?” I said. “We should take them all.”

Mrs. Steele said, “No, Bingo, greed benefits no one. Flooding the market will shrink it.”

I thought that Mrs. Steele had been hit with the heat. It's obvious: flooding the market soaks it! I followed her into Hunsa's house.

Hunsa watched as Mrs. Steele and me chose ten of his children to ship. “Not that one,” he said—again and again. In the end, Mrs. Steele chose ten Hunsas of different sizes. Some were painted on canvas and others on wood, but they all showed Hunsa and his bhunna, along with a variety of animals and forms. We carried the pictures out of Hunsa's house one by one and leaned them against the side of the house. Me and Mrs. Steele looked at the pictures in the mad heat. It looked as though Hunsa had painted life. Everything in the pictures seemed to move; the animals breathed, the bhunnas dangled. “They're breathtaking,” Mrs. Steele said. I smiled. Mrs. Steele liked porn as much as I did.

A sound came out of Hunsa's house. For a second, it sounded like a Slo-George grunt. But it was not. It was a cry of Missing.

Mrs. Steele heard it, too, and stopped staring at the pictures. She went to the van and woke up the caretaker with a yell. He jumped awake as if he had just been plugged into the electric, but guess what? The clay pipe didn't fall. “Driver, we're leaving these pictures here. They are not what I thought at all; they're essentially worthless. Driver, you can go. Bingo and I are heading to the airport. We need to catch our flight.” I looked up at her as if she was mad; the piss and the paint had got to her. All the contracts
were for nothing? All of it was for nothing? But I knew Mrs. Steele's look by now. It said, “I have decided.”

The caretaker did not seem to hear her. He got out of the van. His white curled hair looked like metal. His long white clay pipe looked silver in the sun. When he reached me, he shoved his hand into his pocket. “Boy, this is for you,” he said. He held a large silver cross on a chain and hung it around my neck. It was heavy. The caretaker leaned down, and when he spoke his voice was low. “It is a gift from Father Matthew,” he said. “Father Matthew says wear this cross and it will protect you on your journey.” His breath smelled of honey.

Mrs. Steele said, “Bingo, what do you say?”

“Ta,” I said, but I did not like the cross. It was heavy, and the runner carries nothing (Commandment No. 11). The caretaker got back into the van and drove off. I got into the Mercedes with Mrs. Steele. I looked through the window back at Hunsa's house; the pictures rested against it, as if his children were tired from the sun. She was right: they belonged there. I looked at the concrete house next to Hunsa's. The gate was closed, the door was shut. From now on, Rhino would have to put up with Slo-George's grunts, suffer his half-brained silence, and make sure his face was fed. I was jealous. The sun would beat down on my back and Slo-George would not be there to shade me.

As Mr. Alex drove to the airport slower than dust, I stopped thinking about Slo-George, Hunsa, the paintings, the caretaker, and the cross. I sat close to Mrs. Steele. I said, “Tha paintin's not worth a thing?” She had her arm on my shoulder. She shook her head. “Not to us,” she said. She smelled of woman and trash. Her feet were still bare, white, black, and red. She looked out one window; I looked out the other. She pulled me close. I cried out from my belly pain. “Bingo, are you all right?” she asked. I told her that I still had pain from Gihilihili at Nyayo House. She gave
a good performance that she knew nothing about it. She cocked her head. “Scott knew about this visit to Nyayo House?”

In the Trickster stories, you never know why the Trickster plays tricks, but there is always a point to them. There were no longer paintings or money between us; it was just Mrs. Steele and me. Mrs. Steele kissed my head, and I understood what Charity had done.

Mboya, Nzame's wife, the Queen of Heaven, Daughter of the Great Tree, had made it through a long day. She was tired from writing in the Books.

Once she reached her chamber, she dismissed her attendants with the wave of a branch. Now she was alone. On the small table by her bed was a walnut chest. Excited, as she was every night, she opened it. She lifted out a mass of silken threads.

Each silk thread was a line of time; each thread was one of her children. Each thread had a length, a thickness, and a color. Each silk thread had a beginning and an end. Each thread bore a scent. Together the threads formed the Yarn of Life—infinite color and endless beauty.

She dipped her twig fingers into the yarn and pulled out a thread. Holding the beginning and the end, she examined it. The thread she held was a coarse, raw blue thread. It was the thread of a simple huntsman. She separated it from a similar, slightly longer one, which was his father and also blue. “How evil the huntsman was—no wonder his father beat him.” Two
shorter threads were tied to the huntsman's: one was gold, the other dark green. Mboya shook her head. “How foolish they were to tie their threads to his.” She dropped the threads back into the river.

So many colors, so many forms—all her children, endless beauty.

She spotted a thread that was beloved by her. It was a thread of crimson that ran back and forth across the river. Mboya pulled out the thread and kissed it. Bingo was her first son. She loved all her children, as they came from the same ocean of orange love, but she had loved Bingo first. “He is a good boy,” she said. Other threads were knotted to Bingo's, but his thread ran on forever. Mboya pressed his silk thread onto her lips again and let it go. The crimson thread fell back into the river.

The threads were simple; they were tied by time and tangled by fate. They gave Mboya joy.

Mboya pulled out her own thread. It was made of the softest brown silk imaginable. Tied to it was the thread of the red calf that she had sacrificed and the deep blue thread of Fam, her father, who had cut her with his knife. But the end of her thread was fused to another's—the effervescent purple of her lord Nzame, the Master of Masters, the Lord of Everything. She felt the softness of his breath. She smelled his force. She felt his power and her will to serve it. She caressed the purple thread and followed it as it led beneath her shawl. But something was wrong. His thread left hers and went beyond the walnut chest, beyond her shawl, and out of her bedchamber.

Mboya traced her master's thread out of her chamber, through the divine palace, and into the throne room. But Nzame was not on his throne. Her master's thread passed over
the throne, dropped through the Purple Sap, and fell down to earth. Nzame, the Master of Everything, had gone to earth. Mboya gasped: at the end of the thread she saw a large black spider.

The purple fields thundered. Mboya knew the Trickster was to blame; she smelled his honey-sweet scent.

Mrs. Steele walked across the airport, and I followed behind her. We were both barefoot. I carried my red case and wore my large silver cross.

The Thaatima waited by the KLM ticket counter. His lips and forehead shone from sweat under the electric lights. His orange hair stuck out like wild grass from under his straw hat. For once, the Thaatima looked stressed out. His voice was louder than I had ever heard it. “Colette, we have less than an hour. We need to rush.”

The reason people rush is that they know they are going to die. If people lived forever, they would walk everywhere and never hurry. The Thaatima was stressed by time; he rushed because he feared death—why else would you rush if you were paid $750 an hour? Death was not one of Senior Father's six fears. Senior Father said, “Afraid of death is like afraid of dirt. Neva be afraid of something that has to be.”

The Thaatima breathed hard. “Bingo, you do not need to check your suitcase. It is small enough for you to carry straight onto the plane.” He never asked about Mrs. Steele's lost shoes or
why her feet were bare and black. The Thaatima rushed ahead, and Mrs. Steele and me followed him.

We came to a sign that read P
ASSPORT
C
ONTROL
. Mrs. Steele opened her shiny black bag. “Bingo,” she said, “here is your passport.” She gave me the small purple book with “Kenya” written in gold on the cover. I turned the pages; they were empty, except for the last. On the last page was the photograph Plain Brunette had taken of me at St. Michael's. Printed under it was “Bingo Mwolo, Citizen of Kenya” and, below that, “Date of Birth: 20 November 1993.” “Ta,” I said to Mrs. Steele. I now owned myself.

Mrs. Steele kissed my cheek. “You are welcome,” she said. We went to the passport desk together. The silver cross swung as I walked, and I felt happy and sad together. I had this but not that: Mrs. Steele but not Charity.

The Thaatima showed his passport first and went through. Next, it was my turn, then Mrs. Steele's. A guard looked at my passport and nodded. He looked at Mrs. Steele's and grinned. We walked past police posters about the crimes of smuggling ivory, gold, and drugs. I smiled at the last. I was the best runner in Nairobi, Kenya, and probably the world. After that, we followed the string of people that waited under the sign that read Security. Once through Security, I would be safe from my past but a slave to its passing.

Constancy is not a color worn by nature. Change befalls all, even the Master of Everything.

One day Trickster came before Nzame, the Master of Everything, while Mboya was resting in her bedchamber. Trickster had disguised himself into the form of Beauty, a form he knew the Master could not resist.

The Master asked, “Beauty, what is it you wish of me?”

Trickster's red-painted lips answered, “Master of Everything, all praise is yours. All life is yours. All wonder is yours. All beauty and all magnificence are yours.”

That is how the Trickster speaks: the promise of flowers in dry soil.

Nzame was dazzled. He said, “Beauty, name your wish!”

Beauty smiled. “Nzame, Master of Masters, is it true that Mboya, your beloved, is the Mother of Everything?”

“Yes, she is,” answered Nzame.

“Is it true that Mboya loves her children greatly?”

“Yes, it is,” answered Nzame.

Beauty then said, “Mboya writes in the Books that her children praise you.”

“That is true,” said Nzame. He remembered Mboya reading to him of the never-ending praise he received from his children.

Trickster went on, “Mboya knows how Fam angered you and how you buried him deep in a cave with a giant boulder for a mouth. Mboya fears your anger, lest her children fail you and you bury them, too. Master of Everything, Lord of Lords, Mboya, the mother of all children, does not tell you rightly of your children's acts.”

Nzame said to Trickster, “Are you saying that the Books lie; that Mboya, my wife, deceives me?”

Beauty looked upon Nzame with a third eye that shone with mischief. “Mboya is the Mother of Everything. She loves her children more than she loves you. That is the destiny of all mothers. That is why she lies.”

Trickster knew that Nzame was a jealous master and that all must love him most. Nzame's anger was as fierce as his love was gentle. Trickster said, “Master of Masters, He All Knowing, He All Wise, He who must see all, come with me to earth. Come and see the evil of your children.” Trickster smiled with red lips. Trickster knew that his master would agree.

Said Nzame, “But if the children see me on the earth, they will fear me and fall to their knees.”

Trickster pretended to consider this. Then he replied, “Master of Masters, then disguise yourself. Disguise yourself as a spider. Man does not bow to the spider but runs from him. That way, you will see your children in truth.”