Laugh with the Moon (5 page)

I just stare at the flies buzzing in the wave of dusty light shining through the window slit. When I’m through, I squint around for some toilet paper. My eyes have adjusted to the light and I can see a bit. But unfortunately, although I do have a keen psychic ability, I cannot conjure objects from thin air, and I especially cannot create toilet paper when there isn’t any.

“H
old your hands here,” Memory says when I return from the bathroom. She pours water from the bucket for me. “My turn,” she says, and I pour the water for her. Then we’re ready to eat. I take off my sandals and help carry the food back inside the hut, where we sit on the mats.

Memory tears off a hunk of
nsima
, rolls the dough into a ball in her fingers, and dips it in the
ndiwo
. “Do like this,” she says, and takes a bite. “The good report is you only miss five days of term two at Mzanga Full Primary School.” But then I realize that Memory’s good report comes with a bad report: We aren’t going to be setting down any plates or forks or knives or spoons. We’ll be eating with our hands. “Uncle Stallard explains you shall be in my class, standard eight. My brother Innocent attend this school also. He attend standard one.”

Even though most Global Health Project doctors who come to Malawi from the United States send their kids to the boarding school in Blantyre, Dad wants me to go to the local school. He says that way I’ll get the real village experience. “Besides,” he told me, “I want to spend more family time together.” Since when is two people enough for a family? At least Memory has a father plus a brother, so that makes a more normal number: three. Maybe she knows how long the pain lasts. Maybe she can tell me when I’ll stop waking up with tears on my pillow. But how can I ask her when we’ve only just met?

I rip off a small piece of
nsima
. I roll it in my hands and sniff. Surprise, surprise. It smells like corn.

“Do not worry,” Memory says. “This food I cook is not bewitched.”

“Oh, I, uh … I was about to dig in!” I sink the little piece of dough into the
ndiwo
and shove it into my mouth.

“In our class at Mzanga Full Primary is best students in villages,” Memory says. “Agnes is number two student. She bony and how do you say … 
satana
?” Memory can’t think of how to say the word in English, so we move on to the other students: Saidi, Norman, and Patuma. “The girl called Patuma fancy the boy called Norman,” she says, before discussing the other girls: Stella, Winnie, and Sickness.

“Sickness? This is someone’s name?” I ask.

“Not a good name,” says Memory. “She supposed to die when she born, but she live. Her mum give her this name.”

“Oh,” I say, and take another bite of
nsima
with
ndiwo
. It’s getting darker in the hut, and I don’t see lamps or
lightbulbs anywhere. “Do you have uniform prepared?” Memory asks.

I shake my head. “What uniform?”

She stands.
“Tiye tonse,”
she says. Even though that phrase wasn’t on the vocabulary list I studied before I left, I’m getting the feeling it means something like “Follow the leader” or “Better get a move on.”

Outside, Memory shows me a dress that’s hanging from a clothesline behind the hut. In the dusk, I can’t tell if it’s blue or green or gray, but I can see the shape of it just fine. I don’t mean to be rude, but it looks like a pilgrim frock. Still, I’m a firm believer in stretching the truth in the name of friendship. At this rate, Memory might be the only person I’m speaking to on the entire African continent, so I tell her “It’s sooo cool!” even though I’d never be caught dead wearing something like that myself.

“Do not worry,” she says. “The village seamstress shall fix you a uniform in two days. Now let us fetch your daddy.”

I put on my sandals and follow her across the field. Halfway back to the party, I stop in the moonlit grass to watch the silhouette of a grasshopper. The grasshopper wobbles across the dirt like an old African queen, until she remembers that she’s still young and jumps up as high as my eyeballs. I gasp and Memory just laughs as we trudge the rest of the way to the clearing.

I’m sure Dad is panicked by now. I mean, it’s dark and I’m missing and I could’ve been attacked by a wild beast. There are leopards and lions and zebras in this part of Malawi. Suddenly, I feel a little guilty. He was probably so
worried that he sent out a search party to find me. I run to the smoldering fire, where he’s sitting with Stallard, the new chief, and another man. They’re all perched in carved wooden chairs, watching the poor goat cook.

I walk between Dad and the fire. Memory shuffles up behind me. At first, Dad doesn’t notice I’m there, so I pace back and forth a few times until he calls out, “Hey, Clare!”

I whip my head toward him, even though I don’t really mean to. And in the flickering firelight, I see my father grinning like he doesn’t have a care in the world. “Honey,” he says, “I’d like you to meet Bright Malola. Mr. Malola is the clinical officer at the hospital where I’ll be working. Bright, this is my beautiful daughter, Clare.”

I blush while the gap-toothed man beside my father stands and smiles. I quickly remember not to make eye contact because it’s considered rude. So I look off to the spit while my skin throbs in the muggy night. I blink a few times and grind my teeth into my pendant. But talk about rude! My own father didn’t even notice I was gone.

D
read.

I dread waking up more than I can say. And so I try my best not to.

For the third time, Dad reaches his hand under the net and gives me a little shove. “Rise and shine,” he says again.

I pull the pillow over my head.

He’s sniffing something. “Wow, Clare,” he says. “You still smell smoky.” He’s smelling me!

I groan.

“What did Memory cook for you over at her place?”

My eyes fling open. How did he know where I was last night? I consider breaking my no-talking policy to ask, but I don’t get a chance, because the strangest thing happens: a deep, throaty laugh rumbles through my bedroom like an earthquake.

The laugh throws me into a state of shock and panic. No way am I in the mood for a visitor!

“Put on your clothes and I’ll introduce you,” Dad says. I roll over.

“Might I remind you,” he says, “this is going to be a very long trip if you’re planning not to talk to me.”

Dad pulls the mosquito netting aside. Before I set my feet on the floor, I close my eyes and offer up a quick but heartfelt prayer:
God, if you exist, please make Memory want to sit next to me in the cafeteria at my new school today. I beg of you!
Then I stretch my arms over my head and yawn.

“So, guess,” Dad says. He’s trying to trick me into talking to him, but I’m not falling for it. Diamond-shaped shadows from the mosquito net dance on the walls. I trace their pattern with my eyes.

“C’mon, guess!”

Huge ants swarm the crumpled-up mini Hershey Bar wrapper I left on the dresser last night. No doubt they stumbled on the treasure in the bloodshot hours of the night and carried each other piggyback to the site, the entire procession hypnotized by the sweet scent. There isn’t anything left on the foil wrapper, but still, the ants massacre it with glee.

Dad clasps his hands behind his back and rocks on his toes. I can see he’s dying to tell me. Even though I don’t ask, he can’t stand the suspense. “The new maid!” he says. “This place comes with a maid. I didn’t even know it. It said so in the paperwork but somehow I missed it.”

I pretend I’m searching for something in the dresser, but really what I’m doing is thinking. I’m thinking that most kids would probably be completely stoked to have
someone cook and clean for them, someone who’s around to take care of the house. Not me. That’s because I know better. I know you need a mother to make a house a home. No one else can do it, no matter how hard they try.

“Get dressed and come meet Mrs. Bwanali,” Dad says, and leaves.

I run to the bathroom and turn the faucet knob, and, lucky me, five trickles of freezing cold water spurt out of the rusty showerhead. While my hair gets wet, I think about all the people who tried to rush in to fill the empty spots during the past eight months since my mother died.

In the beginning, Mom’s friends came over with casseroles and lasagnas and meat loaves. They tidied up the kitchen while their kids watched TV or hung out in the playroom and tried their best to act like everything was practically normal, like I was still the same. But we all knew the truth: overnight, I had become a freak. I mean, there were plenty of kids walking around with divorced parents, but only a handful with dead ones. Grandma came from Sacramento for the whole month of August, and that was a little better. She took me shopping on Newbury Street and we baked lace cookies together. Of course, I totally love Grandma and everything, but in the end, she couldn’t replace my mother either.

Dad bangs on the bathroom door. “There’s no time for a shower this morning, Clare,” he yells. But he must be kidding! Does he really think I’d go to school smelling like smoke? I furiously rub the shampoo into my hair.

“Come on, kiddo. You need to get out right now,” he says.

I partially rinse out the shampoo and open the yellow
bottle of something called
après-shampooing lissant
. I took it from the Paris hotel where we stayed last year when Dad had a pediatric surgery conference. I’m working the
après-shampooing lissant
through from the roots to the ends when Dad pounds on the door again. “Not only are we running late, Clare, but you’re probably using up our water supply for the next month!”

Okay, that’s a terrifying thought! Even though my hair is still coated with
lissant
, I get out. I’ll just hope the potion left on my head evaporates with the water as my hair dries.

Back in the bedroom, I pull on my magenta cotton V-neck tee, brown crinkled bedouin skirt, and earth-tone beaded earrings. It’s a million degrees here and women aren’t supposed to wear shorts. How messed up is that? I use my experience creating costumes for the school plays to make myself look respectable. I pin my hair back with four retro poodle barrettes I bought for the Pink Ladies in
Grease
, and when there are no obvious fixes left, I go into the kitchen to meet our new maid, otherwise known as the intruder.

M
rs. Bwanali is an enormous woman wrapped in a purple, yellow, and green floral-print skirt and a red paisley shirt. I squint to protect my eyes from the clashing patterns and colors. She’s sitting at the kitchen table with my father, a plate of orange squashy stuff between them. The only thing that looks worse than her fashion sense is her cooking. As far as I’m concerned, she can leave right now.

“Ahh … Clare!” she says. She smiles and the fat on her cheeks swallows her eyes. “It is a pleasure to meet you.” She stands and grabs my hands with hers. “A true and most superior pleasure.”

Dad is so excited about her that he forgets to chew me out about the shower. In fact, he’s acting rather civilized. “Clare, did you know that Mrs. Bwanali lives in Kapoloma
village?” he says. “She’s worked at this house for sixteen years. She and her husband are originally from Zambia.”