The Milk of Birds (12 page)

First he shows a few slides of the camps he visited. Not Nawra's—we check the Save the Girls info sheet Mom brought. But he says the situation's similar across Darfur. The wind blows pretty much all the time, even when it's not a full-fledged
haboob
.

“They should build some wind farms,” I whisper to Mom. She squeezes my hand the way she does when she thinks I'm brilliant, which happens maybe once a year.

The women stand straight, straight and slender. In some slides, they're looking at the photographer, mostly sad, but a few almost smiling, their teeth so white against their dark skin. Nawra must be beautiful. Women cook
assida
, stirring for hours and hours with a long-handled paddle. I want to know about the taste, but Mr. Physics is into chemical reactions—high heat plus flour plus water plus the force of the paddle equals starch.

“
Assida
reminds me of Cream of Wheat,” I whisper. For a while Mom kept making us Cream of Wheat for breakfast, but it was always too hot, and when it cooled, it hardened into the shape of the bowl. She gave up when Todd tried to throw it outside like a Frisbee.

Mr. Physics says Darfurians spoon saucy stew,
mulah
, on
top, with all the veggies Nawra's mom grew in her garden. In the camp, most people eat only one meal a day.

After the snapshots, he launches into a PowerPoint with tables, graphs, cost estimates, diagrams, equations of energy transfer, blah, blah. At first I think,
This guy is worse than Emily,
but then I think,
This is the guy Emily should marry!

I miss her. Is she thinking of me? Probably not. Probably she's too busy discussing algebra and energy transfer with her brilliant friends. Or maybe she tells a story about this doofus girl she knows back home. Or maybe she's like Todd. What sister? What friend?

I want to ship Nawra a stove, but Mom whispers back that Save the Girls doesn't work that way.

“Couldn't she buy a stove for thirty bucks?” I ask.

“Nawra doesn't get that much.”

“That's what you send.”

“Save the Girls has to pay overhead.” Mom sees I'm about to get mad. “All charities do,” she says. “They have to pay for translations and salaries and gas for Saida Julie and Saida Noor and their driver. Plus training for the girls at the end.”

Efficiency, efficiency—that's this guy's refrain. You want the fire to cook, not leak all over the place.

“How do we know Save the Girls is doing their stuff efficiently?”

Mom gives my hand another squeeze, a world record. Somebody nearby hisses, “Shh,” and Todd elbows me.

Mr. Physics goes on and on. I'm thinking about how to get Nawra a stove. I could stick a ten-dollar bill in the envelope, but that might get stolen. Mom's friend stuck a chocolate heart
in a Valentine to her nephew, but when the envelope arrived, it had been slit open and the heart was gone. She thinks it's because she put
Secret Admirer
as the return address. That's Homeland Security.

Todd needles us to go when the questions start, but I raise my hand and ask how much wood costs. Mr. Physics figures two to three hundred Sudanese dinars per day per family, which is roughly ninety cents to $1.30 in US dollars as of November 2005, which gives you the idea that if you asked him for the time, he'd probably give it to you in nanoseconds Pacific Time.

Mom scribbles away on the back of a bank deposit slip, and then we leave. While we're standing out front, trying to figure out which way to the restaurant, a woman comes up and says hello. She'd been inside, and she was
impressed
by my question about wood.

Gloating in Todd's direction, I tell her about Nawra, and Save the Girls, which she says is doing great things. She works for Oxfam, which is also trying to help Internally Displaced People.

She laughs when I ask about
khawaja
. “That's what IDPs call foreigners,” she says.

I ask what beside firewood Nawra might spend her money on.

She launches into an Emily-size answer. Are all
khawaja
so long-winded? You can get just about anything, she says, for a price. I have a feeling Cloudy's dead, but I hope Nawra doesn't see any other animals because she'd probably spend all her money on them.

And toiletries, the woman says, which is such a yucky word. A big item is demuria cloth, cotton and polyester woven tight. Oxfam and others soak it in pesticide so people can hang it up
like mosquito nets, particularly in the south, where malaria is a big problem.

Blow, wind. Blow those bugs away from Nawra.

Then the Oxfam woman says, “In Darfur women use plain demuria when they get their periods. Some women have been so badly injured from rapes that they've lost bladder or bowel control. They wash cloth and reuse it, but it wears out.”

“A lot of girls get raped?” I ask the woman.

The woman glances at Mom, who nods. “A lot,” she says.

“How many?”

“There's no way to count. Rape's so shameful, it tears families apart. In the camps, we often find babies abandoned.”

Mom asks, “Would you like to join us for lunch?”

I am super relieved that the woman has other plans.

Mom's other surprise is a Sudanese restaurant.

“I am not getting near any
assida
or
mulah
,” Todd announces, but they aren't even on the menu.

When the waitress comes, she doesn't look like the women in Mr. Physics's slides. I ask where she's from.

Peru.

Mom gives Todd the stink eye when he orders a burger, so he switches to falafel. Good charities spend no more than 25 percent on administrative costs and dedicate the rest to programs, Mom says. Before choosing, she did all this research, and she liked Save the Girls because it aims to empower girls and because it spends 85 percent of donations on programs.

“I know some girls who are beyond saving,” Todd says.

“Because they don't appreciate the fine art of out-of-focus photography?”

“Stop, you two,” Mom says as the waitress puts down the chicken shawarma and veggie platter we're sharing.

I could have made a crack about Claire, Todd's sort-of girlfriend until two months ago, when she texted him
U R NT D
1 4
ME
. He was so stunned that he showed it to me. We tried to think up snappy comebacks—the most fitting was
U R LOWER THN A BASEMNT
—but in the end I told him just to delete her from all his directories and wish her good luck the next time he saw her; that's the classier move.

Halfway into his falafel, Todd gets onto some dude named Linus Pauling.

“Is he the guy who named his daughter Moon Unit?” I ask.

“Nooo, that's Frank Zappa,” Todd says.

“Who died of prostate cancer,” says Mom. She's obsessed with obituaries.

“Frank Zappa, Linus Pauling, one of your creepy black-haired rock 'n' roll guys,” I say.

Todd looks at Mom, and suddenly they start laughing—not just a little chuckle, but those great shaking hysterics that take over your whole body like you're possessed by a crazed leprechaun.

“What's so funny?” I ask, but they're goners. People at other tables gape.

“I'm glad I'm so entertaining,” I say, which I am, kind of, because my mom doesn't laugh as much as she used to. I try to turn my back on the blowing sand, so the meanness can't sting my heart. It's pretty hard to look in the mirror and say, “I'm smart, I'm confident,” when even your mother and brother think you're a total ditz.

Finally Mom blows her nose into her paper napkin and says, “I'm sorry, sweetie, but Linus Pauling was a famous scientist.”

“Chemist,” Todd says.

“Chemist,” Mom says, “who won two Nobel Prizes, one for peace and one for chemistry.”

“How am I supposed to know that?” I ask.

“Read,” Todd says. “You know stuff by reading.”

“If we got cable, I could watch CNN,” I say. Mom canceled the cable after Dad left, since it was too expensive. We watch it over at Dad's, but Todd gets mad because Dad's always clicking the remote right in the middle of good parts.

As Mom pays the bill, I ask, “Can't we just send Nawra an extra ten dollars this month? Then she could decide if a stove's a good investment.”

“You can ask,” Mom says.

“Who?”

“Save the Girls. Send them an e-mail.”

“Aren't they in Washington?” I ask. “Let's just go.”

We have the address on the info sheet, so we take the Metro Red Line, Todd moaning the whole way. Good thing he wants a career working with molecules; people couldn't stand him.

Finally we find the building, between a shoe repair and a Peruvian chicken place that probably hires Sudanese waitresses. Overhead-wise Save the Girls seems to be doing the right thing because up two flights of stairs to a dingy little office, they sure aren't spending donations to impress people. Behind the glass, the office is dark, but we knock, and a woman appears from the back, wary about opening the door until Mom holds up the info sheet to prove we aren't robbers.

Turns out she's the assistant director. She's beautiful in a stark way, bright white hair shorter than Todd's, tank top, complicated bead-and-wire earrings that almost brush her bare shoulders. She explains that Save the Girls sets the donation amount really carefully—enough to cover on-the-ground costs, which are going up daily with bandits and all, but not so much that the program creates haves and have-nots in the camps. Handing someone a wad of cash can upset the whole community structure.

“Financially, we give just a small boost to these girls and their families,” she says. “The important thing is that it comes with a letter that shows that someone cares about them.”

The Save the Girls lady suggests we support one of the groups running stove projects, because the more they catch on, the more likely a stove will reach Nawra. But she warns us that probably won't happen soon because “road” is an overstatement for the dirt tracks of Darfur, especially now in the rainy season.

In my head it rains all the way back, trucks stuck in mud as thick as
assida
, Nawra and Adeeba hungry and waiting for the letter I didn't write this morning. I feel lower than a basement.

J
ULY
2008

The morning air is quiet and heavy with the rain to come. That heaviness is in me, too, and on my shoulders, for my mother limps with one arm over Adeeba and the other over me. If K. C.'s money comes again,
inshallah
, I will buy my mother a cane of acacia wood. Perhaps with an old tree at her side, she will stand on her own feet again.

In the lines for latrines, people talk under the same heaviness. We see Umm Daoud with the mute Fayiza, so Adeeba asks for news of the girl whose screams have ended.

“They say she died,” Umm Daoud says. “Her baby died in her.
Ya Lateef
. From God we come, and to God we shall return.”

“From God we come, and to God we shall return,” we say.

“Her aunt had only plastic, so a neighbor gave her a cloth to wrap the body.”

“Better your close neighbor than your distant brother,” the woman behind us says.

“She is buried?” Adeeba asks.

Umm Daoud shakes her head. Another woman says, “Someone told the
khawaja
at first light. The grave digger will come soon to fetch her body.”

I look around, as if to see this grave digger, but of course in all directions there is nothing but lumpen shelters of mud
and sticks and plastic, people milling, smoke beginning to rise from morning cookfires. I wonder how he will carry her body. Probably he will not cradle her in his arms, against his heart, as a brother would. Perhaps he will sling her over his shoulders like a sack of meal from the united nations of the world. He will bury her beside all the others on the edge of the camp. Adeeba calls it the Valley of the Kings, for her father told her of a place in Egypt where the rulers carved fine tombs out of rock, although you would not know of their finery to walk past. But there are no fine tombs here, just mounds of earth, and women picking their way between because it is the shortest path for those leaving the camp to search for firewood.

“A pregnant girl has one foot in the grave,” says a voice I recognize.

Adeeba and I turn. Halima is parading with her usual companions, who nod. The locusts will follow their leader.

God forgive me, I take pleasure in thinking of Halima using the latrines. She has not yet found someone who will do her business for her.

“Every soul will have a taste of death,” Adeeba says to Halima.

This taste, I wonder, is it sweet or bitter?

J
ULY
2008

As we near Richmond, I ask Mom if we can run home quickly, but she says no; she's already cut into Dad's time with us.

We pull into the driveway behind the Highlander, and I run up the steps to the door, but it's locked, so I bop the doorbell. It ping-pongs around inside.

“Take it easy, K. C.,” Mom says. “I called your dad from the road.”

She tries the gold latch, always shiny because Sharon polishes it. When I compare our house to Dad's, sometimes I feel like a have-not.

“Your dad's car's here,” Mom says.

“Sharon's isn't,” I say. I look at Todd. Behind Mom's back, he gives the house the finger.

Mom calls Dad's cell but gets voice mail. Todd and I want to sit in the car, but Mom won't run the AC because it wastes gas, so we end up humid on the step. Todd hunkers down with
The Great Gatsby
from his summer reading list. From her purse Mom pulls out her
Utne Reader
—and, of course, some baby book for me. It's like study hall. I look down at the book—don't people ever get tired of writing about boys and their dogs?