The Milk of Birds (8 page)

Your sister, Nawra

J
UNE
2008

The cafeteria ladies should pass out earplugs along with the elephant scabs they're serving.

I look around for Emily, but she's sitting with the all-stars of last Sunday's eighth-grade promotion, so I keep looking and spot Chloe with the red-and-gold-plated bento box her dad brought back from his business trip to Japan.

My dad brings sticky notes.

“What's up?” I ask. Uh-oh. I can see right away that I should have asked what's down. “Can you believe this noise?” I put down my tray and hold my imaginary swollen head in my hands.

“Next-to-next-to-last day,” Chloe says. Her smile is weaker than one of Emily's mom's herb teas. “That's all you're eating?”

“The chips are for eating. The Jell-O is for torturing,” I say. “My real lunch is on the counter at home. When are you guys leaving for Spain?”

“We're not.”

Chloe offers me sushi, so I take the one with sesame seeds. I lick them off and then unroll the little seaweed bundle. “Nathan?”

She nods.

“Tree?”

“It's raining,” Chloe says. I look in the direction of our maple, but rain is still smearing down the dirty windows. That tree is the only thing I'll miss about Hardston Middle. It's so old and tall and wise that the world seems to make sense when you're sitting under it, picking grass. Once during whirlybird season I showed Chloe how to split the hard green middle and stick it on her nose, and she laughed so hard she forgot about her demented brother for a whole ten minutes.

I lean over and pinch some wasabi to smooth on my tortilla chip. “What'd he do now?”

Chloe squinches her lips. I don't know why she's so terrified of people finding out about Nathan. It's not as if she's doing wacko things.

A really sad thought flashes through my mind: Maybe Todd doesn't talk about me the way Chloe doesn't talk about Nathan. After the Washington-Jefferson-Lincoln-Lee spring concert, the second clarinet said to Todd, “I didn't know you had a sister!”

The wasabi zings up my nose, and I squeeze my eyes shut. No way am I going to cry. Chloe cries. Not me. Not Emily. Not Nawra.

“You know what Nawra says?”

“Nawra?”

“My Sudanese person—Sudanese sister.”

“In the horrible camp,” Chloe says.

“Nawra says, ‘If you can talk, you can sing; if you can walk, you can dance.' ”

“I can't sing,” Chloe says.

“Try it,” I say. “Fa-la-la-laaa.”

Chloe laughs—but nervously. “I am not singing in the Hardston cafeteria.”

“Nobody can hear you.” I sing louder. “Fa-la-la-laaa.” I really can't sing either. It's genetic, Mom's side, so I don't feel bad about it.

Some seventh graders at the other end of the table stop talking to look at us.

“What are you doing, K. C.?” Chloe hisses.

“I'm exercising my vocal cords. I'm celebrating life.” I stand up and step behind the little bench attached to the table. Snapping my fingers, I shimmy. Forget Nathan and brothers who deny you exist. Forget Jimmy Ladd chomping on your face like an alligator on a chicken neck. Forget boys who call you sluts and teachers who compare you to bugs. Forget report cards and all those Es that everyone knows are really Fs. Who cares what people think? In a couple of days we'll be out of here. We're all going to be fresh persons in high school.

“I'm dancing,” I tell Chloe. “Come on.”

I start moving to the happy music I hear in my head. Now a lot of people are turning around, and Chloe is blushing, not solid red like Emily does, but in ragged squarish patches. Someone—maybe Chaz—calls across the room, “Ants in your pants?”

“If you can talk, you can sing,” I call back. “If you can walk, you can dance.”

Chloe looks ready to dive under the table. At least I've taken her mind off Nathan. It would be a lot more fun if I weren't the only one making a fool of myself. I search for Emily, who smiles at me but mouths,
No, no, no.

I'm dancing at a crossroads here. I could sit down and eventually everybody would pass this off as another K. C. howler, like the time I dressed up as Zeus and gave a report about life on top of Mount Everest. Well, it is high enough for a Greek god!

I don't want to sit down and shut up. I want everyone to dance with me.

“Get in the groove, eighth graders!” I shout. “Three more days, and good-bye, Hardston.” At least that generates some whistles and applause. “If you can talk, you can sing. If you can walk, you can dance.”

I keep snapping my fingers and rolling my shoulders, and for the longest minute, I think I'm going to have to eat something with mold in the back of our fridge so I can spend the next three days at home in bed instead of at school. But then Sarah of all people yells, “This calls for a celebration,” and she starts doing the hula, or something.

“Random dancing!” another girl calls. The sixth and seventh graders are giggling and turning to watch us old-timers rocking between the lunch tables. I take Chloe's hand and do a limbo-y pirouette under it.

How cool: I started something. And for once it's not trouble, though I can see we might be headed in that direction as Jared climbs on top of a table.

J
UNE
2008

When we reach the classroom, I walk to the back and sit on the ground. A few of the women I recognize, but most come from other sections. Several talk loudly. Would they behave so in their village? “Neither beauty nor good manners,” Adeeba complains.

From behind, these rows of women look like butterflies,
tobes
fanned out around their bodies like wings. They have touched down for a moment to suck the nectar from this lesson. In front, Adeeba has another view. “Where are the students?” she always complains. “Repetition teaches a donkey—but even a donkey learns faster than these women!”

I think many are like my mother, living but wishing for death. My father's mother used to say,
Close attachment kills
. Perhaps that is why she did not love my father as he wished to be loved. She was a sour woman. She did not live to see this dark time, but it would not have surprised her.
The world is impermanent,
she always said.
Everything has an end
.

Adeeba sets the chalkboard on an easel. In my head, I hear my father, God's mercy upon him, laughing with the men in the village.
A woman, what does she do? Even the wisest woman has a brain no bigger than a durra seed.

I am so proud of my friend, chosen by Si-Ahmad and the
khawaja
for this important job.

“Good morning, Class,” Adeeba says.

A few reply, “Good morning, Teacher.”

“Let us begin by reviewing our last lesson,” Adeeba says. “Who can tell me why we must always use the latrine?”

No one raises a hand.

“How many of you used the latrine today?”

Again no one raises a hand. Adeeba stares hard at me, so I raise mine. But I am ashamed. I do not want people thinking about me using the latrine.

Adeeba says, “Why did you use the latrine, Nawra?”

“To relieve myself.”

Several women laugh. Adeeba stabs me with her look. This is not the answer she wants.

I cannot hold my water as I used to. I use the latrines because I cannot wait. Even if I could, I would have to walk a great distance to find a private space. Bushes surrounded Umm Jamila, but death and desert ring this camp.

Despite the latrines, many in the camp soil the ground where we live. I too hate the stink of the pits, which fill up quickly. Children fear the flies. The first time I stepped inside the latrine I thought the hole had a black lid, until it swarmed up around me.

“What do you do after you relieve yourself?”

This I know, for it is the greeting of the
khawaja
. “Wash hands,” I say.

“Excellent,” Adeeba says. She holds up a poster made stiff with plastic. “All these different bugs live in feces,” she says. “We must scrub them off. Otherwise they will get in our food and water and make us sick. Here. Pass it around.”

As my friend speaks the names of these bugs and their sicknesses, the sheet of pictures moves quickly across the rows. Some fear to touch it. Others do not care. A few study it only to make trouble. Even in Umm Jamila there were people like that, but here they are stronger for they have no work to do and no families to shame.

“The poor are excused from washing with soap,” one woman says.

“Why is she showing us pictures of
soujouk
?” asks another. “I would know if I were eating sausages! What I would give to eat a sausage.”

I will remind my friend that empty stomachs have no ears.

•   •   •

“You see?” Adeeba says. She has complained all the way back to our shelter. “The good you do for these women is just the same as the bad.”

“You sound like a man,” I tell her. “My father used to say,
Even if woman were an ax, she could not break a head
.”

“My father did not—does not—say bad things about women,” Adeeba says.

We sit in my mother's silence by the fire. I would like to meet Adeeba's father, but I do not think I will.

My friend straightens. “I wish I could break open a few heads,” she says.

“Just Halima's,” I say. We laugh.

I gather our plates and the cooking pot. Adeeba stands to help me, but I tell her no. She must work on her dictionary before the light fades.

I walk the longer way to the washing place to avoid Halima's
area. Adeeba calls it Halima's court. They say her husband had been head of his village. People still flatter her. Perhaps they believe that one day she will win them favors again. Yet I pity her. Walida told me, “When they chop down the tree, the fall is harder for the monkey than the ant.”

Halima is jealous that the
khawaja
have given Adeeba a job and that Saida Julie has chosen ruined girls like me to receive gifts from American sisters.

When I return, I notice four eyes in the shadows. A little boy and a girl. She is small but old in her eyes. Older than Meriem but younger than Saha.

“What are your names?” I ask.

They do not answer but melt away in the dark.

Dear Nawra,

I was done in by Umar. Mom says there's probably more sadness around you than we can even imagine.

“Nawra's a survivor,” Mom says. “Somehow she's hanging on to what makes life worth living.”

You're always asking if I'm strong, Nawra, but really it's you. Even if I'm watching a movie and the bad guys start messing with kids, I turn it off. I don't really like any movie with a lot of guns and guys getting their brains blown out, but I tell myself they're just actors and the blood's ketchup. Put a kid in there, though, and I freak. In real life I can barely handle rug burn.

Last fall when I was taking Wally to the park—Walter Clay, the little boy I babysit for all the time—he started running toward the swings and tripped. It happened fast, but later I relived it again and again in slow motion, the rubber tip of Wally's sneaker snagging bumpy pavement, his body going forward, then down hard, left knee first, then both hands, right shoulder, cheek, head. He was silent, and my heart stopped. Turns out he just had the breath knocked out of him. Everything I practiced in Red Cross babysitter class kicked in, though. I pulled out Mrs. Clay's cell phone and tied Wally's sweatshirt around his bloody left knee and hugged him while he bawled. He got eight stitches. Later
Mrs. Clay said I handled it really well, but I was shaky all week and had to force myself to look when she changed the bandage. Wally wanted to show off where the doctor had sewn him up.

He still likes me to run my finger over the scar. I tell him that superheroes have scars all over. That's why they wear those funny suits, so no one can see all their old wounds.

If he died and I had to wrap up his little body in his Thomas the Tank Engine sleeping bag . . . How can you stand it?

Maybe I shouldn't ask. Tell me to shut up; I won't be offended. But sometimes it helps to talk about stuff. When Dad moved out, my mom used to tuck us in and then call her old college roommates. I wish she'd call me sometimes instead.

I may sound like a wimp, but my friends say I'm a good listener. Last summer a counselor at science camp was flirting with Emily, but in a sleazy way. She tried to tell an older counselor, but you know what this girl said? “You're lucky boys look at you that way!”

“Just because you're a geek doesn't mean you have to settle for a creep!” I told Emily. She knows “geek” is teasing. We finally figured out that she should tell the director, and he must have handled it, because the guy didn't bother Emily again.

In lit class we were just talking about a character who shared a
confidence
, which is an old-fashioned word, but I like it. It means that someone trusts you enough to let you near their hurt or fear or whatever is deep inside. They
confide
in you, and they're
confident
you won't go blabbing and stomping on what feels so fragile to them. I'm Emily's confidante. Will you let me be yours? Your sadness isn't a burden for me. I feel kind of honored when you tell me stuff.