The Paper House (7 page)

“Better come quick,” said Rasul.

Safiyah leaped down just as the bus started moving again.

While Cucu leaned on her stick and watched the bus rattle away, Safiyah looked around her. The sign over Mr. Zuma's shop swung in the hot breeze. A brown dog slept in the sun. A jar of flowers stood outside a house, and a broken chair covered with drying clothes leaned against a wall. A raggedy line of neighbors waited at the water vendor's stand.

This was home now, thought Safiyah. Even if it would never feel the same as her village.

Safiyah and Rasul walked beside Cucu as they made their way home. At their doorway, Cucu smiled at the colorful mural. “How lovely!” she said.

Rasul hardly glanced at the house as he helped her inside.

Safiyah stared at the ragged space on the wall where she had torn away Pendo's pictures. She slumped down onto Cucu's bench. Shreds of torn paper and ashes drifted around her legs as she scuffed her feet in the dirt.

She kicked harder as all the anger at her friend came sweeping back, like a bad smell through a crack in the wall.

“Saffy!” called Cucu.

“What?”

“Come here, child.”

Cucu sat on the bed with her back against the wall. Her thin legs stuck out from beneath her skirt. “Take off my shoes for me, would you?”

Rasul watched Safiyah settle Cucu. “I will be right back,” he said.

When Rasul had gone, Cucu asked Safiyah, “Did we forget my mancala board at the hospital?”

“I have it here.” Safiyah turned around to show where she had tucked it in the waistband of her shorts.

“Clever girl,” said Cucu.

Safiyah placed the board on the bed next to her grandmother.

“It will be yours when I die,” Cucu told her.

“Don't say that!”

Cucu patted Safiyah's hand. “But not for a long time.” She took the bag of stones from her pocket and tipped them into her open hand. “Not for many years.”

“Do you want to play now?” asked Safiyah.

“Not today. I am a little tired,” said Cucu. “You may borrow it if you are careful not to break it. Or lose the stones. Perhaps Pendo might like to play with you.”

“Pendo is not my friend anymore,” Safiyah told her.

“Not your friend?”

“She spoiled my paper wall,” Safiyah told her grandmother.

“It looks lovely,” said Cucu. “Even with my old eyes.”

“When I was away, she slapped everything up,” Safiyah shouted at her grandmother. “I had a plan. Now it's just a jumble.”

“Would you lose a friend who tried to help?” Cucu's voice was full of disappointment.

The springs squealed as Safiyah slumped onto the bed.

“Come here,” said Cucu.

Safiyah shifted close. She breathed in the dusky smell of her grandmother's skin mixed with the tang of the clinic soap.

“We are so lucky to make some new friends, Saffy,” said Cucu. “Mrs. Pakua has been so kind. Many neighbors came to visit us in the clinic.” She ran her hand up and down Safiyah's arm. “One should never judge a friend who tries to help.”

Safiyah quoted one of her grandmother's favorite proverbs. “‘Words are easy. Friendship is hard.' You told me that.”

“So you do listen to your old cucu.” Cucu tapped Safiyah's hand. “It means that you should work hard to keep the good friends you have. And take care that your words do not drive them away.”

Cucu slumped against the wall. She was better, but she still tired easily. Safiyah helped her lie down and draped the thin blanket over her.

She looked around. The shack was already cozier, but with the cracks filled, it was dim in here, even though it was still daylight outside. “We will have to use the lamp more now,” she said. “And how will we pay for the oil?”

Cucu hand reached out to slap Safiyah's leg. “Go away if you wish to sulk. We are home. I am almost well. With so little, is that not enough?” She turned her face to the wall. “Now let me rest.”

Chapter Sixteen

Safiyah barged out of the house, straight into Rasul. Water slopped onto her leg from the can he was carrying.

“Looks like you needed a wash.” He laughed.

Safiyah darted past him without answering.

“Where are you going?” he called after her.

At the corner of the street she tripped over two children playing in the dirt. She landed with one hand bent underneath her. She held it against her chest and squeezed her eyes shut. But she could not stop the tears.

“Do you want to play?” A little boy with a very dirty face held a tangle of string out to her.

“No!”

“Why are you crying?” the boy asked. “Are you hurt?” Now his friend was staring at her too.

“Mind your own business.” Safiyah stood up and wiggled her sore hand back and forth. If it was broken, she might have to go back to the clinic.

She looked back toward her own street. For a moment she wondered if Rasul might come after her. But what would the neighbors think, if they saw a gang leader chasing a little girl?

She looked at the busy streets and alleys ahead of her. Kibera stretched out in all directions, more streets than she would ever know, crowded with more people than she could count.

Pendo and her schoolmates turned the corner, coming her way. Safiyah watched as Pendo strutted along with her nose in the air.

Without planning to, Safiyah reached toward her friend. “Pendo?”

Pendo brushed her hand away. “Do I know you?” Her voice was thin and mean.

“Please…wait…” Safiyah stammered.

Pendo turned her back on Safiyah. She linked arms with another girl and walked away without looking back.

Safiyah stood alone in the middle of the alley with her hands hanging at her side.

Suddenly, her hand was grabbed from behind. “You're home!” Chidi hopped up and down and hung on to her arm. “Is your Cucu dead now? Are you all alone in the world, like me?” He grinned at her, as if he didn't mind one bit.

She shook her sore hand free. “She's not dead! Anyway, you're not alone. You have Rasul, and your aunt and uncle.”

Chidi grinned. “Let's go see your cucu. I bet she missed me.”

“You were supposed to tell us that Rasul was coming to meet us at the clinic.”

“I had to go to school,” said Chidi. He giggled.

The little pest reminded Safiyah of the monkeys that hung from the trees in her village. A nuisance, but amusing. She couldn't help smiling. “Don't you know how lucky you are? I wish I could go to school.”

“Lucky?” Chidi's grubby fingers circled her arm as he pulled her along the alley. “School is boring. Two times two is four. Two times three is six. Two times four is nine,” he chanted. “It's all tables and reading.”

Reading! Even Chidi could read! thought Safiyah.

“Come on,” he called, trotting ahead.

At the house, Chidi darted along the wall. “What's that?” He pointed at the bare slash where Safiyah had torn down Pendo's pictures.

“You ask too many questions.” She gave him a little push. “You wanted to see Cucu. So go and say hello to Cucu. But don't wake her if she is sleeping.”

Safiyah studied a few pictures that had survived the fire, and others from her collection that Pendo had added. Then in one corner she spotted the picture of the glinting blue swimming pool. The one Pendo had snuck into her pocket.

Pendo had given up her favorite picture! And in return Safiyah had been mean and ungrateful. She leaned forward to flatten a loose piece of paper. Friendship
was
hard, she thought. And words were easy. Sometimes they made it too easy to hurt a good friend.

But finding the right words to make up was going to be hard.

After a supper of Mrs. Pakua's groundnut stew, Safiyah and Cucu played mancala. Safiyah gave Cucu some water to wash down her pills, then wrapped the rest back in their paper and tucked them in the tin under her bed.

She rolled her bracelet off her wrist and put it safely inside too.

“The clinic mattress was better,” said Cucu, as she settled down for the night. “But it is nice to be home.” Safiyah was sweeping the rug when Cucu added, “Rasul left something under the bed for you.”

A cardboard box was pushed among the clutter of pots and dishes. Inside Safiayah found a stack of brightly colored magazine pages. There were pictures of colorful gardens and women in smart clothes. Some showed fancy meals laid out on white tablecloths, while others showed city streets full of people looking in shop windows.

Here were enough pictures to cover a whole wall, thought Safiyah. Perhaps even more.

When she sniffed the paper, Safiyah could smell rotten food and smoke, oil and rancid water and dirty diapers.

It must have taken Rasul a long time to collect all the pictures.

Safiyah grinned. Chidi must have helped. That's why there were no pictures of cars in the pile!

Chapter Seventeen

All the next day, Cucu sat like a queen accepting visitors. Some neighbors came with corn cakes, others with tea. Some stood outside the door chatting while many crowded inside until there was no room for Safiyah.

She spent the hours papering the back wall of the shack.

First she sorted the pictures into colors. She put the greens and blues together, then the yellows and the oranges and browns and the reds. She sorted all the whites and blacks and grays and made a pile of multicolored pictures. She squinted at the wall, deciding how to arrange them.

The paste was dry around the edges of the jar. But there was still enough. She mixed brown and yellow pictures in a long slash from the bottom corner at one end of the wall to the top of the other end. To reach up high, she stacked an old crate on a chair with a broken leg. She tumbled off twice, but nothing stopped her from working on her mural. By midafternoon, her arms and neck ached.

She shooed away the visitors and gave Cucu her pills. Then she settled her in bed for a rest.

As she waited on the bench, Safiyah practiced what she would say to Pendo when she came by.

She asked neighbors to come back later to visit when Cucu was awake. She smiled at the people she didn't know who stopped to look at the brightly colored wall. She helped a woman pick up a bundle of pots and pans that fell off her head. A huddle of boys in tracksuits dribbled a soccer ball down the street. Three small kids in school uniforms dashed past.

Maybe she had missed Pendo.

Safiyah was about to run indoors to check on Cucu, when Pendo turned the corner. Today, instead of being surrounded by her school friends, she was with a tall white man with red hair. When she saw Safiyah, she ducked her head and said, “My teacher wanted to see what you are doing with the glue and the scissors.” She looked at the wall instead of Safiyah, as if she didn't want to be there at all.

Blond hairs peeked from the man's sleeve when he put out his hand to greet Safiyah. “I'm pleased to meet you.”

She wiped her hand on her shorts before she shook hands with him. Maybe Mr. Littlejohn had not seen her all those times she hid below the classroom window, watching everyone at work.

He stepped into the middle of the alley while he studied the papered wall. “So this is the project Pendo told me about.”

“Yes, sir,” said Safiyah.

Pendo glared at her.

Safiyah thought about what Cucu had said about words and friendship. And needing all their friends if they were to survive the hard life in Kibera. She moved closer to Pendo and said to the teacher, “Thank you for lending me the paste and the scissors.”

Mr. Littlejohn just nodded and moved closer to study the wall.

Safiyah took a deep breath and added, “Pendo helped me.”

Her friend smiled slowly, looking as relived as Safiyah felt. Then Pendo looked sad again for a moment. “But I spoiled Safiyah's design.”

“It's okay,” said Safiyah. “Look. I started the other wall.” She led Mr. Littlejohn and Pendo around the corner.