I placed the wet rag on my mother’s forehead. It was hot to the touch. She was burning up, so fiercely that I finally had to move my sister away. She slept on the ground, a blanket wrapped around her to protect her from the cold ground beneath and the cold air above.
The chill couldn’t break my mother’s fever, but at least she was now asleep. For the past few hours she’d been awake, but not really awake. She would cry out, say words and look wild-eyed. I tried to talk to her, to answer her words, but she didn’t seem able to hear me. She was like a madwoman, a woman possessed. And she was—by the fever.
Some of what she yelled out made a twisted sense. Many of her words were so garbled as to not even be words, but still I knew what was haunting her mind. The anguish in her voice and that look in her eyes—I just knew she was back in Eldoret, in the church. It seemed like the fever in her blood had brought back memories of the fire in the church. It was something she couldn’t drive from her mind, and something that would never leave mine.
“Muchoki!”
I started out of my thoughts. My mother was looking up at me, her eyes wide open and staring into space.
“Yes, Mother, I am here.”
“Your father—go and get your father.”
She was so feverish she was out of her head.
“Go! I need him.”
She did need something, but I didn’t know what more I could do. Maybe a doctor or a nurse at the medical tent would know.
“I’ll go and get help,” I said. “You just stay here and I’ll be—”
Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving. Was she …? Was she …?
She took a deep breath and her whole body shuddered, then her eyes closed and she was asleep again. She was just asleep. For a brief second, I thought she had died. That was crazy but not so crazy. People did die of malaria—but not here and not now and not her. I wouldn’t let her. She’d get better, just as she had done a dozen times before, and then we’d leave this camp. I didn’t know how we’d get there, but I knew where we were going—Kikima. We were going back to the homestead where she was born, and once we got there, everything would be fine—as fine as it could ever be again.
I tucked the extra blanket around my mother to keep her snug in bed. Next I took the cloth from her forehead, dipped it in water and wrung it out, finally placing the cool, damp cloth back on her forehead. Slowly, so as not to jostle the cot, I went over to my sister. She was still sound asleep. In the little bit of light coming from the candle she looked peaceful, as if she didn’t have a worry in the world. Maybe she didn’t. I owned all of those. All the worries were mine to hold, mine to solve … but how?
“I’ll be back,” I said softly, whispering in my sister’s ear. “It’ll be all right. I’ll always be here for you.” Even though she couldn’t hear me, I needed to say those things. Maybe I needed to say them for me to hear.
I slipped out of the tent. The sky was filled with a hundred million stars and a big, bright full moon. Between them was an eerie glow that seemed to reflect off the white tents. I’d never seen snow, but I’d read about it in books. Was that what snow would look like? I took a deep breath and in the silence could hear it release. There was no wind at all. It felt like the camp itself had fallen asleep. It must have been as exhausted as the people.
On silent feet I moved among the tents. There were no sounds other than my muffled footfalls. I was struck suddenly by the terrible thought that all the tents were empty, that all the people had gone, leaving me and my sister and my mother alone. I knew that wasn’t true—that the tents were filled with sleeping people, hundreds and thousands of sleeping people—but really we were all alone. Alone in a crowd. We had nobody. Well, except for Jomo.
I was near his tent. I had an urge to lift the flap and shake him awake so I would have somebody to talk to, to ask questions of. Of course I wouldn’t do that, but tomorrow I would ask his mother for advice. She was a good woman, and she and his sisters had been very kind to Jata, to me, to our mother.
I hesitated for a half second by their tent. It was identical to all the other tents in the row, in the camp, but there was one difference: the people inside lived in hope. They still went to sleep every night and woke up every morning hoping that this would be the day their father would return and take them away. And with each passing day, the hope both grew and faded. It grew because it only made sense that each new day was one day closer to his return. And it faded because with each day he didn’t return, some of their hope was replaced by the fear that he never would. How could something get bigger and smaller at the same time? I didn’t know, but I knew it was true.
I had hope too—hope that my mother would get better and we would then leave and her family would welcome us. I had started to realize how powerful hope was. After water and food, shelter from the weather and a place to sleep, it was the most powerful thing that could sustain a person. That was why my mother had never gone back home. She needed that hope, and I worked to convince her, to allow the hope to grow and the fear to fade. It would soon be time for us to test our hope. As soon as she got better.
As I approached the hospital tent, the silence was replaced by a gentle hum. It was the sound of the generator. In a sea of darkness, the hospital tent was a little island of electricity—a few dribbles of light leaking out through the cracks in the canvas. I wasn’t sure what I would say, or if anybody would even talk to me, but I had to try something.
I circled around the side where the entrance was located. There was a big truck parked right by the tent and two men came out, carrying something between them. As they heaved it into the air, I suddenly realized they were tossing a human body. It landed with a thud in the back of the truck! I skidded to a stop and then darted over to the side so I was sheltered in the darker shadows.
Two more men came out of the hospital tent, and they were also carrying a body. They were more delicate in placing it in the truck. It looked to be smaller. Could it be a child? All four men disappeared back inside. In the light, I could see that they were all wearing masks over their faces and gloves on their hands. The first two reappeared with another body. How many were there? I stood there, frozen in place and barely daring to breathe, and watched and counted—five and six … seven and eight. And then nothing. Was that all of them? I continued to wait, giving the men more time to return, until I realized I didn’t want to see any more bodies. I turned and rushed off. There was nobody in there I wanted to talk to tonight.
