After school Pendo brought two pairs of scissors and a big jar of paste. “I told you Mr. Littlejohn would lend them to us,” she told Safiyah. “He told me it’s called a collage when you put bits of paper together to make a picture. When you put a collage on a wall, it’s a mural.”
Lucky Pendo, learning so many things at school, thought Safiyah.
Between taking care of Cucu and doing chores, it took Safiyah three days to finish stuffing paper into all the cracks indoors before she could paste her pictures on the wall around the doorway outside. First she cut out just the right pieces. Then she spread them across the dirt floor of the shack to plan how to put them together.
“Cucu!” she protested each time her grandmother stepped on them. “You’re leaving footprints.” Cucu was often in a hurry to relieve herself in the ditch, and then too weary to respond as she hauled herself back to bed. When Safiyah asked if she should put a blue picture next to a green or a brown one, her grandmother hardly looked at them. “You’re the artful one,” she said. “You decide.”
As the mural started to grow, more and more people stopped to look at it. One day two small boys sat in the dirt to watch Safiyah work. When their friend came along, they made him stop and look too. Mrs. Simon peered at one of the fashion pictures. She ran her finger down the model’s red dress while her two little girls giggled shyly behind her. An old man carrying a can of water on his shoulder muttered, “What nonsense is this?” before he trudged away.
The sun was hot on Safiyah’s back as she used up the last picture. Squinting at the glossy paper all day had given her a headache.
Cucu had felt well enough today to play mancala with their neighbor, Mrs. Okella. All morning Safiyah had heard them gossiping and laughing. The game was one of the few things Cucu had brought with her from the village. Each dip in the wooden board was shiny from use. The bag of stones always lived in her pocket. Each time Cucu tucked the mancala board back under the bed, she talked about playing with Safiyah’s mother outside their village hut in the evening while baby Safiyah rocked in a tree hammock overhead.
Sometimes Safiyah loved hearing stories about life before they came to Kibera. At other times, it hurt to be reminded of all the people and things they had left behind and how everything had changed.
The only special thing Safiyah still had from those happier times was a braided bracelet. It was twisted and thin now, mended with string she had found at the garbage dump. She remembered her mother making the bracelet for her as the sun went down and the chickens pecked around her feet.
Maybe it wasn’t a real memory but just what Cucu called “wishful thinking.”
Safiyah fingered her bracelet as she walked slowly along the wall. She peeled away one picture. She slathered more paste on the back and stuck it back in a different spot. The mural did not even cover one wall yet. She needed more pictures if she was going to paper the whole house.
Cucu could be hours with Mrs. Okella. Once they got together, the two old ladies forgot everything except their game.
Safiyah tucked the paste jar under Cucu’s bench. Then, with a quick glance at the neighbor’s house, she headed down the street toward the garbage dump.