The Snow Angel Read online

  Back at the house, Shani stationed Makena on the sofa, feet up and wrapped in a blanket. The Tings had planned a farewell barbecue in the garden for Makena but she was in no condition to eat or be cheerful.

  ‘You must have a little something to keep your strength up,’ said Shani, who didn’t know about the newspaper report but did know that her young guest was in desperate need of some TLC. ‘As soon as the veggie kebabs are ready, I’ll bring you a couple. After we’ve eaten, we’ll sit together and watch a DVD. Choose something you’d like. Before you know it, it’ll be morning and your mama and baba will be here.’

  Makena waited until the whole family was out in the yard before throwing off the blanket and darting to the hall, where Shani usually left her mobile. She didn’t care how much it cost or how much trouble she got into, she was calling her mother. She had to make sure that her parents were getting on the plane that evening.

  The phone was answered on the fourth ring. To her surprise, music was blaring in the background. It sounded as if a party was going on.

  ‘Mama?’

  Male laughter boomed down the line. There was something on edge about it. ‘MAMA? Pikin, dere are no mamas here. We in a bar. You have da wrong number.’

  Makena dialled again. This time the phone rang only once.

  ‘I tole you, pikin, wrong number.’

  Makena found her voice. ‘It’s not the wrong number. I know it off by heart. How did you get this phone? Did you steal it? Where’s my mother?’

  ‘Who you calling a tifman?’ the man said in Krio. ‘You think I wan any business wit de polis? I pay tree weeks’ money for… Hang on. Where you be calling from? Kenya? KWAME, NA EMAGENCY. TURN OFF DA MUSIC. Take yo padi no do.’

  Bob Marley shut off abruptly. The laughter moved out of the room. When the man came back on the line his tone had changed. ‘I beg pardon, pikin. Dis phone, I buy it on Kenema market. You saying it were yo mama’s? So sorry to tell you, all dese phones, dey from dead people. Ebola, man, it be killing everyone. If dis market cat had yo mama’s phone, she be gone, pikin. D.E.D.’

  ‘Stop!’ Makena was freezing and boiling all at once. ‘I’m sorry for the people who died but they have nothing to do with my mama or me. I’ve made a mistake. I’ve called the wrong number. This is the WRONG NUMBER.’

  Then Shani was prising the phone from her fingers and holding her tight and there was no longer anyone on the line. And Makena knew, with a crashing certainty, that now there never would be.

  SHATTERED

  ‘This is the house,’ said Shani. ‘It looks … fine. I like what they’ve done with the sunflowers. It’ll be good for you to be with family again, Makena.’

  Makena didn’t respond. Some days, most days, it was too much effort to speak. Today was one of them.

  Samson Chivero had insisted on driving them. He waited until a lorry had hurtled by, spewing black smoke and dust, before parking outside a pink house with a blue door. The paintwork looked as parched as the fields they’d passed on the way to Isiolo in Kenya’s drought-wracked north.

  Despite that, an attempt had been made to create a mini front garden. There was a square of thirsty grass and a bed of scarlet geraniums. Two goats were trying to get at them through the wire fence. A tunnel of nodding sunflowers lined the concrete path.

  They knocked twice before the door was flung open. A woman emerged in a clinging hot-pink dress. She had a baby on her hip and was strikingly attractive in a hard, coy way. Makena remembered overhearing Baba confide to her mama that, as a youngster, his half-brother Edwin had rarely been out of trouble. He’d only settled down when he’d moved to Isiolo and become a respected mechanic.

  ‘Then he married the best-looking woman in the district and got himself a whole heap of other trouble.’

  For a moment her aunt seemed to have forgotten they were coming. Then she seized Makena with her painted nails and crushed her to her breast. ‘Poor, poor child. Priscilla’s gonna take good care of you.’

  Makena pulled away at the first opportunity. The baby smelled as if its nappy needed attention.

  ‘You’ve missed Edwin. Some emergency at the garage. Probably a spark plug needed changing.’ Priscilla waved a hand dismissively. ‘Men!’

  Inside there were more children: a boy of five and girl of seven. They all shared a room barely big enough to contain a narrow bunk bed and the baby’s cot.

  Shani’s brow wrinkled. ‘And Makena …?’

  ‘It will be tough but we’ll manage,’ Priscilla sighed. ‘In the beginning, she will have to sleep on the sofa or top to toe with my daughter. After that, God willing, some money will come in to help us finish the extension.’

  She gestured towards the open back door. Through it they could see four breeze-block walls with wire and weeds poking out of the top. ‘All it needs is plaster, paint and a roof and Makena can have a room of her own.’

  ‘What about school?’ Shani asked over tea. ‘Makena has already missed so much. It’s been over six weeks since her parents … since … You know, it’s been hard. We tried to send her to her usual school but she couldn’t cope. Too many memories. A change will be for the best, don’t you think, Makena? New friends, new teachers.’

  Makena had not spoken since leaving the car and she said nothing now. What difference would it make? Soon Shani and Samson would drive away, leaving her with these strangers. She’d met Uncle Edwin a handful of times over the years and remembered him as a tall, lanky and sweetly charming man. But she barely knew him.

  From what she’d heard, he was not someone to be counted on. ‘Weak as water,’ was the phrase her mother had often used.

  Shani was still going on about school, as if it mattered any more. ‘Makena is so bright and talented. She used to be top of her year at English and science. Her mother’s hope was that she might one day go to university.’

  ‘The difficulty is, now we have an extra mouth to feed,’ said Priscilla. ‘Things will be tight but, of course, we will do our very best for Makena. There is a first-class school in Isiolo. It goes up to eighteen years. Though there would be uniforms to buy, text books, exercise books, pens, shoes, hats, sports clothes, tennis rackets and trainers, swimming gear, netball … The list goes on. Some day if we are blessed with money we will send her there. Until then she will go to the local school. There are only two teachers for all ages, but what can you do?’

  Uncle Samson cleared his throat. ‘I can help. Not me, personally, but the New Equator Tour Company. We were broken-hearted by the loss of Makena’s father, our finest mountain guide. We wanted to help his daughter. Our manager organised a charity auction and people were so generous in their donations. We thought of giving you a cheque but we didn’t know your banking arrangements.’

  He patted his jacket pocket. ‘I have the cash. It should pay for a year at the good school and buy many of the other things you mentioned. Uniforms and such like. It might even stretch to the paint and roof for Makena’s new room. Next year, we can try again to raise funds to put her through high school. It would be our pleasure to do this for Makena.’

  He produced the fattest bundle of notes Makena had ever seen. Priscilla glowed. Uncle Samson’s eyes widened as she spirited it into her bra.

  ‘This will make all the difference. Once a person has money, the world is her oyster.’

  They moved out to the vehicle. Uncle Samson had deposited Makena’s rucksack and suitcase in the children’s bedroom. They contained everything she owned in the world – clothes rescued by Shani from her old home, a few new ones, and shampoo, soap and toothpaste. Li had kindly given her three new books, bought with her own pocket money.

  ‘I wish Makena could have stayed with us for ever,’ said Shani. ‘After six weeks, she’s family to us. But we have four children of our own and my husband’s business is struggling.’

  ‘Do not concern yourself,’ said Priscilla, all smiles now that her bra had won the lottery. ‘Makena is in excellent hands.’

  Like Unc
le Samson, Shani had tears in her eyes when she hugged Makena goodbye. ‘You know where we are if you need anything.’

  The SUV was moving off when it suddenly screeched to a halt. Shani leaned out. ‘Priscilla, I almost forgot to tell you, Makena is a vegetarian.’

  ‘A veg what?’

  ‘A vegetarian. She only eats vegetables, rice, beans, fruit and ugali. No meat, not even chicken or beef stock. She loves animals, you see. Sometimes she’ll have a bit of fish.’

  Priscilla’s smile slipped. ‘We will have to see what we can do. The problem is the cost of vegetables and fruit. The drought has pushed them sky high.’

  Makena saw Shani bite back a comment. She opened her handbag and gave the woman all the cash she had. ‘Will this be enough?’

  ‘For now,’ purred Priscilla.

  Makena wanted to crawl into a hole in the barren earth. Since that wasn’t an option, she forced a smile and waved goodbye to her friends. Seconds later, the dust had swallowed them up.

  Priscilla took her by the hand. Her nails dug into Makena’s palm. ‘Come, darling, show us what you have in your suitcase. We can’t have you keeping everything to yourself. In this family we like to share. There are no princesses here. You will have to help out too, same as everyone else. How are you with babies? My youngest needs his nappy changing.’

  SLEEPING SPIDER

  ‘In the Tings’ living room there’d been a magnificent silk tapestry of a heron eyeing koi fish in a lake. Reflected in the water were jagged-toothed mountains, wind-blasted trees and swirly bushes. One had to look really hard to see that amid the foliage lurked a tiger, poised to pounce on the luckless bird.

  The tapestry was Mr Ting’s pride and joy. He’d translated the Chinese characters for Makena: ‘Coming events cast their shadows before them.’

  Whenever Makena could get her tired brain to function, which these days wasn’t often, she wondered if she could have foreseen the tragic events in her own life. Had there been signs?

  Maybe the nightmare on Mount Kenya had been a premonition after all. She should have listened to her gut and warned Mama and Baba that something terrible was about to happen.

  If they’d refused to take her seriously, she could have faked a stomach bug and caused them to miss their flight or something. Even if they’d later rebooked, the extra day or two might have given them time to watch the news and discover that Ebola had reared its ugly head in some parts of Sierra Leone and become an epidemic. They’d have learned that many of the patients diagnosed with malaria were actually feverish with the Doomsday Germ.

  Would they have gone anyway? If you are brave for a noble cause, because you want to help others or fight for justice or save a life – perhaps even your own life – then being brave is the best thing of all, Baba had told her.

  Was entering a plague zone to save a life the right kind of bravery or the stupid kind? Makena didn’t know. She did know that if her parents hadn’t gone to Sierra Leone to try to save Aunt Mary, her aunt would have suffered and died alone. Makena could never wish that on anyone, least of all her aunt, who’d devoted her life to helping others.

  Makena was not alone but she felt alone, which was the same thing. Most days she wished that she were dead too. That way, she’d be with her mama and baba and not in Isiolo, sitting on a cracked step under a dull sky, watching a fly crawl over her leg.

  She waved at it half-heartedly but it returned five seconds later and she lacked the energy to drive it away again. She did, however, straighten the fly net over the baby’s pram. When the baby fretted, she sang a spiritual that had been her favourite lullaby when she was younger. The lyrics were heartbreaking but her mother’s beautiful voice had more than made up for it.

  O my Lord, sometimes I feel like a motherless child

  A long, long way from home

  Makena was halfway through the song when she realised that now it was true of her. She was the motherless child a ‘long, long way from home’, just as the slaves who’d once sung it in America had been far from all they knew and loved in Africa. The words died in her throat but she didn’t cry. For a few blessed moments she’d felt her mama’s presence and heard her exquisite voice. She lived in fear of forgetting. She had the photo of her father, ice axe in hand, grinning as he dangled from a rock face, but of her mama she had nothing but memories.

  The baby whimpered, bringing her back to the present. Makena squinted hopefully down the pot-holed street. Priscilla had promised to be back more than an hour ago.

  Taking a tissue from her pocket, she blew her nose hard. The cold she’d caught from the younger children was getting worse. She’d been awake half the night because she couldn’t stop coughing.

  It was hard to believe that nearly four months had passed since the evening she’d phoned Sierra Leone. It felt like a lifetime. A life sentence. Time crept by at the pace of an ancient grandmother, marked only by the revolving shadows of the sunflowers or the demands of the baby to be fed and changed.

  The ‘first-class’ school had never materialised. ‘The money was not enough,’ was all Priscilla was prepared to say on the subject. ‘Pocket change,’ she’d added with a sneer.

  Makena noted that the pocket change seemed to have done very well in keeping Priscilla in stylish dresses and matching handbags and jewellery. She flounced out in them every other day when a dark, shiny car with a dark, shiny man at the wheel whisked her away for a long lunch. On her return, the clothes and necklaces went into a box under her double bed.

  By the time Priscilla’s children returned from school and her husband from work, she’d be in one of three outfits, the hot-pink dress or a simple one with orange and white checks. She also had a demure black and cream skirt and top with a matching cream hat that she wore on Sunday when the family attended the Kingdom of Fire Ministries.

  Makena had been once. In Nairobi, her parents had been infrequent churchgoers. The chapel they’d attended when Baba wasn’t travelling offered polite sermons about a kindly shepherd, and hot cross buns for tea.

  The Kingdom of Fire was epic both in scale and emotion. Great cauldrons of ugali and stew smoked at the entrance. Scores of people came from far and wide to crowd into an old warehouse and blast the roof off with their praying and singing. At the height of the preaching, a gale-force love seemed to sweep the place. For the briefest of moments Makena had allowed herself to be caught up in it, then she reminded herself that if God had really cared for her he wouldn’t have snatched away Mama, Baba and Aunt Mary. She’d refused to ever go again.

  Priscilla, who in any case preferred her to stay at home with the baby, told Uncle Edwin that Makena was too traumatised to attend church or school.

  ‘When she has recovered, God willing, she will catch up with her lessons. Until then, we must be patient. What does it matter if she has to repeat the year?’

  And Edwin, who regarded his wife as a heaven-sent combination of a beauty queen and Mother Teresa, just smiled and said vaguely: ‘Very wise, very wise. Yes, we can think about school when she’s better.’

  Makena wasn’t holding her breath. Priscilla divided the world into two types of people: those who could be used and those who were a threat. Shani, Uncles Edwin and Samson fell into the first category. For reasons she could never understand, Makena fell into the second.

  Part of the resentment was historic: Makena’s mother had been a science teacher. Uneducated herself, Priscilla had a contempt for learning.

  ‘Your beauty is your passport in this world,’ she’d tell her daughter as she transformed her into a little doll each Sunday. ‘Be alert for opportunity. Aliye na hamu ya kupanda juu hukesha. A person who wants to rise in society must stay awake.’

  ‘Your brains are your passport in this world,’ Makena tried telling the girl, but it was hopeless. She resembled Priscilla in more than just looks. A week after Makena moved in, the girl had given her a couple of hard kicks in the bed they shared, while pretending to be fast asleep.

  Taking the hi
nt, Makena had moved to the sofa. She’d been there ever since with the baby in his pram beside her. There were no spare blankets. At night she wrapped herself in a threadbare towel. She’d have done anything for the rock hot water bottle her father had made her on Mount Kenya. But comfort, like everything else about her former life, was a thing of the past.

  That afternoon Priscilla returned in a taxi, two and a half hours late. Makena watched nervously from behind a curtain as she tottered unsteadily up the path, mouth pinched. Her mascara had run beneath one eye.

  She barely glanced at Makena or the baby, just went into her room and reappeared in the faded orange dress. Her face was scrubbed bare of make-up and she looked oddly vulnerable.

  She started banging around by the stove. Makena hurried to help. If she assisted with the cooking, she had a better chance of grabbing a bowl of ugali before Priscilla covered it in chicken or goat stew, which she often did out of spite. She knew it made Makena sick to her stomach.

  As with the first-rate school, the promised vegetarian meals had never happened. Since Edwin ate lunch at the garage, the children at school and Priscilla goodness knows where, supper was a small, meaty meal or beans cooked with meat bones. Only occasionally, if her afternoon had gone particularly well, did Priscilla return with a pumpkin or sukuma wiki – collard greens – which she made with tomatoes, onions and many Kenyans’ favourite flavouring: mchuzi mix.

  That evening Makena was heartened to see Priscilla take the sukuma wiki out of the fridge. The vitamin C might help shift her cold. But when she went into the kitchen the greens were lying in a pool of blood. A lump of fatty meat of unknown origin was leaking into the leaves.

  Makena’s default setting these days was numb resignation, but her sinuses were killing her and she felt wretched and hungry.

  Snatching up the bloody greens, she cried: ‘Why do you do this? You know it means I can’t eat them. Why do you hate me so much? I’m sick of this. I don’t want to be your free babysitter and maid any more. I want vegetables and I want to go to school – the good school. The one Uncle Samson gave you cash for. If you don’t send me, I’ll phone him and tell him you’ve stolen the money. Then I’ll tell my uncle—’