Perhaps, responds a voice in my head, sounding remarkably like Asu, but there’s still no call to be silly about it. Go put your hat on!
I smile, remembering the thousands of times Asu snapped those words at me when I was little, and go put on my hat, my long pants, and a double layer of shirts just like yesterday. I peel the makeshift bandage off that I tied over my arm after dinner last night. The cut has scabbed over again, so I leave the bandage off. After poking at the cut, though, I’m no longer smiling. Asu is the one who got me into this mess, by telling her friends about me. It’s how Alasiri found out where I was. He would probably have found me anyway, I remind myself. But the betrayal still stings like lime juice on a wound. I don’t like thinking bad thoughts about Asu, but I can’t make myself think good thoughts about her just now, either. So I think about something else. It’s daylight. I can look around at Kweli’s house and belongings. I slip out to explore.
The house itself and the front yard are fairly normal, but when I walk around the house to the backyard where we ate dinner last night, I catch my breath in surprise. The things that were just shadows in the moonlight now have hard edges and color. There are tools of all shapes and logs of all sizes leaning up against the wall. In the far corner of the yard, a blue plastic tarp is stretched as a roof between four tall poles. Under it is a large log, almost a tree trunk, partly peeled, with a hatchet embedded into the middle. There are wood chips all over the ground. But what really makes me gasp is what I see in a lean-to attached to the house. There, protected from the weather on three sides, is a collection of carvings more amazing than any I could ever have imagined.
They are all made from a dark wood, polished so smooth they glow. People and animals twist and knot about one another. They stretch for the sky, screaming, or bend double and curl around, laughing, weeping, grinning. They are beautiful. They are horrible.
I find that I’ve crossed the yard without realizing my feet have moved. I’m up close, staring at the tortured leer of a mask. I feel slightly dizzy, surrounded by the writhing forms. I take a step backward and run into a man.
I shout in surprise, turning around and punching at his chest while trying to get away, my eyes still filled with the screaming masks and my body reacting on instinct to feeling trapped. Hands close over my flailing wrists like manacles, and my hands are wrestled down to my sides.
“What’s wrong with you, boy?”
I look up, startled, and see that it’s Kweli who has me, not Alasiri. I sob with relief, and then shame.
“I’m sorry, Bwana, so sorry. I was frightened. I thought you were someone else.”
His face softens. “Well, that’s some greeting you gave me. If I let you go now, will you try to strike me again?”
“No, Bwana.”
He drops my hands. I rub my wrists. I’m going to have bruises there, too, now. This old man is a rock.
“So, what were you doing out here? I woke up and went to find you and you were gone.”
I wince, realizing what that would have looked like, how he must have thought I’d abandoned our agreement and run off in the night, maybe even taking some of his things with me.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. It feels like I’m saying that a lot to this man. “I was just taking a look around and I got distracted by these carvings.”
“Ha!” Kweli barks. “And? What do you think of ‘these carvings’?”
I pause, not sure what to say. Clearly the old man collects them for a reason, so he must like them, but I can’t help but feel uncomfortable around them.
“I . . . don’t know,” I say, but Kweli is shaking his head, telling me that answer isn’t good enough. I try again; decide to be honest. “They’re very good. I used to do little carvings for my cousin, and these are much better than those were. But . . . I don’t know if I like them. They’re too . . . They show too much feeling.” I curse my clay tongue, not knowing how to say what I feel. “They seem aggressive or something.” Still not right. I give up. “I don’t know,” I say again.
This time, though, Kweli is nodding. “Ndiyo, you’re right.”
I look up in surprise. I had expected him to defend the statues, tell me that they were wonderful. Though I suppose, being blind, maybe he doesn’t know? Why would a blind man collect statues anyway?
“I am?”
“Ndiyo, they’re aggressive. They are Makonde sculptures, the sculptures of my people. They show us how we really are: the raw emotion of humanity. Good. Evil. Love. Hate. Everything. They aren’t supposed to be pretty little carvings. You have good eyes.”
I don’t have good eyes. I have stupid, worthless albino eyes, and I want to ask him how he can know that I have good eyes when he’s blind and can’t see the wretched statues anyway, but I keep my mouth shut.
Kweli continues, “And now you know what I do, hmm?”
I’m not entirely sure, really, because Kweli doesn’t seem to be rich enough to collect art for fun, but I take a guess anyway, since he’s waiting for my answer.
“You . . . collect carvings? You . . . sell them?”
The old man laughs, making me feel even more stupid than I already do. Why would a blind man collect art?
“No, silly boy! I make them.”
I know that my mouth is hanging open and I’m glad he can’t see me.
“But . . . you’re . . . I mean . . .” I stammer off into silence, not sure how to finish without sounding insulting.
“You mean, how can I be a sculptor when I’m blind?”
I nod, and then mentally kick myself because, of course, he can’t see me.
“Ndiyo, Bwana, that’s what I was thinking.”
I sound like an idiot.
“Many people have the same question,” Kweli answers, stepping forward into the lean-to. He reaches out and runs his fingers along the twisting, almost life-size body of one of his sculpture people. He is quiet for so long that I think he might be finished speaking to me. I wonder if I should maybe slip away and let him have some time alone, but then he continues, almost as if he’s talking to himself.
“The answer has two parts. One part is that I was not always blind. My father was a Makonde sculptor as well, and he taught me as a child how to shape the mpingo blackwood and make it tell my story. I had been carving for six or seven years before I went blind.” He pauses again. I’m fascinated, willing him to go on.
“I was angry for a long time after that.” His voice is soft. “And yet, I suppose I was lucky. I could have been a painter and lost everything, but no, I was a sculptor. Once I got past my anger, I learned that I could still shape the blackwood. The difference was, I could no longer make it tell my story; I had to listen to the wood and shape it slowly into the story it already held. I feel the sculpture now, in my hands, even though I cannot see it with my eyes.” He turns to me with a sad smile. “Some say my sculptures are even better now than when I was younger. But I don’t know if that’s true. All I know is that I’m grateful I didn’t have to lose my art when I lost my sight. I don’t think I could have survived losing both.”
I’m stunned by his story, hearing the softness in his voice, watching his fingers slowly trace the outline of a man screaming in rage at the sky. Then he lets his hand drop and I realize that, on the statue he has been touching, the man has no eyes.
“So!” says Kweli, with such force that I jump. “That’s my story, and that is enough of that. Now, let’s get to work. I have a lot to do today.”
I learn quickly that working for Kweli isn’t going to be easy. He tends to shout when he wants something and he expects you to run to get him what he needs.
He needs water from the well.
He needs the hatchet from the bench.
Not that hatchet, punguani, the little one.
Once, I left the broom on the ground between chores and Kweli tripped over it walking to the
house. He screamed at me like I’d killed his cattle. It makes sense, with his being blind, that everything has to stay in its place, but I had my hands up in front of my face in case he started in on me with his fists—he was that angry. Luckily he didn’t hit me; I just learned some new vocabulary.
As we sit by the fire that evening, sharing another pot of stew in the dusk, I think about what a day it’s been. My clothes are stiff with sweat and dust, cracking when I move. My leg muscles ache from all the fetching, and I have blisters in the crooks of my thumbs from sweeping up all the wood chips Kweli produced as he hacked at the log under the tarp. But for all that, I feel content as I chew on the spiced green banana in my bowl. Kweli worked me like a regular boy. This is maybe the first day in my entire life that I’ve worked just as hard as anyone else, and the feeling is almost as warm in my belly as the stew. Today, I was normal. And with my extra precautions, my arm is still healing and I didn’t even get burnt.
Kweli’s voice snaps me out of my thoughts.
“So, boy, what did you learn today?”
“Bwana?”
“You saw me work. What did you learn?”
“Umm,” I stall. I didn’t know there was going to be a test! I quickly think over what I saw him do. “You used the hatchet to break big chunks off the log . . . You started at the top and then worked your way down—”
“No, no.” Kweli is waving his hand at me. “That’s what I did. That’s not what you learned. Think about it and then let me know.” With that he gets up and walks inside the house.
What’s that supposed to mean? I learned that I can do a full day’s work, just like a normal person, I want to shout after him, but I don’t. Kweli is the one person who, because he can’t see at all, doesn’t see me as odd. I’m not about to mess that up just because I’m frustrated by his stupid question. Still, I’d better come up with some answer.
I think over the day again, this time not just on the things that I did, but on everything that was going on: how I would jump at the sounds of people passing by on the road before I remembered the wall, the dogfight up the street near noon, the heat of the sun, the clear taste of the water from the tap in Kweli’s wall, the sight of Kweli working.
It was amazing to watch, really, and I spent a lot of the day spying on him even when I was doing other things like sweeping the courtyard, getting water, and tidying up. He started off the day running his hands over the log, brushing his fingers over the dents and cuts he had already made, memorizing everything. Then, with a force and precision that was terrifying, he picked up the hatchet and began to chop. He would find a spot with his left hand and then raise his right arm high above his head and slam the hatchet down next to his left, again and again. I had visions of him missing, even once, and chopping off his hand, but his aim never wavered, and the rhythmic biting and ripping sounds of the hatchet became a backdrop for my day to the point that I only noticed when it changed tempo or he took a break.
I wondered why he wouldn’t take a smaller risk and only tap the wood with the hatchet, so one time when he was in the outhouse, I snuck over and tested my theory on a piece of scrap wood. I soon found out why Kweli has muscles like he does: Blackwood is as hard as iron. I tapped at it with the hatchet, and the metal blade just slid off, nearly costing me a finger. There wasn’t even a scratch on it. It was only when I raised the hatchet high over my head, with two hands, and brought it slamming down that the scrap wood split in half, the pieces flying in opposite directions. I don’t know how he can control the cut when he’s putting that much force behind it, but I decided I’d tested my luck enough and quickly returned the hatchet to where he’d left it. I only just managed to pick up my two halves and toss them on the scrap heap before Kweli came back. He didn’t say anything to me then, but there was a secretive little smile on his face, and I wondered if he somehow knew what I did.
He spent most of the day working at the log, chopping great hunks off the wood with long, fluid sweeps of the blade. By late afternoon, the wood no longer looked like a log, but more like a crocodile—all twisting jagged edges and flat bits covered in choppy scales. It still didn’t look like a statue, really, but it was definitely different. At that point, Kweli had paused. He had set the hatchet aside, stretched out his shoulders, and taken a long drink of water. Well, really, he had told me to put the hatchet away, sweep up his mess so he had space to stretch, and get him a drink of water. Then he ran his hands over the wood one more time, memorizing it again in its new form. Then it was Boy! Get me a carving blade! and he was at it again, this time with a smaller, much sharper piece of metal. And he spent the rest of the day with that, chip, chip, chipping away at the scales of the crocodile.
I look up from the fire. I’m still not entirely sure what I’ll say, but now at least I’ve thought about it. I rub my bowl with ashes. The ash brushes away the last crumbs of ugali and cleans away the grease of the sauce. It also turns my fingers black. I look like some funny animal, with white fingers that turn black at the tips. I sigh and head inside. Nesting the bowl inside the others stacked on the table, I turn to the lump in the darkness that is Kweli. I can tell from the lack of snoring that he’s still awake. I take a deep breath.
“I learned that it takes a long time to make a statue. I learned that blackwood is very hard, harder than any wood I’ve worked with before. I learned that you have to have the area neat and that you memorize your work with your fingers. I learned that different blades work the wood differently. And I learned that you don’t make something perfect all in one go. You start with rough shapes and then make them smoother and smoother.”
In the silence, I hear Kweli turn over to face the wall.
“Bwana?”
“What, boy?”
“That’s what I learned.”
“I heard you.”
“Oh.”
“Now go to sleep.”
I turn away, dejected for some reason I can’t quite name. Then I hear the rough voice come out of the darkness again.
“Tomorrow you’ll learn more.”
I smile.
15.
The next morning we’re sitting together in the backyard, eating breakfast, when Kweli hands me a piece of wood and a carving knife.
“Carve me a dog,” he says, and heaves himself to his feet and is gone.
I watch his retreating form for a moment, then look down at the wood and the knife that he thrust at me. I grip them awkwardly, like a man holds a newborn. From his workstation under the tarp, I hear the tch-tch-tch of Kweli starting into the crocodile again with the little hatchet.
“Boy!” he barks from across the yard. “Go get the whetstone and sharpen this blade for me! It’s too dull!”
I jump to my feet and leave the wood and the knife on my stool. It seems I’ll still have to do chores today. In a way, I’m glad. It gives me a chance to think about how I’m going to carve my dog.
I’ve made dogs before, for Kito, but five-year-olds are easy to please. You can put a block in front of them and say, Look, it’s a house, and they’ll smile and nod and play with it for the rest of the day. I know Kweli won’t be so easy to convince, even though he’s blind.
As I move through the chores of the day, I think about all the dogs I’ve seen—the way they run, the way they growl and fight, the way they flop in the sun and sleep like they’re dead. Should I make my dog standing up? Should he sit? Should he sleep? Will Kweli ever stop giving me chores so I can go work on him?
The answer to that last question seems to be no, and the day drags its dusty body across us, crushing me with the weight of a hundred tiny tasks. It’s not until late afternoon, the hottest part of the day, when Kweli decides to take a nap in the shade of the tree, that I get a chance to work on my dog.
I pick up the knife and the piece of wood from my stool where it has sat abandoned all day and sit just inside the doorway. There I’m covered
by the shadow of the house but I can still feel the breeze from the yard. I turn the piece of wood over in my hands. It’s more square than circular, though it’s more like a rectangle than anything else. It’s not blackwood, but some pale, soft wood that I can dent with my thumbnail if I press hard. I guess Kweli doesn’t think I have the skill to make a mpingo dog. He’s right, of course.
I close my eyes and rub my fingers over the wood, trying to sense the dog inside like Kweli does. But that only makes me feel foolish, so I open them again quickly and pick up the knife.
Well, here goes, I think, and push the knife against the wood with no clear plan.
Immediately the knife bites out an irregular chunk, breaking off one corner in the process. I curse myself silently so as not to wake the old chore-finder under the tree.
Punguani! Slow down! You’re ruining it and you’ve barely even started.
I take a deep breath, put the knife down, and look at my mutilated little piece of wood again. Well, the loss of that corner will make it nearly impossible to make a standing dog, unless he’s laughably short. So it’ll be a sitting dog. This time, I lay the knife very gently on the block and inch the blade toward me.
I’m rewarded by a thin curl of wood falling into my lap. I grin. I can’t help it. I have no dog yet, just a block of wood with one chunk and one slice gone out of it, but even if I stop now I have something to tell Kweli I learned.
I hardly notice the time passing as I sit on the stoop and carve. I’m only mildly aware that I’ve had to shift my legs twice to keep them out of the moving sun and that the sounds of the small hatchet are again filling the middle distance. I don’t even look up. My knuckles ache from gripping the knife so tightly, and every now and again sweat drips off my nose onto the blade and I have to flick it away. I hunch my shoulders and bite my lower lip, and slowly, slowly, a curved back and two pointy ears are freed from the block. A round chest follows, and a blocky muzzle and feet. My dog.
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