The Paper House

by Lois Peterson

  The Paper House

  LOIS PETERSON

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2012 Lois Peterson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Peterson, Lois J., 1952-

  The paper house [electronic resource] / Lois Peterson.

  (Orca young readers)

  Electronic monograph.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0052-6 (PDF).--ISBN 978-1-4598-0053-3 (EPUB)

  I. Title. II. Series: Orca young readers (Online)

  PS8631.E832P36 2012 JC813'.6 C2011-907768-X

  First published in the United States, 2012

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011943725

  Summary: A mural on a tin shack brings hope and happiness to a girl in the slums of Nairobi.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.®

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover artwork by Scott Plumbe

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, Stn. B PO BOX 468

  Victoria, BC Canada Custer, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  15 14 13 12 • 4 3 2 1

  For Shelley and Mohammed,

  and their nephews Harrison and Isaiah.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A few facts about life in an African slum

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Safiyah stood ankle-deep in garbage near the top of the dump. Below her lay the Kibera slum, a patchwork of rusty tin roofs. A thick blanket of cloud and dirty smoke hid the concrete buildings and busy roads of nearby Nairobi.

  Not far from where Safiyah stood, a pack of small boys tussled like mangy dogs over a heap of old clothes. Suddenly, one broke away and leaped at her. “What have you got there?” he yelled.

  She held the old magazines high in the air where he couldn’t reach them. “You can’t have them.”

  The other boys were watching.

  “Let me see.” With each jump, the boy’s hands came a little closer. “Hey, you lot!” he yelled. “See what she’s got.”

  “It’s just paper.” Safiyah could hear her voice shaking. She had seen gangs of boys corner lone girls before. Sometimes they beat them up or stole things from them. But the boy’s friends had already found something more interesting in the garbage.

  When she hid the handful of magazines behind her back, the boy leaped at her again. “Let me see the pictures.”

  Safiyah sold most of the stuff she found at the dump. It was the only way to make money for a pound of maize or some tea. Sometimes a breadfruit for Cucu, her grandmother, who loved them so much.

  People would buy almost anything she dug up: old clothes, cracked dishes, tins and old tires. Once Safiyah found an old clock that still worked, and they had eaten well for a week.

  Today she was looking for paper to fill the cracks in the wood and metal walls of their house. Maybe Cucu would get well if Safiyah could keep out the smoke and the cold night air. Then Cucu could take care of the house and make the meals so that Safiyah could go to school like her best friend, Pendo.

  But for that you needed more money than Safiyah could make selling stuff from the dump.

  “I want to see,” screeched the little boy as he grabbed at her again.

  Safiyah slipped and slithered away from his grasping hands. She waded through plastic cartons and torn packaging. Bottles and jagged cans tumbled down all around her. Clumps of plastic bags squelched under her feet. Ripped newspaper and stinky diapers clung to her legs.

  Another landslide of smelly garbage fell around the little boy as he scrambled down behind her. “Let me see.” He yanked her arm.

  Safiyah twisted away. But the boy squeezed his thin arms around her waist. He was hurting her, but she wasn’t going to cry.

  “It’s just old magazines.” She held the papers out of reach.

  “I want to look at the cars,” whined the boy. “There are always pictures of cars.”

  “I need them.” As Safiyah pulled away, she almost fell back onto the garbage. Dense swarms of flies rose into the air. The sickly stench was worse now.

  She was getting used to filthy puddles of water everywhere and the smell of burning garbage and rotten food. But the stink was always worse at the garbage dump.

  The boy lunged at her again. He pulled one of her pigtails.

  She slapped him.

  He yanked her so hard that they both fell back into the shifting garbage. Something sharp poked Safiyah’s back. A wad of slimy stuff clung to her leg.

  The smell got worse as Safiyah and the little boy tussled.

  Suddenly, the boy’s weight lifted off her. “What’s this then?” Deep scars ran down the cheeks of a tall teenager who held the smaller boy by one arm.

  His tightly curled hair was dyed red. Blade! The gang leader was everywhere you looked in Kibera.

  Cucu was always warning Safiyah to stay clear of the gangs that roamed the slum. They stole cell phones and radios and cut people with knives. Mr. Zuma’s bicycle shop had once been held up by a gang with guns and sticks. Safiyah had sometimes seen Blade lounging against walls, flicking his knife open and closed, open and closed, or swaggering through the streets with his tough friends, sending people scattering.

  “Run away home, little girl,” Blade told her now, “before I let this brat loose on you.” His eyes were big and shiny. “Your cucu will be waiting for you.”

  “I’m not a little girl,” she told him, even though some people said she was small for ten. How did he know about her grandmother? Safiyah wondered.

  “Go on!” Blade held tight to the little boy, who was trying to squirm away. “Get out of here,” he ordered. “I’ll take care of this brat.”

  Safiyah didn’t wait to be told again. She ran along the alley, leaping across heaps of garbage and puddles of smelly water. She jumped over babies playing in the dirt. She darted around women gossiping between the densely packed shacks.

  Cucu had told her that gangs recruited boys when they were young. And if they didn’t want to join, they were beaten until they did. What would Blade do with the little boy? she wondered as she raced home.

  Safiyah kept running without looking back. She had no time to worry about a boy she did not know, or to wonder why a gang leader would want to help her.

  Chapter Two

 
; When Safiyah reached her own street at last, she slowed down and tried to stop panting. Cucu would want to know why she was out of breath. She didn’t like it when Safiyah was away from home too long. And Safiyah knew that her grandmother would give her a talking to if she found out she had been in a fight.

  A huddle of school kids came out of an alley between the shacks. They all wore red sweaters and blue shorts or skirts. Her friend Pendo broke away from the others and ran to catch up with Safiyah. She wrinkled her nose as she looked her up and down. “You stink, Saffy.”

  “I had a fight with a boy at the dump.”

  “Oh.” Pendo shrugged. “I only got nine out of ten on my spelling.” She was not interested in fights at the dump. Kids—and sometimes adults—were always fighting over the garbage, most of which came from Nairobi.

  “Nine out of ten is good,” Safiyah told her. “Maybe you will get them all right next time.” The two girls linked arms and walked on together.

  Safiyah was filled with relief when she saw Cucu asleep on her bench outside their shack. She always worried when she left her grandmother alone to run errands in the neighborhood. She dreaded coming home to find her dead, the way she had found her mother soon after they had come to Kibera. Safiyah had been washing their clothes in the nearby ditch when her mother died. They had come here for her mother to find work after the crops failed and there was no food in the village.

  Now Cucu was all the family Safiyah had. She could never survive alone in this awful place if something happened to her grandmother.

  Cucu’s skin was ashen as she dozed against the wall. Sweat ran down her cheeks. She opened her eyes as Pendo and Safiyah hurried to her side. “My lovely girls.” She smiled.

  “Can Pendo stay and play?” asked Safiyah.

  “Go home and change first,” Cucu told Pendo. “Your mother would not want you to dirty your lovely uniform.”

  “I’ve got chores,” said Pendo. “But I will see you later, Saffy.” As Pendo darted away, her schoolbag banged against her hip and her skirt whipped against her legs

  “Obedient child,” said Cucu as Pendo dashed along the alley. The red of her sweater flickered in the distance like flame from a fire.

  Safiyah put her magazines on Cucu’s lap. “Look.”

  “Something for me?” asked her grandmother. “Me and my old eyes.” She glanced at a bright cover of a woman wearing a yellow dress.

  “They are for patching the walls,” said Safiyah. “But you can look at them first.”

  Cucu stroked Safiyah’s face. “What would I do without you?” She coughed harshly into a bunched rag.

  Safiyah ran indoors and fetched a bowl. She held it for her grandmother to spit in until the coughing stopped. She stroked her cucu’s shoulder as she slumped back against the wall with her eyes closed.

  When she was sure the coughing fit was over, Safiyah ran across the alley to empty the bowl. Little flecks of blood floated on the surface. This was the second time Safiyah had seen blood after one of Cucu’s coughing fits.

  Safiyah wiped the bowl with her sleeve. If she told anyone, her grandmother might have to go to the hospital. Some people who ended up there never came home again.

  Chapter Three

  That evening, Safiyah turned the pages of the magazines she had found at the dump while her grandmother watched from under their thin blankets.

  Cucu couldn’t read. Nor could Safiyah. She had not been to school since they left their village, two day’s bus ride away. School lessons were often free here in Kibera, thanks to rich people who donated money. But a student’s family was responsible for their uniform and books, which cost money—money Safiyah and her grandmother would never have.

  “Lovely shoes,” said Cucu. In the picture Safiyah held out to her, a man leaned back in his chair smoking a cigarette. His shoes, with little tassels in the middle, shone like polished wood. Cucu always wore a pair of old runners with holes cut away for her bunions. Safiyah sometimes wore a cracked pair of flip-flops. But she went barefoot most of the time.

  Safiyah liked the pictures of ladies’ clothes and fancy houses. And the ones of models with smooth makeup. But when she pressed her face against a picture of a bottle of perfume all she could smell was the stink of garbage.

  The little boy at the dump was right. There were lots of pictures of cars. A green one with an open roof and a red one with silver in the middle of the wheels. There was even a row of white cars with pretty girls sitting on them, their yellow hair streaming behind.

  In Safiyah’s village, one man drove a noisy truck he had built himself. Here, she sometimes played in the skeletons of old cars abandoned beside the railroad tracks. She had never been in a car that worked.

  Safiyah tore out the pictures she liked best. She put them in a pile. “I’m going to keep some to put on the walls after I fill all the cracks,” she told her grandmother. “But how can I make them stay?”

  “Some maize flour and a little water will make a paste,” said Cucu as she fanned through a handful of pictures. She held them close to her face to study them in the dim light of the shack.

  “We don’t have flour.” Safiyah gathered all the pages that were just a gray muddle of writing. “But maybe this will work.” She tore the paper into small pieces, dipped each one in the bucket of water that was kept under the bed, and then twisted each scrap into a little roll.

  Cucu watched as Safiyah climbed on the bed to stuff paper into the cracks in the walls. Safiyah moved their little stove and a basket of old clothes out of the way to reach into the corners. Cucu pointed out where to put the scraps of paper, guided by the light that showed through the gaps.

  Later, when her grandmother fell asleep, Safiyah sat on the end of the bed listening to her wheezy breath. There were still lots more gaps in the walls, but if she used up all the magazines she’d found at the dump, she would no longer be able to look at the pictures of fancy clothes, nice houses and food.

  “What are you doing?” Pendo stood in the doorway in her striped shorts and a green sweater with a hole in the elbow. She was barefoot now too.

  “Shhh.” Safiyah gestured to her sleeping grand-mother and led Pendo outside.

  Pendo took a picture from Safiyah’s hand. “Look at all that blue water.” A glinting swimming pool was shaped like a big apple. “My uncle went to the ocean once,” she boasted. “The water stretches out forever, he said. Just like this.”

  “These are the best pictures. I stuffed the others in the walls to fill the cracks,” Safiyah said. “If I can keep out the cold and smoke, maybe Cucu will get better.”

  She wanted to tell Pendo how afraid she was that her grandmother might die. But the words were too hard to say aloud. Even to her best friend.

  The girls peeked through the doorway at Cucu. The light from the flickering lamp made the hollows in her cheeks look deeper. All the sadness of their hard life showed in Cucu’s face, thought Safiyah.

  What did her own sleeping face look like? she wondered. Especially when she had nightmares all night. She wanted to tell Pendo about the blood she’d seen in the bowl earlier. But Pendo would tell a grownup, and Cucu would end up in hospital.

  And then what will happen to me? thought Safiyah. She swallowed hard. “Let’s look at the other pictures,” she said. She blew out the lamp and tightened the thin blanket around Cucu’s shoulder. She pulled the frayed curtain across the doorway and went outside again, so they wouldn’t wake her grandmother.

  Chapter Four

  While Cucu slept indoors, the two girls spread the pictures on the ground close to the house, out of the way of passing feet and bicycles.

  Evening was a busy time in Kibera. The streets filled up with people coming home from jobs as maids or drivers or from tending their market stalls. They gathered to discuss the day’s news. They strolled along arm-in-arm in laughing groups or ducked into the tea shop to visit with friends.

  Back in Safiyah’s village, everyone had gathered in the shade after a long d
ay of work. Babies who had spent the day tucked into their mothers’ shawls played in the dry earth. Women cooked the evening meal under the branches of the plane trees. And every night Safiyah fell asleep to the comforting sounds of village life.

  There, Safiyah had been surrounded by family and villagers. People she had known all her life. Here, there was just her and Cucu, with strangers—some of them dangerous and frightening—everywhere.

  Everything was so different in Kibera. The noises were louder and the smells stronger. Flies hovered above trenches of mucky water. Garbage lay everywhere. Packs of dogs roamed the alleys, barking and howling, rooting for food and getting in snarling fights. Flocks of birds scavenged through the garbage dump and sat in noisy rows on the power lines above the railroad tracks. Fires sometimes destroyed whole rows of shacks. Gangs threatened old people and women and little kids.

  Safiyah was often woken in the middle of the night by shouting, crying and terrible screams. “Go to sleep,” Cucu would say as she stroked her back. “It’s none of our business.” But still Safiyah lay wide awake for hours, weeping quietly into her blankets as she remembered how safe she had felt back in their village, when her mother was still alive.

  “These would look good on the walls,” said Pendo as she flipped through the pile of pictures. She sat on Cucu’s bench, swinging her legs. “My mother only lets us put up pictures of Jesus.”

  Pendo’s family attended the church that met every Sunday morning in a warehouse near the railroad tracks. Sometimes Safiyah stood in the back and sang along with the hymns. But she always ran home as soon as the collection bowl was passed around.

  It was too far for Cucu to walk. Instead, she stayed on her bench and listened to the hymns drifting down the lanes.

  As Safiyah watched Pendo leafing through the colored papers, pictures started to form in her head. The bright patterns of the ladies’ hats and shawls and the glowing red robes of the choir when everyone crammed into church on Sundays. In her mind she saw the glorious mix of shapes and colors that changed the dark and smelly warehouse church into a garden full of light.