The Paper House

by Lois Peterson

  When he took pictures of Cucu on her bench, she smiled without needing to be told.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Littlejohn strolled around the house. “Wonderful,” he said. “Look at this!” He touched the fire mural. “And this lovely tree—it is a tree?—against the blue sky. Is this your village? Yes. I can see it.” He studied the walls up close and looked at them again from a distance.

  Chidi followed the teacher, copying every move, stroking his chin, nodding slowly. Everyone thought it was very funny, but Mr. Littlejohn didn’t seem to notice.

  Neighbors clustered around. Some tried to sneak into the pictures or gave Mr. Dhillon advice that he ignored. He tried to shoo the audience away, especially the neighborhood children who wanted to have their pictures taken too.

  Safiyah and Pendo soon got bored, standing this way, then that. Cucu sent Chidi next door to play with the little boys who now lived in Mrs. Okella’s house. “I’m going inside, away from this fuss,” she said.

  Mr. Dhillon kept taking photos. He balanced on the old chair and knelt in the dirt. He went around and around the shack taking pictures from all kinds of angles.

  He took one group picture of everyone who wanted to be in it. Cucu stood in front holding hands with Safiyah on one side and Pendo on the other. The camera clicked and whirred.

  At last Mr. Dhillon packed it back in his bag. He was done.

  Everyone clapped. They patted Mr. Dhillon on the back and shook Mr. Littlejohn’s hand. They shook hands with Pendo and Safiyah. The women hugged them and pinched their cheeks.

  Before Mr. Dhillon left with Mr. Littlejohn, he gave Safiyah one of his little white cards. “It says his name. Amar Singh Dhillon,” said Pendo as she read over Safiyah’s shoulder. “Then Photographer, IFPO. RSP. I wonder what those letters mean. Maybe he is famous.”

  “I didn’t like him,” said Safiyah. “Move here. Stand there. No, this way. Smile. Don’t smile.”

  “Bossy, bossy, bossy,” said Pendo.

  “Bossy, bossy, bossy,” echoed Safiyah.

  They fell against each other giggling.

  When they had both got their breath back, Pendo picked up her schoolbag and hung it over her shoulder. “I better go home. I didn’t like Mr. Dhillon either, but I am glad you let me be in the pictures.”

  “Have you got homework?” asked Safiyah.

  “I have twenty words to learn for a test tomorrow,” Pendo told her.

  Pendo had homework for school tomorrow. Cucu was indoors, resting from the excitement of the afternoon. As she watched her friend disappear around the corner at the end of the street, Safiyah slumped onto Cucu’s bench.

  Her mural was done. But nothing else had changed.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It was hardly light when Safiyah was woken a few days later by a voices in the street. She peeked outside. “Cucu! Cucu wake up.”

  Her grandmother’s face emerged from the blanket. Her hair stuck up like curled wire. “What is it, child?”

  “People. Hundreds of them, outside.”

  Cucu sat up. “People are always stopping to look at your lovely house.”

  When Cucu and Safiyah stood in the doorway, they found the alley filled with people. Some going and some coming while others stood talking to each other, pointing at the paper house.

  Pendo pushed through the crowd, holding a newspaper above her head. “Saffy. Your house is in the paper!”

  “What do you mean, child?” Cucu pulled Pendo out of the scrum of people. “Away now,” she cried. “Have you no work to go to? No families to tend to?”

  A few people moved away. But many stayed as even more came down the alley.

  “Mr. Dhillon’s pictures,” said Pendo. “Look!” She held up the newspaper for Cucu and Safiyah to see.

  One wall of the paper house almost filled the front page. In another photograph, Cucu sat on her bench. She was smiling so hard that every one of her few teeth showed. Huge letters ran across the top page. “Child Brings Color to Dark and Dangerous Place,” read Pendo. “That’s what it says.”

  “Dangerous!” huffed Cucu. “How can my own home be dangerous?” She squinted at the picture.

  Safiyah took the newspaper from Pendo. Cucu looked so proud and happy in the photo. Even in her frayed and faded dress.

  “There are more photos inside,” said Pendo. “On page seven.”

  They huddled around the newspaper to look at the pictures that filled two whole pages. One showed Cucu standing with her back to the camera as she pointed at the fire that blazed across the wall. Another was of Safiyah and Pendo with their arms around each other. There was one of Pendo in her smart red and blue uniform, while next to her stood Safiyah in her old shorts and yellow T-shirt with the hole in the shoulder.

  Safiyah felt her face flush with shame. Cucu looked like the proud old lady she was, the kind grandmother who Safiyah loved more than anyone in the world. While she looked like a poor little girl who couldn’t even go to school. “Here. You can have it.” She shoved the newspaper into Pendo’s arms. “Hang it up for everyone to see, you in your lovely clothes. Show it to all your friends. But I don’t want to look at it again.”

  “Safiyah!” cried Cucu as Safiyah ducked indoors away from the prying eyes and chattering voices. “What is wrong now? Our lovely house. Look! In the important newspaper for all to see.”

  Safiyah did not answer her grandmother. She threw herself on the bed and pulled the thin covers over her head to keep out the nosy world.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Safiyah stayed indoors all day. Just as Cucu had done when she was so sick.

  All day she heard her grandmother telling passersby why her granddaughter had started her mural. “To help make an old lady well,” she said proudly. She led them around the house to point out the village they had come from. She described their long journey by bus and on foot and in a low voice told them how Safiyah’s mother had died. Cucu described the fire that had killed Mrs. Okella. And explained that she had been in the clinic, but was better now.

  Some people murmured sounds of sympathy and sadness. Others told their own stories, some stories just as sad as Safiyah and her grandmother’s, others about new friends who helped them adjust to life in Kibera.

  Between visitors, Safiyah heard the rustle of the newspaper as Cucu sat on her bench just outside the door, turning the pages again and again.

  Late in the day when Cucu came indoors to light the lamp, she brought presents from the visitors. A plantain and a bottle of Coca Cola. “Here’s a book for you,” she said as she handed it to Safiyah. “We will ask Pendo to tell us what it is called. And look at this lovely bread. We will have it with our soup.”

  Safiyah turned her face to the wall. Her beautiful house was in the newspaper. But so was she. A girl with old clothes, who couldn’t even read the words that told her what page to turn to see more pictures.

  She was huddled under her blanket when the doorway curtain was pushed aside. “Are you sick now?”

  Safiyah sat up. Rasul! Still sneaking up on her. “What do you want?” she asked.

  “I came to pay homage to the great artist!” He bowed deeply. When he stood up again, he was grinning.

  “Don’t make fun of me,” she said.

  “I’m just repeating what everyone is saying.”

  “Who is everyone?” asked Cucu.

  “The newspaper, for a start,” said Rasul. “And your teacher, Mr. Littlejohn?”

  “He’s not my teacher.”

  “He will be soon.” Rasul grinned again.

  “Go away,” Safiyah told him. She pulled her blanket higher.

  “Saffy!” Cucu frowned at her.

  The light shifted as Rasul stood in the doorway. “You sure you don’t want to know more? You are to get what you have wanted all along.”

  A glimmer of an idea squirmed inside Safiyah. “What have I wanted all along?”

  “To go to school. Like Pendo and chattering Chidi,” said Rasul. “You’re to
get a scholarship.”

  Cucu grabbed Safiyah’s hand and held it tight.

  “Someone has offered to pay for Saffy to go to school,” Rasul told her.

  “For books?” Safiyah swung her feet over the edge of the bed. “For a uniform?”

  Rasul nodded. “For everything. And you will get special lessons. At the art college.”

  Safiyah’s heart thumped in her chest. She would go to school with Pendo. She would wear a red sweater and blue skirt.

  She would learn to read!

  “Who is paying for this scholarship?” asked Cucu.

  “A rich geezer,” Rasul told her, “who likes art.”

  “Why?” Cucu sounded as if she did not believe a word of it.

  “He recognizes Safiyah’s outstanding talent. Those were his words.”

  Cucu’s hand shook on Safiyah’s as she asked him, “How do you know all this?”

  Rasul leaned against the doorway. “Mr. Littlejohn showed the newspaper to the teachers. They told all the kids in their classes, which is how Chidi heard all about it. The brat happened to be in school today, for a change. And on his way home he stole two copies off the newsstand, which is how we know all about it.” He stuck his hands in the pockets of his bright yellow pants. “Ma is so happy for you, she can’t stop smiling.” His face was sad for a moment. Perhaps he was thinking of his sister who liked school so much, thought Safiyah. But then he winked at her. “It may be a while until Chidi smiles though,” he said.

  “Did you beat him for stealing?” asked Safiyah.

  “He deserves it. But no one gets beaten in my house.” He grinned. “He has to pay back the news vendor. So he’s off now, collecting bottles at the dump, I bet.”

  That’s where this all started, thought Safiyah. At the dump. Looking for paper so she could fix the house for her sick grandmother.

  Rasul dug a rolled newspaper out of his pocket. “Here. I bought a copy for you.”

  “Cucu has one already,” said Safiyah. “You know I can’t read it.”

  “This is no time to sulk, little girl! You can look at the pictures, can’t you?” said Rasul. “And maybe if you look at them long enough, you will believe what that art fellow has to say. ‘Extraordinary talent. Keen observation. Great initiative.’ And lots more.” He pulled Safiyah her to her feet. “Pendo will read it to you. She’s outside giving tours of the paper house.”

  Safiyah found her friend talking to two men at the side of the house. She was wearing her usual shorts and the old green sweater with a hole in the elbow. Pendo’s school uniform was at home, keeping clean.

  Without it, she and Safiyah did not look so different.

  She would have a school uniform soon, just like Pendo, thought Safiyah. She would take it off after school and put it away carefully before she changed into her old familiar clothes. Clothes she had brought with her when they traveled the long road from the village.

  She would go to art classes. Just like Rasul said. Like it said in the newspaper that she would keep in her special tin under the bed.

  But what if she didn’t want to be an artist?

  Safiyah linked arms with Pendo and said, “I want to show you something.” She led her friend to the picture of medical instruments. She pointed out the stethoscope and told Pendo how she might be a nurse instead of an artist, so she could help the sick people who crowded the beds and the floor and the courtyard of the clinic.

  But first she would go to school. Where she would learn to read.

  Safiyah and Pendo spent a long time looking at the newspaper pictures and studying every inch of the mural on the walls of the paper house.

  Later, while Cucu heated soup on the little stove, they sat together outside and listened to the noises of Kibera swirling all around. They looked across the roofs at the birds chattering on the power lines.

  Behind them, the house blazed with shapes and colors, telling the story of Safiyah’s life here and back in her old home.

  “Tell me again what it says in the paper,” said Safiyah. She tipped her head against Pendo’s shoulder as she imagined them walking together to school in matching red sweaters and blue skirts. She would learn to read and write like Pendo—and Chidi. She would grow up to be an artist or a nurse or even a doctor, so that one day she could earn enough money for a better house in the city. Or so that she and Cucu could return to their village to help the people left behind.

  Until then, with friends and neighbors like Mrs. Pakua and Rasul—and even little pest Chidi—life here was not so bad. Safiyah closed her eyes as she listened to her best friend Pendo read words that one day she would be able to read herself, about their new life in Kibera and the paper house they were all so proud of.

  A few facts about life in an African slum

  Kibera is a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya.

  As many as half a million people may live there, most without running water, electricity or bathrooms.

  Many have been forced to leave their villages by drought, which causes crop failure and starvation. They come to the city looking for work. But there is never enough work for everyone.

  Many Kenyan children have lost at least one relative to AIDS. Many live with a grandparent, aunt or uncle and other family members. Tuberculosis and pneumonia are other serious diseases that affect people in the slums.

  Not all children can afford to go to school. But many are helped with money donated by people in other countries.

  Despite their poverty, the people of Kibera have schools, churches, clinics and community centers. Children play, neighbors get to know each other and people organize ways to help those most in need.

  For many people, life in the slum may be the only one they will ever know. But those with a good education have the best chance of making a better life.

  Mancala, one of the oldest games in the world, is played by adults and children all over Africa and in many other countries.

  Ten percent of author royalties from the sale of The Paper House will be donated to Kibera’s Red Rose School, Nairobi through The Children of Kibera Foundation at www.childrenofkibera.org.

  Acknowledgments

  No idea goes anywhere without the wonderful input from my husband Douglas Brunt. And my dream editor, Sarah Harvey, helps me get the story right. Then there are all my writing peers who cheer me on, and the readers who send me wonderful letters. Without them all, I would be writing in the dark.

  Lois Peterson wrote short stories and articles for adults for twenty years before writing Meeting Miss 405, her first novel for children. Her next children’s book was The Ballad of Knuckles McGraw, followed by Silver Rain. She was born in England, and has lived in Iraq, France and the United States. She now lives in Surrey, British Columbia, where she works in a public library, writes, reads and teaches creative writing to adults, teens and children.