One Shadow on the Wall Page 2

  “I’m sorry, but I cannot say. I can only assure you that you have not gone mad. You will not be locked away for your thoughts. Instead of worrying, be grateful for what you do see and hear. Many would give anything for a word or glimpse of lost loved ones. These are gifts. Welcome them,” she encouraged. “And your aunt Dieynaba’s arrival will be another blessing. She is saddened not to have made the burial, but she has called your father’s old shop and told Mamadou she would arrive in four days’ time on the early ndiaga ndiaya. So prepare for her arrival, and thanks be to Allah that she provided for your father’s stay at the clinic and that she is coming to provide for you and your sisters.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mor said, his head full of thoughts. He wished Cheikh would be on that bus from Dakar too. Not just an aunt he hardly remembered. He couldn’t imagine what it would soon be like to share his home, and his family’s space, with her. After all, it was her home too. And now there was room again in it for her.

  Tanta Coumba spread her fingers across her knees, ready to lift herself up. She placed a light kiss on Mor’s forehead. He inhaled the fragrant scents of incense and ginger mixed with light sweat as she rose.

  “All will be well. Your bàjjan is a wonderful soul who has always aided her brother in times of trouble. And now she will lovingly do it again. You will see.” Tanta Coumba pinched Mor’s cheek when he did not look up. “She will bring sunshine again, Incha’Allah.”

  Then Tanta Coumba stood and turned for home, leaving Mor with his wishes and the night. Without his permission, more tears blurred his eyes as she got smaller and smaller on the path.

  When he blinked, his mother’s djiné, gleaming like stars, leaned against the doorframe of their home. Her spirit smiled down on him. He jumped to his feet and raced to her as Jeeg’s m-a-a rolled across the air. His heart danced against his chest. The happiness that ribboned through him was strange after so much sadness. He welcomed it and wanted to be locked in his mother’s arms, but he almost stumbled through her. He stared up at her as she stared down, so many silent words being spoken between them. He wished he could hear her voice, but somehow it didn’t really matter; like Tanta Coumba had said, the sight of her was a relief. A gift. The love in her eyes, the heat of her presence, and the comfort in her smile were all he needed in that moment.

  They stayed staring at each other until Tima squirmed inside on the pallet next to Amina. When Mor looked back from the open doorway, his yaay’s lips swept across his cheek like a sunbeam peeking through a cloud.

  Then she was gone. But Mor’s eyes were dry. He reached up to his cheek and smiled, yawning. He thought he was finally ready to close his eyes and dream.

  OPEN your eyes.

  The words sailed through Mor as if his father had leaned close to him, with lips only inches from his ear, like his mother’s had been two nights before. The call to prayer hummed in the distance.

  Sleep weighed heavy on Mor’s lids, and his mind was a web of dreams. It had been a little over two days since his father’s voice had first joined him, and he no longer found it strange that his baay’s words reached him at any time of day. And in that moment he even stopped questioning why his baay and yaay did not come together. He was just grateful that they came at all.

  Wake, my son, his father’s voice echoed. Sleep when your heart no longer beats like the sabar drum. Do not lie still, expecting to be handed what you need. You are not a fish flapping in the sun, sucking air, hoping to be thrown back to sea.

  Mor twisted on his mat and his eyes slowly opened. He rolled to his side. He had remained there for almost two days, crying and missing his baay, and he wanted to stay there undisturbed at least twenty days more. No one had been able to move him so far, not even Amina. She had nudged him in the back with the broom, saying, “Lying like this is not good for you. It is not good for Tima to see. Get up,” but her words fell on Mor’s closed ears.

  But his baay was different. He demanded that Mor listen.

  Your tears are understood, but your wallowing is not. Rise, his baay urged. Rise.

  Pulling himself to his knees, he obeyed, then dragged the water bucket and bowl from beneath the raised platform that used to be his parents’ bed, which his sisters now slept on. He splashed well water Amina had carried in the night before across his face and behind his ears, then over his hands and feet. He took out his prayer mat and knelt, bending and rising as he spoke in hushed tones.

  Once he’d finished, he returned his mat to the corner and retied the square-shaped téere amulet he wore high on his arm. The tiny leather envelope contained hand-scribbled Koranic verses written by the village serigne that were believed to protect the wearer. Years before, his mother had gotten one made for each of her children. She and Baay had worn their protection rings.

  He unfolded a clean but faded polo shirt his yaay had bought from a pile of previously loved clothing at the village market. Mor yanked it over his head and stepped into a pair of men’s khaki pants cut at the knees, cinching a black cord tight at his waist to hold them. After sliding into his sandals, he poured more water into the jars around the room, in case his parents’ spirits wanted to take a drink, something many families did for their dead relatives.

  Across the cramped room, the only photograph he and his sisters had of their parents, taken with a borrowed camera, rested on a shelf next to a picture of a fellowship leader cut out from a calendar. Mor took the photograph off the shelf and traced his finger over his father’s tall, lean body and his mother’s swelling belly as his parents embraced under an imposing baobab tree, excited to be starting their family—to be welcoming him.

  His parents seemed so happy staring into the camera’s lens with slight smiles, as if unsure of what the camera might actually capture. Mor made himself pull his gaze away from their vibrant black faces. As he went to replace the photograph, another of the shelf’s occupants demanded his attention. A rusting tomato can perched on the splintered wood.

  He glanced at his sleeping sisters, then reached inside the can and withdrew a miniature fabric sack. It protected a pearl button, a tiny seashell, a curl of hair, and a baby’s tooth, along with the money he and his sisters had left after their baay had used almost all of it to pay for some of Amina’s schooling. Mor felt a bit better holding his mother’s keepsakes and the money. Just having them near him settled the sadness brewing in his belly.

  Let it rest where it is safe, his father warned. Where it is protected.

  As much as Mor knew he ought to listen to his baay, he slipped the francs and keepsakes back into the pouch and slid it all into his pocket. He wanted his mother’s treasures close.

  As Fatima twisted in sleep, an image of his parents lying there instead came across his eyes. When he blinked, the memory vanished, much like his father’s voice had.

  Everywhere he looked in the tight, dark room reminded him of his parents. At first his father’s work shirt hanging on a nail, his mother’s sarongs, now Amina’s, neatly folded with a small stack of his father’s pants, and their prayer mats joined with Mor’s in the corner had been a comforting sight, snapshots that showed they were once there. Now they began to weigh him down, these symbols of loss. The walls of the barak felt as if they pressed against him. And the morning air, stale with sweat and slumber, made it hard for him to breathe. He had to get out.

  The path between his home and the other baraks was deserted except for a swarm of flies buzzing over a garbage heap at the end of the row. He glanced up and down the path, needing to leave the familiar behind, but uncertain what to do or where to go. He knew his father never tolerated idleness, not even in sadness. After his mother died, his baay had gone right back to work, tinkering with engines, believing that idleness would have shackled sadness around his ankles like a chain. “Get up, do something that makes your pulse dance and brings sunshine,” he had told Mor then. Lost to his memories, Mor let his legs lead him on one of the paths out of the village, sure he would return before his sisters worried about hi
s absence.

  With each step, you must grow in wisdom and in strength, his baay instructed, accompanying Mor along the roadway. But remember you are not a lion until challenges do not have you running the other way.

  Mor grew upset. Ignoring what he’d felt earlier, he didn’t want to hear his baay if he could not have him there with him. He cupped his hands over his ears. “Go away, if you won’t stay and show yourself to me.” The words tasted bitter as he spoke them, and he instantly wished he could swallow them back. He definitely sounded like a cub.

  His father went quiet again, like he had when Mor first ignored his words.

  “I didn’t mean it.” Mor panicked in the silence. “I don’t want you to go. Stay with me.”

  After a few solitary steps his father whispered, Even when the breeze is silent, I am always with you. But you must find strength, my son. Not bitterness.

  “But I do not know how to be strong.”

  You must find a way.

  As his father’s voice grew stronger, Mor hoped he might glimpse his baay’s spirit, as he had his yaay’s. Yet all he saw in front of him was the shadow of the neighboring villages, Jamma and Mahktar, in the distance, set off by the sea. Beside him were the sunken tracks of those who had recently traveled along the roadside, their footprints oval saucers in the copperish dirt. Trees and sparse patches of weed and grass dotted the landscape.

  Do you remember how your little fingers could not hold a wrench? Its weight your enemy? But as you grew—

  “I was able to hold it, turn it, and use it to help you,” Mor finished for him, bouncing on his toes.

  Yes, my son. You became strong.

  As Mor meandered down the path with his baay, his sadness started to slink off of him, curling in the dirt. Soon he was well away from Lat Mata. Stretches of flat land lay ahead and behind him. The salted sea air was cool and sticky against his skin, and all was clear around him. He heard the squeak and yawn and trill of a bell, before he saw the man with thick reddish-brown dreadlocks pedal up beside him on a rickety bicycle. He was muttering to himself as he passed Mor. A squawking bird sat on an open box attached to the back of his bike.

  Mor watched as the man grew smaller, pedaling away. Mor’s feet were not tired, and his spirits lifted with each word Baay spoke. The day had just begun, so he kept walking. He followed the line of the bike’s tire in the dirt until he came to a deep bend in the road caused by a stubborn tree, splitting the path in two. Instead of going left like the man on the bike, he stepped to the right. Then everything inside Mor went still. Without realizing it, he had taken the same path his baay had the day of the accident. It was the exact bend in the road that had halted his father’s life.

  “Baay, are you there?” Mor stopped in the hot bed of sand. He strained to hear. He feared the sight of the accident had silenced his father. “Baay, have you left me?”

  EVEN under the waking sun an icy frost bit at Mor. A charred, twisted bumper, a sprinkling of shattered glass, and a jagged piece from the truck that had kissed away his baay’s breaths hunkered before him. Straggly chicken feathers fluttered, trapped by the sand.

  Lift your gaze and walk, my son. Settle your sights on the horizon, not this.

  Mor’s body shook. Frantic, he took off in a sprint, though his legs and feet could not move fast enough for him. He pumped his arms and mashed his sandals against the dirt, running until pain pierced his sides, knocking out his breath. He nearly toppled over when he stopped.

  Except for his ragged breaths, all was silent. Why had he gone that way? There were so many other roads he could have taken.

  It is not important the reason why, only that you had the strength to get through.

  Mor continued walking, not convinced it had been any great strength that had helped him. It had been fear. After a few more bends in the road, and many deep, calming breaths, he realized which path he was on. It led toward Mahktar—a village on the ocean, close to his own but not nearly as big. He had sometimes accompanied his father there when the men of Mahktar became too frustrated with a truck’s pesky engine. They had often called the yard where Mor’s baay had worked, asking him to lend a hand. His baay could fix anything.

  Heading for the beach in Mahktar, Mor pulled out his mother’s turquoise-and-ruby-colored pouch, with its painted twirling line of gold, hoping to settle himself, hoping to hear even his father’s disapproval at bringing it. Anything would be better than his heartbeat thudding in his ears. But his father said nothing as he stared down at the pouch. Each day of her life, his yaay had poured the contents of it into her hand and remembered, thanking Allah for the treasure of her family. When she was unsettled, she had pressed it close to her heart. And at that moment it brought Mor comfort. His yaay had always said the nafa held her heart because it contained a curl of Amina’s baby hair, his chipped baby tooth, the button Fatima had always tried to swallow, and a tiny seashell that had rested between his parents’ feet on their wedding day. Mor had thought there was no better place to secure his family’s only francs. The money clinked inside the shifting cloth, and he found it strangely reassuring in his hand.

  Glancing around, he shoved the pouch deep inside his pocket. When it fell, he hardly felt it against his leg. The money inside wasn’t much, but six-year-olds, like his sister Fatima, might think they were rich, while older kids would consider it a lucky find. But a man would know how quickly it could come and go. And at eleven Mor could no longer be a boy, as his father’s voice had reminded him; he needed to become a man.

  If I tell myself I am a man, am I? He knew he appeared no different from the boy he had been days before. No taller, stronger, or wiser. But within two days everything had changed. Mor kept walking, concentrating on his next steps. The road curved at a short, crumbling mud wall that spread in front of him, the beach beyond it. Weatherworn boats with flaking bright yellow and orange paint hunkered down in the sand or sat tall on hefty logs. Some of the gaals were taller than most men.

  Over a bridge at the far end of the beach, a higher pink wall wrapped around an outdoor market, dividing it from the road and water. A woman sold the sweetest bissap juice there. He thought about getting one to share with his sisters, like he often had with his baay when they’d come to Mahktar. Mor threw his leg up and lifted himself over the stunted wall in front of him, dropping into the sand, when someone let out an earth-rattling scream. He spun in the direction of the commotion.

  Two boys chased a smaller boy who looked gobbled up by his oversize T-shirt. The bigger of the two wore a stained basketball jersey and fraying shorts, and tripped him in the sand. The other boy, who was rail thin, shouted, “Be still!” while his friend pressed his knee into the little boy’s back and slapped his head.

  “You know what you’re in for,” the boy with the jersey warned.

  The trapped boy coughed up dirt. Mor could hardly make out his face. It was a sheet of speckled sand.

  “Hold him down,” demanded another boy, striding up the beach. His skin shone like a crow’s wing against the tangerine baseball cap he wore, turned backward on his head. A sothiou dangled in the corner of his mouth. The chew stick bobbed up and down between his lips as he spoke. “I’m going to teach you,” he said.

  He pushed at his shirtsleeves, already above his elbows, yanked up the crotch of his baggy pants, and squatted over the helpless boy while his friends continued to hold him down.

  “Who told you to go spying through our doorway and touching our wall?”

  “I . . . I didn’t—”

  “You saying I’m lying?” The boy’s face scrunched into a scowl. “You hear that? He’s calling me a fene kat.”

  “No . . .” The little boy gasped for air. When he parted his lips, he took in a mouthful of sand. “I didn’t say that. . . .”

  “Then what did you say?”

  Head in the sand, the little boy couldn’t answer. Instead he wiggled and kicked. Sand flew everywhere. One of the boys pinned down his legs.

  The boy w
ith the orange cap sprang up and dusted off his jeans. His eyes darted around, at first paying no attention to Mor frozen at the beach wall. Then they traveled the length of Mor’s body, and he snarled, baring teeth.

  “Do you want some of this too?” He spit, and nawed off flecks of chew stick bark flew.

  Mor backed away, meeting the crumbling wall again.

  “Then let your eyes find somewhere else to be.” He reached down into the sand and pulled up a plum-size rock. Turning back to the struggling boy, he said, “This will teach you to never let your eyes or hands fall on the Danka Boys’ door.”

  Mor closed his own eyes, but the sound of the rock hitting its target made him leap back, almost tripping out of his sandals. The young child’s screams stabbed the air. Afraid to look, Mor squeezed his eyelids together tighter, so the light coiled when he opened them again. The trapped boy’s hand lay limp in the sand. The oldest boy raised the rock again. Mor’s jaw moved. He yelled for them to stop. Or did he? No sound left his lips. His words were as trapped as the trembling boy. Mor watched in disbelief as the oldest boy let the rock fall again, catching it inches away from the boy’s injured hand. His chilling laugh hacked at the air.

  “You will not go breathing near our door again, will you? Or even sneeze on our path.” He swung the rock back and forth in front of the little boy’s eyes.

  Sand clung to the little boy’s face. Tears cleared lines down his cheeks, exposing his dark-brown skin, like streaks of war paint. When he glanced up, his eyes found Mor. It startled Mor, and Mor dropped his head. A part of him wanted to help the boy, but everything else in his mind was telling him to run. Yet his feet would not budge.

  Have your legs been hobbled like a mule’s? And your mind as well? his father’s voice rattled. Mor’s head shot up. You are not an ostrich that can camouflage its head by lying on the sand. You are its white tail feathers. You have been seen and you must act.