The Brightest Sun

“Where is the money?” Her father’s voice. Angry and urgent. “You have been stealing money.” His voice stank of honey beer.

Simi’s mother was a good wife. Simi knew that. She’d never seen her mother disagree with her father. But now, Simi’s mother turned to him and said quietly, “I have not taken your money. I have given you many sheep and goats.”

Simi remembered sliding closer to her mother. She remembered the warmth from her mother’s skin, and how suddenly it disappeared when her father leaned down and pulled her mother up.

“You are a liar, wife!”

Simi watched as her father dragged her mother from the hut. She couldn’t move. Her brother jumped up and disappeared through the door. There was scuffling outside. Simi heard her mother make a guttural sound and then she heard a thud. Suddenly her father was back, standing above Simi. His red eyes, foul breath and the angry quivering of his lips made him look inhuman, like a monster or a wild beast.

He leaned down slowly and, when his face was only inches from Simi’s, he growled.

“You, child, find me my money.”

Later Simi would cry and wonder why she did what she did. But at that moment, her monster father took all the thoughts from her head. It was just an empty cave.

“It is there,” she whispered, pointing under the cowhide bed.

Her father pivoted, still leaning low, and stretched a long arm out into the space under the bed. His face instantly changed when his fingers felt the tin box. He smiled wide, stood up, tucked the box under his arm and was gone.

Simi crept out of the hut. She thought her mother might be there, but she wasn’t. It was dark and she could hardly see the sleeping cattle. Not even the stars were shining. Simi kept the fire alive, and knowing her mother would want something warm to drink when she returned, she put a pot of water on the fire for tea. She added the sugar and milk and took it off the heat when it boiled. The tea grew cool, and the milk formed a skin on top, and still her mother didn’t return. Finally, unable to keep her eyes open, Simi curled up on the bed and fell asleep. She woke again when her mother returned and climbed into the bed next to her. Simi listened to her mother breathing for a long time. She was ashamed of what she’d done.

The next morning, Simi woke up early. Her mother was stirring chai in the pot and ladled out a hot cup that she handed to Simi. Her face was calm.

Simi watched her mother’s face carefully, desperate to know if she was angry with Simi or if, Simi hoped, she understood the choice Simi made. She found it impossible to refuse her father. Surely her mother understood.

“It was your school money, Simi.”

Shame bubbled up in Simi’s mouth. It was impossible to drink her tea.

“I wanted you to learn so when you married, you could be smarter than your husband. A husband can beat his wife, he can take what she has, but he can never take the things she knows.”

Simi stood up. It was almost time to leave for school. She glanced at the hook where her uniform hung. It was empty.

“Your father wanted that, too. I gave it to him.”

The loss was a blow to her chest. Simi fought to find air to breathe.

Her mother continued, “He has also told the laiboni that you are to be cut.”

How fast everything changed then. Simi was fifteen. Many of her age-mates were already women—circumcised and married and gone from her manyatta. The last several years were dry; Simi’s father’s herds had thinned, and the land grew hard. The bushes and trees the women cut for firewood and building were less and less plentiful. They had to walk farther to get them and, without tree and grass roots to hold the soil together, when it did rain, it merely turned the land to mud. All the seeds and tiny grasses were gone. Money was harder to find and, therefore, food less plenty. Simi would bring a bride price of at least two cows and two goats and one less mouth to feed.

Her mother changed. In the evenings, she didn’t ask Simi’s brother about what he was learning in school. Simi didn’t ask him, either. She tasted bitterness every time she thought of him writing in his exercise book and learning things while she cut wood and washed clothes in the trickle of water that used to be a river. Instead, each night they sat quietly, staring into the fire and sipping tea.

The night before Simi’s emurata, though, her mother took her hand and said, “I was a weak wife.” Then she reached up and unlatched her favorite necklace from her own neck. It was a stunning piece, wide and flat and shimmering with beads in all shades of blue and green. Simi remembered watching her mother make it, painstakingly selecting the perfect bead to sew on next. It was the only piece she’d refused to sell. Simi felt her mother’s rough hands slide the necklace around Simi’s neck and fix the clasp shut.

“You are my daughter,” her mother told her. “And now you are a woman and soon a wife. Your life will be like mine, but maybe not your children’s. Maybe they will have a wider sky.”

Simi looked at her feet. She knew her mother was still bitterly disappointed in her, in the way she’d ruined the dream her mother had had—to send Simi to school and delay marriage. This was a gesture that her mother had forgiven her, maybe, but had not forgotten.

Simi was resigned to marriage. Even with her schooling, it was inconceivable that she wouldn’t follow the path of all the other women before her. She was lucky that the man who chose her was the son of the village elder, the one whose opinion mattered and to whom others paid respect. Her husband was a pleasant man and had an easy rapport with all his wives and his children. Simi was the third wife.

Simi was married for one year before her husband began asking if she was unlucky. He asked with pity in his eyes—a childless woman is a sign of chaos; disorder in the way the world always works. After all, of what importance is a woman without a child? A woman is to provide children; if she cannot give babies, what can she give?

There were things to be done in this situation. The week-long silent praying to N’gai, the eating of lambs, the visit to the oreteti tree in the forest, the slaughtering of the ox, the dousing with milk and the eating of fat. For two years Simi consulted with the village doctor. Four times, she hoped. And four times the babies, unformed, left her. The other women, especially the other wives, looked at her through eyes tinged with suspicion. An unlucky woman could veil the whole village with her curse. And what was unluckier than a woman who couldn’t bear children? God only made perfect things; imperfections were doled out in life only to the people who deserved them. A childless wife was an imperfection of the highest degree—a stunning slight from God. Some husbands cast out their infertile wives to save themselves from the stain of bad luck she might bring to the family. Some villages refused to allow unlucky women to stay.

Simi’s husband didn’t tell her the American was coming. She found out through his first wife, Isina, when the women all gathered at the river to wash their clothes.

“Why is the muzungu coming here?” someone asked. “To steal our men?” The women laughed.

“How will she live here when she cannot speak to us?” someone else asked.

Nalami, Isina’s daughter, turned to Simi. Her hands were soapy with lye, and her palms red and chapped. She paused and then said slowly, “Simi, you will be the only one who will be able to talk to her.” The other women nodded and murmured.

“Ooh, Simi.” Loiyan cackled. She was the second wife, and although she often kept the women laughing with her jokes and her brassy interactions with the men, she had a meanness that could flare up with little warning. In the beginning, Simi was frightened of Loiyan, but she wasn’t anymore. Still, she didn’t like Loiyan—she thought of her as she did a snake, more dangerous because the strike was often unexpected.

“Ooh, Simi.” Loiyan stood tall and tipped her head back. “You will be too important. You will be an American yourself.” Loiyan pranced in place, pretending to be a white woman.

“You don’t look like an American,” Simi said, “you look like a sick hippo.” All the women laughed, and Loiyan sucked her teeth and hunkered down again to rinse her pile of clothes in the slow-moving river.

Simi was excited by the news of the muzungu. When her husband came to her the next night, Simi handed him a cup of chai and asked him why the American was coming.

“She wants to study us, the way we do things.”

Simi was surprised. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would be curious about the lives they led in the manyatta. She couldn’t imagine why an American would come all the way here just to watch them.

She had seen white people before, but never up close. Usually she saw them behind the glass of a vehicle window, through a film of dust billowing from under the slow-rolling tires as she stood by the side of the road. Often, the white faces on the other side of the glass stared at her, too, with eyes as wide and curious as hers. Sometimes, if the windows were open, the white people would lift their hands and call “Hello!” It always thrilled Simi when this happened. English was her best subject at school, and hearing words she’d practiced over and over again coming from the mouths of strangers was exciting. She loved the way learning a different language had made her feel free—like she had a key to a new life. When she waved and called “Hello” into the van’s dusty wake, she felt important. English was her connection to the world outside, and now, though her school days were long past, she was proud of her knowledge. Her mother was right; nobody could take away the things she knew.

In the early days, the American hardly spoke. She wandered like a ghost through the dust in the manyatta and started at the movements of the cattle. Simi watched her closely. She felt too shy to talk to the white woman at first, but she also worried that if the American stayed frightened and out of place, she would leave. Simi desperately wanted her to stay. She watched how the other Maasai women crowded into the American’s little house—one they’d constructed for her the day she arrived—and just sat there, watching the strange woman and gossiping among themselves. Finally Simi slipped in with them one afternoon and watched the white woman trying to light a fire in her fire pit. There were no embers there, and Simi quickly got up and fetched a bright coal from her own house and brought it back. She sifted it into the American’s fire pit, added a few twigs and dry grasses and blew it all into a flame.

“You must keep some fire alive all the time,” she said quietly. “We let it burn, just a little, even at night. We must always have our own fire, miss.”

The white woman smiled. “You speak English! Thank God! I’ve been needing you!” Simi felt herself flush, and she knew the other women were watching. She thought she heard Loiyan sucking her teeth.

“Please,” the American said, “tell me your name. Mine is Leona.”

From that moment, Leona was always near Simi. “Help me, Simi,” Leona would say, and the questions that followed were endless and wide-ranging—from how many handfuls of tea to toss into boiling water for chai, to how a man selects a wife. Simi grew bolder in her English, and lost her shyness with Leona. She scolded Leona the time Leona forgot to dip her head when greeting an elder, and warned her never to walk far from the manyatta in the evenings, when the shadows grew long and the hyenas and leopards stirred from their dens. With Leona next to her at the river, washing their clothes together, Simi found Loiyan left her alone. It wasn’t enjoyable to tease Simi anymore when Simi had a friend to speak to in a language Loiyan couldn’t understand.

Simi came to understand that Leona’s life back in America was completely different from the life they all lived here. Leona showed them photos of enormously tall buildings, expanses of grass so green it almost hurt their eyes to see it.

“Where are the cattle?” Simi asked when she saw the grass. “They must be too fat to walk!”

The images were breathtaking—it was hard to imagine they were real. Leona explained to Simi that not only did America look vastly different from Loita, but that life there—everything from clothing to speech to thoughts themselves—were unlike those here. Simi knew that some of the other women, ones who had never gone to school and seen a photo in a book, didn’t understand how to grasp the images and ideas Leona introduced them to; their minds were so firmly here that they could not see things differently. Simi could, though. She’d read stories about people different from herself and knew that the Maasai way wasn’t the only way people lived. The images in the pictures and the stories Leona told were like dreams. They flickered in her mind and flashed against the reality she saw around her constantly, two worlds—one inside herself, and one outside, like hot flames that burned blue and orange and red all at the same time.

In the evenings, Leona would come to Simi’s house. Her Maa was improving. Often, they practiced together. Leona would look through her notebooks and ask Simi questions about things she’d seen that day, and note ages and names of the people in the village. In return, Leona would teach Simi American slang. Simi loved the feel in her mouth that the new words gave her, and took to peppering her Maa with “That’s cool!” and “For real?” Other nights they’d drink tea and just stare into the fire quietly. One night, after Leona had been in the manyatta for several weeks, she sat on a low stool next to Simi. Simi threaded beads onto a strip of leather for a bracelet. It was dark outside, and chilly. “You don’t have children,” Leona stated.

Simi was relaxed in Leona’s presence but this statement—vocalized so clearly and directly—shocked her. It was unexpected, too bold for Simi’s comfort. She started and spilled some tea in her lap. It was hot and it stung. Her eyes welled, and she glanced across the bright embers of the fire and saw Leona watching her. There was no malice in Leona’s face. Part of Simi wanted to bury the subject forever, but another part was desperate to talk about the pain, release it to someone else in a way she couldn’t with the other women. Leona’s face was clear, her eyes blank.

“How long have you been married?” Simi heard Leona’s question and shifted uncomfortably.

“Three years,” Simi answered.

“It’s a problem to be a wife without a child?” Leona was speaking as if she had her notebook and pen with her, but Simi saw she had neither.

Simi answered in English. To say the words in her language made them hurt more coming out. “We say that a woman who hasn’t given birth is like a wilderness. A woman or a man with children to remember them can never die. But a person like me? When I am gone, nobody will remember.”

“In America people can choose to have a baby or not,” Leona said. “But even so, there are people who want to but can’t. This is something that happens everywhere, Simi. Have you seen a doctor?”

Simi didn’t answer. She was tingling with discomfort now. There was no way to explain it all to Leona. Her pain was not something for an American notebook, something to be inscribed with a pen on paper. Simi’s bitter frustration about not having a child, and her fear of the repercussions, were not something she would ever let see the light of day. She tried to keep herself from even thinking of them. How could sharing the story in words even scratch the surface of Simi’s disappointment and terror at the way her own body betrayed her? She was grateful when, after a long silence, Leona smiled and said she was tired, and then stood up to leave.

* * *

With Leona in the manyatta, Simi’s daily life changed. Her ability to communicate was a link between the American and the others. She had a certain power she’d never felt before. Even the men saw it. They approached Simi carefully with their questions about Leona, and the conversations Leona had with the villagers all happened with Simi hunkered close by, interpreting for both parties, not just the words themselves, but the ideas and feelings behind them. For the first time since Simi understood the fact of her infertility, she felt her fear loosen. Leona was her anchor. Even with her bad luck, they couldn’t send her away while they needed her so much. They were grateful for Simi’s education now. There were educated men in the village who spoke English, but because Simi was a woman, she had easier access to Leona. A man couldn’t spend so much time with a woman who wasn’t his wife without eyebrows being raised.

Leona joined the women daily at the river, and the women taught her to bang her clothes against the rocks and rub the bar of White Star soap until it frothed. It made the hours of banging and rubbing and rinsing clothes go faster when Leona was there. Simi was sorry, in some deep way, that she wasn’t the only woman who could have a companionship with Leona. Leona was beginning to make friends with many of the other women, but she was grateful that Leona seemed happy here, content. She wanted Leona to stay for a long time.

“Simi,” Leona whispered one day when they were resting their soapy hands. “I think Loiyan is pregnant.”

It was something Simi knew already, but she glanced up at Loiyan, anyway. The folds of the other woman’s wraps strained a bit under the swell of her belly. Simi swallowed a hot ember of jealousy. Loiyan already had three children. Two of them boys.

“Isn’t it true that a childless wife can adopt a baby of another woman?” Leona was whispering her words, but also speaking in English, not Maa. The conversation, Simi understood, was one Leona wanted to keep secret.

“Yes,” Simi answered simply. The possibility had crossed her mind a thousand times. To be regarded a mother didn’t absolutely have to mean bearing your own child. “It happens often.” Leona opened her mouth to speak again, but Simi already understood the subtext of Leona’s question, and answered it before Leona could clarify.

“Unless the reason for the adoption is that the mother died, the women have to be as close as sisters.”

Later the thoughts of adoption—and the seeming impossibility of it—crowded Simi’s mind like the scuffling cattle in the paddock—pushing against each other and refusing to let her sleep. Her husband was rich with children. Loiyan’s three and seven from his first wife, Isina. Now another baby was coming, and still, she herself had nothing.

A few months after Leona arrived, Simi found her squatting next to the laiboni, struggling to make conversation. Simi offered to translate, and when she heard the questions Leona asked, she felt herself shaking. Her skin went cold, and her vision blurred. She recognized a feeling of deeply embedded anger, but there was something else, as well—a sense of betrayal. N’gai had betrayed her, and now Leona had, too, by so easily achieving, and not even wanting, the one thing Simi desperately desired.

That evening Simi left the enclosure. She walked until she couldn’t see the acacia tree fencing, and she couldn’t hear the sounds of people. It was near dusk, and this was dangerous. Simi didn’t want to be seen, though. She needed time alone, and she didn’t want to talk. She stood at a place where the land dipped down toward a stream, now dry, but where shrubs and grasses were thicker. She saw a family of zebra, munching calmly, and she felt safer—they didn’t sense a predator nearby. Near where she stood, she saw a young green shrub, the one they used to treat stomachaches. They always needed this plant, so she began plucking leaves, tying them up in the end of her kanga as she did. It was later, when she returned home to heat up tea, that she had her idea. Leona hadn’t learned to tell one plant from another, so Simi tossed a handful in a crumpled plastic bag and made her way to Leona’s house. These leaves would do nothing, Simi knew. And as she handed them to Leona, she imagined the baby clinging tightly to the dark insides of Leona’s body. Simi’s own muscles clenched at the idea of that fullness. If only. If only.

It was early one morning—before dawn, even the cattle and goats were still asleep—when Leona’s cry broke the dark sky into two. Simi heard it. It woke her from her dream and sent a rushing shiver down her spine. It was time. She wrapped her kanga around her shoulders to stave off the cool air and crossed the enclosure to Leona’s house. The midwife was already there, and some other women, too. Everyone loved to participate in a birth. There was Loiyan with her own new infant—another boy—snuggled fast asleep in a wrap tied tightly against his mother’s back.

Leona was lucky. The birth was an easy one, and the midwife had no trouble releasing the baby from Leona’s body and into the world. The cord was cut and the new baby—a tiny, pale girl—was placed in Leona’s arms.

* * *

There were women who didn’t take to their babies. Simi had seen it happen before, but never with someone who didn’t also have the wild-eyed look of the cursed. Leona’s reaction frightened Simi. After the baby was placed in Leona’s arms, Leona made a wailing like an animal. Her mouth opened, and her eyes closed, and the cry was from a deep place Simi never suspected Leona had inside of her.

Leona tried to nurse the infant, but within days she pushed the baby away and wrapped a kanga tightly around her breasts to stop the milk from coming. It wasn’t uncommon for mothers to be unable to nurse—it happened on occasion, and another nursing mother could always step in and help. But Leona could nurse. The few times she tried, her milk came strong and plentiful. Simi could see that the baby was able to drink her fill and that Leona’s breasts were swollen and ripe. Simi never heard of a woman who could nurse but wouldn’t. There was a sharp feeling in Simi’s belly when she saw the way Leona treated the baby.

Simi told herself she was helping Leona when she began caring for the baby herself, and when she arranged for a wet nurse. The wet nurse had five other children, one only a few days older than Nalangu, so she didn’t mind when Simi handed her the pink baby for feedings. A few weeks later, when Leona’s interest in her baby hadn’t increased, Simi asked her husband for a ram to make the adoption official. His wife’s adopting Leona’s baby was a good thing, and although he found Nalangu’s color unappealing, he was happy to provide the animal. All his wives should have children, and this would bring luck to Simi and the community. Even if the child was the color of a bald baby aardvark. Simi divided the ram’s fat into two portions. Leona was still gray and quiet, and Simi told Leona the fat would make her body strong again after the depletion of pregnancy. After all, that was the truth. Leona never asked why Simi bundled off the other portion of fat. Simi told herself that Leona must know the procedure for adopting. She’d been here for so long now, taking notes on everything. Surely they’d talked about this.

Simi loved being a mother. Her place in the village was cemented. Loiyan didn’t tease her anymore, and her husband no longer looked worried when he came to her at night. Simi was part of things now—safely protected from the wilderness of a life without a child.

Simi didn’t choose Nalangu’s name, but it sounded like the hand of fate reaching out to give Simi what she’d wanted for so long. Until now, she’d felt like a member of a different tribe herself. Now she and this new person were together, they had each other and that would allow them both to be included. Simi knew Leona watched Simi and the baby together with a sense of relief. Leona’s skin grew pink again, and the hollowness in her eyes filled out. She seemed happy. By the time Nalangu turned one, and it was time to give her a proper name, Simi didn’t ask Leona what she thought. The mother could decide this one, and Simi chose Adia, “gift,” because that was what this child was.

* * *

Later, Simi wondered why the clouds came that particular day, and what it was she’d done to deserve renewed punishment. She was a good person, a good mother to Adia. She took all the necessary steps to ensure that N’gai—God—was satisfied with her. Leona had been going to other manyattas often lately. She also traveled to Nairobi. Simi could sense that her friend’s attachment to the village was waning. Simi was ashamed that the notion of Leona leaving brought her relief. There were times she wondered if her baby would feel more like hers if Leona were gone. The link they had—Leona and Adia—simply through the color of their skin, was too obvious. People outside the village, people who didn’t know, assumed the wrong connection. When Leona was gone, it would be easier.