Chapter 7: They Only Circle

Chapter 7 · 6 min read

Three mornings passed, and nothing happened. At the brick frames, Lumani pressed clay into a frame and smoothed the top.

Scoop. Press. Smooth.

Beyond the frames, the women were already spreading leaves on the drying mats. The sky was the soft orange of early morning. An older woman, her hair covered with a cloth, looked up at it.

“When I was a girl, a sky this color meant a wedding,” she said.

“There are no weddings here,” the woman beside her said.

“Then the sky is wasting itself.”

The younger woman laid down another leaf.

“What did a wedding look like?”

The old woman frowned at her hands.

“Drums,” she said at last. “There were drums. I remember that much.”

“No old stories,” the younger woman whispered. “Remember?”

“Yes, yes.” The old woman waved her hand at the wall. “What more can they do to me? I am already old.”

“Keep shouting, and you will find out.”

“Children these days do not know how to speak to their elders.”

The younger woman laid her leaf down next to the old woman’s.

“I only want you to stay safe,” she said. “Here. With us.”

“Oh, I know, dear.”

Kamau passed behind the frames with a stone on his shoulder.

“Kamau,” Lumani whispered. “Can I ask you—”

“Not here.” Kamau did not stop walking. “Bricks.”

Lumani pressed the clay down harder. He had a hundred questions, and nowhere was safe to ask a single one.

Every morning, Malanga walked their row. He never hurried. He stopped wherever he liked.

This morning, he stopped behind Lumani.

Lumani kept working.

Scoop. Press. Smooth.

He sharpened the corners and flattened the top. His hands stayed steady. He was sure Malanga could hear his heart.

Malanga bent down. He picked up a handful of mud from beside Lumani’s tray and squeezed it slowly. Brown water ran out between his fingers.

“Wet ground,” he said quietly, to nobody.

He dropped the mud and walked on.

Lumani did not look up until the boots were three frames away. When he did, Ayo was watching him from across the row. She shook her head once.

“Lumani.” Jabari leaned over from the next frame. “Watch this.”

“Another trick?”

Jabari waited until the nearest guard looked away. Then he puffed out his chest and copied the guard’s stiff walk, three slow steps with his chin in the air. On the third step, he almost dropped his tray.

Kofi laughed into his sleeve. Across the ditch, a boy from the other crew bit his lip to stop himself from laughing.

Lumani smiled a little.

“Nothing?” Jabari whispered. “That was my best one.”

“It was good,” Lumani said.

“Good? It was legendary. Kofi almost died.”

“I did not almost die,” Kofi said. “I almost laughed.”

“Same thing, in here,” Jabari said.

Ayo set down her frame and watched Lumani.

At midday, she carried water down the line, then came to Lumani last.

“You look like you swallowed a stone,” she said quietly.

“I am fine.”

“You have said that three times today.”

“Then it must be true.”

“It is not,” Kofi said from behind them. “You said it yesterday too.”

“Kofi, how are you?” Lumani asked.

“I am fine.”

“See?” Lumani said. “Everybody is fine.”

“Kofi is lying too,” Ayo said.

Kofi thought about it.

“A little,” he said.

Ayo gave Lumani a hard look. Then she bumped his shoulder with hers and poured him the last of the water.

That evening, in the cooking shed, Mama Leki poured stew into the bowls, one spoonful at a time.

Kamau sat a little apart from the others, his hands empty in his lap.

Mama Leki held a bowl out to him. “Eat.”

“In a moment.”

“Your stew is getting cold.”

He looked twice toward the trees at the edge of camp.

Jabari leaned toward Lumani. “What is he looking at?”

“The trees.”

“Why? Trees do not do anything.”

“They grow,” Kofi said.

“Slowly. Nobody watches a tree grow.”

“Eat your stew, Jabari,” Ayo said.

Mama Leki crouched beside Kamau and spoke too low for the others to hear. But Lumani was sitting closest. He heard some of it.

“…not yet,” Kamau was saying. “He is ten.”

“And he will still be ten tomorrow,” Mama Leki whispered. “Waiting does not make him older. It only makes him alone when it comes.”

“And if I show him, I cannot take it back.”

“Then do not take it back.” She put the bowl into his hands and closed his fingers around it. “Eat. You cannot protect anybody on an empty stomach.”

She stood up and saw Lumani watching.

“Your stew,” she said. “Is it very interesting?”

“Yes, Mama Leki.”

“Then eat it.”

Lumani looked down at his stew very quickly.

“What did she say?” Jabari whispered.

“Nothing,” Lumani said. “She said eat.”

“She always says eat.”

When they cleaned the bowls, the others went to the fire. Kamau stayed. He tipped his head at the bench beside him.

Lumani sat.

Kamau turned his full bowl on his knee, then turned it back.

“You slept badly last night,” he said.

“I slept.”

“You called out.”

Lumani looked at his hands.

“It was only a dream.”

“What kind of dream?”

Lumani looked up at the sky.

“I do not remember it all.”

He did remember. He remembered the tear on Kamau’s face, and he did not want to see it again.

“Listen to me. If it comes again, you wake me.”

“In the night?”

“As soon as you open your eyes, you come to me first.”

“Why?”

Kamau looked at his stew, then at Lumani.

“You will know.”

Later, Lumani joined the others at the fire. Ayo sat down next to him and held her hands to the heat.

“Kamau keeps looking at the trees,” she said.

“I know.”

“Mama Leki keeps looking at Kamau.”

“I know.”

“And you keep looking at your hands.”

She bumped his knee with hers.

“If you are in trouble, you tell me. Not Jabari. He will tell the whole camp.”

“I heard that,” Jabari said from the other side of the fire.

“You were supposed to,” Ayo said.

Lumani smiled at the fire, but not for long.

“Ayo. Do you ever dream the same dream again and again?”

Ayo did not laugh at him.

“Sometimes,” she said. “When I am scared of something during the day.”

“What do you do?”

“I look at all of you,” Ayo said. “Mama Leki. Kamau. Jabari. Kofi. You. If everyone is still here, then the dream was wrong.”

That night, the dream came back.

This time, the song came first. It broke apart every few notes, as if someone kept putting a hand over the singer’s mouth. Then the eyes opened around him, closer than ever, turning slowly in the dark.

He woke up with his fists tight and his face wet. The shed was dark.

He counted them, the way Ayo did. Mama Leki, by the door. Kamau, on his mat. Jabari, snoring. Kofi, curled into a ball with his blanket over his head. Ayo was asleep with one arm stretched toward Kofi’s mat.

Everyone was there, but it did not help.

He crept to Kamau’s mat.

“I had the dream again,” he whispered.

Kamau was already sitting up. He glanced at the sleeping shapes around them, then tipped his head toward the door.

“Outside. Quietly.”

Lumani followed him, stepping over Jabari’s arm. The night air was cold against his face. Kamau led him past the shed to the edge of the firelight, where the others could not hear them, and turned.

“Tell me,” he said. “All of it.”

“It was dark again,” Lumani said. “And there were eyes. Four pairs. Closer than before.”

“How close?”

“Close enough to hear them breathing.”

“Did they chase you?” Kamau asked.

“No.”

“And the song?”

“It kept breaking.”

Kamau looked at the trees. A dog barked somewhere past the wall, and then the camp was silent again.

“I have dreamed of them too,” he said at last. His voice was low. “Years ago. Before I brought you here.”

Lumani stared at him.

“You never told me.”