stumbling in the stubborn snow.
Dave and Lou follow.
Lou has on a thick red coat
and a hat with a fuzzy ball on top.
Ganwar is still leaning against Gol.
You cousin has an idea, says Dave.
My grin is so big it hurts.
You can work with me here! I exclaim.
Helping with the farm!
All is quiet.
Ganwar looks doubtful.
He doesn’t say yes,
but he doesn’t say no, either.
I don’t have much cash, Lou says.
You’d have to split
the pay I’d promised Kek.
But come spring I sell
organic veggies and flowers
at the farmers’ market,
and you could help with that.
She pauses. Assuming, that is,
I hang onto this old place.
Ganwar looks at me hard.
I can’t take your charity.
But I’m taking yours, I say.
You’re sharing your home with me.
I don’t know anything about farming, Ganwar says.
I don’t either, I say.
Ganwar turns to Lou and holds out his hurt arm.
What about this? he asks.
His voice is soft,
but his words are shouting.
We all look at Lou.
Lou shrugs.
Guess you’ll have to use the other one, she says.
For some reason
this makes Ganwar smile.
He slowly nods.
He glances at Dave.
Can you come back later? he asks.
We have dung to shovel.
I laugh.
It’s much harder here, I warn him.
Everything freezes.
Even that.
Gol moos softly,
as if she’s sorry to make work for us.
Dave shakes my hand, then Lou’s, then Ganwar’s.
Folks, this is great, he says.
Ganwar, don’t let Lou down, buddy.
He won’t, Lou says.
She winks.
Dave and Lou leave us
in the cold barn.
I look around me.
It’s not a great herd I see,
dotting the grass
like clouds in a vast green sky.
It’s just a tired flock
of scrawny chickens
and a cow with ribs trying to hide
behind her muddy coat.
But for a moment,
as Ganwar and I hum
one of the old songs,
we are where we belong
in the world.
FIELD TRIP
The next week,
my ESL class takes a field trip to the zoo.
Field trip is another English trick,
like raining cats and dogs
and a barrel of laughs
because there is no field
and it’s not a far trip
like the one I took from Africa.
We take a yellow bus.
When we get to the zoo,
we must stand in line to get our tickets.
The other kids complain,
but I am used to lines.
One day in the refugee camp
I stood in line for nine hours
to get a handful of corn.
At last a guiding lady walks us past
birds and lizards,
fish and butterflies,
zebras and elephants.
We’re looking for animals
from our homelands.
I see gazelles
standing on a low hill
beyond a fence.
I remember such animals bounding
through tall grass,
riding the air like
wingless birds.
I wonder,
How did they come to be here in this strange, cold world?
They flick their tails
and check the horizon for danger.
They’re safe here,
but they don’t know it.
We visit the petting zoo,
with its animals for touching
who will not eat your hand.
There are goats and chickens and pigs,
a llama and a turkey,
but no cows.
We are supposed to be watching the animals,
but I can’t stop looking at the people
looking at all the animals.
A class of little children
laughs at the pigs
rolling happily in cold mud.
Their class looks like our class,
or maybe we look like them:
many colors and shapes
and words.
Of all the things I didn’t know
about America,
this is the most amazing:
I didn’t know
there would be so many tribes
from all over the world.
How could I have imagined
the way they walk through the world
side by side
without fear,
all free to gaze at the same sky
with the same hopes?
What would my father have said,
to see such a thing? My brother?
What will my mother say?
I walk behind my classmates to the next exhibit,
but I am not alone.
My family is with me,
and every sight is something they cannot see,
and every hope is something they cannot feel.
To carry them, unseen as wind,
is a heavy burden.
THE QUESTION
All afternoon my belly aches.
Maybe I should have eaten more, I tell myself.
But I know the hurt of hunger well.
Hunger is a wild dog
gnawing on a dry bone,
mad with impatience
but hoping still.
It isn’t hunger I feel today.
This pain is worse,
one without pity
like an icy night.
This pain is a question,
the one my heart will not stop asking:
Why am I here,
when so many others are not?
Why should I have a desk
and a pair of fine jeans
and a soft place for my head to rest?
Why should I have the freedom to hope
while my brother and father
sleep in bloodied earth?
I should not take these gifts
I do not deserve.
And yet I know I will take them,
warm food
and soft bed
and fresh hope,
holding on tight
as that wild dog
to his bone.
APPLE
Before ESL we have homeroom.
I don’t much like it.
In my homeroom are only
three other ESL students,
and I don’t speak their words.
All the rest are from America.
One morning,
a folded paper waits on my homeroom desk.
I think maybe it’s a note to pass.
I’ve seen other students
hand paper to each other
during the loud man in the wall
named Announcements.
It’s exciting to think
I might already have a homeroom friend.
When I open it, I see a picture.
It’s not a good drawing.
But after a moment I can see
it’s a dead body made of bones.
Hungry, Kenya? a boy in the back asks.
His voice has knives in it.
He holds up an apple half eaten.
None for me, thank-you, I say,
using my polite English words.
&nbs
p; And my home, I add,
is not Kenya. It’s Sudan.
He tosses the apple across the room.
It lands on my desk
and drops to the floor.
My homeroom teacher
looks up from his newspaper.
Can the flying fruit, he says.
Of course, I don’t want
the apple to be wasted.
I pick it up off the floor
and throw it back to the boy.
It hits him on the nose.
I’m a fine thrower of rocks and balls.
It is not my fault the boy moved.
The teacher gives me a detention slip.
I’m not sure what this slip means,
but I do know I’m the only one in class
who receives one.
I feel very lucky
to be selected by my teacher
for such an honor.
GROCERY STORE
The next afternoon,
Hannah invites me
to visit the grocery store with her.
Her mother she calls a foster has asked her
to buy some food for dinner.
We take another bus to a place
of many cars in neat rows.
By the time we get there
the sun has already said good night.
That’s it, Hannah says.
Safeway.
There isn’t enough food in the world
to fill such a building, I say.
I follow her inside,
and she grabs a shiny cart.
You don’t pay for this fine cart? I ask.
You just borrow it, she explains.
The grocery store
has rows and rows
of color, of light,
of easy hope.
Hannah moves down the aisle,
but I stand like a tree rooted firm,
my eyes too full of this place,
with its answers to prayers
on every shelf.
Hannah glances over her shoulder.
You OK? she asks.
I reach out and touch
a piece of bright green food
I’ve never seen before.
And then I begin to cry.
Hannah rushes to my side.
It’s OK, she says.
We can leave if you want.
She takes my hand
and we leave the empty cart
and go outside.
We sit on the icy bench
and wait for the bus.
A car whooshes past.
Its lights cut the gloom
like the eyes of a great cat
prowling for food
in the moonlight.
THE STORY I TELL HANNAH ON THE WAY HOME
In our tent in the camp
a baby was dying.
Flies teased her eyes
and her arms hung
like broken sticks.
Her mother was
not much older than I am.
All day long she
whispered to the baby
drink, drink, drink.
All day, all night.
We couldn’t sleep
for the sound of it.
But the baby had been hungry
for too long
and the bottle
went untouched
and after a while
the mother stopped rocking
and went silent.
When the baby died,
she covered her child
with a feed sack
and she said to no one,
I told her to eat.
Why wouldn’t she eat?
When I’m done with the story,
I stare out the window
at the sunless world.
Hannah stares with me.
This time, she’s the one
who cannot find any words.
LIBRARY
Ms. Hernandez and Mr. Franklin
take us to the school library twice a week.
It’s filled with books on shelves,
climbing to the ceiling like
little buildings.
Each book is like a door
waiting to be unlocked.
Today I sit at a table
but I don’t pick a book to read
like everyone else in my class.
Today,
I don’t know why,
feels like the day at the grocery store.
Today I’m thinking of how my mother
always wanted to learn to read,
to own a book,
to open one of these magical presents
and see what’s inside.
Ms. Hernandez shows me a book about cows.
She asks me to find a picture of a cow like Gol,
but I tell her I don’t feel
in a library mood
today.
That’s OK, she says. I know how that goes.
It’s just so hard to choose, I add.
There are so many books.
And where I come from,
there are hardly any.
Ms. Hernandez nods.
I felt that way a lot
when I first came here.
Once I went to the mall and ended up
hiding in the corner of a clothes store.
It was just too many lights,
too many clothes, you know?
And I still feel kind of funny at movies.
Have you been to a movie yet?
I shake my head. Not one of the big movies.
But I did see a little one
on the flying boat.
I went to a grocery store, though.
I started to—
I whisper the last word—
cry.
Ms. Hernandez pats my hand.
It’s just too much sometimes, isn’t it?
When you had almost nothing.
And when you know that many people
still have so little.
I don’t know what to do with it all, I say.
I kick at a chair leg.
To have all this food and
all these books
and all this freedom.
I feel sort of …
I don’t know the word.
It’s a big gift, she agrees.
I reach for the cow book.
My father would have liked
this book, I say.
I’d like to hear
about your family, Ms. Hernandez says.
I think for a minute.
My father was a fine singer, I say.
Tell me more, Ms. Hernandez says.
And I do.
GOING UP
Time passes,
the kind they call weeks.
I have a little money from my job.
I have to make myself believe that a
crumpled piece of green paper
means something,
means anything.
In my old world, it was easy—
you could know a person’s
wealth by counting his cattle.
Hannah and I take the bus
to a giant store filled with many things to buy.
I’ve promised her
I will not get upset this time.
I want to buy my aunt some new dishes.
There are stores within stores here
and music and food.
It’s bright and big,
with toys and chairs,
TV machines and T-shirts.
What do you call such a place? I ask.
The mall, Hannah replies.
I follow her to a huge shiny store.
I’ve herded cattle for hundreds of miles
with only the stars to guide me.
But I’m certain I could never
find my way out of this place.
Hannah takes me to two magic silver staircases,
; one going up,
one coming down.
I watch as the stairs melt away,
then reappear.
It’s just an escalator, she says.
No big deal. C’mon.
I shake my head. They had these at the airport,
but Dave let me take the stairs instead.
Is there another way to climb?
She laughs. Well, there’s an elevator.
That would be a better way, I think.
OK, but you gotta promise me you’ll try it
next time. It’s fun, Hannah says.
So are elevators.
The elevator is hiding near a row
of puffy white coats,
like clouds with arms.
Hannah pushes a button.
We wait.
A bell rings, and then
the doors vanish.
I follow her into the little room
waiting for us.
She pushes another button,
then—zoom!—
up we fly.
I think I left my stomach
downstairs, I say.
Hannah smiles.
Told you it was fun.
HEARTS
Hannah leads me to shelves
full of colorful dishes.
I like some with many stripes,
but she says I can’t afford them.
She picks out a small box of white ones.
This should pretty much
replace what you broke, Hannah says.
I cradle the box gently in my arms.
the way I would carry a newborn calf.
On the way to the paying place,
we pass many red sparkling cards
and much candy.
Some of it is even chocolate.
Valentine’s Day is in a couple days,
Hannah explains.
You give stuff to people you like.
Plus it just happens to be
my birthday.
Hey, when’s your birthday?
I don’t know, I admit. We don’t
have birthdays in the way that you do.
But I know I was born in the time
you call summer.
Hannah looks confused by this news.
It’s hard for me to remember
that she sometimes finds my ways
as strange as I find hers.
I must find you a gift, I say.
After I pay you back the money I owe
for the bus and the washing,
how much do I have left?
No way, Hannah says.
You’re not spending your
hard-earned money on yours truly.
But it would make me very proud, I argue.
And it’s my duty as your friend.
Hannah grins out of one side of her mouth,
a silly tilted smile
like a new moon rising.
OK, OK. See that little box of heart candy?
You could afford that.
It must be chocolate,
I say firmly.
She scans the shelves.
Here, she says at last.