Leaving

Mandiaya

It’s Friday morning, first period. We sit idly on and among broken rows of desks, humming with low scattered sentences. The emptiness at the front of the classroom is heavy. My gaze wanders from the empty blackboard to the open window, and I stare out at the assembly ground.

Stones, some the size of my fist and some the size of my head, radiate in lines from the cleared central rise. It’s just enough of a hill that you can see the tops of everyone’s heads as you address them, your heart thrumming in your chest, your hands clasped together to stop them from shaking.

Mandiaya stood there last week, his heart thrumming, his hands clasped, his voice skipping, tripping, falling.

I turned away when I realized what he was saying. I wanted to hide my face from my friends. I wanted to hide his face from me. I wanted him to just come into the classroom and teach already, like he always did, and walk among the rows and look at my work and say, “Good job!” or “Very close! Maybe try…”

When he finally ended his speech and walked to the roadside, a lot of the class followed him. I just stood watching him leave, rooted to the spot, to grow like a tree, a monument, to the place where he should return. Here is your school! Here are your students! Come back!

The teachers say he will come back. But his face, before I hid behind the other assembled students, said he wouldn’t.

Ukanja

I tried to call him today. Timoti, the ukanja, the white man who came to our school last year and then left during the tribal fighting, saying he wanted to come back, saying he would come back – he didn’t pick up the phone. It didn’t even ring.

He never did visit back, even though he told me that he was still in Ghana, that he was planning to return. A new school and a new set of students, and no time for us. And now he’s gone home.

Or maybe his phone broke. Or he got a new number. I remember when he changed his number some time ago, and I had to wait for him to call me.

I don’t want to wait for that. Maybe I’ll try calling again.

Tim

I wake up to my phone vibrating on the bedside table. Squinting, I wait for my eyes to adjust to the brilliantly glowing screen. Messages, buzzing in from a group chat in quick succession. Someone can’t sleep.

I put the phone down. Pick it back up. Three in the morning.

The room is calm and quiet. In the still darkness, a cool whisper of air rolls easily over my thick blanket. The pillow under my head is soft. The mattress is firm with just enough give.

The bed frame is a dark brown carved wood, a match to the desk and drawers along the wall. A closet full of clothes and shoes and board games lies behind doors just out of reach. If I’m thirsty, an infinity of water glasses is just twenty steps away. And if I drink too many, the toilet is just two steps farther on.

The lights can turn on and never go out. The pantry and man-sized fridge are full. The roads are black, the yards are lush, the sidewalks are wide and clean.

It’s home, like a strange guilty memory, a dream so real I can touch it, just before waking up in a hot loud dusty itchy night.

I remember that I forgot to call Immanuel, to explain, to give him my American number. To apologize.