The Brightest Sun

Simi’s earliest memory was one she wished she could forget. Mostly she pushed it to the back of her mind and kept it trapped there in the dark. Sometimes, though, mostly while she slept, it slipped out of its confines and floated, ghostly, into her consciousness.

The details were no longer clear. In her memory, the inkajijik was chilly. That didn’t make sense, Simi knew, because her mother was a good Maasai woman who always kept burning embers in her fire pit. She would never allow the fire to burn out or let the air chill. There would have been fire. But still, in Simi’s adult mind, the memory was cold. It was a typical evening, happy and calm. She and her mother and brother sat by the fire. Simi and her brother were telling their mother about their day at school. Their mother loved hearing about school and was proud that she was sending both her children, not just her son.

Simi’s family was rich in cattle and children. Her mother was her father’s fourth wife. This was a lucky thing for Simi because by the time she was born he’d grown accustomed to the demands children placed on his time and his money. Mostly her father kept away from the children, and he only visited Simi’s mother’s house when he needed something. He spent his time with other elders under the shade of an acacia tree. One of his wives made honey beer, and he enjoyed that and spent most nights in her hut. Sometimes he liked the honey beer so much his speech slurred and his walking became erratic. Before the night when everything changed, Simi thought her father was funny when he was drunk. Afterward, it made her hate him.

Simi’s mother was quiet and thoughtful; she didn’t spend much time with the other women. Instead, in her free time she sat alone and made intricate beaded jewelry. Her designs were delicate and unique. They were so beautiful that people from other manyattas, some two or three days’ walk away, began to seek out her creations. Sometimes they would trade a goat for a piece, sometimes they would pull a faded wad of shillings from their wraps. Simi’s mother allowed the animals to wander with the others. She made no secret of them. The money, though, she hid. She saved it in an old tobacco tin she kept hidden in the dark space under the bed. When Simi turned seven, her mother bought a used school uniform and sent Simi to school. Simi’s father didn’t notice, or didn’t care, that Simi left the manyatta each morning, dressed in a uniform she carefully kept pristine by washing it each week in the river and hanging it to dry over a small, thornless bush.

As the years passed, her mother earned enough money to buy Simi a new uniform, and she provided Simi with a clean exercise book each year. In all her eight years of school, Simi never missed a day. She walked in rain and dust, and through the torrent of taunts and names the boys tossed her way as she went. In the early years, she walked with other girls, but one by one they all left. They were circumcised, married and sent to live in their husband’s villages. Every time another girl left, Simi fought dread that she would be next. But her mother kept sending her. Every evening when it grew dark and all the people withdrew to their houses, Simi and her brother showed their mother letters; they taught her how words were written. They taught her addition and subtraction and times tables. Those years, in Simi’s mind, were the happiest. But, in the way daylight follows a dark night, the dark follows daylight, too.

Simi couldn’t remember the details anymore. When her father entered, her brother was in the middle of speaking. What story was her brother telling? Simi only remembered that he stopped, mid-word, when their father burst into the hut. This is where her memory skipped from a feeling of contentment to one of fear.

“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.