Chapter 1
Left Behind
Charles Mulli awoke to sunlight filtering through cracks in the thatched grass roof of his family’s mud hut. His neck still hurt from the beating his father had given him two nights before. Thankfully last night his father had collapsed onto his bed, too drunk to even throw a punch at Charles’s mother. Charles could hear the hen pecking outside the door, the same hen his parents had consulted yesterday. As far as Charles could understand, his father, Daudi, believed that when he prayed to the hen, his ancestors would hear him and bless and guide him. The prayers had lasted for a long time, and when they were over, Charles’s father strode off with a determined look on his face.
The hen stopped pecking, and suddenly Charles was aware that the hut was silent—totally silent. There was not even the rustle of his mother, Rhoda, moving about the hut preparing to light the fire to cook ugali, or the babbling of his one-year-old sister, Katumbi. Ignoring the pain, Charles lifted his head and looked around. Except for himself, the bed he shared with his younger brothers, Musyoka and Dickson, was empty. Stranger still, the hut was empty.
Charles quickly sat up on the edge of the bed, wide awake. What had happened? Where was his family? How had he slept through the commotion of everyone getting up and leaving? Charles forced himself to think. There was something different, something alarming about the situation. Charles swung his feet to the floor, stood up, and opened the door. He didn’t need to change out of the ripped shirt and pants he had slept in, since they were the only clothes he owned.
Charles walked out into the bright African morning, past the acacia trees, and along the edge of the track that led to the maize field. He tried to reassure himself that his family had gotten an early start working in the field. But he could see no one bending over to weed the maize crop. His heart pounded in his chest as he took off running along the track to his grandmother’s hut. Would his grandmother be there? Was anyone left to take care of him?
It normally took ten minutes for Charles to reach his grandmother’s house from the maize field, but this morning he covered the distance in record time. He almost wept for joy when he saw his grandmother sitting on a stool slicing beans with a long knife. She looked up wearily when she saw him approaching.
“Father and Mother are not in the hut. Do you know where they are?” an out-of-breath Charles asked.
His grandmother sighed deeply before answering. “They have gone, Charles, and they have left you behind.”
“Just for the day? They’ll be back, won’t they?”
Charles’s grandmother shook her head as a chilling thought overcame Charles. Somewhere deep inside he knew his family was gone, not for a day or a week but for good. It was no accident he had slept through it all. His father, mother, and brothers had all conspired to leave him behind. Perhaps that was what the ancestors had told his father to do when he had prayed to the hen the day before.
This was a lot for a six-year-old boy to absorb. Charles stood by the door of his grandmother’s hut trying to sort through the information. “What will happen to me?” he asked.
His grandmother wiped a tear from her wrinkled face. “You will live with me, but…” Her voice trailed off.
Charles knew very well what the but meant. They lived in Kathithyamaa, the village in south central Kenya where his mother and her brothers had been raised. According to local custom, the brothers stayed with the parents and inherited the land, while the sisters were married off and moved away to their husbands’ lands. A daughter had no right to inherit anything from her parents. But Daudi Mulli had broken with tradition and come to stay with his wife’s family, bringing along Charles and their other three children. Rhoda Mulli’s five brothers, Charles’s uncles, resented the fact that their sister had returned home and expected them to help support her, her husband, and the children. Charles had once overheard Uncle Nzioka arguing with his grandmother about giving the Mulli family food from her tiny garden. Charles knew that his uncles would be very angry that he had been left behind, fearing that he would grow up there and be entitled to some of their inheritance.
Charles gathered a sack to sleep on from the old family hut and carried it to his grandmother’s place, his new home. His grandmother’s hut was even smaller than the one the Mulli family had been living in, but it felt like a safe haven to Charles. In Charles’s previous experience, his father would beat his mother more nights than not and then unleash his fury on Charles and his brothers. It felt good to him to sleep in the corner of the hut knowing he would not be subjected to another nightmarish beating.
Soon, however, a new nightmare presented itself. The reality in his new home of feeding two mouths instead of one became urgent. There was no food left in his grandmother’s hut, and her tiny garden didn’t produce enough vegetables to feed them both. Sometimes her sons brought food, staying to watch her eat it and insisting she not share any of it with Charles. “Let him beg,” they said. “His parents left him behind. He is worthless. We don’t want him either.”
Charles recoiled at the idea of begging. It was bad enough that the other children in the village taunted him with “Bure Bure” (unwanted orphan). What would they say when he started begging for food from their families?
After not eating for three and a half days, Charles broke down and headed to a neighbor to ask for food. Despite the hunger gnawing at his stomach, he hated what he was being forced to do. Luckily a kind woman was in the first hut, and she gave him boiled manioc to eat. She even knelt beside Charles to talk to him, but he ran away before she could ask him any questions.
Charles made the manioc last for two days and then had to beg again. Sometimes he met with kindness, but as the months went by, many people became weary of feeding the six-year-old who had been left behind. “What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t your family take you with them? Why did they take the others and leave you behind?” they would ask him.
Charles didn’t know how to answer the questions. He had heard a rumor that his parents and siblings were in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, thirty-five miles to the west. Sometimes at night as he lay on his sack in the corner of his grandmother’s hut, he tried to imagine what might be happening in the capital. What were his brothers doing? Were they rich enough to go to school? Had his father found a job and stopped drinking and beating his mother? A year passed, and still Charles’s parents did not return. He had become used to his new life, even though each day was a struggle.
Another year passed. Charles was now eight years old and felt like an old man. Every day he was burdened with the need to find enough food to fend off starvation. He was sure that his life would not only never get any better but would also get worse when his grandmother died and he was left completely alone. But late one afternoon as Charles was weeding his grandmother’s small garden, a boy from the village came running up to him. “Come quickly! She’s here!” he yelled.
“Who’s here?” Charles asked.
“Your mother. Your mother is back.”
“Where?”
“At your grandmother’s hut,” the boy said.
Charles took off running.
As he rounded the corner on the track to his grandmother’s hut, Charles saw a cluster of relatives around the doorway. Four of his uncles and several of his cousins were there, and they all looked somber. Charles didn’t stop to talk to them. He wanted to see his mother more than anything in the world. As Charles ran past the relatives, Uncle Kaisi reached out to grab him, but Charles pulled away and dashed inside. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim interior of the hut from the bright sun outside. His grandmother sat on her old stool, and a woman lay on the floor, slumped over against the opposite wall. Charles stared. Was the woman on the floor his mother? He looked closer but could barely recognize her. The woman’s eyes were bruised and swollen almost completely shut. Her head was swollen almost to the size of a large melon, and her face bore a patchwork of cuts and bruises.
The sight of his mother’s condition made Charles want to vomit. Only one person could have done such a terrible thing to her, and that was his father. Charles’s hands balled into fists as rage filled his heart. He wished his father were there right then so he could fight him.
“Hello, Charles?” his mother whispered.
Charles ignored her. He was too angry to speak, angry that she had stayed with his father, angry that he could not protect her, and angry that she had left him behind. Then he heard a whimper from a pile of rags in the corner that he hadn’t noticed. He turned to see his grandmother pick something up. It was a baby. Charles stepped over to take a better look. “This is your brother Zachariah,” his grandmother said.
As he looked closer, Charles saw that the skin around the baby’s hands and the back of his head was raw and seeping yellow fluid. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked, afraid of the answer he would get.
His grandmother sighed. “Your mother says Daudi attacked her, but this time she had the baby in her arms. She tried to shield the baby, but during the beating, the child slipped from her hands and into the fire.”
Charles stared blankly at his mother. Would the nightmare never end?
Uncle Nzioka stepped inside the hut. Rhoda looked up at him. “I need to get to the hospital, at least for the sake of the baby,” she pleaded through blood-dried, swollen lips.
Uncle Nzioka helped Charles’s mother to her feet. He then led her, clutching Zachariah, out of the hut.
That night, lying on his sack on the floor, Charles thought about his mother in the hospital. As he listened to his grandmother’s labored breathing, he tried to process the events of the day. Had his mother come home to die? And brought Zachariah with her? What if she died in the hospital and the baby lived? Who would look after him? Would Charles be responsible for the baby? And if his mother did recover, would she leave again? And would she take Charles with her this time? Charles had many more questions than answers. As was usually the case, he knew he would have to wait to see what fate sent his way.
As time passed, Charles begged his grandmother for news of his mother and baby brother. All she told him was that they were still in the hospital. At last his mother returned to his grandmother’s hut with Zachariah. This time Charles immediately recognized her. She looked much better and even gave him a hug. Zachariah’s hands and head were healing too, with the help of the ointment that was rubbed on his wounds every morning and evening.
After his mother’s return to Kathithyamaa, questions continued to plague Charles: What would happen next? Would his mother creep out in the night and return to his monster of a father? And if so, would she take the baby with her? Surely, Charles thought, she would not go back to his father after her latest beating.
As it turned out, Daudi came to Rhoda. One day about a month later, he appeared at the door of Charles’s grandmother’s hut. Charles instantly recognized his father’s short, muscular frame at the door and tried to shrink from his sight. He needn’t have bothered. His father totally ignored him as he stepped inside.
It did not take long for word to spread throughout Kathithyamaa about Daudi’s return. Soon the hut was crowded with uncles. Charles was told to step outside, though he could still hear everything that was going on inside.
“You should be ashamed leaving that boy to fend for himself,” one uncle said.
“We know what you are up to. You cannot come back here to live. We don’t want you,” another said. “And if you don’t take better care of your wife, we will report you to the clan elders.”
Charles found satisfaction in thinking about that possibility. He knew that the clan elders stepped in to hear only serious offenses, but when they did, justice was swift and severe.
