Free Golden Boy by Tara Sullivan Page A

a whisper. She is rocking slowly where she sits. “What do we do?”
    I am beginning to think that we will have an entire conversation made up of questions that don’t get answered, but, surprisingly, Auntie answers this one.
    â€œYou should go to Dar es Salaam.”
    My family’s faces are almost funny in their disbelief. Chui’s mouth has dropped open, and he looks like a fish. I close my own mouth.
    She must be joking. Dar es Salaam is hundreds of kilometers away from here, halfway across the country, on the ocean. It’s twice as far as the journey we just took, days and days of travel. There’s no way we can go there. We don’t know anyone there. Who would we stay with? How would we live?
    Auntie continues on, as if it wasn’t like talking about going to the moon.
    â€œNowhere in the Lake District is safe, and you cannot farm without a man to help you. Yes, Dar es Salaam is the only place for you to go. It’s an enormous city, filled with people of every kind. You can get jobs there in cleaning or something. There have been no albino killings there. They even have albino members of parliament. One is a lady albino MP, at that.”
    â€œKillings,” Mothers whispers, as if she didn’t hear anything else Auntie said.
    â€œHmph,” says Auntie. She clatters over to the stove to boil more water for tea. The others must have been able to finish their cups. Mine sits, cold and still, at my feet. I can see small hairs and dust have settled on it, pinching the surface like water bugs’ feet. I want to vomit. Auntie bustles into the room again with the tea.
    â€œSo,” she says, “you must leave as soon as possible, but you can’t leave until you have more money than you do now.” She runs her eyes over us again. “You’ll need train fare and enough to get started in the city. At least two hundred and fifty or three hundred thousand shillings.” She pauses, considering. “More would be better.”
    It’s a number so high that it’s lodged in the cracks between the stars. Mother starts to cry again. “We will never be that rich,” she sobs.
    â€œWell,” says Auntie, “you’ll have to try to get that rich as fast as you can. You must work hard at whatever jobs I can find you until you have the money you need.” Then she turns and levels a finger straight at me.
    â€œAll except you,” she says. “You will hide.”

7.
    I crouch behind the tall sacks of corn in the pantry, listening to the voices in the next room rise and fall. Auntie and the older cousins have arranged the sacks so that it looks as if they’re thrown in a pile in the corner, but really there’s a narrow space underneath. I can crawl in near the wall and pull a light sack of millet over the opening and then I’m hidden from view.
    The first time I went into this space I was afraid.
    â€œWhat if he dies in there?” asked Kito, Auntie’s youngest son.
    â€œHe won’t,” replied Chui, with a confidence I only wished I shared. It was cramped under the sacks; I had to lie on my belly with my arms curled under my head.
    â€œWhat if he can’t breathe?” asked Kito.
    â€œHe can breathe,” said Chui. “You can breathe, can’t you, Habo?”
    â€œI can breathe, and I can hear you, too, Chui,” I muttered through tight teeth. “There’s no need to shout.”
    â€œHow was I supposed to know that? I can’t see you.”
    â€œWell, that’s the point, isn’t it?” snapped Asu from the doorway. She had initially refused to be a part of the construction of my corn cave, as the younger cousins were calling it, but all the talk of me suffocating had brought her into the room after all. Through a tiny crack I saw Asu surveying my hiding spot, standing with her arms crossed so tightly that her
khanga
pinched in at the elbows.
    It was hot, and I could