Meager

Afua heaved the massive bag onto his shoulder, balancing it on the side of his neck as he picked his way across the hill of garbage. One of his big toes was peeking out of his dirt-caked sneakers. He scooted quickly down the side of the hill, kicking up dust and smoke as he went. The bag of glass and rubber shards was heavy, but after years of working as a picker at the dump, Afua was used to the weight. When he reached the next hill he climbed it quickly, using his outstretched left hand to balance himself on the way up. At the top, he saw that he was mostly alone, a few other pickers about their own business. Between the other pickers were giant-beaked birds with black and gray feathers that stared at Afua as he dropped his bag and got back to his picking. He felt scrutinized under their gaze, more so than when the thugs watched him.

“Scat!” a man screamed on the other side of the hill, at one of the birds who was pulling at his bag with its gray beak. The creature opened its mouth and squawked at him. The man waved his arms crazily and shook his head back and forth while screeching. When the man hopped closer, the bird gave up, flying high into the air and away, leaving the man's bag on the ground. He ran to the dirty bag and grabbed it, holding it close to his chest as if it were a child.

Afua dragged his bag closer to his side, wanting to keep his precious means of income safe from thieves. The birds weren't the only thieves that lived in the dump. It was scary to Afua, how desperate men and women became when survival wasn't easy to come by.

He was fourteen and had lived in the dump with his eleven-year-old sister for five years. They had made a life for themselves there, meager as it was. They worked every day, picking at the massive heaps of garbage for anything recyclable, which they could sell to the thugs that controlled the trucks. Sometimes the thugs would reward him with sniffing glue, other times they would beat him. His sister, Hakima, lived in constant fear of being raped, but she was used to it, she had told him once. Afua knew that she had been raped a few times in the years since coming here, but it was the price they had to pay to stay alive.

A yelp jumped from his throat, causing the large birds to frighten, a few of them flapping away to find a new napping area. Afua shook his hand, holding his sliced finger to his shirt to stop the light flow of blood brought on by the old, broken syringe. There were scars on his hands; wide, white scars left from the many times he had been cut while digging through the garbage without gloves. His feet had scars too, from before the man had found him the dirty, ripped sneakers. They had been like gold to him, when he had first slipped them on and walked in circles without having to fear slicing his toes open.

The dump was almost 30 acres of medical, industrial and domestic garbage that Afua and Hakima called “home”, in the most tolerable sense of the word. Burning piles of waste gave off acrid smoke that Afua knew he would never get used to. It was always there in plumes and whenever he was near it, his nose would scrunch and he would have a violent coughing fit. The stench had once affected Hakima and him, but they had long ago gotten used to it. The sun was high in the sky, beating down on Afua's shoulders. He wore a too-large shirt covered in stains and ripped jeans that he had rolled up to the knees. Short black curls hid his scalp, and a beard was starting to come in along his chin.

Afua spotted the backside of an old cell phone and rushed to snag it before anyone else saw it. Tossing it into his bag, he stood and made his way towards the other side of the dump where the green food truck would be arriving soon. When he got there, there was already a sizable crowd waiting. Pushing through the older men and women, Afua found his sister. She stood off to one side with her bag plumped by her side. The faded red dress was small on her, the sleeves having needed to be sliced off for her arms to fit through. Her feet were kept safe with a pair of light brown sandals. Her black hair was short as well and her face a thinner build but less gaunt than his. He walked up to her and dropped his bag into her other hand.

“I want you to go to the church again tomorrow,” Afua said to her, his voice thick with their Swahili accent. She squinted up at him, a bittersweet glare blooming on her face.

“You need food too,” she spat, in her heavier Swahili accent.

Afua turned his back towards her, ignoring her words as the green truck lumbered up the garbage littered road. The truck brought the food leftovers from the Nairobi airport. As soon as the truck slowed down, Afua ran to it and climbed up the side of it. He was swarmed by other boys and men in seconds, as the strongest people in the crowd could get the best food if they climbed to the top of the truck. Afua snatched a handful and slid down the side of the truck before jumping to the ground. He rushed back to Hakima to see what he had grabbed.

In his hand was half of an apple, a chunk of moldy cheese and a container of liquified, warm, and reeking yogurt. The siblings eyes went wide at the sight of the yogurt, one of the most coveted food items. Afua handed his sister the apple and cheese, kept the yogurt for himself because he was older, and he was a boy. He pulled the lid off of the container and drank the liquified yogurt as quick as he could, not wanting anyone to swipe it out of his hands. The white liquid dripped down his chin, beads of it getting stuck on the tiny hairs of his beard. It tasted like lemon flavored spoiled milk, how he imagined heaven would taste if it could be put in a glass and drunk. Afua licked at the container until every drop was gone. Hakima ate the browned apple in three bites. She took the cheese and split it in two, handing half back to Afua. He shook his head and pushed it back towards her.

“I'm full,” he lied to her as she looked up at him disappointingly.

She knew he would never admit to being hungry, would never take the cheese. She popped both halves into her mouth and lifted her bag, walking away from the truck still teeming with hungry pickers. Afua watched her go up and over the closest hill towards their hut. Once she was out of sight, he lifted his bag and brought it to the thugs. They ruffled through the bag for several minutes, leaving Afua to wait off to one side. The older thugs were watching him closely, guns resting in their arms, their fingers never far from the trigger. His heart was floating in his throat, his blood drumming in his veins and pounding in his ears. He knew the taste of fear, it left a metallic sensation under his tongue, but he could never admit to himself that he was afraid. He held his head high, with his arms curved around his straightened back.

Afua was a proud boy. He did not like the thought of these thugs seeing him as weak. Once or twice, he had thought about joining one of the gangs in Dandora, either Kamjesh or Mungiki. He knew he would have joined, too, had he not had Hakima to look after. It was the one thing his mother had said to him before she died. You're all she has now. Don't let her down.

After looking through the heavy bag, the thugs offered him one dollar and forty seven cents for his findings and a bottle of glue for the cell phone. He accepted them gratefully, took his now-empty bag and walked away. He felt his heart return to normal, the weight lifted from his chest as he let out a long breath he had been holding.

The sun was dropping lazily in the sky, casting an almost red glow over the hills of the dump. Once Afua had crested three hills, he hesitated, a lot of the pickers having left for the night to their slum homes. He ducked behind the skeleton of an old car, one from thirty or thirty five years ago that was practically buried halfway to its roof in the filthy waste. With his back arched, Afua lifted the bottle of glue to his nose and sniffed until his breath ran out. A second drawn out sniff brought with it a buzz in his head and a quickly passing bout of dizziness. Afua leaned back against the disintegrating car skeleton and took a third shorter sniff before fumbling the container closed.

He wanted to save the glue for later, after Hakima was asleep and wouldn't know. He had seen her sniff glue before, and though she had kept doing it, as most of the kids in the dump did, Afua didn't want her to know that he did it. He wanted to be her role model, which was hard with his constant lying and his wish to join a gang. The danger of the gangs was ominous, but Afua would rather be in one than watch his sister starve because he couldn't get her enough to eat. Him being gone meant she could leave the dump with the pastor. It meant she could make a life for herself, because she would only have her mouth to feed.

Afua hit himself on the head, wanting the dark thoughts to go away. He thought back to what his mother had said to him. What if his staying was letting her down? Did she really need him as much as he thought she did? Afua skidded down the hill towards the black river where their hut was. He could see it in the distance, a tiny, one-room house made from scraps of metal, with a roof barely tall enough for him to stand. A flap of fabric hung over the entrance, cloth resembling a light gray dress, or the corner of an old, singed blanket. The flap parted when he got closer and Hakima walked out to greet him.

When he came close, he noticed that her dress was disheveled, the sleeves hanging low, ripped. From one side of the broken dress fell a breast, sagging against her chest, shining with sweat. Hakima said nothing as Afua walked up to her. Her eyes were staring at him, hardened by the constant threat of rape, and the every-so-often fulfillment of it. They stood apart for some moments, the air between them pregnant with anticipation. Afua placed his hand on her shoulder and for the first time, she did not wince at his touch. He lightly squeezed her vulnerable, chocolate-colored, sweaty flesh before dropping his hand and walking inside the hut.

“I won't go to the church tomorrow,” he heard her say. Afua tossed his bag into the corner where he slept and stalked back outside.

“Yes you will,” he ordered her.

He was careful not to touch her, wanting to keep her fragile. This state of frailty was easy to manipulate. He could use it to convince her to go to the church for the food and school lessons. Nevertheless, his eyes were glued to her chest, watching her breast dry from the mixture of air and smoke that glided over it. The river rushed in the background, a constant hum to their thoughts. Somehow, the setting sun made the night feel warmer than the day, or maybe it was the hot blush in his cheeks from his staring at his sister's breast.

“I won't,” she let him scrutinize her chest before lifting a flap of her dress to cover her breast. When she turned and headed into the hut, she looked back over her shoulder. “But you will.”

Afua followed her into the small room. He sat on his bed of gathered rags and plastic bags and she lay on hers. As the sun set, it cast dusty orange stripes through the walls, reflecting onto Afua and Hakima's faces. Afua glanced at his sister but her back was turned towards him.

“You have to go, Hakima,” he argued, refusing to take his sister's place.

“Why must I live and you die? Can't we take turns? Tomorrow you will go to the church and I will stay and work” she said, dragging her fingers across the white dashes that covered the walls of the miniature home.

“You can't work as good as me,” Afua said stubbornly. He was the older sibling, and the male. He always earned more in a day than she ever could.

“Just cause I'm a girl it doesn't mean I'm helpless,” Hakima spat, her back still turned towards Afua. Anger spiked in him, making his ears grow warm and his hands shake. He was not used to her speaking out against him. She had no right.

“How many times have you been raped?” he asked cruelly. She sat up and hugged herself tightly, her slender form seeming smaller than it was as she curled into a ball.

“How many times have you been beaten?” she whispered.

Afua's eyes widened, giving him a headache in the fast-disappearing sunlight. He stood, towering over Hakima's tiny body. Her words made him cringe inwardly, because he knew they were an attack on his pride. When he cuffed Hakima on the side of her ear, the noise resounded in the small room, held in by the makeshift metal walls. Hakima made no noise as the momentum from his hand pushed her onto her side. Afua had expected a shriek, or at least a cry, to make him feel like he had enacted some kind of justice for what she had said. He took a step backwards, an anchor suddenly pulling his heart into the ground and he could not stand. He cared for his sister more than his own life, and still his damaged pride had struck out at her.

Afua fell back onto his bed of rags and pulled his knees pulled to his chin, rocking back and forth. The sun blinked out and he was cast in an eerie shade of bluish-gray from the cloudy night sky. Between the cracks in the metal scraps shone dull moonlight. The light accentuated Hakima's form, curled into the fetal position on her bed. He peeked at her for a moment and looked away quickly, unable to believe what he had done. All he wanted was for her to be safe, and he realized then, with the acrid smoke blowing through the hut, that she would never be safe with him. She would not go to the church, and his pride would end up holding her back. He wanted more for her than a life of filth and rape.

Afua sat like that until her breathing became deep sighs. He whispered her name and when no reply came, he was sure that she had fallen fast asleep. Jumping up quietly from his bed, he peeled the rags away from the ground, revealing a hole to one side with a wad of money and two bottles of glue hidden in it. He pulled the goods from the stash. The glue he left beside Hakima's bed, as well as half of the money. The other half he took with him. The knife he had inherited from his father was on his belt, as it always was. Afua left the hut and decided that Mungiki was the gang he would join. He refused to look back, instead concentrating on the distant sounds of the city of Nairobi and the loud voices of the thugs that drifted with the wind across the garbage heaps.