Laugh with the Moon Read Free

man. It lumbers upright on two feet across the dirt road. And it isn’t just any monkey. It’s a thirsty monkey. It’s carrying a can of Coke—regular, not diet.

T he monkey stops right in front of us, tilts back its head, and guzzles. Then it crunches the can in its fist, chucks it on the ground, and disappears into the jungle on the other side of the road.
    “Ha!” Dad says. “What a world this would be if we could distribute medicine like they deliver cola!” Then he laughs. It’s one of those laughs that goes on and on forever, like a jumbo hot dog from Fenway Park. I don’t know why hearing my father laugh makes me furious, but it does.
    Mr. Mbalazo moves the stick shift into gear again. “This is
chiyendayekha
,” he says. “Big monkey.”
    I grab my phone to text Marcella about this bizarre place, then remember the thing is useless. Instead, I capture a rough image of the gorilla-monkey on my sketchpad, and when I’m done, I glance at my father. His eyes are closed. I’m afraid he might snore. Like most doctors,my father hardly sleeps, but when he does, watch out. For now, though, he’s breathing like a baby. I press my finger into his arm. What would Dad think of my little experiment? What would he think of me trying to touch the old him, to see if the part of him that used to care about me still exists? Before I can tell anything for sure, Dad shifts in his seat, so I yank my finger away.
    As predicted, a few minutes later, the rumbling begins. When Mr. Mbalazo hears my dad snore like a drunken sailor, he laughs a rich, hearty laugh. Then he says, “Soon we enter the trading center near to your home. Tomorrow you may visit there.”
    I shove my father hard, back and forth, back and forth, until he burbles, shakes his head, and wipes his eyes.
    I look out the window. It’s completely dark. I can’t see a thing.
    Mr. Mbalazo turns off the main road onto a narrow path. I wonder how he knows where to go. There aren’t any street signs with white reflective letters glittering in the night. I don’t even see any trees. But I do hear sticks and leaves scraping the windows.
    Mr. Mbalazo pulls into a driveway, takes out the key, and pops the trunk. “Here you are!” he says. Dad gets out to help him carry our luggage and supplies inside. I stay stuck to the seat like a stamp. I grind my teeth into my dented heart pendant while the sounds of the African night creep through the open car door.

    Once Dad and Mr. Mbalazo come back to the car, I get out and stretch and try to lose the feeling that I’m stuck in anightmare. “Wishing you a season of good fortune,” Mr. Mbalazo tells us before getting into the driver’s seat. As he crunches backward over the gravel driveway, Dad and I wave into the glare of headlights. And when it’s completely dark and creepy again, I follow Dad into the house, which is the size of half a Pop-Tart.
    There’s nothing inside but two tiny bedrooms, a bathroom, a closet-sized living room, and a kitchen with a small round table. There are no pictures on the white walls, and the overhead lights are the fluorescent kind designed by some kook for places like hospitals and schools. Worst of all, the bedrooms have ugly canopies that are the color of dead fish. And aside from the twin beds with mattresses as thin as bitten fingernails, there’s nothing in either bedroom except a plain wooden dresser with three drawers and a window with a screen but no glass.
    Dad moves my luggage into the room closest to the bathroom. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
    Before I can stop it—before I remember that a world record is at stake—a scream wells up inside me and blows right out of my mouth. “What’s wrong is that you pulled me away from my entire life right in the middle of my formative years!”
    Marcella told me that when a girl turns into a teenager—which I happened to do this past summer—she enters the most important years of her entire life. Now I pass the information on to