Laugh with the Moon

Laugh with the Moon Read Free Page B

Book: Laugh with the Moon Read Free
Author: Shana Burg
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disciplined about the silent treatment. I’ve got to make Dad regret every second we’re here.

S unlight crashes through the window screen onto my head. I’m alarmed to see where I am. I lug myself out of bed, run to the bathroom, then pass Dad reading on the living room couch.
    “It’s already two o’clock, Clare,” he says. “Why don’t you grab something to eat, and then what do you say we get going to Mkumba?”
    As if I’m going to answer him! I march straight to the kitchen, where I tear into a box of wafer cookies. They make a great breakfast.
    “Cut it out, already,” Dad says, now standing in the kitchen doorway. “I thought you said you aren’t a little kid anymore.”
    I shrug. I wish Marcella was here so I could ask her what to do.
    Dad sits down next to me at the kitchen table.Suddenly, I’m feeling claustrophobic. He turns over the medical report in his hand and sketches a map of the village where he used to live when he was in the U.S. Peace Corps. “Doubt much has changed,” he says as he draws huts and labels them. “Families in the villages tend to stay put.” He draws arrows between the huts to indicate who’s related to who.
    Dad shows me where his friend Stallard lived. “Stallard and I were like brothers back in the day,” he tells me. “We exchanged letters for years before we fell out of touch. He used to always ask when I was going to bring you and your mother to meet him. You know, that’s why I wrote in September … to tell him the news,” he says. Dad shakes his head, like if he tries hard enough, he can toss the memory of Mom right out of it. I guess it works, because a second later, he goes back to his masterpiece with a little smile on his face and continues to describe his old pals. By the time Dad finishes drawing, there are about a hundred arrows shooting all over the place, and I can barely keep everyone straight.
    After I eat half the box of cookies, I go into the bathroom. Of course, it’s hard to see anything in the six-by-six-inch mirror hanging on the wall. Still, I’m almost confident that I’ve managed to scrunch curls from the nest on my head. I put on my cranberry dress with navy batik figures. It looks very ethnic. It’s my best hope of fitting in here.
    Next, I open the guidebook that I read on the airplane and rip out the page my father will need about manners, because manners aren’t his strong suit. In the past eight months, it has been my misfortune to discover that my fathernot only leaves shaving stubble in the sink, but he also leaves the toilet seat up and occasionally unflushed. These are the grisly things a girl is forced to learn when her mother isn’t around anymore to cover up.
    Dad’s waiting for me in the Land Rover that’s parked behind the house. Once I get in, he puts the stick shift in reverse, and we back onto the narrow jungle path. Soon we’re driving through the center of town. Unlike last night, today we can actually see what’s going on here, and it isn’t much. A lady with firewood on her head walks past three or four storefronts. The names of the businesses are painted right onto the white concrete buildings. There’s THE SLOW BUT SURE SHOP and THE AFRICAN DOCTOR . Above the English words are some words in Chichewa, the other national language in Malawi. The trading center lasts only a minute; then we pass through the jungle again and the shock of where I’m trapped truly sets in.
    When a cluster of mud huts with dried-grass roofs appears, Dad pulls off the dirt road. “Here we go!” he says. “Mkumba village.” His excitement bounces all over the Land Rover. “So remember, Stallard is the nephew of the chief. I lived in a hut next to his family’s.”
    The afternoon sun is high in the sky, and the shadow of an enormous tree at the edge of the field cuts a sharp line against the ground. I know that if Mom were here, she would make sure I was wearing sunscreen and sunglasses.
    I step out of the Land Rover,

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