Reasons to Be Happy

By this point, I was so drained I could hardly stand. I pictured myself falling to sleep on one of the mats on the floor, but Modesta led me around to the back of the house and opened a door into a room with one bed.

She’d prepared a private room for me. That was an honor. “Oh, Modesta. I-I don’t mind sleeping with everyone else.”

She frowned. “This room is not satisfactory?”

“Oh yes! It is. It’s wonderful!” I tripped all over myself not to offend her. “Thank you.”

She nodded. “Good night,” she said, and slipped away into the darkness.

This private room had an outside entrance. I fumbled in my duffel bag for my flashlight. I shone it around the room’s concrete walls. No door connected the room to the rest of the house. I stood in the open doorway and turned my light toward the trees. I had to pee. There’s no way I could hold it until morning. Just my luck, the orphan’s house had to be on the outskirts of town, with the toilet even deeper into the rain forest.

I’d vowed to do the very next thing that scared me. But you already did, a whiny little voice protested in my head.

I inched down the dark path, heart in my throat. The kids do this, I told myself. They come out here and do this all the time. It can’t be that dangerous.

A shriek from the trees above whipped me around and my legs raced me back to the start of the path before I was even aware of moving. What was that? A bird? Some kind of panther? Did I even want to know? Forget it! Just forget it. I should pee right here, off the path. Who would even know? But when I shone my light at the side of the trail, assessing whether this was a safe place to crouch, I saw, climbing up a tree trunk, a spider as big as my hand.

I fled back to my room and slid the wooden latch into place, locking my door.

I inspected the room with my flashlight. There were three windows—no screens of course—and one small bed on a wooden platform. That was it.

Above the windows were thick cloths rolled up and tied that you could release to keep the bugs out. If I closed the drapes, the room would be sweltering. The mosquitoes didn’t seem too bad, plus I was taking malaria pills…but…but…I thought of that monstrous spider.

I’d never be able to sleep as long as I thought that CD-sized spider could crawl into my room!

I released the strings to unfurl the makeshift drapes.

Within seconds, the room became a sauna.

I eyed the bed’s legs. In the inch or two visible before the oilcloth drape covered them, I saw the barbed wire wrapped around the legs—to keep snakes from climbing into bed with me.

I stripped down and used baby wipes and a bottle of water to mop most of the sweat, smoke, and red dust from my skin. I stuffed the dirty baby wipes into a plastic grocery bag. (I’d learned not to throw anything away. You never knew when it could be useful.) A clean T-shirt and shorts made me feel a little better.

But I still had to pee.

Bad.

I felt so far from home, so afraid, so alone. I wanted my mother.

I wanted my father. I wanted him to be healthy and normal, so he could be my dad again and I wouldn’t be standing here half a world away too exhausted to stand but about to pee my pants.

What if I just peed right outside my door? No, no, no, if Modesta or anyone saw me it would be unforgivably rude.

Hey…I eyed the plastic bag already full of baby wipes. Why not? Wouldn’t the wipes absorb it? Desperate times called for desperate measures. I’d done worse in my life after all.

It worked pretty well, actually, and it was one of those blessed, wonderful I’ve-held-it-too-long pees that felt so amazingly good I wanted to put it on my reasons to be happy list! Ahh…

I tied the bag, knotting it tight. I’d be sure to get it to the trash in the morning.

Feeling giddy with relief, I pulled back the mosquito netting on the bed. The weariness clung deep down in my bones. Sleep was going to be sweet indeed.

The bed was on the small side. To remain under the mosquito net, I couldn’t extend my legs. Oh well. I laid on my back, knees bent, arms crossed over my chest, clutching my flashlight. I turned the flashlight off. I was so tired, I could have slept in a back bend if I had to.

I closed my eyes.

Sweat trickled through my hair.

The air seemed to simmer. And it was suddenly so noisy.

An entire universe of insects conducted a symphony outside, chirping, whirring, droning.

The whole forest come alive with drips, creaks, cracks, and rattles.

Another of those piercing shrieks.

I am never going to sleep.

But, apparently, I did.

I know I slept because a hideous heart-in-your-mouth noise yanked me awake.

A goat.

A goat that sounded like he had a microphone and was in my room! I swear. I turned on my flashlight and shone it around the room.

He baaed again.

Oh.

My.

God.

He was so loud. He must be right outside one of my windows!

I turned off my flashlight and pretzled my sweaty self back into my contorted position.

The goat continued yelling. Another goat, somewhere else in the village, began to answer.

They had quite the heated, insistent conversation. I checked the room again with a flashlight because I swore the one goat sounded like he was there, right next to me. If the floor hadn’t been dirt I would’ve bet a million dollars that he was directly under the house.

The goats continued their debate for forty minutes. I timed them. Somehow, miraculously, I got used to them, or was completely drained enough to drift off to damp, stinky sleep…

• • •

I woke with a shriek when the bed moved beneath me. I dropped my flashlight and then scrambled in panic, hands fumbling over the sheets to find it, hoping not to land on anything unexpected. The bed moved again—creaking and moving side to side—as something bumped it from underneath. Something was in here! Something was in the room with me! I found the flashlight and stood on the bed, draped in netting, turning the light on in time to see a black-and-white goat crawl on his knees out from under the oilcloth drape.

The goat was in the room with me. There’d been a goat under my bed!

He clicked to the door on his cloven hooves, then bleated again.

The goat butted the door with his curled horns as if to make the point, clear as any house-trained dog, that he wanted out, thank you very much.

I collapsed cross-legged on the bed, one hand on my heart.

He kept yelling. How could anyone else in the house sleep? Why didn’t Modesta come running at the sound of him banging his head on the door?

Finally, exasperated, not knowing what else to do, I opened the door and let the goat out. He trotted away into the rainy darkness.

I locked the door and checked under the bed for any other surprises (there were none). As soon as I’d crawled back into bed, another one of those blood-curdling screams came from the jungle. Oh no! Great. Just great. Had I just allowed one of the orphans’ goats to be slaughtered by wild animals? Modesta would really love me now.

I obsessed over that little goat, certain I’d find its mutilated body in the dawn’s early light.

Somehow, from utter exhaustion, I dissolved into sleep again. My dreams were full of bloody goat heads.

• • •

BANG!

I was on my feet, wrapped in mosquito netting, flashlight on.

BANG!

Over my head. The ceiling was falling in! I pictured some huge creature tearing the roof off, trying to kill me.

BANG, BANG, BANG! Then several lesser taps, then a clatter.

Then a chatter. A chi-chi-chi, reminding me of a squirrel.

The monkeys.

The monkeys were on the roof.

I checked my watch. It was 4 a.m.

Feeling beat up, I crumpled yet again back on the bed (the netting such a giant mess there was no hope of me fixing it by myself), but the monkeys were just warming up. There may as well have been a troupe of tap dancers doing a recital above my head.

At 5 a.m., I gave up. I wiped my drenched self down again (didn’t have to pee now, having sweated all liquid out of my body during the night) and dressed.

When I stepped outside, the fresh air felt like receiving a gift.

To my surprise, several people were already up and going about their business. Many women had cook fires going in their yards.

I found Aunt Izzy with Modesta and another girl out front, already tending to something cooking in a pot. Several red chickens and three goats wandered near them. I thought I identified my buddy—the one with black and white spots.

Aunt Izzy hugged me. “You weren’t lonesome, were you?” she asked. “All alone?”

I burst out laughing, which made Modesta cock her close-cropped head at me. “Oh, I wasn’t alone,” I said. I gestured to the goats. “I hope it’s all right that I let the goat out last night.”

Modesta nodded, no apology, no explanation. Just a nod that said, Of course. What a silly question.

I couldn’t stop giggling. My terror from last night seemed absurd now. I’d been petrified. But I’d done it. I’d done something scary, and I’d survived.

“Did you sleep well?” Modesta asked.

I thought again of my private room, of the other rooms lined with mattresses and beds, of the sacrifice and effort to give me such a gracious gift. “Very well,” I lied. “Thank you so much.”

She beamed at me, her somber face transformed.

“I am glad,” she said. “You shall stay with us again.”

There was nothing to say but “thank you.”

We were distracted by Rafael and another boy emerging from my room with my tied-shut trash bag. “We will take away your trash for you, sister,” Rafael announced, already beginning to untie the top of the bag. I remembered the children rooting through our trash the day before.

“No, no, that’s all right!” I snatched the bag from him, my face red.

I guess I couldn’t get too cocky about my newfound bravery. I was still too scared for them to discover my pee-soaked baby wipes.





A week later, I stood at the village pump with a fuming Modesta. She waited for a late child to arrive for a bath (she’d already supervised the scrubbing of three others). I looked at Modesta’s blazing eyes and felt bad for adorable Englebert, the guilty party.

She paced, barefooted, on the packed earth.

I flipped through the photos I’d taken on my digital camera. I’d also filmed a couple movies, and I played one back of Modesta leading the smaller children in a song with lots of clapping.

She shook her head when she heard her own voice. “Why would anyone care what I have to say?” I knew she was talking about Aunty Izzy’s documentary, not my little film.

“Lots of people should,” I said. “You’re a strong, tough survivor.”

“What else is there to do but survive?” she asked, her question genuine. She slapped a towel over her shoulder and scowled down the street.

Ekuba and Beauty strolled up to the pump to fill buckets with water. “Good morning, sister,” we all said to each other.

The day before, Beauty had taught me how to feed mangos to the monkeys, much to the delight of the younger orphans. Beauty and Ekuba also brushed my hair and braided it with beads and tiny shells. I’m sure it looked ridiculous—Modesta had laughed out loud when she’d seen it.

When the girls carried their water away, Modesta resumed her pacing. “I will have to go get that boy myself. He never minds!”

“Give him five more minutes,” I said. “It’s a nice morning. Where else do we have to be?”

Modesta cocked her head at me, pretending to be annoyed, but she couldn’t help lifting her face to the sun and smiling.

I continued flipping through my photos. I had several I was proud of, several that Aunt Izzy had asked permission to use. She’d even had me record with a real film camera a few times.

I came across my favorite candid picture of Modesta. She crouched, bare feet flat on the ground, knees up by her ears in her flexible Gumby-like way. Her left elbow was on her left knee but her hand rose to her face, her cheek leaning into her open palm.

Her skin, short burgundy hair, and muted purple dress blended into the shadowy dusk behind her, so her huge, haunting eyes leapt out of the photo, the brightest visual in the shot.

I thought she was stunning in this picture, so thin, angular, and flexible. Her mind clearly elsewhere, she looked unveiled, her face so open.

“I love this picture of you,” I said. “I’m going to print this one and keep it. I’ll send you one.”

She came close to me to look. When she saw it, she wrinkled her nose.

“Ach,” she said, holding up a hand as if to shield her view. “That is a horrible picture!”

“What? You’re kidding, right? You look like a supermodel!”

She made a face like she would spit.

“Modesta, are you serious? What’s wrong with this picture? You look gorgeous.”

She barked a harsh laugh. “I am too scrawny, too weak. My legs and arms look like that pile of sticks there.” She pointed to a bundle of kindling.

“Modesta, you’re lean, not weak. You look fit and strong.”

She eyed me, lips pursed. “No, fit and strong is like you.” She gestured to my legs. “I want legs like yours.”

It was my turn to wrinkle my nose. “I’m fat, Modesta. You don’t want my fat butt.”

She whooped with laughter, then her smile vanished and her cold, stern look returned. “Fat? Ha! You can’t call yourself fat,” she sounded almost scolding, as if I’d been bragging. “Now Beauty, she is fat. You are strong, though. Your…butt looks like you can run fast.”

I nodded. “I am fast.”

She shook her head, eyes twinkling as if amused. “Fat,” she repeated. She snorted.

“Beauty is beautiful,” I said, hating how corny it sounded but wanting to defend her.

Modesta nodded.

“But you just said she was fat.”

Modesta’s brow furrowed. “You make no sense, Hah-nah. She is beautiful because she is not a stick person like me.”

Oh. So me saying I was fat out loud like that had sounded like I was being a diva, like I’d said “I’m gorgeous” or something.

I laughed.

“What is so funny now, crazy girl?” She put her hands on her hips and stared me down as if I were one of the young orphans.

“What’s funny is I have no idea what is beautiful here.”

She tilted her head.

“I mean it.” I tried to think of how to explain. “At home, at least where I live, there’s a ‘look’ everybody wants. I don’t fit the look, so I always feel like I’m ugly.”

At this, Modesta looked confused.

“But here,” I said, “I don’t know how anyone is ‘supposed’ to look. I don’t know who’s popular. I don’t know anything except who is friendly and who’s not.”

I wished I could explain to Modesta that I was friends with her because I wanted to be, even though I had no way of knowing if she was an “acceptable” person to be friends with. Same with Beauty and Ekuba. I talked to them and hung out with them, but it had never occurred to me to take my cue from Modesta about them. Although I spent time with all of them, the three girls never hung out together that I saw. They were friendly to each other, but clearly not close friends. I, however, was friends with all three.

I didn’t know who in the village was rich or poor, considered popular or undesirable, or if their clothes were fashionable or laughable. I didn’t know what anyone’s parents did. I couldn’t even tell who was pretty or not. How strange that such wild, unfamiliar territory made it easier to find myself.

Slowly, I was rebuilding myself—as meticulously as one of my miniature cities.

“So,” Modesta said as she looked down, tracing a circle in the red dirt with her toe, “in America, I would be beautiful?”

“Yes,” I said. “But you’re beautiful here too.”

She waved her hand at me, dismissing this idea.

Then along came Englebert, the very boy she’d been waiting for.

“You are the laziest boy!” she said, smacking him on the side of his head, but only playfully. They both laughed.

“If I had to be bathed,” Englebert protested, “I thought I should get dirty first.”

He stripped down right there at the pump, as had the other three before him, two girls and one boy. Being nude was no big deal here. Everyone, even adults, could be seen naked, especially here at the pump or bathing on their porches. People just sudsed up with no screens or privacy. It had taken me a while to get used to that. No one, but me, looked twice at a naked person. It was actually kind of cool to see all the different kinds of bodies.

I was still too much of a novelty, with my white, white flesh, to bathe at the pump. I sometimes felt like the Pied Piper, the way the little ones followed me to touch my hair and skin.

When I took a bath, I carried a big bucket of water behind the outhouse—which I had even started visiting after dark—and washed myself there, naked except for my flip-flops. I ignored the giggles I heard from the woods. I knew the children laughed only at my freakish, ghostly skin, not my shape, or even at seeing my private parts. “I hear you,” I’d call, shampooing my hair. More giggles, then the rustling of leaves as they ran away.

I hadn’t binged or purged in over two weeks, mostly because it was too difficult there.

I felt good. I had energy. I felt rested. Awake. Curious.

Modesta scrubbed Englebert with a zeal that looked like it hurt. He took it like a trouper, his face stoic but his eyes bright.

At the end of the alley, Aunt Izzy appeared, talking to one of the village elders. She was simply talking, not filming, and the two stood at the intersection of roads in a deep conversation.

When Englebert was rinsed off and dried, he put his clothes back on and scampered away. Once he’d left, Modesta folded her towels and said, not making eye contact, “In America, are you…beautiful?”

All my good feelings ran away with the rivulets of water making pink puddles in the dust.

“Nope.” I tried to make my voice light and casual. “In America, they like girls bone thin, like, you know, like Dimple, the Indian woman? The one who does sound for my aunt?” I gestured down the alley where Aunt Izzy stood talking to the elder.

“Huh,” Modesta said, mulling this. She watched Izzy a moment. “Your legs and butt,” she said with a sly grin, “belong to all the women of your family. Your aunt, she has them too.”

“No, she doesn’t!” I said. “Aunt Izzy is so thin and fit. Her legs are—”

I broke off and stared. She did. She was thin and fit, and she had big, well-muscled thighs and plenty of booty. How had I never noticed this before? I’d always pictured her body as perfect. I shook my head, angry at myself. Her body was perfect.

“The women of your family pass it down to you,” Modesta said. “Did your mother have such strong legs too?”

The hot, dusty landscape wavered. My mother. My mother was gone. I closed my eyes, trying to picture my mother. “I-I-you know what? I think I have a picture I can show you!”

I scrolled through my photos. I’d never deleted my favorite photo of her from the camera’s memory card, even though I’d downloaded it to my computer over a year ago.

When I found it, I stared at it a moment before I showed it to Modesta. My mother, leaving for an awards ceremony, walking to the limo. She wore a violet backless gown. She held my father’s hand and they walked away from the camera, but I’d called to them and they’d looked over their shoulders at me. The photo offered a perfect view of my mother’s behind.

Her ample, curvy behind.

Modesta leaned next to me to see it. “It is so,” she said.

I had my mother’s butt. No matter what I did, I couldn’t change this. Why would I want to?

“You look so much like her!” Modesta said.

I bit my tongue before I could say I do not. “Really?” I said instead.

“Oh yes. If you had not told me, I would know at once she was your mother.”

Maybe I hadn’t been switched at birth?

“Your father is a handsome man. You favor him as well.” Modesta kept looking from the photo to my face, nodding as if to affirm what she said.

I wanted to hug and kiss her!

The photo blurred before me. God, how I missed my mom. But how much I missed my dad slammed into me too. I pictured him in rehab. How was he doing? Did he think of me?

I felt like an idiot when I realized Modesta must miss her parents too. How self-absorbed I was! “Do you-do you have a picture of your parents?” I asked.

She blinked but otherwise showed no emotion. “Only here.” She tapped her head.

“What did they look like?”

She smiled. “Tall and thin,” she said, gesturing to herself. “My father, he was strong before…” She stopped a moment, gazing into the distance. “A big, strong man. He used to carry me on his shoulders. My mama was thin. Even when she was growing a baby, she was thin. Stick legs, like me. But she was admired for her eyes and her singing voice.”

“I’m so sorry they’re gone,” I whispered.

She looked at me, almost irritated or angry, it seemed, then she sighed.

The monkeys rattled the leaves. After a pause, she said, “I will go to school, you know. To university. In Accra perhaps. I will be a doctor. I will stop this plague that stole my parents.”

She wore that grim, determined expression again. I knew she would do this, in spite of all the difficulties and obstacles. I saw it in her face and posture that she would find a way no matter what. I saw this was her driving force, her obsession, just as mine had been my DRH.

It struck me how much effort, how much time, planning, and expense I’d invested into something so stupid and absurd.

Modesta closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun again. “How do they like the boys?”

I frowned. “What?”

“You said in America, they like the girls skinny. How do they like the boys?” She was dead serious, interested.

“Um…” I thought of movie stars. I thought of my dad. And, I couldn’t help it, I thought of Kevin. In spite of everything, Kevin was lovely to look at, the big jerk. “Not so skinny, more muscled. Blond is good. Blond and tan.”

She tilted her elegant head. “I think you are thinking of a certain boy.”

I shrugged but felt a blush bloom in my cheeks.

That smile started on Modesta’s face, the one that totally transformed her face. She seemed to have two expressions: stone-faced or beaming. “Yes, I think I am right. What is the boy’s name?”

“Kevin,” I admitted.

“Ah ha!” She sounded as if she’d beat me at some game. “Tell me about Kevin.”

I thought a minute. “He’s really nice to look at, but…Kevin’s kind of a jerk. He’s mean. He was rude to me. He wanted…you know, he was all creepy and grabby with my body.”

“You like this boy?” She added a new expression to her repertoire: horror.

“No. I mean…well, I did. At least I thought I did. I mean—I felt lucky that he liked me.”

“Why?”

What was it about the African sunlight that made it so easy to tell the truth?

“He liked me,” I said. “He was beautiful and popular, and I’m…not.”

She studied me a moment. “Huh,” she finally said.

I’d been mean too, all because Kevin liked me.

Modesta gathered up her folded towels and said, “My mother told me, ‘Beauty will take you there, but character will bring you back.’”

I froze. “My-my mom used to say something like that. She said, ‘Pretty is as pretty does.’”

Modesta thought a moment then nodded. “Exactly.”

I took half of the towels from her arms and walked the dusty alley toward the house.

“Is there no boy that you truly like?” Modesta asked. “Someone who does pretty?”

Jasper flooded into my mind.

“Ah, I see from your face that you do. Why did you not tell me about this boy first?”

I smiled. “He’s not popular but he’s very kind. He’s been very nice to me.”

“Do you like him?”

I nodded.

“Why?”

Why? I thought about that. “He gets this wonderful look on his face when he’s playing the piano. Like he’s in another world. He’s very smart…and curious. He’s nice to everyone. He’s—he’s brave. And different. Unique. He doesn’t care what anyone else thinks of him; he does what he wants to do. He has this yellow wedge in his eye that I can’t stop looking at when I’m around him. And this very slow smile. And his hair—”

I stopped, realizing Modesta had disappeared from my side. I turned back to see her standing still in the road. Two brown goats trotted past us.

“You do not like this person, Hah-nah. You love this person!”

I almost dropped the towels.

She caught up to me and peered into my face. “You do. Does he know this?”

I shook my head.

“You waste your time on this Bad Kevin when this beautiful boy is there?”

I shrugged. “I’m a chicken, Modesta.”

She pushed me in the shoulder. “You must be brave!”

“I-I can’t. I—he knows this thing about me. This ugly awful secret.”

Modesta stepped away from me, then eyed me up and down. “What secret?”

“It’s too…It’s gross.”

She narrowed her eyes at me then shook herself. “It is not so. Whatever this secret is, your true character cannot be hidden.”

I wasn’t so sure. My true character had been stuffed in a drawer so long with my secret stash of food that I wasn’t sure how to bring it back—at least, I didn’t know how to bring it back at home, and I couldn’t live here in Ghana forever.

“You must tell him.”

I joked, to make it easier. “Well, I can’t, can I? He’s not here.”

“Write it to him.”

“I’ll be home before a letter from here reaches him.”

She made the same exasperated clucking sound she’d made over Englebert. “Email him!”

I blinked. Modesta knew about email? I looked at the buildings surrounding us, buildings with no plumbing and no electricity.

She shuffled her bundle of towels and soap under one arm and grabbed my hand with the other. “We have email at the school! Come!”