Crucial Time

[QUESTION, IUNIVERSE: HOW DO I GET THE ITALICS BACK INTO CERTAIN FOREIGN WORDS IN THE FOLLOWING?] Chapter 9 Harare, Zimbabwe August 1998 Heavy thuds against their locked door splintered the central panel. Later Tapiwa couldn’t be sure whether Chipo had kicked him in warning before she jumped out of their bed, or whether this first blow to his body had come from the masked intruders. By the moonlight from the west window, he could see two amorphous forms in oversize uniforms, stamping in their knee-high steel-tipped boots. He was jerked to the floor. He sensed Chipo and Farai cowering beneath the bed out of sight of the intruders. Blows crunched Tapiwa’s skull, bashed his groins and the soles of his feet. The only sounds were the thuds of the clubs and, though he tried to keep silent, his own screams and groans. He could smell his fear, and the Chibuku breath of his attackers. He felt the shameful wetness burn between his legs. If only he could control his moans, they might leave him for dead. His lips clamped shut, Tapiwa summoned all his remaining strength and health and implored the god of his childhood, in whom he had thought he no longer believed.“Mwari, help me!” He clamped his upper teeth over his lower lip, willing his body to lie stiff and motionless. The intruders left with the same abruptness as they had come. At the broken door, they paused a moment and in unison intoned: “Mhondoro.” Silence. Not even the sounds of their feet descending the stairs. Chipo was the first to move. She dragged Farai from beneath the bed into her arms. “Nothing happened, son. Your father is all right.” aying him back on his pallet, she told him, “Close your eyes and go back to sleep, Farai.” Dutiful even at this moment, the boy tried to close his wide-open eyes. He knew he would be beaten if he disobeyed; that was the way things were. Trembling all over, he turned his back to them. Now he could allow his eyes to open without his mother seeing. He listened. It was scary to hear his father sobbing. And there was something different about his mother. He heard the gentleness.“Here? Does it hurt here?” She was exploring his father’s body, toe to head. Tapiwa wasn’t answering her, wasn’t making any sound at all now. “Don’t try to move, husband. I will fetch what is needed.” Farai heard her quick step across the room, heard the sound of water hitting the metal pan, and the pan being set gently on the stove. Moments later she returned to Tapiwa, still silent as a stone. Farai heard the sounds of water wrung from cloth and dripping back into water; he felt his mother’s gentle rubbing, chafing, probing as if she were tending him, not his father. She was muttering under her breath: “Midzimu, help us!” He could hear his father’s breathing too, not regular, but yes! he was breathing. Farai sensed that his mother wouldn’t notice if he rolled over again. He did so, eyes closed, then opened them just a slit. All his life he would remember what he saw. His father appeared to be asleep. He saw his mother’s tender strokes, saw her laying her wet cheek against his father’s, and kissing him. “You will be all right, my husband,” she crooned, just as his ambuya had crooned to him that morning. “I will help you be strong, and we will leave this place and never come back, and we will be together, and we will be happy.” Prologue Pasadena, California Wednesday January 20, 1999 Careening toward the brightly lit pizza stand, the bicyclist scattered the line of waiting parents and children and smashed into the generator. Shards of glass exploded and tinkled in the sudden dark as he jammed on his brakes. He hurtled over the gravel into Tapiwa Moyo, who was shielding his four-year-old son, Farai. The impact with concrete killed the young father instantly but at first, in the darkness, no one knew this. Sue Bowles, a parent from the nearby Pasadena Child Development Center, inhaled the smells of oregano and garlic along with the screams and cries filling her senses. She groped for the boy but encountered a sickening void. Farai Moyo was gone. Chapter 1 Pasadena Child Development Center Tuesday January 12, 1999 “Something was different about the way the gate opened in the dark, Hannah, but I couldn’t see clearly enough to tell what it was? I think it was something about the sound of the latch? I noticed it, but didn’t pay attention, know what I mean? I was planning how I’d use the time before six thirty to set up the room for the kids.” Angie’s voice rose at the end of each sentence. It was six in the morning in the four-year-olds’ building at the Pasadena Child Development Center, and the Center’s director, Hannah Cooper, had arrived early for some quiet work time, but Angie called her and she’d come right over. Sitting on a child’s chair, she looked up at her now, listening deeply, understanding her employee’s need to release her agitation. She took in Angie leaning against the children’s cubbies, her hands bracing her limp body, all her usual vibrancy drained into her need to talk. Though at fifty-five Angie was a few years older than Hannah, her hair was still a deep brown, and she wore it long and straggly. It emphasized her customary pallor, and today the pallor verged on green. “Besides my set-up jobs like taking the kids’ chairs off the tables and opening the shades—I open them first thing I come in, even when it’s dark?—I had something else in mind. Like I said, I was planning something fresh for the kids, that’s why I came in a little before six. That way I have a little more than half an hour.” Hannah opened her mouth to respond, but Angie continued without a pause, her chatter like a freeway with no on-ramps. Her voice was shrill and wobbly, and her words came so fast Hannah had to strain to hear them. “Some of the teachers think just a few crayons and some paper’s enough? Of course when the kids first arrive it’s true they’re usually still sleepy, don’t want much stimulation. They won’t eat breakfast at home half the time. Heck, a lot of parents don’t eat breakfast either! The kids aren’t combed, sometimes they’re still in their pj’s—not ready for some huge super-activity —like, say, making pretzels from scratch—” Angie laughed at the very idea, then bowed her head and closed her eyes, and Hannah knew she was wishing she could stay with this part of the story. “Go on, Angie,” she urged gently. “Well, I’m getting away from telling you what happened. I was trying to say that just the same old box of crayons and the same old recycled eight-and-a-half by eleven paper that parents bring from their offices—well, that’s not enough. The kids deserve a little variety, a little imagination, and it helps them ease into their day, too. Anyone should see that. “Not to badmouth anybody, but some of the teachers here just don’t seem to get it? Maybe it’s because I have kids of my own, I remember what it was like to coax my own sleepy boys into waking up. Oh God, I wish I could have afforded to send them here instead of leaving them with my grandma, but that’s off the subject.” She set her mouth into a resolute line. The rain was falling outside, muffling the sound of traffic on Del Mar Boulevard half a block away, and creating a protected cave feeling between the two women talking alone in the dim, empty classroom. “So I was focusing on something different for this early part of the morning, maybe those large leaves we collected on our walk yesterday?—I could put those out and the kids could draw around them, even cut out the shapes they made.” Her voice rose again at the end of her sentences, as if she were desperate for Hannah to understand. “I’m telling you Hannah, I get carried away with this kind of stuff! I can’t believe you pay me to do it. It’s so much fun. Oh, this was going to be so much better than just a few crayons and some old paper--”