CHAPTER ONE
At seven in the morning the sun was already behaving as though it were noon. It hung white and heavy above the eucalyptus trees behind the house, and by the time its light reached Kevin’s window the room had grown thick with heat. He lay under his blanket with his eyes shut, which was his way of pretending the day had not yet begun.
It was the harvest holiday, and that was the trouble. On school days a bell woke him, and he rose without complaint, because school meant lessons and friends and the long walk in a noisy crowd. Holidays belonged to the garden, and the garden belonged to his mother. Kevin could not have said which he disliked more, the digging or the hour at which it began. He suspected that if the garden opened at ten, he might have loved it.
Every morning he fought the same small war. Rise or stay. It never lasted long, because sooner or later there came three firm knocks at his door and his mother’s voice, pitched to carry through wood and sleep alike.
Sunday was the only exception. Sunday was for rest and worship, because God had made the world in six days and rested on the seventh, and his mother, who read her Bible the way other people ate, had made sure he knew it. What Kevin had never managed to settle was the rule behind it. He had worked it out like a sum. The command to labour had been given to man. He was a child, so it could not apply to him. But his mother was not a man either, and she worked every day except Sunday, harder than anyone he knew. Either the command had been written wider than he thought, or it had been written for someone else entirely, and at that point the sum always fell apart.
He would have liked to ask. But he could picture her face if he did, and so the question stayed where it was, folded small at the back of his mind.
That Monday the knock was late. Ten past seven, and the house was quiet in a way that made him suspicious. He heard a pot set down in the kitchen, the hens quarrelling in the yard, and nothing else. Perhaps the pastor’s sermon had finally reached her. Yesterday he had preached on harmony, on gentleness inside a home, and Kevin had watched his mother nod through all of it with her lips pressed together. It was possible she had decided to practise on him. He lay there, quietly grateful and a little afraid of wasting it.
Then the knock came after all. “Kevin, my child, it is time we went to the garden.”
Her voice was mild, but it was still her voice. She had only been delayed by the beans, which she had soaked overnight and now had simmering on the fire, so that they would be ready when the sun stood overhead. Ankunda Faith was never late for anything that mattered. People in Mugiti said her name had been well chosen, and she had spent her life making sure it was not wasted. She had given herself to Christ in the late nineties, and she held on to Him the way she held a hoe: firmly, daily, and without display.
They walked to the garden through the forest, in silence, which was how she preferred to begin a day. Light came down through the leaves in coins and slid over her headscarf. High above, birds called to one another across the branches. Kevin carried the basket and kicked at the dry leaves and said nothing, because at that hour silence was a kind of agreement between them.
When they stepped out of the trees onto their land, the neighbouring fields were already loud. Men were bent double along the rows. Somewhere a radio was playing a gospel song badly. The harvest was at its peak and everyone was racing the sun. Kevin took his place beside his mother at the edge of the plot and began separating groundnuts from their dry stems, shaking the red soil from the roots and dropping the pods into the basket. His fingers found the rhythm before his mind did. This was Mugiti. This was what its days were made of.