Golden Boy by Tara Sullivan Page B

shade, so you don’t even have to worry about me getting burnt,” I add.
    For a few moments, Asu just stands there, considering. I inch out and settle myself behind the woodpile, not waiting for her permission, pleased to see that I was right about being invisible and shaded.
    â€œSee?” I say. I know Mother and Auntie would kill me themselves if they knew I was out in the yard in the middle of the day, but I want to get out of the kitchen, and the chance to finally be helpful outweighs my unease. Anyway, I want to show Asu that I can look out for myself.
    From my hidden corner, I reach out and start feeding dry corncobs into the fire. I smile widely up at her. She sighs.
    â€œOh, all right,” she says, and goes to get another bucket of water.
    I don’t say anything more but inside I’m crowing in triumph.

    When steam rises off the top of the pot in great billows, Asu throws the soap flakes and sheets into the pot and starts to beat them around in the water with Auntie’s laundry pole. I’m in all my usual long clothes, and Asu is standing right over the laundry pot. Both of us are sweating a lot. Mwanza is not only hot but sticky too, even in the dry season. Kito doesn’t seem to notice the heat. Right now he’s chasing bugs around the edges of the fire. When he catches them, he brings them over to Asu or me. We tell him what a clever little boy he is.
    â€œAsu, tell me about your day,” I say.
    â€œWhat do you want to know?”
    â€œEverything,” I grumble. “I’m stuck in a pile of grain sacks for half the day, and I’ve never seen Mwanza except the night we came in the pitch-black. Tell me everything. Then I’ll be able to think of that when you’re gone.”
    Asu looks off in the distance for a moment.
    â€œWell, today is a Tuesday, so I work for the Njoolay family. But let me tell you about the Msembo family, because they’re more interesting.” She winks at me and continues. “When I’m going to work at the Msembo house, I take the purple
dala-dala
from the corner of the fish market and ride down Makongoro Road. We turn onto Uhuru Street and cross the city, heading away from the wharves. People get on and off. I can smell the food from the street vendors.” She puts a hand on her belly, dramatically. “I always want to eat, but I don’t want to get my clothes dirty before work, so I don’t. In the center of town I switch to the yellow and blue
dala-dala.
This gets me to Isamilo, and from there I can walk to the Msembos’ house.”
    Asu pauses to heft a steaming sheet out of the kettle with the paddle and put it into the rinsing bucket. She beats it around in the cold water there until all the soap is gone from the cloth, then lifts it out again. She takes one end and I take the other and we twist the sheet between us, making sure it doesn’t ever touch the dirt, until most of the water is gone out of it. Water drips off Asu’s elbows as she lifts the sheet over the line. Then she’s at the soapy pot, beginning the process again with the next sheet.
    â€œOnce I get to the front of the Msembo house,” she continues, “I’m still not inside. It’s a very grand house. There is a huge garden around it on all sides, so green it hurts your eyes to look at it. And around the garden, there’s a great, tall wall with broken glass and barbed wire along the top. To get into the house I have to go up to the gate and talk to the man on guard. He stands there all day with his big gun on his shoulder and opens and closes the gate for people.”
    â€œIs it scary to talk to the guard with the big gun?” Kito asks.
    Asu flashes him a quick smile. “I bet he’s almost as bored as Habo in the grain sacks,” she says, “standing there all day long in his little hut, not able to go anywhere or talk to anyone. No, he’s not so scary.”
    Again she moves the