The Paper House by Lois Peterson Page B

indoors and fetched a bowl. She held it for her grandmother to spit in until the coughing stopped. She stroked her cucu’s shoulder as she slumped back against the wall with her eyes closed.
    When she was sure the coughing fit was over, Safiyah ran across the alley to empty the bowl. Little flecks of blood floated on the surface. This was the second time Safiyah had seen blood after one of Cucu’s coughing fits.
    Safiyah wiped the bowl with her sleeve. If she told anyone, her grandmother might have to go to the hospital. Some people who ended up there never came home again.

Chapter Three
    That evening, Safiyah turned the pages of the magazines she had found at the dump while her grandmother watched from under their thin blankets.
    Cucu couldn’t read. Nor could Safiyah. She had not been to school since they left their village, two day’s bus ride away. School lessons were often free here in Kibera, thanks to rich people who donated money. But a student’s family was responsible for their uniform and books, which cost money—money Safiyah and her grandmother would never have.
    â€œLovely shoes,” said Cucu. In the picture Safiyah held out to her, a man leaned back in his chair smoking a cigarette. His shoes, with little tassels in the middle, shone like polished wood. Cucu always wore a pair of old runners with holes cut away for her bunions. Safiyah sometimes wore a cracked pair of flip-flops. But she went barefoot most of the time.
    Safiyah liked the pictures of ladies’ clothes and fancy houses. And the ones of models with smooth makeup. But when she pressed her face against a picture of a bottle of perfume all she could smell was the stink of garbage.
    The little boy at the dump was right. There were lots of pictures of cars. A green one with an open roof and a red one with silver in the middle of the wheels. There was even a row of white cars with pretty girls sitting on them, their yellow hair streaming behind.
    In Safiyah’s village, one man drove a noisy truck he had built himself. Here, she sometimes played in the skeletons of old cars abandoned beside the railroad tracks. She had never been in a car that worked.
    Safiyah tore out the pictures she liked best. She put them in a pile. “I’m going to keep some to put on the walls after I fill all the cracks,” she told her grandmother. “But how can I make them stay?”
    â€œSome maize flour and a little water will make a paste,” said Cucu as she fanned through a handful of pictures. She held them close to her face to study them in the dim light of the shack.
    â€œWe don’t have flour.” Safiyah gathered all the pages that were just a gray muddle of writing. “But maybe this will work.” She tore the paper into small pieces, dipped each one in the bucket of water that was kept under the bed, and then twisted each scrap into a little roll.
    Cucu watched as Safiyah climbed on the bed to stuff paper into the cracks in the walls. Safiyah moved their little stove and a basket of old clothes out of the way to reach into the corners. Cucu pointed out where to put the scraps of paper, guided by the light that showed through the gaps.
    Later, when her grandmother fell asleep, Safiyah sat on the end of the bed listening to her wheezy breath. There were still lots more gaps in the walls, but if she used up all the magazines she’d found at the dump, she would no longer be able to look at the pictures of fancy clothes, nice houses and food.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Pendo stood in the doorway in her striped shorts and a green sweater with a hole in the elbow. She was barefoot now too.
    â€œShhh.” Safiyah gestured to her sleeping grand-mother and led Pendo outside.
    Pendo took a picture from Safiyah’s hand. “Look at all that blue water.” A glinting swimming pool was shaped like a big apple. “My uncle went to the ocean once,” she boasted. “The water