Feeling Sick

Having cholera would feel much better than being told my three year old friend had just died from it. Tolo was brazen. He must have been the most theatrical kid I’ve known, his gravid eyes always reminding me of stage makeup you would see on a Pharaoh. Touting water and often having to aggressively defend myself, too many times this berserker among children would prove my most worthy opponent. Not settling for a ten-foot charge, Tolo always gave himself a ten yard runway, focusing his energy into his foot-long legs instead of shouting like his myriad of other attacking peers.

“Juvenile fools,” I always imagined him thinking, “let me show you how to topple a white man.”

Our encounters always ended the same—me with spilled water all down a leg and him with a size 11 ½ footprint square in his chest. I used to wonder if the little guy needed prescription contacts (how could you run at an outstretched leg for thirty feet and still manage a full-speed collision?), but eventually amended my opinion: black-baby descendant of Braveheart or he loved slapstick comedy as much as I do. But Ya-Ah’mamy stopped me with my bucket of water yesterday to tell me he had died. Her own eyes, expressive as her grandson’s had been, looked like melting glass before she started sobbing.

You were so awesome, little guy. Your family misses you and I sure do too. Heck, given how many times I saw you sharing your rice with Knut, I’ll say he even misses you. There’s such a loud silence on your porch, in our neighborhood, that we have to listen to every day now.

What’s been burning me since your grandmother cried out an explanation of your last few days to me isn’t so much the thought of you hallucinating till the last system in your dehydrated body shut down, but the image of those standing by your bed during your last bit, refusing to take you to a hospital. Devils and an uncontrollable force didn’t take you, Tolo, it was a treatable sickness, superstition, and a bent kind of love.

I’m making that long, hot trip to the Luma market tomorrow for you and your playmates. Hopefully people use the boxes of soap I bring back. Ibrahim even said he’ll help me distribute, so maybe instead of laughing at my mangled Temne our neighborhood will learn a thing or two about hand washing and how to prevent the sickness that killed you. I can’t help but think this should’ve been done sooner.