The Brightest Sun. Adrienne Benson

couldn’t name the motivation, because every cell inside her wanted to die—forced her to stand and shuffle back through the enclosure and into her house. It was dangerous to be outside the manyatta at night. She could be attacked by a leopard, a lion, and eaten. It was the smallest part of her that pushed her to avoid that by retreating to her home. She bent to enter and fell into her bed. The fire needed tending, but she couldn’t make herself care. Simi’s longing for her daughter came in painful waves that made her feel as if her body was burning on the inside. How could this be real? She was desperate to relive that last moment when she held Adia’s arm and watched as the terrified girl was pulled from her grasp. How could she have let it happen? How could a mother let her child—her only child—be taken? God was right not to bless her body with her own children—she was not fit to be a mother.

      Over the next few days, Simi was broken. She could only lie in her bed. The other women—even Loiyan—came into her hut to see how she was. They kept watch, boiled chai in the suferia, and tried, constantly, to make Simi open her mouth to drink, to swallow, to take the small sustenance that the sugar and tea and milk might give her. The women whispered to each other as they watched her. Simi didn’t speak. She couldn’t open her mouth, not to answer the women and not to drink the tea; she could hardly open her eyes.

      She remembered the time after Adia’s birth, and how Leona had sunk into herself, barely speaking, barely eating. A thought crossed her mind that this was Adia’s mark—that her mothers were destined to share a kind of darkness. And then she remembered that Adia had been pulled away from her; she was nobody’s mother—not anymore. It was that thought that made her stomach heave, and she leaned over and retched. Because she hadn’t eaten for days, it was nothing but bitter, sticky foam she coughed out. She watched as it disappeared, slowly absorbed into the dirt of the floor. The women in her hut tsked and sucked their teeth.

      Late that night, Simi woke up. Her hut was empty. The other women had gone home. That was a relief. Her stomach growled. Her mouth still didn’t want food, but her belly called for it. She stretched her weak legs and slid off the bed. Even though she’d barely sipped water in the last few days, she had a desperate need to urinate. The cattle in the manyatta enclosure lowed softly and shook their great heads as Simi slipped past them. There were fewer than there used to be, Simi noted. The drought was bad again. It seemed the pattern was changing—a year of good rains and hope, followed by several years of dry land and dry skies, starving animals and hungry people. It struck Simi just then that nothing was certain. Not ever. Not even the continuation of the life she’d always lived. More and more Maasai men were abandoning cattle herding and moving to Nairobi to seek work. There were manyattas where no men lived at all, only women and children, all the husbands and sons having left for new opportunities. Everything was changing.

      Simi squatted down and felt the relief of emptying her bladder. It felt good to be outside, to breathe the cool night air and look up at the stars. It was a clear night, not one cloud to tease her with the possibility of rain, but none to obscure the universe above her, either. The moon was new. It was a curved edge, as sharp and clean as a scythe. The Maasai myth said that the sun and the moon were married. Olapa, the moon, was short-tempered and, during a fight one day, she wounded her husband. To cover his wound, he began shining more brightly than anything else. To punish his wife, he struck out one of her eyes. Now, Simi thought, as she slowly stood up, her body weak from lack of food, the sun was punishing all of them by shining too hard, never allowing rain clouds to form.

      The moon, the wounded wife, was lucky, Simi thought. She’d only had an eye taken. Simi remembered her mother always said nobody could take an education from her. That was true, but her mother never told her that everything else could be taken; a body part, grazing grasses for the cattle, a way of life and a daughter.