Science at Eleven
Mathematics at nine. English at ten. Science at eleven.
A white banner flaps in the wind, covered in black script. It explains why, an hour from now, the ambulances from the capital won’t make it to the town. Old warriors piled heavy stones and logs across the only road. They sit drinking tea and fighting eggs. They gather spoiled ones, select the strongest by tapping it against their teeth, then try to smash their opponent’s shell. Whoever’s cracks last wins. Loser pays for the egg.
In the market, a man’s yoked to a cart like a mule. He’s struggling under the weight of shoeboxes piled high. With every turn he risks being crushed under the weight of other people’s shoes.
At the house, six children kneel in front of a wall of threads and weave a carpet. There’s music in their hands as they tug and pluck the long strings. The walls of their home are pocked with holes of almost exactly the same size. The mother in purple headscarf arranges dates in perfect rows. The geometry of ordinary mornings.
The schedule’s simple. White lined paper in black script. A child’s hand. Mathematics at nine. English at ten. Science at eleven. It’s wrinkled and torn like some ancient map to a country that has yet to be formed.
Not long ago, men came and melted all the trumpets like candle wax. They hung all the drummers from goalposts. Now in the square, women sing under their breath. Widows outside the mosque snatch at spare change. Workmen from the two warring factions have come together to rebuild this house of worship. Kiss the flag, your wish will be granted, according to local legend. A man in black was seen kissing the flag that morning, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
The ground shakes as though the hills had moved. A sudden dust storm. One massive brown cloud as though the sky were burning. So much smoke one could lean up against it. Bells ring. Women ululate. The sound of something ending.
There was a time not long ago a document could get a girl killed. A class schedule was a plan for insurrection, sketched in crayon. Girls would cross the high hills and deep valleys to reach secret schools. Brave hidden women in veils taught beneath the earth. How heavy air becomes when words are forbidden. How a pencil, hidden in a fold of cloth, could burn like coal against the skin.
A jagged hole in the brick wall, as though some giant had run through it. Trees with bark peeling like burn victims. Grasses all lean in one direction, brushed and smoothed. Bones, intact but twisted and compressed as though they’d been placed in a giant vice.
A man runs through the street. His shirt’s soaked with blood. There’s so much of it, it has to be someone else’s, or he wouldn’t still be running. He stops, eyes wild, to challenge passers-by to fight. If you are our enemy, confront! Fight! Not like this! He’s sobbing now. By the time he gets back to his cart, all the shoes will be gone.
The stains on the schedule should have been grape jam or nail paint from experiments gone wrong. Or a red heart with her name plus another’s.
The hospital floor’s slippery with blood. A small room with a concrete floor and no beds. The dead are stacked like wood. The shoeless dead. Small forms covered in white cloth. Workers move among them with the careful attention of librarians re-shelving books.
The doctors roll the man in black out on a wheelbarrow. He’s mostly whole. No one brushes the dead leaves off his forehead. What do such men see in death? Men who get up on stools to bring their prayers closer to heaven. His open gray eyes expect to behold earned paradise. His open gray eyes look surprised.
The paper’s no longer a schedule. It’s an inventory of things that would not come to pass. Promises the morning would not honor.
A woman in a purple headscarf attacks any journalist with a camera. The reporter keeps shooting until the woman picks up a stone. The crowd urges her on. The police just watch. The reporter doesn’t run. Maybe he believes he deserves to be stoned.
The setting sun hits the hills and lights the summit on glorious fire for a minute or two. Hundreds of white butterflies swirl like ash. The paper’s draped on the girl like a white flag.
Kim Brunhuber is a journalist based in Atlanta. His novel Kameleon Man was excerpted in an anthology of Black Canadian writing. He has stories forthcoming in Hobart and J Journal. His nonfiction has appeared in newspapers such as the Globe & Mail and National Post.
