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Dream Bearer, The AER
Chapter One"So why are you building a house up here on the roof?"
"To show I can do it," Sessi said. "This is the way my ancestors in Kenya built their houses."
Loren and I watched as Sessi folded strips of dried palm leaves and wove them through the sticks she had made into a four-foot wall. She did look like she knew what she was doing.
"How many people can you get into one of these little houses?" Loren asked.
"This is just a model, silly," Sessi said. "If I were in my country, all of my family would help build the house and it would be ten times this big."
"They don't have to pay rent, right?" I asked.
"If you live on somebody else's lands, then you have to pay rent," Sessi said.
"If I was in your little country, I would probably be a king or something," Loren said. "At least the mayor."
Sessi, on her knees, turned her head sideways and looked up at Loren. "Tarzan told you that?""He didn't have to," Loren said. "I just know it."
"I'm thinking of going to Africa when I get old enough," I said. "Just to check it out."
"Me and David are American." Loren nudged me with his elbow. "But we're part African."
"Who are you? Ibo? Edo?" Sessi asked. "All you guys are is American. I am Kikuyu."
"Yo, David, when she finishes making her house, you want to come up here and tear it down?" Loren put one hand on the house and pushed it gently.
"That's what Americans do," Sessi said, turning back to her model house. "You tear things down."
"Nothing wrong with that," Loren said.
Sessi made a little noise with her throat and shook her head. That was thething with Sessi...sometimes she would make little noises that sounded almost like words or move her hands in a way that was almost like talking. She was pretty, with a smile that started with her mouth and spread across her face in a way that always made me smile when I saw it.
Loren was the same age as me, twelve, and lived in my building. Sessi lived in the building next to mine. When the weather wasn't too bad, we sometimes went over the rooftops to get to each other's houses. Sessi wasn't like most girls I knew...she never put anybody down or got into arguments. Maybe it was because she was African, I didn't know.
"We could use your model house for our clubhouse," I said to Sessi. "You know what a clubhouse is?"
"I've been in this country for four years and I'm only one year younger than you are, Mr. David Curry," Sessi said. When she stood up she was an inch taller than me even though she was younger. "Whatever you boys know, I know."
"Oh, yeah? Why did the moron throw an alarm clock out the window?" Loren asked.
"Don't ask me silly things," Sessi said, rolling her eyes in Loren's general direction. "Do I look like a silly person to you?"
"Because he wanted to see time fly!" Loren said. "Get it? He wanted to see time fly!"
"Loren, that is so stupid!" Sessi went back to building her model house.
"The only reason you're smart is because your mother makes you study and stuff," Loren said. "If me and David studied all the time, we'd be twice as smart as you. Ain't that right, David?"
"I don't know," I answered.
"I'd think we'd be twice as smart as anybody if we tried," Loren said.
"What do you think of us using it as a clubhouse?" I asked again.
"I'll have to ask my father," Sessi said. "I don't think he'll mind, but he'll have to be asked."
"When are you going to ask him?"
"When he gets home from work." Sessi smoothed the side of her house with the palm of her hand. "Maybe after supper."
"What's your dumb brother Kimi doing?" Loren asked.
"Reading to my mother," Sessi answered. "He's helping her with the citizenship test. She can read well, but it helps her to hear the words read aloud."
"You know you can't become a citizen without my permission," Loren said.
"Loren Hart, shut up!" Sessi spoke with finality.
"I don't know anybody with a real clubhouse," I said. "You think your father's going to say we can use it?"
"Tell him he'd better say yes or I might have to come to your house and deal with him!" Loren said.
"You're going to deal with my father?" Sessi held up her thumb and put it on the end of Loren's nose. "I don't think so!"
Loren gave her a look, but he didn't say anything and I knew he wasn't sure if he could beat Sessi or not. He had told me before that he thought Africans were tougher than they looked.
"I got to go home." Loren wiped his hands on the front of his jeans. "You want to come to my house and watch television?"
"I can't stay out too long," I said. "Mom's going to some kind of meeting, and she wants me home when she leaves."
"David's a good boy," Sessi said. "He listens to his parents."
"I think you want to marry him," Loren said. "If I go downstairs right now, I'll bet you'll be giving him a kiss before I get to the third floor."
"Child," Sessi said to Loren. "You're a mere child."
"I'll come over for a while," I said.
"Why don't you check with your mother first?" Sessi looked up at me. "Then if you go you'll have an easy mind."
Dream Bearer, The AER. Copyright © by Walter Myers. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
