Dave Eggers - What Is The What

— Hello Frances, I have just been to health class, and I was wondering how your feminine parts were developing.

It's one of the things that one says when young, and from which there is no escape. After that, she and her friends had a very low opinion of me, and the words have haunted me for many years after.

I learned many important lessons, first among them the fact that making forward statements in English was considered more acceptable than in Dinka. Because our grasp of English was tenuous, tone and precise meaning in that language was amorphous and shifting. I could never say 'I love you' to a new girl in Dinka, for she would know exactly its meaning, but in English, the same words might be considered charming. Thus I used English a good deal, always in the interest of appearing charming. It did not always work.

But I spent a good deal of time calibrating my approach to girls, and when I was ready to inquire about Tabitha's interest in me, I was anything but bold. I knew by then that Tabitha was that rarest of girls who was still allowed to go to school, whose mother was at Kakuma and was enlightened enough to afford her a range of opportunities, academic and even those related to friendships with boys like me.

There was a certain day each year called Refugee Day, and I am quite sure it was the day that half of all youth relationships at Kakuma began or ended. On this day, June 20 each year, from morning to dusk, all the refugees of Kakuma celebrated, and there was less adult supervision, and more mingling of nationalities and castes, than at any other time of year. They celebrated not the fact that they were refugees or were living in northwest Kenya, but instead the simple existence and survival of their culture, however tattered. There were exhibitions of art, demonstrations of ethnic dances, there was food and music and, from the Sudanese, many speeches.

This was my opportunity to speak to Tabitha, who I was tracking all day. When she watched a traditional Burundian dance, I watched her. When she sampled food from Congo, I watched her from behind a display of Somali arts and crafts. And when the day was waning, and there was only a few minutes before she and all the girls would be expected to retreat to their homes, I strode to her with confidence that surprised even me. I was four years older than she was, I told myself. This is a young person, someone around whom you should not feel like a child. And so I walked to her with a serious face and when I stood behind her-she had had her back turned to me during my approach, which made it far easier-I tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to me, very surprised. She looked to my left and right, surprised to find me alone.

— Tabitha, for a long time, I said, — I have tried to talk to you about something, but the opportunity never presented itself. I was not sure how you would react to what I wanted to propose.

She stared up at me. She was not very tall at the time. Her head barely reached my chin.-What are you talking about? she said.

There is no lonelier feeling than when a proposal you have rehearsed is rejected out of hand. But through adrenaline and plain stubbornness, I continued.

— I like you and would like to go on a date with you.

This was how we said things at that time, but it did not mean that a real date would ever take place. It was unacceptable for a young man and woman to go off alone together, to a restaurant or even for a walk. A date, then, might mean a meeting at church, or in another public setting, where it would be known only to Tabitha and myself that a date was taking place.

Tabitha looked at me and smiled as if she had been only trying to cause me suffering. She did this often, in those days and in the future-all the years I've known her.

— I'll let you know at a later time, she said.

I was not surprised. It was not customary for a girl to give her answer immediately. Usually, a time would be arranged, a few days later, when the answer would be given either in person or through an emissary. If no appointment was made, it would mean the answer was no.

In this case, the next day, I learned through Abuk that the answer would come at church on Sunday, at the south entrance, after Mass. Those intervening days were torturous but tolerable, and when the time came, she was exactly where she said she would be.

— How was the homework that you gave to yourself? This was my attempt at charm.

— What do you mean?

What I meant was that it might be considered humorous that instead of answering my first question, about a possible date, when I asked it, she went home to think about it for five days. But this was not very humorous, at least not the way I put it.

— Nothing. Sorry. Forget it, I said.

She agreed to forget it. She forgot a lot of what I said. She was merciful that way.

— I've been thinking about your question, Achak, and I have come to a decision. She was always spectacularly dramatic.

— And I've asked around about you…and I haven't heard anything bad. She had not talked to Frances, apparently.

— So I accept the date, she said.

— Oh thank God! I said, taking the Lord's name in vain for the first time in my life, but not at all the last.

I am not sure what might be considered our first date. After that day at church, we saw each other often, but never alone. We spoke at church and at school and, through my stepsister Abuk, I sent messages detailing the extent of my admiration for her, and how often I was thinking of her. She did the same, and so the volume of the messages kept Abuk busy. When the messages were deemed urgent, she would come running across the camp to me, her arms flailing and out of breath. She would finally regain herself and then relay the following:

— Tabitha is smiling at you today.

There could be little private contact between young people like ourselves, even if madly in love, as Tabitha and I were. Like most of the courtship, any interaction at all was done in plain sight, so as to draw no questioning eyes or murmuring among the elders. But even in plain sight, in daylight and in public, we were able to do quite enough to satisfy our modest desires. Those who knew me at Pinyudo, and suspected what happened in the bedroom of the Royal Girls, were surprised by the chaste courtship that Tabitha and I shared. But what had happened in Pinyudo seemed, now, outside of time. It was done by children who did not invest meaning in such explorations.

The first time I was able to hold Tabitha against me was one Saturday morning, amid many dozens of people, during a volleyball match. I was on a team with the Dominics, and we were playing against a group of overconfident Somalis this particular morning, and were being cheered on by a dozen Dinka girls our age and younger. There were no official cheerleading squads at Kakuma, and though many girls participated in sports, on this day Tabitha was there both to cheer for me and to hold herself against me. In any culture, there are certain loopholes that can be exploited by hormonally desperate teenagers, and at Kakuma we realized that under the auspices of the girls cheering us on, giving congratulatory hugs after a winning point was somehow acceptable.

There were five Dominics playing volleyball that day, and four of us had notified our ladyfriends that if they rooted us on, we would be able to hold each other between games or after successful points. So this is how I first held Tabitha. She had not done this cheering and hugging before, but she took to it immediately and very well. The first time I spiked a winning shot past the face of a certain overconfident Somali, Tabitha cheered as if she might explode, and came running over to me, jumping and hugging me with abandon. No one took notice, though Tabitha and I savored those jumping and hugging moments as if they were sacred honeymoon hours.