I reached down and picked up a handful of the dry red soil and let it sift through my fingers. This planet wasn’t home, but it was a planet. A home. I pressed my palms flat to the ground. Immediately, I felt a little better. My heartbeat slowed, Heru and his shocked face retreated and I sighed.
“Hello? Are you alright?”
I looked up, shielding my eyes with one of my otjize-covered hands. I knew this girl, but I didn’t know her name. I still barely knew anyone’s name at my dorm. Since arriving six earth weeks ago, I’d hidden away from my schoolmates as much as I could. In the dining hall, I collected my food and took it to my room. I didn’t like dining halls.
“I’m fine,” I muttered, trying to get up. Then I remembered Heru’s parents and all my strength left me again. They’d called me yesterday. The holographic image of his mother had simply stared at me, stared so hard that I could practically feel her trying to sift through all that was me to find my memories of her son. She only wanted those glimmers of her son, not the surviving Himba girl to whom they belonged. Then she’d burst into tears, unable to say a word to me.
Heru’s father had shouted at me from behind her, “How does a beggar survive and my son not? What did you trade?! What filthy charms did you work?!” I thought they’d then break the connection, but they didn’t. They’d instead shouted and cried at me for over a half hour. I held my astrolabe, with a shaking hand, listening, gazing back at them into their eyes, quiet, from planets away. When they’d had enough, they finally broke the connection. The whole thing was horrible.
Whimpering, I pressed a hand to my face, wishing the girl whose name I didn’t know would leave me to grovel in the dirt alone.
“Don’t worry,” she said, squatting before me. “I’ll come down to you.”
My eyes flooded with tears that dropped into the soil at my sandaled feet and onto my long orange red skirt. Heru was dying again. The stinger in his chest. White. But his blood spread on it so easily. So red. I grunted, my heart was racing again.
She put a hand on my shoulder. “Breathe,” she whispered.
“Can’t.”
“You are, though,” she chuckled. “If you weren’t you’d have passed out by now.”
I blinked. I am alive, I thought. I just think I’m dead. I looked up at her smiling face. She had eyes green like leaves, skin the color of sand flower. She was dark for a Khoush, probably from spending so much time under Oomza’s suns. Even now she wore the blue jumpsuit I often saw her jogging about wearing. We both laughed.
“Breathe more,” she said, and I did. I felt stronger. The sight of Heru disappeared, for now. She helped me up and for a moment we stood there looking at each other. “My name’s Haifa. You’re Binti.”
“I have nothing to add to that,” I said.
“Everyone’s been wondering how you can be so together,” she said. “You save the university and everyone back home and then turn right around and start the semester without missing a step like some sort of superhero. Today, I think I’m finally convinced you’re actually normal and, well, mostly human.”
I burst out laughing. Oh yes, now I was breathing just fine.
“It’s nearly second sunset, best part of the day,” she said taking my hand. “Come sit and eat some mini apples with me. I’ve had a long day, too.”
“Okay.”
We walked across the dirt to the dorm path and I waited for the question: “Where’s your Okwu?” In these first weeks of registration, moving into my dorm, orientation, then classes, whenever I met anyone, this question was never far behind. I was so glad when Haifa didn’t ask it now.
We sat on the stone steps. Large and uneven, the fifty steps extended down about a half-mile to the first buildings of Math City. They were made for People with legs of various lengths. Nevertheless, the stone steps were tan and smooth and the sunlight warmed them, making them the perfect place for us to sit at this hour. We simply sat there eating sour mini apples, watching the second sunset. It was always a spectacular scene of orange-pink that softly glowed in the swelling darkness. With most classes having ended by this hour, there was no traffic on the steps.
“Why were you grabbing your hair like that?” she asked.
I shrugged. Then I just said it; I wasn’t home anymore. “They’re not hair.”
“Oh I know that,” she said, popping another mini apple into her mouth and rolling it about before biting. “Everyone does.”
“They do?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you like them?”
I shrugged, “They’re mine.” I took an apple. I looked at it. Red and soft in flesh, the apples were delicious after you ate a few and your taste buds adjusted. “I was… I was having a moment. It’s been a lot.”
“I know,” she said. “What’s it been like? You’re part Meduse, now.”
I looked at her, but she seemed genuinely curious, an openness on her face that made it impossible for me to feel annoyed. “I’m… still getting used to it.”
“Of course you are. You don’t adjust to that kind of thing in a day.” She got up and did a graceful dancer’s twirl on one of the stones, her hands out. “Look at me,” she announced. “I’m fantastic.” She sat back down. “It’s not the same as your situation, but I was born physically male and when I was thirteen I transitioned to female.”
My eyebrows rose. “Oh,” I said. Back home, we called people like Haifa eanda oruzo, but they weren’t so open about it. And we didn’t say “transition”, we said “align” and once they align, it was never mentioned again. Amongst the Himba, you “were what you knew you were once you knew what you were and that was that”, to quote my village’s chief Kapika. I wondered if all the people of the Khoush communities were as open about alignment as Haifa.
“All my life, I knew this was who I’d be, but it still took some getting used to after I transitioned,” she said. “Well, more everyone around me, than me.”
“Did it hurt?” I asked.
“Did it hurt for you?”
“Well, yes… I mean… I… it was…”
“I’m joking, Binti,” she said, gazing at the sunset. “You got stabbed in the back with a Meduse stinger, that’s not going to feel good. And you didn’t even have a say in what happened to you. Doesn’t that bother you?”
I looked at my hands.
“No warning, no nothing, just ‘stab’, then you wake up and you’re part-Meduse. That’s really something,” she added, more to herself than me. Her words were making me nauseous and I focused on the deepening pink-orange sky. Haifa didn’t notice. “My goodness. Maybe we can’t really compare.”
“Maybe,” I said, my nausea passing. Still, Haifa had changed, too. And she’d been so clear in what she wanted that she’d done it voluntarily. I certainly would not have chosen to be stung by a Meduse, but would I have gone into that ship and risked everything if I had known what was about to happen? After a moment of thought, I knew I would have. I’d gone in there with the intent to live, but sure that I was going to die.
I can never forget the look on my mother’s face when I finally contacted home. I was sure everyone at home was livid with me, I couldn’t take it anymore. I’d grabbed my astrolabe and messaged home, not knowing who’d respond. Those moments of wait were agony. I’d grasped my edan so tightly that my hand ached. I considered treeing, but I didn’t think it was a good idea for my family after so many weeks to finally see me while I was up in the tree. Then there she was. As the hologram bloomed, I could initially see that she was standing in the kitchen. She was lit by a different sun than the one that would rise where I was in a few hours. She stared at me for a long time and I stared back, my eyes filling with tears.