I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives Read online

  Taking a break gave me time to think about other things, like school, and softball. I was on the team, but not very good. My coach suggested practicing at home, so I started doing that with my dad on weekends.

  We were throwing the ball in our backyard when my dad asked, “Have you heard from your pen pal?” The question startled me. I had not really been thinking about Martin since I sent him my photo. I was too swept up with boys. And then, just like that, his letter arrived the following week.

  I could always tell Martin’s letters from the rest of the mail. They looked and felt different—thinner paper, more exotic and colorful stamps. This letter was thicker than the last. I ripped it open and gasped when I saw that he had sent me a photo.

  Seeing him standing there dressed in his school uniform changed something in me. Martin was no longer this faceless fantasy—he was real. He looked much younger and smaller than I had imagined—like a little boy in his green shorts and shirt. My very first thought was, He’s so cute! Not in a boyfriend way, more like a little brother. He had written on the back of the photo that it was taken two years before, in 1995, which explained why he looked so young. He also looked quite serious, though I could see the sparkle of a smile in his eyes. I assumed he was standing between his father and probably his older brother, Nation, who looked a lot like Martin, only taller. I ran up to my room and immediately placed this photo between one of me, my brother, and parents taken at my grandparents’ lake house, where we visited often, and another of me goofing around in my backyard with Lauren. I kept all of my favorite photos beneath the glass on top of my desk, so I could see them always.

  And then I read his letter several times over.

  I loved the way he wrote: While I understood all the words, they still seemed foreign. Every letter began with Hallo!, a greeting I’d never seen written before. I imagined his voice to be singsongy and upbeat. In his letters, he used lots of exclamation points, except instead of a dot at the bottom, he drew tiny bubbles. They reminded me of smiley faces, and I imagined him to be as happy as his handwriting. His language was so formal—he sounded so smart!

  I wanted to send him something special in my next letter, so I went to the mall that weekend with Lauren to find the right gift. Claire’s was our first stop. It was a jewelry store where you could get a pair of hoop earrings for five dollars. We also went to Spencer’s, which sold gag gifts. Back then, key chains were super-popular, especially these rectangular metal plates with funny references like Heartbreaker, Lucky, or Diva. I had about two dozen, which I had clipped onto a huge key ring that was attached to the outside zipper pocket of my backpack. Lots of kids did this, which meant everyone clanged when they walked through the hallways at school, like a jingle orchestra.

  I chose one for Martin that had a glittery swirl pattern on it without any words. I also bought one for Lauren that said Best Friend. She got me the same one. We already had Best Friend necklaces. Mine said Best and hers said Friend.

  Back home, I wrote Martin another letter thanking him for the photo, and sent him the key chain and a picture from my winter dance. In it, I’m wearing a headband that looks like a tiara, and a burgundy dress. I asked him to please send me another photo. I hoped it would be more current.

  A month or so later, I received a four-page letter from Martin. No one had ever sent me such long letter! This time, instead of writing Hallo!, he addressed me as “the queen,” which was so funny! It didn’t feel like it did when Richie said it. My mom and dad called me Queen Caitlin as well, but in a much nicer way than my brother did. I had no idea where Martin got the idea, but it made me feel that much closer to him, like he was part of our family.

  He wrote:

  3 March 1998

  Dear Caitlin the “queen”

  Well! It’s me again. I don’t know how to thank you. Thank you very very much for sending the nicest letter in my life. Thank you for the glittering and attractive charm. What a friend Caitlin. Thank you for the nice picture of yours. You look extremely beautiful, like a queen. (Queen Caitlin.)

  I thought it was funny he called the key chain a charm, and was so glad he liked it. Then I noticed at the very top of the letter, he wrote a PS, which said: I am making you very nice African-type earrings. I will send them in my next letter.

  How could he possibly know that I collected earrings? I had more than one hundred pairs—a collection of big hoops and long dangly beads and small studs shaped either like hearts or daisies or baby animals. I kept my most valuable ones in a jewelry box my parents gave me for Christmas the previous year. It was blue velvet and had my initials, CBS, in gold letters. I also had a pink plastic Caboodles box that looked like a small suitcase, which I had covered in stickers. That’s where I kept all the plastic jewelry I got at Claire’s. In all my searching for new earrings, I had never seen a pair from Africa.

  Martin went on to list all the holidays he celebrated and I was relieved to learn that many were the same as ours—another thing we had in common. But then he wrote that Zimbabwe was still “developing.” I didn’t quite understand what he meant. I knew I was developing—I had grown two inches since September and had just gotten my first training bra with my mom. But I wasn’t quite sure how a country developed. Martin said that there were few schools and hospitals, and wrote that some students learned under trees due to the shortage of classrooms. But then at the end of that sentence he wrote, “Fun!” It certainly sounded nicer than being stuck in a classroom all day—as long as it was not pig-cooking day. When he wrote, Patients have to stay about ten per bed. Just imagine. Fun, I couldn’t imagine that, no matter how hard I tried. So I skipped to the next line, which made me smile: Our friendship will always last forever. Sometime we will meet one another.

  I really hoped this would come true.

  On the next page, he described life in his country. Lines like Many workers in Zimbabwe receive a small pay which can’t even feed the families and Two families have to share a room in some parts of Zimbabwe stuck out. We had poverty in the United States, though I had never really seen it up close. I figured Zimbabwe was similar.

  I also thought that Martin came from a wealthy family because he was wearing a school uniform in the photo he sent. I assumed he went to a private school, which is expensive in America. There was a Catholic school in neighboring Lansdale where the girls wore dark green skirts and the boys wore slacks. Everyone had to wear a yellow shirt. It was supposed to be an excellent education, but I thought I would die from the boredom of wearing the same thing every day. Still, those kids gave me context for Martin and his life. I imagined he lived in a home like mine. But then he wrote that Sakubva, the town where I was sending his letters, was a high-density suburb and filled with poor people and crime, like LA. I had never been to LA, but knew that movie stars lived there as well as poor people. Maybe that was what Martin meant.

  I didn’t dwell on it long because the very next paragraph talked about clothes, my favorite subject. We also have Nike, Reebok, Adidas, and many others, Martin wrote. My best is Reebok. All of these brands were popular in school—the boys especially liked to wear oversize shirts with Reebok or Nike logos on them. I wanted to get one for Martin on my next trip to the mall.

  On the last page, he drew a man wearing a grass skirt and a crown of feathers and wrote, Our traditional suit but many people wear real clothes. He also sketched a hut with a grass roof and wrote, Some Zimbabwean house. I had seen photos of grass huts in National Geographic magazines, but in the photo Martin sent me, there was a brick building in the background that had to be his school. It looked a lot like mine.

  The next line really cracked me up: Have you heard the one from Spicy Girls, which says friendship never ends?

  I laughed out loud that he called them “Spicy,” and hoped that the line would become our motto.

  At the end of the letter, he wrote, Send me a US dollar and I will send you ours in my next letter. I had actually thought about sending him a dollar, to show him our currency.
It was like we were on the same wavelength. There was so much else I wanted to tell him about the United States, and to learn about Zimbabwe.

  I took out my multicolor pen to write him back. It was the size of a fat cigar and had little levers in different colors circling its top, like a crown. I clicked the green button to describe our seasons, and then the pale blue one to explain that our president was Bill Clinton and our vice president was Al Gore. I chose a dark blue to write, I have also sent a dollar bill.

  After I finished writing, I opened my desk drawer where I kept all my babysitting money. I found the crispest dollar bill and folded it into my letter. As I addressed the envelope, I felt another kind of fluttering in my stomach. It was a different feeling from my boy crushes—it felt more like an awakening. The world was gigantic, and I had a friend who lived halfway across it.

  April 1998

  Martin

  I HAD ALWAYS WANTED TO see an American dollar. People often said that money grew on trees in America. Seeing this crisp green bill tucked so neatly in Caitlin’s letter made me think this may have been true. It looked so new, so hopeful, like a leaf in springtime. I had just laid it on the bed when Nation came into the house.

  “Whoa!” he said. “Where did you get that?”

  “Caitlin sent it,” I said.

  We both bent over it, to get a better look: It was bigger than our Zimbabwean dollar, though I rarely saw those either. My parents used coins primarily.

  “How much do you think it is worth?” I asked.

  Nation shrugged his shoulders.

  We both knew it was worth more than a Zimbabwean dollar, especially with inflation, which was escalating daily.

  Suddenly the room was awash with a big swath of sunlight. I turned to see my mother’s small silhouette in the doorway.

  “Why are you all standing around?” she asked. “Your father will be home soon!”

  “Mai,” I said, handing her the dollar. “I received another gift from Caitlin.”

  My mother’s eyes grew wide, like a child spotting an elephant.

  “Why would she send such a thing?” she asked, though it sounded more like an accusation.

  Her question startled me—suddenly I worried that my request for a dollar may have been out of line. Truly, I was just curious. We were sharing information about each other’s culture, but I realized by the look on my mom’s face that I had asked too much.

  “I asked her to send it,” I said. “I did not think it was such a big deal.”

  “Well, it certainly is!” she said, still stern. “Your friend must be very wealthy—and you must keep this safe, Martin.”

  When I showed my father the bill that evening, his face lit up.

  “This is the real thing,” he said.

  “How much is it worth?” Nation asked.

  My father shook his head. “I will take it to work tomorrow to ask my boss,” he said. “He will know.”

  My mother winced.

  “You must bring that back,” she said. “That’s Martin’s money.”

  My father turned to me and winked. “Your mother, always so worried.”

  That following evening, my father arrived more joyous than I had seen him in many months.

  “Your friend gave you a very generous gift,” he explained. “This may be worth twenty Zim dollars.”

  I was stunned. It felt too big of a responsibility for me, so I asked my mother to keep it in a safe place until I knew what to do with it.

  The dollar stayed put for two weeks. By then, we had been eating sadza for days on end—no beans or even collard greens. And our mealie meal was running low. I could see the strain on my mother. She would make a pot every morning, and we’d eat it clean. In the evenings, our portions were smaller than usual. Simba complained he was still hungry.

  “Mai,” I said one day as my stomach groaned from hunger. “Let’s use Caitlin’s money for groceries.”

  She shook her head. “That is for your future, Martin,” she said.

  “Our future is now,” I explained.

  She reluctantly agreed, and then climbed on top of her bed to get the dollar from the box.

  We went to the post office to exchange it. The teller did not even have to check any charts or use a calculator.

  “One American dollar is twenty-four Zim dollars,” she said.

  My mother looked as surprised as I felt. My heart quickened. I nodded to her, and she exchanged the dollar.

  We went directly to the market and bought enough groceries for two weeks. That night, we ate beans and collard greens with our sadza. And the following morning, we had bread and tea for the first time in many months. It was April in Zimbabwe, but all this good food felt like Christmas—all thanks to my new friend in America.

  The next evening, with a full belly, I wrote Caitlin a letter. I thanked her for the very generous dollar bill and told her I would send her something in return soon. I considered sending her a Zimbabwean dollar but knew that was one day’s worth of sadza. So instead, I made the only promise that I knew I could keep: that I would always write back, no matter what.

  May 1998

  Caitlin

  SEVENTH-GRADE SPRING WAS RIDICULOUSLY busy, and dramatic—Drew asked me out again in December and then we broke up on New Year’s Eve. I wanted to start 1998 fresh—and that meant dating Brennan. He and I were together for less than a month when Christa told me that she liked him, too. That was tricky. By then, Christa was my best friend. Lauren and I were in a fight—she gave me back the Best part of our friendship necklace. Then Christa and I went to the mall and bought a new necklace, together. Then Christa got so mad at me for dating Brennan that she gave me back the Friend part of our necklace. So I was without a best friend, but still dating Brennan. I was torn—I really liked Brennan, but he wasn’t worth losing a best friend over. I broke up with him and he started dating Christa! I couldn’t believe she said yes! I was so upset that I didn’t invite her to my thirteenth birthday, on March 28. It was a Saturday, so I had a party and all my friends came—except Christa. Lauren and I were back to being best friends. I had six different best friends that spring, at different times and for different reasons. It was hard to keep straight. At least there was one constant in my life: Martin.

  He kept writing. Most of the other students in my English class had stopped corresponding with their pen pals after two or three letters, but by the end of seventh grade, I had at least six letters from Martin. I kept them all in my desk drawer. In the early ones, he’d ask simple questions, like What’s your favorite music? and What does your house look like? But in the last letter he sent me, he asked how much it cost to go to school. I figured he did not realize I was in public school—and I wondered if he would think differently of me as a result. I hoped not.

  In that same letter, he said his dad worked at a paper mill. I wasn’t sure what that was, or if we even had them in the United States. I bought all my stationery at Staples. And I did notice that while my stationery was either a pristine white with pale blue lines through it or pink with decorative edges, Martin’s was always different. Some letters were written on grainy gray paper; some were written on the back of homework assignments. Sometimes he wrote in pen; other times in pencil. But his penmanship was constant—a bubbly cursive. He always curled the tip of his h’s, and his z’s looked like chubby 3s. His letters always put me in the best mood. They were often funny, too.

  I had heard monkeys lived in the trees in Africa and asked him if that was true. He wrote back that there were lots of monkeys living in Mutare, and that he actually got into a fight with one once. Monkeys are really nasty, he wrote, which made me so sad, because I had wanted a pet monkey for the longest time. He said there were more baboons than monkeys in his hometown, and everyone considered them a nuisance. I think our baboons are like your squirrels, he wrote. In my response, I wrote that many people in the US thought squirrels were annoying, but I actually loved them—that’s because I loved all animals.

&nb
sp; At the time, I had a pet rabbit called Louis. I got him in sixth grade. He had long, floppy ears that bounced off the ground when he hopped. Louis was so attached to me that one day he followed me out the door to go visit Heather, my best friend and neighbor. It was the sweetest thing! He started following me all over the neighborhood. My mom put a little bell on his collar so we always knew where he was, which was unnecessary because he never left my side. He became our neighborhood mascot. When I played kick ball in the street, he’d run whenever I ran. The only time it was a problem was when we played flashlight tag. Everyone always knew where I was, because Louis’s bell would ring. I told Martin about Louis, expecting him to tell me about his pets. Instead, he wrote, The story of your rabbit is very amusing indeed! In Zimbabwe, we eat rabbits! They are quite delicious!

  I was so horrified, I didn’t know how to respond, so I put that letter aside and then got so swept up with life. When I finally sat down to write him back several weeks later, I made a point not to mention Louis.

  I ended with: If you could please send me a new picture of you so I can show my friends how nice you are! You are the best pen pal that I have ever had. Again, I am so sorry for not writing back right away! Thank you for being a great friend. Best of friends.

  Before I sealed up the envelope, I remembered that in all my crazy drama, I forgot Martin’s birthday, which was three weeks before mine. I also remembered that I wanted to send him a Reebok T-shirt—his birthday was the perfect reason.

  I called Lauren to see if she wanted to go shopping later that afternoon. My mom drove us to a discount store in town called Ross, where I found a white shirt with blue trim that had REEBOK across the front in matching navy blue. Perfect, I thought.

  As I was paying for it, Lauren asked, “Caitlin, are you like in love with Martin?”