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

  The question caught me off guard, and was hard to answer.

  “I love him like a brother,” I said finally.

  “Ew,” she said. “That’s like incest.”

  “You know what I mean!” I said, swatting at her. “He feels like a member of my family.”

  Back home, I wrapped the shirt and attached a note that read, This is what all the cool kids in Hatfield wear.

  June 1998

  Martin

  THE POSTMAN DELIVERED MAIL to Chisamba Singles every Saturday. I would wait for him to arrive on his bicycle, hoping there might be something from Caitlin. He would always ring his bell and then call out the names of people who had letters and packages. Whenever I heard his husky voice shout “Martin Ganda,” I would sprint as fast as I could, knowing it had to be from Caitlin. I’d then spend the next hour reading and rereading whatever she had written. Her stories let me imagine what it was like to be an American teenager. We were growing up together, ten thousand miles apart, as she once wrote in a letter. I’d always share her news and photos with my family and friends, who by now considered her their friend as well. Her letters lifted everyone’s spirits. After I had practically memorized every detail, I would give them to my mother, who kept them in the biscuit tin.

  One June morning, the postman handed me a large envelope. It was bigger than a textbook and squishy. I knew it was from Caitlin by the small hearts, smiley faces, and stars that decorated the package. Next to my name, she wrote BFF in purple glitter ink. I knew, thanks to her, this meant Best Friends Forever.

  I fought the urge to open the package right there, in front of everyone else waiting for mail. Back home, I decided to go inside our hut. I wanted privacy. Since we shared a common outdoor area with four families, someone was always hanging around. The joke was, if you wanted privacy, you just had to close your eyes. But during the day, our home was usually empty. With no electricity or windows, it was always dark. It was just a place to get dressed in the morning or to sleep at night. I slipped inside, thankful for the cool quiet.

  I saw the letter first, taped to a package on which Caitlin wrote HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, MARTIN! also in purple glitter ink. I was very touched. I had heard that rich people in Zimbabwe have parties and get presents on their birthdays, but mine always passed like any other day.

  The only gift I ever received was when I turned ten.

  That evening, my father asked, “Martin, what’s today?”

  “March ninth,” I replied.

  And he said, “You know you’re ten today, right?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said, smiling. “I almost forgot.”

  He grabbed my hand and led me to the woman who sold soft drinks down the road. He told me to choose my favorite.

  “Fanta,” I said.

  We usually got one every Christmas. My father would buy one for each kid, and we would each sip ours slowly, savoring every drop, hoping to make it last as long as possible. That was how we celebrated. The last Fanta I had was two Christmases ago—at the beginning of the economic troubled time. My father could only afford one that year, so we passed it around, taking small sips, holding the sunshine-sweet liquid in our mouths for as long as possible before giving in to a swallow.

  I carefully peeled back the tape on Caitlin’s gift and could not believe what was beneath the festive paper: an authentic, genuine Reebok T-shirt! Even the wealthy kids who went to my school and lived in houses and ate three meals a day could not afford such a precious thing. Their shirts were knockoffs from South Africa or Mozambique. This one had a tag that said Made in America! Proof it was the real deal.

  I changed into it immediately. The material felt so good against my skin. I had never owned anything new in my life. Even our school uniforms, which we had to buy each year, were secondhand, and often thin or torn in spots. This shirt was thick and smelled sweet, like ripe fruit. I wondered if Caitlin had sprayed it with perfume, or if this was just how a new thing smelled. Either way, it made me feel powerful, like Superman putting on his cape.

  Before I walked back outside, I pulled the Made in America tag out of the collar, so people could see this was not some cheap knockoff from Mozambique. And then, smiling wide with lungs so full of air, my chest puffed out, I walked outside.

  “Where did you get that?” Nation asked, amazed.

  “From Caitlin,” I said, beaming.

  He grabbed the hem and rubbed it between his fingers.

  “Wow!”

  “It’s the real deal!” I said, and pointed to the tag.

  Nation whistled and slapped my back. “Now you look like a professional movie star, Martin!” he said.

  I felt like one, too. At least a dozen people commented on my new shirt and many asked to touch it.

  I wore it to greet my father that evening, but he barely seemed to notice. Usually, he would parade around bragging to all the neighbors that I got another gift from my American friend. Tonight, he simply said, “I’m happy for you, son.”

  I knew he was preoccupied; there were talks of layoffs at his work. A week before, he came home to say that the company had offered employees to be paid either in Zim dollars or in cups of mealie meal. Many chose food, but my father had to cover school fees as well as rent and food. I could see the concern all over his face; his eyes were always distant, his mouth downturned. He had been working at the mill more than eighteen years—it was all he knew how to do. But if the rumors disturbed him, he did not say. Then one night he came home drunk. That caused a big fight. My mother started screaming, “How can you spend money on beer when your children go to bed hungry?”

  He was too drunk to answer.

  I knew he was happy for Caitlin’s kindness—he just had bigger things on his mind.

  I wore my new shirt to school that Monday beneath my uniform, with the tag sticking up out of my collar. When I finally took it off to wash it a week later, I stood guard as it dried to make sure no one stole it. My father wore it that weekend, and then some days I’d come home from school to see it on my mother or on Nation. I realized that ever since it arrived, it was always on someone’s body.

  I wanted Caitlin to know how much I appreciated her generosity, but once again was not sure how to do it. That same month, our Post and Telecommunications Corporation, or PTC, fired more than six hundred people, causing the other workers to go on strike. Zimbabwe was in a full-fledged economic crisis: There were riots in Harare and Bulawayo—the government called in the army after people started smashing windows at grocery stores. Their reasoning was “since we cannot afford to buy bread, then we must just take it.” People were arrested or beaten as a result. A few even died, trampled or shot by police. Chisamba Singles was already rough—people always fought there. Sometimes it was a domestic dispute that spilled into the street. Other times, it was one man fighting another over an unpaid debt. These days, it was more often about food. Hunger makes people act crazy. I even witnessed one man knifing another for cutting the line to buy bread.

  I originally wanted to make Caitlin earrings, but then I spotted a pair of black-and-white speckled ones at the market and thought they would be the perfect gift. I started working on weekends, carrying luggage for people at the nearby bus depot. Now that money was so tight at home, it was the only way to buy postage. And now that the post office was on strike, I had more time to save up.

  The earrings cost twenty Zim dollars. After one day of carrying luggage, I had made four dollars in tips. So I went to the market every weekend for two months to save up for Caitlin’s gift. By the end of August I had enough for the earrings and stamps. I wanted real stationery—not the back of used homework, which was all I had to write on. My father used to bring scraps from work, but now that the factory was doing so poorly, that luxury ended. I asked him for help anyway, hoping for a miracle. The very next day, at dinner, he handed me two pieces of notepaper with the name and address of the Mutare Paper Mill. “Official stationery,” he said, explaining that his manager gave it to me as a
gift.

  “He often asks about you, Martin,” my father said, smiling. I think my father felt good that he could provide something special for me. That same night, after everyone else went to bed, I wrote Caitlin using the fire embers for light:

  September 1998

  Beloved queen Caitlin:

  Hi. How are you. I did not reply quickly because the Zimbabwean PTC where we buy stamps was on strike. I am very sorry. But never worry, Martin is always there for his best, Caitlin. I will always reply no wonder what happens, I swear.

  Thank you very much for the best present, the lovely beautiful high quality shirt I have ever received. Whenever I walk everyone stops me, touches the best quality, asks me where I got the wonderful shirt and I feel special because of you. Oh you are the greatest. I have really a loving AMERICAN friend.

  Guess what? I bought some beautiful earrings at a traditional shop for my best friend Cait. I hope you will like them.

  Please keep up your excellent art of markers. I really love it. How do you do it?

  I added a three-toed lion’s paw, a heart, and a star, trying to mimic her handiwork, and added, I can do it with my pen. You see!

  While there was so much more I could have said—about the crisis, about how hard it was to save money for the stamps, about how hard life was becoming in my country—I decided to keep it light on purpose. I didn’t want to trouble Caitlin with my life worries or scare her off. Plus, I didn’t think a girl who could send me a dollar bill or a Reebok shirt could ever understand. So instead, I simply wrote:

  As I have told you before I am not a son of a wealthy dad, your gift increased my clothes. Before I had been left with only an old shirt of my dad but your gift made me very happy.

  Lots of love, Martin.

  After I signed the letter, I placed the earrings in the middle of the page and then drew the image of two hands clasped in a handshake beneath them and wrote in all caps, NEVER LOSE HOPE. I will always reply. I underlined “will” and “reply” with three squiggly lines to make this point clear.

  I folded the letter around the earrings, and then placed both in the envelope, which my father had also secured for me.

  On that, I wrote: Thanks again for the most beautiful shirt I have ever had. I love you!

  August 1998

  Caitlin

  WHEN I HAD NOT HEARD back from Martin by July, I started to worry. He usually replied within a month. I figured he was busy with school and life. I certainly was. I had just started my first real job, as a camp counselor, which meant leaving my house every morning at seven thirty and not getting home until four thirty in the afternoon. It was fun entertaining six-year-olds all day, but exhausting. After work, I usually went straight home. I’d have dinner with my family and then hang out on our back deck with Heather, or play flashlight tag with other neighborhood kids. It was pretty uneventful, until my dad came home one night in early August, looking upset.

  “What is it, Rich?” my mom asked.

  “Have you heard the news?” he asked.

  Mom clicked on the TV to the BBC, her favorite news channel. The screen filled with images of people running through the streets of some faraway city, blood pouring down their faces. Two big men were carrying a limp body in between them, all three splattered with blood. Small fires flared in the streets as police cars arrived and sirens sounded. Bombing at American Embassy in Nairobi flashed across the bottom of the screen just as an announcer said, “This was an orchestrated attack. Truck bombs were parked outside the American embassies in both Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.”

  They were African capitals of countries not far from Zimbabwe. I knew this because ever since I started corresponding with Martin, I had been studying African geography.

  “Why would anyone do that?” I asked, dumbfounded.

  My dad shook his head and said, “There are evil people in the world, Caitlin.”

  “Will they strike again?” I asked. I was thinking about Martin. There were only two countries—Mozambique and Zambia—in between Tanzania and Zimbabwe. I knew Martin lived in Mutare—not in the capital, Harare, but still. The thought of him being affected in any way made my stomach queasy.

  “Honey, I have no idea,” my dad said. He was rattled.

  The following day, we learned that many people died from the attacks. The bombings marked the eighth anniversary of American troops arriving in Saudi Arabia. My dad used the word “terrorists.” I’d never heard that before and asked him to explain. “They planted a bomb that killed innocent people to make a political point,” he said. “They’re cowards.”

  The bombings were front-page news for days: Two hundred twenty-four people were killed in Kenya, ten dead in Tanzania. I was worried Zimbabwe would be next.

  That August, my family went on vacation to the Thousand Islands in Canada. We spent a week on a houseboat and brought Romeo, but left Kava home because Romey was a better swimmer and Mom was worried about how we would walk both of them if we were living on a boat. I was worried about being stuck in such a small place with my parents, especially when I realized we were basically sharing the same room—I had a bunk bed, they had a queen-size one, and the only thing that separated us was a curtain. It was like upscale camping and we actually had a blast. Every morning, Romeo and I would jump off the boat to swim. He would paddle over to a nearby rock or the shore so he could do his business. Then we’d swim back to the boat.

  On that trip, we visited a bunch of old castles, including Boldt Castle. It was named for its owner, George Boldt, a very rich man who had it built it for his wife. She died suddenly, weeks before they were meant to move in. The tour guide said that George was so heartbroken that he never visited the castle again, but kept it as a shrine to his wife. I was so touched by his story. The place was magical, like something out of a fairy tale. It had a drawbridge, and gardens shaped like hearts. The castle itself had 120 rooms—including a ballroom and a piano room. The Alster Tower was a separate building, twice the size of my home, that George Boldt had built as a playhouse for his children. It made me sad to think they never got a chance to play there.

  During that trip, my mom took a million photos. As we were flipping through the stack the week after we got home, I picked out several to send to Martin. In one, I was wearing my mom’s big-brimmed straw sun hat so I would not get sunburned on the top of my head. I was so blond that people thought I was an albino, and had such thin hair that my scalp sunburned easily. That shot was my mom’s favorite picture of me—I liked it, too. I wasn’t looking right into the camera but instead staring off into the sunset.

  That summer, I became obsessed with taking photos. My mom bought me an Advantix camera, which was so small it fit in my pocket, but it could still zoom in for close-ups or out for wide angles. I took five rolls of film on that trip alone and pasted them together to make collages when I got back home, one of which I pasted to my bedroom wall, next to my Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys posters. Richie passed my room as I was doing it, and poked his head in.

  “What, suddenly you are an artiste?” he said sarcastically, pronouncing it the French way, “ar-TEEST.” He hadn’t come on vacation, as he was leaving for his freshman year at California University of Pennsylvania, which was four hours west of Hatfield. He wanted to keep working at Sears to save as much money as possible.

  “Whatever,” I muttered. I was about to tell him to leave me alone, but I stopped. He was about to leave me totally alone that weekend. Instead, I said, “Shouldn’t you be packing?”

  “I am,” he said. I was thinking of a comeback, like, “Actually, you are bothering me,” but he was quicker.

  “Send this to your African friend,” he said as he tossed a T-shirt into my room.

  It fluttered, like a stingray beneath water, before settling in a tangle on my pink rug. I picked it up and smiled. It was Nike, another brand Martin had mentioned in his letter. Richie was a jerk, but sometimes he was a nice jerk.

  “Thanks,” I said as he disappeared down t
he hall.

  I sent that with a few photos I had selected from our vacation and several I took specifically for Martin of our backyard, our driveway, and the dogs. I wanted him to see what my life looked like in America.

  Several weeks into eighth grade, I finally heard from Martin. He sent me an envelope that had a slight bulge—I tore it open and saw a pair of earrings. They were tiny hand-carved birds, painted black with small white polka dots. He said they were called guinea fowls, which sounded very exotic. I imagined they were very expensive. He also explained that it took so long to respond because the post office had been on strike. I was so relieved that was the reason.

  I was also thrilled that he loved the Reebok shirt. He made a strange comment at the end of the letter, that it greatly increased his wardrobe. I had no idea what that meant, and was so swept up by his generous gift that I did not give it much thought.

  That fall, big gold hoops were super-popular. All my friends wore them, and I had at least a dozen pairs in various sizes and thicknesses. My new African earrings were unique. Nobody else could possibly have had them. And that made me feel special. Still, I was a little nervous the next morning as I slipped them on.

  Heather was the first to notice as we waited for the bus that morning.

  “Nice earrings,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Martin sent them to me.”

  “Your pen pal?” Heather asked.

  “Yeah,” I responded. “He got them at a traditional shop.”

  “That’s awesome,” she said just as the bus pulled up.

  At school, all my friends commented on them as well.

  “My pen pal sent them,” I explained every time. No one could believe that we were still in touch.

  “He still writes?” Halle asked at lunch.

  “My pen pal was lame,” Alison chimed in. “I got like one letter and that was it.”