Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb

earning my keep. I didn’t have the option of going blank.

a single wellington boot
    I contributed to Nouria’s household in the ways that I could. I took the broom from her hands, swept away the dead insects and the cat and goat feces and sprinkled water over the dirt to settle the dust, leaving Nouria free to take in more laundry. She rubbed her hands raw washing richer women’s clothes in a big tub filled with water that her oldest boy, Anwar, carried by the jerry can each morning from the river beyond the city wall. Later, we used the pinkish brown laundry water to wash our faces, hands and feet, then our dishes and our own clothes. When the water was black, we threw it into the street, where it trickled downhill and eventually seeped into the parched ground.
    The boys spent most of the day lingering in the market, selling peanuts or, when there were no customers or peanuts, begging. They kept their eyes glued to the fruit and vegetable stands, ready to pounce on anything rolling away from its seller. At the end of the day they scavenged for anything spoiled and discarded, returning home with the soft, battered remnants of what had once passed as food.
    Nouria’s twin girls, meanwhile, spent most of their time playing—shoeless and filthy—in the streets. I would often find the smaller one, Bortucan, sitting alone in the road eating dirt. Seeking nutrients where she could.
    The birth of the twins had changed Nouria’s fortune, not that her prospects, coming from the poor Oromo background that she did, had ever looked particularly bright. Like her cousin Gishta, though, Nouria aspired to belong among the Harari—their wealth and privilege powerful aphrodisiacs—and had made the language, the food and the customs her own.
    When her husband died—of some mysterious illness called ground disease, people said—Gishta had encouraged Nouria to find a Harari man just as she had. Nouria did her best: for several years she had been a Harari man’s mistress, and although he had given her an allowance that enabled her to send her two boys to school, he did not ask her to marry him. When she got pregnant, he cut off relations altogether.
    The boys were forced to drop out of school and go back to the streets; Nouria was forced to beg rich Harari women to let her do their laundry. She would not go back to being a household servant, as she had been as a child. She would not surrender her own home. Rahile gave up mother’s milk for water and stale bread and the black flesh of overripe bananas. Bortucan, however, still refused to let go of her mother’s breast, whether milk was forthcoming or not.
    Dinner, which I would help Nouria prepare, was a modest meal, a stew made of onions and lentils and chili peppers sopped up with stale injera, or sometimes injera and ground red chili pepper alone.
    We relieved ourselves on a patch of ground behind the kitchen, wiping with the left hand, pouring water over the left with the right. We tiptoed in flip-flops—mine hand-me-downs from Gishta—across this patch of earth, its slippery brown sheen no doubt caused by ingesting these foul-smelling thin stews made from poisonous water.
    Nouria didn’t deny my help because it allowed her to earn more income, but there was no easiness between us as we settled into our reluctant arrangement. I knew this was not simply due to the limitations of language.
    The children, on the other hand, were proving to be a blessing. The boys soon got over the giggle-inducing, wide-staring curiosity of having a foreigner in their midst, though they would still drag people to have a look at me over the corrugated tin fence and then beg to be paid for providing entertainment. I simply waved at the women and children who peered over, which would send them into flight. I hoped that the novelty would eventually wear off, though thousands of people lived within the city’s walls.
    I felt immediately protective of Bortucan because she was in much greater need of