Moses had little interest in work after the scene with Amy, so he finished earlier than usual that night. When he entered the hut, however, he found it empty. He looked around the shamba and could see that Rosy had not been tending the garden as she should have. Then, a few minutes later, she walked up the path. Rosy looked surprised and embarrassed to see him home already.
"You are earlier than me tonight," she said in Luhya, giggling. "Are you sick?"
"Where have you been?" he asked sternly in their mother tongue. "School finished two hours ago."
"I was visiting Winky. She said you came by this afternoon too." And she laughed.
"You can't do the planting and visit Winky at the same time," he said. "We will need the maize just to live when I start buying bricks."
They had already dug foundations for their future home, and the trenches were waiting for the walls to go up.
"Moses, I won't be here," Rosy said. And she neither laughed nor giggled.
So, it was true. She was going to move in with Winky. The options open to him raced through Moses' head before he spoke. He could see they were few.
"You can visit her," he pleaded. "Every day, if you like. But I need you, Rosy. Stay here with me. Please?"
"You don't need me," she said, and the customary laugh returned. "I eat more food than I grow." And she laughed again.
"It's not about food, Rosy." Moses was begging now. "You're my sister... my family. I want to take care of you. I don't want to live here all alone."
Rosy had never heard Moses express his feelings so candidly. It touched her deeply. She walked up to him and gave him a hug.
"Thank you," she said, leaning her head on his shoulder. And once again, there was not a hint of her habitual foolishness.
Moses did not know if the hug meant that she was going to stay; he did not want to know just yet. It was just good to have her there. So they worked together quietly on fixing dinner, ate in relative silence, and then sat together in the yard, after the sun had gone down, just looking at the stars.
"Do you believe in God?" Rosy asked, when they had not said anything for quite some time. It was a deep question coming, as it was, from a twelve-year old. Throughout the conversation that followed, she never laughed once.
"Yeah, sure," Moses said. "Why?"
"Does he talk to you?"
"Talk to me? Of course not! I just believe in him; I'm not a prophet or something," Moses retorted.
"Do you talk to him, then? Do you ask him what he wants you to do?"
"If I can't hear him, how can he tell me what he wants me to do?" Moses laughed. "Rosy, I just try to be nice to people, that's all ."
"Everybody likes you," Rosy said.
"Right, and if you're nice to people, they'll like you too," said the big brother.
"It's the best way to get ahead. It worked for me... in America, and in my business."
After a long silence, Rosy asked, "But what about God? Don't you try to be nice to people for him?"
"No, I do it for myself, Rosy. If you don't take care of yourself, no one else will."
Another pause. Then Rosy said, "God talks to me."
"Wah!" Moses turned around to face his sister as he asked her quite earnestly "What does he say?"
"Not like a voice, but like in my heart," she said. "Like I know I have to do something." Disappointment showed on Moses' face, as Rosy went on: "I know I have to go with Winky. He wants me there. It's about something big that is going to happen."
"Are we going to go back over that?" Moses asked angrily.
Rosy did not answer. And Moses did not say anything more.
An hour later, Rosy went to the mattress on her side of the hut, lay herself down, and fell asleep.
The next morning, when Moses got up he noticed that his sister's bed was empty. She must be working in the shamba, he thought. But when he went out in the yard there was no sign of her.
He raced back into the hut, pulled a box out from under her side of the couch, where Rosy kept her clothes, and it was empty.