Untangling a Knot

Friday morning, I am feeling overwhelmed by last night’s conversation, so I decide to get grounded in something right in front of me. My poor target was Christine, a girl of about 12 or 14. She is sitting in a wheelchair with useless feet and very busy hands – she is knitting something with some rough yarn. I ask her, what are you doing? No answer, she just darts her eyes and looks away. Okay, leading questions. You must have spun that yarn yourself? Same, but with the very slightest nod of affirmation. In retrospect, I don’t think she’s actually understood me at all.* I ask her if I can watch, and she nods yes, but when I sit down next to her she seems uncomfortable. Someone comes over to her, another kid, and they converse in Acholi. I stand up after a minute. I don’t want to walk away just yet, but I am at a loss. Standing up creates a little more distance, and I try to think of a way to talk without language about our mutual interest in knitting. I watch her hands move, and then she becomes irritated with a pile of tangled red yarn in her lap. She throws it on the ground. Her friend picks it up, tries to tease it apart, and drops it with disinterest after just a moment. She has unwittingly given me just the opening I need. I am expert at untangling knots (and I invite you to bring me your tangled balls of yarn. What patience I lack for other areas of life I make up for in this.) I move to pick up the yarn, asking if it’s okay if I help, and Christine gives me another nod. Was that the ghost of a smile I saw? I wanted to think so, but I never get another one. I begin working at the knot. It is a doozy – five or six separate strands that have been co-mingling for days. Every once in a while, I glance over at Christine. Sometimes she looks at me, sometimes not. Other kids come up to her and talk. A toddler comes around and she shoos him away without missing a stitch. Each time I pull a stand free from the mass of yarn, I wind it around my fingers, leaving a tail in the center of the ball to pull from. I wonder if that’s how she does it, or if she would know to pull from the center; the yarn she is working with is wrapped around a well worn stick-spindle. I place each ball of neatly untangled yarn next to her wheelchair (which, incidentally, was nothing more than a regular chair with wheels attached). We steal glances at one another, each time lingering a little longer, but her expression does not change. I finish the last bit of knot with regret. Christine is busy with her hands. Her small piece of fabric had grown. I pick up the detangled packages of yarn from the ground and hand them to her. She barely looks at me. Thank you, I say. She turns back to her work, and I walk away, wondering, discouraged.

*The kids here in Gulu are raised speaking Acholi and don’t start learning English until primary school, but even so, many kids don’t speak English at all. Most adults use Acholi as their primary language, and it is not spoken regularly at home. Acholi is the first language at the orphanage as well.