by Donna White
“Are you all right, Eseza?”
“Eeh? Yes, I am fine. I am tired, that is all.”
“Well, eat first and then you can sleep. I’ll keep watch this time. I still have a few paintballs left.”
Eseza simply nodded and looked away.
Sam pulled out the food and set it on the ground. She grabbed Eseza’s knife from the bag, cut up the tomatoes, and put the slices between some buns. “Here,” she said, offering her a bun.
Eseza took a little bite and placed it on her lap. She stared down the road.
“What’s bothering you? You’ve been quiet ever since we turned at the intersection. Come on. You can tell me.”
Tears welled up in Eseza’s eyes and coursed down her cheeks. She wiped them away, but they continued to flow. She sobbed.
“Hey, hey.” Sam knelt beside Eseza and put her arms around her. “It’s okay.” Sam thought about her mom and the tears she cried after she had died. Sometimes things weren’t okay and there was nothing else a person could do but cry, because nothing anyone said could make it better. She said it differently: “Okay. It isn’t fine. But I’m here. Tell me what’s going on. I’m a good listener.”
“Not right now.” Eseza stood and walked into the field and sat in the tall grass.
Sam nibbled on her bun and took a drink from her soda. She looked into the sky and watched the sun climb to its peak. Leaning against the tree, she closed her eyes for a moment and then suddenly sat up.
She looked at the sun and then at the road. “The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. So that would make this east,” she said, holding out her right hand, “and that would make this way west.” She held out her left. “Then this would be north and that would be south.” Sam paused. “Then why are we going south? Charlie said he would meet us up north at the refugee camp, if he returned.”
Sam looked at the truck. Even from the road someone would see it behind the tree.
She walked over to Eseza, knelt at her side, and tapped her on the shoulder. “Eseza, I think we’d better get going. It’s not safe to be out here with the truck.”
Eseza stared into the distance.
“And I think we’re going the wrong way. Look, the sun’s going to the west right now, so that means we’re heading south. And I heard Charlie say that your son is in a refugee camp to the north.”
“No,” Eseza replied. “We are going the right way. We are going south.”
“But the camp’s in the north. Aren’t we going to get your son there?”
Eseza’s voice cracked. “No. We are not going to the camp, and I am not going to get my son.”
“But why? What are you planning on doing? Are we going north later?”
“No. Never.”
“But—”
“Did you see the look on Jonasan face when I told him I was a wife of one of the commander?” Eseza glared. “Did you see the disgust that filled his eye?”
Sam shook her head.
“Oh yes you did. You saw it. Now imagine if he or anyone was to find out that Maisha is Kony son. Can you not see what would happen to Maisha life?” Eseza’s voice got louder. Her eyes widened. “He would be ostracized by everyone from every town and village. He would be labeled as the son of the man who killed many many people. He would be seen as evil and horrid, possessed by the jok, never to be trusted, always to be feared. Do you not see this?”
“No, I mean, I never thought about it. I mean, sure he’s Kony’s son, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to be like his father. And people should know that, shouldn’t they?”
Eseza snorted. “Hmph! You have a lot to learn of the Ugandan way, muzungu woman.”
Sam was silent. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Eseza abandoning her child? A memory replayed itself—a scene that came to life every night before she went to bed or when she walked into the house or when she looked at her dad or when she washed the dishes or . . .
“Dad! Dad!” Sam screamed. She ran down the hallway, past the gurneys and the doctors, and through the emergency doors.
“Dad!” she screamed. “Where’s Mom? Where’s Mom?”
Her dad wrapped his arms around her, unable to speak.
“Dad!” she screamed. “What happened? What happened?”
He pulled her away from the door and tried to soothe her. “It’s not a good time for you to see her right now. It’s not—”
“Mom!” she screamed.
Sam grabbed Eseza’s hands and held them tight. “But you can’t just abandon him like that. Maybe you can take him away somewhere, and the two of you could live alone and you could tell people his father’s dead.”
“Live alone? Do you hear what you are saying? Do you even know how hard it is to survive here? I do not have a job. I do not have the schooling. I cannot raise a child by myself and work.”
“But you could make it work out. I know you can. You can’t leave him. You’re his mother. He needs you. He needs you! A child needs his mother!”
Sam squeezed her eyes shut. The image in her mind was like a 3D movie seen from the front row.
“Mom!” she screamed.
Her dad held her tight.
“Mom!” she screamed.
He whispered into her ear. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Mom! I love you! Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that?”
Sam opened her eyes.
Eseza pulled her hands away. “I know a child need his mother. Do not look at me like I do not have a heart.” She glared at Sam. “Do you not see that this is hard hard for me to do? Do you think I want to leave Maisha? Of course I do not. But it is for the best. Salume will raise him like he is her own, and no one will be the wiser of who he is and who is the father.”
The scene in Sam’s mind fast-forwarded.
“Why, Dad. Why?”
“I don’t know, Sam. I don’t know.”
Sam had to think. She had to say something to change Eseza’s mind. “But you’ll know, Eseza. You’ll know every day that you abandoned him. And every day you’ll think of him and wonder how he is and what he looks like. No, you can’t leave him. For his sake and yours.”
Eseza’s eyes brimmed with tears that rolled down her cheeks.
“Come on.” Sam grabbed her hand and pulled her up. “Let’s go back to the camp and find your son. It’ll all work out. We’ll make it work.”
Sam led her to the truck and opened the door. Eseza crawled into the cab and sat while Sam gathered the food and put it inside. She started up the engine and turned the truck around. She drove north.
Eseza stared out the window in silence. They drove past the row of tiny stores and past the fields. The sun started to make its way across the sky. Its beams shone through Sam’s window. She wiped the tiny beads of sweat from her face.
“I cannot help but think you have spoken this way to me because you have the experience in your heart, my dear Sam.”
“Yes, I do.”
“And why is that? Were you abandoned?”
“Yes. No. Sort of.” Sam paused. “My mother abandoned me when she committed suicide. And I know it’s not the same. Not really. But I feel abandoned. I feel like my mom didn’t love me enough to want to live. That her love for me wasn’t stronger than the depression. Otherwise she would have fought it and won.”
“But I want to stay with Maisha. It is just . . . I cannot.”
“But you see, Eseza, there will come a day when Maisha will learn the truth, that the woman who’s raising him isn’t his mother, and he’ll wonder why you left him. And all kinds of thoughts will fill his mind and he’ll come up with one conclusion: my mother didn’t love me.” Sam paused. “And do you want Maisha to think that?”
“No.”
“Then let’s go to the refugee camp and find him.”
Eseza glanced at Sam and stared at her hands folded on her lap. “You must think I am a horrid mother for wanting to leave Maisha.”
“No. I don’t. I think you were
doing what you thought was right because you love him.”
“Yes, I do love him. I think Maisha is what keep me strong through all this. He is what give me hope. I think the love between a mother and her child is very strong.” Eseza looked up at Sam. “You agree, yes?”
Sam stared straight ahead, using the road as her distraction. “I’m not too sure about that sometimes.” She paused, searching for the right words. “I mean, right now I hate my mom. I mean, I really hate her.”
“Of course you do, dear Sam. It must be hard hard for you. But there must be time you love her too. There must be some good time you think about that make you feel the sun on your face and make you smile.”
“Yes, of course there are.”
“Then can you not accept that with the love come the dirt also?”
“The dirt?”
“Yes, the dirt. We have a saying here in Uganda. ‘He who love, love you with all your dirt.’”
“Well, I sure got my share of dirt from my mom.”
“Yes, you did, dear Sam. But perhaps in time you will be able to forgive her for taking her life. Perhaps you will come to understand this depression and what made your mother do this. But in the meantime you can hate her and love her.” She reached over and squeezed Sam’s hand.
Sam offered her a half smile. “Dirt and all, eh? I suppose I can do that. Just wish I didn’t feel like I was buried up to my neck in shit, you know?”
Eseza laughed.
They drove on, past the fields, past the huts, feeling the heat of the afternoon sun on their faces. The truck began to slow, and the engine sputtered and it coasted to a stop. Sam pushed her foot on the gas, but the engine had died. She looked at the gas gauge. “Great. We’re out of gas. Guess this is as far as we can go.”
Eseza jumped out of the truck, grabbed the black bag from the back, and put it on her head. “Are you coming?” she called out to Sam.
“Are you coming?”
Sam sat bolt upright. She stared at the four walls around her. Faint blue, curtains, a thin green blanket, a trunk at the end of her bed.
A knock sounded at her door.
“I said, are you coming to the museum with me this morning? You told me last night you wanted to help Dr. Roget set up the displays. I’m leaving in thirty minutes if you still want to come.”
Sam stared at the pieces of the wooden box on the floor, and then at the leather sack of stones by her pillow. She opened her hand. A pile of black sand lay in her palm. She looked out her bedroom window as the sunbeams crept into her room, filling it with morning light.
She was home.
Chapter 27
Do not look where you fell, but where
you slipped. ~ African proverb
“Sam? Sam? Are you all right?” Sam’s dad knocked on the door again. He pushed the door open and stood in the doorway. Sam shook her head and wiped the dust off her hands.
“I’m . . . I’m fine, Dad.” Her voice shook. “Just had a long, crazy dream, I guess. Took me a while to wake up, that’s all.”
“Okay, just checking.” He walked into her bedroom. “What’s this?” he asked as he bent down and looked at the pieces of the wooden box on the floor.
“Oh, that,” Sam said, trying to clear her head. “It was a box . . . sort of a puzzle box. I found it with the uh, artifacts last night. I left it on the table and wanted to show it to you ’cause it wasn’t categorized with the rest of the items, but”—Sam rubbed her hand across her face—“we got busy with the coffin. You must have put your papers on it and accidentally brought it home last night in your briefcase. And when I was looking through it for the papers you gave us last night, I found the box.”
“And you broke it? Sam, that’s museum property! How could you?”
“But I didn’t break it. I told you, it’s like a puzzle. I can put it back together.”
“This is not good. Not good at all.” He gathered the pieces and tried to match one piece up with the other.
“It’s like this.” Sam took the diagram she had drawn and showed it to her dad. “This piece here goes into this one like this, but to hold it in place you need this piece here.”
He took another piece and tried to match it up.
“No, that one won’t work there, Dad. You see the slot here? It’s facing into the box. You need one with a slot that faces to the outside of the box, like this one.” Sam fit another piece into the puzzle.
The tone in his voice changed from anxious to astonished. “You amaze me, Sam. You’ve got quite the brain in there, you know?”
They worked on the box together until, finally, Sam held up the completed box and passed it to her dad.
“Oh, wow,” he said, turning it over and over, examining the carvings of the animals. “You know what this is, Sam? It’s an ancient Egyptian puzzle box, called a loghz box. They were used as a sort of safe. The owner would keep something very valuable inside because he knew it was well protected.”
“Protected? How? Anyone could smash it with a hammer and open it.”
“Well, if my memory serves me correctly, they would perform some sort of a ritual that would seal the box and curse anyone who opened it.”
“Guess I’m cursed then, eh Dad?”
“Yes. Quite cursed. You’ll be scrubbing the floors in the museum for this one. But I want to know: was there anything in there when you opened it?”
Sam glanced at the stones on her pillow. Her dad followed her gaze.
He picked up one of the stones and examined it. “Is this what you found?”
She nodded. “They were inside the sack.”
“This is amazing! You know what you have here?”
Sam hesitated. “No.”
“They’re talismans for an ancient Egyptian pharaoh. They believed these stones had great powers only the pharaoh was able to harness.”
“Really?”
“Yes, everyone had talismans, but the fact that these were kept in a loghz box tells me they weren’t thought of as ordinary talismans. Nope, you’ve found something really interesting here.” Her dad paused. “Come on, hurry up and get ready. We can show it to Dr. Roget. She should be arriving at the museum for the setup as soon as we get there.” He took the box and stones and walked to the bedroom door. “And have a shower and get changed. You don’t smell that good.” He left the room.
“This is way too weird,” Sam mumbled. She ran her finger over the coarse grains of sand that lay on the floor and rubbed them between her fingers. She stared at the faint rope burns on her wrists. “Way, way, way too weird.”
She looked at the trunk at the end of her bed. Opening the lid, she looked inside and stroked the paintball medal that lay on top of her blanket. “Dirt and all, huh Mom? Dirt and all.”
She walked into the bathroom and turned the shower on full throttle.
****
The warehouse in the back of the museum seemed eerily quiet and surreal. Although Sam had just been there last night—or was it a couple of days ago?—it felt like it had been years. She sipped her coffee, hoping it would somehow settle her nerves, but it didn’t. It was like she was in a daze, a dream, and nothing around her seemed real. She found her dad near the side counter, talking to a woman, and walked over.
“Dr. Roget, this is my daughter, Sam. She’s here to help you set up the displays, if that’s okay with you.”
Dr. Roget shook Sam’s hand. “Of course. I’d love the help.” She turned to a table behind her and picked up the puzzle box Sam’s dad had brought back to the museum. “This is impressive, Sam. It takes quite the skill to be able to open a loghz box. Many an archeologist has been driven mad trying to figure out how to open them. As a matter of fact, I remember a colleague of mine wanting to smash one open with the fossilized femur of an ornithopod, he was so frustrated.”
Sam’s dad laughed.
“But there’s something else that’s odd about the box, Jim. I’ve never seen it before, and I’ve worked at the museum for over twenty yea
rs now. And I didn’t see it when I packed the crates either. Look”—she took the inventory sheets from a file—“there’s no loghz box listed here.”
“Maybe it fell in there somehow. You know, someone knocked it in there accidentally.”
“But”—she pulled out her phone and showed them a message—“no one else at the museum has seen it before either. And Frank in shipping and handling said he never saw it, let alone placed it in the crate to ship here. It’s like it magically appeared.”
Sam caught her breath. “Yes, magically,” she stammered.
“Unless . . .” Dr. Roget tapped the edge of the table with her finger. “Unless Frank threw it in there as a joke or something. Be just like him to try to mess with me. Put me on a wild goose chase, trying to figure out where it came from. He probably got an old box from a toy store, rubbed some dirt on it, threw some old stones in it from a children’s rock collection, and tossed it in the crate.” Dr. Roget examined the box again. “And yet, this looks pretty authentic . . . but like I said, it would be just like Frank to pull a stunt like this.”
“Well, I’m taking a picture of it and putting it on the Canadian Archeological Association website. Joke or no joke, this is too good not to share. And who knows, maybe someone will have some info about it.” He took the box from Dr. Roget and passed it to Sam. “Here, you hold it for the photo. You found it.”
As Sam held the box, her dad emptied the four stones from the sack and placed them in her other hand.
He noticed the marks on her wrists. “What happened here, Sam?” he said as he gently touched the red abrasions.
Sam’s mind raced. “Uh, probably from paintballing yesterday. I don’t remember.”
“Looks rough there. Make sure you keep them clean, eh?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sure.”
“There, now just tilt your hands toward me so I can see everything. And smile. Try not to look so dead.”
Sam forced a smile while her dad took the photo.
“Great,” Dr. Roget said. “And just to play along with Frank, I’ll put it in this protective case and bring it back to the museum in Toronto when I head back tonight. I’ll feign total ignorance, tell him I think it’s some ancient loghz box. And then, with the help of your diagram, Sam, I’ll open it up. And Frank will stand there dumbfounded, wondering how the heck I did it.” She rubbed her hands together. “Oh, for once I’ll get him. I can’t wait to see the look on his face.”