Sefu sat outside his hut, resting. He listened to Kondo without commenting, his eyes locked on the fire below the lamb that was cooking for the evening meal. Though the sun had vanished beyond the horizon, darkness had not yet come, and the earth radiated the heat it had absorbed during the day. The sheet-metal door was ajar, and the sound of female chatter hovered in the air along with the scent of the searing meat. Kondo could hear children laughing in the distance and a woman’s sharp voice, Sefu’s first wife’s, Kondo imagined.
“You have the final word, Sefu,” said the old man after having set out the matter.
“Why ask my opinion on something I am completely indifferent to?” said Sefu. “You decide. You’ll make my mother happy. She will be the only one to use the name. I, surely, shall never utter it.”
Though Kondo was able to quash the conflict around the zeru zeru this time, he anticipated that future battles would arise that would cause casualties. He prayed to the Spirits of the Lake that they not tear his village apart.
On the Sunday of the baptism, as Nkamba sang a soft tune, she bathed the baby, rubbing her with a cloth soaked in warm water and soap. She wrapped the child in bright-colored fabric she’d bought the day before. At the service, no one from Nkamba’s family was present, nor was the baby’s mother. Nevertheless, standing before Father Andrew, cradling her granddaughter, the woman was happier than she had been for many rainy seasons.
“What would you like to call her?” asked Father Andrew.
“I believed you’d give her a name,” she replied.
“I told you I would baptize her. You must choose the name.”
Nkamba thought for several moments and then looked at her child’s serious countenance. “She will be called Adimu[6].”
Father Andrew nodded. “What could be more fitting.”
Yes, she is special, just like my own first child, Nkamba thought.
At that joyous moment, the old woman couldn’t have imagined that before too long her beloved granddaughter would be taken from her as her own unnamed daughter had been.
8.
The night Adimu was conceived, as well as on the day of her disappearance one year after her birth, Charles Fielding was on Ukerewe Island near the village of Murutanga. Mr. Fielding, a white African and owner of a gold mine in Mwanza—on Tanzania’s mainland—was born and raised in Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, as were his parents and grandparents, descendants of the first English colonists who landed in the Empire’s possessions shortly after the colonization of the southern hemisphere.
From the time of his birth, Charles had been away from Africa only for three interminable years. That period spent in England had been the worst of his life. The doctors called what he suffered “depression.” He knew, though, the diagnosis was incorrect. What was destroying his very soul and body was “homesickness.” His one desire was to return to the African continent. The specialists who had examined him had never set foot in Africa. They had no notion of how the land entered one’s blood or of the true color values behind the words “green,” “orange,” “yellow,” “blue.” No, not the shades one glimpses in this chilly urban penitentiary with the odor of combustion and exhaust but the tones of my homeland, he thought, with not the slightest trace of England’s epithet gray. The colors in Africa, so pure, so alive, drenched in the scents of the flower, fruit, and plant that lend their names.
Homesickness it surely was, and to simply survive, he basked in memories of his experiences on the golden continent. When he gazed at his good luck charm, he felt less alone. The small gold nugget had been mined by his father who had given it to him for his fourteenth birthday. The stone was the size of a walnut—rough and bright yellow like a canary with ochre bands—embedded in a cage-like setting and attached to a chain. Rather than set it on his desk, he hid it in his pocket. He would always keep it with him, he had assured his father.
At Oxford, where he studied economics, he’d met Sarah, the woman who would become his wife. From the day they first kissed, they were inseparable. Charles proposed on one knee, slipping on the ring that had belonged to his grandmother, which had arrived, via his mother, from Zimbabwe. The two lovebirds blushed when, awkward young man that he was, he placed the ring on his beloved’s index finger, and Sarah gently guided him to her ring finger. The three-carat white pure Asscher diamond was the most beautiful gift Sarah had ever received and the only jewelry she would ever wear. She promised him she would not remove it until the day they gave it to their daughter.
Once he obtained the piece of paper that attested to his university degree, Charles convinced his wife to abandon her studies, and, saying goodbye to Europe forever, Charles returned to his Africa with his Sarah by his side. Although he was unable to live away from the land he considered home, Charles, like his parents and his grandparents, felt “European”—English, to be exact. He would come to realize, eventually, just how much his perception was distorted.
From the time he was a child, Charles was attracted to any object that captured light. As an adult, he developed a proclivity for small shiny things with a value of tens of dollars or more per gram.
It was during his early years that his father taught him the power of wealth. Mr. Finley Fielding was forever traveling, either for business or between bed partners. Once Charles learned how money made the man, he could not do without it.
One hot day, when Charles was playing alone in his room with a couple of gold nuggets, he heard his father’s car being parked in the courtyard, and he saw the man enter the house. Finley had been away for quite some time on a business trip, and, overcome with anticipation, the son ran down the long staircase to the ground floor, threw open the door of his father’s study, and lunged toward the man, hugging him about the hips.
“What are you doing? Stop behaving like a dog,” Finley said, shaking his son and holding onto his arm. “Don’t you see I’m speaking with your mother?”
Charles, excited, waved the piece of paper he was holding in his hand. “Now you’re up to ten nuggets all together!” he shouted.
“Never a request for a horse or toys suitable for your age,” the father said with good humor as he looked at his son while digging into his jacket pocket to extract a silk pouch, embroidered with his initials. “However, I believe your calculations are incorrect. Ten nuggets are too many.”
The boy read from the piece of paper in his hand. “Two because you forgot to come to my end-of-year recital, two more because last year you were away.”
The woman looked at her husband, an expression of reproach in her eyes.
“Two because Mama and I always dine alone,” continued the boy. “And two more because you’ve never taken me riding. And the last two because you forgot to come see me play cricket, even though you had promised. All together that makes ten. Nuggets or gold coins!”
The father gave the pouch to his son. “Count them carefully,” the man said.
Charles counted eight small gold nuggets and seven coins. “Yes, I have what I need.”
“Are you sure? Did you take exactly ten?” insisted Mr. Fielding, jerking the bag from his son’s hands. “Now we’ll count them together, and if you took more than ten, I’ll keep everything because you lied,” he warned.
Charles became hysterical, thrashing his fists at his father’s chest. “I didn’t think you’d count! Give them to me; they’re mine! You’re never home, and I deserve them.”
The telephone rang, and Charles’s mother ran to answer it. “Finley, the minister is on the phone. He says it’s urgent.”
“Here, take them and stop whining,” Mr. Fielding said, handing the pouch to his ornery son. “We’ll talk about this later. Now Daddy has important things to do.”
That evening, the boy cried himself to sleep, clutching his treasured gold.
* * *
As an adult, Charles would awaken at six. Though he had stopped smoking ten years earlier, every morning he would light a cigarette without touching it to his lips. He
’d set it on the ashtray and let it burn. It was his way of testing his volition. Once his cigarette ritual was performed, he checked prices quoted for precious metals and the official exchange rate for principal currencies. He read the first page of the Times and the Sunday Mail that his faithful assistant, Jackob, set on his desk before 6:45 a.m. and, after completing his morning rites, he went into the kitchen where his wife prepared his breakfast.
Sarah had followed Charles to Africa without a moment’s hesitation. He had been her one true love. Less than half a step behind him at all times, she saw herself as his shadow. Nevertheless, before he had entered her life, she had been popular and formidable, a spirited young woman who was the sun to many satellites. She contained a powerful magnetism that she never acknowledged, and it was that which attracted Charles. Although Charles was drawn to her strength, she was drawn to his vulnerability. When it came to business he was a bull, and she loved his confident, commanding presence, but she sensed something tender behind his bluster. She heard a harmonic minor scale reverberating from his spirit and that reminded her of her father.
She had dreamed of having a conventional marriage and desired children—something they hadn’t discussed until after they were wed, though she had mentioned a daughter when Charles first proposed. As it turned out, she couldn’t conceive, and he didn’t wish to adopt, a frequent topic of conversation in their first years as husband and wife. In the end, she gave in. We’ll be together forever, and we’ll have our own type of happiness, even without children, Sarah repeated to herself every time the yearning for motherhood eclipsed her need to be a good helpmate.
On the day of Adimu’s birth, Sarah was with Charles on Ukerewe. They had bought the only building on the island that could be called a house in the Western sense of the word. It was a rectangular two-story brick structure with ten brick columns fronting it, creating a spacious veranda. That the home was white resulted in a striking contrast to that dusty place where the lightest color was the ochre soil. The doors—heavy, engraved wood—and the low walls of the patio, constructed with perforated brick, made it appear extravagant compared to the rest of the landscape. The natives of the island believed it had fallen out of the sky during a windy storm. Surrounding the house was a yard, bordered by centuries-old trees—so tall they created constant shade—that towered over the house itself.
“Finally a real home,” said Sarah with relief. For five years, since arriving in Africa, she had lived in houses with perimeter walls; this house, without a fence, gave her a reassuring sense of freedom. “Who was the previous owner?”
“It was built by the last king on the island, before Tanzania received its independence from the United Kingdom[7],” he said proudly. “I bought it from the heirs of a businessman who died when he was only thirty-three years old.” Her husband’s face became sad. Then his amused expression returned. “The homeowner’s stomach exploded because he disobeyed an inviolable law of this residence. One that will affect us, too, that is, if we don’t behave accordingly!” Charles snickered. “Jackob assured me. You trust Jackob, don’t you?”
His wife giggled.
“Ah, yes, no one but the king may have sexual relations inside the house.”
“Ours are not only sexual,” she said with an air of false reproach.
Charles recalled how amused he was when he had heard the legend.
“It’s a matter of witchcraft, sir,” his assistant told him. “And it is not a good idea to go against witchcraft.”
He had set his hand on Jackob’s shoulder and said, “But now I’m the king of the island.”
Charles left Jackob to his anxieties. Though he loved this land, he was glad, he said to himself as his hand felt in his pocket for his lucky gold nugget, that his English upbringing caused him not to believe in these silly superstitions.
After a few connubial squabbles about the name, they decided to call it “White House.” Charles held that he had suggested it for its color, even if the high-sounding appellation offered association with another residence. The house was certainly worthy of an important man. The most important man. A king among the most important, he reminded himself.
Once refurbishments to the interior were complete, Charles and Sarah turned their attention to the garden and veranda. Shrubs and flowers were planted, arches and statues were ordered from grand department stores to embellish the open spaces, and heavy wrought-iron benches were imported from England, as were garden furniture from the colonial forge. After a long wait, every nook was ready to accommodate the Fieldings. Charles joked to his wife that at White House, they would rule over man and beast, and though Sarah laughed along with her husband, the statement couldn’t help but make her flinch.
9.
Two coal black eyes were spying the house where Nkamba and Adimu lived, a single, rectangular room built from mud and sand brought from the shore of the lake and supported by an inner framework of woven tree branches. Season after season, rain eroded the outer layers, and near ground level, the roots of the plants used as foundation began to show. The home looked like an extravagantly shaped tree trunk, one of those oddities that nature seems to invent for no reason other than to startle humans. The roof was made of branches, held together with hemp cords and strips of palm leaves that were wrapped around a thick plastic tarp covered by a heavy mantle of long dry grass. It slanted steeply on all four sides of the hut to facilitate runoff during the rainy season. The door was made of sheet metal, rusted and reinforced by branches that Nkamba had added during Adimu’s first weeks of life. From the outside, one barely noticed the holes Nkamba had drilled next to the entrance so she could look out at night without being seen. The inside of the hut was darkened by soot from the cooking fire in a corner on the packed earth floor. On the other side of the hut were the palm mats used for sleeping. Her furnishings consisted of a small table and two plastic chairs, a container for water, a few cooking utensils, a pile of wood and charcoal. The bathroom was outside, a hole in the ground about six feet deep, partially covered by planks of wood. Behind the hut was a spacious yard, marked off by a fence made of dry, thorny branches. Originally the fence had kept grazing animals away from the house, but after Adimu’s birth, instead of a barrier to protect from intruding creatures, it had become a border established by others to isolate the old lady and the zeru zeru. Inside the fence grew three large papaya and two imposing mango trees. Under one of these lay the body of Kheri, Nkamba’s husband.
* * *
Darkness terrified Nkamba, and she cursed the moon and the stars. From the first night of her granddaughter’s arrival, the slightest sound woke Nkamba. She imagined a criminal hidden in the shadows might attack or kidnap Adimu. Nkamba developed an obsession with danger. She knew that only her rough and caring hands guaranteed the girl’s safety.
In order to confuse the neighbors, she’d spend several nights each week sleeping in the forest. She feared those with evil intentions might hide in plain sight: moving locations would trick them. With Adimu fastened securely to her back, she ventured into the woodlands directly from the fields, always seeking new, well-hidden places. Under the green forest arches, cloaked in blackness, Nkamba kept vigil, her eyes and instincts alert in the gloom, ready to sense a threatening presence. Thus, she held the child in the hollow formed by her bony legs.
Nights spent in the hut were marked by agitation. The grandmother was afraid of dogs though always saved leftovers for them with the hope of keeping some feral ones nearby. They would be a deterrent for troublemakers and act as an alarm if someone came near. She reinforced the door with green branches—the most robust—and made arrangements for her bodily needs during the night.
Although her life had been upended by the arrival of her granddaughter, Nkamba did not neglect her husband. Upon returning from the fields of cassava and corn, she often sat under the mango tree and prayed at his tomb. Immobile, eyes half-closed, she’d whisper confidences while the baby sat on a straw mat in the shadiest spot under the thi
ck, oblong leaves.
Most Sundays, grandmother and grandchild went to Mass. Nkamba believed there were never enough blessings for her little treasure. Surely some god would take her under his protection. For this reason, she prayed to them all, in particular to Mosi’s one and only—the one that procured Adimu a name—known to have special regard for the weak and defenseless.
However, on one particular Sunday, after Adimu had completed a cycle of seasons, the child’s restlessness prevented church attendance and an unexpected event occurred. On that Sunday, Adimu fidgeted on the mat and refused her manioc mush. Nkamba would get some milk for the baby, leaving her inside rather than exposing her to the sun, the child’s true enemy. Most of the village was at Mass, at home, or at the lake. The old woman peered through the peepholes before leaving her hut. No one around. Nkamba slipped out. In her hands she held a bowl to collect milk from her small herd.
Two coal black eyes, belonging to a young woman who was concealed behind a pile of stones and bushes, watched Nkamba leave the hut. As soon as Nkamba disappeared behind the first curve of the path, the clandestine woman, her face wrapped in blue fabric, came out of hiding and, with quick steps, approached the house. Adimu was lying on the mat, her white arms by the sides of her small body. The woman in blue lifted the baby, careful not to upset her, and she withdrew into the forest.
10.
Charles and Sarah spent the following morning preparing a list of things they needed for their domestic milieu. Jackob, who understood how to satisfy Mr. Fielding from years of close contact with his employer, took note of each request. The assistant had worked for white men since he was a boy and knew from experience how exacting they could be. Mr. Fielding, though, was distinct from other bosses. He was white and African, and Jackob considered him a great man, through and through.
Then She Was Born Page 4