Then She Was Born

by Cristiano Gentili

  “All of it stinks,” Thomas replied without breathing, fearful he’d give the wrong answer.

  The white man forced a laugh, tore the fish out of Thomas’s hands, and beheaded it with one clean swipe. “No, nigger,” he said, “fish always stink from the head!”

  Thomas and the other child soldiers stared at each other, their eyes bulging. None of them could decipher what the man meant.

  The white man picked up the headless fish and held it high so all could see. “Now it doesn’t stink anymore,” he’d shouted. He stepped close to Thomas and put a gun in his hand.

  “Shoot him, kill him,” he’d urged, kicking Thomas’s commander, the white man’s voice not much more than a whisper. The gun pointed at the leader, kneeling on the ground.

  Thomas’s eyes were drawn to the prisoner’s nape. It was covered with dirt and sweat and smeared with blood. His gaze lowered and locked on the rope that bound his commander’s hands behind his back.

  Thomas ran for an entire night. He ran far from his commander’s body that lay lifeless in the forest. Nevertheless, Thomas had been the one who’d stayed to hold his leader when he was in agony. The others had escaped. Thomas had wrapped the body in his arms, tried to stop the death spasms, continuing to ask himself, Why? Why? Thomas had endured the pain of triumphant loss, had even endured the pain from the machete that chopped off his index finger. As he ran and ran under the sharp-edged moon, he repeated to himself what the white man had said shortly before shooting his commander: “A fish stinks from its head.”

  Thomas’s commander was the closest thing he had to a father. And now the boy was alone, anger buried in a dark corner of his mind.

  Thomas had reached the age of twenty-five believing the words “life” and “death” described the same condition. He desired a happy life and, at the same time, wanted to die. Life and death—the hands on a clock that would sometimes meet, were part of the same mechanism. Each one setting the tempo for the other.

  Thomas’s thirst for vendetta had not a precise target, therefore, he vented his pain against all potential obstacles. He was trained to obey and would carry out any barbarous act. He had nothing to lose. He had stopped asking why. For these reasons, he was the perfect group leader to hunt for a zeru zeru.

  To Thomas, Zuberi said, “You will have to be very careful. You risk going to prison if you are caught, though it is more likely you’ll become rich. And an isope will bring you luck. Keep these things in mind. You’ll see, it will be easy to do, simple, just find a cadaver, a ngazu[19] that’s already dead.”

  31.

  Although Adimu had been invited back out in the boat with Antony, no friendship was born from the excursions. She’d sit in the bow, alone. The children evaded her with their eyes and words. To keep herself from feeling sad, she’d look at the lake and imagine she was sailing with someone just like her. During one of the outings, she saw a glass bottle without a cap floating in the blue, carried by the waves. Water had filled it halfway, and it seemed to be sinking. The bottle was like her, at the mercy of a force too great to fight against. She wanted to be caught by a fisherman named Charles and put on display on a table in a big room, or maybe placed in a refrigerator to hold milk for a newborn.

  Adimu had developed a ferocious hatred for her own skin. Sometimes she snuck behind her hut to dirty her arms, to make them darker. But the yellowish dust that stuck to her clothes only made Nkamba angry. One afternoon on her way home from school, Adimu saw some men handling a thick dark liquid. They were spreading it on the ground with the help of machinery. Curious, she moved closer, though still out of sight, and noticed that the black substance stained their arms and clothes. The worksite will be abandoned at sunset, and I can come back, she told herself. And in fact, when she returned later, she found the barrel from which the men had taken the liquid, and she peered over the edge. It was half full. When she poked her finger into it, the oily substance swallowed her finger completely, and when she pulled it out, she discovered that the color remained on her skin. It’ll stay black forever, she thought as she flapped her arms excitedly like a little bird inside a pool of clean water. The temptation to fill a bottle with the liquid was irresistible. Who will ever notice such a small quantity missing from the barrel? Adimu searched around until she found an empty plastic bottle lying in a bush. She filled it with the liquid and went home with her treasure hidden under her dress. During the night, she fantasized about the permanent stain and how it would make her like the other children.

  The next day when school got out, she went home to gather clothes and utensils that needed washing, as was her routine, and hid the bottle in one of the pots. At the beach, the shore was full of women washing clothes and dishes, children who were playing around them, and some fishermen who anxiously hauled in their nets with the hope of a catch. Adimu set her bundle down next to some bushes, and she waited. In the distance, a motorboat glided along on the glittering water.

  Suddenly, a child shrieked with joy. He had captured a fish in his hands. The silvery oval reflected the sun like a mirror, and the child gleefully ran with it, followed by his friends. As he ran, he tripped in front of Adimu, and the fish slipped out of his hands, falling at her feet. The group stopped, not knowing what to do with a fish that was so close to the mzungu. Adimu swiftly picked it up and, laughing, started to run. The children chased her across the warm sand that was white and soft, like powdered sugar. “How dare you play with us? You haven’t given us any of your hair!” shouted one of the boys.

  Adimu became afraid and, knowing that she couldn’t hold her advantage for long, tossed the fish on the ground. She hung her head from the insults that had been thrown at her and ran to the bush where she had left her things. Behind the vegetation, she pulled off her dress so she was only wearing her underwear. She opened the bottle and poured the dark liquid onto her body, rubbing it all over. First her arms and chest, legs and feet, and then her back. Finally she applied it to her face. She had to hold her breath because of its disgusting smell. She hoped that, with time, the sickening odor would go away. Completely covered by the black fluid, Adimu stepped out from behind the bush and ran after the other children. Frightened, they ran away. The mothers called to their children while the fishermen watched the scene, the nets slipping from the hands. “Who the hell is that?”

  “It’s me, Adimu!” she cried.

  The people recognized the voice and stopped to stare. She was blacker than they were and oily from the petroleum that made her shine in the sun. The women began to laugh, holding their bellies, and the children, caught up in the merriment of the adults, jumped around her.

  “I’m like you! Black like all of you!” she shouted, happy to be the center of attention.

  The children moved close to touch her and discovered that their palms became black and stained. “She painted herself!” exclaimed a frail boy whose eyes were half closed from some kind of infection. The bigger children studied her before they grasped what she had done. It was only dye. One boy dove into the lake, rolled in the white sand and jumped in front of Adimu, chanting, “You’re not like us, you’re not like us!”

  The adults laughed. Adimu was disheartened. Her joy had lasted such a short time! The boy who had captured the fish walked up to her and said she’d have to be punished for having stolen it from him. “I only wanted to play,” she protested, pushing her fists against her sticky thighs. No one listened to her. Instead, the children dragged her off by the arm and made her get in a boat. They touched her—something they never did—as though her black color made her a little like them, even if they would have sworn the opposite. Some of the children were afraid when they saw their palms were slimy and stained. She sat under the blaze of her worst enemy, the sun, as the boat traveled out into the water.

  Over the years, Adimu had become increasing intolerant of her bibi’s advice about avoiding the sun. She didn’t care about getting burned or spending sleepless nights due to the pain. All she wanted was not to feel di
fferent. All she ever wanted was to be part of a group of kids. However, that afternoon she wanted to be anywhere else but in the middle of the lake, stared at and taunted by the entire village.

  After a while, her skin began to burn, even though it was partially covered in tar. She untied her hair, and her great coppery mass covered her shoulders. She crossed her arms over her bare, blackened chest and changed positions frequently to alleviate her discomfort. She thought of her grandmother as a way to help her gather courage, but it made her even sadder. Her grandmother was right: everyone was against her, all of them enemies.

  Sarah was reclining on a striped deck chair in the motorboat that was gliding on the gentle waves, sipping iced tea with lemon. She was worried about Charles and his health. He was increasingly anxious and distant. And fat. He used to be handsome. She thought of how the weight would tax his heart. What was happening to him? Deep in her thoughts, she hadn’t noticed the small fishing boat drifting on the lake, not far from their large motorboat, until she heard voices. One child had caught a big fish and others on the shore were shouting, excited. Sarah saw a black figure with blond hair glinting in the sun. She stepped into her boat’s cabin to get binoculars and called to her husband to come out on deck with her. When she lifted the binoculars to her eyes, she was sure.

  For a moment, she and her husband were a team, both outraged by the cruel children in the run-down fishing boat. Before their skippers maneuvered closer to the girl, Sarah dove into the water and, when she came up for air, called Adimu’s name.

  It’s the dessert woman! Adimu thought. She stared at Sarah, astonished.

  “Jump,” shouted Sarah. “I’ll catch you!”

  Adimu, who couldn’t swim, was terrified. The other children didn’t understand why the foreign woman was so interested in their zeru zeru. Sarah held onto the edge of the fishing boat and caught Adimu’s arm. Adimu heard the jeering of the children. It would be better to die now, she thought, rather than keep living this way. She let herself fall into the water and Sarah, with the help of her husband and the skippers, who had come closer with their boat, pulled her aboard.

  They took Adimu to the Fielding clinic. She was meticulously washed and treated where her thin skin had burned. “Go find the grandmother and bring her here,” Charles told Jackob.

  The old woman did not say a word during the trip in the car. She sat rigid with her gaze straight in front of her, Jackob’s attempts at conversation in vain.

  Jackob and Nkamba arrived at the clinic in the late afternoon. Sarah tried in every way to convince Nkamba that her granddaughter should stay overnight for observation as the doctor advised. The grandmother was unyielding.

  “With time, they will understand,” said Nkamba, referring to the inhabitants of the village. “My girl is not evil. For now, I am the only one who loves an embulamaro.”

  “Your granddaughter could have died today,” exclaimed Sarah. “And tonight she may be very sick.”

  “I thank you for your help. It is the price my granddaughter must pay for being in this community. She will come home with me.”

  Sarah understood why, years earlier, the old woman had grabbed the baby out of her arms and swiftly fled.

  Nkamba sat in the waiting room while Adimu rested. The grandmother’s dark, wrinkled hands contrasted with the light-colored chair. Her bright traditional dress was the only accent of color in the antiseptic environment.

  Though Sarah felt a rush of anger, she had to accept the old woman’s decision. She gave Nkamba the medicines the doctor prescribed and walked her into the hospital room to help her awaken Adimu. The grandmother tried to lift the girl but she was too heavy, and Nkamba was forced to ask a nurse for help.

  Sarah watched them leave, the curved, frail body transporting Adimu, who was almost her size, and the child leaning on her shoulder.

  When Sarah returned home, she told Charles that she would wait no longer to have Adimu over for lunch. She felt a connection with the child and was driven to atone for the hard-hearted children who rejected the little girl.

  As a child, Sarah’s classmates shunned her once the rumor got around that her father had committed suicide. She knew how it felt to grow up without friends. Now destiny kept on placing her in the path of this unfortunate child. Sarah had always believed, from the time of her very first introduction to Adimu, that if Charles changed his mind about adopting a child, it would be easy to decide who to welcome into their home. Wasn’t this how a person became a parent? The parent was chosen by the child, not the other way around. Sarah felt Adimu had chosen her and Charles.

  Charles agreed to have the girl to lunch, though only because he was ashamed he hadn’t had Jackob invite her earlier when he first said he would. When Sarah mentioned sharing a meal with Adimu, a fleeting sense of regret for having visited Zuberi returned.

  During the night, Charles was overcome by guilt. Not weeks after he had agreed to the witch doctor’s remedy, an albino girl would be eating his food at his table. The whole thing seemed grotesque. He had an impulse to weep. And it shocked him. If even the slightest hint of what I’ve done reaches Sarah, it will be my end. Mine, ours, the end of the Fieldings. He dissolved a dose of Zuberi’s sleep aid in a glass of water, and his body began to relax. He fell asleep with the bedside lamp on and his hands beneath his head.

  During the night, Adimu broke out in a high fever. Her body had been poisoned by the tar and singed by the sun. Nkamba kneeled next to the wall, facing the phone number for the protected community as if it were an altar. She prayed throughout the night. Outside it was as dark as the thickest forest, and far away a dog howled.

  For two days, Adimu was at the mercy of the fever and suffered from violent delirium. Nkamba was about to lose all hope when Jackob knocked on the door.

  “This is from Mr. Fielding,” he said.

  The elderly woman took the fine paper envelope. “I can’t read.”

  “Give it to me. I’ll read it.” Jackob opened the white envelope with quick fingers like a curious child. “The Fieldings are pleased to invite Adimu to lunch on the last Sunday of the month.”

  Adimu heard Jackob’s voice from inside the hut and managed to say, “They wrote that it would give them pleasure to invite me to lunch?”

  “Yes,” replied Jackob.

  “Bibi, did you hear?” she said after Jackob had left. “Please, give me all the medicines we have. I have to be well enough to go.” Someone in the world was interested in her!

  Nkamba was equally surprised by the invitation. At the hospital, she had noticed, though, that the wife did appear to genuinely care. She had observed the white woman’s liquid eyes fixed on Adimu as she slept on the European-type bed. To deny Adimu this opportunity would mean stealing from her one of the few rare joys she might ever have.

  “I have to get better, Bibi,” she said, drinking the mango juice that Nkamba prepared for her every evening.

  On the Sunday morning, Nkamba accompanied Adimu to within a few yards of the gate to White House.

  “Have them take you home,” she instructed before letting go of Adimu’s hand.

  Adimu turned to wave at her grandmother. Nkamba remained there, watching her until she could no longer see her shape against the background of the Fielding’s immense house.

  32.

  Though Adimu felt ashamed to be wearing the same dress she’d worn to the inauguration of the clinic, not having proper shoes to wear felt even worse. Will Mr. Fielding accept me with these old things on? she worried. If he’s my real father, he will, she decided.

  The Fieldings were on the veranda sipping chilled white wine when Adimu and Nkamba approached White House. Sarah saw the girl and her grandmother walking hand in hand and watched Adimu continue alone through the gate. Sarah met her with a cookie and a wide smile. Adimu wanted two kisses, like on the evening of the party, but didn’t have the courage to ask. When seated at the glass lawn table, Adimu found it difficult to hold the gaze of the two adults so she focused on
a button on her dress and rolled it between her thumb and index finger. Every object around her seemed enchanted. The paradise that surrounded her was spine-tingling and bedazzling, and her hunger to ingest its every miracle soon eclipsed her timidity. The pure white tablecloth, the blossoming strange-shaped garden, the glittering silverware, the mouthwatering food smells. Her head, though, was full of insecurities, and thus she swung her foot under her chair. How do I use the utensils? How much should I eat? And what if I need to pee?

  Sarah had spent much time considering how to help Adimu feel at ease and decided that having the food presliced and served in small portions would reduce her anxiety.

  “Your hair is so beautiful,” Sarah said, as she stroked Adimu’s long tresses. Adimu hoped she would never stop.

  Adimu felt so buoyant, so safe, that she ignored Mr. Fielding’s unwillingness to look at her. After he shook her hand when she’d arrived, he ate in silence.

  Though Charles wanted to please Sarah, he was careful not to feed her false hope. Not that girl, or any other, would be their daughter.

  As lunch progressed, Adimu became more audacious and peered lovingly at the man as often as she could. She scrunched up her face so she could see him as clearly as possible, though when her blue eyes caught his black ones, she lowered her gaze. She interpreted his glances as a sign of interest. It didn’t go unnoticed by Adimu that three times in a row, they both requested seconds of the same food. We like the same things, she thought. Looking at him, she was convinced their eyes, mouth, and even their nose shared the same shapes. If she were polite and good—as her bibi taught her to be—maybe Mr. and Mrs. Fielding would care for her just a little. It was something she could hope for. The man was shyer than the woman, she realized. Maybe he hadn’t gotten around to telling his wife his secret. That Juma is his other wife. That I am his daughter.