Child of Africa

by T. M. Clark

  ‘Gideon told me they would let me know when it was needed,’ Peta said.

  ‘That is good, because the fewer people who know this information, the better,’ Bongani said.

  ‘I agree,’ Peta said. ‘What about Dad and Tsessebe?’

  Bongani shook his head. ‘Not on the phone. Fill them in when you get back. Everyone be careful with this information. We already know that Tichawana is sniffing around. We cannot afford to have him destroy the evidence. Our people, they need justice for these killings.’

  A loud clap of thunder rumbled nearby.

  ‘There’s not much food in this house, so we had best go grab some dinner in the lodge before that storm hits,’ Joss said.

  * * *

  Joss sat on the couch in Peta’s rondavel. Decorated in blacks and whites with monochrome pictures of African fish eagles catching fish in front of majestic vistas of drowned trees, her lounge area had an overstuffed couch and two chairs, excessive for a single person. It was the nicest suite that he had available for her and Joss had purposely not let it out for the next ten days. He yearned to offer her a room in his home, to show that to him, she wasn’t a simple guest, she was so much more, but with Sophia in the nursery, Mitch in his own old room, and Madala White and Lwazi in their rooms, the five-bedroom house was suddenly feeling rather small.

  ‘Dinner was lovely, thank you,’ she said. ‘And I loved the new idea of the serviettes being different animal prints and folded to look like each of the animals. It’s a nice touch.’

  ‘The waiters were so excited to spend hours practising that folding and this is the first week they’re trying them out. I just wish we could have relaxed a bit more. I think that the universe has thrown us quite enough curve balls for now.’

  ‘You think? The lion, then Sophia, these crosses and the potential for them to be mass graves ... At least I can honestly say that since you came home, life hasn’t been boring.’ She slid open the door to the private patio. The cool wind off the lake flooded into the room, carrying with it the smell of imminent rain. ‘I love watching electrical storms.’

  ‘You always have. I remember you’d sit out on the veranda until my mother would drag you inside.’

  ‘The rain at this time of the year is refreshing,’ she said. ‘It cleanses your soul.’

  Joss raised his eyebrows. ‘Excuse me if I don’t sit out in it tonight.’

  ‘Seriously, you don’t want to try?’

  ‘I might rust,’ he joked.

  ‘Joss, you are incorrigible!’ Peta said as she flopped onto the couch next to him.

  ‘You sure you still want to come to Bulawayo on Monday, with the spotter problem in your park? They might send a replacement for Hunt at any moment.’

  ‘They won’t move fast – there’s too much trust in a spotter. They need to know the area well, and also how to move through it undetected by the locals. Like Hunt was, using the crosses as his excuse to be where he would normally have raised suspicions. Being away from the parks for a few more days isn’t going to matter.’

  ‘I’m still planning on visiting the orphanage, and I’ve appointments with both the paediatrician and my lawyer. I’m going to ask Charmaine to go with us, to look after Sophia.’

  ‘Too many bodies to fit in either of our bakkies,’ Peta pointed out. ‘Besides, I think you, me and Sophia can cope. Spend some time together, just the three of us.’

  Joss looked at her. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He stared into her eyes for a long time, searching them, but all he could see was honesty. She wanted to give the three of them a chance. No maid around for Sophia, no Lwazi around to wake him up.

  ‘What if I have another nightmare?’ he said.

  ‘Then I shake you and step away, just like Lwazi does. I think we can cope, Joss, and it’s only for a few days. See how we go. I adore Sophia, you know that already, and it will give me time with her too, without anyone else hovering to take her away. I won’t feel like I’m always being watched with her.’

  ‘You feel watched?’

  ‘A little, but Charmaine is just being herself. She is an extremely nurturing person, even towards Sophia. There is a protectiveness to her that Sophia is lucky to have. I’m not sure I’m built like that.’

  Joss tilted her head with his finger and stroked her cheek. ‘It’s there, deep inside; you just have never been given the opportunity to show it. Remember when Ndhlovy was here with us? You were pretty protective of her, and really nurturing then. But it’s not Sophia I have doubts about.’

  ‘You? You think we can’t share a room as adults?’

  ‘We already spent one night together, but there is so much more to us now. I don’t want to blow our friendship. It’s become too important to me.’

  ‘I don’t think that a few nights away together will damage us. I’m hoping that the time away could help us decide if we want to take it further.’

  Joss smiled and squeezed her hand. ‘I agree. I need to make sure that just because I said goodbye to Courtney, you’re not simply substituting for what I lost ... we both need so much more than that—’

  ‘Gee, thanks, you know how to make me feel so special,’ Peta said, pulling away.

  ‘You know I don’t mean it like that. I need time too, to make sure that this shift is what I hope it is. Thank you for your honesty and, as always, your frankness.’

  The lightning crackled outside and a clap of thunder shook the ground. Fat drops of rain began falling on the veranda and soon became a sheet of driving rain. A fine mist drifted in on the wind.

  ‘I should close those,’ Peta said, standing up and walking to the doors. She slid them together, cocooning them in an artificial quietness. She returned to the couch and took Joss’s hand in hers. ‘I’m scared. If we become more, and it goes wrong, what if I want to come back to this time and place, and go, this is where I liked you. This is where we were firm friends. Where we shared more than just Courtney between us.’

  ‘I don’t have the answer for you, and I’m not sure we can come back; it would always hang between us. But I’m happy to give it a try, like you said, and just go slow. A few days with me, seeing my scars, having to help me in and out of the bath or the shower, being faced with seeing only Mr Half-a-leg.’

  ‘We have time to look forward to the week away together. Doing a few fun things too, like dinner and a little dancing, and having Sophia with us. Just us.’

  He smiled again and brought her hand up to his lips. ‘Okay, no pressure; that I can handle.’

  They sat there, Peta leaning on Joss’s shoulder, watching the storm rage outside. He wallowed in the scent of her next to him, the heat radiating from her body as they watched the storm. He watched her eyes grow heavy and close.

  Still he sat there.

  CHAPTER

  22

  Bulawayo

  Hillary was shopping in the market when she saw him, the white man with the iron legs. It had to be him. Mr Joss Brennan. There couldn’t be too many white men in the country with black and silver artificial legs sticking out from the bottom of their shorts. She got her phone out of her bag and typed in his registration number, vehicle type and colour.

  She watched as Brennan finished loading the goods from the baby store into his bakkie, and that was when she noticed there was a woman with him who carried a child in her arms. She smiled, watching the family, seeing how he laughed when the woman talked, and smoothed her hair aside, tucking it behind her ear. Then he lifted the child and gave it a little wiggle and a kiss before putting it into the front of the bakkie.

  Even from where she stood, she could see that the baby was not theirs, not biologically. Hillary found it hard to equate this family man to the story of the ruthless commando who unarmed Mr Mlilo within seconds and bruised his back. Brennan was causing her boss to move his ‘importation’ shipments of ivory and rhino horn to a different boat crossing point away from Binga, and a planned targeted poaching exercise to a different
area too, something he had never done before.

  Brennan made Mlilo uneasy, and her boss was dismissing him as nothing more than an inconvenience. Watching him, Hillary knew that Tichawana had made a huge error of judgement. Joss Brennan was not a man to be underestimated. Despite his iron legs, he moved with the grace of an athlete, held himself proudly, and he had shown kindness to the woman and child.

  The woman and the child. Mlilo had not yet reported either of those, so his intel was not as complete as he thought it was. She wondered what else had been left out of the report, or had been overlooked and not passed on to her boss.

  She continued watching as Brennan closed the door of the bakkie for the woman. He touched her arm through the window before he moved to his side of the vehicle and climbed in. She watched them drive further down the road, stop and get out again at the Private Medical Centre. They walked into the building and she couldn’t see them any more.

  Realising that she was standing in the middle of the pavement, staring at nothing, she forced herself to continue walking to the taxi rank. Now that she had seen him, her mind reeled with possibilities. It was getting close to the time that she would have to admit to herself that she could no longer just hold on to her files. Tichawana Ndou was planning something against his half-brother, but she did not know what. She didn’t yet know how the many threads she had collected knitted together. She knew that if she took her information to Brennan, he would know what to do with it.

  He would help her to bring down her family’s murderers.

  * * *

  The paediatrician’s office was already running four hours late.

  Peta sighed and looked at the clock on the wall, willing it to stop or the appointment would run into the one they had with the lawyer at five-thirty. First the orphanage had cut their shopping trip short, now the doctors were on the same track. Everything ran on Africa time. She noticed the other mothers in the room openly admiring Joss as he returned from fetching her a scarf from the bakkie to put around her shoulders. The way he moved, his physical appearance, but, as they ran their eyes down his body and legs, their looks changed to pity as they noticed the gleaming metal and black plastic, and they averted their eyes.

  He sat down next to her, peeking at Sophia, who slept soundly on a mat on the floor. ‘She still out?’

  ‘I think she could sense your turmoil this morning at the orphanage, and it drained her,’ Peta said. ‘I’m glad we went and had a look, but I’m more glad it’s over.’

  He put his hand on Peta’s neck and massaged it gently. ‘Thanks for coming. It confirmed that I’ve made the right decision in keeping her. Jarryd and his orphanage are definitely only Plan B if welfare give me trouble.’

  Peta moved slightly so that he could massage her shoulders. ‘I could get used to this.’

  ‘Me too,’ Joss said.

  ‘Brennan family, you can go in now,’ called the receptionist.

  Joss picked up Sophia, who had become restless in her sleep, a sure sign she was waking, while Peta collected the rug and the bag.

  The doctor was writing something at her desk, and motioned them in with her hand, not looking up. After a few moments, she finished and stood up as Joss and Peta reached the desk. ‘I’m Kim Swart, nice to meet you. Sorry, I was just finishing up a report.’

  ‘I’m Joss, this is Peta, and this sleepy girl is Sophia.’

  ‘Hello, beautiful,’ Kim said. She reached over her desk, and patted Sophia’s back as she lay against Joss’s shoulder, before sitting down. She gestured for them to take a seat and glanced at her file. ‘So, little Sophia was an abandoned baby, left at your home, Joss?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘She has deformities in both legs.’

  ‘Also correct.’

  Kim’s head snapped up. ‘You’re willing to keep this child, even though she might never walk?’

  ‘Yes. What difference would that make?’

  ‘About five hundred thousand US dollars and counting.’

  ‘I didn’t pay for her—’

  ‘No, you misunderstand. That’s going to be the cost of having a disabled child, above and beyond what you would normally expect to spend raising a child in Zimbabwe in the private education system. You don’t have to keep this child; she can go into an orphanage and be cared for by the state. Deformed black children are often shunned by their Ndebele playmates; the old traditions still run strong. Being a cripple will cause you more trouble as she grows up—’

  ‘Dr Swart,’ Joss interrupted her. ‘There’s something you should know, before you say another word. I recently became a double amputee. Sophia was given to me because I know what it’s like to be a “cripple”. Who better to be her dad than someone who has no legs and understands her needs?’

  Kim nodded slowly. ‘I guess I owe you an apology. This will make explaining the whole process easier.’

  ‘Also, she has already been living with me for a while. We visited the Baobab Tree Orphanage to see if she would be better off there than with me, and the answer is no – she’ll be better off with me. I’m keeping Sophia, and our next stop after here is the lawyer’s office to begin the adoption process. What I wanted to know is how bad her deformity is and if it can be fixed. Is she healthy in every other way? Because if she isn’t, then I need to organise other treatments for her, besides her legs.’

  ‘It’s wonderful to see your passion for her. You three, you’ll be fine.’

  ‘Three?’ Peta said. ‘Oh no, there is no three. Just two. Joss and Sophia live a few hours from me.’

  Kim looked at Joss. ‘You’re a single white man trying to adopt a black child? Did your lawyer explain how hard this is going to be for you?’

  ‘He did. Hard, but not impossible.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s get looking at your precious bundle. Pop her on the bed and get everything off except her nappy.’

  Joss put Sophia on the examination bed and removed her clothes. He blew a raspberry on her stomach and she laughed.

  Kim began with Sophia’s mouth and worked her way downwards.

  ‘Can she get around on her own at all?’

  ‘Yes,’ Joss said, and explained her hopping style of moving.

  Kim was making Sophia giggle as she tickled her and rubbed her feet. ‘Other than her legs, Sophia appears to be a healthy child.’ She lifted her up into a sitting position, and Sophia adjusted herself to balance on the bed. ‘She’s got good balance. I’d like to do an X-ray of her legs. See what those bones look like inside.’

  ‘Sure,’ Joss said.

  Kim lay Sophia back down. ‘I’ll take some blood, then she’s free to go get those scans.’

  ‘Do I need to hold her?’ Joss asked but Kim had already put a needle into Sophia’s arm. Sophia was trying to bat away a large pendant that swung from Kim’s neck.

  ‘All done,’ she said, placing the tubes of blood on the table next to her. He watched Kim dress Sophia, then unwrap a lollipop she’d pulled from the jar next to the bed and give it to her before passing her back to her father.

  ‘My receptionist will walk you through to the X-ray department. Once you’re done, please come right back. I’ll fit you in as soon as I can to review the films,’ Kim said.

  * * *

  Kim put the X-rays up on her light box. ‘I’m not going to sugar coat this. There are going to be three schools of thought on Sophia’s prognosis. One would be to just leave her, wait and see what happens as she grows. Others will suggest breaking her legs and operating on them, putting in pins and plates, then have her learn to walk. But she might have to have multiple operations, and keep having them as she gets older. A third option would be to have these legs surgically removed once she’s a little older, and helping her learn to walk with artificial legs.’

  ‘If we take option one for now, and just wait and see how her legs go as she grows?’

  ‘You’ll have a little girl who’ll have immense upper body strength, having to drag those useless legs aroun
d behind her. But she’ll never walk without intervention. We can’t perform any major operation on her legs until she is older, so you have time on your side before you make a final decision.’

  ‘Is there any indication when she’ll begin to talk?’

  ‘I think she’s choosing not to. She has her every need taken care of, so she hasn’t needed to. It might be she’s only learning English now, so she’s working on being bilingual. Give her more time to settle into your home and she’ll begin to talk more. If she isn’t talking by the time she’s about three, then we can look into it. Kids are resilient; they find out what their bodies can and can’t do. She’ll develop at her own rate, but by twenty-one she’ll be exactly like any other 21-year-old, except she’ll have fought a huge battle with her legs, and we can only speculate on that outcome. Just remember to toddler proof your house. Things that you think are out of her reach, she will get to.’

  Joss smiled. ‘We’ve already found that out.’

  ‘She’s totally normal. Living with you, she’ll never think herself as anything but. She is lucky to have you. I guess that mother knew what she was doing when she gave her up. Just be careful – you are going to have to ensure that the area you live in knows that you are not a private orphanage, that this is a one-time thing with little Sophia, or you will end up with more children than you can imagine.’

  Joss nodded.

  ‘I’ll see you as soon as her blood work comes through so we can do her inoculations and get her up to date, and here are some papers to get an MRI. You might need to take her down south for that, as the machine here is broken again. Once those are done, we can discuss the prognosis of her legs and what other specialists we need to involve in getting her walking.’

  Joss knew that their journey was only just beginning, but he also understood it better than anyone else. He was going to be with Sophia every step of the way.

  * * *

  Peta was kneeling on the floor of the nursery, sorting through the stuff they had brought home, packing clothes and blankets and sheets into the new cupboards. Joss took a step towards her, then stopped himself. She’d looked so happy when they were buying the stuff for the nursery but she’d been pretty adamant in Dr Swart’s office that they were only friends.