by Robin Winter
"Because I believe in my plans. I gave my word to carry through. This isn't your purpose. It's mine. Besides, Wilton, I could never position myself in America the way I have here. I couldn't write history. In America I'm a woman, and as you said to me years ago, it may be the sixties, but women still live in the kitchen, spread their legs in the bedroom and wash the floors when they're not shopping."
"Yuck," Sandy said.
"Oh Lindsey, there are tons of causes in the US you could join. The antiwar movement, the end of segregation, ecological awareness, the new feminism…Our own country's barely begun..."
Lindsey smiled, head high. "You said the magic word, Wilton, join. I'm no joiner. Never have been. I move people like chess pieces here, influence votes of ministers of state and military officers by buying up their debts. I've gone far beyond your calculations and your schedule. I'm not leaving my investment now. And it's a big investment. You have no authority over me. Disasters make opportunity—I'm here for mine."
"Besides," Sandy said, "where else could I expect a minimum of one marriage proposal a week?"
"Yeah," Lindsey said, "it would mean more if it weren't merely a courteous Nigerian habit. And if your suitors weren't already married."
"Hey, don't spoil my fun." Sandy crunched up a handful of nuts. "I could be number three or four wife. It's legal here."
Wilton shook her head, swallowed hard. Careful, even in your success, in the fever of your triumph. Never let them know you came to turn their inclination to stay into zeal.
"You give me heart, Lindsey," she said, and that much was true.
"I'm sure of one thing." Sandy pointed her beer bottle at Wilton. "Damned sure. No matter what you're saying we oughta do, you're not fucking leaving yourself. Besides, we're guests in this country and here being a guest's damned serious. I can go camp out in the wilds and nobody bugs me except the little kids waiting to see when I go pee if I'm really white all over. No one in Nigeria would harm us."
Wilton stared at her, startled Of course, what Sandy said was true.
"So that discussion's over. How long can you stay? It's a long trip from the Eastern Region to Lagos. Twelve hours driving? More?" Sandy waved her beer again, grinning, as if suggesting nights of drunken debauchery.
"I flew," Wilton said, "but I'll be gone by tomorrow afternoon. I have classes to teach back in Nsukka next week."
"Birds?" Sandy pushed the peanuts in Wilton's direction.
"Ornithology, yes." Wilton took two of the nuts, only two, and passed the bowl back. Self-denial was a skill that could never be practiced too much. "And classes in Intro Zoology. You'd like the field trips, Sandy. Hedgehogs and rock pythons, more ground squirrels than you can imagine with black-and-orange fur, striped tails."
"Keep me near flush toilets." Lindsey smiled as if she'd won the discussion.
Wilton smiled back. "Speaking of such?"
"Down the hall on your right," Lindsey said.
Wilton left them, but she continued to listen. Blessings on the transom in the bathroom door that let their voices drift in.
"You think Gilman will leave? She's right in the trouble zone in a way we're not," Lindsey said. "Out there in the East she's going to see a lot of damaged people coming out of the North."
"But I'll bet you dollars to donuts she's not going to get scared out. No way is Gilman going to show a yellow belly when Wilton's watching." Sandy chuckled.
Or when you're watching. Time for Wilton's transplanted Americans to meet again under her roof in Nsukka. Time for them to feel again that edge of competition, the push to excel. Savory food, gin and tonics, conversation on Wilton's enclosed porch so no one had to worry about mosquitoes and stories between friends.
They'd been separated for months and distance healed wounds. Gilman and Lindsey wouldn't openly fight this time, but they'd be the sharper for the friction and she knew how each thirsted for her approval. Oh, Lindsey probably denied it to herself, but Wilton read the signs. Only Sandy didn't care about Wilton's opinion—seemed to have her own private drive to continue here in Africa. Wilton wondered why.
Chapter 10: Gilman
December 1966
Nsukka, Eastern Region, Nigeria
The third evening at Wilton's place in Nsukka, Gilman heard the putter of a Citroën in the yard. The air shaded to violet and pink in the sudden shift from afternoon to night. Wilton back? Wonderful. Gilman pushed the reading lamp to one side and closed her book, stretching her bare toes and wriggling them. Wilton would scold her for not wearing shoes. Snakes and scorpions, centipedes and other biting, stinging things invaded houses so easily. Tough, Wilton. Gilman did, however, tuck her cigarettes into her breast pocket.
"Hello." Wilton opened the glass-paned door, but she didn't step in yet. "I've brought company."
Company? A scuff of feet on the path and steps.
"Hey, Gilman," came Sandy's voice. "Still emptying bedpans?"
"Hah." If Sandy were here, they could both smoke. Sandy sauntered in, tanned, thin and angular, the only concession to her sex the thick braid of hair down her back.
"Where the fuck are you hiding the cold beer, Gilman?" As if no time had passed, Sandy still looked a college student, complete with baseball cap tugged low over her green eyes. She grinned but Gilman tensed, waiting for the door to swing again.
Gilman watched Lindsey step in. A different kind of strut but still a strut. Deliberation in every bone, as if Lindsey knew people looked at her, not for beauty in this climate but for the sense of chill her pale face and copper eyes carried, the passionless but lovely mouth, the carriage of royalty. Like a millionaire. Pale-blue shirtwaist dress, trim belt. Glossy chestnut hair twisted into a chignon, restrained. To look at her was to feel a slob. Lindsey, an iceberg walking. No wonder they all loved her.
"It took us a couple hours longer than we'd hoped. Airport delays. Sorry to be late." Lindsey smiled the smile Gilman believed she practiced in the mirror. Gilman shook herself and looked as pleased and welcoming as she could. Wilton, you bitch. Wilton had set her up, brought the three of them together when she knew there'd be trouble. Gilman felt it in the stillness around Lindsey's eyes, in the turn of Lindsey's head. From their first meeting a dog and cat relationship, at best a wary truce.
"You've been waiting for us. How long's it been? You had surgeries lined up last time Wilton tried to get us together."
"No, I wasn't waiting." Gilman wasn't going to lie. Wilton knew she didn't want to see Lindsey. Vacation or not, it never ended well. She could wring Wilton's neck. Sandy was great, but Gilman always hit it wrong with Lindsey.
Sandy stepped between, pulling out her pack of Marlboros, and Gilman took that as permission to bring out her own and offer a wooden box of matches. She took a long steadying pull on her cigarette.
Gilman, smoking too fast, adjusted to the familiar voices. Americans. Friends. There was a power in it, so long as Lindsey didn't piss her off. Was it possible to enjoy this? No, she'd have to watch what she said. Was there significance to the way they settled into chairs, Sandy off to one side while she and Lindsey sat opposite each other, Wilton between? Make something of that, Freud.
"Hey, Wilton there was a guy came looking for you. Gave me a bit of a start by showing up right in the house yesterday afternoon. Christopher knows who he is."
"Yes, I sent him. Thank you."
Wilton excused herself, slipped out of the room and Gilman felt abandoned. At least Wilton wouldn't be watching if she fucked up.
The houseboy came and went with drinks, groundnuts freshly fried and salted, a bowl of iced mango in geometric yellow chunks. Sandy's eyes narrowed with pleasure. For such a skinny figure she ate like a hog and always had. Gilman flashed back on a memory of Sandy burying her teeth in a slab of hot pizza. Sandy stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and went for the peanuts next.
"No, I've never seen Wilton at her bush station. You haven't either, Gilman?" Lindsey said.
If she didn't know better, Gilman mi
ght think that Lindsey was trying to make cordial conversation.
"Up in the foothills, near the Cameroon border, a total pain to reach. Cross River area. I guess it's fantastic for birds. You and that nun you work with should make a pilgrimage," Lindsey said. "Sandy went and came back impressed."
Gilman shrugged. When would she have time? Lindsey didn't understand what she meant to the people she treated. Gilman felt a restless guilt at the idea, wanted absurdly to rush back where she was needed.
Wilton shouldn't have brought her here, shouldn't have forced this kaffeeklatsch on her. God knew what kind of terrible mutilations arrived even now out of the North. She considered Lindsey's cool face, the smile on those thin lips. No, Lindsey didn't have a clue. Maybe losing her parents young made Lindsey less than human.
"Oh, come on, Gilman," Lindsey said. "You're not a slave. You deserve a medicinal dose of R&R. You can't afford to take yourself too seriously. Just ask your nun for absolution."
"You said it, not me. I'd need absolution. But she's not my nun."
Did Lindsey want to imply there was something about her relationship with Sister Catherine? Fine one to talk, she with Sandy at her beck and call. But Gilman took it back. No, Lindsey had never warmed to anyone, and probably never would. Definition of frigid.
"No one can work at full tilt all the time. Everyone needs a break."
"Speak for yourself." Gilman made herself take another sip of her drink. Condescending bitch.
"Well why are you here—so far as I know I don't need surgery today. How about you Sandy?" Lindsey smiled.
"Fuck you too," Gilman said.
"Don't be so sensitive."
Gilman heard that avuncular note in Lindsey's voice as though Lindsey said, Here is where I show I'm the adult in this conversation.
"Sensitive. God, listen to you. You imagine medicine's anything like your political card games? Those need absolution all right."
"I hear you kill a few too. Maybe you need more time off and that's why Wilton brought you along."
"Screw this," Sandy said. "What is it with you two? Can dress you up but can't take you out. Care to try again? Start over?"
"I'm supposed to act like I thought this was funny? I take every death hard—why do you think I'm doing what I do?" Gilman said.
Pretending to be mature and polite, my ass. She remembered the man in the garage—God, keep that information out of Lindsey's hands or she'd dictate orders about what they shoulda done. He'd already been saved, by Wilton, and by her own useless doctor self. And that strange man Oroko.
"Have a better idea?" Sandy looked at her, then at Lindsey. "Neither of you mean half the shit comes outa your mouths. I don't know which cereal box you got your manners from, but I can tell you that both of you bore me to tears. It's a joke already. You want to upset Wilton? Seems to me she's got enough to bug her with all the shit coming down."
Gilman took a slow pull on her cigarette. Gave her time, put her back in control. She liked Sandy. She'd do this for Sandy and for Wilton, and especially because Lindsey wouldn't expect her to take the high ground. But she wouldn't forget.
"How's your work going, Lindsey—I see you feel you can take time off for a vacation." God, that hadn't come out right either, had it?
"Tense," Lindsey said. She tucked a tiny lock of hair back neatly behind her ear.
All three of them turned with relief when Wilton came back into the room.
"It's war," Wilton said. "The man you saw, Gilman, Oroko, came to warn me, but the radio's announcing it now. The Eastern Region of Nigeria has seceded. We are here a new nation—Biafra."
Chapter 11: Sandy
December 1966
Nsukka, Biafra
"Holy shit." Sandy looked first at Lindsey. Cool as a cucumber, as always.
Gilman stood up, golden hair unkempt, blue eyes blazing, her glass in her hand. Aw, sit down, Gilman. Sandy stopped herself from making it worse by speaking.
"Bloody time too, with all the killings of Ojukwu's people and the frigging Nigerian government doing nothing." Gilman raised her drink in a toast, which no one followed. "Long life to Biafra."
"Is Ojukwu in charge?" Lindsey asked.
"Commander in chief," Wilton said. "Yes. Head of the new government."
Cheering rose somewhere on the compound. Must be the servants greeting the news. Oh crap, her parents would be having a cow back in the States, imagining pillage, rape and murder. Sandy might have to call them. Damn it. She wondered if this was her cue, if she and Lindsey ought to hit the road and get back to Lagos. Now.
As if she heard the thought, Wilton looked across the room at Sandy.
"We wait," she said. "No immediate big changes. They'll negotiate peace."
"You don't know what it's been like here," Gilman said. She was trying to keep calm, Sandy decided, but her voice broke. "Streams of terrified refugees coming back to the Eastern Region, some who once believed they had Northern friends, believed in the One Nigeria. They gave it their best, went and worked in other Nigerian cities and now—children, wives, fathers slaughtered. Cruelties you wouldn't visit on a dog. The first patient I had coming out of the North…"
Sandy sucked on her beer. Gilman's talk of pogrom survivors grossed her out. Enough to gag a maggot—Sandy swallowed the words. She hated guts and goo, made her want to puke—that's why she went for geology. Hope to God Lindsey didn't decide to talk about that guy in her office with his head in the typewriter.
"Wilton," Sandy asked. "Why're Nigerians killing each other?" She'd interrupted, but the question had been in her mind so long she felt relieved.
Lindsey tightened up. Sandy saw it in the movement of her shoulders, so was the question a mistake?
"Tribal rivalries and misunderstanding," Lindsey said, not waiting for Wilton to answer. "An ancient country, full of different cultures. When the military gunned down the government leaders, all that old stuff blew up."
"The trouble started in your Western Region where all the Yoruba live," Gilman said. "Never understood the Yoruba, proud as the devil, so formal, just like you, Lindsey."
"But it's all about your Eastern Region Igbo," Lindsey said. "Westernized and pissed everyone else off. If they would just stay home…"
"And pretend to be dumb?" Gilman said.
Sandy wished she and Lindsey were back in Ibadan. This visit was a mistake even without Ojukwu fucking declaring independence. If only Wilton would stop trying to make Gilman and Lindsey friends. Gilman always overreacted when Lindsey rubbed her the wrong way. Let 'em stay on opposite sides of the country and then they'd have a chance to like each other. A few hundred miles between them. Had they ever gotten along? Seemed to her she'd watched them tangle assholes at Wellesley from day one. Gilman was okay when Lindsey wasn't around. Never put on airs or makeup and never criticized the way Sandy chose to act. Would share, down to her last cigarette.
"We were doing fine until the Nigerian army decided that gunning down corrupt officials would solve everything." Lindsey balanced her glass in her cupped hands.
"They killed Prime Minister Balewa," Wilton said. "If only they'd spared him. The leader of the North, a Muslim, who had clean hands, the right ideas and the right profile."
"You really believe Balewa was clean?" Lindsey sipped her drink. "If so, he must have practiced selective blindness."
"Balewa was a good leader," Wilton said. "But they killed him. That got the entire Muslim Northern Region terrified and angry, and fear of Igbo domination exploded when the military stepped in and General Ironsi took over governance. Another Igbo, so he got slaughtered next. Coup number two."
Gilman stared at Lindsey as if she expected contradiction. "The paper said the first coup was a plot by the Eastern Igbo, said they've been infiltrating all the powerful jobs in the other Regions for years now trying to take over the country."
Sandy wanted to slow Gilman down.
"Someone called the Igbo the African Jews," Gilman said.
"Nonsense," Li
ndsey said. "What crap."
"Well look at the way the Northerners always segregated the Igbo and other outsiders who moved to the Northern cities into ghettos—the sabon gari. Acting like they were unclean and had to be locked up apart. Just like the Jews. Not nonsense at all."
"Racism. Yeah, reporters love bad stuff," Sandy said before Gilman could react further. "American or Nigerian. They'll make trouble outa nothing. Next thing you know they're gonna call someone a Nazi."
If nothing else worked she'd have to spill her beer or something to cool everyone down. Waste of good beer.
"Hey, I live here in the East and I work with the Igbo and the Ibibio all the time," Gilman said. "They learn fast and rush right into everything new, even Christianity. Great sense of humor. Ambitious as the day is long. I like them, but I can imagine why they scare lazier tribes."
"Well in Nigeria, of all countries, you shouldn't believe anything you read in the newspapers," Lindsey said. "Talk about inflammatory nonsense."
"The ghetto arrangement made it real easy when the Northerners decided to massacre the Igbo." Gilman stopped even pretending to sip her drink.
Bad sign. Sandy tried to think of some way to derail the argument. She turned meaning to sign to the houseboy that she wanted a fresh beer, but he'd moved out of sight.
"They marched right into the sabon gari and pulled people out for machete practice. God, the patients I saw coming down from the North, raped children, crucifixions, even this seventy-year-old with nails pounded into his skull for a crown of thorns. Died on the table. Those were the ones who made it home. Saying pogrom and holocaust isn't inflammatory nonsense. You should've seen."
"So you're now a Colonel Ojukwu fan. Or how do we address him now? Your Highness?"
"Lindsey, you asshole. He told the Easterners to come back home because the Federal government couldn't protect them outside of the homelands. Ojukwu's making a point."