“I apologize,” he says as he settles into the driver’s seat and starts the Rover. “I’d hoped to meet you planeside, but I had a breakdown on the way in.”
“It’s fine. It’s not something one can anticipate.” She looks across at high cheekbones, an aristocratic up-tilting chin.
In a short time the environs of the airport have slipped into deep shadow, but for the odd street lamp and prickles of light in the distance.
“I am so sorry. I forgot. It’s because I am reminding myself to concentrate on these roads.” Which is just as well, for though it is very late, lorries and buses overtake and chase past them, their fleeting lights illuminating a bald landscape interrupted occasionally by grey factory-like buildings that loom against the blackness. “It’s Harmattan, so it’s cool at nights. I brought you a wrap, for it won’t warm up till the middle of next month.”
“Thank you, but I brought ... ” She glances into the back. “Oh no! I must have mislaid my jacket in the airport.”
“I’m sorry about that. Please use the wrap. It’s very warm. Sœur Monique made it. She’s always glad when it can be of service. She says it has good juju.”
“Well, I could do with both wrap and juju. Thanks very much.”
“We’ll see what we can do about your jacket tomorrow.”
She hugs the wrap round her, a tight weave in dark cotton, warm but not ticklish, and sinks back on her seat, biting her lip against a next twinge in her belly. Dozing off, she muses, “I’m thirty-four on my next birthday. Getting too old for this.”
A couple of big bumps jerk her eyes open. The Land Rover is now squirming through dimly moonlit darkness, its headlights flitting here and there, picking out bushes and fence posts like follow spots on a shifting stage. She listens to the irregular rhythm of wheels on the rutted road, now and then a shuddering of wings in branches, and when the vehicle slows, a faraway pounding like rain. She doesn’t see how it can be and is thinking of asking the priest, when she drifts off again.
“We’re almost there, Dr. Carpenter,” his voice cuts into a dream, of water perhaps, though once she opens her eyes she isn’t sure. “The going gets a bit rough from here on, so I thought to warn you. You should perhaps hold on.”
She hangs onto the dashboard against a mile or so of formidable pitching and tossing, until she sees in the gloom ahead a lighter place, as if someone has erased the spot. Shortly, the priest drives through rough-hewn gateposts, stopping on a small rise. The point of expunged dimness is a lantern held aloft in the hand of a saint of twisted wire, a holiday garland round his neck. A child sits in his other hand. The sculpture is fixed to the front of a building that stretches back into blackness.
Her host looks towards the house as if expecting someone, then shrugs, opens his door, and jumps out, vanishing momentarily, reappearing to open her door. The light from inside the car shows cheeks freckled in a pattern of scars, a mouth pinned at one corner by an odd smile.
“You must be sleepy as a sulcata, Dr. Carpenter. She’s our Sahara tortoise. We’ll get you something to eat and then install you in your room. Is there a bag with your essentials or will you need all these cases now?”
Grace figures that the person he had looked for was meant to help with the suitcases. She nods, her attention distracted by a flash of lightning so bright and near she swears she hears it fizzle. She is feeling odd and very cold, despite the wrap, the pain in her belly nagging. Maybe she should have forced herself to eat more of the dreadful airplane food.
“I’m a bit tired,” she begins, collecting her briefcase and carryall.
“Why don’t I take those?”
Easing herself from the high seat, she hands him the two pieces of luggage and reaches out her hand to grasp his.
“Thank you,” she says and faints.
She relishes the cover of the soft African night, large enough to wrap her up many times over, alive with sounds so she doesn’t feel alone. She nuzzles up to it like a human body, comforted by its snores and hoots and sighs, sleeping the sleep of childhood, wedged between Ma and Pansy, surrounded and safe. Strange that on waking, she feels deflated as popped Mary’s tears, tiny, red bell-shaped flowers they’d stop and burst on the way home from school. She is in a white metal hospital bed, knees raised on a pillow, shoulders bare, looking up at a tall black man whose long, slim hands hold a stethoscope.
“You’re awake, I see. How are you feeling?”
“It’s afternoon, isn’t it? It feels like afternoon.”
“Early afternoon,” he says. “I asked how you felt?”
“Like a squished tomato. How did I get here?”
“You fainted coming out of the Rover. We brought you in and put you to bed.”
There is a lump of something between her legs. A sanitary pad! Good God. She never uses those things. It’s warm and damp down there. Perhaps she hurt herself falling — but hardly there. She tries to sit up, feels faint, and drops back onto the bed.
“No, don’t. You should be quiet. Are you hungry? You must be. We’ll get you something to eat.”
Past where he is standing by the window in the small, grey room, bright sunlight splatters on dark vegetation. In the near distance some trees, mango maybe, are tall enough to block the light, but enough comes through, dappling in a breeze. Right next to the rails of what must be a verandah there are paw-paw trees laden with fruit. Further away, sun shines on domes of red-brown bricks, just visible through the trees.
The priest has on glasses, round, with pale frames, hitched halfway down his wide nose. She is seeing him properly for the first time. He resembles a schoolteacher, but he is handsome behind the spectacles.
“Father Atule,” Grace considers what she wants to say and decides that since she doesn’t know, she will simply speak and find out herself. “This is all highly peculiar. We have a lot of work to do, a lot of ground to cover.”
“It’s Jimmy.”
“Jimmy. Thank you. It’s Grace. I’m sorry about last night, the trouble and embarrassment.”
“Grace,” he leans towards her and asks quietly, “Don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“You’re pregnant. And you may be losing the baby.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“I’m clairvoyant,” he says, or she thinks he says. His smile fades as she slides back into dreaming.
A mountain blots out everything. It is alive, sputtering, the earth vibrating with each explosion. Then it breaks open, emitting lava that gropes down slopes, breaking into streams that fan out and cook everything they come upon, frying, boiling, roasting. Chickens burn up, sizzling in their own fat. She hears the feathers catch fire, smells their scorched smell, the flesh aflame in seconds, the bones, first brittle, then ash. Pigs burst, oil spitting from their crackling. Melons and cucumbers stew in their own juice.
Something moves in a green grove towards which a finger of molten rock is winding, a small thing on the ground, thrashing in a frenzy of waving brambles as it wrestles to be free. She wakes, anxious about the furious little creature. The tastes and smells from the dream are sharply present.
It is night and cold. She is in a hospital gown, under a blanket. The gown is raised up, the bedclothes rolled down to her hips. A man is touching her belly.
“Takes twelve years to make your average Jesuit, if there’s such a thing.”
“Do I detect sarcasm, Don Jaime?”
Jesus! What is she saying! The man must think she is crazy!
“I think the child will be okay,” he readjusts gown and bedclothes so she is fully covered.
“It’s hardly a child, is it?”
“Whatever it is, it’s put you on your back and it’s keeping you there.”
“Shouldn’t we talk about whether there’s any point to my staying? We’ve not even had a conversation about what’s brought me here, plus I’m interfering with the centre’s routine.” She is deciphering what she is saying as it comes out of her mouth.
>
“Man proposes, God disposes. In your country they say, ‘Man pour pint. God take quart.’ ”
“You’ve been to St. Chris?”
“I told you about those Jesuits, didn’t I?” She must have been asleep for that too. Off-her-head and narcoleptic!
“Why would they have sent you to St. Chris? Isn’t there a big enough need in Africa?” His bio said nothing about him being a doctor, or being in St. Chris.
“I did my regency there, at St. Aloysius College. It seems a long time ago now. Jesuits go anywhere there’s a need. We are men of the world in that sense. Africa isn’t the world, after all. I’ve studied at Oxford; I’ve lived in St. Chris. Among other places.”
“Oxford? So I was right to call you ‘don’ then?”
“I preferred to think you were celebrating me as a ganja baron. Suits a big black man better than the other kind, doesn’t it?”
He is teasing, but it irritates her, maybe because she still feels outside the fold of black people, though it’s silly to call anyone black or African here.
“What makes you think I didn’t mean them both?”
He only smiles. “Tomorrow we’ll see how you’re doing and we’ll talk some more. Now we’ll send Amitié with food.”
He is almost through the door, when he pauses “One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“It’s not my business, but what of the baby’s father? Oughtn’t he to know?”
Next morning she gets up to go to the bathroom. Through the window, a sky with an old woman’s face glowers at her. It is the flinty face she has seen on mothers taking care of wasted daughters spotted with lesions, skin scabbed, or turned to powdery grey; the worn face of grandmothers looking after orphaned grandchildren for whom food is scarce, clothes and shoes are luxuries, and doctors and medicine are fictive things. Wentley folks are poor, sick, and often sad, but she can’t recall ever seeing a face or a morning sky like this.
On her way back, she yields to the temptation of peeking through the door. Footsteps sound on the floorboards outside as she is stepping in that direction, and she scampers under the sheets in time to pipe, “Come in!” when there is a knock.
“I heard footsteps. How are we today, then?”
“I’m fine. We’re fine, thank you.”
“Good. I see you are assessing our weather.”
“Please.” She is reluctant to say his name. Now that yesterday’s delirium has given way to sanity, calling him Jimmy seems too familiar, never mind that he told her to call him that, but Father Atule or Father sounds too formal. Irresolute, she skips it. “I’ll die of boredom, if I stay inside. Not to mention curiosity. I need to see what’s going on. It’s why I came.” She is glad to sound businesslike. “Otherwise, what do I tell my employers?”
“Last point first.” He sounds serious but there is something playful in his eyes. “I wouldn’t worry about them. I’ve been in touch. They’re apprised.”
She sits up, zoom.
“You told my employers I’m pregnant?”
“Please. You must be quiet.” He pats her back onto the bed. “For sure, you can’t think much of me. I’d hardly have done that without your permission. Your office called to check on whether you’d got here safely. We told them you were somewhat indisposed but recovering comfortably.”
Stupid. All the same, it alerts her to the fact that she isn’t sanguine about letting her bosses know she is having a baby. Not that there aren’t any single mothers among her colleagues, but it is inevitably a long-time-ago matter, occurring early enough that the children are grown by the time their mothers are senior people.
“And you have been in bed not even for three days. There are women who have to lie in bed for an entire pregnancy if they want to keep a baby.”
“Don’t lecture me.” Remembering Ma and manners, she adds, “Please. I’m surely not one of those women.”
“Perhaps not so surely.”
“How can you know? Are you an obstetrician?” She is being boorish again.
“There’s no escaping some obstetrics if one works with HIV/AIDS. Women and babies are a big part of what we endeavour to do here, as you know.”
She finds the word “endeavour” quaint and humble. He can easily speak of achievement, for as far as the World Health Organization is concerned, the MATE Centres are considered outstanding. He is weird — modest, bossy, and hip at once.
“Isn’t there an ob/gynae clinic nearby?”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to do. The nearest hospital is in Benke, hours away.”
“There must be someone who can get me on my feet … ”
“I’m sorry. I have to go,” he responds, not really answering her. “There are some other folks I have to see. We’ll check on you when I get back.”
“Father Atule, we can’t keep delaying … ”
But he’s gone.
She puts down Jimmy Atule’s manuscript: “Jesus and HIV/AIDS.” He brought it in at lunch time, suggesting she have a look at it since it told the history and work of the centre at Tindi, but how can she read while she staggers among emotions, reeling between fear and confusion? She folds her arms. Exhales in exasperation. First she flirts with the priest. Now she sounds like something out of a bad novel. What is wrong with her?
She has not thought of aborting the baby. She is Gramps’s grandchild, Gwen and Moses Carpenter’s child, from the barracks’ yard in Wentley Park, sister to Pansy, Stewie, Edgar, Conrad, Sammy, and Princess, a family who made a place for her. As she reasoned when Maisie’s daughter got pregnant, dashing away pikni isn’t part of their tradition. And she is Phyllis’s daughter, lost to her mother and cherished anyway. But the priest is right. Should she tell Mark? Less than two months ago, she left him at Logan, feeling not madly in love, but warm, content. She hasn’t heard a word since. That surprises her. They worked well together. She hasn’t thought of their Cambridge interlude as the beginning of anything earthshaking — she has known earthshaking with Charlie — but it was surely important enough to warrant his being in touch, just to say he treasured it and wouldn’t forget. He can find her; people do it all the time. If he wanted to, he could have called. Still, she dallied two weeks in New York to see Phyllis and do a bit of work, spent another three weeks in London, and stayed for a week and a half over Christmas in Geneva before flying to Mabuli. But if he’d phoned or written, she’d have known. That being the case, she isn’t sure she wants to give him this news.
The pregnancy is a surprise to her. It had been a while between her last two periods, but the last one happened right before the workshop in Cambridge. Her periods have always been erratic, measured by the once-a-month criterion. Sometimes she has only half a dozen in a year. So she hadn’t really been worried about getting pregnant, never mind her teasing question as she left Mark at Logan airport.
“Cock mouth kill cock!” An old Gramps adage.
How do you tell a man you haven’t seen for ages then make love to one morning that there is now a bond between you that nothing can erase? Besides, when they parted, she released him from obligations to any baby that might come as a consequence of their lovemaking.
If she hears from him, it might make a difference. She’ll wait and see.
On the verandah late the next afternoon, Thursday, Grace is enjoying a small triumph. Some good-natured gutter fighting in the morning secured her leave to be outside for a bit. There is to be no walking up and down, but she can sit and read. It is warm, the sky tinsel bright. Dry grasses and shrubs are a dusty olive that holds its own against the jades of pawpaw and date palm. Set against a backdrop of red domes scrabbling through dark green mango leaves, with behind it all, the glittering, overarching blue, the panorama reminds her of Christmas in Wentley, tipping as it always does into January drought.
She has been enjoying the priest’s account of how the design for the centre at Tindi came about. At the start, he and the two nuns saw everyone in a large, round, thatch-roofed hut. Those waiting fell i
nto groups: men talked together; women stood or squatted, some with babies, many with toddlers; pregnant mothers sat on benches, often with a baby slung behind or balancing another in front; older women leaned on canes and crutches, no strangers to HIV for having left childbearing behind; restless folks clutched birth, land, and medical papers, for HIV/AIDS affected many things.
When the staff grew (two nurses part-time, another midwife twice a week), they’d used woven screens to divide and extend the hut.
The building rose on the plan traced by people’s feet. From a central, all-purpose space, walkways lead to satellite structures housing wards for men, women, mothers with newborn babies, a kitchen-cum-refectory, and an administration section.
Alternating male and female voices interrupt her concentration, singing in a language she can’t understand. Laughter breaks in, and then the singing resumes in French, and then English. A lusty tenor asks, “Will you, will you, will you be my mate?” to which a saucy soprano replies, “No sir! No sir! You already have a mate!”
Little rooms are the boast of the facility at Tindi, according to what she reads: bathrooms, a library, a playroom, a prayer room. The priest relates the story of his trying them out on the first day, and, in so doing, treating the superior to a display of his elevated bottom, clad in the rose pink of the chasuble worn on Gaudete Sunday, as he prostrates in the prayer room.
“Allah-o-Akbar, Jimmy. Contemplating conversion?”
“Yes, Father, of kneelers to prayer rugs and kneeling to the Sajda. Our imams and marabouts endorse the Sajda for prayer and the constitution. I agree.”
“As long as you ensure the air in this room stays sweet,” Father Kitendi retorted.
“Cruel!” I lamented my fate: persecuted for the whims of my bowels. I tried out the playroom too, slamming my ankle into the ground, twisting it badly as I came scooting down into the sandpit from a slide meant for the children. Sister Monique rescued me, eyes full of fun, asking, “Father Jimmy, have you lost your age paper again?”
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