Green City in the Sun

by Wood, Barbara

  Deborah paused before a photograph of Aunt Grace standing at the base of Treetops with Princess Elizabeth, in 1952, and her eyes misted over. It was as if Grace hadn't died at all but lived on.

  "All this really belongs to you, Dr. Treverton," Mother Superior said. "After you had left for America, I found storage boxes full of keepsakes. I had thought you would be coming back for them. I even wrote to you in California. Did you not receive my letters?"

  Deborah wordlessly shook her head. She had thrown those letters away—anything bearing a Kenya stamp—without opening them.

  "And then we decided to share these things with the world. Of course, if you wish to take anything away with you, it is your right, Dr. Treverton."

  Fifteen years ago Deborah had left Kenya with the only mementos she had wanted. Among them had been her aunt's turquoise brooch. Unfortunately that stone had been stolen from Deborah during her first year in medical school. A fellow student, one of the few other women in the class and an unhappy person, had admired the stone to the point of asking Deborah if she could buy it from her. When it came up missing, Deborah knew who had taken it but had no proof. The same girl dropped out of school a few weeks later and returned to her home up north in Washington. At the time Deborah had been upset over the stone's loss; as the years passed, however, she had come to accept the impermanence of all things—possessions, relationships—and had decided that the turquoise had been meant to be passed along.

  Deborah turned to the kindly spoken nun, whose black face sharply contrasted with the white simple of her habit, and said, "These things do belong to the world, as you say. I have no need of them. May I see Mama Wacheranow?"

  As they crossed the lawn, Deborah said, "Do you know why she is asking for me, Mother Superior?"

  The nun frowned slightly. "It was not an easy decision for me to make, sending for you, Dr. Treverton. Because you see, I am not sure she is asking for you. The poor woman is so terribly distraught. She came here on her own, you know. She appeared one day, very tired and in ill health—we estimate her age to be well over ninety—saying that the ancestors had instructed her to come here to die. She lapses into moments of lucidness, but most of the time she seems to be confused. Her mind moves to and from different points in time. Occasionally she will even wake up and asked for Kabiru Mathenge, her husband! But she has called out the Treverton name so many times, and she is so insistent on such occasions and so agitated as to require medication that I thought a letter to you might help. I pray that once she has seen you, she will rest more easily."

  Inside the bungalow they were greeted by a young nursing sister in a blue uniform and blue veil and taken to a bed at the end of the sunlit ward. Wachera was asleep, her dark head resting peacefully on the white pillow.

  Deborah stared down at her, prepared to feel anger and bitterness toward this woman who had been so cruel to her. But strangely, all Deborah saw was an old woman, frail and unthreatening. She didn't remember Wachera's being so small ....

  "She usually wakens later in the day," the young African nurse said. "Can we telephone you?"

  "Please. I'll be at the Outspan."

  "Let me offer you some tea, Dr. Treverton," the mother superior said. "We feel so honored to have you visit us."

  Deborah talked for a while with Mother Superior, drinking Countess Treverton tea and discussing Mama Wachera.

  "Her grandson visits her quite often," Perpetua said. "Dr. Mathenge is a good man. His wife died a few years ago. Did you know that?"

  "Yes. But I don't know how she died."

  "Malaria, it was. Just when we thought we had conquered it, now there's a new strain that is resistant to chloroquine. Dr. Mathenge is carrying on the work he and his wife both had been doing. We pray for him daily. Dr. Mathenge is taking healing and the Lord to the people of Kenya."

  Afterward Deborah visited the eucalyptus glade, where the Sacrario Duca d'Alessandro was still maintained by an old caretaker, the light still burning inside. Deborah liked to think that her grandmother and the Italian duke dwelt in a kind of eternal, spiritual lovemaking.

  THE RAIN WAS coming down hard by the time she returned to the Out-span Hotel. She went straight to her cottage, bypassing the dining room where lunch was being served. As she closed the door behind her, cutting off the wind and driving rain, and began to remove her damp sweater, Deborah received a shock.

  "Jonathan!"

  He rose from the sofa. "Hi, Debbie. I hope you don't mind. I told them I was your husband. A bribe got me the key to your room."

  "Jonathan," she said again, "what are you doing here?"

  "You sounded so strange on the phone the last time we talked that I got worried. I decided to come and find out what's going on."

  66

  J

  ONATHAN OPENED HIS ARMS TO RECEIVE HER.

  But Deborah hesitated by the door. She hadn't planned to tell him so soon. She had wanted time, to think and to prepare. So she went to the phone and asked for room service. As she ordered salad, fruit, sandwiches, and tea, she kept her eye on Jonathan. He looked tired.

  By the time Deborah had hung up and was removing her sweater, Jonathan was on his knees lighting a fire.

  This was a familiar scene, one which they had enacted many times in their apartment on Nob Hill. Coming in out of fog or rain, shrugging out of wet clothes, Jonathan started the fire, Deborah made the tea, and then came the hours of warmth and coziness, just the two of them, talking quietly, reviewing the day—patients, surgery, plans for their new office. It was within such golden circles of firelight that their love for each other had grown and strengthened and bound them together.

  But now the fire smelled wrong because the wood was foreign, and Jonathan kept his leather jacket on; the tea was brought by an African room steward, who served in silence while Deborah remained standing, ready with the five-shilling tip; and then, when she was alone with Jonathan again, she didn't go sit next to him on the sofa, sliding under his arm, curling her legs up and leaning into his body. She stood by the fireplace, looking at him, suddenly afraid.

  "What's happened, Debbie?" he asked at last.

  Deborah struggled for self-control. "Jonathan, I lied to you."

  His expression didn't change.

  "You asked me what a dying old African medicine woman was to me. I told you I didn't know. That was a lie. She's my grandmother."

  He remained perfectly still, staring up at her.

  "At least," she added, "I thought so at the time."

  The fire cracked loudly, and a red-hot shower of sparks went up the chimney. Outside heavy rain had turned the day as dark as night. It pelted the veranda roof; it drenched the forest that grew at the bottom of the sloping lawn. Deborah went to the low table in front of the sofa and poured two cups of tea. But they remained untouched.

  "Your grandmother?" Jonathan said. "An African woman?"

  Deborah avoided his eyes. It was easier to stare into the fire. She sat at the other end of the sofa, maintaining a distance from him, and said, "I thought she was my grandmother. It was what she wanted me to believe. She was the reason I left Kenya."

  Deborah's soft voice joined the whispers of fire and rain. She talked quietly, without emotion, leaving nothing out. Jonathan listened. He didn't move. He watched her tight profile, the fall of black hair down her back, untidy from the wind and rain. He listened to an incredible tale of Mau Mau freedom fighters and forbidden racial love, of childhood sweethearts, African and white, of a bachelor hut, of a funeral, of finding love letters, and of an old woman's curse. Jonathan was spellbound.

  "I had my aunt's journal all these years," Deborah said as she came to the end of her story, "but I never read it. I opened it when I checked in at the Hilton in Nairobi. And that was when I found out"—she finally turned to Jonathan, her eyes unusually dark, the dilated pupils reflecting the fire's glow—"that Christopher is not my brother after all."

  He met her straightforward gaze for a moment; then it was his turn to
look away.

  During her story a log had rolled off the fire, and it lay at the edge of the flames. Jonathan got up, took the poker, and maneuvered the log back onto the fire. Then he straightened and gazed at the portrait over the mantel, an elderly man with white mustache, wearing a Boy Scout uniform. Lord Baden-Powell, who had forsaken his comfortable life in England to live in the Kenya wilderness.

  Jonathan was perplexed. What was it about this country that seemed to turn people's heads? What special magic made men give up lives of ease?

  He turned and looked at Deborah. She sat on the edge of the sofa, tensed, as if ready to run. Her hands were clasped tightly before her; her face was drawn. He was familiar with that look. It came upon her when she stood by a patient in the intensive care unit. She would watch the monitors with singular passion.

  "Why did you never tell me all this, Debbie?"

  She looked up, her eyes full of pain. "I couldn't, Jonathan. I felt so ashamed. So ... dirty. I just wanted to forget my past and start anew. I saw no point in dredging it up. I never intended to come back to Kenya."

  "It wasn't a lie you told me," he said quietly. "All you did was keep an unpleasant memory a secret."

  "But there's more. I thought I was part black, Jonathan. And I never told you that. I said I couldn't have children. That's not true. I didn't want to have children. I was terrified that my ancestry would show up."

  "You could have told me all this, Debbie. You know that I don't give a damn about race or color."

  "Yes, I know that now. But I wasn't sure about you at first, when we started dating. So I told you the same lie I had told others. That I had had endometriosis."

  "But later, Debbie! When we realized we were in love, when we decided to get married. You could have told me then."

  She bowed her head. "I was going to. And then you told me about Sharon, the woman you almost married. That she had lied to you."

  Jonathan was thunderstruck. "You're blaming me? You're saying it's my fault that you perpetuated your lies?"

  "No, Jonathan!"

  "Christ, Debbie!" He turned away from the fireplace and walked to the French doors. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he stared out at the gray rain.

  "I was afraid," she said. "I was afraid that if I told you that I had lied, I would lose you."

  "You thought our relationship was that tenuous?" he asked, looking at her reflection in the window pane. "You thought so little of me? You thought I was that shallow?"

  "But Sharon—"

  He spun around. "Debbie, that was seventeen years ago! I was twenty at the time! I was young and intolerant and an arrogant son of a bitch! Good God, I like to think I've changed since then. At least I thought I had. I thought that I was a reasonable man and that you saw that in me."

  "But when you told me about her—"

  "Debbie," he said, crossing the room and sitting next to her, "Sharon and I were two young, selfish people. The lies she told me were outrageous ones. They were intended to deceive, even to hurt me. But your lie, Debbie, was intended only to protect yourself and to protect me. Don't you see the difference?"

  She mutely shook her head.

  "Lord," he said softly, "you've got to know me better than that, Debbie. You've got to know that I love you too much to pass judgment on you because of your past. I wish you had told me about it long ago. I could have helped you come to terms with it."

  "That's what I'm trying to do now, Jonathan. Coming back to Kenya has less to do with seeing Mama Wachera than it has to do with me finding out who I am. Reading Aunt Grace's journal has helped me a little. At least now I know my family's history. But I still have this ... rootless feeling. I don't know where I belong."

  He searched her face, saw the honesty in her eyes. He took her hands in his and said, "God, I love you, Debbie. I want to help you. I could tell on the phone. You didn't sound right. I got worried. So I canceled my surgery schedule and asked Simonson to take emergencies. All the way over here, on that damn jet, I kept trying to think what might be wrong. Lord knows this isn't what I expected. But at least it's not as bad as I had imagined."

  When Deborah didn't say anything, he said, "Is there more?"

  She nodded.

  "What is it?"

  "It's Kenya, Jonathan. I have this strong feeling that I must stay and help. In the past few days I've seen such poverty, such disease, people living in inhuman conditions. Except for a few caring individuals, like the nuns at the mission"—and Christopher, she thought, recalling how futile she had thought he looked, with his bag of medicines and all those desperate people—"no one seems to give a damn about all the suffering in this country. I feel this inexplicable pull at me, Jonathan. To stay, to put my medical skills to use here, as Aunt Grace had done."

  "People all over the world need our help, Debbie. Not just Kenya. What about our patients back in San Francisco? Are they any less in need of you because they're white and live in America?"

  "Yes," she said earnestly. "Because they have more doctors and better facilities."

  "What do those mean to Bobby Delaney?"

  Deborah looked away.

  Bobby Delaney was nine years old and fighting for his life in the hospital burn unit. He had been purposely set on fire by his mentally unstable mother, and Deborah was one of a team of physicians who were taking care of him. Having sustained third-degree burns over ninety percent of his body, Bobby now endured incredible pain and suffering, severe mental as well as physical trauma, living in a sterile bubble, where his only human contact was through rubber gloves, the only faces he saw, masked. For reasons no one knew, Bobby had singled out Dr. Debbie as his one friend. The way his eyes, in that poor, disfigured face, moved toward her each time she came in ...

  "You know he won't talk to anyone else," Jonathan said. "You know he lives for your visits. But there are others, too. All your patients are worthy of your care, Debbie."

  "I don't know," she said slowly. "I feel so strange, so undecided. Where do I belong?"

  "With me."

  "I believe that, Jonathan. But at the same time ..." She looked out at the Kenya rain. "I was born here. Don't I owe something to this country?"

  "Listen, Debbie. We all have two lives: the one we're born into and the one we seek out and make for ourselves. I believe you're caught in between the two. You need to find your way out."

  "I wish Aunt Grace were here. I could talk to her. She would help me."

  "Let me help you, Debbie. We can find a way out together."

  "How?"

  "We can start by having me read the journal."

  They made themselves comfortable on the sofa, Jonathan at one end, reading under a table lamp, Deborah curled up at the other end, pillows at her back. As Jonathan opened the old book to the first yellowed page, Deborah felt herself become lulled into a strange sense of complacency. There was something vaguely consoling about Jonathan's reading her aunt's words. She listened to the rain and closed her eyes.

  THE RINGING TELEPHONE jarred her out of a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Jonathan was up first, answering it. He hung up and said, "That was the mission. Mama Wachera is awake and asking for you, Debbie."

  She stretched and rubbed her stiff neck. "What time is it?"

  "It's late. I'm more than half done with the book." Jonathan hefted it in his hand. "The earl's just been found dead in his car. Quite a family you have here, Debbie!"

  She reached for her sweater, which had dried by the fire, and said, "I hate to leave you, Jonathan."

  "Don't worry. You just go and get things sorted out with the old woman. I'll still be here when you get back."

  "I don't know how long I'll be."

  He smiled and held up the book. "I have plenty of company."

  At the door he held her and said quietly, "I want you to come home with me, Debbie. I want you to find what you're seeking here, come to terms with it, and then lay the past to rest. The future belongs to us, Debbie."

  "Yes," she wh
ispered, and kissed him.

  DEBORAH REALIZED SHE was suddenly very nervous. As she followed the night nurse down the dimly lit ward, she felt her pulse quicken, her anxiousness mount.

  Wachera was resting against pillows that had been built up to put her in a comfortable half-reclining position. Deborah saw that she was having trouble breathing. Dark brown eyes fixed on her and followed her as she came to the foot of the bed; they stayed on her as she came around and sat in a chair at the bedside.

  "You ..." Wachera said in a papery voice. "The memsaab. You came.

  Deborah was surprised. She hadn't heard that word in years; it had been banned upon independence. But she also noticed that the medicine woman was not using it as a respectful term of address. Which memsaab? Deborah wondered. Does she think I am my mother?

  "You came," the ancient voice continued. "So many harvests ago. With your wagons and your strange ways."

  My grandmother!

  "You were the only one among the wazungu who understood the Children of Mumbi. You brought medicine."

  And then Deborah realized: She thinks I'm Aunt Grace.

  "You sent for me, Mama Wachera," she said softly, bending close. "Why?"

  "The ancestors ..."

  Wachera was speaking in Kikuyu, and Deborah was amazed at how easily she understood the words and then with what familiarity she herself now spoke it. "What about the ancestors, Mama?"

  "I will be with them very soon now. I will return to the bosom of the First Mother. But I go with lies and thahu upon my soul."

  Deborah grew tense. She watched the aged black face, still carved with dignity after nearly a century but looking strangely naked and vulnerable without the beaded headbands and great looped earrings that Wachera had always worn. Now she lay beneath white sheets in a plain hospital gown, her long, sinewy arms laid out on the pale blue blanket. Deborah wondered if the medicine woman knew how stripped she looked, how divested of authority and power.

  "There was the last girl," Wachera said, her breathing labored. "I let her believe my grandson was her brother. It was a lie."