The Fall of Saints

by Wanjiku wa Ngugi

“Then I don’t need to tell you.” Betty looked at me. “The bond between the mother and the baby she carries for nine months is very strong. In my case, pain and suffering have united us,” she added with a touch of bitterness.

  “The others, could they talk to us?” I asked as if this were part of our plan to help.

  “Yes, but I would have to ask them first.”

  “Okay, we will stay in touch,” Wainaina assured her, and again thanked her for receiving us and talking to us about a difficult experience. I stepped in and gave her some dollars.

  “No, not American, I don’t want to have to explain anything to Wakitabu.”

  Jane took out one or two thousand shillings and gave them to Betty. For baby clothes, she said. I had seen the terror in Betty’s eyes every time she mentioned Wakitabu. There was the threat but something more as well. I asked, “Betty, tell me, why does Wakitabu terrify you so?”

  She looked away for a few seconds and then back at me. “You don’t understand. It’s not the fear of loss of a child or death, even. It’s being a slave for life. We cannot get out of the contract we signed freely. We have to keep on producing babies for as long as our bodies are able to—for life. We don’t even feed our babies. They are taken from us as soon as we deliver them. We have three months of rest. Then another baby, sometimes multiple births, anywhere between two and eight. Our wombs have been hired for life.”

  It was chilling. We were so transported by her story that we almost forgot that we had come to find out how we could get in touch with Wangeci.

  “Betty, can I ask you one more question? Was Wangeci one of the wombs for hire?”

  “Her case was different,” she said. “It’s not as if she needed the job. But she can tell her own story herself. I never understood it fully.”

  “Will you help us get in touch with her?”

  She stood up and studied me. “Can you really help her?” she almost whispered, with a bit more animation. “She was my friend. She is my friend. Will you really help her?”

  Our eyes remained locked. Even the others noticed. Thoughts flashed through my mind. Why was I doing this? Merely to satisfy my curiosity? And then? Bye-bye, Kambera, Mugure has found the partner agency, reconciled the conflicting details on Kobi’s adoption papers, and found her roots. It was me, me, me, all the way. Even my sudden passion for the roots must have been triggered by watching too much Roots. But at whose expense?

  I thought of the recent calls from abroad and conceived of myself as a human wrecking machine. I had disturbed people’s lives from Ohio to Manhattan to Cape Town. And now here! What right did I have to turn their lives upside down? Kasla may have had something to hide, and it was possible that my amateurish questions had stumbled upon something that the police had failed to see. The fact was, I could live without the details of Kobi’s papers and without having to confront my father. I could put a stop to all the lot, Kasla, Mark, Joe’s Mafia, my doubts, by ending the antics of a bored housewife and working harder to secure a material haven in a solid marriage.There was time for me to back out of this imbroglio with grace before I hurt more people. Besides, Betty had not really told us Wangeci’s problem. However, my answer to the question was unequivocal.

  “Yes!” I said firmly. “Yes, I will do my best.”

  15

  People talk of epiphany as a religious experience, but what can I call what I had just gone through? Did I have to know the name of it? It was a question of faith. Betty had given me faith. Secular. Faith is a commitment to the as yet unknown, and whatever the name, I had given myself to something from which I couldn’t back out and which was not solely about me.

  Betty’s saga of wombs for hire dominated dinner at Jane’s house. The mood was introspective with none of the lightness of the previous ones. Our spoons and forks scraping the plates only emphasized the somberness. Finally, deep into the dinner, Jane broke the awkward silence.

  “This is the worst case of assault on a woman’s body that I have ever come across. Women forced to breed and their babies the property of some male assholes who didn’t even sweat their penis in the process,” she said, casting an eye at Wainaina. “Surrogacy is not a crime, but this is different. Cheap wombs. Enslaved wombs!”

  “This society is sick,” said Wainaina almost defensively. “Kenya has remained the happy valley of the colonial yesterday—”

  “Paradise,” Jane interjected. “Wombs in paradise. A paradise of the crook and the crooked.”

  “My last investigative piece was on child pornography and pedophilia at the coast. Black madams selling underage girls to some aging fat white men for hard cash, sometimes under the cover of dance competitions in the big hotels and beach hostels. Unfortunately, the story was a one-week sensation. The government made some noise, threats of hell. The storm passes. There! Government goes back to sleep,” Wainaina said.

  “Government is male,” Jane retorted. “Adam was the first government; Eve his first subject.” She paused. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning to Wainana. “You happen to be the only son of Adam present at the table.” She leaned over and touched his cheek with her lips. “But you see my point? Eve seeks knowledge and passes the forbidden fruit to Adam, who readily accepts it. They are expelled from paradise. Eve is sentenced to bear children with pain, while Adam paces about the yard, waiting to claim ownership. Mugure, my views on marriage and children were formed a long time ago, as you know. Call it my rebellion against the sentence on women. That’s really why I became a lawyer, not because of Portia in The Merchant of Venice. Portia was inserting herself in a battle of property between thieving males. I wanted to defend women against the original sentence. Not that it’s easy, no, it’s not. I tell you, every time I bang my head against a government’s intrusion in women’s rights, I end up bleeding. We three were witnesses to a crime, at least the compelling testimony of a crime. I am a defense attorney. We don’t prosecute. That’s the work of law enforcement. Of course, if clients come to us, we can initiate civil suits.”

  “I thought that as FIDA, you were proactive when it came to women’s empowerment—or in this case, women’s disempowerment,” I said.

  “We are, but we still have to work within a male system. And in that system, women have nowhere to hide, not in their homes, not in the government, not in churches, mosques, or temples. I’ve always thought of Atlas as a woman carrying the weight of the globe. That’s why one has to admire Reverend Susan, making it in a man-eat-man system—sorry, I should say man-eat-woman society. But even she ends up maintaining the male system.”

  I had never seen Jane in this mood. She had always been a fighter, a doer, not Miss Hamlet. It was clear that Betty had touched a raw nerve in Jane.

  “Ah, my friend Mugure. As a defense lawyer, I am driven by the ideals of helping to maintain a fair system of rules, whether it results in a win or a loss in a particular case. But this assumes a delicate balance of policing, investigation, prosecution, defense, judgment, and enforcement. What if it turns out that Wakitabu is in charge of all the elements? My friends, I cannot sit here and pretend that the case of Republic versus Alternative Clinics did not leave bruises, and they have not yet healed.”

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “As you know, abortion in this country is illegal. But for one reason or another, women are aborting. Along come the Mary Magdalene Sisters. They form an NGO, Alternative Clinics, for a humane solution to the illegal abortions. They encourage women and young girls to carry the baby to full term and then give up the babies for adoption. Basically, they provided an expectant mother with all the essentials she needed to ease the pregnancy. They provided free education for some of the girls. According to Alternative Clinics, only about half the women chose to give up the babies. These were placed in government or government-supervised adoption centers.”

  “Sounds like a noble project,” I said.

  “The brain behind
the whole thing is Sister Paulina. From all accounts, it seemed to work well. She wanted to expand to HIV centers. “

  “A kind of local initiative,” Wanaina said.

  “Yes, that was the beauty of it. Sister Paulina had the same kind of background as Susan. In fact, she comes from the village next door; the women are almost mirror images. Bright. Attractive. Forceful personalities and, in their own way, dedicated to serving others. But Paulina chose a different path: the Roman Catholic way. That way enables what she loves most: education. She admires the selflessness of nuns, and she decides to become one, in short, working within an established system to give back a little of that which was given to her. Within the Catholic Church, she sees room for individual initiative, in the tradition of all those orders from the Jesuits of old to the orders of Irish missionaries. For Sister Paulina, from what I could gather, working within a system ensured removing herself from any temptations of personal gain. The programs start receiving recognition. Visitors from Brazil to India flock, even some who used to work with Saint Teresa in the streets of Calcutta. The model is seen as one that could be copied elsewhere.”

  “We carried stories about some of these visitors,” Wainaina confirmed. “We did a profile of Sister Paulina with the sensational heading: ‘The Black Teresa: On Path to Sainthood.’ ”

  “That article could have been the beginning of the end of the Alternative Clinics,” Jane said, again turning to Wainaina, who frowned, but she ignored it and continued. “I mean, the article and its prominence may have set the problems in motion. At first they were rumors—that the Alternative Clinics were not what they seemed. Then Susan gave the rumors a leg and a voice—the clinics were encouraging young girls to have early sex. The chorus was taken up by all the other churches, Protestant, of course.”

  “Yes,” added Wainaina. “I remember interviewing the head of the PCEA Nairobi chapter. He almost foamed at the mouth as he denounced the clinics, asserting that this hypocrisy has been the real face of Roman Catholicism since the times of Pope Leo X, who declared war on Luther.”

  The government had taken the clinics to court on charges of unspecified illegal activities. LAW took up the defense and sent their top lawyer. Jane demanded that the republic stop trying her clients in the press; she also sought specifics of the charges and a list of witnesses.

  “What happened in court?” I asked.

  “Four things: Father Brian, a document, the Vatican, and Detective Mbaya,” Jane said with an enigmatic smile that barely hid her bitterness.

  “Mbaya, as in Swahili for bad?” I asked. Jane nodded.

  Detective Mbaya had told the court that he intended to prove crimes of commission and prospective commission. Leading the list of witnesses was Father Brian, and for proof, a document so sensitive and explosive in its claims that its contents could not be revealed in court. Yet the document contained the only evidence of prospective crime. Jane had a fierce exchange with Detective Mbaya, headlined in the press as “Kagendo Faces Mbaya,” with their pictures glaring at each other on the front page. The case never went ahead; the Vatican intervened. The clinics were closed. Sister Paulina was called to the Vatican. And then relieved of her order.

  Jane stopped to drink some water, though I suspected it was to calm her emotions. “The papers ran with the story: ‘The Fall of a Saint,’ ” she said.

  “One thing we could not understand,” Wainaina said. “Mbaya had a fairly good reputation in a force that had lost credibility since the debacle of the Armenian brothers accused of smuggling guns into the country. But he seems to have lived true to his bad name.”

  “I used to have so much respect for him. Not so much after that,” Jane said.“Out of the fiasco emerged clear losers and winners. I lost. My star—sorry, Wainaina—was no longer shining. Nor was Sister Paulina’s. She was the other loser. I was too ashamed to face her afterward. It was as if I had let her down.”

  “I tried to get an interview for the Daily Star,” Wainaina said. “Apparently, she had been sworn to silence by the Vatican in exchange for continuing her service within the Catholic fold. She now teaches in Msongari.”

  “Our old school,” Jane and I said in unison.

  “We could talk to her. Years have passed. She may be willing to share some information,” I suggested.

  We agreed. Jane offered to make the arrangements and then continued, “The clear winners were Reverend Susan and Father Brian. Reverend Susan registered her adoption agency: the Real Alternative Clinics. Father Brian became a sensational picture of morality, although nobody knew what it is he had wanted to say in court. Some rumors claimed that he was the author of the secret document that doomed the clinics and brought about the fall of a saint. Brian became an overnight celebrity when he registered his all-purpose charity to lift Africa. Some called him a great nationalist, a white Pan-Africanist even, a holy visionary. Madness! How could a name like All Lost African Sun Kingdoms Arise turn a wayward priest into a Pan-Africanist visionary overnight?”

  “Extraordinary,” I said. “A whole sentence for the title of a mere charity?”

  “It’s registered under the initials,” Wainaina said. “ALASKA. Alaska Enterprises!” He looked at me as if he had realized the implication.

  “Oh my God,” I said, excusing myself to the bathroom, where I sat motionless, though my mind was a whirlwind. How did Alaska Enterprises end up in my husband’s file in Riverdale? Whatever, the saga of the Alternative Clinics and Betty’s story of enslaved wombs were intertwined with my life. I played with the initials. Alaska. Kalaska. Kasla. The Palmer defense of Kasla. Rhino Man. The priest. The gunman. The priest, the lawyer, the gunman, and the Rhino Man. Mark. Joe. The Mafia. A web of intrigue and personalities. How did they connect?

  I took out my cell phone to call Ben. I had forgotten to keep my phone on. He had called again. Ben . . . but why was he following me? Was he part of the web? I decided not to call him just yet. I had to find out more, arm myself with details, knowledge. I had to take a good look at this Wakitabu and the Supa Duka, the fertility clinic in Mashingo, and anything else connected with Alaska. Then meet with Paulina, Wangeci, and Susan. In that or any other order.

  “I am going to Kambera,” I told Jane and Wainaina after I returned to the table.

  They looked at each other, then at me.

  “For a few days,” I added.

  16

  The next call from Ohio sounded anxious. Ben had called Sam again to tell him they had questioned Joe and found that his story didn’t make sense. Nor did the fact that I’d ended up in Ohio and then disappeared, leaving Kobi behind. Ben wanted to know the relationship between Joe and Sam and sounded skeptical when Sam denied knowing Joe. What irritated Sam was Ben’s implication of a white conspiracy against a black female.

  “Oh, and Dad advises you to get a gun. He does not like this Ben fellow insinuating that I could be involved in the disappearance of an African queen,” he said with a nervous chuckle.

  I had to stop this. This time I called Ben.

  “Mugure, thanks for calling. Where are you? I have been looking for you everywhere.”

  “And harassing my friends? Threats, even?”

  “You must admit that the series of events has been strange. I am your friend, sister. I meet with you at Kennedy. We talk about Zack and suited gunmen. I give you my hotline for any emergency. The same afternoon, you leave your home in Riverdale in such a hurry that you don’t even stop at traffic lights. Thereafter, Joe chases you all the way to Manhattan. He calls us. I question him, and he tells me some fiction that you are crazy. But you did not look crazy to me when we met at the airport. He says we should lock you up in a ward to have your head examined. Then you vanish. You leave behind a child you love. Cape Town? You are not there. My calls to you? No response. Melinda disappears at about the same time. The police ask Mark to report at the police station to answer a few questions about sm
uggling and employing illegal immigrants. He disappears. You told me that he recommended Kasla to you. Kasla was once represented by Palmer. I drive past the curio shop. The owner is gone.”

  “The Rhino Man?” I asked, unable to disguise my fear.

  “Is that what you call him? Mugure, we have to meet. There are things I want to tell you.”

  “Ben, I am far away. Can’t you can tell me over the phone?” I asked.

  “A meeting is best.”

  The more he emphasized a meeting, the more suspicious he made me, but curiosity overrode that. What if he was telling the truth? I did not want him to bother Sam again. “I am in Kenya,” I said.

  “What! You are in Kenya?” he sounded agitated.

  “I was going to South Africa. I changed my mind at the airport.”

  “Remember my friend Johnston, the detective I once told you about? I will text you his number. He is a good man. Please call him in case of anything . . . Mugure, I’m sorry, but I must ask you this: Has Zack been in touch with you lately?”

  “Why? Has anything happened to him? Please tell me.”

  “I don’t know. We lost him in Tallinn. We think he may have crossed over to Latvia.”

  “What about the suited gunman?”

  “We haven’t seen him, either. Does Zack know you are in Kenya?”

  Why does he want to know? I asked myself. “No!” I said.

  “Keep it that way.”

  “Look, Ben, tell me the truth. Is Zack safe?”

  “Put it this way: I’m not aware of any harm to him.”

  “Thank you for your concern, but I really have to go now,” I said, trying to terminate the conversation without unduly annoying him. I could not trust him fully. His good came mixed with evil. Perhaps he wanted his friend—if Detective Johnston existed—to keep an eye on me.

  “Wait. How about Melinda?” he asked.

  “She is performing at the annual Festival of Rags. Look, I have to attend to something now,” I said hastily, and hung up.