The Garden of Burning Sand

by Corban Addison

  She settled easily into the routine of living with the Prentices. They treated her more like a neighbor than a guest, yet every evening she found her laundry cleaned and her bed made. Their housekeeper, Rosa, was exacting, scrupulous, and a genius in the kitchen. Carol Prentice sang her praises and trusted her implicitly. On workdays, Joseph escorted Zoe home to ensure she wasn’t followed. Often he stayed for dinner, and the Prentices grew fond of him.

  On Sunday afternoons, Zoe visited Kuyeya. Her affection for the girl deepened with each meeting. Though slow at first, Kuyeya’s therapy with Dr. Mbao began to bear fruit. The psychiatrist probed the girl’s memory for stories she learned from her mother and used them to piece together details about her past. Kuyeya’s favorite tale involved a bee-eater who made friends with a hippopotamus. Whenever she said “bee-eater,” she burst into a fit of laughter.

  In the middle of November, Zoe at last conceded that her strategy to flush out the housekeeper had been an abysmal failure. She considered staking out the residence without telling Joseph, but the memory of Dunstan Sisilu and the black mamba tempered her enthusiasm. One morning when she sat down to breakfast, she heard Rosa washing dishes in the kitchen, and an idea came to her. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it before.

  “Do you have a minute?” she asked Rosa.

  “Of course,” the woman replied, drying her hands on a towel.

  Zoe gave her a sketch of the case and told her about the search for the Nyambos’ housekeeper. “If you were trying to find her, what would you do?”

  Rosa thought for a moment. “Does her mistress wear chitenge or Western clothes?”

  Zoe searched her memory for details about Patricia Nyambo. She had only seen her once—at the Subordinate Court on the day of the arraignment. Had she been wearing a business suit? In a flash Zoe remembered. She had been wearing a dress made of green chitenge.

  When she told Rosa this, the woman asked, “Is the cloth expensive? Is the color rich and the pattern fine?”

  “I think so,” Zoe guessed, figuring Patricia Nyambo would settle for nothing less.

  Rosa nodded. “There is a woman at the City Market who sells the finest chitenge in Lusaka. She keeps a stall on Saturday only. My last mistress often sent me there. I saw many other women like me.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Zoe said, and asked Rosa how to find the stall.

  Early on Saturday morning, Joseph and Zoe drove downtown. The largest of Lusaka’s markets, the City Market, sat on a parcel of land wedged between the Cairo Road commercial center and the more pedestrian Soweto Market. The nicest stalls were housed in an enclosed arcade with tributaries branching off the main hall like side streets in an urban grid. Zoe had visited the market only once in her year in Lusaka, but most Zambians she knew were frequent customers.

  On any given day, downtown Lusaka was a bustling place. On Saturdays, however, the commercial district had a festival atmosphere. The streets were jammed with traffic, and the sidewalks were crawling with shoppers hungry for a deal. They parked beside a salaula stand brimming with secondhand clothing from the West. Joseph took Zoe’s hand and navigated the labyrinth, sidestepping moving bodies and merchandise laid out along the roadside.

  They slipped into the covered arcade and joined the stream of customers shuffling through the main hall. The diversity of goods on display beggared imagination –shoes, boots, leather, bags, textiles, chitenge fabric, rugs, woodcarvings, jewelry and clothing. All around customers haggled with vendors. The noise and commotion made Zoe’s head spin.

  “Rosa said the stall is on a side aisle halfway down,” she said. “The woman’s name is Chiwoyu. She said we should expect a crowd.”

  They found the stall exactly as Rosa had described. The fabrics were beautiful and the queue extended down the aisle. Most of the customers were Zambian women over fifty—many no doubt employees of the elite. Zoe searched their faces but didn’t see the housekeeper.

  “Where should we wait?” Zoe asked.

  Joseph led her toward a stall stuffed with racks of men’s shoes. Outside the stall was a folding chair. “Sit here,” he said. “Pretend you’re pregnant.”

  Zoe took a seat and watched Chiwoyu dispense bolts of fabric while Joseph struck up a conversation with the shoe vendor. Eventually, her back started to hurt. She stood up and walked toward the exit, stretching her muscles. As she neared the end of the aisle, an old woman entered from the outside. The woman glanced at Zoe and stopped in her tracks.

  It was the housekeeper.

  “We met before,” Zoe said quietly, making no move toward the woman.

  The housekeeper’s eyes darted around, as if seeking a way out.

  “I understand why you don’t want to talk to me, but I need your help. Kuyeya needs your help. Can I show you a picture of her?”

  Zoe took out her iPhone and found an image of Kuyeya at St. Francis. The woman stared at the screen and tears came to her eyes. Still, she didn’t speak.

  “I think you know her,” Zoe said. “Or maybe you knew her mother. Her name was Charity Mizinga, but she also went by Bella. She died two years ago.”

  At last the old woman found her voice. “There is nothing I can do for you. Even God cannot change the past.”

  You do know her! Zoe thought. “Perhaps,” she said, keeping her excitement in check. “But the truth is easier to come by.”

  The housekeeper regarded her sadly. “What would you do with the truth?”

  Zoe steadied her breathing, certain she was close to a breakthrough. “I would tell it to the judge and let justice take its course.”

  The old woman shook her head slowly. “Your justice would change nothing.”

  “It would change everything,” Zoe countered. “Darious raped a girl before.”

  The housekeeper’s eyes filled with fear. “I need to go.”

  “Please. We can offer you protection.”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking,” the old woman replied.

  She clutched her handbag and headed toward Chiwoyu’s stall. For excruciating seconds, Zoe held out hope that the woman might reconsider. But the housekeeper took her place at the rear of the queue and acted as though the exchange had never happened.

  “What did she say?” Joseph asked, meeting Zoe in the aisle.

  “She knows something, but she doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  He angled his head thoughtfully. “I’m not sure you’re right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I watched her face. She listened to you, but she’s afraid. She has your number, right?”

  Zoe nodded. “I gave it to her at Shoprite.”

  “Give her time. She may come around.”

  As the days passed, Zoe checked her iPhone regularly for a message from the housekeeper, but nothing came. She distracted herself with half a dozen new case referrals from Dr. Chulu. All were horrifying—the youngest victim was six years old—but the perpetrators were family members or neighbors, and the process of compiling evidence was fairly straightforward.

  She tried several times to reach Cynthia Chansa by phone. She left her husband a number of voicemails—each time dropping a bit of information about Kuyeya and the obstacles faced by the prosecution—but she received no response. After three calls a disembodied voice informed her that the mailbox was full. She tried Godfrey again, but he didn’t answer.

  One morning in December, Zoe was sitting in the office editing an appellate brief for the High Court when Maurice appeared in the doorway to the legal department. He crossed the floor to her desk and stood silently until she looked up at him.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  He nodded. “There’s a woman at the gate looking for you.”

  She felt burst of excitement. “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The housekeeper! She walked through the office and steadied her breathing. Be cool, she told herself. Don’t frighten her.

  She left the bung
alow and headed down the lane toward the gate. She nodded to the guard, and he beckoned to someone standing on the far side of the barrier. A woman in a pale pink suit and high heels stepped through the opening, and Zoe stopped in shock.

  She was not Zambian. She was American.

  “Hello, Zoe,” said Sylvia Martinelli, surveying the landscape around the CILA office. “Is everything in Lusaka so lovely?”

  Zoe stared at her, paralyzed by the unexpected collision of worlds. She hadn’t seen or spoken to Sylvia since the dinner they had shared in Cape Town at the conclusion of her clerkship. The détente she had forged with her father over the disbursal of funds from her charitable trust had not extended to his second wife. If ever the conditions had been right to build a bridge between them, that had been the moment. But Sylvia had squandered it by defending Atticus Spelling.

  “Why are you here?” Zoe finally managed.

  Sylvia smiled. “It’s almost noon. Let me take you to lunch. The concierge at the Intercontinental told me about Rhapsody’s. It sounded very nice.”

  “It is. But you haven’t answered my question.”

  Sylvia glanced at the guard. “This isn’t the best place.”

  Zoe felt suddenly anxious. “Is something wrong with my father?”

  Sylvia laughed. “No. He’s as indefatigable as ever. But my visit does relate to him. Please, Zoe. I know we’ve had our disagreements. I’m only asking for an hour of your time.”

  Zoe was ambivalent, but she didn’t have it in her to be cruel. “Okay.”

  She grabbed her backpack from inside the office and followed Sylvia to a waiting SUV. A Zambian driver opened the door for them and they climbed in. Ten minutes later, they entered Rhapsody’s, a trendy South African import with electric-blue mood lighting. The hostess greeted them and showed them to a table.

  “Is the steak good?” Sylvia inquired, scanning the menu.

  “Yes,” Zoe replied evenly. “But I want an answer to my question.”

  Sylvia gave her an inscrutable look. “Will there ever be peace between us?”

  Zoe met her eyes. “Peace without reconciliation is a lie.”

  “Okay, then tell me about reconciliation.”

  “It starts with the truth.”

  Sylvia looked puzzled. “What truth are you talking about?”

  “You were raised Catholic,” Zoe said, keeping her expression neutral. “You remember the thirty pieces of silver.”

  Sylvia frowned. “Come now. Must you be so melodramatic?”

  A dozen responses came to Zoe’s mind, but she held her tongue, staring at Sylvia until the silence became uncomfortable.

  At last Sylvia spoke again. “You know how committed Jack is to winning the election. He’s the right man for the job. Our country desperately needs his leadership.”

  Zoe nodded. “I’m well aware of his ambitions. And yours.”

  Sylvia softened her tone. “It doesn’t matter what you think of me. I never tried to fill your mother’s shoes. I couldn’t have, anyway.” She gave a little laugh. “But Jack loves you. He’s your father. He’s made mistakes and he regrets them. He’d really like your support.”

  Zoe shook her head. “I can’t support him. His solution to the budget crisis is to gut the programs that benefit the people I work with every day.”

  “That’s hardly true. You know better than I do how much Jack cares about the poor. He gives generously to your mother’s foundation. In times of crisis, everyone has to cut back.”

  Zoe’s eyes flashed. “You take a billion or two from the Pentagon, and people will complain, but they’ll get over it. You take that money from AIDS relief and thousands of Africans will die. There’s a difference between cutting and killing.”

  Sylvia put up her hands. “Look, I didn’t come here to talk about policy. I came because Jack is going to win the New Hampshire primary. It would mean the world to him to have you on stage with Trevor when he gives his victory speech.”

  Zoe considered this, knowing Sylvia was right. In the end, however, her conscience wielded an absolute veto. “I can’t do it. Tell him I’m very sorry.”

  Sylvia raised her eyebrows. “Even if it means he won’t make the call to Atticus?”

  Zoe felt as if she had been sucker-punched. “He gave me his word.”

  Sylvia shrugged, allowing the silence to inspire doubt.

  Zoe stood up. “I have nothing more to say to you.”

  “Wait,” Sylvia protested. “Please don’t go.”

  But it was too late for rapprochement. Zoe walked out of the restaurant, ignoring the waiter who was bringing them bread. She thought of her father as he was before her mother died—the Harvard-educated child of a Midwestern insurance salesman; the savant who ascended to the pinnacle of Wall Street but never lost the middle-class chip on his shoulder; the sailor who taught her how to hoist the jib on his yacht and rescued her from drowning when she fell overboard in a squall; the husband whose love for Catherine Sorensen-Fleming sent him into clinical depression when she died. Why didn’t you find another woman like her, Dad? Why did you have to marry Sylvia?

  She placed a call to Joseph and asked for a ride. Then she took a seat in a small plaza and listened to the bubbling fountain behind her. The sky was mostly clear, and the sun was hot upon her skin. Distracted by unwanted memories, she barely noticed when a group of business-people approached the hostess at Rhapsody’s. It was the voice that caught her attention, the booming basso profundo that carried such gravity in the courtroom.

  She looked across the plaza and saw him—Flexon Mubita. With him were two Zambians, a tall man in a dark suit and a handsome woman in chitenge. The man she didn’t recognize. But she remembered the woman well. Her stomach clenched involuntarily.

  It was Patricia Nyambo.

  Zoe took a few hasty photographs with her iPhone and then sat back against the bench, trying to make sense of what she had seen. Mariam trusted Mubita more than anyone on the bench; Dr. Chulu considered him an honorable man. His behavior in Kuyeya’s case had been unimpeachable. He had ruled in their favor on DNA and given Benson Luchembe a tongue-lashing over the theft of evidence. He and Patricia were both judges; they surely knew one another. It could just be a friendly lunch meeting.

  The more Zoe thought about it, however, the less likely that seemed. Mubita was presiding over the trial of Patricia’s son. She sat on the High Court, which would hear any appeal in the case. What was it Judge van der Merwe had told her? “Judging is one of the loneliest jobs in the world because relationships are always secondary. A judge can’t tolerate even a hint of impropriety.” Perhaps judicial ethics were looser in Zambia, but conflicts of interest were the same everywhere. Besides, the Nyambos had proven their guile. Evidence had gone missing; someone had broken into her flat; Thoko Kaunda had been influenced. The thought struck Zoe with sudden force: what if the same thing happened to Mubita?

  When Joseph pulled up to the curb, she jumped into the passenger seat. “Look who’s having lunch together,” she said, showing him the photos.

  His eyes darkened. “They’re in there now?”

  She nodded. “Who’s the tall guy?”

  “The Deputy Minister of Justice.”

  She shook her head. The involvement of a powerful politician—a deputy cabinet minister, no less—only accentuated her concerns. “What are we going to do?”

  “If she compromises him, I doubt there’s anything we can do. But we don’t know what they’re talking about.” He looked at the pictures again. “Mariam’s husband has political connections. Maybe he can make a few inquiries.”

  Zoe struggled to compose herself. First Sylvia. Now this. “Please take me home. I can’t go back to the office right now.”

  Joseph nodded and pulled out onto Great East Road, heading toward Kabulonga. After a while, he asked, “What were you doing at Arcades?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  He glanced at her. “I don’t have anywhere else to be at the moment.”


  Out of habit she almost deflected his inquiry, but something in her counseled the benefits of disclosure. She was tired of policing her words, tired of subjugating her feelings and hiding her scars.

  “Okay,” she said, surprised by the lightness she felt in saying something so simple. “If you want to hear it, I’ll tell you.”

  When they reached the Prentice bungalow, they found the carport empty. Zoe unlocked the front door and called out to Rosa, but she heard nothing beyond a marbled echo. She led Joseph to the terrace, and they took seats on wicker chairs facing the pool. She looked across the water and felt a tremor of apprehension. For an instant, she reconsidered her decision, but she knew she had to do it. The burden needed to be shared.

  “My dad and I have a … complex relationship,” she began. “We’re very different, but I grew up respecting him. We had a lot of fun together, and he loved my mom more than anything.” She let out a chuckle. “Except making money, perhaps. He took it really hard when she died. Trevor and I had to figure things out on our own. It was a difficult time.”

  She listened to the birds singing in the msasa trees. “A year later, he met a woman named Sylvia Martinelli at a charity function. She was a celebrity publicist—essentially an image consultant. She was beautiful and he was lonely. I didn’t like her, but it wasn’t her fault, at least not at first. After they got married, Dad started to change. His ambitions grew. He’d built a hugely successful fund on Wall Street, but it wasn’t enough. Suddenly, he wanted to be President of the United States. I don’t know if it was Sylvia’s idea, or she just encouraged it, but his decision to run for office changed everything.”

  She took a nervous breath. “His first race was for the U.S. Senate in 2000. He asked his investment partner—one of his best friends—to run the campaign. His name was Harry Randall. Our families were close. Every summer, the Randalls spent two weeks with us on Martha’s Vineyard. That year, Dad and Harry were too busy with the campaign, but the rest of us went. Harry had a son named Clay. I had a crush on him. He was affectionate, and I was seventeen and naive. It was all very juvenile, but I was foolish enough to believe he loved me.”