Dear Exile

by Hilary Liftin

  I had a very cold Coke and some greasy fries for lunch that tasted pretty good. Admit it, you’ve wanted to have a big pile of French fries and a cold Coke for lunch now and then, haven’t you? I know you have.

  Love,

  Kate

  NEW YORK CITY

  November 1

  Dear Sunshine,

  It was not simply raining at the time. It was raining miserably, torrentially, hysterically. How much does it rain in the rainy season in Kenya? It doesn’t matter, because this was definitely as much rain as there can be; a great, sad rain. Sane people didn’t leave their apartments. But last Saturday William had little trouble convincing me to come hiking with him. There we were at Bear Mountain State Park, a mere hour or so from the metropolis, determined to see the fall leaves in their wettest, shiniest colors. There were groves of uniformly yellow leaves, then the ground would swoop up slightly and we’d be in a new city of Oz. I kept my hood on not so that I’d stay dry, which was impossible, but to try to keep the rain out of my eyes so I could see. As I walked ahead of him, though, I was near tears. I knew that I was there hoping he had come around, angry with him for daring to be my friend, wanting him to kiss me. At some point he said, “Do you hate me?” and I said, “Only a little.”

  We stopped by a lake for a while. The rain made its gray surface look like a parking lot. And then there was an empty parking lot with weeds sprouting through the cracked asphalt that we mistook for a lake. I know it sounds strange and not terribly interesting, but I insist that you keep an eye out for this phenomenon. Anyway, I asked William what he would do if, while we stood watching, a plane crashed into the lake. He said that he would send me for help and would swim out to the rescue. In spite of a tremor of indignation, the obvious suddenly dawned on me: that because he was a doctor (and probably a better swimmer) he could save lives that I couldn’t. If that isn’t adding existential crisis to heartache.

  His car was the only car in the parking lot, because no one else in the entire state of New York looked out their windows Saturday morning and thought, Hey, what a perfect day for a hike! To my surprise, my companion thought we should slip out of our wet clothes and fog up those windows. I was happy to comply. Don’t think I don’t remember your opinion on this front. I reread it just last night and, weirdly, shed a few tears over it. Yes! It surprised me too! It was the part where you said that you didn’t think I should be sleeping with anyone who didn’t recognize my “ultimate intelligence, charisma, and sexiness.” I don’t know why those tears ran down my cheeks (although I wasn’t making any noise or anything). Let’s figure I was moved by

  a. your faith in my excellence or

  b. your correctness about my settling for too little or

  c. the sadness of giving up something I’m enjoying or

  d. a general sense of dissatisfaction and self-pity.

  But if I don’t overthink it, if I just say, every so often I have a fine time with a person I like and respect, then it seems like a simple, good thing. And the pain generated by the knowledge that he thinks something is missing isn’t really so great as to overwhelm my enjoyment of his company.

  And the dissatisfaction is like the wet clothes that must be put back on for the long ride home.

  Love,

  H

  KWALE

  November 11

  POLICE BATTLE RIOTING STUDENTS

  By NATION Correspondent

  Armed police officers yesterday fired canisters in the air and battled more than 400 students of Kwale High School who had gone on the rampage.

  They were protesting the failure by the Provincial Education authorities to address problems facing the institution for the last two years.

  Trouble started when the rowdy students went to the Principal, Mr. Daniel Igwo, and demanded to have an audience with District Education Officer Sheikh Badawi. The latter had promised to give his findings after being presented with a memorandum by the students two weeks ago.

  A fortnight ago, the students boycotted classes after the school administration failed to address some of the grievances they had presented. However, they resumed classes after Mr. Badawi assured them their grievances would be looked into.

  Yesterday, the students said they had boycotted classes due to poor sanitary conditions and a poor diet. Their spokesman argued that the sanitary conditions were so poor that they posed a health hazard.

  Yesterday, Deputy Provincial Police Officer Peter Leiyan said police had been deployed to stop the students from causing further damage.

  Dear Hilary,

  I’ve started this letter several times already but they weren’t right, so I burned them. Maybe reading the clipping I’ve enclosed is the best place for you to start. Just thinking about what I have to describe to you makes my stomach hurt or my body ache with nerves and emotion.

  It started out like all the other mornings at school, with sweat along the waistband of my slip and tension from students stewing over the latest injustice. Just yesterday the principal pretended to raise the flag (the students had stolen it so he merely changed the position of the rope). Then he pretended that the student body hadn’t turned their backs on him during the morning assembly. Yesterday, as on every other day, teachers all acted as though everything was fine, as though today would be no different. I had come to think that it would be no different, that this was the way of things here.

  Then the principal called a staff meeting. I was excited—maybe we would talk about the fact that the school is still filthy; the bathrooms still don’t exist; the food still has worms; there still isn’t enough water; and there still aren’t any books or materials. But that’s not what was on the principal’s mind. He was talking about ordering new chairs for the teachers—“tall chairs that prove we are teachers! Chairs with arms and with cloth on the seats.” As he went on about the chairs, we all started to hear the yelling and shouting of an approaching crowd. The students were coming at us.

  I know it’s odd, but when I heard it, I was hopeful. Something is finally going to happen, I thought. Finally, this would show everyone that you can’t lead a school this way. Then the screaming students surrounded the staff room, and immediately glass was breaking and blocks of the school’s crumbling concrete were hurtling in at us. As students battered the door, we teachers scrambled behind tables and under the desks. Suddenly, the tenor of the screams I heard outside the door made me realize this was going to be violent. A chunk of concrete hit Immaculate, my fellow English teacher, on the side of the head. She fell over. As I stared at the blood on her head, we all heard gunshots. Now the mob was running away. The police were shooting into the crowd. As I stood there in shock, willing the bullets away from the children, another teacher said, “I hope the police kill those kids.”

  When I got home I hung clothes over the openings in the hut so I could get some privacy. So I could cry. Even when Dave got home (having gone to the school unknowingly to teach his afternoon class) I couldn’t stop crying. I was crying because I had been hoping for violence, crying because they had shot at my students, crying because I couldn’t stand being seen to be on the side of the teachers anymore, crying because it was impossible to imagine teaching here any longer. But then, tears are cheap. What does that mean? That I was only crying not bleeding.

  All this means that we’re going to leave Kenya. It’s going to hurt. But not as much as it will hurt to stay in these schools. If only we could’ve just been teachers outside the school system, tutoring people who can’t afford school, or setting up a center where students could come for extra help. But that is not an option. When Peace Corps finds out what happened in Kwale, they will probably try to pull us out of here and send us to yet another school. We know we don’t have the energy or the spirit to move again. Besides, we have no reason to expect that the next school would be any different than the two we’ve left.

  Since the riot I’ve been having a series of dreams where I meet good people I’ve known in my life that for random rea
sons I’ve lost touch with. In the dreams, although they’re people I don’t know too well or haven’t thought of in years, I’m trying really hard to mend things or to catch up, and I’m telling them that I want to keep in contact with them all the time now. I think my psyche is clutching at the memory of the kindness of people. Even not-so-strangers like you.

  I’m very sorry that he doesn’t love you, Hilary. But I do.

  Kate

  NEW YORK CITY

  November 21

  Kate:

  What are you doing? You are a teacher, not a soldier. You must come back right away. I know if you’re admitting that things are bad then they must be so, times ten. Do you have any hope for the school or the village? Remember, there’s plenty of need for you here. Including my need for you to be safe. Really.

  Consider this to be serious peer pressure.

  —H

  NEW YORK CITY

  November 22

  Kate,

  Okay, my friend, I’m not complaining. I know how lucky I am and all that. People starving, people with malaria, kids being unjustly beaten in unclean schools, whatever it is. But I’m still allowed to be sad, right? I’m still allowed to be hopeless and heartbroken, to wallow, to fret, to believe that love equals happiness, right? Enough. Last week I got round two of “we have to talk” from Dr. Strong, and now I’m down for the count. I knew it was inevitable because we have been in limbo for too long, pretending our awkwardness and nonrelationship were fine. But it was his birthday, and I hadn’t planned to confront anything. I suppose he found his birthday ideal, though, masochist that he is. So I plunked myself down in my chair, feeling sort of like I was in a bad movie. He asked, “Don’t you want to sit here?” indicating the place next to him on the love seat (oh, how ironic). I replied, “Is that your way of asking me to sit next to you?” Yes, it was. Then I got the whole recitation about how he thinks I’m great, and how it’s still that he feels like there’s something missing, etc. I, plea-bargaining, said, Well, we aren’t getting married or anything, so if you like me and are attracted to me, as you claim to be, then why can’t we just do what we’ve been doing? And here’s where the birthday came in, I think. It seems that when you’ve just turned thirty-six, even though you kiss better, you’re pretty marriage-focused. It wasn’t worth debating. But, as he hugged me for about ten minutes, I couldn’t help saying, “You’re making a mistake.” I just felt so sure that ending it was wrong. Not in an I-can’t-live-without-you kind of way. I was totally convinced in the way that one knows if something is morally right or wrong. The decision to stop felt entirely premature, like I was still peeling the carrots and he was like, I hate this salad.

  Then, to prove that this news hadn’t converted me from the ideal would-be soul mate that I am, I gave him his birthday present. I had wrapped it in newspaper and then a layer of tissue. On the tissue paper I drew a circle around some of the words that showed through from the newspaper: “Fire will prevail.” Inside were thirty-six candles and a set of twelve matchboxes from Chinatown, each of which says something like “Achievement,” or “Money,” or “Love” and has a fortune in it. We tried to name all the colors of the candles, usually resorting to fruits and vegetables (eggplant, kiwi, okra). He was making regular, see-we-can-be-friends conversation, and I was trying to cry. I know you’re thinking, How unlike Hilary. But I wanted to, because there was little else to say, because I wanted to prove to us both that this was real and final. I told him that I couldn’t be friends with him and that I didn’t want him to call me. At that, he looked so sad that again I felt like I was watching the same bad movie, scene two. Finally, when he hugged me goodbye at my door, I managed to sob into his overcoat. And then I felt a little proud of myself, somewhere in the unhappiness, for knowing exactly what I wanted.

  I realize how this may sound in context of the crisis in Kwale, but love counts, even in wartime.

  Hilary

  KWALE

  November 30

  Dear Hilary,

  I have no hope for the school. It has never reopened after the stoning. It’s closed for the rest of the year but not for cleaning or repairs or to dig choos or to find a way to supply the place with water—it’s closed as punishment to the boys, so they’ll miss school time and fail the all-important National Exam. The headmaster left, but not because he was forced out of office for flagrant abuses of power. No, rumor has it he got a promotion to a more prestigious school. While the school has been closed, teachers have been meeting to discuss the Readmission Procedures for the boys.

  After the first strike, several months ago, the Readmission Procedures were that each boy had to submit to an interrogation, and had to sign a Confession of Guilt (many innocents were forced to sign it) and an Oath of Obedience to the school authorities. Then, he had to lie facedown in the dirt while a teacher beat him with a thick rod. For the teachers to do this to each of the 400 boys took more than a week of teachers bellowing, the cane whipping through the air, and students screaming in pain and humiliation. The assistant headmaster even asked that I take my turn at the interrogation tables and at the cane (although he knew that I wouldn’t). I left so I wouldn’t have to listen to the cries.

  Now the teachers have decided that the reason for the stoning riot was that those procedures were too lenient. The meetings are spent devising harsher measures. Needless to say, I am no longer attending the meetings. I have no hope that the school will ever be any different than it is now.

  Do I have hope for the village? Well, hope for what? I have no hope that the children will, in the foreseeable future, be as healthy, or have as many choices in their lives as American children.I mean, I got out of bed at 5:30 this morning to burn garbage and dump compost because I’m not brave enough any other time. It’s embarrassing for everyone when the children try to save the rotting food we throw away. Last time Dave sneaked out to do it when he thought no one was looking, little Mwanaidi spied him and ran over with a few of her friends to eat the compost. Dave was fishing for the Kiswahili word for “putrid” but settled for “very bad.” He coaxed her into dropping it. Worse yet, as our trash heap was burning they began trying to fish out of it a pair of underwear I had used to tend to some impetigo, the pair now covered with pus, blood, and bacteria I had scraped off my face. (I used the underwear because it was clean and semidry. No towel will ever reach that state.) Luckily, Dave came back in time to catch them before they ran off with that contagious prize. (This morning it was just me and the chickens. I was curious to see if they are dumb enough to actually walk into a flaming pyre to get banana peels, and yes, they are.)

  Actually, I would have great hope for Kenya’s future if three-year-old Uba were going to be president someday. Yesterday she wandered over here while I was peeling potatoes. She’s about two feet tall, sucks her fingers, talks a lot, and has a tendency tofind your lap no matter what position you are in. She got excited watching me peel, rushing to get a pot from the farside of the courtyard, filling it with water, and dragging my jiko (container for my cooking fire) out from under the thatching. We weren’t quite ready to eat, so Dave and I were just chatting with her brother Rama. The next thing I knew, Uba had loaded the jiko with charcoal, gathered dried palm leaves for kindling, and was searching the kitchen for matches. Playing along, I took the lighter and pretended to lightthe charcoal. Then I put the pot on and thanked her forhelping me. She looked at me as if I were a nincompoop and took the pot off the nonfire. She got some more palm leaves, flicked the lighter, and started blowing on the tiny sparks and fanning the flame with a pot lid she’d found. She brought the potato peelings out to the chickens, washed the peeling knife, and swept the courtyard with a bundle of tied-together reeds while she was waiting for the potatoes to cook. After a little while she even tasted a piece to see if they were ready! At one point while she was getting leaves right in under the charcoal, she burned herself a little, shook her hand for a second, and kept on working as she sucked on the blister. Remember, she’s three y
ears old! What spunk! We all ate potatoes together and I thought about how we are leaving here.

  Kate

  NEW YORK CITY

  December 1

  Dear K8,

  On Monday I was diligently following my new program of going to the gym before work. I got into the elevator, but it stopped on the floor below mine. I had a sinking moment of premonition. Then the doors opened, and standing there was a middle-aged guy—not clean, not dirty—whom I somehow instantly identified as my downstairs neighbor who freaked me out last month and has been yelling weird things intermittently ever since. He said, “Do you live in 6L?” I said yes. He looked at me in disgust and growled, “What do you think you’re doing?” Then, shaking his head, he started to walk away. Because I know he’s strange (and have gotten more information on this front from the doormen), I figured I should try to establish my innocence. I stepped out of the elevator and said, “I’m not doing anything. I just want to be a good neighbor to you.” He turned and replied, “Well, I don’t think sending pulses into someone’s apartment is being a good neighbor.” This confirmed something that a tenant had told me—that this guy believes, and has for many years, that his upstairs neighbors (currently me) are sending electrical pulses down into his apartment. There I was, in my gym clothes, looking, I felt, very small and harmless. I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m not doing anything.” He asked if I was “alone up there.” I affirmed that I was. Then he said, “Well, somebody’s trying to kill me . . .” I was okay with that, thinking I’d successfully asserted my innocence. But then he added, “. . . and if it’s not you then I think you know who it is,” and turned away. I called feebly after him, “I’m really not . . . .” Then he was gone.