by Gabi Moore
“What the fuck? What the actual fuck? We were doing you two stupid losers a fucking favor and now you’re waving this stupid fucking knife in our faces? This isn’t even our fucking car, do you know that?!”
I snatched at his hand and knocked the knife from him, sending it clean down the side of the car seat. They were all three staring at me. The man on the other side had inched back a little further.
No. They were not going to get away with this. I punched the dashboard again and threw open the door on my side, sending the guy there skidding backwards in the dirt. I marched to the front of the car and stared at them both.
“You’re fucking pathetic, both of you! Do you have any idea how stupid you are? Nobody cares about you guys, fucking nobody. And why should they? You’re trying to hijack a broke down fucking piece of shit car filled with rotten fish. Just fucking think about that. Everyone knows this car is Mama Tembi’s, so how the fuck do you think this is going to work out for you? This car’s worth nothing. In fact, I bet I have more cash on me right now than you could sell this piece of crap for…”
I dug around in my pockets and fished out six twenties, still fresh from the pile Dylan had drawn and given to me in a little brown envelope along with his photo. I tossed them to the ground and they fluttered down.
“Fucking take it then! Because I pity you!” I said and stomped back to the car and climbed in, slamming the door behind me.
“Just drive” I barked at Valerie. She turned the ignition and with narrow eyes I made out their figures behind us in the dust, picking up the money and then staring after us in bewilderment.
On the road, Valerie hit the acceleration and we sped off, hurtling right over the potholes. My heart was beating like an animal’s. I felt as though I had fire in my veins. We had driven a few miles before Valerie dropped the pace a little and we turned to look at one another.
“I never knew you could swear like that” she said quietly, then broke out into a smile. I couldn’t help but smile with her.
Chapter 10 - Penelope
Valerie was gone for the night. She had told the story over and over again, the people at Mama Tembi’s one moment outraged and the next amused. Had I really said all that? Could they look at the knife again? Some people in the village had an idea of who the two could be, and I was assured over and over again that “things like this” simply never happened in this village, and they come from elsewhere, and that they’d pay.
I had retired early for the night, and Valerie had left around the same time to head over to her “friend” who was briefly visiting from London. So it was just me. Just me in that tiny hovel with my oversized bag, my overpriced boxes of laundry detergent and some godawful orange cheese naks that looked like packing material and tasted worse. And the knife. I had fished it out and kept it. Like a trophy. They wanted to push me around? I’d push them around. And now their stupid knife was mine.
My phone pinged. Another surprise: Africa is no black hole. There’s not much internet, no laptops. But sweet Lord did every single person have a cell phone. At every stop sign and street corner you could get the essentials: disgusting cheese naks, smoked fish, airtime. It was brilliant, really.
Dylan Moore: Still, I think you should come home. I’ve already called the mission leader this side and he agrees with me. Let’s not take any more risks.
In the darkness, I typed a response.
Penelope Murphy: I appreciate that you’re worried about me, but my heart is settled and I want to follow through on my commitment.
I stared at the message and deleted it without sending.
Penelope Murphy: I’m fine! All is well. I’ll be staying, I hope you understand :)
I deleted this too.
Penelope Murphy: I’m staying here.
This one I sent.
The message showed that Dylan had read it. I waited in silence. I could feel it, all this way away, how angry it made him. Had he discovered the hidden locks yet? I almost didn’t care. The longer the message sat there without a reply, the more vindicated I felt. I turned to look at the knife beside my bed. There wasn’t much light in the room, but all of it seemed to find the surface of the knife, and it was gleaming darkly now. It was my knife.
Dylan Moore: I’m not happy about this. You should come home.
Penelope Murphy: I’m staying.
I replied immediately. He read it. The knife gleamed.
I saw him typing a response, but before he could finish, I sent him another:
Penelope Murphy: Forget about all that. I’ve missed you. I wish you were here with me now, in bed
Penelope Murphy: Today made me realize so many things. I don’t want to wait any longer. I love you.
I hit send and watched the screen go dark.
Dylan Moore: You’re disgusting.
He blinked offline. I flung the phone across the floor and it landed face down, the screen light trapped underneath the dimming out. The strange thing was, I wasn’t sad. Not really. I reached out and took the knife in my hands. It was cool and the slight rust on its edge was powdery to the touch. It was a brutal, ugly object, and yet just holding it here in the darkness made me feel so …safe. And calm. And something else.
As the metal warmed under my fingertips, I glanced the knife point over the skin at my wrist. Not enough to hurt. Just to feel. I increased the pressure, seeing in the dim light how the sharp V pressed a dent in my flesh but didn’t puncture through it. I pressed until I was right up against that edge, the point at which a tiny fraction of extra pressure would have been painful. But I lingered on the other side of that pain. Getting closer, but not quite there. I pushed a little more.
I had lost count of how many times it had happened since I arrived here.
I was wet all the time now. Wet when I had spoken to Mama Tembi this morning. Wet when Valerie and I traipsed around the village. Wet all during our discussions, wet when I had slammed the door and swore at the would-be hijackers. Wet right now. Ever since he had touched me. Wet.
And aching too. Had anybody ever touched me before, before he had? It was a painful, maddening sensation. Like a squirming, tight thump that wouldn’t stop. It was obscene. “Disgusting” even. It was driving me to distraction. When I sat I squeezed my knees together as hard as I could. But when I relaxed again, there it was, stronger. Thumping. But maybe I liked it.
Maybe that idiot in the forest knew a thing or two.
Not more than that, granted, but I can admit when I’m wrong.
I pressed the knife tip deeper in, then snapped my wrist back. Ouch. A bit too far.
I looked over at my downcast phone. No light. Dylan was a whole country …a whole world away from me now, virtuous and angry and cold and …dry. Judging me. But there was a little seed in my mind right now. What was the difference between God’s will for me and Dylan’s will? Was he really a simple conduit for the word of God, and was it really my job to follow and obey him? What if he was wrong?
I slid the knife V up my arm and to the crook of my elbow. V for Viktor. I paused, then drew it back down again. Then I moved the blade to the elastic at the top of my pajama bottoms. Interesting things, knives. I wondered about all the things this knife had done. I slipped it under the elastic. Dragged it side to side. The knife tip brushing against the curly hair there, I swear I could hear the sound of a rustling forest.
I closed my eyes and pressed my head back into the pillow, letting the tension fall from my body. I squirmed under the sharpness, my skin and flesh the opposite of the line and steel, and yes, I admit it, yes Dylan, I admit it: I thought of him.
“Fuck,” I whispered, trying the word out in the darkness. Like knives, words are interesting things and can have many uses. Fuck can be angry and hateful. Fuck can mean violence. But it can also mean …something else. Bodily violence. Lust. Love, even. The same word.
I slid the knife into my pajamas. The metal scarcely touched me, it was more like a caress, but the sensation sent thrills all through my bo
dy. In the darkness, I arched my hips up against the hard lines. Just a little. Just teasing, up, then down again.
Maybe the body is disgusting. And maybe I like it that way.
“Fuck,” I said again, this time louder. I wanted to swear more. I liked swearing. I wanted to yell at people when they were being assholes and I wanted to do what I wanted to do. I found the slightest rhythm with my hips and began tracing almost imperceptible circles, seducing the knife, playing with fire, rising up to meet it and then dropping my hips when I got too close.
What I wanted to do most of all was fuck.
Without any resistance, in the darkness, I let myself have the thought. It’s what I wanted. What my body wanted. Delicious ribbons of pleasure were fanning out from my pelvis, shooting all down my thighs and tingling into my toes. I felt like my body was coming awake. I had had an orgasm, once I think, when I was younger. I cried and cried and said 40 Hail Mary’s and held my hand over a candle until it blistered.
But maybe I had been wrong. Maybe what I really wanted to do was fuck. Soon. Something hot and urgent was pooling right at the spot where the V pressed into me. It pulsed and thumped, harder and harder, making white sparks pop behind my closed eyelids. A trickle curled its way down over my thighs and into the mattress. I didn’t care.
“Viktor,” I said at last, and his name was like a triumph on my lips. I said it again, tasted it, felt how the word itself made me bite into my lower lip, but then open my mouth again. Viktor… Viktor…
The syrupy sensations swelled to a nub and when I said his name the fourth time, I couldn’t finish.
“Vik…”
My lips opened, my breath escaped in gasps as a powerful burst of pleasure pumped through me. I flung the knife aside and my body bucked and arched in silent agony. Choking on the pleasure, I couldn’t speak. But my body was screaming. I lay back and surrendered, letting the pulses throb through me as they wanted to, resisting nothing, letting it all take me.
After a few moments, when the pleasure had trickled away to a few twitches, I opened my eyes and tried to make out the room, my body, in the pitch black. My soul, it would seem, was still intact. The room was still the room. I was still me. I guess technically, I hadn’t touched myself at all.
I toyed with the idea of saying his name again, but put it away. If it was a magic spell, if it was a dark-sided word that had the power to conjure up such things, perhaps I should put it away for another time…
I curled over on to my side and fell into a blank, dreamless sleep.
Chapter 11 - Viktor
“Yes, OK, you don’t have to tell us a whole story, all we want to know is, will it fuck you up?”
I didn’t like these new guys. Didn’t trust them either. My usual buyer, an older and more subdued Nigerian gentleman by the name of “Fat Boy Fat”, had been scarce lately and he had sent these two boneheaded lackeys in his place. I didn’t like it. But whatever, it was just for one batch, and then I’d demand to work with Fat Boy again.
The one kid couldn’t have been older than 19 or 20, and was leaning in the shade of the car door to get out of the heat, not bothering to pull down his shirt to cover his bulging gut. Women can be soft. In fact, they should be soft. But a man? Something in me hated to see a soft man. A weak one. A baby who’s never challenged his body, never worked, never sweated. I could kick this kid’s ass for free in 30 seconds and he’d only be better for it.
“Will it fuck you up? Of course not. Drink kerosene if you want to be fucked up,” I said. I might have nothing to cover my nakedness but a threadbare sarong, and I might have walked here on my own two feet, and I might be here in Zambia right now, handing over a paper bag filled with narcotics to some boneheads, but I was a connoisseur.
The soil in which these plants had grown had been tended and revered like a lover; the botanicals in this bag had been harvested, sifted and prepared like my first born children, raised with love and honor. In my time at the cabin, I had reared hundreds of delicate, nuanced strains of a whole range of plants so vast most people hadn’t heard of most of them. My garden looked like weedy wilderness to the uninitiated, but a forest of possibility for those who looked just a little closer.
I had roots to make you dream, leaves to open the windows of your heart, and mushrooms to wash the pain from your body. I had stored plant essences that would clear the spirit, petals to make you sleep, and bark that awakened within the body all those carnal desires that lay dormant in the modern man. Or woman.
Did it “fuck you up” he asked me. Nevermind. I’d deal directly with Fat Boy next time.
“You speak Nyanja like a local. Fat Boy told us you were Russian,” the other one said.
“My mother was Russian.”
“And your father?”
“Born in Mchinji. He was a doctor.”
“Was? He’s not anymore?”
I ignored the question. They both passed quizzical eyes over me, then looked at one another. I was just about done with this whole transaction, and this line of questioning. If I left within a few minutes, I’d make it back to the cabin before sunset.
“Your mother, she’s there still? In Malawi?” the fat one said with a smirk.
I knew what he was getting at. I had had this conversation too many times already. Maybe my mother had been a lost little girl, lured and seduced by a dirty African to come to this godforsaken country and have a baby against her wishes. Maybe she was a raging whore who had asked for trouble, found it, and then bailed the moment things got too real. Or maybe she decided to have another beautiful, all-white baby in beautiful, all-white Russia and forget that it – that I – had ever happened. What fucking difference did it make to me, though? None. I glowered at them.
The fat one laughed at me and spat into the dust, then sneered a little as he looked over my outfit.
“Don’t worry mati, I would have abandoned you too” he said, and they both laughed mockingly.
My hands were instantly on his neck and I slammed him into the car.
“Are you going to shut your fucking mouth or must I find another buyer?” I hissed, getting right in his face.
The other one was giggling.
“Hey, hey! Mister KGB, just chill! We’re cool. He’s just talking.”
I pried my fingers off his neck and stepped back, but held him firm with my eyes. He held up both his hands and flashed a shit-eating grin at me. I could see the gun at his hip, plain as day, but I swore right then that if I heard another peep from him I’d punch that smile right off his face.
“Easy …easy. He’s an idiot. He wishes some beautiful Russian lady would also come and give him one, hey Busi?”
“Shut up” said Busi, regaining his composure.
“Nah it’s true. Vik, let me tell you. This guy? He’s got problems. Your old lady just dropped a new album, ne?” he said, poking the fat one’s ribs.
“She’s expecting next month” he said, a little sour.
The other one just laughed. I didn’t have time for this shit.
“Wait what? Another one? Man, he’s in more shit than I thought.”
“Where’s the money?” I asked, but the two morons were mid-banter. Fucking kids.
“You should have been a Malawi doctor, mati, then the chicks would love you. Maybe you have a chance with that white gelo that took Rambo’s knife” he said and laughed long and hard at his own joke.
My ears pricked.
“What white girl?” I said.
“What? Nothing. Some …associates of ours.”
“Yeah, but what girl? Who are you talking about?”
They both looked at me.
“Who wants to know?” the fat one said, back in thug mode. He leaned in, menacingly.
“Ok, whatever, let’s just finish up here please, I have shit to do” I said and shrugged.
They looked at each other again.
“You know a white girl in Mchinji? Someone who took our friend’s knife?”
“Who wants to k
now?”
A slow smile curled over his lips. He turned to his friend.
“Give this man the cash, let’s go” he said and turned to get in the car.
The fat one gave me a folded brown envelope with cash and a dirty look, then hopped into the passenger seat, slammed the door and hung his arm out the window as they drove off.
The dust cloud rose, shimmered a little in the late afternoon sunshine and then sank slowly back to the ground. Penny. I had heard people talking about her little stunt the other day, how her and Valerie had chased off some would-be hijackers. If anyone was to be believed, they had saved the day and Mama Tembi’s car with nothing but girl power and the protection of the almighty.
I groaned and pinched the ridge between my eyes. Women complicate things.
I turned on my heel and headed back the other direction, back to the cabin. Soon I had picked off the main road and was on my own path. I knew these roads and backways inside out. On a map, this territory was just nothing, a space, just the boring line between Malawi and Zambia. I liked to think of it as my own secret portal between the two countries. The walk would easily take more than 3 hours, but it was good walking, and I did my best thinking when I walked.
And I needed to think.
As my nimble feet stepped their way through the familiar brush, the thoughts began to loosen. The landscape morphed from brown and desiccated to juicier, more lush and green …and then back again. I knew all the plants I walked by, by name and by essence, and greeted them like old friends. The light dimmed and brought out even the most elusive threads of gold and copper in the crunchy grass. By the time I was halfway home, I had decided: Penny had to go home. I would convince her she had to.