by Lucie Wilk
Ellison had gone to get the boy and Henry had tended to Iris. He urged her to leave the vehicle but she refused and remained curled up on the back seat, staring ahead with strange eyes. It took a woman from the crowd to go to Iris—she hugged her and rubbed her back and murmured things to her—and Iris eventually sat up and then stood on shaking legs and looked around blinking like a newborn calf. She has not spoken to him since they entered the village, and Henry feels her humiliation. He will not ask her.
It was Ellison who decided the father must accompany the boy back to the hospital. The child was so young—no more than eight. Henry agreed that he couldn’t leave the village alone. So the father and son went and Henry and Iris stayed. And here they are. Waiting for Ellison to return tomorrow with the car and take them to the clinic.
It is all that had to happen to bring him here, standing on the dirt in his tan chinos and blue button-down T-shirt, hot and uncomfortable in the sun and dust and wondering what to do. At least there is nothing to say. No one here speaks English. He is released from that obligation, the obligation to reassure, to make peace with words, and the tricky business of choosing the right ones. He has never been good at that.
*
The men stand. Toe the dirt. Look off into the distance. As though there is something they are waiting for, as though someone is due to arrive.
But it has already happened. All in one instant they are here, the two of them: the white man—the doctor with the hair like a flame and her—bad luck in the form of a woman who left as a girl named Iris. For the moment, the men seem more concerned with Dr. Bryce; Iris sees their eyes drift to his hair and his expensive-looking rucksack slung over his shoulder, then the quick look away, as though they have caught themselves showing an interest they do not want to admit. None of the men look at her.
She feels a touch on her leg—gentle and brief and she follows the hand to her auntie’s smile—also brief. It barely hides her trouble—the trouble she is having with their arrival. It was an event none of them had expected, least of all Iris.
“Iris,” says her aunt. “Would you like some water?”
She is being handled carefully, like a guest. At first, her aunt wouldn’t even let her help with preparing dinner but she insisted. She shifts in her tight, constricting nurse’s uniform. The cut of it and the fabric does not allow her to sit easily on the ground. It is too narrow and stiff. She shakes her head, murmurs “no, Auntie.” Then she returns her gaze to Dr. Bryce.
This is something she has never been able to do—watch him like this. In the hospital she was always too busy, and it was not her place. Her place was to listen, and to carry through an order. Order after order. With her head down. Now he stands with his hands tucked into his pockets, and she knows this is what he does when he is uncomfortable or unsure. He looks at the men who speak to each other in Chichewa. They ignore him, and he tries to look friendly—she can see the strain of this in the lines of the doctor’s face, the twist of his half smile. He is uncomfortable with people. This is something that never occurred to her before, he was so busy trying to save them. But he cannot just be with them. He cannot just stand and be in the presence of others without something to do, something to fill his hands, or his mind.
Iris knows that the women are watching her as she watches Bryce. They are experts in the language of the body, the language before words. No doubt they are speculating as to their relationship. Perhaps they think they are a couple and this gives Iris a little tingle somewhere inside her. She studies his face, his angular limbs, the looseness of his clothes, the self-conscious slouch of his shoulders. From this view where she sits on the ground he looks kind, she decides. Kind and earnest and he is trying too hard. It is strange how just now she is able to decide these things about Dr. Bryce. He wore the hospital like a cloak, and only now, far away from it, can she really see him.
One of the younger men is talking to Dr. Bryce now. He speaks of the game Bao in mostly gestures. Dr. Bryce leans in, effort to understand all over his face. She turns back to the group she is sitting with. Many of them look quickly away when she turns to face them. Her bowl of peeled cassava is nearly empty compared to the other women. She picks up another of the vegetables. She feels their judgement hot on her face.
In the hospital, it is impossible to survive HIV. It is impossible to overcome a deadly disease. In this village, it is impossible to return when you have been sent away. It is impossible to disobey the wishes of the elders and the ancestors. Or it is very stupid and dangerous. And so she is a risk to them all, inflicting her bad luck on the whole of them. It is a selfish thing to do, to stay here. Just by staying here, she has proven that she is mutu umazungulira, she has a spinning head. She is not taking into consideration the greater needs of the village. If there was no room in the car that dropped them off and took away the injured boy, she should have walked back to Blantyre.
Looking down into her lap as she peels, she knows all this. She catches her aunt’s gaze and says, quickly, before she can look away: “I didn’t choose this.” Her aunt washes the peeled cassava and doesn’t say anything. Iris doesn’t really know what her own words mean. She didn’t choose so many things. When she thinks about it, she realizes that she has never chosen anything.
*
Iris motions to him and when he goes over, Henry sees a pale, half-peeled cassava in her lap. It makes her look so domestic, so different, more like a wife, a mother, more like a woman, and he shifts back a little, averts his gaze. She tells him that they have been invited to her aunt’s home for dinner and before that, they will meet her grandfather. He nods, then walks back to the group of men. He struggles to keep the neutral, nurse image of Iris in his mind. Good old Iris. Good old Iris who has an aunt and a grandfather in this village. It seems that Iris has come home.
*
They enter a yard through a fence. The hut that the fence surrounds is rectangular, mud-walled and windowless. The roof, as with all structures in this village, is made of straw from the vast grassy plains that surround them. The doorway opens wide to the interior darkness. There are no doors. Just smooth, wide doorways in all the homes they passed on their way through the village. They stop and stand in the yard, look at the hut in front of them. The hut has its own presence, a stolid brown homestead, warm and strong and welcoming despite its unremarkable structure, its plain mud walls.
Iris, still beside him, just an inch or two away, trembles and brings her hands to her face. She takes her hands away and Henry can see the slick shine of her skin. He places a tentative hand on her back, just his fingertips. He touches her over her right shoulder, feels the starched stiffness of the cotton, and her warm skin beneath it.
A man appears at the doorway. He rests one hand on the door frame. He stares outside the hut, deep-carved lines of his face in shadows. He looks at Iris, brings his hands together and up to his lips. “Iris,” he says.
Iris steps forward toward the hut and falls to her knees just before the doorway, before her grandfather, who moves his hands from his lips to her head.
They remain like this for a long moment. Eventually, Iris stands, clasping the old man’s hands and she is led inside the hut. Henry remains outside the hut, on the well-swept dirt yard. He stands there and waits.
When Iris reappears, she does not smile. She steps down into the yard and reaches out for Henry. “Come,” she says. “You will be welcomed.” His knees ache, muscles stiff and tired. He would like to lie down under a shady tree and have a nap. But he follows this new Iris. In the hospital, she had been a soldier, all edges, hard and unforgiving. There is a disconcerting vulnerability in her now.
And her new face, this new Iris, is turned up to him, tremulous with anticipation. He follows her through the doorway, moves past a heavy curtain that hangs over the doorway and into the darkness of the hut.
At first, Henry cannot see anything at all. He has to relinquish control to
whomever is there with him and Henry wonders if this is by design. He feels warm broad hands press onto his shoulders so he succumbs to the pressure and kneels down. The floor is cool dirt, but smooth, not dusty, like it has been lacquered with something. It smells of raw, deep earth. And there is another smell. Fresh and fragrant like wind, perhaps herbs that might be hanging somewhere to dry. Above him, pins of light pierce the layers of straw like stars. He hears Iris position herself behind him. Someone is in front of him, probably the old man, Iris’s grandfather. Henry can’t see his face now, but recalls all the fissures crossing it and obscuring his bones, his most defining features. His face is broad like hers, their noses a similar shape.
After a moment, Henry can see that the old man is in front of him, sitting on a low stool, watching him. As an elder in the village, he clearly expects respect. Henry looks up at his face, at the eyes that are studying him grimly, and then Henry feels compelled to look down, he cannot bear the weight of that gaze any longer. The man wears sandals made of old rubber tires.
Iris’s breath is on his neck as she leans forward and whispers in his ear, “Do you have a gift? Visitors usually offer a gift. Anything will do.”
Henry sits for a moment, his mind empty of ideas, irritated by this expectation revealed to him just now. Is he supposed to create something out of thin air? He slides his hand into his trousers pocket and his fingers find smooth metal. He grasps the object and pulls it out, looks at it in his hands. His reflex hammer. A thick red rubber arrowhead attached to a metal handle. The blade of the handle is smooth and flat, the tip pointed. The handle shines in the dim light of the hut. Henry extends it to the old man and he reaches down and takes it, holds it in both of his hands. The old man laughs out loud, his few teeth gleam like the blade of the hammer.
The man becomes quiet again, but continues to smile. He reaches behind himself and brings out a small object which he holds out to Henry and Henry takes it. It is oval, hard and smooth and cool to touch. The underside reveals an opening that has a corrugated edge. Hollow inside. A shell. Just smaller than the palm of his hand. He runs his thumb across the surface. Henry smiles and looks up at the man who grins back at him.
“Thank you.”
He and the old man look at each other for a long moment, the old man fingering the blade of the reflex hammer, Henry the shell. The elder reaches behind himself again, and then brings forward a small basket. He tips the basket toward Henry and Henry can see that it is filled with shells and carved bones of various shapes and sizes. The man points a finger to Henry’s shell, and then the basket. Henry places his shell back amongst the others. He must have failed some sort of test. He hears Iris inhale behind him, disappointed, perhaps, that he did not meet the elder’s approval.
The old man then hands the basket to Henry, and motions to him to tip it over. Henry hears Iris’s breath coming out in one long stream as he does as he is requested and spills the contents of the basket onto the floor. The elder places one hand on each knee as he leans forward over the spilled shells and bones. He studies them and Henry watches. Henry sees the shell he was given, lying half on top of a long bone, tipped up, catching the small amount of light filtering in from outside. Its underside is exposed, the slit-like aperture like a heavy-lidded eye and turned on him in a steady gaze. Finally, the man reaches down to the shells, picks up the one he had given to Henry, and hands it back to him. Henry accepts it again. The man no longer looks at Henry. He rounds up the remaining bones and shells, returns them to the basket, and Henry has the sense that he has been dismissed. He feels Iris’s hand on his shoulder. She leans toward him. “We can go now.”
Henry unfolds himself reluctantly, hoping for more. He leaves the hut, widening the slice of sunlight that marks the threshold by pushing aside the cloth that is obscuring the doorway. He glances back one last time before stepping into the light, and the old man is turned away from him, rummaging through his things.
Chapter 12
Iris walks through the fence and out of her grandfather’s yard and Dr. Bryce follows her, his brow wrinkled and staring mostly at his feet. She moves through the village without seeing. She walks past fences and large shade trees, past all of the villagers who go about their daily business but who follow her progress without watching her. She feels all this. The khumbi, the trees, the nearby mountain, the well, the shrines and the graveyard. She feels the villagers and what flits on the surface of their minds as they attend to their various tasks. They are thinking that she is all fire, that she is burning up with the heat of the city. That her distance from spirit can only have made her brittle—a dry, dead twig—more liable to leap up in flames. Dr. Bryce beside her is a blaze. What effect would the two of them have on this place? The health of a village depends on the balance of all of its members. This is what her grandfather whispered to her when she reunited with him in his hut. This is the warning he gave her.
The sun has dropped. Dusk is about an hour away. People are preparing dinner, slowing down so their stomachs will be ready for the final meal of the day. She glances over at Dr. Bryce who walks beside her in his loping gait.
In the low evening sun, Dr. Bryce’s beard glows the red and yellow of firelight. His mouth behind his beard is grim, set in a straight line. His eyes, she realizes, are circled with fatigue. She softens and slows down.
“We will go to my aunt’s home for supper. It is not far now.”
Iris’s aunt stands at the threshold of her yard, just outside the fence. She smiles when she sees them approach.
“Here you are,” she says to Iris in Chichewa. “You must be hungry.” They both look at Dr. Bryce who stands there rumpled and quiet.
“Is he okay?” Iris’s aunt asks her this quietly, as though he can understand.
“He’s fine,” says Iris. “He’s just tired. And hungry. Westerners are always tired and hungry, no matter how much they eat and sleep.”
“He is a doctor?”
“Yes.”
“You work with him?”
“Yes. I work with him.”
Iris smiles at her aunt and takes her hand. Her hand is cool and soothing. Her aunt’s touch feels so good that she moves closer to her, and her aunt responds, wrapping Iris in her arms before pulling away out of respect for their other guest.
“Let’s go in. The children are waiting.” Her aunt touches Iris on the small of her back, guiding her into the yard. She waits for Dr. Bryce to follow Iris, before she follows them.
Once in the yard, the children shriek and laugh and run to them. They stop short by a few feet then press up against each other, shoulders, bare arms, elbows all criss-crossing. They study her with their eyes open. They are not coy. And they stare at Dr. Bryce.
“My, what beautiful little faces and round little tummies you all have!” Iris prods the protruding stomach of one of the children with a wiggling finger and receives a chorus of laughter in response. The children all wrap their arms around their bellies as though she has tickled them all. She tickles a few more before standing up again and smiling at Dr. Bryce. The children have moved in, and press up against them, fingering Iris’s blue nurse’s uniform, and the doctor’s trousers. Some reach up to touch the rucksack that is slung over his shoulder.
“They are very curious about you,” says Iris. “Especially your beard.”
Dr. Bryce squats down among them. He looks out at the group. They have grown solemn and watch him with round eyes. He rubs his fingers in his beard. “It’s rough and prickly. See?” One girl reaches a tentative hand out and makes brief contact with a few of the wiry hairs before snatching her hand back. Soon more of them, overcome by curiosity, reach out and Dr. Bryce closes his eyes and smiles as his hair, face and beard are touched, poked, prodded and tugged.
“It’s like fire!” they shriek. “But it’s not hot.”
“It won’t burn you,” says one of the older boys to a younger one who has un
til now held back.
“His eyes are strange, too. Wait until he opens them again and see.”
Eventually, Dr. Bryce stands again. “What is it about children?” He asks, his tired eyes turned on her. “How are they always so perfect?”
“They are the closest to spirit, and the ancestors. They have only just left that world. When they are very young, they still remember it.”
Iris’s aunt begins to shoo the children out of the yard, shepherds them out the gate, instructing them to go home for supper. They crane their necks around, gathering one last look at Iris and Dr. Bryce before disappearing into the darkening night.
Yellow light brightens the doorway and windows of Iris’s aunt’s hut. Henry is not expecting anyone to be inside when they enter, but two pairs of eyes are fixed on him when he ducks through the doorway.
A woman stands across from him and a child stands in front of her, pressed against her legs. The woman has her hands placed on the child’s shoulders in a protective grip. They stand in the far corner of the room, as far from the doorway as possible. It is the woman’s eyes that startle Henry, so light a brown that they seem to glow, and trained on him as though he is a hyena nosing his way into her home. He sees her tighten her hold on her child’s shoulders. She nods curtly at Henry.
“Muli bwangi.” Henry offers this and stands there at the threshold, not aware that he has blocked the entrance to Iris and her aunt until he feels Iris try to slip between him and the doorway in order to enter. He shifts over for her. Her aunt is the last to enter, and she sighs loud enough for all of them to hear.