The Strength of Bone

by Lucie Wilk

  They walk over to her mother’s sleeping mat and Iris helps her sit down on it. Her mother pulls her knees up to her chest, wraps her arms around her legs and looks up at Iris like a young girl waiting for a story. Iris sits down beside her, feeling too much like the adult, weighted down with responsibility. Somehow her mother seems lighter, free from all this. Free even, from the past. Perhaps this is a sign of just how quickly her mother is approaching the spirit world. This sort of peace is usually only available to the very young, or those closest to death. Iris puts her arms around her mother again.

  “I have been to the village, Mama.”

  Her mother nods.

  “I stayed with Auntie. And Grandfather. They are well.”

  “There is a woman. Alile.” She waits to feel her mother stiffen, to react somehow, but she does not. She leans against Iris and listens.

  “She has your eyes,” says Iris. “Mama, Alile has your eyes.”

  Iris looks over at her mother and sees that her mother has closed her eyes. She leans into Iris like a child. She seems to be getting smaller, lighter, younger by the minute.

  “And she is very skilled. She is learning to be a sing’anga. She is learning from Ade. Mama, you would be very proud.”

  Iris looks at her mother again and sees that there is a very small smile there and now Iris feels it rising inside her: the questions, the anger. She sits up and lets her arms fall off her mother.

  Iris asks: “Is she why we left?”

  Her mother looks down.

  “Did father know?”

  Her mother looks at Iris, turns those eyes on her, the eyes she shares with all her children except Iris and Iris feels her allegiance with her father grow steadily.

  “Who was he?”

  She stares hard at her mother, impatient with her frailty and her weaknesses.

  “You must tell me, Mama. You can’t keep it from me. I have the right to know.” She can’t stand even the warmth coming off her mother’s skin and warming her own skin, an inch away. She stands up.

  “It doesn’t matter.” And the way she says it, so quietly without any need to convince, calms Iris. It must be her mother’s proximity to the spirit world that gave her the power, in one brief statement, to make Iris realize what she says is true.

  Her mother points up to the wall above her mat where a crucifix has been hung. Seeing Him there, hanging His head over her mother’s mat makes her want to cry. “He will tell you, if you ask Him, that it doesn’t matter.” Her mother says. “He forgives us, Iris.” Iris folds down on herself. She hugs her knees to her chest just like her mother and keels to one side, then the other.

  “No.” Says Iris. “It doesn’t matter anymore. But what do I do now?”

  She looks over at her mother, feels the pinprick of tears. “Mama, what do I do now?”

  Her mother lays down on her mat, pulls a light cloth over herself. She closes her eyes and says: “Look at you, with all these choices.”

  *

  Henry has memorized the hut, counted all the bottles and gourds and collections of plants drying upside down in bunches. He knows the pattern in which they are hung. There is an artistry in how they have been arranged, and he is aware that there is an order to this, an order that serves many functions. He knows which containers hold his particular medications, the ones from which they retrieve the dried plants, and then the bowl in which they grind them, and the stone urn that holds the water that they add to the plant matter in order to make a paste to apply to his wounds, or liquid to pour down his throat.

  When Alile begins her daily ministrations, he seeks out her eyes first. He waits for her gaze to come to his, and counts the minutes it takes for this to happen. It is taking less time. With each visit, she moves to him more quickly with her eyes. And her expression is changing. It is changing from the reserved and benevolent attention from a healer to her patient, to the engaged and thoughtful look of a person seeking out another person. There is evidence, on her face, that she has thought of him when she was away.

  But when their eyes finally meet, her face changes, and that softness goes away. She busies herself with her tasks. She studies the gourds. She spends long minutes trailing her fingers across the hanging bottles, causing them to bump one another, making their gentle music, her look unfocused and remote.

  When she is ready, she will begin to collect materials from several different containers. She will rub leaves in her hand. She will smell them. She will look away, and listen. Then she will drop the particular plant in a bowl, or return it to its storage vessel and reach for another. This goes on for a long time and through all this he remains respectfully silent. He watches her arms reach up to a bottle, the muscles reshaping with the effort. He watches her fingers massage a leaf. There is the twitch of her jaw muscle when she is considering a choice, and he waits for the barely perceptible shake of her head when she decides against something.

  He lingers on the nape of her neck, the shadowy groove that runs from her scalp to the base of her cervical spine. He has memorized the size and shape of the gentle hills of her spine that descend down her back, and the dips between each of them. He can count four before they continue beneath her blouse.

  And her scent—a mixture of smoke and air and fresh broken green leaves and the more personal smells of damp, musky sweat and sweetly soured skin. If she enters when his eyes are closed, he can know with certainty that it is Alile standing at the door, looking toward his corner of the room, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the new darkness. It is those moments, the time when she has entered a darkness that he has adapted to but she has not, that he feels everything slow down. As he watches her face during the only time of uncertainty for her, when he can see and she cannot, he observes a certain vulnerability that is never there again. He loves those moments. It is the only time when he feels like he could do something for her, protect her from a certain danger, protect her from this darkness that he has adapted to. He has learned to see in the dark.

  So today when she enters, and he watches from the corner, he uses this time to linger on parts of her that he ordinarily could not. Her eyes, of course, and cheekbones. Her lips. Her clavicles that are so well-defined, the deep notch between them. The smooth curves of her shoulders, the graceful position of her arms and hands, how they curve down so her hands meet below her navel like a dancer where they press her skirt against her body and he can see the subtle roundness of her stomach beneath the fabric.

  Now she looks at him directly, and something changes. The vulnerability stays. And something else appears in her face, beneath the skin: something soft, a tenderness that he has never seen. He holds his breath for longer than was possible a moment before and his heart thuds with an expectation and with a need for more—more oxygen, more of this. This new something he sees in her face, in her eyes. My God, what is this?

  He is breathing more raggedly now. He can’t stop this breathing, it is beyond him. She has always been beyond him and he wonders how long he has been waiting her to be within reach. How long has it been? He can only count two nights, but it could be more.

  Alile moves across the hut. She kneels beside him and looks down at him. He can see her eyes travel over his hair, his brow, his lips where they must be hidden in his beard, and then back to his eyes.

  He reaches out with his left hand, his uninjured hand, and stretches his arm across his body over toward where she kneels beside him. He just wants to touch her, that’s all. Just to touch her with his own fingertips, to feel her skin like she has felt his. She is as familiar with his skin as she could be with a body that is not her own. But the same cannot be said for him.

  She stares at his hand that still reaches across his chest and over toward her. She reaches out and touches it. Their fingers slide across one another. She slips her hand around his, her fingers cupping over his, and she gently presses his hand down, moves it back over to
his side, presses it down onto the mat beside him. Then she removes her hand and stands up. She moves over to the gourds and begins her usual ritual. She has turned her back to him and he can no longer see her eyes where her feelings were expressed, clear as the night sky in this place, just a few minutes before. He watches Alile move among the bottles and then closes his eyes and listens to the music of the gourds.

  Chapter 23

  The hospital has not redeemed itself in her absence. It stands no taller, it feels no more reassuring. And what falls on the people who enter, what they must carry on their shoulders—it weighs on them as much. They stagger under it.

  She follows her usual path to the medical ward before remembering she must go to the surgical suites. She redirects herself and walks up the gentle, uneven slope of the corridor. She pushes open the swinging door to one of the operating theatres and slips inside. There are quick glances from the scrub nurse and the anaesthetist; both raise an eyebrow at her presence and her attire, but say nothing. She has put on a mask and surgical cap as per protocol but she still wears her borrowed blouse and chitenje wrap.

  Dr. Ellison, scalp shiny pink under the surgical lamp, peers down at his patient, or rather his patient’s leg. He wields the saw deftly. Even with her surgical mask on, Iris can smell the wound—the raw, organic smell of flesh and bone being cut and cauterized. The lower half of the patient’s leg is now on the table below him like it has been misplaced and must simply be reattached. But it will go in the bin with the others and will be disposed of in the usual way. The idea of parts of bodies being discarded, when the remainder of the body still lives, has always disturbed Iris. When she trained as a student nurse she woke with dreams of these misplaced parts, of the owners returning to claim them, trying to find their own amongst the pile. She tries not to think of the patient, what he will see, what he will feel when he wakes, groggy and nauseous from his morphine dream. She breathes into her mask and feels her trapped breath condense wetly on her chin and lips.

  When the limb has been burnt beyond bleeding, when all nerves and vessels and flaps of tissue have been dealt with, when the skin has been sewn over the limb and closed off neatly like a purse, Dr. Ellison hands his last tool to the scrub nurse. He swabs the stump with a wet gauze pad and does not look up when he speaks.

  “Iris.”

  “Hello, Dr. Ellison.”

  “To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?”

  She pauses. “Perhaps we should discuss it in private.” The nurse and anaesthetist watch her with more interest, give her more consideration.

  “I’ll be done shortly.” He lifts the amputated limb and wraps it with a long roll of dry gauze, covering the stump with a layer of cotton. Iris leaves the room and waits for him outside the surgical suite. Once outside, she pulls off the mask, feels the cool air on her wet face and wills away her nausea.

  They share a tea in the canteen. Iris sits opposite Dr. Ellison and feels the vapour of her tea touch and then condense on her chin and lips as her breath did under the surgical mask. She can’t seem to warm up.

  “So he’s got malaria,” Dr. Ellison ticks a finger as he counts ailments, “dehydration, fractures—an arm and a leg. Semi-conscious. Perhaps a head injury from the fall.” He lays a long stare on Iris until she starts to feel guilty again, as though she sent him up the mountain. She did not want to feel the weight of responsibility heaped on her by someone else; this is why she came here, to free herself of that feeling.

  Dr. Ellison looks down at his teacup. He wraps his thick fingers around it and the cup disappears behind them so all she can see is the steam rising off it in a lazy spiral.

  “Strange.” He looks up at her again. “Isn’t it strange, Iris?”

  “Well, it was a bad fall. And malaria, well … anyone can get that.”

  “I mean strange that a smart man like Bryce would get himself into such a pickle.” He fixes on her another long gaze. “Almost as if he wanted it. Either that, or it was simply out of his control.”

  Iris says nothing to this. She steals a glance at the doctor’s face. More thoughtful than usual. He has surprised her before with his warmth. Maybe he will surprise her with his consideration, too. She chooses her words carefully.

  “The mountain is a dangerous place. Some … visitors … don’t realize what can happen there.”

  She notices his half smile now and stops herself.

  “Mother nature can be a real bitch. ’Scuse my language, Iris, but you know what I mean.” He looks out the window to the courtyard where laundry is being hung. “There are some things you just can’t control.” He tips his cup up to his mouth and drains it. He stands up. “I’ve a few things to wrap up. It’s early still. We’ll leave first thing after lunch.” She watches the doctor leave the canteen, how all the rest of the patrons avert their eyes, how they don’t rest their gazes on him for too long as though he, like Mulanje Mountain, carries about him some power that he could wield one way or another, depending on his mood.

  After her cup of tea has been emptied into her stomach where it seems to swish and stir and keep her insides unsettled, Iris leaves the cafeteria. She finds herself again returning to the medical ward where she and Dr. Bryce spent all their working hours until recently. They have only been in the village for a few days, yet somehow it feels like an eternity, as if they have lived entire lives, had births, deaths, and rebirths. She feels as though Dr. Bryce is in between lives right now, perched as he is between worlds: the spirit and the tangible. The more time spent in the village, the less she knows, it seems. Maybe it is the effect of her grandfather: how quickly he reveals how little she knows, or how little there is to know.

  She stops in the corridor now. Ahead lie the yellow wards of Dr. Bryce’s efforts. Behind her, the grey. She moves into the yellow and she is struck again by how odd the colour is, effortfully bright and cheerful.

  She turns and leaves the yellow. Back to the grey. Back to her mother for one more visit before she returns to the village with Dr. Ellison, bringing another piece of this place with her to the village. For a brief instant, she wonders whether she should, but this thought passes and she is left with a firm resolve that this is the only way. The doctor needs to be saved and this is the only way.

  *

  Iris sits beside Dr. Ellison in his car. Dr. Bryce’s rucksack leans against her legs and she twines her fingers through the loops. She found it in her aunt’s hut. She emptied it of the few items he’d packed: a change of clothes, a book, his stethoscope. She’d glanced at the title and the back of the book before placing it down with his clothes. Something about spies during the Second World War. Something about the Cold War. It didn’t interest her at all. She supposed she shouldn’t find this too disappointing—she would have expected that she and Dr. Bryce had quite different tastes in literature.

  Together, she and Dr. Ellison have filled it with the essentials. All the lifesaving equipment gathered into this one bag. Some small vials of liquid—surprisingly little is required—to kill the malaria. Other vials to kill the pain and the nausea. Bags of IV fluid. And some plastic tubing to feed it all into a vein. All these years she has numbly pushed such tubing into various veins in various arms, thinking little of it other than the nuisance of having to do the same procedure over and over again, yet now: now it seems a strange technology. Not a miracle, not magical, and no need for belief. One just needs to know the illness, and the treatment follows naturally along a flow chart crafted by others much more clever than herself. She just needs to read along and carry out the instructions—tube by tube, vial by vial. This feels reassuring to her right now: that it has worked in others. There is a satisfaction in the complete absence of mystery.

  As the car bumps along the raw road, she leans her head back against the seat and closes her eyes and thinks about Dr. Bryce. Lying there in the corner, he reminded her of Grace, how she looked in the days before she died
. The same slump of the body, the same odour filling the hut. She remembers her mother trying to spoon medicine into Grace’s mouth, how it ran down her cheek, how she stared out at Iris, how there was nothing in her sister’s eyes. Nothing. It was as though her sister had already departed, but through some cruel deviousness had left her heart still pumping and her lungs still taking air.

  Iris remembers clearly her mother’s friendship with one of the clergy from the local Christian church. The woman was invited into their hut on many occasions and her mother often went to visit her, over at the church, several miles away. Iris and her brother and sisters were taken there to receive a blessing. A baptism. They were initiated into Christianity as infants, before they could make such choices. They were given Western names. And, over the years, her mother did not perform many of the rituals recommended to her by the village elders and sing’anga. When something went wrong, amends were not made to correct the errors. Instead, her mother went to the church where she knelt on a wooden beam and spoke to a different God. And when her mother committed the biggest betrayal of her life, when she went to another man, she did not perform the rituals that might have saved her family from the inevitable ruin. This far-off church God did not listen, or did not hear her, or chose not to help her. The destruction that followed, Iris now wonders, could it have been prevented? Is her mother beyond saving now? If her mother returned to the village and performed the necessary rites and rituals, would she be forgiven? Could things be made right again?