“Sister,” she began, “I have come to see you because I am feeling very sick. I think I have malaria.”
Sister Augustus eyed her carefully, but still without the suspicion which any other girl would have provoked. “And so you want to go to the health centre?”
Josephine paused almost imperceptibly here. Augustus noted that, but as yet did not interpret it. “No, Sister. I want to go to the hospital in Kitui town. I have been treated there before and I am known by the doctor. Anyway, the health centre has no pills these days. It is closed down until more supplies come in.”
Augustus was silent for a while. Her inquisitive eyes held Josephine’s unwavering gaze. Though it was obviously more convenient for girls from the school to be treated in Mutune’s own health centre, she acknowledged that the place had descended to a pitiful state under a nurse who spent most of his time drinking with the primary school teachers in the local bar. As a result, it was always short of basic supplies and was therefore making her own job that much more difficult. If a girl were really ill, she would now have to go into the town to the hospital, because treatment was simply no longer available locally. Knowing this, however, all the girls seemed to want to be treated for something and most of the requests, as far as Sister Augustus was concerned, were mere excuses for a day out in town.
In this case, however, she knew that Josephine had always worked as hard as any girl in the school, and that of all her pupils, Josephine was one of the most highly motivated and trustworthy. It was to create a role model for others in both of these areas that she and the other nuns had made Josephine a prefect. Thus, after this short concentrated pause for thought and then judgment, Augustus turned to the side and retrieved her fountain pen from its stand. “I will write a note for you, but remember that the longer you stay away, the more work you are missing.” Sister’s slight frame bent forward over the desk as she took a sheet of headed notepaper from a tray on her left and began to write. She was more shortsighted than her thin-framed glasses could correct and so habitually had to bend her head right over to bring her eyes closer to the paper. From where she sat, Josephine would have been able to have a full view of the bald patch she knew to be there, on the very top of Sister’s head. As it was, of course, Augustus was wearing her veil and, like all the other girls Josephine was left to merely imagine whether all white women lost their hair as they grew older.
“I will do extra prep next week to make up for it, Sister,” said Josephine, acknowledging the obvious. It was with great difficulty that she suppressed the expression of the deep relief she felt.
She was lucky. When she arrived at the nearby shops, there was a pick-up truck already laden with people ready to set off for the town. The one shilling coin she gave the driver was apparently enough to persuade him that the trip as a whole would be profitable and so the truck set off immediately.
Some three hours elapsed before Josephine walked away from the hospital with her bottle of pills. After the sweaty stuffiness of the crammed waiting rooms and corridors inside, the cool breeze that whistled through the tall trees by the entrance to the compound came as a welcome relief. It had been a very long wait, certainly longer than she had anticipated, but she had no choice but to stay. Sister Augustus would undoubtedly want to see some proof that she had been to the hospital and that her mission had been accomplished successfully.
The walk back to Kalundu market, where the pick-up taxis awaited their business, took her from one end of this District Centre town to the other. She paused only once in the mile or so she had to walk, only yards from the hospital gate to cast a short emotionless glance at a wire-fenced compound where a group of workmen were servicing a lorry. Just behind the lorry, and obscured by it, was the low building where the bus company’s office was housed, and beyond that was the stock room with its mattress where she had so often offered herself as a vessel for John Mwangangi’s sperm.
Within ten minutes she had reached the open market place, walked straight across it, ignoring both the pick-ups and the buses, and set off alone and on foot along the road to Mutune.
Nestling behind Kalundu market’s shops and tea rooms, up and over the low hill with is cluster of ragged banana plants, and only just visible through a gap in the high euphorbia hedges which edged both sides of the road, was a small neatly kept group of small hutch-like houses which had become one of Kitui’s most notable sites. Surprising herself, Josephine felt no guilt whatsoever as she walked down the almost manicured, white stone-edged path which led to the place which had all along been her journey’s prime destination. She knew she had been utterly stupid to have put off the decision for so long, and began to curse herself for having been so afraid of lying to Sister Augustus. In the event, it had all been very easy. So it was now the light-headedness of sheer relief that caused a broad smile to grow as she rapped on the door of the first of the small, strange houses.
There was no answer. “Hodi!” she shouted again and again, but to no avail. It seemed there was no one here to rouse. Standing back to survey the scene, her smile broadened further as her eyes scanned the wonderful paintings that covered the wall before her. Here, a laughing woman receives the attention of a highly aroused and quite enormous man. In her hand she clasps a small medicine bottle. There, two men shake hands across the table strewn with beer bottles. Beneath the table one stabs the other in the groin with a spear.
“Your business, young lady?”
The sharp words made her jump. She looked back at the door where she had knocked. It was still shut. There must be another door or a window on the other side, she thought, and set off to walk round the house. She had taken only a step, however, before she was stopped in her tracks by more words from this disembodied voice, this time angrier and louder than before.
“State you business, young lady.”
With at first wide-eyed disbelief and then almost uncontrolled amusement, she stared at the painted skeleton by the side of the door which, apparently, had uttered the words. She had not noticed before that its eyes and mouth were holes in the wall.
“I have come for some dawa,” she said. She felt strange, almost as if she wanted to laugh at the comical image she faced. But equally, it could have been her nervousness which caused this unexpected and for her almost unnatural behaviour. When she was really afraid, she often gave the impression she was laughing. It was certainly not this silly cartoon that caused fear to start to well inside her; rather it was the sudden realisation of what it was she was about to request that darkened her world like a cloud.
“You can buy aspirin from the shop over there in the market,” said the skeleton, impatiently. “I am busy. Don’t waste my time. It could be an expensive mistake for you to make.”
“I have been told that only you can give me the medicine I need.”
“Then state your business,” said the skeleton. “Is it a lover you want to woo? That’s my speciality.”
Josephine smiled again at the irony. “I have already wooed my lover, but too often, I am afraid. I have a child.” And the smile faded again.
“But that is good news, young lady. Your lover is now your husband.” A skeleton’s eyes flashed a glance at her for an extended moment and then withdrew.
“I cannot be married yet. I am a student. I have to finish my education before I can even begin to think about such things.”
There was a short pause before the skeleton spoke again. “It seems to me that you have at least thought about such things already.”
Josephine did not respond, unable to decide whether what was said was meant as a joke of some kind.
“The dawa costs fifty shillings.” The skeleton’s eyes flashed again. She could not even tell if the voice was that of a woman or a man.
“I have it here,” she said in reply, quickly, thrusting her hand inside her blouse to extract the crumpled and sweaty bank notes from her bra.
“Ah, my f
ool!” The skeleton almost sang its words. “I am hungry. Feed me!”
Josephine strode toward the wall and pushed her money through the skeleton’s gaping mouth. She felt a hand grasp the money and pull it from her fingers.
“Your bottles?”
Josephine looked confused. The skeleton’s eyes flashed inquisitively at her again. “Bottles?” she said, nervously imitating the strange disconnected way in which the word had been said to her.
“Young lady, what you are asking for is powerful dawa. You must carry it home before you take it. I need two bottles. Do you have them?”
She did not answer.
“If you have no bottles, I will provide them, but you will have to pay a five shilling deposit.”
“I have only two shillings.”
“Not enough.”
“Can you wait a few minutes?”
Josephine turned away before the answer came. It took her only a minute to run back to Kalundu market and into the teashop. Here one shilling and fifty cents was enough to buy the smallest bottle of lemonade the shop had to offer. Her bus fare was gone as a result, but after all this it was better than going home empty handed. By the time she returned to the skeleton’s house, she had not merely drunk the lemonade, but also emptied out onto the road all the anti-malaria pills from the small bottle she had been given by the hospital doctor.
“I have the bottles,” she said, expecting an immediate reply, as if she had never left the place.
It took a minute or more, plus several ever more impatient repetitions of Josephine’s claim before there was any response. The skeleton’s eyes reappeared and looked at her long and hard. “I can eat bottles as well.”
It took her a few seconds to interpret the words, but then all became clear. Nothing more came from the skeleton before she had fed both bottles through the mouth-hole cut in the wall of the house. Then, after she had stepped back to await the results of feeding time, several minutes elapsed. By that time she had grown quite worried. On several occasions, she was convinced that there had been stirring inside, but throughout she had been too frightened to approach any closer than to within ten yards of the house.
Momentarily, she was tempted to peep inside through the skeleton’s now vacant eyeholes. Hesitantly, she edged forward, but she had moved no more than a full pace when she was overcome by a fear of the unknown and retreated. She was in no position to take such risks. Without the medicine only this person could provide, she would certainly lose everything she had, so she remained at a safe distance. Almost twenty silent minutes passed before she was again summoned by the rattle of glass in the skeleton’s mouth, but during that time, none of the nervous expectancy left her.
“Now you should listen to me very carefully indeed,” said the skeleton, as the bottles spewed from its mouth. “First of all remember that this is very powerful dawa. It can do the job you wish, but you must follow my instructions to the letter. Do you understand?”
“I will do as you say.”
“Good. Now there are two bottles. In the small one there is a powder and in the large one there is a liquid. You are to go straight home from here without pausing on the way and it is important that you should run all the way. Be sure that when you reach your destination that you have run all the way and as fast as you can. You should be completely exhausted when you arrive. You will be very thirsty and will have sweated very much. But you must neither drink water nor wash your body. Then wait until sunset and go immediately to your bed. Lie down there without removing your clothes and concentrate very hard on the thing you are about to do. When you feel you are ready, take a glass and mix the powder with the liquid. You must first place the powder in the glass and then add the liquid a little at a time, always making sure that you stir them so that they mix properly. When you have added all the liquid, put away the bottles in a place where they will not be found by any stranger. Then you should begin. Using your left hand only, you should rub small amounts of the liquid onto your vagina, making sure that it mixes well with your body’s own juices when they start to flow. Soon you will start to feel the same pleasure that he gave you when he planted his seed inside you. You will feel it start to grow, but as you use more of the dawa, you will also feel yourself going more numb between your legs. It will take some time for the waves of joy to come, but when they do, even as you gasp for your breath, you must immediately drink all that is left in the glass. Is that clear?”
Josephine eyed the bottles with some confusion. She had not expected to feel so afraid of this man’s power. “But how much will I need? And how much of it should I drink, and how much should I use down there?” The sound was pathetic and confused.
The skeleton laughed long and hard. “Ah, my pretty young woman, that is for you to decide. It depends on the size of the man you slept with. If he was tall and strong, with a penis that filled and stretched you, then use it all. If he was a weakling with a matchstick tool you could hardly see, let alone feel inside you, then a mere sip would do. The child of a strong and powerful warrior could withstand all of my medicine, but you yourself might not. The child of an impotent boy on the other hand would run away at the first sniff of the stuff. It is you who knows the man, not I. And remember also, that the more you run and tire yourself, the better and quicker my medicine will act on you.”
When Josephine finally looked up, the eyes had gone from their sockets. She called again to the painting on the wall, but the skeleton would not be cajoled back to life. It was much more complicated than she had been led to expect. Regina, in whom she had confided, had described the treatment like something which you took for malaria, but then she had admitted that she had never seen any of the medicine herself and was only going on what she knew from talking to the bar girls in Kitui town, who out of necessity had to do this kind of thing all the time. So, as she walked slowly away from the house, still examining the contents of her bottles, she began to doubt the wisdom of her decision.
“Remember to run... to run... to run!” came a voice from behind her, making her jump with fright. She turned round but saw no one. Even the skeleton’s eyes were still empty. As much out of fright as compliance, she broke into a run and, turning right out of the compound onto the road, she set off for school.
It was not easy to run along this road. It was quite narrow, and there were quite frequent pick-up truck taxis which ran along there linking Kitui town and Mutune market. As each one approached, Josephine had to slow down and get right off the road to the side to allow it to pass. Most of them, of course, also stopped right next to her, thinking that she would want to board for a ride back to school and every time she had to explain at length that she did not want to ride home. The ones that did not stop, on the other hand, showered her with a cloud of dust that the vehicles threw up as they progressed along the dirt road.
Now in the event, whether it was doubt, growing fright, a new feeling of guilt, or merely a fear of discovery, she would never remember. Perhaps it was her inability to decide which man it was she was trying to overcome. Throughout her headlong dusty dash back to school in the fierce heat of the late afternoon, she tried in vain to reconstruct the already dimly remembered events of the previous weeks. She knew she had seen Boniface three times recently, but could not decide if John had visited her once or twice since her last period. For some months past, time spent with him had been so featureless, so completely matter of fact and predictable that she found it difficult to remember anything but the last occasion.
She knew, however, that it was important that she should remember, because the two men were so completely different. If it had been Boniface who planted the child in her, she thought she might need only half of the medicine to uproot it. He was a nice man and she liked him. He was always warm, kind and respectful to her, but she knew that without her help he would never have found his way around her body. John, however, was different. He was a hard, unfeeling man, tall, str
ong and extremely virile. Memories of how he would almost order her to respond to him sent a shiver down her spine. And she could remember the wonder she felt the first time she took his great thing in her hands and found that it filled them both and still stuck out at the top. Boniface was a nice man, but he was not a big man in that way. And might it make a difference if she had taken the man in her mouth as she had with John so often? How would that affect the amount she should drink? Why had she not asked all these questions when the skeleton had asked? The mere thought of having to take all of the doctor’s medicine to loosen John’s child make her feel horribly sick. The mere smell of that oily liquid was enough to turn her stomach.
Whoever she chose to treat, she knew, however, that she simply could not risk taking the medicine at school. She had nowhere private here to do it and, even if she were to find some out of the way corner, she would never be able to concentrate on what she had to do. Surely she would be constantly afraid of being discovered. It would have to wait until she went home to Thitani at the weekend. She would still make sure that she followed every instruction she had been given, so what possible difference could it make? There was the complication of finding somewhere to hide her bottles and their smell until then. And the lemonade bottle with the powder did not even have a stopper. Where could she possibly keep that safe? There was only one answer.
When she neared the school, her pace slowed to a walk, so that she might enter with the decorum demanded of her position. But when she reached the gap in the hedge that many of the younger girls used to sneak out of the school compound, she was still panting, partly out of nerves and fear of failure, as well as a result of her exertions. The school was empty. She knew it would be. They were all at prayers, the Roman Catholic minority in the Church by the mission house, the Protestants in the school hall at the other end of the compound.
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