Cleaving

by Julie Powell

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “I one-hundred-percent swear, I didn’t come a second time. Maybe it was another man, a bad man, it wasn’t—”

  “Look. I don’t want to get you in trouble. I just want my phone back.”

  “I didn’t… I don’t have your—”

  I’m being a castrating bitch, I think. I’m ruining this guy’s life. Look how terrified he is. I feel like walking away, letting it go. But now Kesuma and Elly have surrounded him and are taking turns at him in rapid Swahili, maintaining a sort of good cop–bad cop routine, Elly clearly trying to persuade him to be reasonable, Kesuma barely refraining from shouting. At one point he directs an order in Maa to Leyan, who throws a threatening glance at the man before setting off for the park ranger’s hut at the edge of the campground.

  The man walks a few paces to sit heavily on a box of camping supplies a couple of yards off. Kesuma shakes his head in exasperation. “He insists he doesn’t have your phone. He thinks we’re stupid because we’re Maasai. He is the stupid one. Why didn’t you shout out? Then we could have just taken care of it then.”

  “I’m sorry. I know. I thought I could handle it myself.”

  “That’s why we’re here, to make sure you’re okay. Okay?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  Leyan comes back with a man in a ranger uniform, enormously tall, cheeks dotted with ritual scars, cheekbones high and eyes hooded and inscrutable. An intimidating man at the best of times. The same conversation happens all over again, this time mostly in Maa, the ranger looking at the two primary actors in this absurd plot out of a soap opera with evidently increasing anger. Both the man who snuck into my tent twice in the night and I have increasingly miserable looks on our faces. Almost everyone else in the campground has packed up and left, as the sun is getting high in the sky.

  A ranger vehicle pulls up, and with a few grunts the ranger orders the man into the backseat. His fellow ranger drives off, and then he, Elly, Kesuma, and I get into our own truck, while Leyan stays behind to do all the packing we’ve been too busy with this nonsense to take care of. Elly drives while Kesuma keeps talking to the ranger, who, as we follow the other truck down the road to the police station, becomes increasingly incensed. Both men’s voices are raised now. Sometimes Elly tries to get a word in edgewise. Occasionally, the ranger gestures angrily in my direction. I hear the word mzungu several times, a word I’d never minded but that now sounds vicious. Wait—is he angry with me? My face goes hot and I feel tears in my eyes. What are they saying about me? That I was causing trouble? Dammit, I’d wanted to drop the whole thing. I didn’t do anything wrong! Or if I did, they didn’t know that. Unless Elly has told them? The only thing that is keeping me from bursting into tears now is my anger at the unfairness of it all. I stare fixedly out the window until we pull up at a low concrete building with a tin roof and Elly parks. Inside the ranger’s station, a small room, there are perhaps seven or eight men gathered, plus the guy from my tent. There is still more back-and-forth between all these men. Occasionally one of them will ask me a question or two in English.

  “What did he say to you the second time, when you woke to find him inside your tent?”

  I struggle to be forthright. This is not 1953, moron. What on earth do you have to be ashamed of? “He got on top of me. He said he wanted to have sex with me.”

  Elly prodded. “He tried to rape you?”

  “I don’t want to use that word.”

  More talk, round and round. The questioning of the man gets more intense. It’s clearly a cross-examination, and he’s sweating and uncertain and finally he says something, a sort of protest, and everyone in the room suddenly reacts violently, all of them the same, throwing up their hands or rolling their heads to the sides with groans. At first I’m terrified—what has he said about me?—but Elly’s shake of the head is accompanied by a covert grin in my direction, and Kesuma turns to me. “We’ll get your phone. He has it. He’s still lying, but we know he has it.”

  “How? What did he say?”

  “He got caught in a lie. Don’t worry.” He says a few more words to the frightening ranger, who waves us away. “We’ll go down to the park now. When we’re finished seeing the wildlife, they’ll have the phone for us.”

  And so that’s what we do. We head back to the campground, pick up Leyan and our gear, and head down the road that winds along the steep wall of the crater. It’s by now probably ten thirty. I don’t know for sure because my phone is gone.

  I’m relieved to concentrate on something else after that fretful morning, and Ngorongoro is an extraordinary thing to concentrate on. An enormous caldera, the site of a cataclysmic ancient volcanic explosion, it looks like an enormous bowl sunk into the earth, lined in soft greens and yellows, cast with the shadows of the cottony clouds that get hung up on the high cliff walls surrounding it, then free themselves to skitter across. The far rim is halfway obscured in the hazy distance; in the crater’s center an alkaline lake glints a pale blue. Even from the top of the rim, you can see that the place is fairly teeming with animals, mostly water buffalo and wildebeests, ungulates of all varieties, all of them walking in the same direction, toward the central lake, as though they’re participating in some grand Disney musical extravaganza. We catch sight of families of warthogs, adult couples with a child or two in tow, ridiculous creatures that somehow manage, when they kneel on their forelegs to root in the grass, grace and even elegance. There are herds of zebras, gazelles, tall birds with gorgeous and strange orange poms on their heads, ostriches, pairs of hyenas. I sink into a sort of blissed-out daze.

  But I guess not everyone is so consumed. “I can’t understand why he thought it was okay to go into a woman’s tent. You’re sure you didn’t say something to him?” Kesuma asks again.

  I try to hide my irritation, and luckily Elly, who I’m beginning to think of as my advocate on this matter, intercedes. “They barely talked at all. He was a crazy man.”

  “It makes me so mad. He thinks because we’re Maasai we’re uneducated and foolish. So that’s why he chooses you to bother, maybe.” He turns around from the front seat to look me in the eyes. “African men aren’t like Americans. They have different ideas about women. You have to be careful you don’t make them think things.”

  Elly glances back in the rearview mirror and gives me a quick small smile, half-amused and half-apologetic.

  “It’s terrible this had to happen to you.” We’re approaching a pond shared by a flock of flamingos and a clutch of dark, wallowing hippos. We slow beside it to watch.

  “It’s okay. I kind of just want to enjoy the animals, you know?”

  So that’s what we did. We weaved our way around the circumference of the caldera. The highlight of our sightseeing was a group of four young male lions, magnificent and indolent, walking in a tough-guy gang right up to our truck. As I stand with my head and shoulders out the sunroof, one of the wonderful creatures pauses perhaps two feet away from the rear wheel of the automobile as we sit idling, looking up with those great, golden eyes—looking at me, I can’t help thinking—until I avert my gaze, more than a little afraid that he might just decide to climb up and take off my arm for the insult of returning his stare. After spending some time circling our truck, lying in its shade, licking their paws, just like house cats’ only as big as pie plates, they turn their backs on us and all saunter off together. No wonder they call it a pride of lions. “An arrogance of lions” just doesn’t have the same ring.

  By noon we’ve worked our way to the far end of the crater, where several picnic tables and a building with restrooms are set along the banks of another large pond, another family of hippos snorting in the water, elephants moving through the glade on the other side. Elly starts unloading our lunches while I use the bathroom.

  But when I come back out, wiping wet hands on dirty khakis for lack of paper towels, a cluster of men has gathered around our truck. I see that another truck has pulled up, this one shiny and new.
There are Maasai in traditional dress, other men in ranger uniforms. They glance at me as I walk past them, to a flat rock near the pond’s edge, which I make a beeline for rather than attempting to get in on the conversation. I don’t want to know, I really don’t. But as I pass, and as I sit on the rock waiting for it to be over, I can’t help hearing the words mzungu and BlackBerry and, I think, something that sounds like sexual. My ears ring as I stare out over the water.

  After a few moments Elly comes over to me with my boxed lunch. He’s grinning from ear to ear. “They got your phone!”

  “Really?” I’d sort of picked up on that part. “How?”

  “He told them he had it. He’d hidden it in the bathroom.”

  “What made him change his mind and tell?”

  Elly laughs. “You don’t mess with Maasai, man. They’re crazy.”

  “Wait, you mean—”

  “Yeah. Hit him until he changed his mind about the phone. Led them right to it.”

  “Oh, man.” I cringe. The twinge of guilt, I’d be lying if I didn’t say, doesn’t entirely overwhelm another warmer feeling. The smug little voice that whispers, Good.

  “Hey, it’s his fault. We tried to be nice.”

  “I bet he wishes he’d just given us the phone.”

  “His head wouldn’t be hurting so much now. And he’d have a job. He’ll never work for anybody here ever again.”

  The other men leave and, after a light lunch, so do we, continuing our circuit of the crater. We see yet more rooting warthogs and a small herd of graceful, dark elephants grazing among a stand of widely spaced trees too lovely and composed to be properly named a “forest.” On our way out of the park, we return to the ranger station to retrieve my phone, unscratched and in perfect working order, which is delivered with eloquent and extensive apologies.

  That evening, back in Arusha, after a direly needed hot shower, I lie on my bed as insects buzz outside my window and Leyan and some of the other young warriors who make money guarding Kesuma’s front gate have wrestling matches on the red dirt drive. In the kitchen, Suzie, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl who lives next door and does chores for Kesuma, is making us ugali for dinner. A dish of cornmeal and greens, it’s ubiquitous in Tanzania, served in every restaurant. Suzie has the wide smile of a kid, but the direct confidence of a woman twice her age (quite a bit more than some I could name). Tonight after dinner I’m going to practice English with her.

  Tomorrow I’m off to Japan, for a couple of days of relaxation in a hotel with excellent room service and technologically advanced toilets and rampant slippers and 600-thread-count sheets, before heading back to New York. I’ve pulled out the two great sheaves of papers I’ve been compiling, for Eric and D, my twin journals of this trip, am flipping through them before mailing them off tomorrow. The crabbed handwriting is erratic, stretching out and squeezing together, sometimes illegible with exhaustion or emotion. For some reason, the writing has slowed down a bit since I’ve been in Tanzania. I’m not sure why, but it feels like a good sign. There’s something about this country so far away; I feel like a Thanksgiving parade float out in this dry, high air, bobbing, seeking always to tear a tether loose from some keeper’s grip. Still, in the aftermath of last night’s—what would you call it?—“incident,” I find myself needing to talk, to work out what exactly happened, and to these neglected letters is where I go.

  When the two started out, each of them had wildly different tones—one solicitous and goofily gabby, the other fervid and extravagant. I would write to the two men utterly divergent accounts of the same experience or place, versions designed to cater to their two sensibilities, and I highlighted whatever a particular story had to do with what I wanted or didn’t want from them. But now the two versions seem to be coming together. Reading the two side by side is like shakily bringing a pair of binoculars into focus. In the end, I relate to each what happened to me on the rim of Ngorongoro in almost exactly the same words.

  Then I woke up in a couple of hours to find the guy basically on top of me. And for the longest time I didn’t do anything, didn’t move a muscle. And you know why? I think I thought this was what I’d earned. For all that I’ve done or felt over the last few years. In my half-awake animal brain, I deserved this. Even when I finally, finally got up the gumption to hit him, I kept my voice to a whisper. Even when I made him leave, even when I told my story, even when I was in the ranger station and the guy was being questioned, some little-girl piece of me figured this was my fault.

  But now I’ve turned around on that. I’m not proud to say that finding out that the man had been beaten to the ground for what he’d done helped. It was like someone else could see that he was the one who deserved punishment. Not me, for once.

  Maasai warriors are some good friends to have.

  I fold Eric’s pages into thirds, with some amount of effort. I can barely wedge them into the airmail envelope I bought for the purpose from a shop in town. I write down our address on the front, seal it, and set it aside to be mailed tomorrow. I begin to do the same with D’s. “Julie?” Suzie comes to the door of my room, gesturing for me to come. “The ugali is ready.”

  “Great. I’ll be right there.”

  I seal up the letter to be mailed. It’s time to go home.

  SUZIE’S TANZANIAN UGALI

  1 small bunch michicha (actually, I have no idea what michicha is; you can use chard)

  1 small bunch saro (ditto on this; use arugula, or a green with some bitterness)

  1 small red onion

  2 Roma tomatoes

  About ¼ cup vegetable oil

  Salt to taste

  About 6 cups water

  3 cups ugali maize flour (or white cornmeal)

  Thinly slice the greens, then thoroughly rinse both bunches together in a sieve. Shake off excess water and set aside.

  Slice the onion into thin rings. Chunk the tomatoes.

  Light a single-burner kerosene stove, or alternatively, your stovetop, to high, and set a largish saucepan atop it. Throw in the onions and a healthy glug of vegetable oil. I said a quarter cup in the ingredient list, but it’s really your call. Cook the onions over high heat, stirring often, until good and golden brown, almost heading into burned territory. Add the tomatoes and continue cooking on high heat until they melt into a sauce. Salt to taste.

  Add the greens and cook, stirring, until soft, perhaps 10 minutes. Turn the mixture out into a bowl and set aside. Rinse the saucepan. Add 6 cups of water and return to the burner.

  When the water is just at the boiling point, slowly stir in about a cup and a half of the maize flour. Let boil, stirring often to avoid sticking, until quite thick, about 7 minutes. Add the remaining flour and cook another 7 minutes. By this time, the ugali will be almost a dough, more solid than liquid. As you stir, it will begin to pull away from the sides of the pan and form a ball. Turn this out onto a plate. Toss it over lightly a couple of times with a sort of flipping motion of the plate, forming a loaf.

  This will serve four people. Cut thick slices of ugali and place them on plates, and spoon some greens to one side. You and your guests can eat with your fingers, pinching off a gob of the ugali, rolling it into a ball, and pressing an indentation into one side. Pinch some of the greens up into the depression and eat. Feed yourselves like this, bite by bite.

  PART III

  Master?

  Driven every kind of rig that’s ever been made,

  driven the back roads so I wouldn’t get weighed.

  And if you give me weed, whites, and wine, and

  you show me a sign, I’ll be willin’, to be movin’.

  —LITTLE FEAT, “Willin’ ”

  Change has a way of just walking up and punching

  me in the face.

  —VERONICA MARS

  15

  A Butcher Returns

  THE FIRST FULL day I’m back in New York is a crisp November one. I’d come back through rain clouds and met Eric with a long hug and short kiss in a gr
ay drizzle in front of a JFK terminal while traffic cops dully shouted for us to pack up and move on. But in the night, all that blows away, and the sun the next morning makes the Chrysler Building across the river glitter like mica as I walk Robert for the first time in ages.

  “How did it go?” Eric inquires when we get back to the apartment. He’s using the excuse of my return to very much not get to work on time, mulling over the crossword and eating some eggs. I’d not known how things would be with us when I returned, and neither had he, I could tell the moment I first saw his face. But the next moment after that was easy, and we’ve slipped right back into life with astonishing, almost disturbing swiftness. There is something different going on under the surface, furniture moving around, air seeping in, perhaps. But we still fit together like puzzle pieces, with a snap.

  “Rather marvelously, actually.”

  “Marvelous, eh?”

  “Yes. I think I may be having a New York renaissance.”

  “Gonna read a lot of Joseph Mitchell and ride the subway all day?”

  “Might do, might do.”

  After Eric has shaved, gotten into some clothes, and gone off to work, I shower. My Lord, Tanzania took that Ukraine weight right off and then some. I weigh ten pounds less than I did when I left! I dress in the skirt I got in Ukraine and a little black sweater, black tights, and my tall black boots with their secret red lining. (One must wear all black when having a New York renaissance; it’s a rule.) I wrap a cunning green scarf around my neck (except for scarves—scarves are the exception to the black rule, scarves and hats). I put on some lipstick, a scarlet shade darker than I usually go with; as I watch myself putting it on in the bathroom mirror, I fancy that the bracelet Kesuma gave me—white hair still bright on the band, but beginning to wear off in places—looks rather mysterious and jaunty. I head out for the 7 train.