“You have to remember, Patson, you’re dealing with the basic dilemma of every amputee,” he said to me in his American accent. “No matter how well-fitting the prosthesis may be, the residual limb doesn’t stay the same. It swells and shrinks. It also gets muscle cramps, calluses, blisters, and all the other maladies that afflict normal human skin. Even pimples.” He smiled at that and then went on as if he were talking about the care of an untrained puppy dog. “You have to listen carefully to what your wound is saying and pay close attention to it. Especially when it needs a bit of TLC.”
The words amputee, prosthesis, and residual limb rolled easily off his tongue but I heard only a foreign language I could never learn. I stared into his sympathetic eyes, unable to comprehend what these strange words actually meant. My hands gripped the sheets as I held his gaze, too afraid to look at the bottom of the bed at the space where my foot should have been.
I wanted to shout at him, This is not happening to me! I am a normal boy, with a normal life. There has been some terrible mistake. Make it right, Dr. T., please make it right! But my jaw stayed clenched and I said nothing.
“It will take some getting used to, Patson, but you’ll get the hang of it,” he said, in his good-humored twang, so similar to the actors in American television comedies. “To compound matters, the skin of your stump is most often in a warm, moist, and dark environment. It’s also under pressures that it was never designed to withstand. So it will be up to you, young man, to look after your stump at all times.”
I nodded in agreement only because remaining positive was expected from residents of the country of the Diseased and Disabled.
“Are we in good spirits?” He touched me on the shoulder, causing me to flinch. “You’re still in shock, Patson, but you’ll get better. You’re going to heal. Whoever worked on you did a real fine job. In about two weeks’ time we will move you to another hospital, for more surgery, but in the meantime you need to rest. Mr. Boubacar will be back for you before long. You’re going to be just fine, kid. Remember, you’re not disabled by the disability you have, you are enabled by the abilities you have.”
I nodded again at his broad row of white teeth and attempted a similar smile. Anything less than a cheery attitude displeased Dr. T., even though it was rage that burned through me, and tears brimmed in my eyes at the injustice of all this.
It had been eight days since Arves had phoned Boubacar to tell him what had happened to me. Boubacar had come immediately and swept me up off the floor of the photocopying room, loaded me into the front seat of his truck, and drove into the Bvumba Mountains as if chased by the devil. We had left so suddenly, it had the feel of a dream: the old woman muttering instructions while she gathered potions and stuffed them into my canvas bag; Arves wrapping my cell phone and charger in newspaper and slipping a chain with his lion’s tooth around my neck; the lipsticked lips of the blue-eye-shadowed washerwomen chattering with questions as Boubacar laid me down in the front seat of his cab. And Boubacar rolling down his window to swear at them that he’d be back to burn down their classroom if they told anyone he had taken me away.
Arves stood outside my window of the truck staring at me as if he would never see me again. His face was pale gray and the dark shadows under his eyes formed deep rings that made him look like an old man. I thought it odd that he should be so worried about me when he was the one who looked so gaunt and ill. I tried to wind the window down to talk to him, to tell him to keep eating and taking his meds, but my hand kept slipping off the handle. He placed his right hand on the glass, his fingers spread out in a silent high five, and smiled at me. His lips moved slowly and I thought I caught the word diamonds but I couldn’t be sure.
“Thank you, Arves, thank you so much,” I mouthed slowly, hoping he would understand. There were a hundred things I wanted to tell him. But I only had time to raise my hand against the glass, mirroring his, before Boubacar threw the truck into gear and hurriedly reversed.
“He must come with me,” I said to Boubacar. “We must take him with us.”
Boubacar gripped the steering wheel and gunned us forward across the veldt.
“Not possible, Patson,” he said, shaking his head, keeping his eyes on the track.
I looked back over my shoulder as we sped away, but all I caught was a glimpse of Arves standing alone in the courtyard of Junction Gate High School, waving good-bye.
Boubacar explained that it wasn’t safe for me in Marange anymore. He didn’t tell me why, only that I had to get away as quickly as possible. He was taking me into the Bvumba Mountains to a mission station run by an American he knew.
I remember little of that journey; only that it seemed to last forever. I was so tired I gave over to the bumpy road, the rush of passing trees in green forests, the gray mist over high mountains, and later, the bright headlights coming at us and flashing past.
Then I was lying in a quiet bed with clean sheets, in a room that smelled of straw, disinfectant, and freshly made tea. When I opened my eyes I was in the small, eight-bed ward of the mission station hospital, sun streaming through the window. A tall man in a white coat was examining my leg, murmuring to himself as if he had made an important discovery. There was no sign of Boubacar anywhere.
“Excellent, Patson,” Dr. T. chirped. “Everything looks just fine and dandy. You will be up and about in no time.”
What do you say in the face of such enthusiasm for a leg lost? I had no answer and so fumbled for my pen, opened my diary, and wrote a story about how a one-legged boy climbed onto the thatch roof of the mission station in his hospital gown, his bare arse displayed for all to see, clutching a stolen bag of condoms. In my story Nurse Godi and Dr. T. tried to get the difficult, wild, rude boy down from the roof, but he pelted them with condoms and then, just as they were about to reach him, he set the thatch roof alight and burned down the mission station and himself in the process.
The only urgent question I had for the staff they couldn’t answer: When would Boubacar return? I counted every day that he had left me there. Eight days and eight very long nights. I had lost the ability to sleep. My mind seemed to feed upon itself and sleep was a bridge I walked along without ever reaching the other side. The pain in my phantom foot insisted I stay awake and the itch in my toe-no-longer-there remained unscratched. I could not roll over to lie comfortably on my side while my good foot mourned its missing twin. Outside my window, the crickets chirped the night away, and I would stare into the oblivion of the dark ceiling, listening with envy to the other snoring patients. I couldn’t stay away from random thoughts of my father’s broken glasses, the voice of my mother coming from an old woman’s mouth, and a glowing white tie in a dark tobacco shed hanging over Grace. I gave up the idea of sleep and turned on the bedside lamp and wrote in my diary:
Old Mutare Mission Station
After midnight
Wednesday, 9 April
Sheena and I once had an argument about who was the tallest. So we turned bottom to bottom to settle the issue, but we still couldn’t tell for certain. I turned her around to face me. We were so close to each other our noses almost touched and I remembered being fascinated at how her pupils enlarged as I looked into her eyes. The back of my hand glanced her arm, and she smiled. She decided that for the moment we were the same height, but that I would be taller by next year. Sheena. Nut-brown eyes and skin as soft as caramel, with a smile I could feel all the way to my toes.
I don’t know where she is. If her family made it to Marange. And if I ever decide to talk to her again, what do I tell her?
It’s all fun and games, until someone loses a foot.…
On my ninth day at the mission station, Nurse Godi refused to help me to the toilet or provide me with the cold metal bedpan I hated.
“Not today, young man, and not ever again,” she said, placing a pair of crutches beside my bed. “Today you go to the toilet yourself.”
“I don’t want them,” I said, glaring at the offensive giraffe-leg crutch
es that represented far too much to me.
“You may find them useful.”
“I’m too sore,” I whined, amazed at her cruelty, aware of the other patients watching while pretending not to. “I don’t want to walk today.”
She folded her arms and looked at me with the indifference reserved for the efforts of a struggling dung beetle rolling its ball of shit up a hill.
“I can’t do it,” I said, smoldering with anger and frustration.
“Yes, you can, Patson.” She picked up my chart and made a mark, as if my reaction was normal and noteworthy.
“Give me a few more days,” I pleaded. “I promise I will try tomorrow.”
“Today is the day.” She smiled like a boxer just before he knocks out his opponent.
Under her pitiless gaze, rage bloomed in my chest. I gripped the bedsheets and shook my head from side to side. I would not look at her. Do you have any idea how I feel? No, because you are standing upright on both your legs. If I could end my life, I would do it right now.
“And I would start early, Patson, unless you want to wet yourself on the way. Then you’ll have to clean that up too.” With that she turned on her heel and left me to reconsider my choices.
I swore under my breath, refusing to give her or any of the other patients the pleasure of seeing me give in too easily. I lay in the bed fuming, but also aware of the pressure building in my bladder. After a while I yelled for Nurse Godi, in one last effort, not really believing she would leave me to wet my bed. Then I tried bribing the woman on my left with the promise of my evening slice of bread and jam. But she only waved her hand at me and rolled over. When I looked to the man on my right, he feigned sleep. Obviously no one wanted to help me and then find themselves on the bad side of Nurse Godi.
Cursing the unfairness of a full bladder and a leg and a half, I threw off the sheets and viewed the thing hanging below my knee. I didn’t know what to name it. It was no longer possible to not think about it as my own. For the first time, I felt the humiliation at seeing my foot-no-longer-there, in front of everyone. And when I finally glanced up, every head in the room quickly turned away.
I lifted the stump and gingerly maneuvered myself to the edge of the bed, swinging my good leg onto the floor. I hopped toward the end of the bed and, using one of the crutches, I attempted to stand. I’d seen people maneuver on crutches before and I was surprised by the power in my right leg. It felt familiar and comfortable. Encouraged, I gripped the second crutch. The other patients in the ward became strangely quiet, while I focused on getting around to the far corner of the bed.
“Staring at me is not helping,” I growled.
“You can do it—”
“I don’t need anyone to tell me what I can or cannot do,” I snapped at the woman who had declined my bribe.
I planted the crutches a few feet in front of me and swung my good leg forward. The stump followed, almost knocking me off balance. The trick was not to put the crutches too far forward and to take smaller steps. Beads of perspiration rolled down the side of my face but I had no free hand to wipe them away. My arms had never felt the full weight of my body before, but with the next step I figured out what the handles halfway down were actually for. I looked down the length of the ward. The toilet seemed a mile away and the pressure to pee intensified. I lurched from the security of the bed and started down the central aisle, ignoring the patients’ stares as I slowly passed one bed after another. My new way of walking was like a three-legged giraffe crossing the muddy banks of a watering hole: lift crutches, balance on one leg, plant crutches in front, shift my weight to lift good leg off the ground, and swing it one step forward, and the stump at least seemed to know enough to follow along. This complicated procedure of taking just one step at a time meant that the toilet, almost thirty steps away, seemed unreachable.
I wobbled my way slowly forward, with my stump aching and my frustration building. I was in no-man’s-land—too far from my bed and still too far from the toilet to make it in time. I placed my crutches farther and farther ahead of me, in an attempt to cover more ground, and then, with only, say, ten paces more to go, one of the crutches slipped from under me and I fell. Trying to break my fall, I hurled the other crutch into the air, onto a cabinet stacked with drinking glasses that shattered on impact.
I felt the warm release spread across my thighs, the floor, and over my hospital gown.
Somebody hovered over me to help me up, but I kicked them away. “Leave me alone,” I screamed. “Just leave me alone.”
I lay in my puddle of piss, crying, lashing out with my crutch at anyone who came near me. “Don’t touch me! Fuck you. Fuck you all.”
The following morning, I woke up from a groggy, double-dose sedative sleep to a voice saying, “You ready to travel?”
It sounded like Boubacar, but I might have been dreaming.
“We have a long way to go, Patson,” he said. “Or do you want to stay here?”
I opened my eyes and Boubacar was standing at the foot of my bed. “No. I don’t want to stay here.” I swallowed the sob that threatened to bring tears. I would not cry in front of him.
“Good. I don’t think the hospital can afford any more broken crockery.”
I offered him a weak smile as an apology, ashamed that he knew about my meltdown.
“I slipped. It was an accident.”
Boubacar’s mouth twitched maybe in a smile, but I wasn’t sure. “There’s something else,” he said, moving to my bedside cabinet and stuffing all that I owned into the old woman’s sack, which was now my Amputee Survival kitbag. “Grace is not at the sheds. She and a few of the other kids have gone to South Africa with Determine.”
I struggled to sit up. “Grace has gone to South Africa?”
Boubacar nodded. “Yes. I went to pick her up but she was not there. The Banda women let her go to a scout jamboree in Cape Town. They said you knew about it.”
“No, I don’t—”
And then I remembered Grace proudly showing me her uniform, telling me about the money she had given Determine. She had mentioned going to South Africa. I just hadn’t listened to her properly.
“I told the Banda wives if anything happened to Grace, they would have to answer to me,” Boubacar said, his voice edged with anger. “I will find her and get you far away from Marange and into a proper hospital in South Africa.”
I was so pleased to see Boubacar, I wanted to hug him. “And take Arves with us,” I said, suddenly filled with hope. “He has to come with us.”
“Arves and the magogo have disappeared from the school. I don’t know where they are.”
“I do.” I sat up, swinging my good leg off the bed. “I know just where Arves would have gone.”
I clung to Boubacar’s neck, wrapping my good leg around his waist, as we moved rapidly through the crowds at Beitbridge. Commander Jesus was here somewhere. Looking for me. My leg had buckled at the mention of his name but Boubacar caught me before I fell, and swung me onto his back. I couldn’t stop the trembling, and pressed myself against Boubacar. I was sure he could feel the pounding of my heart.
Commander Jesus would find me. There was no escape. I was going to die.
“Take it easy, Patson. You’re going to be all right, but not if you strangle me,” Boubacar said, tapping my arms wrapped tightly around his throat.
“Why’s he here? How did he know…” I stammered, trying to catch my breath.
“I thought you could tell me that,” said Boubacar, sidestepping a family loaded down with luggage, and moving into the shadows outside the brightness cast by the heavy floodlights above the immigration offices and courtyard. He glanced over his shoulder.
“Can you see him?”
“No, but I know he’s here,” he said, moving steadily away from the crowd, in the direction of the surrounding bush.
“What happened at the border office?”
“When I finally got to the counter and showed my passport, the official asked me to wait
. I didn’t like the way he looked at me and then I saw him making a phone call. I ran back to the truck, but the soldiers were already there. They had broken into my cab and were searching it. I asked a girl what was going on. She said someone had told her that the commander from Fifth Brigade was looking for a man and a one-legged boy.”
“But why? What does he want from me?”
“Your diamonds, Patson. What else? They will make him a very rich man.”
“But I don’t have them. I gave them to Arves—in the photocopying room. Jamu came. Maybe he took them. I don’t know where they are, Boubacar. I swear.”
“Who did you tell about your girazis, Patson?”
I couldn’t think straight or control the rush of fear. I had no idea what happened to my stones. All I remembered was seeing them boiling in an oil pot; telling Arves to take them; and Jamu asking for them. The only thing I knew for certain was that the hole in my shoe was empty.
“Grace. I told my sister. And Jamu was around when I told her. Maybe he overheard me? Maybe he got it out of Grace the next day? Jamu came to the photocopying room and asked me about the diamonds. He told his father about the gwejana.” I remembered how angry Arves had been with Jamu for betraying the gwejana. “And my father,” I said, suddenly remembering his reaction when I had told him. “I told my father the night you had food with us. And of course I told Arves. But he wouldn’t have told anyone. And his grandmother too.”
“So enough people knew about them that it was only a matter of time before Commander Jesus would find out,” he said, jogging into the darkness, moving away from the border post. “We’re not going to be able to cross the border tonight. We’ll have to spend all of tomorrow hiding and then try again when it’s dark. I’ve got to find the River Woman. She’ll get us across the Limpopo River. Once we’re in South Africa, you’ll be safe.”
Diamond Boy Page 19