“Maybe none could pay the bride wealth,” she said. “My father asks for too many cows.”
Safi cocked her head. “It is good to have a father who values you.”
“It’s a blessing upon me.”
“But a father is no husband.” Safi leaned toward her. “You know my son, Sarah. Young and strong. Almost of age.” She winked. “Tuyage twongere.”
Let’s talk.
Safi’s laugh told Sarah the woman had managed to make Sarah blush even harder, a feat of endless fascination among the refugees. She’d better brace herself; no doubt there’d be more of such teasing coming.
The children swarmed even after the last candy was gone, roiling around her, asking questions, their small hands stroking her arms. She approached the main building of the camp and noted the moss growing on the edge of the roof, and the chunk of mud that had slid off the wall in the humidity. It would soon need repair.
And she couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t help scanning the open area, looking for a very specific jeep, wondering if he was here now, having delivered some supplies, perhaps boxes of donations like the ones the boys had filched from to bring to the market, but there were no cars here, nothing but a couple of loose goats. It was better this way, she told herself. She needed to brace herself, get a good grip on her senses, before she laid eyes on Sam.
She gave the last candy to the youngest in the crowd, and then said her good-byes as she slipped into the coolness of the main building. It served as the registration area for refugees, as well as a hospital and living quarters for herself, Dr. Mwami, and a collection of other employees of various NGOs. If it weren’t for the flies, the mud walls, and the humming of the generator, the room could be mistaken for a back office somewhere in Iowa. An iron-haired woman in khaki scowled over a monitor, her features bathed in a blue glow, as she pounded a single key over and over.
“Be with you in a minute,” she said, sliding under the table to unplug the CPU. “Dang operating system, freezes the whole drive,” she muttered, “couldn’t bring us a Mac, had to give us some virus-ridden office reject with a processor speed in the kilobytes—”
“Hello, Maggie.”
The woman poked her head up over the rim of the desk and blinked behind her square-rimmed glasses. “I’ll be damned if it isn’t Sarah Pollard.” She hauled herself up. “You just cost me two bottles of banana wine.”
Sarah cocked her head.
“I made a bet with that hunk o’ man with that bed-nets organization. Told him, after you left, that we wouldn’t see your skinny ass again. Can’t say I’m sorry I lost.” She spread her strong, wiry arms. “Come give Maggie a hug.”
Sarah braced herself for Maggie’s powerful squeeze, and was sputtering when Maggie finally let her go long enough to give her a good look-over. “You’re supposed to come back from the States fattened up and tanned, darling. What the hell you been doing, hibernating?”
“On airplanes,” Sarah said, ruefully. “It’s a very long story.”
“Well, there ain’t a hell of a lot doing around here, so you can fill me in on the gritty details over the next ration of mush, what d’ya say?”
“Sounds good.” Sarah thrust her chin at the computer. “More trouble?”
“Than it’s worth.” Maggie rounded the desk and gave the monitor a good swipe on the side. “The monitor’s got a burn-in. I think it’s porn. Ever try reading Banyamulenge profiles through the shadow of an angry penis?” Maggie gestured over her shoulder to the suite of machines humming behind a tarp. “The real problem is that I can take all the pictures I want of these lost souls, but without access to the refugee database, I can’t match orphans. Ah, you don’t want to hear this. It’s nothing Maggie can’t fix.” Maggie eyed Sarah’s bulging bag. “Wouldn’t happen to have a nice hummin’ black-market processor in that bag, would you?”
Sarah pulled out some magazines. “No, but I did bring you three months’ worth of People magazine.”
“Child,” she said, with a deep-throated laugh, “you just earned yourself an upgrade on your firewall.”
Sarah spread the magazines on the desk, and then cocked her head toward the hospital wing. “Is he in?”
“Is Brad Pitt crazy?” Maggie pulled the top magazine toward her. “Beyoncé is what? When did that happen?” She gave her head a shake. “I’ve got some reading to do. Why don’t you go on back to the clinic? Dr. Mwami could use the help. The last girl Doctors Without Borders sent, he demoted to firewood duty.”
Sarah shrugged her much lighter bag over her shoulder and made her way through the open doorway to the clinic. She followed the strengthening scent of disinfectant and bleach, which did a heroic job of masking the less pleasant scents of a room that housed fevered patients. The room itself, nothing more than a large open space, had its own separate entrance. Six of the eight beds were currently occupied, and she was relieved not to find any children lying on the floor pallets they kept stacked in the supply room. Yet a full bench of patients waited for Dr. Mwami’s attention, and one woman paced just outside the clinic, clutching her swollen abdomen against the labor pains.
She heard Dr. Mwami behind the single curtain.
“… I tell them, never drink still water. Still water is bad water, full of bugs and sickness. Fast water is better, if you must drink. Yet over and over again I see this. You will remember what I am telling you, won’t you, Dieudonné, the next time you go by that pond when you’re gathering sticks?”
Sarah came around the edge of the curtain to see the boy, thin and weak, manage a nod.
“Two of these a day.” Dr. Mwami grabbed a bottle from the shelf by the bed, checked the label, and handed it to the mother, Inès—a young and lovely woman who had named her child “God-given,” in spite of the less than loving way he had been conceived. “Two a day,” Dr. Mwami repeated, “one at sunrise and another at sunset. Comprenez?”
Inès nodded.
“You have no other children, yes? Then take the bed at the end of the row, so I can observe him. Maybe, in a day or two, he’ll be strong enough to go home.” Dr. Mwami raised his head and saw her. “Ah, Sarah. You are back.”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Dr. Mwami pressed the plunger of the antibacterial gel on the bedside table, filling his palm with the quick-drying liquid. “That’s the eleventh case of bloody diarrhea I’ve seen today—but it’s not from the tanks. In every case, they drank out of that cow pond about a kilometer west of the camp.”
Sarah started. “Cholera?”
“No, but that’s why six of them are still here, for monitoring.” Dr. Mwami vigorously rubbed his hands together until all the antibacterial lotion dried. “The other two beds are taken by women who’ve just delivered. There’s a third on the way”—the laboring woman cried out, punctuating his words—“and if my instincts are right, little Claude out there has broken a rib from his foolish idea to climb the water tank.”
Sarah couldn’t help the smile that pulled at the corners of her lips as Dr. Mwami continued to catalogue the cases as if he were standing in a white-tiled room in a city hospital and she’d just come in for a new shift. She kept mum as she nodded, feeling slow in the head. Absently, she thumbed the strap of her bag off her shoulder, took the familiar stained lab coat off a peg on the wall, and hung her bag in its place.
“For now,” he said, “you’d best fetch Lynca out of her mother’s arms—the screaming one. She’ll need about a dozen stitches and a tetanus shot for that gash on her foot.”
Sarah shoved her arms into the sleeves of her lab coat. She walked around the curtain and glanced at the bench-full of patients, trying to pick the right sobbing girl from the crowd. Sarah led the girl behind the curtain. At first, she couldn’t find a pail or a clean cloth, though the soap was where it always was, and she felt Dr. Mwami’s slight impatience as she fumbled for supplies. She cleaned the girl’s foot as the doctor flourished a frighteningly long needle. Then Sarah held the girl’s hand while she to
ld halting stories about America: about dogs who slept in feather beds, and machines that sucked away dirt, and houses that did not need fires to be kept warm. Dr. Mwami finished the stitches and called the next patient while Sarah did her best to keep up.
The next time Sarah lifted her head, it seemed, the bench was empty of patients, and the dried banana fronds on the roof rustled in the night breeze. Dr. Mwami shoved a bawling newborn into Sarah’s waiting arms and then turned back to take care of the exhausted mother.
Sarah brought the newborn to an empty pallet and gently cleaned the birthing fluids off the tiny girl. As she tucked the child into the box that would serve as a cradle, Dr. Mwami dropped a hand on her shoulder.
“Sarah—we’ve missed you.” He gave her a curt nod before turning away. “Glad to have you back.”
Sarah stared down at the infant, swaddled tight, as evening insects buzzed outside, as the light dimmed to the rose-purple of a Burundi evening, as the scent of cooking fires and roasted goat filtered through the open door. She felt, somewhere deep inside her, a certain fundamental shift of gravity, like a cart dragged through the mud finding sudden purchase on a straight and solid road. She stood quiet for a moment and let herself experience the growing lightness of being.
Yes. It was very good to be home.
A full week passed before Sarah finally heard the familiar pitch of a revving motor as a vehicle labored its way up the hill to the main building. She was pacing in the clinic, patting the tense back of a screaming infant who’d just received his first immunization, when she recognized the distinctive grinding of metal as the driver forced the jeep into a lower gear.
Sam had returned.
Her stomach dropped right to her feet. She patted the baby’s back a little faster as prickles of heat and shame erupted all over her. Sarah knew she’d have to face him, sooner or later. He was, after all, the one fragile thread that had been strong enough to pull her all the way back to Burundi. She knew this wasn’t going to be easy. They’d parted on such bad terms in Bangalore. He had been so angry with her.
With reason, Sarah reminded herself. Sam had been right. She’d made the wrong moral choice in India. She’d thrown herself at Colin, knowing he was promised to another woman, when she should have just said good-bye.
The devil had a million excuses, but Sarah took none of them. She couldn’t blame her behavior on Rachel, or Kate’s urging, or Jo’s encouragement: Sarah had made the decision all on her own. In the months past, she’d made her peace with God and her own conscience. She just wasn’t sure she could bear Sam’s terrible censure. Especially when she’d been such a virulent holier-than-thou about so many of Sam’s own difficult decisions.
“Dr. Mwami!” Josette, a young woman who happened to be herding some goats just outside the clinic, poked her head around the door. “Dr. Mwami! Master Tremayne is here! Come, you must see!”
“A moment, a moment—”
“He is asking for you,” Josette said excitedly. She spoke toward the doctor, but her eyes danced on Sarah. “He wants to see you, Dr. Mwami!”
Sarah glanced at the doctor. He was inoculating an older boy against measles, a boy of about nine who sat with his eyes squeezed shut. The doctor finished the shot, pressed a cotton ball on the welling dot of blood, and tossed the needle in a sharps container.
“And doesn’t Sam look fine,” Josette said, her smile so wide her cheeks bulged like plums. “A fine man he is, tall and strong! And no wife of his own!”
Sarah turned away to lay the babe in the box they used as a crib so the young woman wouldn’t revel in seeing Sarah’s face redden even more. She hoped the teasing about her lack of a husband would taper off soon, but she supposed Sam’s arrival would only make it worse. Half the women of the camp considered her and Sam married in all but tradition. Didn’t they argue like husband and wife?
They did. All the time. It had taken her months to accept the realization that she was angry around Sam because he stirred within her a flood of dangerous feelings. Feelings she’d only dared to examine when an entire ocean physically separated her from him.
Dr. Mwami told the waiting patients that he’d be right back and headed out of the clinic. The patients, curious, quickly followed. Sarah fussed with the baby, arranging the cotton bedding, until she heard a voice in her head—part Rachel’s, part her own.
Coward.
Yanking off her lab coat, she tossed it across an empty cot and strode through the registration area to the main door of the compound.
The usual confusion of goats, children, cattle, and the curious had gathered in an arc around Sam’s jeep. Sam had managed to drive the vehicle all the way up the soggy hill, but the front wheels had sunk in the mud to the rim, and the vehicle was so splattered only a few spots of white paint and windshield glass shone through the muck. In stark contrast, Sam stood apart, straight-backed, wearing a blindingly white button-down shirt and a pair of belted, starched khakis.
She curled her hand around the bent sapling that formed the doorjamb. He looked fit and strong. The dark skin of his chest gleamed through the fibers of his shirt. He’d rolled the cuffs up, exposing the ropy strength of his forearms. He stood still, visibly uneasy, waiting for something.
She slipped outside to stand at Dr. Mwami’s side. Sam’s gaze shifted. It fell upon her. She braced herself for anger, censure, dismay—or, worst of all, lack of interest—but his look was a sudden flare, shifting and unreadable.
She shifted her feet to balance herself. She really must remember to eat her rations.
“Sam,” Dr. Mwami said sharply, “what’s all this about? I have a dozen patients waiting.”
Sam answered by turning away and nodding to a tall young man, who promptly slipped away. Then, leaning forward, Sam motioned to a boy by the other end of the jeep, who shot off in a different direction. The boy returned a moment later, trailing four young goats, just as the first man muscled through the crowd, gripping a leash and one horn of a brown Ankole cow.
The crowd murmured admiring noises, drawing around the beast, and the women grinned with new excitement.
“Dr. Mwami,” Sam said, “I’ve been thinking of how best to do this for some time now. I’ve decided it’s you who I must approach, to make an offer.”
“Speak plainly, Sam, is this another one of your grand jokes?”
“No, no joke.” A muscle flexed in Sam’s dark cheek, catching a gleam of sunlight. “You are considered the foster father for many of the fatherless daughters in the camp.”
“Well, what of it?”
“I’ve come to make an offer,” he said, gesturing to the goats and the cow, “of bride wealth.”
“Bride wealth.” Humor flickered across the doctor’s usually strong, expressionless face. “Burundi tradition. You wish to marry.”
Sarah swayed, sucking in a slow, long breath. The sagging belly of rain clouds rumbled across the sky, like Burundi drums in the distance. The first faint patter of raindrops rustled the dried roof fronds. A breeze brought the sweet tang of fermenting bananas from some hidden mash-pot.
She dived into Sam’s dark-chocolate stare. Fathoms deep, those eyes; she kept tumbling deeper.
Sam spoke, loud and clear. “I make an offer… for Sarah Pollard.”
Around the clearing, the women squealed and clapped their hands, and the children laughed, and suddenly everyone was moving, dancing, clapping, and stomping in circles. All but she and Dr. Mwami and Sam, three stiff figures amid the madness. Sam watched her steadily, his hands curling in his trouser pockets, ruining the sharp creases, while her heart started a steady, heavy pounding.
“A cow?” Dr. Mwami said suddenly. “Four stinking goats? What use do I have for these beasts, Samuel Tremayne?”
The crowd’s exclamations ended abruptly. The women stilled and watched Dr. Mwami with wide, unbelieving eyes.
“Of all the things you could bring me,” the doctor continued, “syringes or alcohol, iodine or bandages, salt tablets, antibiotics�
�you come to me with animals? Animals?!”
Sam spread a hand toward the jeep. “There is more.”
“There’d better be.” Muttering, Dr. Mwami left Sarah’s side to pull open the filthy door, revealing a pile of boxes. He patted his lab coat for his reading glasses, but Sarah didn’t know if he found them, because, while he looked, Sam crossed the yard, closing the space between them.
“Sarah-belle.”
She broke eye contact, then took interest in her muddy flip-flops, and filled her lungs with air, because it was too much, really—too much all at once—a great volcano of feeling. She didn’t deserve this. She’d done nothing but fight him since the first day he’d driven up the hill, over a year ago, and announced himself with a grin and a wink. She’d struggled against him the whole time, fought his tactics, even as he brought her equipment they had never been able to get before, despite all their efforts with grants and the requisitioning and the bureaucracy. She’d tried to drive him away with her holier-than-thou disapproval and her arguments about moral reckoning, but he kept coming back. She’d ignored him and yelled at him, even as she shamelessly chased another man—yet he persisted, solid and unyielding and sure. Sam scared her—she’d never really understood why, not until now.
His fingers were suddenly under her chin. She yielded to the soft pressure. Dared to look at that face, only inches from hers, as she had dared once before, under an acacia tree on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Intense and searching. The spattering of pits on his cheeks was like so many stars in the night sky, a counterpart to her own freckles. Sam, her dark reflection.
“I thought,” she said, her voice breathy, “that you were leaving Doctors Without Borders. I thought you wouldn’t come back.”
“So did I.” His nostrils flared as his gaze drifted over her head for a moment to the mountainous jungle around them. “But this place, these people…” His jaw worked. “It’s my calling.”
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