by Gabi Moore
“Oh, sure, you can trust me” I said, and smiled darkly on the inside.
“Well, I haven’t been at my friend’s this evening,” she said, and then waited.
“You haven’t? Oh, why not?”
“Well… nevermind about him. I wanted to say I was somewhere else, though, and –”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you, which part of London did you say your friend was from?” I said, cutting her off.
She paused, still staring at the ceiling.
“Um …which part? Oh, he’s from, uh, Hammersmith” she said. Little liar. I can’t say why, but it thrilled me to catch her lying.
“Anyway, go on” I said.
“If I tell you this, promise you won’t judge me?”
Oh, I’ve judged you a million times already, you bitch.
“Of course not. What’s wrong? What’s bothering you?”
She let out another heavy sigh.
“Ok, well, I was at Vik’s tonight” she said, then turned to see my reaction.
I bat my eyelashes and look straight back at her.
“Oh? Why? I hope everything’s OK?” I said sweetly. I she wanted to play confession with me, then I wanted her to squirm and say it out loud.
“Yes, no, of course he’s fine. I was there …you know…”
“I don’t understand,” I said quickly.
She turned to look back at the ceiling.
“Vik and I have been having a relationship for the last few months” she said plainly, as though she were on trial and desperate to state the dirty facts in as clinical way as she could manage.
“A relationship? But, we all have a relationship with Vik, I’m very fond of him too. I don’t understand the problem.”
Perhaps that was pushing it a bit. I mean, I had worked hard to dispel the Christian good girl image I had when I first arrived here, but even I would have trouble convincing her I was that naïve.
She looked at me and frowned.
“Oh god, you are so innocent,” she said, and flopped her legs down on the bed.
I laughed.
“I’m just playing. Of course I know what you’re saying. But, I mean, I already knew that…” I said. I wasn’t done messing with her yet.
“You did?” she seemed genuinely surprised.
“Of course! Val, everyone knows, duh.” Now it was my turn to laugh.
I didn’t technically see her blushing, but I was enjoying imagining that she was.
“Really? So …you’ve …heard?” she said quietly. For a moment I almost felt sorry for her.
“Well, don’t feel bad about it!” I said, in mock-sympathy. “It’s not like anybody’s singled you out or anything. If it makes you feel any better, they talk about all the girls he sleeps with. In fact, I think they probably mention you the least, so don’t stress…”
The silence in the room was sharp, and cold, and delicious. In a few moments, I heard her start crying. For the first time in my life, I felt bad. And I liked it. Valerie had lied to me. Vik had lied to me. And now with an eerie clarity I realized all at once: I didn’t care anymore. It wasn’t revenge exactly. But it felt good.
“Oh, hey, don’t cry Val…” I said, but what I really meant was, go on and cry, bitch.
She sobbed a little and then started frantically wiping away tears.
“I just don’t understand why I keep doing this to myself, you know? Why I keep choosing men who hurt me. Why do I keep doing this to myself?” she cried.
I got up and went to her bed, placed a hand on her shoulder and stroked absentmindedly.
“Did her…? Have you broken up or?” I said.
She was tracing her fingers over the flowers patterns on the bed, over and over again on the same loops.
“Well, it was all fine, we were doing so well. Obviously I never expected him to drop everything and have a big serious relationship or whatever, obviously with me leaving soon we both understood it would be a temporary thing, I’m not an idiot, I knew that…”
“But he dumped you and now you’re sad?” I said. That was maybe a bit blunt.
She sniffed and looked at me.
“Well, not dumped exactly. But he’s just pulled away completely. He’s just ignoring me. He’s an utter arsehole, truly” she said and sobbed again.
I lowered my head and rested it against her shoulder. It might sound strange, but hating her was a comfortable feeling. Now that I saw how hurt she was, it felt natural to try and cheer her up. You’re fucked up, Penny.
“You know, maybe you’re attracted to guys like that because you know that they’re unavailable. Maybe you want them to leave you” I said.
“What?”
“Think about it. I don’t know. Why are girls drawn to him so much?”
“Good question.”
“Well, maybe there’s something comforting about the whole idea. Vik will never commit to any one girl. He’ll never leave Mchinji. And maybe it’s a relief not to have to care about that for a while.”
“I don’t know… maybe.”
“Imagine if Vik settled down with one girl. I can’t even imagine what that would look like, can you? He wouldn’t be Vik anymore” I said.
“Well, that’s true,” she said. At least she had stopped crying.
“You know what you should do? Forget him. Do your own thing. Do you see him fretting about women? He just does what he likes. We should do the same” I said.
“We?”
I got up and went to my own bed again and laid down there. It was getting late.
“I’m just saying, Vik’s not the only one who gets to do cool things.”
We chatted late into the night, but my mind was elsewhere.
Chapter Twenty-One - Viktor
Without Penny, the world was flatter. Lacking a dimension.
But they all leave, eventually.
I thought she was different. I thought I saw and felt something different in her. But clearly I had been wrong. Women …only complicate things.
I get everything I need from the earth herself, who is a woman too, only not so complicated. With my bare hands I turned her soil and buried seeds in her and pulled out plants and herbs and roots to sustain me. My home was hewn from wood grown in the very same forests that swayed and swished around me at night, like her great rustling skirts. And if I did things just right, she would smile and gift me a rabbit or two from her endless banquet. I wanted for nothing. Except for one thing.
I was seated at the back porch outside of the cabin, a narrow lip jutting off the edge where I could perch and smell the air and think. With my legs crossed, I balanced my small pipe on the flesh at my knee and tamped down my own special blend into the stem, pressing little scraggles in with my finger. I dangled a match over the surface and watched the flame lick and catch the dried plant tendrils, then set the whole wad alight. As it glowed noiselessly I opened my chest and inhaled, pulling the plumes of wandering smoke down the tube and into my body.
I sealed my lips, put the pipe down and narrowed my eyes as I looked out over my view of the forest. Distant birds trilled and chattered in the treetops. When I couldn’t hold it any longer, I collapsed my chest and exhaled, and sent the smoke back out into the world, thanking it for taking the time to visit all the little corners of my lungs. I blew a smoke ring and watched it bobble off into the forest and disappear.
All the leaves were her face. Every bend in every tree was the shape of her cheekbone. All the foliage was her hair. There was nowhere to look: she was everywhere.
I took a fresh lungful of air and looked harder, trying to do without her, to forget. She had left, what more was there to say? Did anybody care if I missed her?
I took another drag and set the pipe aside. This time, the smoke plumes snaked into my brain, and loosened things up a little there. It wasn’t her job to come back. I didn’t deserve her anyway. If they all leave, well, maybe there’s a reason for that…?
My ears pricked instantly to a faint rustle in the d
istance. Someone was approaching. I had picked this damn spot specifically because it was difficult to get to. Because I didn’t want to be bothered. Because no, I didn’t have a special cure for your granny’s arthritis and no, I didn’t want to make a trade.
I turned my focus to the oncoming rustle. To my surprise, a familiar but out-of-place figure appeared at the threshold. She stood for a moment, great bosom heaving in the heat, looked at me and then ambled her way up the path without a word. I watched her approach, and when she said nothing, I scooted over and made a place for her on the narrow porch. Mama Tembi is what the locals affectionately call “traditionally built”. I felt the weight of the entire building sag a little as she settled herself beside me, dangling her feet off the edge.
I offered her the pipe, and she took it. Wordlessly, I tamped in some herbs and lit it for her, and she drew a long, graceful puff for herself. At the apex of her inhale she coughed a little and looked with disgust at the pipe, then handed it back to me.
“You’re drying it in the sun. It needs to dry in the dark,” she said to me, matter-of-factly. Like I said, Mama Tembi knew everyone and everything. I’m not a man built for shame, but she was right, and I withered under her judgment, and the thought that I had prepared my herbs incorrectly.
I said nothing and waited for her to speak.
“It’s a pity that your father couldn’t teach you more, before he died.”
For a moment, the leaves and branches at least looked like leaves and branches.
“I told him, when he was sick, I told him, don’t worry, Vik is in good hands. Because you were. Everyone in this village is my child, you know. But you are also my child. I knew your mother, Vik.”
Once every couple of months, Mama Tembi would have a come-to-Jesus talk with me. She respected that I was on my own path, but she never doubted for a second that that path would necessarily lead back into Mchinji, into a life that was good and decent and normal. And I’d wear pants and marry a nice girl and stop my nonsense. In Mama Tembi’s eyes, this rough little cabin didn’t nearly count as “good hands”. We were all her baby chicks, and concerned mother hen she was, she didn’t like one of her own wandering too far from the nest.
Penny’s face had vanished completely. I relaxed a little.
“I have to speak my heart, Viktor,” she said, holding a clenched fist to her chest. This was serious. She never used my full name. I looked at her, and her face seemed strange.
“What’s the matter?”
“That baby girl. Penelope. She’s...” she said though choked sobs.
I was irritated.
“Mama, she’s not a baby, she’s an adult, what she does with her life is her own business, and what I do with my life is also my own business…”
She shook her head violently.
“No, Viktor, stop saying that. Everything we do affects others, everything, how can you be so…”
She stopped mid-sentence. My face grew hot. I knew that there were rumors. I knew that people disapproved of me, skulking around in the forest on the periphery, snaring an occasional missionary girl if one wondered by, like a jackal. I loved Mama Tembi, but she didn’t get to come here and tell me wat I should do. Nobody did. I stood up and made as if to usher her off the ledge. I wanted her to go.
“Are you still running around with Valerie?” she said. I didn’t see what Valerie had to do with anything.
“Whether I ‘run around’ with someone is nobody’s business but mine,” I said, curt.
“Viktor, when your mother…”
“My mother doesn’t have anything to do with it either. I don’t see her anywhere, do you?”
“And Penelope? What about her fiancé at home? You don’t even care?”
“Mama, you said you wanted to speak your heart, so do it. Say what you want to say.”
Her eyes were wounded.
“Viktor, she’s pregnant,” she said quietly, then clutched both my hands in hers.
Instantly, her face was everywhere again. Penny was all around me. Her eyes were in the wood swirls of the cabin, in the clouds, in the shapes on Mama Tembi’s shirt.
There had to be some mistake. I had given Penny a huge handful of medicine to take with her, to prevent pregnancy. It was a pouch of silphium and stoneseed root, and a mix of other potent herbs, and I had been making the same blend for the women in the village for years, and they swore by it. It always worked.
“There must be some mistake,” I said.
“I know it when I see it!” she yelled.
“Wait, when you see it? So you don’t know this for sure? What does she say?”
“She’s American, what does she know? It will take her till Christmas to figure it out…”
I angrily pulled my hands from hers. My mind raced. I hadn’t spoken to her again since she stormed off on that horrible morning, and I hadn’t the heart to chase after her. I had quietly hoped she would have sprung some sense and just gone back home already. She didn’t belong here, anyway. Not really. She needed to be at home, with her asshole fiancé, who at least could offer her something normal, something legitimate.
I had to find her. I went to fetch my shoes and angrily lashed the laces round my ankles.
“Where are you going?” Mama Tembi said. She still held the pipe in her hands. I raced over to her and clasped her shoulders.
“Thank you for coming to me with this Mama” I said and ran off.
“Vik! Wait!”
“Yes?” I said and paused at the shed.
“She’s not going anywhere, Vik. You don’t have to rush.”
For a while we stared at one another. I could sense a double meaning in her words. I ran off. In just a few words she had unraveled my exact dilemma. I didn’t want her to leave. Of course. I didn’t want her to go back home to her asshole boyfriend and I would have given anything in the world to have her sweet head in my lap just one more time. Her leaving me would be the worst possible outcome.
Except for one other possible outcome: her staying.
Chapter Twenty-Two - Penelope
Walking in the bush calmed me. It’s easy: one step, then the other. One step, the other. I liked my shoes. They were simple and strong and didn’t mind taking me far. I hadn’t been called a “goody two shoes” in quite some time. In fact, the whole idea seemed so distant to me now, like something that belonged to someone else who lived in a distant era in history. Not to me.
I had committed adultery. I had taken illegal substances. I had fraternized with a man known to have regular run-ins with the law. But even still, I felt my moral compass pricking at me harder than ever: cheating was wrong. No question about that. He had said that Valerie was just his friend. He had promised me. And he had lied.
And he could act like he was some fancy forest-guru all he liked, but he was just a garden variety, flawed human being like the rest of us, and a coward, and a fucking liar. I still hadn’t decided what exactly I would say to him when I saw his sorry face, but I still had a long way to walk, and plenty of rage to carefully spin into the perfect speech as I did so. As my feet went, one over the other, swiftly through the underbrush, my brain worked and I hashed out everything I wanted to tell him.
That he had abused my trust. That he wasn’t some cool revolutionary for hiding out in a tree house in the woods, he was just afraid. Afraid of people and of me. He was all about how he hated to see bullshit in other people, well, I would news for him: his bullshit was just as bad as everyone else’s. And though he would never admit it, the way he dried his stupid herbs was completely wrong!
And I didn’t care anyway. He was fun, sure, but I had long ago moved on. He had shown me what an idiot I was to think about marrying a man like Dylan. But he was no better. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore, but it wasn’t him, and I wanted to make damn sure he understood that not only wasn’t I hurt by his betrayal, I actually pitied him for it, and no, I wouldn’t even consider forgiving him for a damn thing.
My feet moved quic
kly in the brush. I was walking quickly, a brisk, angry pace that had me break a slight sweat. I recognized all the old plants as I passed them. Old friends in the form of narrow, golden grasses or thorny leaves or little white star shaped flowers with dusty neon yellow stamens inside.
While I was at it, I was thinking of scrapping the garden completely, too. We needed to grow a crop that was actually worth something. I was done heaving and sweating to raise mediocre crops, and the soil was just too depleted for anything – even the maize had been lackluster.
And I would return back home just as soon as I damn well pleased, thank you very much.
As I made my way, I heard my skirts rustling over the grass. By now, most of my old wardrobe from back home was either ruined, given away or just gone. I had a growing collection of sarongs and fishtail dresses. And a new way to fold my head wrap: not like the local women did, but in my own fashion: with a broad strip wrapped across like an extravagant Alice band, knotted at the top, off to the side, like a 50s housewife who had gotten lost and landed up in Africa somehow.
Which is kind of what I was.
I started to feel better. The right words for what I wanted to tell him hadn’t appeared to me yet, but I knew how I felt, and that seemed like enough for now. I still had a long way to go. Light footed, I skipped towards his house, the feet familiar with the old route. Then I saw him and froze.
He was standing on the swell of the hill, just standing and watching me approach. I stopped too. His form was unmistakable. I would know those strong shoulders, that cocky, upright posture anywhere, and from any distance away. I realized that he was coming to see me. Our path was the same path.
Suddenly, all the anger, my whole silly speech …it all just fell away and my mind went blank. And into that blankness rushed all the memories of him. His crystalline eyes. His hard, warm arms around me. The way his fingers were so strong around an axe, but so gentle around the stem of a flower. With a deep, hurting ache I realized I would have given anything to just stop walking, and to just curl up in his lap and let him stroke me to sleep. I hated him. But I watched his form, looking for a sign, any sign that he felt the same.