In the Belly of the Elephant

by Susan Corbett

  The women of Selbo gathered to talk about boutiques villageoises. They wanted loans to start a village store to sell blue soap, canned goods, matches, and cloth. Adiza and Fati both nursed their babies as they explained the need to determine demand and quantity.

  I left the shade with Jack and Julie to visit a few of the project sites in the village. Jack pointed to a new grain store, describing its construction with wide hand motions. He had gained some weight while in the States and returned with the flush of health that only temperate climates and high caloric home cooking can achieve. He looked wonderful and had given me a big kiss in front of the VP when they had arrived at my gate.

  It had been easy to sleep in my own bed since Julie was a guest at my house for the first part of her stay. I had managed to get Jack alone long enough to announce my decision regarding our relationship. This way, I explained, I would have nothing to lose. The nothing to gain was a given.

  As we walked the path down to the women’s gardens, he looked at me with a wounded slant to his eyebrows and the same hangdog expression in his brown eyes that Rocky gave me when I caught her chasing chickens. I gave him a pat on the shoulder. Poor guy, old buddy, old pal.

  Past several courtyards that housed new mud stoves, a chorus of angry voices agitated the air like a sudden clapping of hands. We rounded the corner and ran into a group of villagers. A young woman stood crying, holding a wailing infant. A man alternately shouted at the woman then at the group of people who surrounded them. All the villagers talked at once, some called to the woman, others touched the man to calm him.

  Fati hurried over to us. “The man is the woman’s husband and says she refuses to feed her baby. He is demanding a divorce.”

  The woman with the baby kept trying to talk, but her husband’s shouts prevented anyone from hearing. When the crowd finally calmed the husband, Fati approached the woman and talked to her. Fati then turned to the crowd and spoke Fulfuldé.

  Adiza had joined us and translated. “The woman is saying she has tried to feed the baby, but the baby is sick and won’t take the breast.”

  The man was shouting again. The woman, much younger than her husband, just stood with tears running down her face. The infant in her arms cried in an ear-piercing wail. It was a cry of more than hunger, a cry of sickness and pain.

  “The woman has tried to explain this to her husband,” Adiza said. She shook her head. “He will not hear her.”

  The crowd argued with the man. Fati talked with them, first the young mother, then the husband. She explained the child was sick and must be taken to the clinic in Dori. The man finally nodded, then turned and walked away. The woman followed behind, her head bent over her child. The wind molded the skirts to the legs of the women in the crowd and blew dust into our eyes.

  Back in the car on the road to Dori, Fati and Adiza nursed their babies. Healthy sucking sounds and the scent of sweet milk calmed me. Jack and Julie sat in front. Hamidou drove, a rare frown folding the skin between his eyes.

  “Fati,” I said. “Why wouldn’t the baby nurse? And its cry was so shrill.”

  “The baby is sick.” Fati pressed her lips together. “It’s neck is too stiff to nurse.”

  Everyone in the car seemed to be holding their breath.

  No one would name it out loud. Meningitis. Fati and Adiza pulled their babies closer.

  “Is it a complication of pneumonia?”

  Adiza nodded. “Every year, it becomes an epidemic.”

  There were not enough clinics, not enough antibiotics. The wind was the harbinger, pneumonia—the knock at the door, meningitis—death.

  Julie turned. “WHO has just identified another disease in Africa. They’re calling it Auto Immune Disease Syndrome. Apparently it’s sexually transmitted and destroys the immune system. WHO is afraid it’s becoming another kind of epidemic.”

  None of us had heard of it. It was not as immediate as meningitis, not as frightening. We talked no more of it.

  As we parked the car in the office courtyard, Jack invited us all over for dinner. Wanting some solitude, I begged off, saying I needed to put my cold to bed early. It was easier to keep my promise to myself not to sleep with Jack if I just plain stayed away from him. I returned to my house and lit the kerosene stove to heat the couscous and sauce Laya had left in the frigo.

  As I ate, I reread Tom Robbins’ passage about finding happiness only if there was nothing to gain and nothing to lose. I wondered if he had ever lived in Africa where happiness wasn’t a decision you made about wanting or not wanting. Happiness wasn’t a choice in Africa. It was given or taken away according to Allah’s will. I hadn’t seen a whole lot of happiness that day. Tom Robbins reminded me of Philip, shaking me in Gorom, telling me to wake up and then to stand up on a rock and tell the world to fuck it.

  Seemed to me that nothing to lose and nothing to gain just left you with a lot of nothing. Even if you had a choice, why would you choose that? Pride and stubborness? Maybe. Revenge? Probably.

  A week went by. I had the dream again, about trying to catch a plane with no ticket, my luggage lost. This time, the airport had a big window. Out the window, there was a lake with a dock and a boat. But I was supposed to get on that plane, go do some job somewhere.

  The moon passed from full to a waning quarter. I started reading John Fowles, Daniel Martin. Ban the green from your life, and what are you left with? I kept asking myself why I was so intent on sleeping alone. But then I would think of Lori, and by God Jack couldn’t have his cake and eat it, too.

  The last week of January, the VP finally got on the plane for Ouaga. On a Friday night, Jack, Gray, Kate, and I played poker on Kate’s patio. Around midnight, Jack walked me home. We took the route that passed by Guy and Monique’s compound. Lights burned in the kitchen and Luc’s room.

  “They’re up late.” Jack kept his voice low in the late-night quiet of the street.

  “Monique must be up with Luc.”

  “He’s sick again?”

  “Still the same cold.”

  We paused at their gate. The yellow windows glowed, giving the house the face of a Halloween pumpkin. We passed on in silence, both of us afraid to say anything more. Some fears were best not put into words, lest, once out, they took shape and became real.

  Instead, I clasped my hands. “He’ll be fine.” I nodded to Jack, to myself, to the darkness that swallowed us. “He’s a tough little guy.”

  By the time we reached my gate, my hands were stiff from the cold. I tucked them into my armpits. “Well,” I shifted on my feet, “goodnight, thanks for walking me home.”

  Jack stopped and stood. Weak moonlight outlined the top of his head but masked his face in shadow. When he spoke, his voice seemed to come from behind and to the side of him. “When are you going to stop punishing me?”

  I wanted to say, As long as I need to! As long as my pride keeps me a witch. As long as I don’t mind not eating any cake either.

  I stood there, shivering. Damn, I was cold, cold as a witch’s tit.

  When Zambe gave elephant and the other animals and men fire, water, food, weapons, and a book, maybe the reason Elephant couldn’t remember what she’d done with Zambe’s gifts was because she was too busy being proud and stubborn to pay attention to what she had. At least chimpanzee and gorilla had the smarts to end up with some fruit.

  Jack didn’t move, didn’t even seem to be breathing. I kicked at the dirt. I lifted my face to the moon. Witches held grudges. Angels forgave. And didn’t pride top the list of the Seven Deadly Sins? Damn if I didn’t prefer John Fowles to Tom Robbins. If you counted the time Lori was there, Jack’s break in the States, and my weeks of determination, I’d had a big bucketful of nothing for nearly four months.

  The eucalyptus sighed. Up, beyond Jack, beyond the black lines of the rooftops, Orion’s shoulders twinkled a shrug.

  To hell with that. I’d banned the green from my life long enough.

  I took Jack’s hand and led him through the gate.<
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  Chapter 25

  A Flock of Night Birds

  March/Ravi al-Akhir

  Luc lay in his crib, shaking with fever. The flame of the kerosene lamp spit and flickered, causing the shadows to shiver against the ceiling and walls. I reached down to brush a lock of damp hair from Luc’s forehead. Monique stood next to me.

  “Guy is calling Ouaga on the radio to see if they can send a plane.” Monique’s voice trembled. Her dark eyes were overly bright, burning with their own fever.

  Fear hung in every corner of the room, on every breath.

  I placed my hand on Luc’s chest. His heartbeat drummed, too fast, too hard, like the wings of a hummingbird. His skin burned against my palm, the same penetrating heat I had felt on the little girl’s forehead in Liberia. Dread wrapped tentacles around my lungs and squeezed.

  “It’s meningitis,” Monique whispered. Her breath hitched.

  Meningitis had arrived, sweeping the villages. So far, there had been no reported deaths. The child in Sambonaye had recovered and was nursing once again. That child had the antibodies of his mother’s breast milk, for most certainly she, too, had lived through a Harmatton outbreak as a child. But Monique had never been exposed to meningitis. Luc did not have those antibodies.

  “If only we had taken him down on the last plane, when the fever started rising.” She was crying now.

  I put my arms around her. Guy’s voice came from the other room, calling for Monique. She wiped her eyes, touched Luc’s cheek, then quickly walked from the room.

  I bent over the crib rail. Luc stared up at me. His mouth was set, as if he clenched his jaw. He whimpered—little bursts of air from his mouth. His eyes were wide, the black irises deep caves of confusion and panic. The constriction in my chest turned to pain—dread to a terrible fear.

  “Luc.” I held his little hand and rubbed his fingers. “Sweet baby, please don’t die.” His face blurred. “Stay here with your mommy and daddy. Don’t go away.” Tears dropped onto the bed sheets, dots of gray on white.

  His chest heaved with the effort of breathing. I wiped my nose with the hem of my T-shirt. Then I covered my eyes. It was happening again. A child was sick and there was nothing we could do. Death had snuck into the house while we weren’t looking. It was hiding in the shadows. I wanted to grab the light and chase the darkness from the room. But I knew as soon as I took the flame from one corner to another, darkness would fill up the spaces behind me.

  Monique came back. “Guy reached the hospital by radio. They said the military plane will come first thing in the morning.” She spoke rapidly, placing a wet washcloth on Luc’s forehead.

  “What can I do?” I voiced my question to Monique but I spoke to myself, to God, to the Universe. “How can I help?”

  Monique touched my arm. “There is nothing more to do tonight. Just pray for us. Now, go home and get some sleep.”

  My cheeks burned in the face of her courage. I nodded then kissed the tips of my fingers and placed them on Luc’s forehead. I hugged Monique and left the room.

  Throughout the rest of the house, people sat on every chair and stool and on mats on the floor. Older women from the neighborhood kept watch with Guy and Monique. Luanne, Gray, and Jack sat on the couch. Neighbors and friends came and went. Jack stood and came over to me.

  I turned to Guy and hugged him. “We’ll come back in the morning.”

  He nodded. His ever-present stubble had grown into a beard over the past few days. His eyes, always laughing, were mirrors of worry and sorrow. The lump in my throat hardened into stone. I turned quickly to leave, not wanting to cry in front of Guy.

  Out beyond the gate, Jack and I walked into the dark street. Heat from the day still infused the night. Lightening flashed far out on the southern horizon. No crickets chirped, no birds rustled among the leaves. Even the night held its breath. I hugged my elbows, and Jack put his arm around my shoulders.

  “Do you believe in God, Jack?” My throat hurt. I wiped away a tear.

  His shoulder lifted against mine in a shrug. “I believe in something. I’m not sure you could call it ‘God.’”

  “Like an energy force?”

  “Sort of. A collective consciousness.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” We walked on through the quiet. “Do you believe in prayer?”

  “I believe we’re all connected in a way that allows us to change things if we believe strongly enough. If we all hope together.”

  I imagined a sheen of sparkling consciousness surrounding the earth where all the pleas for help and forgiveness gathered.

  “I haven’t prayed in a long time,” I said. “Will anyone listen?”

  Jack sighed. The only sound in the dark. “Maybe all the mothers who have ever had children.”

  Help him. I closed my eyes and bowed my head. He is such a little creature. Please don’t take him. Make him well again. Please, don’t give up another child.

  The plane came early the next morning and took Luc, Monique, and Guy to Ouaga. That night, I went home alone and to bed early.

  Something woke me, a noise either in a dream or reality that passed back into silence. I untucked the mosquito net, swung my feet off the bed and into my flip-flops. On my way to the latrine, I checked the stars to see what time it was. Scorpio had set, but Venus, in its phase as the morning star, had not yet risen. The new moon lay hidden. It was about 4 am.

  Without the moon as a night-light, darkness swallowed me as I stepped into the latrine. I flicked on the flashlight, removed the wooden lid, and squatted over the small hole to relieve myself. A distant sound came from the direction of the mar, now a dried up hole. I listened again, but what had sounded like the croaking of frogs didn’t come again. How could it? The frogs still hibernated in the baked earth. I shivered and prayed again that Luc would be all right.

  I stood and winced from an abdominal cramp. My gut was acting up again and a dull ache had settled into my lower back, a sign that my period was due.

  Along the path back to the patio, another noise slowed my step. Suddenly, from several blocks away, a shrill voice sang out, “Yu-yu-yu, yu-yu-yu.” I walked to the gate. Several more voices joined in. It came from the direction of Guy and Monique’s compound. I held my breath. The voices were ululating a lament.

  No. I ran out into the street and stopped in the darkness. The voices rose like a flock of birds and flew over the town, carrying the news of Luc’s death.

  How could they know? Luc is in Ouaga. But they knew. Somehow, someone had the news. I wrung my hands, stood staring into the sky, as if I could see their voices among the ghosts of night birds, their wings white mists against the stars. The lament filled the sky for five, ten minutes. It held me captive, rigid in the street, until my neck ached and I could no longer look up.

  As the voices faded, my knees gave out, and I sank onto the sand. Fingers of dark fog seeped into my mind, pinching out the flame of thought. Cold brushed the hairs of my arms and chilled my skin until my limbs grew numb. Death had slipped into town in the middle of the night and stolen a child.

  “Luc.”

  My chest began to heave. I panted, trying to take in air. It was as though my body buckled in on itself. Heavy, convulsive sobs came from somewhere deeper than muscle, organs, and bone. I was being emptied out, crushed.

  Time elapsed—an hour, a minute, a lifetime. The pressure inside my chest lessened, and I was able to breathe without choking. When I finally raised my head, faint light glowed in the eastern sky. Slowly, I got to my feet, feeling as though I had aged into an old woman. Back in my compound, I lay on my bed and waited for the dawn.

  Chapter 26

  The Curse

  April/Jumada al-Akhira

  Unable to sleep, I rose before dawn, dressed, and left for the office. Tricia was due to arrive on the afternoon plane, and I had way too much work to finish before then. I walked by Issa’s closed gate to the road at the south end of the street, the road that would take me past Guy and Monique’s house. I
had walked it every day since Luc’s death five weeks before.

  The sun rose low on the horizon through layers of dust-filled air left over from a string of hot nights and hotter days. Sweat beaded along my hairline and under my arms. I turned right, one foot in front of the other.

  Three blocks on, I stopped in front of Guy and Monique’s compound. The wide gate closed off the courtyard. Past the porch, steel doors covered the screened front door like a pair of folded hands. A large padlock with a steel frown on its oval face fastened the doors together. Shuttered windows gave the house a look of sorrowful sleep. The porch and courtyard, empty of chairs and benches, sent a forlorn message to the street and surrounding houses.

  I leaned against the wall opposite the house and wondered again why I was still there when Lily was gone, and now Luc. The wall cast a cool pillow of shadow over my head and shoulders. The morning after the women’s lament, I had taken the plane to Ouaga. Luc had died in the hospital the night his soul flew overhead with the ghosts of night birds.

  In Ouaga, I searched out Guy and Monique and found them at a friend’s house. All I could do was hold onto them, unable to find the words except to admit that I didn’t know any. They flew with Luc’s body to Canada where they buried him next to family. There had been no word as to when or if Guy and Monique would come back.

  Out on the horizon to the south, clouds gathered like a crowd waiting for a train. Their tops billowed pink and bright. Fat, dark bases sat on layers of brown air. The weather had been this way for weeks, ever since Luc’s death. The clouds circled the edges of Dori, promising rain, only to pass by and drop their precious cargo elsewhere. While the land greened to the south, east, and west, the northern region around Dori remained burnt and dead.

  Another pain cramped my lower abdomen. For five weeks, I had waited for my period to start. It had yet to come. I was on the pill but had begun to think I’d been given an expired packet. Companies often sold their outdated medicines to developing countries for a bargain price.