Embassy Wife

by Katie Crouch

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said quietly, his voice quavering. “You see the way people live here? How people die here easily as flies? And you’re complaining about fucking miso.”

  Amanda took a step back. Was she really afraid of her husband? “I’m allowed to say how I feel.”

  “Not when it makes you sound like an insensitive bigot!”

  “What?”

  Mark spun away sharply, running his hands through his hair. He was taking the time he needed to calm down again. She knew this because she’d lived with him for so long she’d memorized his every gesture. Which was why something was very off here, this unexpected outburst. She could feel it.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked quietly. “Is the book not happening? Because if we need money—”

  “Look, the money thing will work out,” Mark said.

  “What? How?”

  “Maybe I’ll get a raise. Or more fellowship money. Look, I’ve got this, Mandi. Just, please have some faith in me.”

  Amanda looked at her husband. The wide shoulders, still intact, but losing shape; the coffee-colored eyes, slightly bloodshot. She wanted to believe him, she really did. But the thing was, she’d never had blind faith in anything. First one mother had abandoned her, and then another had died. Had her father had his way, she’d be a spinster right now, serving him Hamburger Helper. No, she was used to making things happen herself. It was something she’d mentioned to Mila once, during one of their wine-soaked conversations.

  “The woman has to be in charge,” Amanda had said. “Or the woman figure, in a same-sex partnership.”

  “Amanda,” Mila said, wineglass poised. “What are you talking about? Woman figure?”

  “I mean in a gay marriage…”

  Mila waved her hand. “Don’t talk about that. You don’t know about that. I’m not … what do you call it … correct. Politically. You’re saying in a marriage, the woman must be in charge.”

  “Right. But she needs to make the man—ugh, I sound so fifties housewife.”

  Mila shook her head, not understanding. “She needs to make the man what?”

  “The wife needs to make the man think he is in charge. Like, make him think all the ideas were really his. When they’re really yours.”

  “Of course,” Mila said, finally satisfied. “Every woman in Africa knows that.”

  “Every woman?” Amanda asked, in that pseudo-academic way Mark did. “Aren’t you generalizing just a little, Mila?”

  “No,” Mila said. “I am not generalizing, Amanda. Every woman in Africa knows that. The man must think the ideas are his. It is our job to fool them.”

  Amanda looked at Mark now. Every woman in Africa, Mila had said.

  “Okay, Mark,” she said. “I have faith in you. Take it away.”

  “Thank you,” he said, then vanished into the dark garden, far beyond the trees.

  / 14 /

  Josephat himself had advised Mila to befriend the Americans. Yet when asked if she could invite her new acquaintances, along with their families, to his prized property in the Erongo, the answer was a flat no.

  “It’s too dangerous, Mila,” he said now, looking at his phone. The Shilongos were on a family outing to CamelThorn, Windhoek’s most popular plant nursery. Because only shrubs grew in the barren ground surrounding Windhoek, plant nurseries almost always housed other businesses—cafés, boutiques, spas, and, in this case, a huge playground with real grass.

  “But why?” she asked, willing him to look up. As usual, the plant nursery was packed. Windhoek residents would pay any fee to be somewhere near anything green. The first time they’d brought Taimi here when she was two, the grass looked so succulent to her she’d gotten down on her knees to lick the ground.

  “We don’t want diplomats in our private home,” he murmured, continuing to scroll.

  “Why not? There’s nothing untoward happening at Osha. We bought it with our own money. What could happen?”

  Josephat breathed a sigh of annoyance and looked up at last. “It’s too grand, Mila. People know we have a lot, but not how much.”

  “That’s the point,” she said, taking his hand. “It’s grand. We are grand, Jo. See? Namibia is not nowhere. It’s a place where two people can grow up with nothing and become us.”

  “I don’t like it.” He gently took his hand back and folded his arms, watching as Taimi and her little friend Meg jumped up and down on a bouncy castle, then abandoned it because of the burning surface of the plastic. “How did this even come about?”

  “Well, they have this rhino protection program, and I thought, how perfect.” Mila could feel her mood spiraling downward. She had worn a new blouse, handmade out of Ovambo pink fabric. The old Ovambo dresses of home were just tents with holes for the arms and head, but this shirt was a copy of one she had by an American designer, Marc what-what-what. The sophisticated cut combined with the simple nature of the material was meant to be a statement on the present government’s progress. Josephat loved clothes; he relished her outfits when they were correct, admonished her when they weren’t. And here, she had designed this wearable treatise on Namibian politics for him. The order had to be altered twice; the whole thing was six months in the making. And he hadn’t so much as noticed it—though every other man in this wretched place had.

  “I invited them that day you snubbed me at lunch,” she said now.

  “I didn’t snub you,” he replied, shrugging. “I had a meeting.”

  “I’m your wife. Sometimes you could choose me over business.”

  “Mila,” Josephat said soothingly, finally putting his arm around her shoulders. He glanced around, making sure people noticed. They did, of course. People noticed every move the Shilongos made. “The meetings I take, they’re for us. Our family. You know that. I just don’t think this rhino business would help us.”

  “Maybe I want to help a rhino,” Mila said. She realized her mood was dangerous, but she didn’t care. “I don’t mind making you look good to cover up whatever you’re doing. But I do have a conscience, Josephat. I happen to believe in anti-poaching measures.”

  He took his arm back, moving away from her. “Whatever I’m doing? Mila. Please. You of all people know exactly what I’m doing. Also, I’ve never known you to be much of an animal lover. I wish I’d known before I had the boys shoot that oryx for you.”

  “You told me to make friends with the American.”

  Her husband smiled at a pair of mothers who were throwing admiring glances his way. “No one is really your friend unless they are related to you,” he said.

  “Well, I like her,” Mila said. “Amanda Evans. So I invited her. And while we’re on the topic, Adam Wilder’s wife is coming, too.”

  “What?” Josephat took hold of her arm a little too tightly and led her to a bench that had opened up in the shade. “That one I know you detest.”

  “I tolerate her. The way I tolerate a lot of things.” She followed his lead and sat down. She hated bickering with Josephat. He was the one thing she loved in the world, other than her children. It threw her very center off-kilter.

  “All right. I suppose this all can happen, as long as Adam Wilder doesn’t come. He’s all right as far as embassy work … the arrangement makes us look good. But something is off about him, Mila. He absolutely cannot see Osha.”

  “Fine,” Mila relented. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t come.”

  “Look at how elegant Taimi is,” Josephat said, changing the subject. “Much prettier than that white girl. Though I don’t like what my daughter is wearing. She is too old for short pants.”

  “All the girls wear them, Josephat,” Mila said, sitting up straighter so as to be in his view. “Do you like what I am wearing?”

  “Rhinos,” Josephat mused, pulling out his phone again. “All of the foreigners are so worried about rhinos. How about kudu? Poached by the hundreds. Or wildebeests? Are they out of fashion? What about the kids dying of hunger in the south? Are
they not adorable because they don’t have big fat horns?”

  “That’s not what the American ladies are focused on.” Mila sighed. “They want to save rhinos. They adopt one, or some what-what-what. They plan to camp near it and make certain no one pesters it.”

  A waitress came out, bringing them two rooibos teas and a huge piece of Afrikaans cake. Josephat pointed at the table, indicating that she should set the tray there. He never bothered with speaking to servants.

  In fact, the purchase of Osha had been a necessity. Three years before, the Shilongos found themselves with entirely too much cash. Josephat had always been careful about kickback payments from companies to whom he awarded building contracts; the installments were never too big and never came all at once. They were always diverted through one colleague or another’s business—for a fee, of course. Then a new Chinese company he’d started working with dumped millions into his Swakop account. He’d transferred the money to Mila in a day, but still it made him nervous.

  And then his lawyer, Reginald, who had just taken a job as one of the president’s many legal counselors, had told him about Osha. Previously known as Steinveld, the forty thousand hectares had been a grand German farm established during the sixties, when the South African government issued low-interest loans to landowners to make land purchases attractive. Except these particular Germans, it turned out, were children of hard-core Nazi émigrés. They hadn’t been willing to pay even the three percent interest, they told the bank, because they found the very concept of interest “Jewish.” In the end, the Namibian government had simply seized the property, and Josephat plunked down his offending cash to buy it.

  Osha was the Shilongos’ crown jewel. None of the other ministers had a farm this far south. And it was grand. A castle-like farmhouse built with thick walls in a sensible German style that even at midday barred the searing heat. There had been no pool, as such pleasantries on remote farms were purely a South African invention. Well, Mila quickly had one built. There was plenty of housing for caretakers’ quarters, along with the land, already stocked with exotic game. Not to mention a barn full of Nazi paraphernalia, highly illegal in modern Namibia, which Mila was still figuring out what to do with.

  “Can’t you just uninvite them?” Josephat said now. “I’m sorry, but I must bring this up again. The Americans don’t have the best reputation right now. Something about the president urinating on a bed.”

  “I can’t. It is too late. Anyway, look at these two, they are like sisters. Just look at them.”

  The Shilongos looked over at Meg and Taimi, who, having played themselves into exhaustion, were now lying together, feeding each other melted ice cream under the playground’s biggest tree.

  In fact, Mila had grown truly fond of Amanda Evans. Perhaps it was the American woman’s honesty, or the fact that she had done most of the question-asking. Or maybe it was that Amanda sought out advice and help in a way that her proud sisters never would. Or maybe it was the simple yet unsolvable nature of Amanda’s issue. Her husband was clearly failing her.

  The sun had gotten unbearable, even in the deep shade. It had reached the time of day when the only thing to do was to retreat inside to your air-con, if you could afford it, or to whatever part of your home had the thickest walls and the most powerful fan or swamp cooler. Even Josephat, her ever-crisp husband, was wilting. He dabbed his brow with a starched handkerchief, one of many he stashed in various pockets and, just to be safe, in Mila’s purses, where they were wrapped in Ziploc bags to keep their laundered scent fresh.

  “What shall we do with them?” Mila said, a bit hopelessly. All she wanted was for Josephat to come home with her. Sit in the living room, watch the big TV, hips touching. Holding hands, maybe. She so wanted, once more, to feel loved. “Shall we go home for lunch?”

  Please, she thought.

  “I have a meeting, darling.”

  “Really?” Mila kept her voice down and a smile on her face. “You’re going to Reginald’s? Today?” She watched him run his finger around the top of his teacup. When they’d gotten together all those years ago, she’d known he was impervious to her beauty. It was one of the things that had attracted her to him. She’d been working the desk at a SWAPO conference—a temporary job, which was all she could get back then—and he had been impressed with how she’d handled the long line of needy delegates. He’d been so businesslike when he asked her to lunch, she’d thought it was a job interview. But no, he’d wanted to know more about her, he said. Though, in the end, she thought, it was a job interview. He’d been on a search for the perfect government wife.

  Mila often thought about how lucky she was, to have been found by Josephat. She’d been so adrift then, after the loss of her sister, that anything could have happened. Instead, she’d struck a bargain with this up-and-coming SWAPO star. She knew he didn’t love her passionately—not the way other men had. But he was a human promise. She would never have to go back to menial labor, she would always have enough to eat and a clean bed.

  In fact, as time went on it was clear that Mila would be wealthy beyond anything she could have imagined. But he was becoming so secretive. It made her lonely. And in terms of business, well, it had been a long time since she knew what he was into. Mila had been Josephat’s accomplice in concealing several large bribes in the past, but now he was involved in far bigger schemes, deals she had no idea about.

  Mila’s phone rang. Josephat fished it out of her bag, at the same time fetching himself another handkerchief.

  “It’s Anna,” he said. Their oldest daughter. He answered the phone. “Hello, sweets.”

  Mila watched him carefully. Anna had come with the marriage; Josephat had adopted her legally after the ceremony. This, Mila was painfully aware, could have gone either way. But Josephat had adored Anna the moment he set eyes on her. They hadn’t much money then, but as a father, he had spoiled the little girl with love. She looked nothing like Josephat, but anyone who might have questioned her paternity would quickly dismiss such thoughts upon seeing the way Josephat doted on the baby. He even changed her nappies, though certainly not in front of other Ovambo men.

  Once Anna was in their lives, Josephat had insisted on conceiving another child, one of his own. For some reason, it took years to produce a child. But sure enough, ten years later, Taimi had arrived, and Josephat finally had what he wanted: a real family.

  Mila leaned in to listen to what her husband was saying to her older daughter, who lived in Walvis Bay. He was shaking his head.

  “I already sent this month’s allowance,” he said. “Anna. You must learn responsibility.”

  Mila frowned. Anna hadn’t had the advantages Taimi had of a private school education and a privileged childhood. They had still been struggling when Anna was a little girl, with no money for nannies, and often Anna was toted along on trips to Congress meetings and conferences. After graduating from Windhoek High, Anna showed no interest in university—even U Nam. She wanted to get practical experience in the tourism agency, she told them. Besides, neither Mila nor Josephat had gone to college, and look how things had turned out. After years of Anna living in their house and arguing with them, Josephat found a job for her at the Strand in Swakop and set her up with an allowance.

  “Give me the phone,” Mila said. Josephat relented and handed it over. “Anna?”

  “I called to talk to Dad, not you.”

  “Why are you out of money already?”

  “Mom, I told you both, I’m starting a jewelry line.”

  “Jewelry is a hobby. Hotels at least are a career.”

  “A career? In your case the hotel was just a place to meet the man who would save you.”

  “Don’t you—”

  “Mila,” Josephat hissed. Taimi and Meg were both looking at her, ears pricked. “Keep your voice down.”

  “Anna,” she said slowly, “you must make do until April first. Do your work and stay out of the clubs.” Mila hung up the phone, shaking her head. “Cheeky.�
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  “I don’t like her not having money,” Josephat said.

  “Don’t even think about sending any, Josephat.”

  Josephat sat back on the bench, relenting. “All right.” He stood up, smoothing his Italian skinny jeans. “I’ll take you home, and then I really must go.”

  * * *

  Six thousand dollars NAD. That was the tuition for one year at the new university in Windhoek. Everyone was talking about it, the big new college outside of Pioneerspark built by the government as soon as independence took hold. A grand new Namibian institution, established expressly to fill the black hole in schooling left by apartheid. The buildings were big and shiny and filled with foreign teachers, and if you graduated you could get a real job, whether you were a man or a woman. Namibia was opening up, new companies were coming in from Europe and China and America, diamond miners and mineral companies and tourist businesses of all sorts. The government even paid most of the fees for tuition and housing, but it was up to the students’ families to find six thousand. And between them, at the Oshakati Country Hotel, Esther and Saara made just four hundred and twenty per month.

  It was clear to Esther, now that they had been living together in the same tiny, hot room for two years, that her sister Saara was more than clever. She read every book in the “library” of castoffs left by travelers, both in English and Afrikaans, then read them again. She helped up in the front office with the accounting, building mind-bending spreadsheets that magically calculated how to save money on supplies and groceries for the café, how to charge more for little services like towels and breakfast to up the bottom line. On top of it all, Saara sang like a bird, often taking on night shifts in the café performing with JoJo, who played guitar. On those evenings, she called herself Amber, so that Mrs. Van Wyk, who hadn’t darkened the door of any eating establishment since apartheid ended.