by Katie Crouch
“Perhaps those are the fuzzy people,” Persephone had said when they had stared at the page together earlier in the day.
“What?”
“No. Furry. They’re called furries. People who like to fornicate in animal costumes.”
“For someone with so many etiquette rules, your knowledge of the seamier side of life never ceases to amaze,” Amanda said.
From a marketing standpoint, Amanda knew the furry theory couldn’t be the case. Something else was causing this interest. And she was right in the middle of funneling the profiles into a complicated graph analysis when she heard what could only be called a bird commotion. Stepping outside, she gingerly approached the tree, in the limbs of which a swarm of birds seemed to be roosting. Was she imagining this Hitchcock moment? No, there were hundreds—maybe thousands—of birds in her very tree.
“Hello?” Amanda called out timidly. “Can I help you?”
In the very next moment a text came in, signaled by a cheerful ding! And, as if on cue, all of the birds took flight at once, momentarily darkening the sky before scattering in all directions.
It was eleven o’clock, exactly the time of day when she inevitably found she had nothing to do. She’d already run four miles, so there was no need to do any more exercise. During the first few months of their time here, she had filled the vacant hours with various sorts of clerical tasks: itemizing receipts for next year’s taxes, trading a bit of stock, reading about the latest Silicon Valley news.
This particular morning, Amanda had also fielded a biweekly email from Ronnie, a developer she worked with back at GiaTech who was convinced he was in love with her. Amanda had twelve years on Ronnie and a college and a graduate degree to boot, and, snobby or not, she felt that gave her the upper hand in judging his supposed feelings. (Ronnie was one of those Silicon Valley wonders who’d stepped into a two-hundred-thousand-dollar salary right out of high school.) He’d worked for her indirectly, though, when he presented himself to her. She couldn’t remember him being at any of her meetings; but then, most of her meetings consisted of her acting brisk and bitchy in front of a whiteboard the size of a movie screen, and the (mostly male) developers, designers, product managers, project managers, and other human flotsam quaked at her “hard stops” and “delivery dates.”
The week before Amanda left for Namibia, the company threw a goodbye party for her at a club in the Mission called the Church, which was exactly what it sounded like: a once-holy place of worship, it had now been bought by tech millionaires and converted “ironically” to a bar that served overpriced kombucha cocktails. Amanda and Mark had gotten into a huge fight, which resulted in two things: his absence from the party, and her getting more shitfaced than she’d been since Dartmouth. And it was those circumstances, she’d repeatedly tried to explain to Ronnie, that had led to her making out with him in the alley, when she had innocently gone out to share her first cigarette in twelve years.
It was Amanda’s opinion that Ronnie’s consequent hard crush on her was the result of her presumed power. She tried to explain, in response to his multiple flirty-yet-desperate messages, that she had no power anymore, she was just a housewife, a MILF on her best days, if you squinted. Ronnie wasn’t buying it. But Amanda, in her hungover state the morning after the party, had made the colossal mistake of replying when he emailed her at 6:12 a.m. about their “awesome night together.” Which meant there was an email chain on her company email server. Which meant, in the #MeToo era when Silicon Valley journalists would kill their firstborn to get their hands on a story about a female-sexual-predator boss, Amanda had to handle Ronnie very, very carefully. So she did. She told no one, and she responded to each of his messages in a friendly, motherly tone. Someday, she prayed, he would find a GiaTech babe his own age, probably while stuck in traffic on the luxury GiaTech shuttle bus.
Having sent her placating missive of the day, Amanda wandered out onto the patio. She was finding the torpor of Africa in general increasingly seductive. Amanda often found her mind going back again and again to the night she and Persephone had spent camping out on Mila’s farm. The wild animal and insect sounds drowning out all things human, the delicious warm desert wind on her arms and cheeks. Yes. She’d liked it. And navigating Windhoek, after six months, was becoming less impossible. She knew how to go to the bread lady and ask to have the health loaf, sliced. She knew that banting meant Paleo. She knew that now-now meant “in a little while.” She knew that when the butcher said that the minced lamb was “finished,” if you just stood there, smiling expectantly and not moving, he would eventually go put more through the grinder.
So Amanda was learning Namibia. And yet, she couldn’t help feeling that she would never truly understand everything. As a foreigner, she was always half in the dark. Like this thing with Mila. She was certain they’d been good friends. Positive. And it couldn’t just have been one-sided, could it? For three months, they’d been going for two-hour lunches at least once a week, sometimes twice. But ever since the trip to Osha, Mila had shut Amanda out. She never returned Amanda’s calls or emails. Amanda looked for her at school, but Taimi was always picked up now by a government car or an assistant. Mila hadn’t gone as far as keeping Taimi and Meg apart (thank God), but when Taimi came over for playdates, again she was ferried in the government car, and when Amanda dropped Meg off, her daughter was ushered in by Libertina, the nanny.
Amanda had gone so far as to ask, via email and even a handwritten note delivered via Meg, what she had done wrong. But there was no answer. Which led her to believe that, no matter how much she thought she was coming to understand Namibia, really she must have remained completely blind, because just by being herself she had managed to alienate one of her very favorite new friends.
The phone dinged a second time, reminding her of the text. It was Mark.
Halfway home. Got you a present. You’re perfect in every way and I love you.
Amanda raised her eyebrows and sighed. Where the hell was this coming from? It was exactly the sort of thing she would have consulted Mila about.
Stop texting and driving, she wrote back. Then, a few seconds later: Love you too.
She got up to straighten the house, as Frida wasn’t coming for two more days. She knew she should leave Meg’s room to Meg herself. Giving her the duty of straightening up and taking care of her own things would surely impart a sense of responsibility; if nothing else, it would help ensure that when she got to college and lived with a roommate she wouldn’t be an asshole slob.
But just the thought of enforcing this, along with the chore chart Mark had constructed, exhausted her, so she went ahead and started. She separated the disturbingly perverse Barbies from the sweet stuffies, folded Meg’s cute mini-sized underpants, made the bed, and alphabetized the books. The only area of the room Meg managed to keep neat herself was her desk, where framed photos of her friends from California were organized lovingly and propped up in pink frames. As she surveyed all those images of Los Gatos kids skiing and becoming geniuses, something caught her eye: a book decorated with a sparkly unicorn. It was the diary with lock and key Santa had brought upon request that year.
Other, more respectful mothers, Amanda knew, would hesitate. Not Amanda. She sat down in Meg’s little desk chair, slid the diary in front of her, and looked carefully around the surface for the key. Her daughter had not yet developed the teenage skill of concealment—something that would surely come, Amanda knew, when it came time to hide pot and condoms—and so the key to the diary, too, was behind the framed photos, in a mesh bag that had contained Meg’s first pierced earrings (yet another cheer-up bribe that Amanda had paid for by facing Mark’s wrath). She turned the sack over, and, sure enough, the key—a cheap metal thing—clattered out. She put it into the lock and turned, opening the book with a little, satisfying sprong.
MEG EVANS, read the inside cover.
AGE 9. Home: CALIFORNIA. (NOT AFRICA!!!!)
Do not read. If you keep reeding, you have lost a
very big freindship.
Amanda paused at that, but then decided that she and her daughter were not exactly friends. So she turned to the first page.
My name is Meg. My dad made us moov here. I have friends but I am not sure they like me. On the playground they sometimes won’t eat with me. Then sometimes they will.
Amanda felt a punch directly to her heart. Those little bitches.
I wish Dad could just do his work in America. I miss America. I miss air Castle and my friends. But Wakaberry is here and that is ok.
I stole a Kit Kat from the Christmans candy jar.
That was it for Day One. Amanda flipped past a few drawings she couldn’t decipher and went on to the next entry.
Dad and Mom are always talking about secrits. They had a secrit they won’t tell me I think. What if we have to move to a different county now? China Lisa has to move every single year. I felt bad for her but then she put sand in my lunchbox so now I’m glad she is moving to Prog.
Another entry:
Today, Taimi and I got:
1670
280
5772
977
She told me to keep trak bc I am the tresurur. Except that is boring. Next time I will be president.
Another:
Taimi is my best friend here. We did not like each other at first but then we fought and her mom made us talk. Our moms are friends too. Her mom is so pretty and dresses like she is going to a party every day. That is not what my mom does but my mom looks OK most of the tim.
Amanda looked down at her outfit—blue shorts and flowered mom shirt. Fuck.
Another diagram of a man and a woman. The man had an X over his face.
My dad always yells at me at dinner.
The last entry:
Taimi and I don’t play Cheetah anymore. We play spy. But since we are spies, we tell everyone we are playing cheetah. We run around the playground like we did before, but we’re really listening to what people are saying. They don’t know it because they think we are doing something else!!
Taimi is really good at spy. She especially is good at listening to grown ups. We hid in her mom’s closet and heard her mom on the phone talking about something. She was telling Mr. Shelxx?? that she was mad because Taimis dad was at his friends house too much.
She makes me hide by myself to listen but I get bored so I just read.
Taimi showed me her sister’s bra. We put it on her head. Ha.
Taimi is so smart. Our spy store is perfect. But it’s a secrit so I better not rite anymore!!!
Our favrite music is Sextopia. Taimi had a silver plate with songs on it we listned to it on something very very old called a Disk Man. She is so pretty. Taimi says she is from the south of africa.
Also, sex is what happens when a man pees into a woman’s utethra.
GROOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSSS
That was it.
Amanda closed the book, locking it again and replacing it in its hiding place. She stood for a few minutes, staring at the wall. Then she left the room and closed the door firmly, as if doing so could convince her that she had never read any of her daughter’s words.
Sextopia?
“To hell with that,” Amanda said out loud. “Goddamnit. Now she has to talk to me.”
Deciding the mom shirt wouldn’t do—not for an unexpected visit to Mila’s—she pulled out a robin’s-egg-blue Armani pantsuit (an ode to Hillary she’d worn a few times in her Silicon Valley days), then pulled her hair into a chignon. She even put on some eyeliner, and was just deciding whether or not it was worth it to wear heels when she heard the gate beep.
Mark. Why on earth did he have to come home so early? She looked at herself in the mirror, trying to decide how much to tell him. But the thing was, they had always been honest with each other, from the beginning. That was how they worked.
He walked in, calling for her.
“In here!” she called back. Mark came into the bedroom, dropping his bag heavily. He came over and pulled her to him so tightly her ribs hurt.
“Hi,” she squeaked. He laughed and let her go.
“You look fancy,” he said. “Pretty, too. I missed you, Mandi.”
“Look, I have to talk to you.”
“What?” He looked at her strangely. “Did Jaime call?”
“God, no. Jaime? Blech. No. It’s Meg. I think she’s in trouble, and it’s my fault, because, well, I didn’t see the signs.”
“What?” he said, alarmed.
“I think she’s involved in something strange,” Amanda said. “She and Taimi are listening to something called Sextopia.”
“Sextopia?”
“She’s a singer.”
“I don’t know,” Mark said. “I don’t really think you can control what kids listen to, can you?”
Amanda couldn’t believe she was hearing this. From Mark. Mark, who freaked out if Meg ate a Skittle.
“She’s nine!”
“What did Taimi’s mother say when you spoke to her?”
Amanda toed the carpet. “That’s another thing I haven’t really told you about. See, we don’t really speak anymore.”
“What?” Mark said. “You love Mila. I was really looking forward to meeting her. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know.”
Of course she knew. She was just like Meg. She felt rejected, and she didn’t want to talk about it.
“Well, what happened?”
“I don’t know. I must have said something,” she said reluctantly. “Or maybe it was a cultural thing. I mean, we didn’t talk about anything. Persephone can’t figure it out, either—though Mila’s fine with her now, oddly. Anyway, I’m going over there. Now. Because … what the hell, you know?”
She realized her eyes were welling with tears, and brushed them away angrily.
Mark sat on the yellow ruffled bed. “I guess I’m feeling a little behind here, babe,” he said. “And how do you even know all of this? About what Lolo’s doing?”
Amanda sighed and leaned on the indestructible State Department dresser. “I didn’t,” she said. “Only, then, today, when I was cleaning her room—”
“She’s supposed to clean her own room.”
“While I was doing that, I found her diary.”
“Okay.”
“And I read it.”
“Wow,” Mark said, scratching the back of his neck. “I’m sort of impressed, actually. That’s, like, the very worst thing a mom can do, isn’t it?”
“I could sell her into prostitution. Or burn her alive to appease the war gods, like in that scene from Game of Thrones. That would be worse.”
Mark scooted back to lean against the wall and folded his arms over his chest. “I really don’t think you should be reading her diary.”
“Well, I did. And I found out she’s into Sextopia. I mean, what could that even be?”
“I don’t—”
“And then there’s some kind of pretend store…”
“What?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She smoothed the wrinkles in her jacket. “Anyway, I’m headed over to talk to Mila about it, even though she’s been freezing me out for two fucking months.”
Mark moved to the edge of the bed, putting his elbow on his knees. “This is a lot to process, having just walked in the door.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry.” She leaned down and kissed him on his head, then righted herself to look at him again, waiting for the old rush to wash over her. There was a sense of powerlessness that used to run through, sharp as an electric current, when she looked at the different elements that made up his face: bridge of his nose, slightly crooked, that tiny plump place at the top inner corner of his cheek. But now, hard as she tried to conjure that frightening, often inconvenient experience, she found that she couldn’t. All she was doing was scratching an itch that wasn’t there.
“Will you come?” she asked, finally. “To Mila’s? So we can have a united front?”
“Sure,” Mark said. How co
mpletely unaware he is, Amanda thought, of how close I am to blowing up our life. As if responding to her thought, he got up and hugged her reassuringly. “Listen—it’ll be okay.”
Amanda gave a weak snort into his chest and turned her face the other way, as if to move from the lie.
Amanda drove, while Mark flipped the radio from Radiowave to a classical station that played favorites like Beethoven and Brahms punctuated by Afrikaans hymns. Amanda was a slow, careful driver, allowing Mark to look out the window at the high, pastel-colored walls surrounding the hulking houses of Ludwigsdorf, laced on top with broken shards of glass and electric wire.
It was three o’clock, and crowds of workmen dressed in blue suits were already waiting to fight for cabs to the Location. Purple clouds billowed over the southern mountains, signaling their empty promise of storms that wouldn’t come. On the few afternoons it did rain, Amanda had noticed, Namibians walked about in it without coats or umbrellas, holding out their hands and saying things like, Isn’t it a beautiful day? The rest of the time, everyone was just waiting for it to come back.
They wound their way up Joseph Ithana Street, climbing farther yet up a spectacularly steep hill, then pulled in front of a fortress of steel, glass, and white cement walls.
“Man,” Mark said. “These Shilongos aren’t fooling around, are they?”
Amanda didn’t answer, but rolled down the window and pressed the call button. They waited, then heard a muffled crackling.
“Yes?”
“Libertina,” Amanda said, before pausing awkwardly. “It’s Persephone.”
What? Mark mouthed.
Amanda made a motion for him to stay quiet.
“Yes, miss?”
“Nothing serious, but I need to speak to Miss Shilongo, please.”
“Just a moment.” The speaker crackled off again. A few moments later, she came back. “Miss Shilongo is in a meeting.”