In the Belly of the Elephant (22 page)

My head in a towel, I switched places with Gray.

“Call it what you want.” I wetted down her hair. “Jack never ticks off all the things that are wrong with me the way Drabo did.” And Rob.

One nice thing—I hadn’t shot down, drowned, chopped up, or fed Rob to a wild animal in over a month.

I slapped on globs of henna and rubbed. One cup of powdered henna, plus a half cup of water and the juice of half a lemon produced nice results—auburn highlights and soft shiny hair. Ground henna leaves could be found in any market as it was used by local women to stain designs onto their hands and feet. Adiza had used it in preparation for her wedding to her handsome captain.

There were rumors that Adiza would be kidnapped that night by the friends of her fiancé,
à la
tradition of the southern tribes. In a few days, we would be celebrating our own royal wedding—an army captain and the local daughter of a wealthy man.

Yipping, the puppies waddled out from under the table, hungry again. They had sucked poor Rocky dry from constant nursing, so I was supplementing them with powdered milk, water, and rice.

Stalks of sorghum and vines of groundnuts spread in green rows across the center of my courtyard. So far, July had been kind to us all, especially Sambonaye. The rains had continued to fall, but at friendly intervals. The army provided fresh water to the village while ORD, FDC, and U.S.AID cleaned up the wells. Typhoid had not raised its ugly head.

I had applied for the extra funding the Home Office VP had encouraged us to ask for the previous February. The funding I had turned up my nose at. Had I paid more attention to the story of Elephant and Squirrel, I might have known better. When they had their eating contest, Squirrel’s brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, and aunts all turned up to help eat the palm nuts. There were a lot of them and they were hungry. Elephant finally had to admit that Squirrel could eat more.

We planned to use the extra Home Office funds to fill the grain stores in Sambonaye. The new director had refrained from saying, “I told you so.” Most assuredly, the VP was sitting at her Home Office desk with an orange lipstick smile.

Squirrel, hopping with delight, thanked Elephant and told her not to be so proud and stubborn in the future. And from that day, Elephant has always left room for Squirrel on the path.

I had turned twenty-eight the day before and was much happier and, admittedly, a little wiser than I had been a year ago. The Elephant
Doondari
had chosen as Mistress Of All Things must have been a very old elephant.

The gray-flecked feathers of guinea hens flashed behind the slats of my gate. Two birds chased each other, screeching like pieces of twisting metal.

I rinsed Gray’s hair as the BBC world news came on. News in the U.S. wasn’t quite so upbeat as the news in Dori. Congress was cutting federal employment by 37,000 jobs. In America, as in so many places in Africa, the rich were getting richer, and the poor, poorer. The current administration had also cut back on civil rights enforcement and continued to back El Salvador where Salvadoran security forces were killing masses of peasants. Kenya had just condemned the U.S. for colluding with the apartheid regime of South Africa.

We were taking a lot of crap from other expats and soldiers at the Militaire Bar. The night before, one of the soldiers had asked, “Why does your president believe the lives of poor people are less valuable than the lives of rich people?”

What could I say? Because he’s a rich Republican?

Kate was in town and joined Gray and me for our traditional Saturday game of Scrabble. Midmorning, Laya and the kids came. As Laya cooked, Aissatou moved out of the shadows of the kitchen and sat near the table, watching our game. About ten years old, Aissatou studied the board and the lettered tiles with an alert tip of her head. Though she did not understand English, Aissatou often sat nearby to listen to our conversations. The small children of Foequellie used to mimic American English by talking loudly in a gibberish of hard “er’s” and gargling “o’s,” as though they had sticks stuck in the back of their throats.

I wasn’t sure whether Aissatou liked the sound of English or whether she just liked hanging around women who were such a contrast to the women of her tribe. Perhaps she was a young anthropologist in training. But that thought saddened me. The chances of Aissatou attending school past the eighth grade were miniscule since she would have to leave her family and go south to Ouaga to do it. As in Liberia, rural girls in Upper Volta rarely continued school past puberty.

All of us sat around the table at lunch. Laya piled our plates with rice and a spicy stew of catfish, greens, and tomatoes. “
Bismillah
!” she said. Begin.

“I wish I could take you home with me, Laya!” I said without thought.

She quieted and looked at me down the table. “I could go. My husband has another wife. He wouldn’t miss me.” Then she smiled at her children and laughed as though she were joking. But I had seen in her eyes that it was not all in jest.

The idea wiggled into my head and grew wings. Imagine! Laya in the States with me, the boys in elementary school, and Aissatou in junior high, then high school, then college. But the where, when, and how questions caught the idea in their nets. I chewed on them in silence along with the rice and the catfish. Gray changed the subject and had the children laughing over a trick one of Gray’s students had played on her the week before.

After lunch and
sieste
, I walked to Fati’s compound, still thinking about Laya’s response. Fati had borne her baby several days before and I hoped to visit her. The compound was well kept, the house walls
crepissaged
with smooth cement and topped with corrugated tin roofs. Fati’s husband’s family was well-off. A young girl greeted me at the gate and led me to a tented lean-to on one side of the courtyard. I bent and entered.

Fati reclined on a blanket with her baby girl sleeping at her side. A pleasant mix of sweat and milk scented the enclosed space.

“
Bonjour, Fati. Tout va bien
?”

She smiled, nodding that all was well, and invited me to sit. The tent was small, about four feet high and five feet across, but it gave Fati the privacy and quiet she needed after her lying-in. The baby was pink and fat with puckered lips that moved in a sucking motion even in sleep.

“
Qu’elle est belle, Fati. Et si grosse
!”

Fati beamed at my compliment that the baby was fat. It was strange to see Fati so calm and quiet, so content. The same shining contentment I had seen on the woman’s face in the Vermont parking lot. Would I ever know that glorious feeling? My heart soared at the possibility and constricted with fear all in the same moment.

Not wanting to tire Fati, I chatted for a short time, bid her a comfortable recovery, and said I would see her and her baby when they returned to the office in a month.

The plane that was due the day before arrived that afternoon with the week’s mail. I had a letter from my dad telling me my mother had been diagnosed with a rare blood disease called hemacromatosis. She had been very ill for several months with hepatitis and when she did not get better, they had discovered the other disease. According to my dad, she was recovering, but it had been a scary few months.

“I didn’t tell you sooner because I didn’t want to worry you,” he wrote.

Dad was that way. He would withhold bad news until the person was either dead or recovering. Luckily, this time it was a recovery, but he had denied me the opportunity to communicate my concern and good wishes to my mother. She had spent all those months sick, without a word of sympathy from me.

One day Elephant and Spirit Rain were arguing as usual. When Rain reminded Elephant where she got her nourishment, Elephant replied, “You do not feed me! I find food for myself!”

Rain, angered in earnest this time, turned dark gray, thundered, and said, “If I go away, will you not die?” And Rain vanished.

For many months, Elephant lorded it over the plains and forest, and life continued normally. In fact, it was quite peaceful without the constant quarrels of Elephant and Rain.

I read on. They’d had an unusually dry spring and several forest fires were burning near Yellowstone. Oh, and by the way, my brother was getting married in a few weeks. My hand, holding the letter, dropped to my lap. I saw flames and smoke billowing near Old Faithful. I saw myself standing there, the only one left, the only one not married. A dust devil skipped across the yard, pulling along a piece of brush in a dance of the dried up and dead.

I continued reading, my hand shook just a little. The marriage would be a small ceremony, quick enough that I couldn’t return home for it. They didn’t even attempt to invite me.

A motorcycle buzzed by on the street. The chatter of children’s voices rose and fell in volume from somewhere across the way.

My brother had promised to come visit me in Liberia. We had even set a potential date for his arrival. I had gone to Monrovia on the chance that he would send a telegram and come. But he never showed up. He had been in medical school and just never found the time. The
boubou
I had bought as a welcome gift sat folded in a box in my parent’s basement. Now, he was getting married in a way that made it impossible for me to come.

Then the time of year for the rains arrived. Every animal was looking forward to the flush of green grass, and flowing rivers once again. But, of course, Rain had gone away. The skies remained hot and bright. Not a cloud was seen, and the animals became worried.

I sat in the hammock and hung my head for a while, feeling farther from my family than ever before. Then I balled up the letter and threw it on the ground. “Damn it! Just because a person chooses to work seven thousand miles from home doesn’t mean they want to be left out of everything!”

Rocky sat up and the eight puppies, denied food for the moment, followed me as I paced in circles around the courtyard.

My family of dogs listened to me rant and rave off and on for the rest of the afternoon as clouds billowed and swept the sky. I swept the patio, swept the out-kitchen, and swept inside the house until the furious frustration of not being able to pick up a phone, call my family, and ask them why I was no longer a part of their lives seeped away with the rest of my energy. By evening, all that remained was an empty sense of having been abandoned.

When the colors of the sunset faded from the sky and the faces of the clouds paled from pink to gray, I walked to Jack’s house, hoping for some leftovers for dinner. He invited me in, listened, gave me a hug, gave me a beer, and shared his dinner with me. Into the second Sovobra, I was enjoying the country-western music and feeling a lot better.

Jack cleared his throat. “I got a letter from Lori today.” His southern drawl was more pronounced after a couple of beers.

“Lori?”

“My girlfriend, remember? The one I told you about?”

Oh yeah, Lori. The one who was farther away than the moon. I nodded.

“She wants to come visit.” He pulled on one side of his mustache. “She’s coming for the month of October.”

Coming all the way to Africa.

“A whole month?”

“Yeah, I invited her when I first got here, before, you know, before we got together. She really wants to come.”

“Does she know about me?” Maybe if he told her, she wouldn’t come.

“Yeah.”

“And she still wants to come?”

He nodded.

Well, sure. If I were madly in love with somebody and he told me some other woman was getting her claws into him, I’d probably come running, too. Wouldn’t I?

On the other hand, maybe not. Sounded kind of humiliating to me. I mean, what if I’d gone to Cameroon, running after Rob? I shuddered at the embarrassment. Of course, Rob hadn’t invited me, he’d sent me a Dear Jane letter instead, making it very clear that he was finished with me and I could go role in a pile of shit for all he cared. Jack wouldn’t do that to Lori even if he wanted to. Jack was a gentleman.

“Sounds like she’s pretty serious about you.”

He nodded again, his eyes on his hands. At least he had the decency to look uncomfortable. “It will be weird having both of you around.” He looked up at me. “But I’ll need to be with Lori.” Good manners would not allow him to do otherwise and, in a twisted sort of way, I admired him for that.

We sat for a minute in silence. A few crickets chirped and a dog barked from across town.

Up to that point, I’d thought of my relationship with Jack as warm but casual. We both admitted we weren’t in love with each other, but I’ve got to tell you, it was a very comfortable relationship. Jack was a soothing poultice on a raw wound, and my heart was finally beginning to heal.

All of a sudden, there was no way I wanted to share the man.

“Well,” I said. “We’ve still got a few months.”

“Yeah. I hope you understand.”

“Yeah.” Sure. I decided it was time to go home.

I ambled along the quiet streets, greeting passersby. A full moon shed enough light to cast shadows. I stopped and stared upward. Despite the moon’s brightness, the three points of Scorpio’s claw shimmered above. Its tail, a curling trail of stars, reached all the way to the horizon.

No matter what happened to us puny humans, the moon continued it phases, and the stars marched across the sky. I saw Lily up there, sitting on Scorpio’s tail, shaking her head at me. “There you go again,” the memory of her voice in my ear, “butting your head against another hedge.”

I sighed. A meteor cut a quick path, wounding the night with white fire.

I could see why the Hausa people of Niger believed that the stars were once human beings. Theirs was a legend about some naughty boys who threw stones at an old woman as she swept the ground in front of her house. Unbeknownst to the small boys, the old woman was the World and she became very annoyed. In punishment, Old Woman World gave the small boys her calabash of garbage to empty. The calabash carried the boys up into the air, and when they reached the sky, God told them to remain and turned them into stars.