Beginning, Section II
Jump to new as of August 17, 2002
Missionary House, Oolongula
Certainty slips from you so gradually that the rug has been pulled from under your feet before you even recognize the coldness seeping in between your toes. I always grew up knowing certain things. My father would wake up at five in the morning and milk the cows. My mother would cook her famous fried chicken on Saturday. Choir practice with the girls would be on Tuesday and Thursday nights and it was my job to bring the cherry Jell-O. Reverend Collins would drone on about sowing the fields and harvesting the grain, but that didn't mean God loved me any less for giving me a preacher such as he. I had a cross to bear and one day I would make my father proud. I would go to heaven and see those who have passed before me. Mr. Dominquiz from the parlor shop would smile with his crooked teeth when I waved. And I would marry for love.
How did it all come to this? How did I begin to wonder whether I was turned over backward in some sort of distorted dream? Why was I standing on a porch in the middle of some forsaken jungle waiting for the night to engulf me? I was meant to grow up, be awkward and ungainly, then beautiful at sixteen. I was meant to fall in love at first sight and be carried off into the sunset or perhaps a castle in the clouds. I would have children, a boy and two girls. Watch them grow and stumble beautifully through life. I would spend my evenings watching the marmalade sunset over the Mississippi River. And I would die an old, old woman before being delivered to my eternal life.
I kicked the concrete steps, stubbing my toes, feeling my nails curve into my skin. I didn't cry out; instead, I brushed past Meesh and into a room to the right of me and pushed the door firmly shut. It was dark, almost completely black and my eyes adjusted slowly. The edge of the cot gleamed slightly and I stumbled toward it. I fell onto the bed, not even pulling my shoes off. It groaned under my weight and every move I made, however slight, resulted in some sort of rusty squeal from the coils. I felt my certainty had long left me. As though I never had it. Was everything the same as it was before I left? I suddenly recognized the patterns had been turning, with me defying my father by going to college and then working at the diner in Jackson so I could pay for the tuition everyone else ignored. With the Reverend reciting a verse or two and discreetly glancing at Charlotte, who played the organ and made the bench grumble under her. With lime Jell-O instead of cherry!
I punched my pillow, thinking about curved space. Einstein believed in curved space, in a universe in which the black night was some blanket that we had been plopped down onto where we would spin in elliptical paths with three percent eccentricity. Did our souls ascend to heaven? And if it did, as so many believed, where was this indeterminable heaven, between the end of our atmosphere and the land? Would it spin along the axis too or was it reserved somewhere in space? I had no answers, only fears. I wasn't certain if Will would come back and that frightened me most of all.
I woke up to the feeling that I was somehow elevated. I had forgotten where I was and how small I was in the scheme of things and all that troubled me. It was that feeling of optimism after you open your eyes to the world. And then you see it...You look around and everything drops to the pit of your stomach.
I brought myself up to a sitting position and immediately, fell back again. I didn't want to face the day. I didn't want to get up and pretend...pretend that everything was normal. Nothing was normal. Nothing ever was. I wanted to scream, cry, tear out my hair. Most of all, I wanted Will. I wanted to tell him why I was here, why I had to be here, and why I needed him to help me.
I turned over, knowing that Meesh would probably listen to my woes but fail to understand. That was it, wasn't it? Why I couldn't fall for him. There was no doubt in my mind that he was a wonderful man, a man of extreme intellect and compassion. But a man of understanding far different from my own. Yes, we were two different people. We were people who could not be anything but polite acquaintances, cordial colleagues, perhaps, to a certain degree, friends.
I had yet to thank him for his kindness. Running a hand through my hair, I rolled off the cot as it squeaked in objection.
"Meesh?" I entered the living room. There was no one there. I walked through the rest of the house. There was not much else to see: another bedroom and the kitchen. I noted there were no lavatories but found myself unable to care. There was a bookshelf in the other room and I tried to occupy myself with the classic titles. Crime and Punishment. I wrinkled my nose. Not something I was particularly interested in at the moment. The Man in the Iron Mask. Too heavy and somber. The Little Princess? I picked up the book. An old favorite of mine. As I turned it in my hands, I felt its weight double. Somehow, the troubles of Sara Crewe seeped through the pages and into my veins. I set it aside and went into the kitchen.
There were some skewed cupboards, an old copper tub on lion claws, and a table which seemed much more stable than the one I saw last night. There was also a stove, that was unlike the electric one that my mother had, unlike the gas one my grandmother used. I tinkered with it, unsure what to do. It looked more like an oven and I could see burnt sticks along the bottom of the interior. I reached in to clear the inside. My hands were soon covered in black ash, and I had nowhere to place the remnants of burnt wood.
I gathered them into a messy bundle and threw them out the door. I felt all strength drain from me as hot tears obstructed my vision. My whole body shook. I tightened myself into a ball, hoping to protect myself from God knows what. Where was He now? Why hadn't He forced Will to stay with me? I didn't move for the rest of the morning. It was just me, the swaying elephant grass, and the burning sky.
Missionary House, Oolongula
My stomach grumbled, the muscles contracting and searching for some sort of nourishment. Meesh looked up as it continued to protest in hunger.
"Maybe you should eat," he said gently.
Maybe everyone should stop telling me what I should be doing, I thought, trying to convey my message by staring at him hard like I've seen Anne do so many times before.
"It is not so bad once you have tried it," he retorted in Standard English. Not American English, but Standard. Couldn't he throw in some foreign phrase, a contraction, something that resembled the mix-up carelessness of whites that were blind to their own weaknesses? Why did he have to walk around with such perfection? The only thing he didn't have to recommend himself with lingered on the surface of his skin. It wasn't right. But could I do anything about the doors that opened for me--- the ones that kept him out forever in the ravages of time?
I looked at my dinner, sitting in the midst of a clay bowl. It looked like a ball of wet flour. For all I knew, it was a ball of wet flour. Perhaps, it had some extra nutrients, like one of those stick insects that looked like a leaf.
"Ellie..."
"Please don't tell me what to do," I whimpered, feeling like a child pouting over cold oatmeal.
"It is for your own good. You must eat." He moved closer, holding a piece of white glob under my nose.
Was that supposed to entice me into devouring that mess? I poked at it and turned away. I might as well have eaten the grass outside. Was that their life? Did they eat wet flour all day and perhaps, on special occasions, rotten meat? I wanted to cry for them. I couldn't imagine living my entire life in this village, coping with such an existence. Survival. That was the only thing they thought of, could think of. I wanted to cry these big crocodile tears for them, but I had wasted them all on myself.
"Will asked me to take care of you, and I thi-"
"He did what?" My head shot up and I looked directly into his dewy eyes.
Meesh looked away. His eyes roamed the room, as though they were rolling around in their sockets. He looked out the window, at the floor, beyond my shoulder. Everywhere except at me. He wouldn't look at me. What was going on?
My stomach seemed to shrink within itself. Perhaps, it was eating its own walls, collapsing like a burning star. I was somehow detached from its pain, as though it was someone else's suffering and I had swallowed it.
"Is Will going to come back?"
"Of course!" he spluttered with a suspicious amount of emphasis.
When? In another month? In eleven months? Was there any way for me to possibly leave? Was I doomed to have my hair gray in this missionary house? I looked at that white ball of supposed nourishment and grabbed it in my fist. It felt moist, sticky, and slippery all at the same time. I turned it in my hands. This was my life. This was me spinning on my axis.
"What do you call this?"
"Fufu."
"Sounds like a poodle's name," I said more to myself than him as I took a big bite.
I tried not to count. What good would it do anyway? Counting only lengthen the wait. Counting only reminded me how long I would be drowning. I woke up on the third day with the children calling out, "Cadeau! Cadeau!" outside, at the edge of the lawn. Or supposed lawn, I should say. I took a stone and carved a scraggy line next to two others. My hand just wouldn't listen. It wanted to count.
I was suppose to go to the schoolhouse but indolence and shame were keeping me away. Did the children even care about the lessons I taught? Were they listening or simply swatting the flies that hovered over their half-naked bodies? I hadn't even bathe since my arrival. Did it really matter? The children hadn't bathe in anything but polluted water for the entire span of their young lives. The village for that matter hadn't bathe in anything but polluted water.
I wiped a hand across my face. I still had ash clinging to me from the day I cleared the stove. I didn't even used the stove. Didn't know how. Meesh brought food for me, if one could deem that wet mess of flour as food. With much disappointment but hardly any amount of surprise, I would look at the ball that Meesh unceremoniously dumped under my nose. I sucked in my stomach every time it groaned for more.
How did he ever get that big? He barely ate anything. Most of the villagers were rather diminutive compared to him. Even Will was taller than most of them. I, at five foot three, looked down upon the women. Maybe it was elephant grass. Or maybe, he would kill monkeys in the jungle at night. I wouldn't mind eating a monkey. Was there any fish in the lake? Maybe I would shrink from lack of nourishment. My mind was jumping from one jumbled thought to another. I felt as though I was losing my mind but had no fear of it actually occurring.
I looked at the crooked table, sitting opposite a chair of similar quality, and walked into the other bedroom. The Little Princess was still stranded in the middle of the cot, where I last left it. It did very well evening out the legs. I went into the kitchen as I heard Meesh coming up the porch steps. I didn't stop there. I went out the back door, through the elephant grass, and into the woods. There was something about the way the sun seemed to vanish without a trace in the shade of the green canopy. I felt my nerves calming down and laughed at myself. I was becoming my mother. Now, that was scary!
The sound of the swaying elephant grass dimmed into echoes. I recalled thinking of running water when the wind swept through it. At first, I had thought it was the river, but no, it was the grass that hissed. Rivers didn't hiss. You had to listen carefully, you had to let your ears capture the breeze. And then, you would hear it speak, through slivers of a thousand of foreign tongues.
My eyelids felt heavy. It was as though the forest had woven a spell on me. I stayed away from the vegetation and followed the narrow path. I had never been on this side of the great jungle before. I continued on, moving slowly, trying to disappear like the sun. My legs were burdened by my own weight and I laid down in the middle of the path. It didn't take me very long to drift off into an untroubled sleep.
The Jungle
A screech shattered the tranquility. I sat up, surrounded by pitch black. I felt fear rush through me like a train bounding down the tracks. Where was I? Then, it came to me...I was in the jungle. I was so stupid to fall asleep! I tried to stand but my body wouldn't comply. The lack of nourishment of the last few days had taken its toll on me. It slowed me down. It made me weak.
I closed my eyes, trying to slow the pounding in my heart. The echoes filled my ears. Which way to go? I wasn't sure, but I couldn't possibly stay here. The adrenaline was rushing, rushing. It filled my veins, my head felt as though it would explode. I got up and ran. I ran without stopping. I tripped over my own legs in the dark and muttered verses. I didn't stop to breathe. I just kept going.
By luck or by the grace of God, I saw the path widening. I saw the brown river glistening in its murky beauty. I hadn't wandered very far after all. I was too tired to go anywhere really and all the dread that had pounded within my veins now seemed so silly. I even considered turning around and heading straight back. Instead, I collapsed among the endless waves of grass. The Congo really made me tired.
"Where the hell have you been?"
My eyelids fluttered open. I hadn't been sleeping, only suspended between consciousness and lost dreams. I squinted. The sun was already burning the land's red haze into endless blue. Did I sleep through two days?
He came closer, his face inches from mine. He placed his cool hand against my forehead.
"Meesh?"
He pulled back. "Have you been taking your malaria pills?"
Something clicked. The gears started to move and I sat up, hitting my forehead against his chin in a loud crack of bone against bone. He reeled backwards, cupping his new injury in his palm. My hands flew around his neck and we tumbled down the gentle slope.
"Ellie..."
He tried to sit up but I was on top of him. I didn't have the strength or the desire to move. I grasped him tightly around the neck, so tightly he flinched.
"Ellie..." he said in that way of his. That patronizing way.
"I thought you wouldn't come back," I mumbled into the collar of his shirt. "I thought I would die here, an old woman or a skeleton."
He didn't try to get up anymore. Instead, he ran his hands through my hair. We were quiet, except for my sobs. I don't know what I was thinking at that moment, only grateful that he was back. He was finally back.
"Don't ever leave," I said after awhile.
He responded with, "How long has it been since you last took a bath?"
"Four days, perhaps."
"Geez..." He said through his teeth, drawing out the vowels and once again making a bad attempt at a Southern accent.
"Yeah, well, I had other things to deal with."
"Meesh tells me you haven't been eating," he murmured, his hands simply settling behind my head.
"What, is he your hired spy?"
"Spy the am I, no."
I lifted my head. He wasn't looking at anything particular, but there was something meaningful in the depths of his eyes. Even dreamy. I didn't understand it, but in the next second, he was looking at me with his usual insouciance. It reminded me of the popular boys at school who were too 'cool' to care.
I felt discomfort creep through me. I was never troubled by Will's stoic nature before...but this time, it made me afraid. I shuddered involuntarily and rolled off of him. We were close to the river and the water almost trickled into my ear. I stared into its murky depths, wondering what could possibly be hidden beneath.
"C'mon, you really need to bathe. You bring new meaning to the phrase, 'What the cat brought in.'"
I turned over and saw his legs disappear into the brush. I pushed myself up on my elbows and stumbled after him. My progression was slow. I was weary and lacked motivation. How was I suppose to bathe? Would he hand me a rough stone to scrub myself with at the river?
I walked through the backdoor. Will was shoving pieces of wood within the dark recesses of the stove.
"Is that how you use it?"
He looked up with his head tilted to the right. "Are you okay?"
My stomach answered for me. He walked out and was back within seconds, holding Tupperware.
"And that would be..."
He pulled off the lid to reveal cold lasagna. I grabbed the container from his hands and used my fingers, filthy with three days worth of grime, to shovel it into my mouth. In minutes, my stomach ached with a different kind of pain. But I kept eating. I was too sure of my hunger to stop.
I licked the bottom of the plastic. I licked every piece of broken pasta and red sauce. I sucked my fingers. I was trying to make up for three days. Three days.
December 24th, 1959
"What are you two talking about? Your secrets again?"
Will didn't reply. He looked at me, his dark eyes smoldering, then turned back again. I left Meesh and him to their conversation. It had been going on for quite some time, these talks of theirs. They would discuss things in French. They would throw their arms about in wild gesticulations. They would pace back and forth. They would strike the table, making it wobble on its three legs and Sara Crewe.
I always asked, but he never gave me an answer. He kept so many things from me. But then, he kept me alive. Wasn't that his promise? To keep me alive? He never said he would do anything more. Just keep me going. What was alive anyway? Was he saving me for something worth while? I wanted to take a bath. I felt so dirty, like I had rolled out in the red Congo dirt for hours. More like months. I kicked the dented bucket by the stove. The effort it would take...to bathe myself. The day he came back - was it two months ago? I wasn't sure. But Will had boiled bucket after bucket of water. It had taken an hour at the very least. That was the last time I felt truly clean.
I went outside to hear the wind whisper. I loved the Congo then. I did. It had so much to say and yet it was all unheard. I rubbed the calluses on my palms. It was so hard. To live here. To pretend that I existed. To pretend that I cared. Modern conveniences had made me weak, fragile. Hadn't they? I was going to crack. I could feel it inside of me. To think, without Will, coming and going every week, to bring me supplies and food, I would've chewed my own arm off. If only he would stay. Why didn't I just ask him? Stay, Will. Stay.
The back door squealed on rusty hinges and shut with a loud series of shudders. I could feel his shadow fall over me.
"The raining season is coming upon us."
"Us?" I breathed. You mean me.
"It's late this year."
"It rains all the time, Will."
"There might be floods." He paused for a moment and then continued, "Have you been taking your malaria pills? I hope you pull that netting over you every night. You're going to have other things to worry about, but now that the school is out of session-"
"I taught five lessons, Will. Five."
"I know, but they have other things to do. The boys...they have to learn more important things and you would've lost a lot of them to the kakakaka anyway," he sighed, the exasperation heavy in his voice.
"What's that?"
"It's what comes with the rainy season."
"Oh."
"You should stay inside. You're safest in here."
I stood up, dusting the dirt off my dress. "Safe from what?"
"Well, safe from..." He looked confused.
"I know, disease. Safe from malaria and whatever else that I can catch from that damn jungle." Will stepped back as I forced the curse from my mouth. "What about madness? That's a disease, isn't it? Have you ever considered that? I can't handle this. Yet, I'm not even handling it. You are! I don't do anything for myself. I don't do anything at all. I sleep. I think. I wait for you to come and hand me my food. I'm going mad! I know it!"
"Ellie..."
"Are you leaving?"
"Yes. I meant to tell you...I'm not coming back for awhile."
I felt something drop inside of me, but I didn't say a thing. I felt so detached from the world. I felt as though I didn't know a thing. I was imprisoned within the drab stone walls of the missionary house.
"Look, there are some things I need to take care of, and-"
"Never mind." I pushed pass him and went to my room. I slammed the door shut and fell across my bed. I didn't cry. I didn't even move.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. My neck ached. Turning over, I focused lazily upon his firm jawbone.
"I thought you were leaving..."
"Ask me to stay."
"Stay."
He got off the bed and walked out the room. I didn't stir. I was listening. Listening for something, anything. For him. There was nothing but silence. He hadn't left already, had he?
"Will?" I called. My throat was dry. I pushed myself up and wandered toward the doorframe. "Will!"
I ran over to him and threw my arms around his neck. "Is it Christmas? I didn't know."
It wasn't much. In fact, it was nothing compared to the holiday season at home where the seven-foot tree would dominate the living room. Where the house would be trimmed with flashing lights. Where candles flickered in every corner. Mother went all out for Christmas. She always did. And it was always so beautiful. But this, this was something beautiful as well.
Will was laughing at my exuberance. "It's a rather sad tree, isn't it? What - one, two, three...eight branches! Well...seven more like it."
"I love it," I murmured, fingering the wilting limbs that had already begun to bruise over brown. "Where did you get it?"
"Dragged the poor thing all the way from Leopoldville. Didn't have anything to decorate it with...except this." He pointed toward the top of the tree. Hidden within the pines was a sparkle. It was a pendant. A guardian angel.
I pulled it down. It glistened like some star plucked from heaven. The sunlight danced on its diamond body as I turned it in my hands.
"It belonged to my mother. I thought you should have it."
I felt the emotion building up inside of me, pushing toward my eyes. I kissed the pendant. "It's so beautiful," I managed before the tears choked me in their ascension.
"Merry Christmas, Ellie."
"Merry Christmas, Will." I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him close to me. He stayed. He really stayed.
January, 1960
The rain pounded against the roof so hard I thought it would cave in. Beyond the incessant pouring was the sound of death, heavy and loud, crashing through the wavelengths of humanity. It was the kakakaka, taking so much of what little there was. For all I knew, it was yellow fever, dysentery, the common cold.
"Will, I haven't stepped out of this house since Christmas."
"You can leave when I leave."
"You're always leaving," I pouted.
"I mean, when I leave the village."
"When are you going to do that?" I tilted my head. Meesh seemed rather frustrated, almost angry, that Will had stayed as long as he had. Maybe he didn't feel useful, checking up on me and making sure I was following orders.
"When I feel like it," he muttered, seemingly burdened by my question. He laid back on his cot and closed his eyes.
I pulled a book from the shelf and sat next to his stretched-out form, listening to the rain as I slowly turned the pages.
"Are you going to read Treasure Island upside-down?"
I turned to look at him, his dark eyes contemplating the book I held in my hands. I followed his gaze to see that I was indeed holding it upside-down and backwards.
"I'm bored."
"That's your problem, not mine."
"Entertain me."
"I'm not here for your entertainment."
"I beg to differ."
"Beg and differ all you want," he muttered, rolling over on his side.
I threw the book across his back.
"Do you think I could survive without you?"
"Ellie..."
I repeated myself. He didn't respond. I asked the question a third time.
"I don't know, but you don't have to."
"I will one day. I'm going to be independent."
"You already are," he mumbled.
"No, I'm not. I depend on you for everything, just as I depended upon my father for-"
"Ellie," he interrupted, rolling his eyes in my direction. "You've got a lot more spirit than you give yourself credit for. What do you think independence is?"
"Not being dependent on anyone else except yourself."
"That's autonomy. Not independence. That's being isolated. It's..."
"Then what's your idea of independence, sir?" I said in the most formal voice I could muster.
"Independence is being free," he tapped his head and then his chest, "in mind and heart. It's when you are your own person. You travel your own path toward destiny, regardless of what has been mapped out for you. You live your own life. You follow your own stars. But you can't escape dependency. You have to depend on other people and when you don't...that's when you lose your freedom. You need people. People need you. But it doesn't mean you have to be defeated by realizing that you're weak, just as everyone else is."
"You're a poet, Will."
"I like to think so," he grinned. Then he pushed me off his cot and grumbled, "Now, get out of here."
January, 1960
Do you know what it's like to look Death straight in the eye? Your blood runs cold and you start to shake. There's an internal struggle. Your spirit wants to flee but you grasp onto it because there would be nothing left once it's gone. But maybe it wasn't Death that I saw in those black eyes. Maybe it was Sickness. Maybe it was Sorrow. Maybe it was Africa that made me shiver as the sun pounded down mercilessly on my broken spine.
"Nsongonya," he pointed at the trail of ants disappearing into the cracks of the cement. Was he providing me with the Congolese word for ant? Or perhaps trail? Maybe even crack for all I knew.
I looked into those black orbs and nodded. He shook his head. He knew I didn't understand. Funny how perspective children can be when adults are so blind.
Peter stood from his crouched position. He repeated the word and picked up a large fire ant delicately between his black fingers. The insect twisted its exoskeleton, fighting for freedom...no, fighting from its physical imprisonment, thinking perhaps that escape meant survival but chains was certain death. Perhaps it wasn't even thinking that. Perhaps it was merely uncomfortable.
I nodded. Peter grinned in satisfaction but he didn't know of the doubts that stirred in the back of my mind. Was that the word for ant or the name for that type of ant? Was there a difference?
"God save the Queen!" Will cried in a thick accent as he stepped out onto the porch.
I squinted against the light. He was smiling. But it wasn't a smile brimming of some unleashed joy. It was sardonic, almost cruel.
"What are you smiling for?"
"Nothing."
But he was still smiling.
"Sala mtbote," the boy cried and ran off, kicking up the red clay with his heels.
"I suppose that was some sort of farewell," I muttered.
"Good. You're catching on."
"I'm suppose to be the teacher!" I pouted. "You have a ten-year-old boy teaching me how to communicate!"
"Is he not sufficient?"
"He's better at it than I am," I said, sitting on the cracked cement. Will instantly stepped forward to pull me up.
"Careful..." he admonished.
I blinked, not comprehending the dangers of sitting on my own porch until I felt the sharp sting of a fire ant's bite on my ankle. I jumped towards Will who caught me around the waist.
"Ow!"
He shook his head. "They call them fire ants for a reason."
"They call them nsongonya," I countered. He laughed as I reached down to rub my injured ankle.
"They can eat you alive. Remember that." His statement was declared with such indifference, you could interpret it as some morbid joke on his part. But I knew it was no joke. He meant it. I eyed the line of ants disappearing into the crack. How easy it would be for me to destroy them, to twist my heel onto the hardness of the concrete and end their existence. How easy it would be for anyone to do the same to me.
Will followed my gaze to the moving red trail. He seemed to look at it the way I looked at it. "Did you know the largest ant colony is found in Europe?"
I smiled. "I did not know that, sir."
"It consists of a stretch of almost five thousand kilometers, I believe."
I arched an eyebrow, uncertain where this conversation would lead as the case often was.
"Do you realize how many ants could live in such a space?"
"Millions."
"Billions, perhaps."
"Billions, then," I echoed, no closer to the meaning of his words than I was at the start of his speech.
"The continued existence of this colony is dependent on the ability of each member to work with his associates. If this ant colony, consisting of this simple arthropod, a creature far below the sophistication of our own make, can live in peace, then why can't we? Why must we persist in destroying ourselves? That colony, as all colonies in this world, with the exception of our own, has attained something that we have time and time again failed to achieve. Not so much a peace as a balance. We cannot continue as we are without such a balance. We will demolish our world. And...in doing so," he said, pointing at the nsongonya. "We may demolish their world as well."
I didn't know how to reply. A response didn't even seem necessary as his features rapidly contorted from their hard stoicism to an apologetic softness. He continued as though he had made no comment about our own self-destruction. "I'm leaving at the end of this week."
I pushed his previous remarks to the back of my mind where they intertwined with my own parallel fears, settling into the murky depths of my memory.
"Do you really have to go?" I pleaded. I knew he had stayed weeks past his intended departure date and it was selfish of me to ask, but I did not care. I didn't want him to go. I was not prepared to live my life here without him. And I certainly didn't want him to let me go either.
"Would I leave if I didn't?" he scoffed. I didn't understand his sudden change in attitude. He was like some sulky teenager. But then, I didn't quite understand him either. He continued to be as mysterious as Africa itself. Perhaps it was I who was slow to make the discovery. But Africa, I could do without, I could allow myself not to understand. I could even be satisfied with not knowing him. I just needed him. I watched him walk away, my heart aching for him, for me, for everything. Perhaps, most of all, for my loneliness.
February 14th, 1960
He left sooner than I had anticipated. My hand returned to its occupation of counting since that day in January when I woke up to find him gone. Just gone. Only a scribbled note, making a promise I prayed he would keep.
Meesh made his regular trips to the missionary house. Usually, he dropped off something that he claimed to be food. We didn't talk much anymore. Polite conversation and what not, but there seemed to be tension crackling in the air between us. Every time we spoke to one other, there was this reluctance to stay, this desire to flee. Maybe I was a burden to him. I was certainly a burden to Will. He had suggested to me the day prior to his departure a return to the States. He was always making that suggestion.
I laid down on the elephant grass, closed my heavy eyes. It was St. Valentine's Day. My mother used to bake sugar cookies, cut in the shape of hearts. The house would be filled with the smell of them. I could almost smell them now, their freshness diffusing into the air, wafting through the open window where I sat lazily in the backyard wondering if maybe this year I would have a sweetheart. I never did get one.
I opened my eyes to face a harsh blue sky. This was the same sky I used to see in Mississippi. But in so many ways, it wasn't. Or perhaps, I could no longer look at it the same way. I was such a lonely child desperate for love. And here I was, thousands upon thousands of miles away from where my heartache first began and still I had no home. I wanted my mother's cookies more than ever.
"Bi la ye bandu," I muttered to myself. Why, why, why. I hardly knew how I came to such a fate. Perhaps I wasn't happy at home. Perhaps things did go wrong. But why couldn't I, a cognitive creature blessed with the proper amount of arms and legs, find happiness in this world? Why did I have to come to Africa to find that I was lonelier than ever?
"Madame Ellie!"
I smiled. He was the only one who called me that. I turned onto my stomach and lifted myself up on my elbows, my solitary reflections drifting off with the breeze, leaving me lighter and less melancholy.
"Are you here?" I could hear him making his way through the grass, the long whips bending back as he pushed his way through.
"Yes, Peter. I am."
I caught a glimpse of his ebony skin and before I could inhale the morning, he was before me. In his arms was a pile of wood.
"What do you have there?" I asked, confused.
His brow creased in a mirrored expression as he pondered the question at hand. He extended his arm so I could have a better inspection. "It is wood. Do you not know what wood is?"
I almost burst out laughing but did not allow my amusement to go further than my lips. "Yes, I know what wood is. But why do you have it?"
"We are cooking today."
"We are?" I stood up. My skirt billowed in the breeze, the movement releasing dirt trapped within its creases. It swam like gold threading through the air.
Peter turned and I followed with steady steps, pushing my way gently through the grass. The wind rushed through the stalks, making them shimmer in the sunlight and hiss like rushing water. I could almost absorb everything around me, the sunlight, the currents of air, all the sensibilities of the moment, but something was missing. Something prevented me from finding true peace.
"Madame, are you not coming?"
I looked up. I had halted my progression without realizing that I had done so. Peter was yards ahead of me, his black orbs trained on my face, reading my open expression. I wanted so much out of this world and I found myself so little satisfied with it. I prided myself for being independent but I couldn't even find a foundation on which I could be truly free. Didn't Will once tell me that we are all dependent on other people whether we have freedom are not? But who was it that I could truly be dependent upon? I once thought it was my father. I once thought he was the rock which I always knew would be there, which I could always go back to. Peter was the one here. The only one here. Could I really be dependent on a ten-year-old? Could I be dependent on a child commissioned to watch over me? I was initially under the suspicion that Will paid him in cocoa powder. And maybe he did. And maybe I had the chance to start over, start fresh, and not allow previous failures to push me down before I even made the effort to begin again.
I picked up my skirt and kicked off the ground. "I'll race you back!" I cried as I passed him.