Green City in the Sun (43 page)

     T
HEY SAT FACING
each other with the cook fire between them, Grace wrapped in goatskins against the cold drafts, Wachera stirring another millet stew. Every so often Grace looked through the door where she could see her brother's polo field turning into a lake. She looked at the sleeping form of Wachera's son, at Mona, who tossed and turned in fever, and finally at the medicine woman.

     Grace had never been this near to Wachera, had never gotten a really good look at her. But now that she did, she saw what she had missed before: that the Kikuyu woman was, in fact, beautiful, her body not yet ravaged by time and hard living, and there was dignity in her eyes. There was also, to Grace's surprise, compassion.

     Grace watched the nimble brown hands add bits of vegetable to the stew. Copper bracelets glinted in the fire's glow; earlobes stretched with rings of beads brushed dark brown shoulders. Wachera had lived alone in this hut for nine years, shunning the company and security of the village to hold on to a patch of seemingly insignificant ground, her only companion a little boy. How could she stand it? Grace wondered. Wachera was still young, and certainly she must be desirable to the men of her tribe. How could she give up so much for a fight that was futile and in which she was totally alone?

     "You're on your own, Grace." Valentine's voice suddenly echoed in her memory. "I won't help you with your mission. You've made your choice to come to Africa and take care of a bunch of natives that ultimately will never appreciate you. I don't agree with what you're doing. You won't receive any help from me."

     Then Grace pictured her own little cottage and the shadows in it that were her only companions.

     Wachera looked up. Their eyes met. Grace shivered and drew the goatskins more tightly about her. There were unspoken questions in the medicine woman's gaze; Grace saw the studied curiosity, the wanting to know, and realized the look must mirror her own.

     Finally Wachera said quietly, "Why did you come?"

     "Come?"

     "To Kikuyuland. Was it because your husband came?"

     "I have no husband."

     Wachera frowned. "The one they call Bwana Lordy—"

     "He is my brother."

     "Then who owns you?"

     "No one owns me."

     Wachera stared. This was a concept alien to her. They were speaking in Kikuyu, and there was no word in that language meaning "spinster." Only very young girls were unmarried. In the Kikuyu tribe all women were married.

     "No one owns you," Grace said.

     "That is true." Wachera was an oddity in her tribe. And were it not for the fact that she was the medicine woman and the widow of the great Mathenge, she would be an outcast. She looked over at Mona and said, "Is she your daughter?"

     "She is the daughter of my brother's wife."

     Wachera's eyes widened. "You have no babies of your own?"

     Grace shook her head.

     The millet stew bubbled; drafts rattled the bamboo frame of the hut. The young African woman retreated into baffled thought.

     "I knew your husband," Grace said softly. "I respected him."

     "You killed him."

     "I did not."

     "Not by your own hand," Wachera said, her tone hard. "You poisoned his mind first."

     "I did not turn Mathenge from the Kikuyu way. We are not all alike, we
wazungu
, just as not all Kikuyu are alike. I was opposed to the destruction of the sacred fig tree. I told my brother to leave it alone."

     Wachera considered this. Then she looked again at Mona, who was starting to waken, and went to her. The two women examined the burn and thigh wound, and when Wachera began to bathe both in juice from a gourd, Grace said, "What is that?"

     "It is the blood of the sisal plant."

     Grace watched the long ebony fingers work quickly and expertly. In her own clinic, if she did not protect a wound with iodine or permanganate, a serious infection would result. The medicine woman had neither, yet Mona's wounds were healing cleanly.

     Grace looked around the hut, at the gourds and leather pouches hanging from the circular wall, at the magic charms, the strings of herbs and roots, at the belts studded with cowry shells and beaded necklaces that looked as if they were hundreds of years old, and she tried to find the witchcraft she had thought was practiced here.

     "Lady Wachera," Grace said, using the Kikuyu form of polite address, "you cursed my brother and his descendants. Why now do you take care of his daughter?"

     Wachera took Mona into her arm and raised a gourd of cold herbal tea for her to drink. "What I do here will make no difference to the
thahu.
The future of this child is a very bad one. I have seen it."

     Grace looked at Mona's white face, at the fluttering eyelids, at the pale lips drinking reflexively. What indeed
was
the girl's future? Grace found herself wondering. Mona's parents were no parents at all; there was little love in the big stone house for her. And the Treverton inheritance was going to go to Arthur. What did lie in Mona's years to come? Grace tried to picture the teenager, the young woman, the wife and mother, but saw only a blank. Where would Mona go to school, whom would she marry, where would she live, how would she make her way in the world? Grace had never thought of it before, but now that she did, it troubled her.

     A feeling of deep possessiveness swept over her. She wanted to take the child away from the dark medicine woman and cradle her back to life.
I gave birth to you
, Grace thought as Mona was laid back to peaceful sleep
once again.
On the train from Mombasa, when I nearly lost both of you. Your mother didn't have the strength to bring you into the world; it was my will that gave you life. You belong to me.

     "I save the daughter of your brother's wife," Wachera said quietly, "because you saved my son."

     Grace looked at David standing in the doorway, contemplating the rain. He was a lanky, pensive boy who she suspected would one day be as handsome as his father.

     "We should not be enemies, you and I," Grace said at last to Wachera, surprised herself with the revelation.

     "We can be nothing else."

     "But we are alike!"

     Wachera gave her a suspicious look.

     "We are the same," Grace said with passion. "Is there not a proverb that says the crocodile and the bird are both hatched from an egg?"

     The medicine woman looked at the memsaab long and consideringly; then she reached up and untied the leather thong that held a leaf dressing to Grace's forehead. Feeling the light touch of Wachera's fingertips, and knowing without having to look at it that her head wound was healing well, Grace tried to think of the words that would express what had come so suddenly and unexpectedly into her heart.

     "We both serve the Children of Mumbi," she said softly as Wachera dabbed the wound with sisal juice, taking care that none ran into Grace's injured eye. "We both serve life."

     "This is not your land. Your ancestors do not dwell here."

     "No, but my heart does."

     They shared a gourd of sugarcane beer, passing it back and forth in silence, both listening to the rain and staring at the thickening stew. Presently other sounds joined the steady patter of rain: donkeys braying; men shouting; a car motor grinding. Grace then recognized the voice of Mario drawing close to the hut.

     When she started to rise, Wachera stayed her with a hand. "Twenty harvests ago," she said, "you brought Njeri from Gachiku's belly. Gachiku was my husband's favorite wife. Njeri was the joy of his eye."

     Grace waited.

     "The
thahu
that we feared never came. Njeri, who is my son's sister, is a girl now, and she will bring honor to our family."

     "Memsaab!" came Mario's voice outside the hut. Feet made sucking sounds in the mud. "Are you in there, memsaab?"

     "Lady Wachera," Grace said softly, "I shall never be able to thank you enough for what you have done. You saved my little girl's life. I am in your debt for always."

     Their eyes met one last time.

     "Good-bye, Memsaab Daktari," Wachera said.

T
HE
C
HEVROLET TRUCK RACED DOWN THE DIRT ROAD
, kicking up gravel and stones and leaving a long red-dust cloud in its wake. James Donald gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles; he watched the road for potholes and boulders as he maneuvered the vehicle at top speed. When it flew down the ridge in a great noise of gears grinding and chassis squeaking, women in the fields straightened up from their work, and the men constructing the new stone buildings of Grace Treverton Mission shielded their eyes and commented among themselves that the
wazungu
always seemed to be in a hurry.

     Finally the truck jolted to a stop amid a shower of sand and debris; before the motor died, James was out of the cab and running. A few Africans who recognized him waved and called out, but he was oblivious of them. His long legs carried him through the busy compound and up the veranda steps of the recently repaired Birdsong Cottage. A startled Mario was asked a breathless "Where is the memsaab?" And before he finished replying, "She is at the village, bwana," Sir James was running back down the steps and off toward the river.

     His boots thundered across the wooden bridge; he sweated in the hot sun. When he arrived at the village entrance, he didn't slow his pace. People turned and stared when they saw the white man come flying suddenly into their midst, asking urgently for Memsaab Daktari.

     He found her in the center of a circle of women, demonstrating first-aid splinting of sprains and fractures. She looked up when he pushed through. "James!"

     "Grace, thank God I've found you!" He reached for her hand. "What—"

     "You have to come with me! It's an emergency!" He pulled her through the circle and ran with her, his hand holding tight to hers.

     Grace's pith helmet flew off; she said, "James, wait."

     He kept running, pulling her along.

     "My medical bag is back there," she said, out of breath.

     He didn't reply. They ran under the natural arch and down the forest path.

     "James, what's happened! When did you get back to Kenya?"

     He turned off the path suddenly and plunged into the woods, his grip still firm on her hand. They pushed through bush and over tangled undergrowth; birds flew up out of their way; monkeys complained overhead. "James!" she cried. "Tell me—"

     He stopped suddenly, swung around, pulled her into his arms, and put his mouth over hers.

     "Grace," he murmured, kissing her face, her hair, her neck, "I thought I'd lost you. They said you were dead. They said you'd been killed in the fire. I came at once."

     They kissed hungrily, Grace with her arms about his neck, holding tight to him.

     "I drove all the way from Entebbe," he said. "When I got to Nairobi, they said you were alive."

     "Wachera—"

     "Dear God, I thought I'd lost you." He buried his face in her hair; his strong arms held her so tightly to him that she could hardly breathe.

     They sank to the ground in the privacy of wildflowers and bamboo and cedar trees. He covered her with his hard body; she saw the blue African sky through branches. The forest swirled around them as James murmured, "I never should have left you," and then no more words were spoken.

     T
HEY LAY IN
her bed, awake and talking softly. It was nearly dawn; soon the mission would be alive with the sound of hammers and chisels, of children singing in their outdoor classroom. This time James and Grace had made love slowly, stretching the night hours to savor each and every minute.

     "I was out in the bush when word came," James said. Grace lay in the crook of his arm; he stroked her hair as he spoke. "Every mile of the long drive here I thought I was coming to your funeral."

     "I was in Wachera's hut for the first few days after the fire. The storm isolated us."