Red Jacket (25 page)

“I heard footsteps. How are we today, then?”

“I'm fine. We're fine, thank you.”

“Good. I see you are assessing our weather.”

“Please.” She is reluctant to say his name. Now that yesterday's delirium has given way to sanity, calling him Jimmy seems too familiar, never mind that he told her to call him that, but Father Atule or Father sounds too formal. Irresolute, she skips it. “I'll die of boredom, if I stay inside. Not to mention curiosity. I need to see what's going on. It's why I came.” She is glad to sound businesslike. “Otherwise, what do I tell my employers?”

“Last point first.” He sounds serious but there is something playful in his eyes. “I wouldn't worry about them. I've been in touch. They're apprised.”

She sits up,
zoom
.

“You told my employers I'm pregnant?”

“Please. You must be quiet.” He pats her back onto the bed. “For sure, you can't think much of me. I'd hardly have done that without your permission. Your office called to check on whether you'd got here safely. We told them you were somewhat indisposed but recovering comfortably.”

Stupid. All the same, it alerts her to the fact that she isn't sanguine about letting her bosses know she is having a baby. Not that there aren't any single mothers among her colleagues, but it is inevitably a long-time-ago matter, occurring early enough that the children are grown by the time their mothers are senior people.

“And you have been in bed not even for three days. There are women who have to lie in bed for an entire pregnancy if they want to keep a baby.”

“Don't lecture me.” Remembering Ma and manners, she adds, “Please. I'm surely not one of those women.”

“Perhaps not so surely.”

“How can you know? Are you an obstetrician?” She is being boorish again.

“There's no escaping some obstetrics if one works with HIV/AIDS. Women and babies are a big part of what we endeavour to do here, as you know.”

She finds the word “endeavour” quaint and humble. He can easily speak of achievement, for as far as the World Health Organization is concerned, the MATE Centres are considered outstanding. He is weird — modest, bossy, and hip at once.

“Isn't there an ob/gynae clinic nearby?”

“I'm afraid I'll have to do. The nearest hospital is in Benke, hours away.”

“There must be someone who can get me on my feet … ”

“I'm sorry. I have to go,” he responds, not really answering her. “There are some other folks I have to see. We'll check on you when I get back.”

“Father Atule, we can't keep delaying … ”

But he's gone.

She puts down Jimmy Atule's manuscript: “Jesus and HIV/AIDS.” He brought it in at lunch time, suggesting she have a look at it since it told the history and work of the centre at Tindi, but how can she read while she staggers among emotions, reeling between fear and confusion? She folds her arms. Exhales in exasperation. First she flirts with the priest. Now she sounds like something out of a bad novel. What is wrong with her?

She has not thought of aborting the baby. She is Gramps's grandchild, Gwen and Moses Carpenter's child, from the barracks' yard in Wentley Park, sister to Pansy, Stewie, Edgar, Conrad, Sammy, and Princess, a family who made a place for her. As she reasoned when Maisie's daughter got pregnant, dashing away pikni isn't part of their tradition. And she is Phyllis's daughter, lost to her mother and cherished anyway. But the priest is right. Should she tell Mark? Less than two months ago, she left him at Logan, feeling not madly in love, but warm, content. She hasn't heard a word since. That surprises her. They worked well together. She hasn't thought of their Cambridge interlude as the beginning of anything earthshaking — she has known earthshaking with Charlie — but it was surely important enough to warrant his being in touch, just to say he treasured it and wouldn't forget. He can find her; people do it all the time. If he wanted to, he could have called. Still, she dallied two weeks in New York to see Phyllis and do a bit of work, spent another three weeks in London, and stayed for a week and a half over Christmas in Geneva before flying to Mabuli. But if he'd phoned or written, she'd have known. That being the case, she isn't sure she wants to give him this news.

The pregnancy is a surprise to her. It had been a while between her last two periods, but the last one happened right before the workshop in Cambridge. Her periods have always been erratic, measured by the once-a-month criterion. Sometimes she has only half a dozen in a year. So she hadn't really been worried about getting pregnant, never mind her teasing question as she left Mark at Logan airport.

“Cock mouth kill cock!” An old Gramps adage.

How do you tell a man you haven't seen for ages then make love to one morning that there is now a bond between you that nothing can erase? Besides, when they parted, she released him from obligations to any baby that might come as a consequence of their lovemaking.

If she hears from him, it might make a difference. She'll wait and see.

On the verandah late the next afternoon, Thursday, Grace is enjoying a small triumph. Some good-natured gutter fighting in the morning secured her leave to be outside for a bit. There is to be no walking up and down, but she can sit and read
.
It is warm, the sky tinsel bright. Dry grasses and shrubs are a dusty olive that holds its own against the jades of pawpaw and date palm. Set against a backdrop of red domes scrabbling through dark green mango leaves, with behind it all, the glittering, overarching blue, the panorama reminds her of Christmas in Wentley, tipping as it always does into January drought.

She has been enjoying the priest's account of how the design for the centre at Tindi came about. At the start, he and the two nuns saw everyone in a large, round, thatch-roofed hut. Those waiting fell into groups: men talked together; women stood or squatted, some with babies, many with toddlers; pregnant mothers sat on benches, often with a baby slung behind or balancing another in front; older women leaned on canes and crutches, no strangers to HIV for having left childbearing behind; restless folks clutched birth, land, and medical papers, for HIV/AIDS affected many things.

When the staff grew (two nurses part-time, another midwife twice a week), they'd used woven screens to divide and extend the hut.

The building rose on the plan traced by people's feet. From a central, all-purpose space, walkways lead to satellite structures housing wards for men, women, mothers with newborn babies, a kitchen-cum-refectory, and an administration section.

Alternating male and female voices interrupt her concentration, singing in a language she can't understand. Laughter breaks in, and then the singing resumes in French, and then English. A lusty tenor asks, “Will you, will you, will you be my mate?” to which a saucy soprano replies, “No sir! No sir! You already have a mate!”

Little rooms are the boast of the facility at Tindi, according to what she reads: bathrooms, a library, a playroom, a prayer room. The priest relates the story of his trying them out on the first day, and, in so doing, treating the superior to a display of his elevated bottom, clad in the rose pink of the chasuble worn on Gaudete Sunday, as he prostrates in the prayer room.

“Allah-o-Akbar, Jimmy. Contemplating conversion?”

“Yes, Father, of kneelers to prayer rugs and kneeling to the Sajda. Our imams and marabouts endorse the Sajda for prayer and the constitution. I agree.”

“As long as you ensure the air in this room stays sweet,” Father Kitendi retorted.

“Cruel!” I lamented my fate: persecuted for the whims of my bowels. I tried out the playroom too, slamming my ankle into the ground, twisting it badly as I came scooting down into the sandpit from a slide meant for the children. Sister Monique rescued me, eyes full of fun, asking, “Father Jimmy, have you lost your age paper again?”

Atule's account is the story of a brave community, laughing and singing, praying and chanting, sustained by the call and response of purposeful work and instructional songs, the ululation of mourning, the priest's and muezzin's summonses to prayer. It argues stubbornly that the principle of double effect allows the use of condoms if one of two partners is infected, since in that case it is intended not to obstruct life, but to prevent death. Grace is thinking that he's brave to take on Rome as well as powerful, ignorant politicians, when he rides up, parks his bike, and comes upstairs to the verandah, banana in one hand, loose condom in the other.

“Isn't that waving a red flag at a bull?” she jokes.

“If the bull is oceans away, it's not dangerous.” He chuckles briefly, reminding her of a younger Gramps. “I wanted to give you an example of what we do. It is simple, deals with the basics, and is easy for community workers to replicate.” He becomes subdued as he reports this, sombre even. “Also, it's time for you to be back inside.”

She's stayed outside all afternoon. Now she knows what the buildings are, she can distinguish a big dome swelling in the pink sunset, and some of the small domes peering through the mango trees, the eyes of their double-baked bricks winking in the fading light. She closes the manuscript. “I'm on my way.” He waits on the verandah, no doubt meaning to watch her go in, but she isn't ready yet. “Father ... Jimmy, I'm way behind. Would it hurt if I sit at my table a few minutes at a time to make notes?”

He takes his time about replying. “I daresay it wouldn't. But be sensible and don't overdo it. For sure?”

“For sure, Jimmy.” Luck is with her, so she bets again. “Do you think you'd have some time this weekend for a chat?”

“I couldn't say just yet.”

“I'll be up and about next week, won't I? I was hoping to go with you on your rounds soon.” She adds, thinking it politic, “I'll do as you say, of course.”

“The chat is perhaps possible. For the up and about, we must wait and see.” He dithers a bit, then hazards, “You must please do some writing for me, then.”

“Absolving you from blame if anything happens to me? Of course.”

“Not that, no. I told my editor that you were going to be here. He said that I should ask you to write a foreword to the book.”

She thought he was going to ask her to sign some kind of indemnity. It would be a very sensible rule. “Well, I'd …”

“Don't answer now. I'm truly embarrassed to bother you. I said no, but you know these people, they've don't know what the word ‘importunate' means.”

“It's no problem. I haven't finished but I've enjoyed the story so far. If I don't think I'm a good person to write the foreword, believe me, Jimmy, I'll let you know.”

“Thank you, Grace.”

“So, what about the chat?” pressing her suit home.

“I say Mass in three places on Sunday, but perhaps at the end of the day.”

“Thanks very much. So may I go with you to the centre one day next week?”

“Why don't we leave it all for Sunday?”

Troubling Trouble

He needs no more women in his life. His sisters, Alleme, now gone, Aisha, Ansile, and Angélique have always been a fistful, not to mention his Ma. He loves them with all his heart, which is easy, for they are generous, funny women, but they are still a big responsibility. Alleme, wife, mother, poet, and storyteller like Mapome, joined her grandma in the family plot in Benke at the start of the previous wet season. Aisha and her daughter are living with HIV/AIDS and so are on his radar, always, as is Alleme's younger daughter. Ansile struggles with depression. Angélique, his baby sister is fine, thank God, but she has just started sociology at the university and is finding it a challenge. She plans to work at MATE.

Many women at the centre are also in his mind and heart's keeping: Sœurs Monique and Tekawitha; Amitié; the twins originally from the novitiate, Elise and Lili; the part-timers at the clinic — not to mention staff at the other centres. And there is Nila, near as his next breath. And of course, the women who come to MATE (there are men too, but mostly it is women) who have for six years made up his life!

He gets into his clothes, scours his teeth, trims and scrubs his nails; he will shower later, after Mass. Stepping outside, he gazes north towards the gentle curl of the Bandiagara Escarpment visible in the distance, despite the haze — country of the Dogon, his mother's people. Mabuli's northwest border curves with the escarpment, then stretches southwest towards the River Bani, finally working its way south through savannahs, wriggling down to the border with Côte d'Ivoire.

In the far north, a region of dry scrubland dwindles into the great desert out of which come traders, mostly Tuareg, a people restive, aggressive and, when, as now, they judge it fit, rebellious. His father claims ancestry with Kel Tamasheq, through Mapome's forebears — Mapome, whom he still mourns, who told a tale about her great-great-grandfather entertaining a short white king in his tent near the shores of the Red Sea, Sea of Qulzum, the Great Water. Not everyone believed his forebear met Napoleon, but they were rapt each time Mapome detailed the appointments in Atunkle's tent, so opulent they overwhelmed the emperor of ashen skin.

It is true one Professor Egbert Johnson, an Englishman who was a member of Napoleon's team of scholars, returned to Mabuli with Atunkle, but less certain that he was responsible for disseminating the English language long before the French came. Jimmy prefers another tale, about the Tellem people who lived on the Bandiagara before the Dogon, and who, it was believed, could fly. When some Tellem youth were stolen and sold to slave traders, a group of holy men flew to the coast and snatched an equal number of white men, depositing them in the desert north of Mabuli. They turned out to be English. Those who survived made their way south to barter and then intermarry with Mabuli clans, bringing the gifts of blood and language at once.

As so often happens, the truth very likely lay somewhere between legend and history, but he treasures the myth of the avenging holy men who inadvertently made a present to the country of the English language. Like him, many young Mabulians are happy to be proficient in it. Often people will code switch, speaking French one minute, English the next. As a Jesuit in training, Jimmy had been glad of his fluency.

Thickets of kinkeliba and bakin gumbi spotting the steppes remind him of the dwindling benefits of the last wet season. Mabulians farm the green belt that runs south of the scrubland, continuing farther south over low hills, and then across flat country, ending in forested ranges near Côte d'Ivoire. On the Oti's counsel, farmers keep faith with Mabuli's sandy soils, inter-cropping annuals and perennials, employing neem, gum arabic, and balanzan trees to improve crop yields. For bees especially, the balanzans are vital. His father, Andri, was once a farmer growing sorghum on land in Oubisi, a town towards the south. As a boy, Jimmy worked in those fields. He also minded the family goats, for farmers were often pen-keepers as well, raising some sheep but mostly goats. Like many others, the Atules kept them for milk, cheese, and meat, but Pa Atule had grander plans and went into keeping pens for gain.

The Atules' migration to Benke, the capital in the north, was not desperate. Having learned many lessons from the droughts, his father wanted to form co-operatives for both pen-keepers and farmers. Benke was the obvious place to set them up, for in Benke everything and everyone are to be found. The co-operatives never got off the ground, and his father turned, disappointed, to buying and selling. The Atules grew rich from trading.

Now Jimmy stretches his ears past the clinic, trying to discover the bleating of MATE's own herd of goats. From Oubisi days, he's been a fan of goats, “because” his mother always claims, “you and they have so much in common! Stubborn and stink!” He checks his watch. He has a minute to reach the chapel. He'll steal some seconds to pause on his way past the visitor's room. Tiptoeing near the window, he slows down to listen. “Boy child,” he can again hear his Mama Makda say, as she pinches his ears, “rank as a goat, with antennae keen as a bat's!”

Grace Carpenter's exhalations are steady, regular, so he presses on to the chapel, his emotions contrary. It bothers him that he doesn't have more cordial feelings towards Dr. Carpenter, partly, he admits, because of what he may have to tell her in due course. In the small sanctuary he robes for Mass, giving thanks for all the women who stitch amice and alb, chasuble and stole, who see them prepared every day. His mother is one. He remembers the tiny needle prick on the day of his first Mass. They had that custom in St. Chris too: if you mend a garment on a person, you give them a little jab.

He counts hosts into the ciborium, for the six communicants: Monique, Tekawitha, Ousmain, Amitié, Elise, Lili. Then he sits in the chapel to consider again the events that brought him to this place, and his life since. If Dr. Carpenter has a reason for not telling her baby's father, it is none of his business, although no one is more aware than he why the father ought to know she is pregnant. He thinks of all his orphan babies. Dr. Carpenter may be a bright woman and a senior bureaucrat, but he has no doubt about who is in control as things stand. They will do what is necessary to secure her wellbeing and that of the baby. If that means she has to stay close to her room till it is safe to travel to Geneva, so be it. He isn't his father's son for nothing.

It is his tea break, ten stolen minutes before going to give classes to community workers at the centre. He blows on the hot liquid, reflecting. Their visitor hadn't known she was pregnant. He's yet to come across a woman at MATE who didn't know she was making a baby. Amitié, who runs the main house, arrived at Tindi self-diagnosed. A fusillade of thumps on his door early one morning brought him out of bed, sure the house was on fire. She wasn't twenty, her face and body a mosaic of cuts, scabs, and bruises.

“Vous
êtes
le prêtre, Atule?”

“C'est moi.”

“Je suis enceinte, et j'ai aussi le SIDA. C'est mon mari. He gave the baby and The Skinny to me.”

“Come,” he led her inside, through the corridor, down to the room they sometimes used as a surgery. Whatever else might be wrong, she was severely beaten. Ousmain slept on the floor on his mat at the T-junction of the corridors. He nudged the young man awake.

“Find Sœur Monique, vite!”

They spent two hours cleaning her wounds, stitching, bandaging, plastering, patching up her body.

“Did you report this?” Monique asked her.

“How can I? It is my husband's doing.”

“You can report it to the Oti,” the nun insisted. “Your clan chief must take it to them, if you inform him.”

“Ce n'est rien. Heal my baby. Give me the chance to bring him up.”

“But why did he do this?” pressed Monique, a terrier, bone in her teeth.

“He was away. He went with whores. I tell him no sex. You are sick.”

“What did he say?”

“ ‘The day I bought you, you swallowed the word “no.” I will show you that you cannot vomit “no” upon me.' ”

Neither Jimmy nor Monique saw how she could be so sure she had AIDS.

After a week at the centre she came to Monique. “Je vais bien, oui?”

“Yes, your cuts and bruises are healing well, Amitié.”

“Je partirai demain
.
I cannot go to my home, but my place is needed for those more sick.” It was true. A dozen new people came to Tindi each day.

“Where will you go? What about your children?”

“Ma mère. She is strong. That man will not cross her. The twin healing women say a grandmother in town is dying. Her body is full of sores, and no one wants to look after her. I will care for her in return for lodging and food. The priest says maybe I can have the test in Benke. I pray it may be so.”

She tested HIV-positive. Her baby came on the date she'd named. In between, she stuck to her plan, guarding her health, tending the old woman until she died. After that Monique suggested they try her out at the centre.

Jimmy asked Amitié how it was she knew that she had the disease.

“This body is my home. I know if there's a guest or if the building needs repair.” Perhaps he should ask Amitié to consult in the case of Dr. Carpenter.