Thirty Girls (12 page)

Thursday or Friday, Lana said, proud to know.

Don consulted his watch. February the eighth, he said.

My brother’s birthday, Lana said sleepily.

I didn’t know you had a brother, Don said.

Yes. From my father. Different mother.

Where is he? Don said.

François? Who knows. I haven’t seen him in years. She was in the front seat, leaning against the passenger door, facing the back.

Pierre’s eyes opened. I saw him a couple of years ago in Cape Town.

That’s right, you did. Still in Cape Town, then, I guess, she said. He got a girlfriend pregnant who wasn’t really his girlfriend. So he married her. Then he was trying to get his pilot’s license but had high blood pressure and was barred from applying and ended up dealing drugs.

More lucrative, Pierre said.

He must have the baby now.

Yes, a boy.

Another nephew, Jane said. Being an aunt was a thing you could be proud of, without having done a single thing. Her sister’s three children gave Jane that feeling.

I guess, Lana said.

Wow, said Don. I don’t have a brother, but I honestly can’t imagine not knowing where he was or if he had children.

Lana regarded him with a cool glance, considering a response, deciding something about Don. She said nothing.

Don had two children, Jane knew from Lana, though she hadn’t heard him mention them himself. He’d recently gotten divorced from his college girlfriend, a woman who ran a successful children’s clothing line. When his wife caught him having an affair with her assistant they split. According to Don, it had been coming for a long time. That’s why he was here, he told Lana, seeing something of the world and not working for a change.

No one knows where I am, Jane said. Not specifically.

Her sister, Marian, had complained of it last summer, when Jane was visiting in New Jersey. They were with the kids at the town swimming pool, a compound with yellow bathhouses enclosed by a chain-link fence where Jane was mesmerized by four different pools, all crowded
with people. The vast wading pool where they set up camp looked like a feeding frenzy of sharks. Children shot out of the water, gasping for breath, splashing into each other with stiff arms. Some ran in slow motion through the choppy waves. Marian’s children had been shy about learning to swim—nervous in the surf at the seashore, clinging to the side of a neighbor’s placid pool—until they came here. After the first few moments observing the mayhem, they jumped in and were happily dunking underwater. Chaos was apparently less intimidating.

Marian spread sunscreen in brisk strokes over her son’s shoulders, then applied what remained to her own face. How am I supposed to know where you are? she said, looking at Jane with a worried expression which Jane had grown accustomed to seeing when she was the subject of discussion. Jane found it genuinely hard to believe she mattered enough for Marian to care. She would come back. Jane was still young enough to think people always returned and the people left remained there where you’d left them.

People know where I am, Harry said. If they love me. Harry seemed to be visiting the conversation, rather than joining it, as if he had other, more interesting things to occupy himself. Jane wondered who Harry’s people were and how many were women.

My family never knows where anyone is, Lana said. Unless they’re dead.

I know precisely where my parents are, Pierre said. I could tell you what chairs they are sitting in depending on the time of the day.

Do they keep track of you? Jane said.

Pierre looked at her with his bedroom eyes. They think so.

Harry, forward on the steering wheel, was studying the sky through the windshield. The sun was white in a white sky. The land now was a flat floor of sandy dirt with dry brush and farther off gentle hills curved into small peaks like meringues and dark-gray clouds hovered like torpedoes. A humid wind blew in the open windows making whirlpools of everyone’s hair.

Harry downshifted, and the truck bumped to a stop.

Now what? Don said, disapproving.

Stopping, said Harry. Jane saw he had his eye on the peaked hills.

Lunchtime, said Lana.

They unbent themselves and stepped into wildly quiet air. Jane walked along a dusty strip butted up against a glassy marsh and crouched behind a bush. Thin grasses trembled in the heat. On the other side Pierre stood peeing behind some spindly trees, gazing out. Lana spread out a red and black Maasai blanket on the ground and in moments had cheese set on a rock and the top unscrewed on a jar of chili paste. We’ve delicious chipatas, she said, and pickles. She laid the beer bottles on their sides. She stood up and retied the yellow and crimson kanga around her waist, then settled back down. I’m going to eat and nap, she said. Thank you very much. She patted the blanket beside her. Come on, Don. Picnic.

I’m going on a recky, Harry said. He bit into the triangular dough of a chipata and set off toward gumdrop silhouettes of rocks. Maybe he could fly here on the way back.

Can I come? Jane said. Her legs felt rubbery, her body still vibrating. A walk would be good.

Karibu anyone, he said, jumping a wet ditch.

Moi aussi, Pierre said. He bent over the blanket, carefully selected a chipata, and followed, camera against his chest.

We should be going in half an hour, Don said. If we want to make it before nightfall. Don had been studying the maps.

No worries, Harry called back.

Lana put her hand on Don’s back and smiled. The smile seemed to confuse him. It made her smile harder. As Jane walked away she heard, Apparently I must make you relax again.

The bumps of grass were wet and Jane’s sneakers were soon soaked. Patches of water whitely reflected the sky. She followed Harry toward a cluster of rocks which up close looked like a wall of mangled teeth jumbled together. After ten minutes they reached the rocks where it was drier. Smaller rocks were scattered as if a fortress had been toppled. They followed Harry up the side and at the top found themselves on an escarpment of rocky towers that made a cliff stringing off to the east. The formation was not visible from the road, but Harry had detected it. The cliff dropped steeply to a plain below, disappearing in haze.

Harry walked, and now and then jumped, along the ruined ramparts. Pierre gave Jane a leg up to the ridge, then stepped down to a lower
pathway, pensively unscrewing the cap of his camera. Harry looked back at Jane.

It’s like climbing a stone wall sideways, she said.

They pulled themselves up each high tower, topped with a smooth lidlike slab of rock. From one, they looked back to the road.

I don’t see them, Jane said. Only the car was visible.

Maybe she’s eaten him alive, Harry said. But he was studying the sky.

Is it a good place to fly?

Might be.

He leapt across to the next rock. Jean stepped down, then climbed up to the next slab, perfectly round and gently concave like a saucer. Below, Pierre was a face behind a camera. She stood at the edge, facing the plain, looking past her wet sneakers. Looking at a wide space you felt something wide also expand in you as if your chest were a mirror. On one side of the saucer was a pile of flat rocks, a sort of miniature tower. In nature things reiterated themselves. She crouched down and reached for the lid on top and her arm was suddenly jerked back.

Watch it. It was Harry, holding her arm in a tight grip. Drop it, he said.

She set the rock down. He had her step back, holding her wrist. He balanced on one leg and flipped the rock off with his toe. Curled inside, as if in a jar, was a coiled snake, the bright blue color of Windex.

Never pick up rocks around here, Harry said.

Jesus. What is it? Is it dead?

I’d guess sleeping. But let’s not find out. It’s a viper. Nasty little buggers.

Yikes. Thanks.

No worries. He let go of her wrist and gave her a look that she felt in her knees. She turned away. Whatever it was her face might show she felt was also dangerous for him to see.

The bridge was still out at Malaba, so they chose the southern route to cross the border. They knew it was near when more people appeared on the road walking. There were not more cars, only more people, till a steady stream lined the road. By the time they arrived at the gates and
booths, it was a bustling crowd. Some people were dressed in sharp, clean clothes, buttoned up, belted, women in dresses. Others wore tattered shirts. Everyone, Jane noticed, was lean. People pushed bicycles. Children ran, women walked slowly with a stately air. Jane noticed the women rarely moved quickly. They were not hurriers. An emaciated Maasai man rearranged his plaid shuka over his bony shoulders. He might have gotten here after walking nonstop for days, the way the Maasai traveled.

Tension gathered in the car. Lana and Harry said that border crossings were only an opportunity for officials to mess with you. Everyone got out with their passports and stepped stiffly onto the scruffy green porch of a wooden building. They filled out passport cards, writing against the wall. Harry took the clutch of passports and cards and various papers involving the car and pushed them through a window. Jane stood beside him and watched as the papers were carried by a young man in a white shirt across the room to another man in a white shirt, sitting at an empty table chatting with a shapely woman in a skirt. He did not acknowledge the arrival of papers; he and the woman were laughing. After a while he looked to the desk in front of him, still talking, and eventually picked up some of the documents. The woman opened a file cabinet behind him, so he had to crane his neck to keep speaking to her, holding a passport in the air. He shook his head and faced back to the papers. She kept talking and he nodded, making slow marks on the papers, smiling. He did not once look toward Harry, waiting at the window beside Jane.

Pierre was out on the porch, talking to a little boy. Don handed some coins to another child, who looked at them eagerly, then hurried away, trying to hide a satisfied expression. Moments later, he returned with a half-dozen children who swirled around and mobbed Don.

At last the passports came back through the window. Quick, Lana said in the doorway. Let’s go.

They walked across the dusty lot, finished with Kenyan customs, to customs on the Ugandan side. Things there were decidedly more spiffy. The building was new, made from cement blocks. A uniformed man singled out Lana and Harry for their Kenyan passports, and escorted them to a room where they sat before another uniformed man at a desk. Here they were questioned with a decided lack of urgency.

Why, please, were they traveling to Uganda? What sort of holiday? The man patted the desk quietly. Who were they staying with in Kampala? Lana gave him the names of her friends on Lake Victoria. What sort of work did the McAlistairs do? They are not Ugandan? No, they are Scottish, Lana said. They work as sound engineers for parties and are starting a computer consulting company. The word
computer
made the man’s mouth turn down. Some things were suspicious. They knew not to announce themselves as journalists or photographers.

When Lana and Harry came out, they hurried toward the truck where doors were open, the others drinking Fanta and collecting interested glances.

They crossed the border. As soon as they entered Uganda the landscape changed. The roads were sturdier and the vegetation lush. Blue hills in the distance became lumpy silhouettes as the sky brightened before the sun set. In the car a silence collected, as if the new country was already alerting them to the differences they might find in themselves here.

They drove through darkness. It was late when they reached the streetlights marking the outskirts of Jinja. They spotted a pink neon sign and stopped at a Chinese restaurant. The deserted parking lot was tinged pink, and the truck was bathed in pink when they got out. They entered an empty restaurant. A large silver fan covered one wall, and on a mantel running the length of the room were inch-high soldiers fighting each other.

They sat down and were given menus by a stooped Asian man. Everyone looked tired. Pierre held his camera in front of his face and was panning the room as if it were a periscope. Don observed the menu, chin tucked in, noting the large selection of chow mein. Well, Fung Yu, too, he said.

Jane had taken her notebook out, but was writing nothing.

Pierre lowered his camera. So, Don, what’s your story?

Don looked at him with an insulted expression. What do you mean?

Pierre seemed pleased.

Don is what you would call a successful businessman, Lana said.

Are you?

Some of us have to bother with the practicalities of the world, Don said. I know it’s boring. He was looking for the waiter.

The waiter came and took their orders. He did not meet anyone’s eye. What business exactly? Pierre said.

Don took a deep breath. It’s not creative like you all. Then he began to explain. Harry drank his beer and regarded him with interest.

Jane compared what he said with what Lana had told her, that he bought failing companies, fixed them up, then resold them. Don was describing it rather differently with more technical terms. He did say he was here taking a break from the grind. Jane started writing in her book. The thought of Jake appeared, altered at this distance. She remembered how he had signed up for a business course at night, then it turned out he was spending the Tuesday nights at high-stakes poker games in hotels around New York. Soon came phone calls from strange men asking for payments. Then another image of Jake came to her, one that came often, of the day he sat slumped in the chair reserved for him, in the middle of that empty room, facing the semicircle of family and friends, as they itemized one after another their disappointments and grievances against him. He was wearing his motorcycle jacket and a tie. His chin dropped down further with each strained utterance from the mortified family and friends who were being made to speak. Among them, she remembered, was the boss who studied bats, with pointed ears resembling a bat himself. Jake looked at none of them, and it seemed unlikely he was going to. His head remained bowed with humiliation; then she realized, of course, that he had fortified himself with an injection before arriving at this appointment with his older, disapproving brother. An intervention it was called. It still gave Jane an odd, fluttery feeling to remember it. The facilitator, a very thin man, put the question to him: Was he willing to get help, or have everyone here cut ties with him if he did not? There was a great silence. Jake, his mother said. A lawyer with a gray bob, she had long given up on him. What? he said. He looked at everyone with hatred then stood up like a weak wave rising. Anything else? he said, and walked out of the room. His dismissal of them was so breathtaking and absolute it still shocked her to think of it. She was divorced from him by then, though they were still meeting in secret and having sex. But none of the others knew that.