Thirty Girls (34 page)

He has been very generous. Jane looked over to Don by the open door of the truck, brushing white dust off the rear of his pants. Five thousand dollars is a great deal for us here and will do much to help the children. He bowed a little to her, making her feel ashamed.

Sitting behind in the truck she found that the back of Don’s head had a new look to it. Harry’s arm, stretched across the seat back, was different too, not hers anymore, maybe more beautiful.

Driving away, Jane saw Esther walking with another girl, their fingers hooked together. Then they separated and Esther moved off on her own.

The truck passed a marsh lit orange in the late sun, dipped deeply to one side and stopped. Harry revved the accelerator a couple of times without enthusiasm. He got out, and Jane saw in his face he knew they were stuck. Both right wheels were sunk in soft mud. He and Don tried rocking the truck, then kicking stones and soil to fill the puddle.

People appeared from out of nowhere. At first they stood, watching, then without being asked, bent to their knees and dug with their hands. Don and Harry planted their shoulders against the fender and when the wheels spun were sprayed with mud. Someone offered a flimsy piece of cardboard which was slipped under the wheel, and that miraculously gave it the traction to move.

They drove away from waving figures. Jane and Lana climbed out the windows onto the roof and sat in the hot wind, watching a low apricot sun in the haze. At the main road, Harry stopped to let them in, but they stayed up there. The land spread around them, an open world. Jane felt the pulse of the music in her thighs through the roof. It had the sound of the other life they were returning to, which would be different now.

When would they leave her? When would she stop thinking of them? She would write about the children and eventually they would retreat to a place in the back of her mind. She would need to stop thinking about them and eventually would. They would stop being foremost in her mind, as they were now. She was already ashamed of abandoning them, but there it was. Recognizing it did not make her any less helpless before it. She thought of the girl Esther and of her fierce eye frowning and her soft voice and being next to her arm to arm. The truck picked up speed on the main road and Jane felt the sky expanding in her.

They pulled over at a dusty lot to a yellow shed that had pictures of fruit and milk bottles on the side. Pierre went in and emerged with bags and handed warm beer and bananas up to the roof. Both were delicious. They bumped back onto the road. The sun was now shocking-pink and transparent just above the trees. Jane and Lana stayed on the roof in the thick, hot wind. Harry handed them beers from the driver’s window. Jane wasn’t ready to get back in. She and Lana stayed out as long as there was light.

They would definitely be driving back in the dark now.

The night was black and the road undefined. There were no streetlights or lit windows. Now and then they passed a bare bulb on a pole lighting a closed door. Shadowy figures were seen for a moment, then would disappear. A few darted across the street, picked out by the farthest headlights.

Do these people want to die? Don said. His tone was not dismissive, but genuine with wonder.

Farther south more cars appeared, often with no headlights themselves. One massive truck barreled out of the blackness straight for them. Harry swerved, face steely, the others poised and alert. No one said it, but they were all relying on Harry. Lana and Pierre clutched hands. Jane sat lightly in her seat, her arm against Lana’s, bracing herself inwardly, but she felt it as a distant fear. In the wake of all they’d seen and heard this fear seemed really rather small.

IX

Spiral

A
FTER THE JOURNALISTS LEFT
I went to my bed and lay on the top bunk.

I was full, like a barrel. I got down from my bed and thought, I will walk to a place behind the tents where I went other times alone. So I went there. It was near dinnertime and the birds were coming out to sing, but I heard little outside the silence in me. I had the face of the lady from America in front of me and thought again of what I had said today. I stood by a tree I knew. My whole body was an ache. I touched that tree and lay myself against it. It was like being close to a person and for that reason you cry on them. I coughed and a sob came out of me like a cork popping from that barrel. I bent to the ground and my crying began. It rolled throughout like a storm. There was not enough space in me to keep it.

My face was sideways on the dirt. I forgot where I was, hardly even a person curled into a ball. My hand hit the ground and the sobbing went on and I pounded more. I did not feel my fist. I also banged my head, then I hit at my head, beating myself. I beat myself as we did that girl
from Gulu, the one we killed. My chest was breaking apart. A chunk split off and another wave of crying came and when I thought there was no more to break another piece would crack off. I could not breathe. I gasped at air. I thought of Janet saying, the heart is endless like God is endless, and I thought, My heart will be endlessly breaking. I wondered, even as I cried, How will this stop? It had to stop. Did it not?

I may die from it, I thought. I had survived many things, but now I would die of this. I even wished I would die and the wishing made more tears come.

Then my fist was limp beside my face and it was quiet. Some time passed, I don’t know how long.

I must have moved closer to the tree, because later I woke close to it. Ants were moving on my leg. The boulder in my throat was gone and instead I felt a space open in me. The space was soft. I sat up and brushed my shirt. I sat for a while. The bush had a few evening sounds but was more quiet.

When I stood up I had a feeling of peace. This was new. I walked without any other feeling back to camp. Dinner had been served and the children were sitting at the tables. Janet and Holly looked at me troubled, but I answered them with a peaceful face. I sat with them on the bench and listened. The sound of everyone talking was like a pretty song. People were like bells, each one ringing his or her own special sound.

After that day, when I see a person cry I see they are on their way to feeling better. Since that day I cried my heart onto the ground I am feeling a change might come to me.

I remember the lady from America and the journalists who were here. I remember they had been our friends.

This morning we are under the tree with some girls doing crochet. It is sunny and not so dusty after rain last night. The air is fresh. Simon is by himself on the playing field, kicking a ball with his crooked leg. Beside me Holly shakes bugs from her yarn. She is making yellow socks. She has no baby in mind, but says there will always be a baby coming to someone. Yellow works for a boy as well as a girl. She may offer them to Paulette, the new girl.

More boys run onto the field.

What are you watching out there? Emily says.

I do not answer. A few boys run around with Simon. It is not time yet for football or shop. It is still free time. Simon’s face turns toward the shade where we are and maybe he can see me. I think he finds my eye.

He starts running and does a little
one-two-three
move with the football, which ought to be wobbly with his warped leg, but he is like a goat, keeping his balance. When he kicks it to another boy, he bends low to the side. I feel the pull.

The last time I ran hard was when I was escaping. My arms hug my solid legs, my chin is on my knees. The girls, heads bent, talk like insects humming on a hot day. When Simon runs he dips from side to side, not showing on his face that it is hard for him. The ball is kicked hard and comes sailing off the field and rolls behind our tree where we sit. Simon runs toward it, running toward us. No girls notice, they are talking, and I do not know why, but I stand up and walk to the ball stopped against a dried-out log. I become someone else for a minute, someone happy. I put my foot on that ball.

Esther! Simon calls. Kick it!

I toe it with my sandal.

Pass! Come on! Here!

I pick it up to throw it. No, I say to myself. I pull back my foot and kick it. It goes sailing up higher than any of us thought. It goes to the other side of the field nearly to the marsh. Simon turns to chase it.

Do I stay? No. Do I walk back to the shade and sit? No. I run onto that field.

I run with the boys. I chase one with the ball and catch him and kick the ball from his feet. I am faster than some of them, I feel even faster than myself.

In the morning we wake and find Carol not in her bunk. Holly said she heard some movement in the night of her leaving. A search for her begins.

Later they find her in the marsh, drowned with her face in shallow water.

Her parents do not come. They tell us her parents are dead. We do not believe it. Carol knew her parents were not taking her back. She did not want to live more. Are we surprised? No.

We understand. Some of me goes with her now she is dead. I let Carol take that part away, the part that would want to die. Instead I would want to live.

The next day while everyone is drawing I pick up a blue pencil and piece of paper and think maybe I will draw this day. I will not draw so much, but something. I put lines, making a river and trees beside it and waves bumpy in it. In the middle I make a round shape. I draw myself, watching. I feel Simon over my shoulder.

What is this, he says. A snake?

A river, I say. This was a girl named Mary.

He looks at my picture, not speaking. I do not want him to speak. Then he takes it from my hands. Maybe I will show you how to draw a tree, he says.

Much time passes and still we do not hear anything from the lady from America so we do not know if she has explained our story. I begin to think of the future. I think maybe I would like to be a teacher.

I’
M NOT WITH THIS
anymore, he said.

They were in Harry’s room off the long downstairs hall. He lay on the bed that was his bed as a boy, a single mattress against the wall. One arm was tucked under his head on a pillow without a pillowcase, the other lay inert by his side. Jane sat near his inert hand. He was keeping his arms to himself, arms which at another time would have been pulling Jane over to him.

When I’m done with something, he said, that’s it.

His words struck like a bolt. She felt she was no longer sitting on the bed, but hovering above it.

She looked at his face, then away. Looking at him was not better, it was harder.

Okay, she said. On the floor by her feet was a straw rug with woven giraffes. She wasn’t going to fight it. How could she anyway? What could she say?

Should I go? she said.

No. He frowned. You stay. But I think I’m going to go flying with Andy. Go on a mission.

She waited.

There’s this place we’ve been wanting to check out.

Oh?

He didn’t say anything.

Where? she said.

In Marsabit.

She nodded. She had no idea where that was. There was silence. When? She said it as a double question, as if asking if she could ask.

Tomorrow.

She kept nodding. You should, she said. That’ll be good. And I should get to work.

His parents were leaving for a week, but she could stay in the guesthouse, he said, or whichever house she wanted. She said that would be great. She could start on the story with her impressions fresh. She didn’t say it would be good to concentrate on something other than him. Was it really okay with his parents?

Totally cool, he said. I’ll make sure with my mom.

She sat up and took a breath, not to look downcast. How long? she said, and immediately tried again with lightness. I mean, when will you be back?

He shrugged. He didn’t need to tell her these things now. It wasn’t her business so much anymore. She stood, releasing him.

Not too long, he said.

They’d gotten back to Nairobi that afternoon. Pierre was unceremoniously dropped off at a friend’s empty house in Karen, and when they stopped at Lana’s there were no invitations to come in for a drink or have dinner later. Don sauntered toward the cottage, carrying bags, and Lana stood at the truck window. She reached into the cab and her hand warmly pressed Jane and Harry, acknowledging the value of the trip. Then she sighed. Now how I am going to get rid of Don?

Jane returned with Harry to his house where she’d left some of her
things. They unpacked the truck and threw out the trash in bins in the garage. Harry led her and her bag through the kitchen past a large living room set off by steps, with wide couches of no arms and a massive stone fireplace. A two-story glass window overlooked a lawn ending in dark woods topped with the bluish peaks of the Ngong Hills above. The last room at the end of the wing was his sister’s unused room. Emma had been living in Ireland for some years with her husband and children, having moved to where it was safer to raise a family. On one wall was a woodblock portrait of Mandela, and in a frame a photograph of young Emma and Harry cuddling a cheetah. The big house felt particularly solid and polished after the last two weeks.