The Garden of Burning Sand

by Corban Addison

  “He’s not on rotation this morning,” Joy replied, picking up her pace. She quickly took charge of the nurses. “Give us a little space, please,” she said.

  When they stepped back, Zoe took out an iPod and put the headphones on the girl’s ears. She selected the new playlist and stood back, watching as the music performed a feat that seemed almost magical. Like a lamp lit on a dark night, the soulful acoustic notes of John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane” chased away the girl’s turmoil. She placed her hands on the headphones, as if willing the song not to end.

  Joy uncovered the girl’s legs and swung them over the edge of the mattress. “Help me lift her,” she said to Zoe.

  The limpness of the girl’s frame made her ungainly to carry, but together Joy and Zoe scooped her up and placed her feet solidly on the ground. When the girl stood on her own, she glanced around the room and blinked, looking disoriented. Joy knelt down in front of her and removed the headphones briefly.

  “It’s time to go now,” she said in a soft voice. “I need you to walk with us.”

  Joy stood again and took the girl’s hand, tugging her toward the door. The girl hesitated a moment longer and then followed in Joy’s wake, clutching Dr. Chulu’s monkey in her free hand. Her gait was slow and she walked with a slight limp, favoring her right leg. Zoe strolled beside her, holding the iPod and keeping the cable from tangling.

  Eventually, they emerged into the sunshine. The Prado was waiting for them at the curb. Maurice opened the back door, and Joy and Zoe helped the girl onto the vinyl bench.

  “I’ll ride with you,” Joy said. She slid in beside the girl, and Zoe climbed in after her.

  The girl seemed to startle when the vehicle began to move. She looked around and let out a low moan. Joy took her hand again and squeezed. “I bet all of this is unfamiliar to her,” Joy said. “Her family probably didn’t take her outside much.”

  When Zoe frowned, Joy explained herself. “It’s the stigma. Zambians think children with intellectual disabilities are cursed, so parents keep them locked up inside to avoid being judged. Sometimes the neighbors don’t even know they’re there.”

  The St. Francis Home for Children was located on a rocky plateau on the outskirts of Lusaka near the international airport. Every time she visited, Zoe was struck by the contrast between the arid expanse surrounding the home and the lushness of the property itself. The drive was rimmed with bougainvillea, and at its center was the largest poinsettia tree she had ever seen.

  Maurice parked the Prado at the entrance, and the ladies from Social Welfare pulled in behind them. A gray-haired nun in a green and white habit stood in front of the low-slung building. She smiled when she saw Zoe.

  “Sister Anica,” Zoe said, taking the nun’s hand.

  “I’m so happy to see you again,” the nun replied in a soft Slavic accent.

  They turned toward the Prado and watched Joy help the girl out. Zoe could hear the faint strains of “Fields of Gold” emanating from her headphones. Joy knelt in front of the girl and uncovered her ears, placing the headphones and iPod in the girl’s pocket.

  “We’re here,” she said. “You’re going to like this place.” Taking the girl’s hand, she stood again and greeted Sister Anica. “She hasn’t spoken yet, but she’s quite fond of music.”

  The nun smiled at the girl and nodded to the ladies from Social Welfare. “Come, this way,” she said, gesturing toward a pair of rosewood doors standing open to admit the breeze.

  They followed Sister Anica down a hallway decorated with the drawings of children to a courtyard dominated by playground equipment and a majestic acacia thorn tree. There, Sister Anica introduced Zoe to a diminutive young nun with tropical blue eyes.

  “Sister Irina will take you from here,” she said. “The rest of us have paperwork to finish.”

  After Sister Anica departed with Joy and the social workers, Sister Irina knelt down before the girl. “I am Irina,” she said. “Can I be your friend?” The girl hung her head shyly, and the nun smiled. “That’s okay. We can talk about it later.”

  She led them down a breezeway to a brightly painted room with an array of toys. Two children with Down syndrome sat by the wall, playing with dolls. An older child with cerebral palsy sat in a special chair by the window, listening to a story read by an elderly nun.

  Zoe saw an electric piano on the floor beside a stuffed bear. She found the power switch and hit one of the keys. The piano began to play “Fur Elise.” A smile blossomed slowly on the girl’s face, and she made a sound reminiscent of air being released from a balloon. She touched one of the keys, then another. While she was occupied, Sister Irina took Zoe aside.

  “This is very unusual for us,” she said. “All our children are orphans. If she has a family, we don’t want her to get too attached.”

  “We’re doing our best to locate them,” Zoe assured her.

  The nun looked toward the acacia tree, its limbs framed by the cobalt sky. “The things men do to children. Our rule teaches us to be merciful. But this … I tremble to say it, but I feel wrath. You must find the man who did this and put him in prison.”

  Zoe met her eyes. “We’ll get him,” she promised.

  After returning to the CILA office, Zoe spent the afternoon pretending to research a point of British evidentiary law on which the Zambian courts had yet to rule. In fact she was thoroughly preoccupied by her father’s email. She was trapped and she knew it. She could neither avoid a response nor deny his request—to do so would dissolve the goodwill she had succeeded in rebuilding when he and Sylvia had met her for dinner in South Africa at the end of her clerkship.

  She sat by the window, pondering the contradictions in their relationship. Eleven years ago he had betrayed her with a kiss and she had run from him, until she realized she was a kite on a string, beholden to him still. Her charitable trust—a creation of her mother’s will—was not yet hers, and the man who managed it was her father’s puppet. Atticus Spelling, an octogenarian curmudgeon in New York, had vetoed many of her donations over the years, citing concerns about the fiscal discipline of the charities she favored. If not for her father’s intervention, Spelling would have withheld funding from half a dozen small nonprofits doing life-saving work in southern Africa, including Special Child Advocates and St. Francis. Zoe hated the subterfuge, but she was bound to it until her thirtieth birthday.

  When five o’clock came, she finally sent an email accepting her father’s invitation. Then she left the office and climbed into her Land Rover, sitting for a moment before starting the engine. She watched the lavender jacaranda blooms dance in the wind and tried not to think about Friday night. After a while, she started the SUV and pulled into traffic, taking Independence Avenue toward Kabulonga.

  When she arrived at her apartment complex, she greeted the guard at the gate and parked beside a hedge of bird of paradise. Entering her apartment, she threw her backpack on the couch and went to her bedroom to change into her swimsuit. The air was cool in the falling light, and the pool would be frigid, but she didn’t care. She had grown up swimming in the North Atlantic.

  The gardens were deserted when she arrived. The pool had an emerald tint and its surface was dotted with wind-blown jacaranda blossoms. She set her iPhone on a lounge chair and took off her T-shirt and shorts. Putting on her goggles, she entered the water with a shallow dive. The cold enveloped her, hammering her nerves and stealing her breath, but she turned discomfort into speed, churning the water with a power that had qualified her to compete in the NCAA swim championships at Stanford.

  After twenty laps, she pulled herself out and sat on the edge, drinking in the last golden drops of sunlight. A memory came to her from when she was fourteen: her mother on the beach at the Vineyard house, a blue and white scarf trailing in the stiff wind. Storm clouds blowing in from the south, turning the surface of Eel Pond into slate. Emerging from the water into the warm embrace of a towel. Running toward the house as the raindrops began to fall. Lightn
ing searing the sky, thunder rumbling overhead. And her mother’s laughter, like grace notes in the chorus. It was Catherine’s last day on the Vineyard before she left for Somalia.

  When the pool fell into shadow, Zoe dried herself off and walked back to her apartment, thinking about dinner. Her iPhone rang just inside the front door. It was Joseph.

  “Mariam said to call you,” he began. “A woman in Kabwata filed a report about a missing girl with mental problems. She identified herself as a friend of the girl’s mother.”

  Zoe immediately forgot her hunger. “Are you going to talk to her?”

  “I’m five minutes from your apartment.”

  “I’ll meet you outside the gate.”

  The address given by the Kabwata police was on Chilimbulu Road, not far from East Point—a trendy discotheque known for turning up-and-coming Zambian bands into sensations. They parked outside a multi-story complex of flats and Joseph led Zoe to a ground-floor apartment. The door was slightly ajar, giving them a glimpse of the living area. A man about Zoe’s age was lounging on a couch watching television, while two girls—one adolescent, one younger—and a woman in chitenge tended the stove in the kitchen. The air was thick with the aroma of cooking vegetables and nshima—Zambian maize.

  The man came to the door when Joseph knocked. He glanced at Joseph and looked at Zoe. She put her thumbs in the pockets of her jeans and stared back at him.

  “I’m Officer Kabuta,” Joseph said in English. “I’m looking for Priscilla Kuwema.”

  “What do you want?” the man asked in a thick Bemba accent.

  “I need to speak with her,” Joseph replied.

  “And the muzungu?”

  “She’s with me.”

  The man shrugged and called out to the woman before returning to the couch. The woman frowned and said something to the girls. Then she walked to the door, her face a mask.

  “Are you Priscilla Kuwema?” Joseph asked.

  The woman nodded slowly.

  “You filed a missing-person report at the Kabwata Police Post?”

  “Yes.”

  Joseph took out his camera and displayed the image of the girl. The woman stared at the photo, then turned her gaze to the floor. “Where is she?” she asked, looking ashamed.

  “In a safe place.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Some people found her in Kanyama two nights ago.”

  The woman glanced at the man on the couch.

  “Your husband?” Joseph asked.

  “No, no,” she said, flustered. “My husband is in Kitwe. He works the mines.”

  Joseph raised his eyebrows. “I need to ask you some questions. Can we sit down?”

  The woman hesitated before nodding. She exchanged a few words with the man, her tone apologetic. The man reacted angrily, delivering her a sharp-tongued rebuke. The woman hung her head, and her reply sounded to Zoe like a plea. The man glared at her and stomped out of the apartment, bumping Zoe’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry.” The woman looked shaken. “He’s my … cousin. He thinks he lives here.”

  She took a deep breath and gestured toward the couch, offering them water or beer.

  “A Mosi would be nice,” Joseph said. “I’ll try to be brief.”

  “Water,” Zoe said when the woman looked at her.

  A minute later, she returned with a beer and a bottle of water, both chilled. She sat on the couch, folded her hands in her lap, and began to speak.

  “I walked with my … cousin to the market. Bright, my eldest, has a boyfriend who lives in the building. He was here with her. Gift, my youngest, was also here. Kuyeya—that is her name, this girl—was in the back room. Bright says she and her boyfriend were only gone a minute. I don’t know if I believe them. They disappear sometimes. Gift told me she went down the street to play. I don’t know why she didn’t take Kuyeya. She usually does.” The woman shrugged. “The door was open when I came home. Kuyeya must have left.”

  “What time was that?” Joseph asked.

  “About nineteen hundred hours. It was after dinner.”

  “And after dark,” Zoe clarified, scanning the apartment with her eyes. Beyond the living room and kitchen, she saw a hallway with three doors, all closed.

  The woman nodded. “None of the neighbors saw her.”

  “Why does Kuyeya live with you?” Zoe asked.

  The woman looked away. “Her mother died two years ago. She has no other family.”

  Zoe traded a glance with Joseph, concealing her frustration. “Where is her father?”

  The woman shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Kuyeya has light skin.”

  “So did Bella—Kuyeya’s mother.”

  “How did Bella die?” Zoe inquired.

  The woman fidgeted with her hands. “Va banthu. The illness came and never went away. I don’t know.” She glanced toward the kitchen. “Excuse me,” she said, leaving to stir the nshima.

  “She knows something she’s not saying,” Zoe whispered to Joseph.

  “Probably a lot of things,” he replied, “but we’re getting off track. We’re not here to talk about the girl’s mother.”

  He waited until the woman sat down again and then took over the interview. “What did you do when you found out Kuyeya was gone?”

  The woman blinked. “I talked to my daughters. I talked to people in the building.”

  “Did you look for her on the street?”

  She nodded. “Of course.”

  “Where might she have been going?”

  The woman shook her head. “Kuyeya is not like normal children. I don’t understand her.”

  “Does she have friends down the street?”

  “No. She usually stays in the back room.”

  “Your cousin,” Zoe said, “does he have friends nearby?”

  The woman narrowed her eyes. “He doesn’t know anything.”

  By that you mean exactly the opposite. “What does he do for a living?”

  “The better question,” Joseph interjected, “is what sort of car does he drive?”

  “He drives a jeep,” the woman said. “A red Toyota.”

  “Do you know anyone who owns a silver SUV?”

  The woman thought about this. “I don’t think so.”

  At this point Joseph broke the news. “Kuyeya was raped. Do you have any idea who might have done it?”

  The woman looked genuinely shocked. She stumbled over her words. “No, I … She never … How is she?”

  “She’s recovering.”

  The older of the woman’s daughters—Bright—approached shyly and spoke to her mother in Nyanja. She glanced at Joseph and Zoe and then returned to the kitchen.

  “Would you like to join us for dinner?” the woman asked.

  “No,” Joseph replied. “Will you be home tomorrow afternoon?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll come back then.”

  “She’s lying about her cousin,” Zoe said as soon as they were seated in Joseph’s truck. She studied his face in the darkness, wondering whether he would give her a window into his thoughts.

  “She is lying about the cousin,” he said, putting the truck in gear and pulling onto Chilimbulu Road. “But not because he had anything to do with the rape. He’s probably a live-in boyfriend. I’d guess she’s also lying about her husband. I doubt she has one. She had no ring on her finger or pictures of a man around.”

  “How do you know the cousin wasn’t involved?”

  “I didn’t tell her about the rape until the end of the conversation. She had no reason to lie when she said he went with her to the market. She also had no reason to lie about his vehicle. As it happens, I saw a red jeep in the lot when we pulled in. It’s more likely that the girl—Kuyeya—wandered out on the street like the woman said.”

  Zoe pursed her lips. “So we’re no closer to a suspect than we were before.”

  Joseph glanced at her. “We’ll find out more tomorrow.”

 
“Can I come with you?” she asked eagerly.

  He waited a beat before responding. “You have good instincts. And I need to talk to the neighbors. Perhaps you can ask Ms. Kuwema about the girl’s mother.”

  “I thought she wasn’t relevant,” Zoe retorted with a grin.

  He shrugged. “It would give you something to do.”

  “Other than bothering you?”

  “Precisely.”

  Chapter 4

  On Tuesday, Zoe left for work an hour early and took a circuitous route through Libala and Kabwata, following a hunch. She had slept poorly the night before, beset by dreams—half remembered, half imagined—of the young man in the bandana and his gang of hoodlums and of Priscilla Kuwema and the girl who had no family. When she woke again, she put the incident in Kanyama out of her mind and concentrated on the woman and the child. Something about the woman’s demeanor, about the man she had called her cousin and the back room where Kuyeya stayed, whispered of secrets buried just below the surface.

  She drove slowly down Chilimbulu Road and pulled to the shoulder. At seven thirty in the morning, the street was swarming with foot traffic—men sporting talktime dispensers, adolescent boys pushing carts overloaded with crates, children dressed in school uniforms heading to class, mothers in chitenge with infants strapped to their backs. A few hawkers tried to solicit her, but she ignored them, focusing on the apartment building where Priscilla Kuwema lived. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she had a feeling that morning might tell a different tale from evening.

  A red jeep sat empty at the edge of the parking lot. She stored its license-plate number in her iPhone and began taking pictures. The four-story edifice was constructed of reinforced concrete with an open-air stairwell and balconies barely large enough to accommodate a clothesline. The windows were louvered and covered with grates, but Zoe could see movement behind a number of them. At the base of the stairwell, a group of men stood smoking.

  After a minute, a young woman carrying a basket on her shoulder approached the men. One of the men gave her some money, and the girl handed him an oil-stained bag from her basket. Fritas, Zoe guessed. The girl then knocked on Priscilla Kuwema’s door. Zoe switched from photo to video and maxed out the zoom, hoping the cousin would answer the door. Instead, a different man appeared, wearing rumpled trousers and a tank top. He squinted at the girl, scratching the stubble on his cheeks. A moment later, Priscilla Kuwema stood in the doorframe, dressed in a miniskirt and a tight-fitting shirt. She gave the girl a wad of bills, took six bags, and closed the door.