Dear Exile

by Hilary Liftin

  As for me and the cybersex guy, we literally haven’t spoken since we acknowledged by email that the jig was up. I mean, I see him almost every day at work, or on the train to work, and we don’t look at each other. I think it’s silly, and I know I should just say something, but there are always crowds of people around. My latest idea is that I’ll tap him on the shoulder persistently saying, Excuse me (tap, tap), we had cybersex, excuse me.

  Delia just called. Oh, is it worth explaining? I’ve been kind of annoyed at Delia lately because she only, literally and astoundingly, only ever calls me when she wants something from me. I called her to send her an invitation to my party and she never called back, so I never invited her. But then, when she heard I was having a party, she went ahead and invited herself. Now, turns out, Stack got her number at the party and asked her out. It felt like a double betrayal. How did I find this out? Oh, because she just called me for Stack’s number. I thought for an instant that she was calling to say hi, but then, like magic, the reason emerged. Stack clearly isn’t gay, although I appreciate your confidence that someone who didn’t fall for me would have to be gay. Note: Stack specifically did not tell me he’d gotten Delia’s phone number and had decided to call her. How could he after what I had told him about her questionable behavior toward me?

  I don’t know why I’m surprised. This is exactly the way the world is. By believing that this level of loyalty was possible I have only furthered my chances at being disappointed in my friends. I’m embarrassed to be upset by this. I think I’m holding them to standards to which they are oblivious. I can’t believe I’m feeling possessive and competitive about my friends. Petty, right? I guess maybe I had more hope that Stack would like me than I knew. Or maybe it’s that I’m not involved in my work, only in finding new work. But also I don’t get what the model for friendship is in this time of life. Look at me—right now I’m trying to imagine why Delia and Stack won’t work out. Now my own behavior isn’t meeting my friendship standards. This whole thing makes me want to retreat, to stick to you, Steven, Emily, and a few other people I know I can trust to the South Pole and back. The hard part is that I think of Delia and Stack as falling into that category. It’s okay, it’s okay. There are good things in the air. (But, God, I’m still angry!)

  Spring is here, and Steven brought me to a sedate barbecue full of kind strangers last weekend on the Upper West Side. Two excellent doctors whom I met a year ago showed up and were talking like doctors. For example, Larissa was eating a hamburger and she said, “It’s funny that I’m eating this because I’m a vegetarian. (pause) My bone marrow is like, ‘Yes!’ ” They were talking about examining the rich and famous. The way they expressed this was by saying, “I did Nixon.” There were two doctors at the barbecue who had “done” Nixon, and Larissa had “done” Jackie O. A rectal exam to be specific. Larissa will be my new friend, I hope. She wants to set me up with her friend William Strong. That’s Dr. Strong to you and me.

  I’m ready for an introduction because yesterday I got my hair cut by April. She works in the Chelsea Hotel, alongside the ghosts of Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe and others. Hers is one of those intimidating salons where I feel like an inferior, if not unwelcome, client because my modeling career isn’t moving fast enough and because there are always supercool, grungy-but-coifed people hanging around and pushing out onto the window balconies for a cigarette or five. April cuts like Edward Scissorhands, shears and hair flying. I close my eyes and hope. This time she stood me up and, without warning, attacked my eyebrows with tweezers. I was powerless to interfere. She is an artist. I have been repaired.

  I’m glad you have a new friend, even if she doesn’t appreciate your cooking. You can have me over for coconut rice anytime. How about that husband of yours? Does it work for you to socialize together, or does he ditch you to go out drinking with the men? Can you hold hands in public? (Do you anyway? Turns out I can’t picture it.)

  One more thing. I summoned up all my courage to go talk nicely to my upstairs neighbor yesterday, to tell her that I hear every step she takes and every piece of furniture she moves, and she was sorry for being noisy and I was sorry the building is the way it is and still she woke me up this morning at six, apparently rearranging her living room. If she wanted wall-to-wall carpeting I would weave it for her. Yes, this is what I will do for love. I’m in love with a good night’s sleep. When I bought my apartment, with my last dime, I thought I was buying a life alone. I never thought my upstairs neighbor would turn out to be a bakery chef, requiring that she rise (“to make the donuts,” as she laughingly said. Ha ha ha.) at four in the morning.

  Lots of rest, care, affection, sympathy, empathy,

  goodwill, respect, loyalty, hugs and kisses,

  H

  P.S. It took me a few days to finish this and now that sponge is dead.

  KWALE

  June 20

  Dear Hil,

  You are very small and cute and un-fuzzy, which you reminded me by writing.

  I’m in the new staff room right now, between classes, and I just want to let you know that I still will never fit in fashion-wise. Yes, I wear my slip and skirt, but I can’t seem to ever keep them in good repair or to get them as clean as my colleagues do. These other women also tend to wear secondhand American prom dresses or gorgeous, brightly patterned African print tops and skirts. My sallow complexion can’t really carry it off, and I usually feel quite frumpy in my cotton tee shirts and long skirts. Just so you know I haven’t changed. The male teachers here at the school are very seventies-hip. I mean, Afros, tight tight bum-hugging dress pants, plasticky leather belts, often jewel-studded, with long-collared shirts and wide brown stripes with orange ties. They would probably be very into you in your new haircut.

  The staff room itself is amazing at the moment, even to me, and I consider myself somewhat used to things (having now lived here nine months already!). The next-door toilet (which, I’m told, has never worked) is overflowing into here, so there’s a quarter inch of, shall we say, not crystal clean water all over the floor. Teachers ate lunch in here yesterday, so there are bits of rice on all the rickety tables. Papers are scattered around and floating on the floor. The walls are filthy, having last been painted before Christ. Cockroaches crawl across the shelves, eating the rice and exploring the yellowed, gritty stacks of papers. The windows are mostly cracked with holes, and there are ripped and filthy curtains with a pattern of black and green flowers. Droppings and pieces of sand coat everything, making visible the vast expanses of cobwebs and spiders in every corner. The chairs are wobbly or have broken backs. The few books are tattered and look like they were printed a really long time ago. In a few minutes we’ll all drink hot sugar water and I’ll listen to talk about how dumb the students are and who should’ve gotten caned this morning. Yes, the school situation is still quite bad.

  Another problem is that Kwale Secondary School stinks. Literally. There aren’t any toilets other than the broken teacher-toilet, and there aren’t any usable choos either. We all use the woods. Dave and I estimated how much urine (not to mention anything else) gets dumped in the grounds around the classrooms and dorms daily: 200 gallons. So you can imagine how it smells. (Only, as you can imagine, urine isn’t the predominant smell.) The headmaster told the boys to walk farther away from the school when they go, “or else we will have an outbreaking of one of those funny-funny diseases.” It’s nasty.

  As for Dave, he’s pretty much doing how I’m doing. He teaches in two schools. In the morning he teaches at one, and then, because he has afternoons free, he joins me to teach at this school also. It means he has a lot of biking to do. This was a problem during the rains because the bike would have benefited from skis, and he needed to change clothes after riding because of the red mud that coated him from head to toe. But it’s okay now because the rains are over and the mud has dried out. The students love him to death, and when he got to the soccer field yesterday to watch their game they started cheering and yelling, �
�Mwalimu, Mwalimu!” (Teacher!) It was very cute. He’d told them he was going to “take a snap,” about which they were very excited. They were asking when he was going to take it and he said, “No, no, I said I would take you a snack! Here, I brought you some sukuma wiki (spinach).” They were totally confused but laughed when he took out the camera. You know, foreign-language jokes. He’s also the bug killer of the two of us. I pretty much avoid killing anything even if it’s poisonous and I really should. On the other hand, I’m the one who usually makes the chapati, which is not logical because his are better than mine. I suspect he resists cooking them because it pains him to put in as much fat as they need to make them tasty and crisp.

  Yesterday I noticed he had a huge blister on his finger so I, naturally, asked him what happened. He kind of mumbled and hedged a little and then finally explained that when he had finished flossing his teeth he had sat there with the dental floss without knowing what to do with it. He figured he might as well burn it. While holding it. As it turns out, African dental floss is explosive, so, even though he promptly dropped it (and the lighter, which shattered into a billion pieces as I later discovered in my bare feet), he still burned the hell out of his finger. Men.

  Meanwhile, a few days ago I managed to splatter some hot fat on my legs while overexuberantly flipping a frying chapati. I got some small but ugly burns on my legs. Mwanamisi saw them and told me the best thing to do was to put the medicine Colgate on them. I hope for her sake that toothpaste kills bacteria or something, since I’m sure she does that for herself and her kids.

  When we’re not trying to take teaching up to the level where we don’t want to kill ourselves and our students to put us out of our misery, we are having a great time here. The latest episode was being ushered into a tiny mud house decorated with millions of bits of colored rags tied from wires (like the colored triangles at a car dealer) for a welcome dance. Women tied kangas (sarilike cloths) around their butts to hang down like tails and shook their booties to the drumbeats. Yes, I tried to dance, but I couldn’t wiggle my patootie nearly quickly enough or long enough to consider it really dancing. The women were laughing and trying to push my rump back and forth appropriately. Meanwhile, the men were watching and drinking alcoholic home brew. (I confess to sneaking an unwomanly sip or two.) The cutest little girl in the world and an old woman with rotten teeth and a bald head did the Dance of the Butterfly together.

  Do you get that I still don’t know what you actually do at work? Will I still be your friend even if I call you because I want something?

  Still love,

  Kate

  P.S. Hi there Hilary. Kate really liked the mbangara. She is trying to convince me that she has malaria. I think it’s just because she doesn’t know how to say “hangover” in Kiswahili.

  Dave

  KWALE

  June 28

  Dear Hil,

  You know how I said that Kwale is better than Ramisi? Well, not in the schools. Dave is getting gray hairs. (Keep in mind people all over Kenya consider Kwale High to be one of the best schools in the Coast Province.) Today, an ordinary day, the headmaster gave his morning speech with the usual humdingers in it. He challenged the students to name the worst sin it is possible to commit. Answer: disobeying a rule. Then he told them that if they hadn’t paid their school fees, they had to go home. And, well, “the rest of you dunderheads can go to hell.” (Afterwards, one teacher asked me what a “dunderhead” was. When I told him, he said, “But hell is only for sinners, and people who aren’t very smart can still follow the Lord, can’t they?” For the record, I said I thought so.)

  Then, as I sat in the staff room, the Teacher on Duty brought in students, one by one. They get beaten for getting low scores on their exams. The form one students (some are only thirteen) were terrified, cowering, even in tears. If they score very low, they get four whacks of the cane. If they flinch, they get an extra whack, so they always grip the chairs in front of them as they bend over. The T.O.D. took off his watch (“So I won’t break it”), rolled up his sleeves, and stretched. He got a firm grip, took a few practice strokes, and then he started whipping the boys. Meanwhile, the other teachers were jeering and laughing at each child, and if it was a student they didn’t like they would yell, “Give him five! Give him five!” One student came back afterwards because his beating was so brutal that he thought he might need to see a doctor. The T.O.D. looked at the gashes on his back and decided he was right but instructed him harshly to say another student did it to him. I always leave when this kind of thing is going on. The first few times I saw it, or even heard it, it would make my palms sweat and my heartpound, and now it only makes me feel sick. It is deeply disturbing to me that I seem to be capable of getting even alittle bit used to it. I don’t want to get even a little bit used to it.

  The assistant headmaster told me what the teachers in Ramisi told us, “This is the only way we Africans can learn.” The other teachers agree. They said even if the students in my classes learn without caning and without verbal slashing, it’s because I’m different as an American, and because there is the atmosphere of “discipline” on the school compound despite me. Since parents treat children this way, they explain, teachers must continue with the same severity. (It is true that parents ask teachers to cane their children, and are often more severe with them than teachers are.) It’s a never-ending discussion in the staff room, fueled on their side by the images of American schools full of weapons, violence, and disrespect for authority. Although Dave and I are on friendly terms with the other teachers, and we often exchange visits and share meals and tea with each other, on a deeper level we are alienated from them, and they from us.

  Yesterday, when we were in the Peace Corps Office getting booster shots, we ran into another volunteer who’s been here some time and had dinner with him. He seems to have thoroughly assimilated. His Kiswahili is excellent, he is very close to several Kenyans and knows an incredible amount about Kenyan culture. As do his colleagues, he’s going to nightclubs and sleeping with prostitutes. He now beats his students with a cane. He said he feels as though he’s “floating in limbo.” I think the feeling might be from tearing away from the rules he had for himself in the States and from the strangeness of following only those rules the people around you follow. I had thought I wanted to be the kind of person who really “embraces” a culture. Now I don’t think so. I now know, for example, that I’m not interested in exploring whether or not brutality improves education, or whether or not subservience in women improves marriages. On these topics, my mind is not open.

  One of my students, named Baya (which means “bad”), is small, probably around twelve, and exceedingly cute. Once he brought me a story he’d written for fun entitled “About My Favorite Animal Chicken.” Anyway, two days ago he went to the Teacher on Duty because he was feeling sick and wanted to go to the hospital. The teacher thought he was faking and sent him back to class. Then yesterday people noticed he was missing. Those questioned had last seen him laughing and crying, running around and curled in a fetal position. We learned today that he probably has cerebral malaria, which either kills you or leaves you with permanent brain damage when you don’t catch it right away. I’m waiting for news of him.

  To feel better, after school I’m going home to play with my David and our neighborhood children. The other day Rehema, the mother of one of the children, ended her visit to us by asking, “You give children time? Your time? That is interesting, we don’t do that here.” She was especially interested that David, a man, would spend time playing with children. It was hard for me to tell if she thought we were extravagant and foolish or if she thought it was a good idea. The next time her son came over to play, he brought us some coconut cassava in a fancy plastic dish, from her. Decode that, if you can.

  Love,

  Kate

  NEW YORK CITY

  July 8

  Dear Katey,

  My boss is out of the office; I’ve run out of job leads to pursu
e for the day; and I don’t have a ton to do. So here’s the whole skinny on my blind date with William Strong, that you may experience the exhaustive detail of our fumblings as we wend our way toward inevitable redundancy, if not failure.

  I actually had two blind dates this weekend. The first was on Saturday, and before it I went to yoga, taught by my friend Tatiana from high school. I told her, I’ve got this blind date tonight, and suddenly I can’t remember what people talk about. She disappeared behind incense and mirrors and returned with a book called The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right. It was very funny. Also, I learned a lot from it. Now I know how to behave on dates one through three in order to entrance an unwitting man and trap him into marriage. Lovely and useful, huh? Well, it slept its way to the top of the slew of scary dating advice books. The Rules are stuff like: Present yourself as nice but busy. Don’t worry about keeping the conversation going. Don’t ever call him. Basically it’s for women who don’t have lives, so they can behave as though they do until a man is smitten, at which point the illusion they’ve created will conveniently give way to the business of planning a wedding. My mother, unfortunately, has also gotten her hands on this book. It’s not like she’s dying for me to hunt down a husband, but there are rules she still wants me to follow. Like being “a nice girl,” not fooling around on the first date, letting him pay. Whatever. Among my many complaints about the book—the virtues of which are being overdebated in various media—is that it’s hard enough trying to be original already. What I don’t need is a best-seller that tells me and a million other presumably diverse people exactly how to be “spontaneous,” how to be “a creature unlike any other.”