Fifteen wonderful weeks together. Or at least the first six weeks had been wonderful, roughly the time it took him to deflower me. It made me ache with shame now to consider how long I’d hung on after his interest waned. I’d have done anything for him. I did do anything for him. That I’d found no personal gratification from our hurried, almost distracted sexual couplings, hadn’t even bothered me at the time. As for the rest, really, I should have seen it coming.
Christophe seemed to be enjoying my discomfort. “It’s not easy to be a private person here. You’re going to have to accept the fact that you’ll be the center of intense scrutiny. People will ask you if you’re married, if you would marry them, if you’ll sleep with them. They see a single white woman, they assume she is looking for a partner. Your desire for privacy will be ignored.”
“Maybe I’ll just be the person I am.”
“It won’t work.”
In irritation, I stepped to the window and looked out. The trees in the courtyard had dropped their leaves, giving the impression of an Indian summer afternoon back home. Two boys raced each other through the dead leaves, while a trio of others ran alongside a rolling tire, propelling it with a stick. “I am not about to change who I am,” I called over my shoulder. “In fact, I don’t think it’s truly possible to change who we are, deep down.”
He considered this before speaking again.
“Where have you lived, in your life?”
I kept my gaze on the scenery. “Nebraska.”
“Where else?”
“Nowhere,” I admitted.
A Peace Corps van rumbled up the drive. When it stopped, cries of greeting arose from a half-dozen people who spilled out of the refectoire and hurried over to the van. Christophe drew closer. I could feel him standing behind me. Dangerously close.
“And yet you feel so confident, preemptively judging your experience here,” he said.
I tried to keep my voice as casual as his. “All right, point taken. I don’t know how living here might change me.”
“Indeed, you don’t.” I felt the gossamer touch of his finger against my neck, as he caressed a strand of hair that had escaped my ponytail. I couldn’t breathe. My knees shook. Outside, the van doors swung open and a few strangers in jeans and sneakers hopped out. Americans, no doubt. One was a pretty woman with long, shiny black hair, who threw her arms around Keisha and hugged her. “Ah,” he said. “Diana.” His finger skimmed a path down my neck, my shoulder and arm, before dropping away.
“Who’s Diana?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
He stepped away and turned to me, his demeanor once again cool. “My girlfriend.”
That evening I had no appetite for dinner. The buzz of animated conversation filling the brightly lit refectoire seemed to bounce off the plaster walls and redirect itself toward my pounding head. While Robert and Carmen chattered, I prodded my plate of rice and turkey wings with my fork. I glanced two tables over where Keisha, Christophe and Diana were sitting. When Diana reached out to caress Christophe’s arm, I felt a stab of baffling possessiveness. Robert followed my gaze.
“Diana Theodorakis,” he mumbled between bites of rice. “Poor little Greek-American rich girl from Boston. Math volunteer. Good looking—too bad she’s taken.”
I couldn’t tell whether the last part was intended to serve as a taunt or as a warning. Robert wasn’t stupid; he’d seen my private smiles the past few Saturday evenings. His expression, initially puzzled, had developed into a wounded “how could you?” look. He disliked Christophe and had assumed I was his ally there. It was too complicated to explain to Robert how I both liked Christophe and didn’t, so I’d kept silent. Now Diana’s arrival seemed to have cheered him inordinately. I ignored his comment and focused on plucking the few slim morsels of flesh from beneath the rubbery turkey skin. Diana, Robert continued, had just returned from a ten-day reunion with her parents in Crete, where the family had a vacation home. She’d come to Lambaréné for the weekend to see Christophe and Keisha, her best friend. She was said to be one of the nicest volunteers in the group.
“You sure know a lot about other people around here,” Carmen commented.
“I make it my business to know,” he replied. “You can never tell when it might help.”
I looked up from my food to see Carmen scrutinizing me. By her concerned expression, I could tell she’d worked out the situation.
“Your spikes are sagging,” I said in an attempt to change the subject. Which was true: with each passing week, she was losing her wild-girl appearance. Piercings had diminished to two per ear, the nose stud gone. As her supply of hair gel dwindled, her spikes sagged further and further downward.
“I could say the same for you and your spirits.”
Meg, our training leader, approached our table, food tray in hand. “Anyone sitting here?” she asked, gesturing to the spot next to Robert.
“Go for it,” Carmen said. “You can help me tell these two about our trip today.”
Carmen liked to attend the Saturday daytrips, which usually involved helping a local volunteer on a project or visiting a nearby site of interest. Today had been ten miles inland, to a village where a Peace Corps school, built back in the sixties, needed a repair and repaint job. Meg and Carmen took turns recounting the experience.
“Was it work or was it fun?” asked Robert.
“I had a ball,” Carmen said. “Henry and William were there. Henry’s so funny. And I learned a lot more about William.”
“I did too,” Meg said. “A dual degree, in international development and civil engineering. Impressive, huh?”
“Well, not if it’s from some obscure college,” Robert said. “Anyone could do that.”
“Um, UC Berkeley?”
“All right,” Robert grumbled.
“He spent six weeks in an Ethiopian refugee camp one summer, and four weeks in Malawi the following one,” Carmen added.
“Okay, I get it,” Robert said. “He’s super-qualified and amazing. But can he speak Amharic? Because I know how to ask for two beers in Amharic.”
Carmen chuckled. “Let’s go ask him.” She gestured to where he and Henry were sitting.
“Fine, let’s.” He rose and Carmen followed him, still chuckling.
Meg and I ate in silence. “You seem a little down, Fiona,” she commented.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“You should have joined us today. It was fun.”
“Yeah, well, I sort of wanted to do my own thing.”
“Carmen mentioned you like to practice ballet on Saturday afternoons.”
“I do.”
“Look. Can I be frank?” Her eyes behind her wire-framed glasses were serious.
Warily, I nodded.
“I’m going to say something you might not want to hear. You’re making this little bubble for yourself, an oasis of comfortable things. Books, ballet, spending time alone, speaking only English when you can.”
I didn’t know how to reply. “I’m successfully learning my teaching job,” I quavered.
“You are. You’re a dynamic teacher and you’ve picked up the TEFL methodology admirably. You’re a great asset to the program. But being a teacher isn’t going to be your only job here in Gabon. You’ll be an ambassador of sorts. A community resource for the locals.”
I watched Christophe leave the refectoire with Keisha and Diana on either side of him. He and Diana were holding hands. I felt sick.
“I don’t want to go scaring you or anything,” Meg continued, “but there are education trainees, like Carmen, who are taking advantage of this training period to go out on daytrips and attend community health events. They’re asking what we can go do together on Saturday afternoons that might help acclimate them to what life is going to be like out at post. For the community health trainees, all of this is super helpful. But the education trainees are profiting too. It never hurts to have an understanding of how one creates community projects, maybe to help promote lit
eracy, sanitation, maternal and child health. These daytrips are a fun, relaxing way to gain exposure to this kind of thing.”
“Ballet un-stresses me.”
“I can see that’s important to you. Have you ever asked yourself if, well… if this is the job you want to be doing right now? The place you want to be living?”
My heart began to hammer. “You’re not going to fire me, are you?”
Her laughter made me breathe easier. “No. I was just curious.”
“I want to be here,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
“Good.”
I drew in a shaky breath.
Meg dug her fork into her rice. “Next Saturday, I’ll be taking a group to the Albert Schweitzer Hospital Museum. The compound is just a few miles away. It’s a fun daytrip, with pirogue rides down the Ogooué River beforehand, and a picnic on the grounds afterward. I think you should consider going.” She paused, fork midair. “In fact, I’ll go so far as to say, I think you need to go.”
I was screwing up here. Everything Meg had said made sense. I wanted to tuck myself into a little ball and cry.
“You’ve got two weeks left in training, Fiona,” she said more gently. “It’s enough time to turn things around. Apply yourself here, and you’ll profit tenfold at your post.”
“Okay.”
“Albert Schweitzer with us, next Saturday afternoon?”
“Yes. Count me in.”
Chapter 4
Rachel, Peace Corps Gabon’s medical officer, carried a cardboard box into the classroom where the trainees had gathered. She plunked the box down on a table and pulled out one of the contents. Condoms. Hundreds.
“Take ‘em and use ‘em,” she announced. She pushed a stray brown curl out of her face and regarded everyone expectantly, hands on her hips. “Well, go on,” she demanded when no one moved. Laughter rippled from the room and everyone rose. “Take them, that is. Do the rest of what I suggested somewhere else.”
It was our last group training session. Rachel had come from the Peace Corps office in Libreville to give us our final round of immunizations and lead a health discussion. She moved to stand beside Meg as we milled around the table and picked up supplies—insect repellant, Band-Aids, aspirin, anti-malaria pills, rehydration salts. “This should be enough for me,” Henry called out, holding up the box of condoms. “How about the rest of you?”
Carmen grabbed a handful, stuffing them into her canvas shoulder bag. She eyed the three condoms I’d taken. “That’ll last you the first night,” she commented.
I shrugged. “I’m just not much of a wild girl, I guess.” In fact, my seriousness had impressed even me. I’d become a model trainee since the talk with Meg. I’d applied myself to all my French and English-teaching lessons. At night, under the fluorescent glare of the refectoire lights, I studied and prepared for my practice-school presentations. On Saturday afternoons, I joined the daytrip group to wherever they went and learned what I could. Christophe, meeting my eye each Saturday upon our return, seemed perplexed, then privately annoyed. I ignored his reprimanding gaze. He was taken, anyway. That we could have continued any sort of special relationship was an illusion I needed to crush.
No ballet, no Christophe. No illusions.
Practice school had ended the previous day. We, as well as our students, had advanced on, in a ceremony commemorated by picture-taking, wide smiles and orange sodas. Today felt curiously flat—no English training, just French class and this final group session. Tomorrow the construction trainees would fly to Franceville, build a prototype school together and after that, be sworn in as volunteers. The community health trainees and education trainees would head to Libreville, the capital city, for one last week of training in their respective jobs. Then we’d break into small groups and go au village—to a village—for four days, before swearing in and awaiting our postings.
They called this the “Last Chance to Scare You Off” session. Rachel started it off with a Q and A on health issues. Carmen raised her hand. “This might just be a rumor,” she said, glancing over at Robert, “but I heard that one of the volunteers came to you with a worm in his eye, and you had to pull it out.”
Rachel nodded. “Yes, that would be Ron, who had an advanced stage of filaria, also called loiasis. You get it when a bite from an infected deerfly transmits a parasitic larva. For a while you can’t tell you’ve been infected—the worm takes up to a year to mature. But then the adult worm starts moving around.” Her eyes gleamed. “The most common complaint is swelling and aching in the joints, maybe the arm, leg or hand. When Ron came to me a few months ago, though, the worm was moving across his eye.”
“Can people see the worm?” I asked Rachel uneasily.
She nodded. “Plain as day. Looks like a piece of dental floss that’s stuck under the cornea. That’s when you come to me in Libreville and have me extract it.” Rachel frowned at us and wagged her finger. “No extractions between yourselves allowed, no matter how tempting it looks and how many Regabs you’ve had.”
Next, we learned how to treat malaria, how to recognize typhoid or dengue fever, how to deal with the inevitable loneliness and isolation at post and what to do if a green mamba slithered through your window. Female education volunteers should wear dresses, skirts and blouses at school, saving the jeans—a tolerated American idiosyncrasy—for casual. Shorts and skimpy dresses were best set aside for Libreville, where, incidentally, you should always stock up on cheese and chocolate. Forget about finding fresh vegetables locally. And expect to be stared at, in your local store, in your neighborhood, as you walk, as you try to relax in your house. Your house might get broken into. That, and thefts, happened. Because you are American, people will assume you’re rich. They will also assume you’re CIA. Those speaking English will call you Peace Corpse; no need to worry that this is a threat, it is simply how they think Americans pronounce the word “corps.”
By the end of the hour, uneasiness had filled the classroom. Rachel looked around and laughed. “Honest, we’re not trying to make this sound awful. But if you found this training challenging, you should be aware that it’s a piece of cake compared to the issues you’ll confront at your posts. You may be the only American in your town, which will be a given for you constructors in the villages. Your post will be all Africa, all the time. Your volunteer leader will visit you annually at your post to check on things. Ditto someone from the administration team. You’ll be flown to Libreville for a week-long conference in April. But that’s it.” She paused and her expression grew serious. “If you think you’re not up to the task, do us a favor and come forward now.”
Over lunch, she had a taker: one of the math trainees. “There you go,” Robert said. “That makes four trainees who’ve quit. They say, on average, there’s a fifty to sixty percent early-termination rate. Think about it. Another nine or ten from our group probably won’t make it the full two years.”
“Have either of you ever thought this might be too much for you?” I asked hesitantly.
Carmen and Robert both shook their heads. “What I’m sick of is this training business,” Carmen said. “Time to do the job instead of talking about it.”
I’d grown fond of the training site’s insulated environment and was reluctant to say goodbye to everything. And everyone. A wave of melancholy swept over me. I made my excuses to Carmen and Robert and wandered over to the dorm room to rest. A boring novel, combined with the effects of the afternoon heat, made my eyes grow heavier, heavier.
It was the trip to Lambaréné again. The military guard who’d stopped us had pulled me from the Peace Corps van after all. He was going to shoot me, the way he’d just shot my beloved, who lay dead on the ground behind me. The violence simmering in the guard was overpowering, the darkest thing imaginable, except, no. Knowing my beloved was dead, that I’d never again hear his voice, see his face light up in a smile, was a death itself that echoed through my heart, my whole being. The guard drew closer, clutching his gun as I stood there,
paralyzed with terror, trying to scream, only nothing came out.
Carmen, from inside the dust-caked Peace Corps van, knocked against the window. She knocked more vigorously a second time. But when she spoke, out came not her voice but my beloved’s.
“Fiona? Are you in there?”
With a gasp, my eyes flew open. I was in my dorm bed and Christophe had entered the room Carmen and I shared.
He froze. Through my disorientation, I became aware of my sprawled limbs, my hiked-up skirt. I felt too drugged with sleep to react. Besides, it was Christophe. My beloved—which I hadn’t realized until this very moment—wasn’t dead. Euphoria exploded in me. I wanted to tell him how glad I was to see him, but I couldn’t get my brain and mouth to work together.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I knocked, but no one answered.” He held up my notebook. “I thought you’d want this. You left it in the cafeteria.”
“Thank you,” I managed. He shut the door, set down the notebook and approached the bed. His face creased with concern.
“Are you all right?” he asked. Frowning, he reached over and rested his hand on my forehead.
In the moment I reached up to him, it was like reaching for life. Embracing it. Letting life swallow me whole. From monochromatic grey to dazzling Technicolor.
My hand slid up his arm and around his neck to pull him down on top of me. The feeling of his body against mine shocked me into awareness. “I’m so happy to see you,” I gasped out before his mouth latched onto mine.
He was alive. I clutched at him, all but weeping to feel his skin, his weight on me, his vitality. His familiarity. As if by watching me dance for him, we’d already performed the most intimate act. I tugged at his shirt, sliding my hands beneath, around to the silky warmth of his back. He unbuttoned my cotton blouse in seconds. His hands roamed my body as his mouth worked a trail from my neck to my exposed chest. The sight of his dark lips against my nipple sent me into a kind of erotic paralysis.
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