“Much better than last time I tried, huh?”
“Was that when you forgot to add the eggs?”
“No, the last time was when the oven ran out of propane midway through the cooking.”
“That’s right. But, you know, in spite of that, it was really pretty tasty.” He turned to Carmen. “It was like a custard with the sauce baked right in.”
He flashed me another smile before going to the refrigerator for two more Regabs. I watched him as he returned to the living room, handed a beer to Lance, and sat next to Jenny, Carmen’s new roommate and the new community health volunteer. She was attractive, assertive, with shiny brown hair and a forthright jaw. Like William, she’d studied international development. Their conversations always seemed to revolve around lofty subjects, like comparative public policy, resource economics, or the lack of epidemiological and entomological data on patterns of malaria and habits of the mosquito vector. This one, conducted in murmuring voices with little coos of agreement and excitement from Jenny, seemed no different.
I turned back to Carmen, who was busy peeling carrots. “So…” I kept my voice casual. “Jenny and William dating?”
Carmen looked at me curiously. “Don’t think so. Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. They just look…friendly.”
She looked at me and a grin spread across her face. “And that would be of interest to you, would it?”
I waved her words away. “Oh please, don’t even go there.”
“God, are you blushing?”
“Look, you kept trying to tell me last year what a great guy he was. Fine, I agree with you. He really helped me out after my accident—I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t been around. As it is, I’ll have these scars to take home with me.”
“Let me see the one on your cheek again.”
I inclined the left side of my face toward her.
“Damn, that’s kind of cool,” she said. “It looks like a tribal marking or something.”
“It looks like a question mark.”
She studied it again and began to laugh. “It does. That’s hilarious.”
“Yeah, just hilarious. A fitting souvenir for my Peace Corps experience.”
“You always did have to do these things differently.” Carrots finished, Carmen pulled a pan of turkey wings from the oven to baste.
“So, how’s Daniel? Talk to him recently?”
“Yup.” She smiled. “Thanksgiving Day, in fact. We finalized our plans for our Christmas rendezvous in Paris. A month from today, I’ll get to see him.” She finished basting the turkey wings in a happy reverie. “What about you?” she asked after she’d popped the turkey back in the oven. “Are you going to call home while you’re in Oyem?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, the actual holiday was two days ago. Besides, it always makes me feel more homesick, once I’ve hung up.”
“Does your family do a big Thanksgiving dinner every year?”
“Oh, sure. A couple of relatives, the five of us, a neighbor or two—it’s never less than twelve. One year it was twenty.”
“Yikes. Who does the dishes after that? And the prep work before? Does your mom rent the linens like I hear other big groups do? Does she make certain foods for picky eaters, or are they screwed on Thanksgiving day?”
Carmen was forever curious about the big family dynamics she’d never experienced, and frequently plied me with questions like this. It was oddly reminiscent of Lane Chatham’s fascination with my family, the way he’d been eager to meet them. I’d balked at the idea initially, but once we’d started sleeping together, I couldn’t resist the temptation to show off my glossy new boyfriend. On the drive to Omaha for The Big Introduction, however, I felt so sick with nerves, I made him stop at a 7-11 for antacids. Lane laughed and told me not to worry so much, that he was sure he’d love my family. I didn’t bother to tell him that was precisely what I was so nervous about.
Thanksgiving dinner in Oyem may not have looked like its counterpart on an American table, but we still managed to gorge ourselves on turkey wings, mashed plantains, carrots, Jenny’s side dishes and feuille de manioc, brought from William’s village to serve as a creamed spinach look-alike. My jaw was still in its early healing stages, limiting me to the softer food. Jenny dominated the conversation, brushing aside breezy discourse in favor of more substantial fodder: the way sexually transmitted chlamydia was rendering so many Gabonese women sterile; Franco-American relations in Gabon; the uneven distribution of the country’s wealth. I tuned her out until I heard Christophe’s name mentioned.
“He’s a perfect example,” Jenny was saying. “Have you seen the car he drives? And I heard his parents’ house in Libreville is practically a mansion. He probably spends more on his shoes than a family of six lives on for a year. And then he buddies up to our Peace Corps community—what a hypocrite.”
It was okay for me to bash Christophe, but when I heard someone else doing it, my hackles rose. “Yes, but he’s really helped some of the volunteers out,” I said.
Jenny dismissed my words with a sniff. “He helps the ones who kowtow to him, who can’t solve their problems on their own.”
Did she know of my relationship with him? I wondered if she was deliberately trying to get under my skin.
Lance unwittingly came to my rescue. “He’s an okay dude,” he told Jenny. “Me and Fiona and William had dinner with him in Bitam a month back. And he didn’t offer me any help, but I guess that confirms I’ve got things under control in my classes. I really do think I have the touch.” Pride crept into his voice. “Not to brag, but my students love me. They love my class. We have a ball. They tell me they can relate to me. Isn’t that cool? That’s all you need to do to be a success in your job here.”
Carmen, William and I eyed each other in amusement. Lance would learn.
I fell into conversation with Kaia, a new volunteer in the fisheries, or fish-farming, or pisciculture program, which was a mouthful, so we just called them “the fish.” Kaia seemed to be the quiet one of the first-year group, next to the oversized personalities of Jenny and Lance. She was sweetly pretty, and made you think of a young but bedraggled Cindy from The Brady Bunch, butter-yellow hair in cute pigtails and big, sad-looking blue eyes. When she spoke, she sounded intelligent yet humble, intensely human. I liked her right away.
I asked her how her work was going.
“A mix of success and frustration,” she said. “I’ve got one farmer whose fish pond is doing really well, only his nephew is starting to be a problem. It used to be I would only see the nephew once in a while, but I guess he got kicked out of school in one of the other provinces and his family shipped him out here.”
“Oh, gee. Lucky you.”
“I know, right? He’s bullying, opinionated, and thinks he knows best. He’s training for the military at the same time, and that’s making him cockier. I hope he ships out soon. Then I can go back to dealing with just his uncle.”
“You have my sympathies.” I shook my head. “I’ve had my share of problem students. They make life miserable for all involved. But, listen, let’s keep in touch. I may be only an education volunteer, but sometimes help comes from unexpected places. Drop me a line if you’d like me to pop by to support you.”
Jenny had been listening from across the table. “Don’t worry, Fiona. I’ve got Kaia’s back,” she told me in that smooth, confident voice that was already grating my nerves.
I forced a smile. “Cool! It’s just that, as second-year volunteers, we’ve sort of learned to think outside the box, find the unlikely solution to problems.”
“Yes,” Jenny said, “but some of us know how to behave in a way that circumvents bigger problems before they arise. Not just go out there and fan the flames.”
Ouch.
A host of heated retorts rose to mind, as the others began to laugh.
Jenny waved her hands. “I’m sorry, that wasn't supposed to be an insult! It came out wrong. Fiona knows I d
idn’t mean it that way, right?” She smiled brightly.
I gritted my teeth, which sent a stab of pain through my jaw, which kept me from speaking, which was probably a good thing.
“All right, gang,” Carmen rose from her seat. “Time for some African pumpkin pie, which smells amazing. Any takers?”
Hands shot in the air.
“There,” Carmen said. “That’s something we can all agree on.”
Back at the mission, the rest of the semester flew by. The students, for the most part, continued to behave in an exemplary fashion. Which didn’t, however, mean I lacked a troublesome redoublant student. This year it was a female, a sullen teenager named Sophie.
Sophie was a village girl at heart, uncomfortable and uninterested in the classroom. Her frayed white uniform blouse always seemed rumpled, tucked out of the regulation navy skirt that bunched up around her heavy hips. Prior to the start of school, Lisette had pointed her out as three teenaged girls strutted past us at the market. The biggest girl looked to be about seventeen, her features too broad and surly to be considered pretty. As I watched, she shoved one of her friends, her expression triumphant. When she turned and saw us, the predatory look in her eyes faded only slightly as she offered a fake, bright smile to Lisette. She grabbed the hand of the friend she had pushed and the three of them scurried off, giggling.
“That one,” Lisette had commented, “she is trouble. She is also one of your students.”
Forewarned was forearmed. I was strict with her and her classmates, never giving them a chance to claim any power. I reserved my livelier projects for the other classes. When Sophie acted up, I immediately called in Soeur Hélène for disciplinary assistance.
During the final week before Christmas break, Sophie grew more unruly, prompting me to get more creative with discipline. She hated school, so I assigned her to return after the break had started, to help me. I had all the time in the world—I wasn’t leaving Bitam for the holidays. Instead I’d work on my secondary project through the break, creating a community library on the mission grounds. Sophie was speechless with fury over the mandate. I smiled sweetly back at her and told her I’d see her at nine o’clock on the first day of break.
To my surprise, she showed up on time, grumbling and tight-lipped, but subdued without the presence of other students. We trudged over to the library building and spent the next four hours in silence, unpacking boxes of donated books and rearranging the shelves of existing books. I could feel a subtle shift in our relationship, particularly when a box I was holding ripped open from the bottom, raining paperbacks all around my feet. “Son of a bitch,” I muttered in English, forgetting about professional decorum. We looked at each other, wide-eyed, and burst into laughter.
“Will you teach me that phrase in English?” she asked in French.
“No!” I protested, still laughing. “No way, José!”
Which I taught her in English.
After we shared a buttered baguette and sardine lunch and returned to work, she grew more comfortable. “Why do you not allow our class to do interesting projects, like you do in the class of my friends?” she asked.
“Why do you think?”
“Because you do not like us,” she said, flashing me her hateful glare. Last year I might have protested, telling her how I longed to be everyone’s friend. I still enjoyed doing fun activities with my students, but I needed them to respect me first. And I hadn’t learned how to do both in Sophie’s class.
“Why should I put energy into something special when you can’t cooperate and behave in my classroom?” I retorted.
She scowled and fell silent, her eyes narrowed to slits. Her gaze fell to the paperback in her hand. It had a pink, sparkly cover and two laughing girls on the front. “If it were something fun,” she said without looking up, “maybe I could do better.”
“Something fun,” I echoed.
She nodded.
I suddenly remembered last year, how I’d written my former French teacher during my early euphoric days of teaching, proposing a pen pal exchange. She’d been interested in the idea, but I’d dropped it after the students got too unruly. Was twelve months too late to start it up? Why not just send a packet of thirty letters to her, and see what came of it?
“Something like having an American pen pal?” I asked Sophie.
She looked up at me, eyes now wide with hope. The animation flooding her face made her seem actually pretty. I shook my head in mock regret. “Only it would take a lot of work. Too much work for you, probably.”
“No way, José!” she said, which made me laugh.
Her curiosity had been piqued. As we finished up, she pestered me with more questions until I raised my hands in surrender. “We’ll see,” was all I could tell her as we left the library. She nodded and after I’d wished her a happy holiday, she trotted off cheerfully.
The other volunteers in the region began to clear out: Carmen to Paris; the first-year volunteers to Jenny and Carmen’s house in Oyem; William to Henry’s village for a meet-up with the other construction volunteers. Although I enjoyed the mission and Bitam enough not to feel too lonely over the prospect of Christmas alone, my heart leapt when I heard William’s voice outside Lisette’s door, two days before Christmas. I was inside, helping Lisette prepare for her departure au village to family. “You couldn’t leave us, after all?” I heard her ask in a teasing voice as she let William in.
A moment later, he stormed past me, angry and sunburned, not even bothering with a greeting. In the kitchen, he splashed water on his face and scrubbed his oil-stained hands. Lisette and I exchanged bewildered glances. “Um, hi there,” I called out.
“Hi, Fiona.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be on your way to Henry’s village?”
He turned back toward us, mopping at his face and hands with a towel. “My truck broke down four miles down the road. I think my water pump is ruined.”
“Mohammed’s truck has a tow,” Lisette offered. “He can bring your truck back here and look at it for you.”
“Yes, I know. That’s why I came here.”
“What, not to wish us a Merry Christmas? I’m hurt,” I said, only half-joking.
He scowled at me. “Merry Christmas.”
Lisette laughed. “Off you go—I just saw Mohammed walk by.”
William gulped down a glass of water, thanked her and left.
When Lisette finished her packing, we headed down to the mission garage. Mohammed and William were poking their heads under the hood of William’s truck. Mohammed confirmed the water pump was indeed foutu, which made the whole truck, in addition to William’s day, pretty much foutu as well. “Son of a bitch,” William muttered to himself, staring at the engine after Mohammed left to make some phone calls.
“There is good news and there is bad news, Monsieur Guillaume,” Mohammed said when he returned.
“What’s the bad news?” William asked, sounding terse.
“There is not a water pump for your Toyota here in Bitam.”
“Not in the whole town?” William asked, his voice rising. He slammed his hands down on the truck. “God,” he said in English, “this fucking country.” Mohammed and Lisette both took a tentative step back.
“The good news, Monsieur Guillaume,” Mohammed said, “is that my brother can bring a water pump from Oyem.”
We all smiled at William encouragingly.
“Tomorrow,” Mohammed added.
William sighed.
“Afternoon,” Mohammed added again.
William began to laugh. “And if you’re telling me right now that it’s going to be the afternoon, Mo, what time is it really going to be? In Gabonese time?”
Mohammed didn’t seem to take offense. “Before it is dark, you will have your pump.”
“By Christmas Eve. Great.” William sighed, reached up and pulled down the hood of the truck, which shut with a bang. He glanced over at me and scowled. “Why do I get the feeling that somehow you’re enjoying t
his?”
He was right. I thought fast.
“I’m sorry about your misfortune, but I’m glad you’re going to be hanging around here for an extra day.” I injected a note of hurt reproach into my voice. “I’ll enjoy your company.”
His scowl softened. “In that case, thank you. Guess we’ll be celebrating Christmas Eve together.”
The news planted itself in my heart and flowered.
Maybe I’d been feeling a little lonely after all.
Chapter 22
Christmas Eve midnight Mass at the Bitam mission was nothing short of theater. By eleven-thirty at night, every bench in the mission church, a dignified, airy, wooden structure, was occupied, as an overflow crowd spilled out into the humid night. Glossy palm fronds and homemade batiks decorated the walls. Candles lined the aisles, their smoke mixing with the smell of incense and cheap perfume. People continued to mill about, not the least bit shy about demanding that the bench occupants squeeze in even closer to make room. Even goats and chickens played a part in the festivities, a dozen of each penned up next to the Nativity scene.
William and I had joined the sisters at their bench off to the side of the altar. Mohammed had finished the repairs on William’s truck too late in the day for him to make the trip to Henry’s village. The sisters, I sensed, were thrilled about William’s delay. He sat sandwiched between Soeur Beatrice and Soeur Nathalie, both of whom periodically turned to smile up at him and pat his arm.
Gabonese Christmas Mass, I soon discovered, was a far more interactive affair than the Christmas services of my youth. Everyone here sang with gusto, swayed to the music, and gave the priest their undivided attention. During the sermon, they leaned forward on their benches so as to not miss a single word. Whenever the priest followed an important point with the Fang equivalent of “know what I mean?” every head in the place nodded, followed by a murmured “uh huh,” all in perfect unison. The worshippers seemed to throw themselves into listening wholeheartedly, precisely the way life threw them into living.
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