Lisette rose to her feet. “You tell her.”
I stared at her, uncomprehending.
“Sit with her,” Lisette said. “Talk to her.”
“She doesn’t need conversation, she needs serious medical help. We need to do something more for her. Find help.”
Lisette gave me a look somewhere between pity and impatience. My next words dried up in my mouth as I realized help was not going to arrive. We were the help.
Lisette didn’t even bother to reply. Once I’d gingerly seated myself next to the woman, she dashed off to help Soeur Beatrice with the others.
I took a deep breath and lifted the woman’s surprisingly light shoulders. Sliding my legs underneath them, I rested her head on my thighs like a pillow. I took the woman’s hand again and tentatively stroked her blood-flecked arm. When she tried to speak again, her body tensed, wracked with what surely must have been pain. My limited Fang vocabulary soon failed me. She didn’t seem to understand my French either. And suddenly I remembered the dusty mama I’d met my first week in country, when I’d gotten lost en route to the bathroom at the checkpoint stop. She’d spoken to me in a patter of incomprehensible words, but there’d been something oddly soothing and hypnotic about it.
“Don’t you worry,” I crooned in English to the woman on my lap. “I’m going to stay here, right here with you, until someone else can come who will know what to do. This is a difficult situation, but there are many of us here, so we’ll figure out what the best solution will be.”
She coughed, a horrible gurgling sound, and I quickly wiped away the spit and blood that came up. “You’re not going to die, because I’m not going to let you. Okay? We’re going to get through this together? Okay?”
She seemed to particularly like the “okay” word, giving me little nods in reply. I told her about how we’d get her up to the refectoire and how much she’d like the mission grounds, with all the pretty shrubs and the green lawn. The woman smiled through cracked lips, her breath ragged and congested. Her eyes flickered shut, although I could sense she was still listening, still responding with nods. I told her about how sometimes the egrets landed and picked at the lawn after it had just been mown and about the time the egret had flown into the refectoire, freaking us all out. The woman relaxed further, the tension leaving her shoulders. The rise and fall of her chest became less abrupt.
I found myself relaxing as well, stroking her forehead, her leathery cheek. The chaos around us seemed to fade as I looked up at the canopy of emerald trees surrounding us. I told her how different they were from the trees in suburban Omaha, and yet how much I missed seeing those trees, the colors of their leaves in autumn. When Lisette walked up five minutes later, it jolted me from my reverie. I smiled up at her. “I think she’s resting better now.”
Lisette glanced down at the woman and looked back at me. Instead of the approval I’d expected, her face was a portrait of pity. “Oh, chérie,” she said, her voice soft, sad, weary.
I’d always been slow to catch on to important relationship developments. The woman had died. Her head hadn’t suddenly lolled to one side, like in the movies. There’d been no final gasped words, no urgent message to pass on. She’d just slipped away, leaving absence where once was life.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. My mind couldn’t process the razor-thin line between life and death. She’d been there and now she wasn’t. It was that simple.
Three people died in the accident. Four others were seriously injured, delivered by Mohammed to Bitam’s little hospital. Afterward, Soeur Beatrice thanked Lisette and me for our help. I had trouble responding. My lips felt numb, my heart frozen.
Over the next few days I continued to stumble around in a daze, unable to wrap my mind around the concept of life’s fragility. Lisette struggled to understand my traumatized reaction over the death of the woman who’d died on my lap. “She lived a full life,” she said. “It was a tragedy, yes, but tragedies like this happen every day. Even in your country.”
When I saw Christophe’s glossy Mercedes pull up on the mission’s front drive late Friday afternoon, something in me thought, Yes, of course. As if he and I had planned it this way.
I walked up to where he’d parked and was speaking with Soeur Beatrice. She offered him her condolences and he flashed her a smile of thanks. Even in his grief, I noted, he was still beautiful, still charismatic. But once it was just the two of us, the charisma seemed to fizzle out of him.
We found a private spot on the grounds, sat and talked. He thanked me for the note, brought me up to date on the events of the past few weeks—the chaos following the terrible news; the whirlwind of events and ceremonies in Libreville and more recently in Oyem. He spoke quietly, pausing only to gaze around as if in surprise that he was here.
As the sun began its descent, we went to my house. “Would you like to go into town for dinner, or stop by Lisette’s?” I asked. When he shook his head, I found myself feeling relieved. I didn’t want to have to guard my behavior to fit Lisette’s expectations of how and why I should grieve the deaths of these women I didn’t even know. Christophe knew me—he would understand. Just as I understood him.
I told him about the accident at the mission, over dinner and a bottle of wine he’d brought, and then asked more about his mother. He seemed reticent at times—I recognized I was probably violating Gabonese taboos about discussing the deceased, but he answered each question.
I made us coffees, but the caffeine had no effect on him. Soon his eyes began to droop.
“Look at you,” I said. “You’re so tired. Please don’t tell me you were considering driving back to Oyem tonight.”
He gave a melancholic shrug.
“Stay here at the mission,” I urged. “Tomorrow, too. This is a healing place; it will do you a world of good.”
He looked like he was fighting to stay awake even as he spoke. “I think you’re right.”
“Good. Do you have a bag, anything for overnight?”
“In my car.”
“You go get it while I arrange for a guest room with the sisters. Make yourself at home while I’m gone.”
I made the proper arrangements and returned to the house ten minutes later. Inside, however, I stopped short. Christophe had indeed made himself at home. His bag was by the bedroom door. His shoes and shirt lay on the floor, leading, like a trail of bread crumbs, to my room, where I found his belt, his trousers.
All the way to my bed, where he lay, bare back exposed, the sheets covering his lower half.
Oh, God.
What had I gotten myself into?
I needn’t have worried. He’d already fallen into a deep sleep.
I’d never had the opportunity to study him like this before. Even during our Cap Estérias getaway, he’d been awake before me, fallen asleep after me. He looked so young. Like the boy he’d once been. The one whose mother had been his best friend.
This beautiful, privileged man, whom, it seemed, had everything, and yet, emotionally, had just lost his childhood everything.
I stood there, tears spilling out, sniffing.
He stirred. “Come here,” he murmured, eyes shut. “I need you.”
I wasn’t sure if he was dreaming of his mother, talking in his sleep, or what. It certainly wasn’t something I’d come to expect from the awake Christophe.
“Fiona.”
This jolted me out of my reverie. His eyes were half-open.
“Come here. I need you.”
He held out his arms. I approached, still unsure as to whether he was awake or dreaming. I cautiously slipped in alongside him in my clothes. I was wearing a gauzy skirt that annoyingly rode right up to my thighs. To my relief, my legs made contact with fabric as well as bare skin. He’d kept on his underwear, at least. Once I was there next to him, he went for the comfort-seeking position, head on my shoulder, arms looping around my waist, under my back, tugging me closer as though I were one of those oversized body pillows.
H
e said nothing. A few seconds later, his even, deep breathing told me he was asleep.
I’d felt a lot of ways toward Christophe, but this was the first time it had been maternal. The first time I myself had ever felt maternal. Hearing the soft, shuddering sigh he made in his sleep, the universally recognized “everything will be all right” sound, gave me such a powerful sense of purpose.
I hadn’t been able to save the dying woman. I hadn’t been able to save Christophe from his devastating loss. But I could give a living being the comfort of another living being. Goosebumps crept over my skin and for a moment I felt as though I weren’t the comforter so much as a conduit. I could almost feel it pumping through me like a pulse. It felt so mystical, so unprecedented, I could only lie there, tears slipping down my face, hoping my ragged gulps of breath didn’t wake Christophe, whose presence, coupled with that other, nameless presence, seemed unutterably precious just then.
All of life did. Africa picked off people with chilling randomness. But here were the two of us, alive and breathing.
Precious stuff, indeed.
Chapter 25
The woman who’d died in my arms after the taxi-brousse accident had not died after all, it appeared. She was in my front yard and she was talking to Christophe. Since it was Saturday morning, she’d brought a dozen fresh eggs to the sisters like she always had. Apparently death didn’t change the commission.
In the background, the approaching rattle of William’s pickup truck signified his imminent arrival. A few minutes later his voice joined theirs in conversation. William knew the dead woman, too. And the dead woman knew not only William but Christophe’s father.
“You resemble him,” she told Christophe.
“So I am told,” Christophe said. “It is an honor.”
“Are you returning to Oyem today?” she asked him.
“I haven’t decided.”
“My community wishes to invite you and your friends to our drum circle this night. We would like to honor your mother and celebrate her passing.”
“Thank you. I accept. We will attend and I’ll stay another night.”
“This is good to hear. I will inform the others.”
The dead woman bade him and William farewell and left for the place dead people here went to, because this was not the U.S., where dead people went away for good once they’d died. Christophe and William headed toward the forest, which had a door, which sounded very much like my door. Its opening and ensuing slam woke me with a start.
I heard William’s and Christophe’s voices in my living room.
In shock, I sprang out of bed, looking around in bleary-eyed confusion.
William murmured a question I couldn’t hear.
“I think she’s still sleeping,” Christophe replied.
“No, I’m not,” I called out, hastily changing out of my wrinkled skirt and top. I caught sight of my disarrayed hair in the mirror over my chest of drawers and winced, pinning it into a sloppy bun.
The two were in the kitchen area, chatting. I came out of the bedroom, calling out a cheery “good morning.” Christophe’s bag was blocking my bedroom door; I stopped to move it.
“So you are up,” William called out. He caught sight of what I was doing.
Christophe’s bag. My bedroom.
Our eyes met. “Good morning,” he said in a strained voice.
It’s not what you’re thinking! I wanted to cry out, but all words had dried up in my mouth.
Too late anyway. He’d turned away abruptly. I felt sick.
Christophe, meanwhile, looked relaxed and cheerful. “Did we wake you?” he asked from his spot by the stove, where he’d set the tea kettle to boil.
“No.” I tried to mirror his tone. “I heard you two talking with someone.”
“Yes. The woman who sells eggs. What was her name?” Christophe asked William.
“Célèste.”
The dream-but-not made more sense now. “Yes, Célèste,” I said. “And she invited you to one of their ceremonies tonight.”
William looked at me in surprise.
Christophe seemed amused. “I see you’ve learned Fang,” he remarked.
“Only bits,” I replied. “Why?”
“What else did Célèste say to me?”
“Something about how you resemble your father. Célèste and her community wanting to honor your mother’s passing with a ceremony, your Oyem plans. Or something. I don’t know, I heard it in my sleep.”
“They were speaking in Fang,” William said.
I gaped at him and Christophe both. “Really?”
They both nodded.
I raised my hands and shoulders helplessly. “That’s the subconscious mind for you, I guess.” My head started to pound. Too much stimulus and thinking for so early in my day.
The tea kettle began to whine.
“Coffee?” Christophe asked me, holding up a third mug.
“Yes. Thank you.”
William wouldn’t look at me. Upon my return from a trip to the bathroom to brush my teeth and splash water on my face, he focused on everything but me—readying the Nescafé instant coffee and canned milk as Christophe took the boiling water off the heat. He’d cut the baguette Christophe had gone out to buy in town, and set butter, strawberry preserves and peanut butter on the table. I studied his tense face in mounting despair. He, for his part, looked particularly good. His hair had been getting lighter in the sun and the contours of his face had changed, thinner in the cheeks, adding prominence to his jaw, which, at this moment, looked clenched. I wanted to reach over and touch him, but I knew a back off signal when I saw one.
A knock at the door seemed to make him inordinately happy. He went to open the door before I could react, and greeted the arriving Lisette like a long-lost friend.
“Come in, come in!” he told her. “Join us for breakfast.”
Lisette proved a great help in diffusing the curious tensions in the room, as we ate and sipped our coffees. She flirted and bantered with both men, teasing William into a good mood. William told her about the group’s invitation to the night’s ceremony.
“Wonderful,” she said. “Why don’t we start the evening with a dinner at my place before we head over? I’ll invite Moussa and Bintou, as well.”
William and Christophe looked at each other and nodded.
“Excellent,” Christophe said. “And that leaves us plenty of time free right now.” He turned to William. “Should we go to this site you were talking about?”
William’s glance flickered over me and returned to Christophe. “But you came here to spend time with Fiona.”
“Oh, we’ll have all evening together.” He turned my way. “Right?”
“Right!” I tried to sound as bubbly and relaxed as everyone else, inside reeling in dismay. No nourishing time with William today. Or Christophe. None.
“Good.” Christophe and William exchanged looks and smiled.
“Should we make an early start of it?” William asked.
“I’m ready,” Christophe said, rising from the table. He glanced around the room. “I just need to put my bag in my guest room.” As he went over to retrieve it, I tried one last time to catch William’s gaze, which he ignored by staring at his coffee cup. Lisette, taking in all the dynamics with a bemused expression, caught my eye with a men… what can you do? look.
Once William and Christophe departed, I let my frustration spill out. “He thinks I slept with Christophe,” I fumed to Lisette. “Not just slept with him but slept with him. Did you see the way he was ignoring me?”
Lisette took a sip of her coffee. “William is intelligent,” she said, which didn’t help much because misunderstandings and hurt pride had nothing to do with intelligence.
“And Christophe, he ignored me too.” I rose and gathered the various jars on the table, clinking them together in my agitation. “It was like I wasn’t in the room. And here I’d felt so… relevant last night, being there for Christophe. Like I’d been a real
comfort.”
“You should feel honored, Fiona,” Lisette said gently. “A man can pay a woman no higher compliment than to turn to her for comfort at the time of his mother’s death. But today, he needs only Guillaume.”
“William, oh boy. Did you see his face?” I asked. “Did you?”
“I did.” She eyed me, this time in sympathy. “Best that you are apart today.”
At the ceremony, Christophe spoke Fang with the locals. This time, listening, I understood nothing. Although I knew it was part of Christophe’s heritage, it shocked me, as did seeing him in traditional African attire. Both seemed to change the way he acted, making him seem more down to earth, his body more integrated in the communication process. That said, the superior quality of the shirt and trousers ensemble—the rich, almost velvety cotton; the intricate, multicolored design; the two-inch borders embroidered with golden thread—still made him stand out like royalty.
It felt strange to be a participant in the ceremony instead of watching from the shadows. It was still early. A dozen people prepared, moving plank benches into place along the periphery of a giant semicircle, in the middle of which they’d built a four-foot tower of kindling for the bonfire. A half-dozen drummers gathered off to the side, setting up their places as they chatted and arranged their drums.
Célèste came to greet our group, and sized me up. “So, this time you participate, yes?”
I gaped at her in surprise. I’d always assumed I was well hidden while spying. “I like to watch,” I said, wincing at the absurdity of the reply, how it didn’t begin to address the issue. But Célèste only nodded and invited us to sit in the place of honor, where a half-dozen chairs had been set up amid the benches. Moussa and Bintou, the Malian husband and wife who taught sciences at the mission, had joined our group, and the six of us took our seats.
Everyone came by to greet Christophe and ceremoniously clasp his hands. Young girls brought us palm wine in ancient-looking clay bowls. The drummers began to pound out a tentative rhythm on their drums, as a few women joined them with shakes of gourd rattles. Célèste sang out a call-and-response in Fang with her six dancers. But it was only a practice run, and the sounds soon tapered off. Our bowls of palm wine were topped off. Lisette rose to speak with Célèste, and I moved a seat closer to Christophe and William, who were engrossed in conversation.
A Dancer's Guide to Africa Page 24
