A Dancer's Guide to Africa

by Terez Mertes Rose

  He ignored my words and with a grip that felt like iron, dragged me deeper in the brush. His comrades were standing on the path still, dumbly, disbelieving. Violence had filled the air; you could feel it, along with a sense that rationality had flown from the equation, replaced by animal instincts and behavior.

  I could feel the way Calixte, holding onto me, was trembling with the adrenaline of it all. His eyes were wide with intoxication, not just booze but the power he knew he had. He was aroused by my fear. Sexually aroused.

  The other two were alarmed, now. “Allons nous,” the tall, spindly boy kept repeating with increasing urgency. “Let’s go. This is too much.”

  “Ondo, you’re not thinking,” the short one said. “She’s not worth it.”

  “Go, then. Get out of here. I have something to settle with her.”

  “Ondo! It’s not worth it,” the taller boy insisted.

  “Vas-t’en!” he roared. Piss off. And he must have held some power over them too, because they skittered away.

  Seeing them depart, my terror doubled. Tripled. The short one, who’d seemed to still have a trace of the good boy in him, cast me a look of apology over his shoulder. Pity, even. When he disappeared from sight I felt lightheaded with panic and despair.

  No one was going to save me.

  Who knew how Calixte had thought this would unfold—unfathomably, my compliance?—but he hadn’t expected me to put up such a fight. Panic flashed in his eyes, and I could almost see the plan change in his head. He couldn’t just force himself on me, and have that be that, Miss Fiona bested once and for all.

  That had been the plan, I realized. Somewhere in his twisted brain, he’d thought he could have his way with me and see it as payback. Or somehow see it as his due. How long had this been his fantasy? Since my visit to Kaia’s post? Since I’d gotten him kicked out of my class last year? Or maybe since the moment he met me in Makokou and I mistakenly assumed he was a man and I’d smiled at him, almost invited him inside, only to reject him thereafter.

  “Get your hands off of me, you creepy fuck!” I screamed.

  He didn’t understand the English, but he understood the insult, and it seemed to fuel him. He slapped me across the face. It burned like fire.

  Things had gone hideously out of control. He’d pushed me up against a tree, mostly out of view from the path. I could feel his calloused hands tearing at my blouse, reaching my bare skin, his beery breath hot on my face, the horror of his fingers running up my leg from beneath my skirt. I screamed for help and he slapped my face again, hard. I detected the presence of someone on the path, who paused, stepped our way and squinted into the shadows, before hurrying away. No one approached any further. No one would confront a man in military attire; it would only put their own safety and security at risk.

  He pressed his upper body against mine, hard, pinning me into place. I heard the musical sound of a belt buckle being undone, the unmistakable zzzzz of a zipper. I saw the glint of a knife in his other hand, as he used his elbow to pin down my shoulders, his forearm across my neck, prepped to cut off my air supply the next time I made noise.

  Oh, God, I screamed inside. He’s going to rape me. Then he’s going to kill me.

  I knew it, the way an animal knew it was going to die. The way the dying woman in the roadside accident had known. That had been why she’d relaxed in my arms. She’d given up.

  Done. Over. The casket dream I’d had in Libreville now seemed chillingly prophetic. I was going to die. Peace Corps Gabon was going to have to call my family and tell them the news. Ally would hear it, fall to her knees and scream in agony. Fi, no! Please, no!

  Calixte shoved his pants down, groping to pull out his member. He’d hauled up my skirt; I could feel his fist bumping against the soft skin of my inner thighs, and something in me gave up, went dead.

  You will think you’re dying. That’s where the most powerful spirit communication takes place, at the cusp of living and dying.

  Joshua’s words.

  And the woman from Henry’s village. They will come to you. Protect you.

  Right before a tornado comes, it gets very still. The sky turns green and there’s something akin to a giant intake of breath, a tremendous drop of air pressure. Then you feel everything around you change. Fast.

  It was the tunnel in reverse, a blurry, fiery thing that shrieked through me, awakened me, powered me. It didn’t just carry me, it allowed me to fight back with the power of a half-dozen strong women. Angry, strong women.

  At first it was nonverbal, simply a force that allowed me to effortlessly shove him away. Next came the voice. The words. In Fang. I didn’t even think in English first, translating to French, then Fang. It just came out. But it was the howls, mixed with the words, that made the hesitating Calixte grow anxious, then rattled, then rigid with terror.

  His fly was open, his pants down around his hips. The sight made something in me explode with wrath. I straightened and gave his shoulders another vicious shove, because I could. He stumbled back. I stepped closer to him because fear no longer factored into the equation. It did, however, for him.

  The louder I shouted, the more his eyes widened in fear. Finally he turned and began to run away. Rage and that otherworldly thing fueled me. I began to chase him. And no one was quite as fleet-footed as a lifelong dancer who was under the protection—possession?—of spirits. How slow and ungainly Calixte seemed. He didn’t help matters by looking over his shoulder constantly while running.

  I could have kept running forever. I’d never felt such power.

  The path led right back into the town and the marketplace. One would have thought he’d prefer to slip away unnoticed. Instead, the pursuit took us into the heart of the town, where I saw people were stepping out of bars and restaurants, alerted by my continued shrieks. Calixte was crying out, now, too.

  My hair was down, the ponytail clasp torn out in the struggle and abandoned in the dirt. A cut lip from where he’d slapped me had filled my mouth with the metallic taste of blood. My blouse was torn and askew. And still I ran.

  Célèste stepped out. The minute I saw her, the thing powering me evaporated. She ran toward me, crying out, asking what had happened. I slowed to a stop and wordlessly pointed to Calixte, who’d found his compatriots and, unfathomably, was clinging to them, weeping.

  “Fiona!” another familiar female voice cried. “What’s going on?”

  Jenny appeared, running toward me.

  I was safe.

  The nightmare might have ended, but it was impossible to shake the sense that I was still dreaming. A gentle fog cushioned everything I said or did. I heard myself speak, agree that yes, I’d like to sit down. No, I didn’t need to go to the hospital, I told Lance and Jenny, what I needed was just to sit down. I felt the hardness of the chair beneath me as I sat, the cloistered protection of an indoor environment, a tiny bar with posters of the president, the Pope, and Gabonese soccer stars taped to the walls. The Pope waved at me from across the wall. I watched as Lisette, Moussa and Benoît joined us, stricken and concerned. Jenny took the seat next to me. I heard the buzz of voices all around me, Lance’s strident voice, Jenny’s lower, soothing one telling me to take it slow, that I was safe. She was a marvel. She’d slung one arm around my shaking shoulder, and she held my hand, which I gripped back. Quite the shift from our relationship just a few hours ago. Lance seemed to be part of the personality reversal game, too, now as serious as William, demanding that we file a report with the gendarmes, that the attacker be brought to justice. He’d attacked a Peace Corps volunteer, Lance kept repeating, voice hushed with disbelief. Not just an average local but an American woman who’d devoted two years of her life to helping the Gabonese. It was beyond reproach.

  In that dreamy space, I had the ability to see it all—Lance’s outrage, his Westerner’s sense of justice that bordered on entitlement; the way his Gabonese friends reacted uneasily, because they liked Lance when he was the funny guy, the clown. They didn’t kno
w what to make of the Lance who was shouting and glaring accusingly at everyone around him, as if the attack had been partially their fault. I didn’t have the energy to tell Lance that this was not going to flesh out in the righteous way he was visualizing, the perpetrator brought to justice, everything cleanly exposed, bad guy punished, innocent victim looked after. Africa was not so cut-and-dried, black-and-white. Peace Corps volunteers, young women like myself, had been murdered in their attempts to pursue American-style justice over lesser issues than this. The thought that I’d come so close to joining their ranks made me shake even more.

  Jenny, still holding my hand, asked me gently about the attack. I provided what details I could muster, leaving out the spirit presence. “He lives in the Woleu Ntem?” she asked. “This turned out to be the one Kaia was talking about at Thanksgiving, whose uncle is her farmer?”

  “Yes,” I said, and she looked at me, appalled.

  “He’s evil,” I said. “He has darkness inside him.”

  A wave of heat and nausea rolled over me. “Oyem isn’t safe for you,” I told Jenny. The words came out in a voice colder and harsher than my own.

  “You will not live in Oyem once Carmen is gone. Peace Corps will not post another solo female volunteer in that city. There’s evil lurking there. Kaia will not stay alone in that village. The two of you will take that house in Mitzic and be safer.”

  Jenny blinked, twice. “Fiona. You can’t know this.”

  I couldn’t explain to her how I knew. I couldn’t explain anything, even to myself.

  “Yes, I can,” I said. “I know what needs to happen. I’ll make it happen.”

  Ten minutes later, Célèste pushed her way through the group to our table. Lance rose. She met his expectant gaze and told him no, the attacker hadn’t been arrested. Instead, she told us, Calixte was “seeking sanctuary.” He claimed to have been attacked and chased; he had everyone in the marketplace as witness to the latter. They were not declaring me the culprit, so to speak. Spirits were. Vengeful spirits. According to Célèste’s report, Calixte was still crying, shaken, begging for protection from my spirit wrath.

  Lance was apoplectic. “I’ve never heard such bullshit in my life!” he burst out in English. “This is a crime! He’s making any excuse he can to avoid prosecution!”

  “My friend,” Benoît said, “please try to understand this situation from an African’s point of view.”

  Lisette chimed in and the three of them began to heatedly discuss the issue. Célèste, meanwhile, stepped closer to me. The fog was still thick in my brain, something she alone seemed to be able to pierce. No surprise. She spoke the same non-language of those who’d gone a little too far over the edge into the other realm. I watched her eyes move over my face, size up my scratched-up condition.

  “You have taken a journey,” she said in Fang.

  “Eh,” I replied, that curious Gabonese one-word assent, accompanied by a little chin nod.

  “They came to protect you.”

  “They did.”

  Célèste considered this for a long moment.

  “Normally one must dance first,” she said in Fang. “Meditate. Fast for the day.”

  Joshua’s words returned to mind. “I thought I was going to die,” I told her. “I was sure. This is why they came. Because Joshua told me that’s where the most powerful spirit communication takes place. At that place where life meets death.”

  She didn’t ask who Joshua was. Likely she knew, in the way she seemed to know things. “Eh,” she said, and nodded to herself several times more.

  Jenny, her arm still around me, released my hand and a moment later I felt the cottony softness of a wad of Kleenex. Only then did I realize I was crying. I studied the wad in fascination. It was so neat and clean and white and Western. I hadn’t realized you could find these in Africa. Trust Jenny and her resourcefulness. “Thank you,” I said to her in English.

  She smiled and gave my shoulders a tighter squeeze. “We’re here for you,” she said, and planted a soft kiss on my cheek.

  Her kindness, the warmth of her gestures, broke down something in me. Or maybe it was the opposite. Something broken, beginning to repair. The fog retreated a bit. So did the memory of what I’d just told Célèste. In Fang, at that. I think. It was like the time I sustained a concussion during a dress rehearsal for Nutcracker. I’d slipped on an artificial snowflake in “Land of Snow” and fell, hitting my head with a terrible thud, rendering everything hazy and disorienting for the next several hours. It was a scary feeling, not recognizing your own thoughts, not having access to the usual order residing in your brain. Here I was, right now. I knew that I’d been attacked. I understood this fuzziness was a form of being in shock. I knew something paranormal had happened out there. The rest was still fuzz. All I could do, in the end, was ride it all out.

  One last event made the fog clear. Célèste had left and returned, this time with a military man, the sergeant in charge of Calixte’s group. He was sending his men back home to Oyem. Taking Calixte with them.

  “He should be thrown in jail here,” Lance raged. “Or at least detained.”

  “The boy is so contrite,” the sergeant said. “So shaken. He will not bother her again.”

  “That is not enough,” Lance said.

  I met Celeste’s eyes and made a decision. She gave me a little go ahead nod.

  “Fine, you can take him,” I said to the blandly smiling (who knew they could smile?) sergeant. Ignoring Lance’s squawk of protest, I rose, gave my disheveled hair a shake, enhancing its wildness, and walked right up to the sergeant. We met at the same height, which I could tell disconcerted him. I also didn’t display the correct fearful deference toward a man of uniform. Which didn’t particularly concern me right then either.

  “You tell your boy”—I emphasized the plebian status—“that it’s not only me he has to fear, but my American sisters. From here on out. If he bothers them in any way, now, or a month, or a year from now, tell him I will know. Never mind that I’ll have returned to America. I will know.”

  My gaze had latched onto him. He looked helpless, and more than a little terrified. “I will know,” I repeated. “And I will come back and find him. And you.”

  Had it been wrong of me? I wondered, thirty minutes later, as Lisette, Moussa and I made our way out of the marketplace. To so terrify the sergeant, and, in turn, my attacker, alluding to vengeance I couldn’t possibly implement? And yet, I hadn’t chosen the words. They’d just come out of me.

  “Regardez, elle est là.” I could hear the electrified spectators murmur to each other as we passed. “C’est la blanche mystique.”

  The mystical white woman. What power my strangeness had bought me.

  Africa took, and Africa gave.

  What the hell. This, I’d take.

  Chapter 33

  They say you can really tell a person’s character by the way he or she behaves in a crisis. Not that I needed any further confirmation that William was a person of extraordinary character and merit, the kind of guy you hang on to for life.

  His arrival, late that evening, stunned both myself and Lisette, who’d come back to my house with me, unsure of leaving me alone. I clutched at him, afraid it was a dream, that he’d poof away. His shirt felt scratchy and smelled smoky. I took those as good signs. Apparitions didn’t have an odor.

  William seemed relaxed, at ease, which calmed me as well. He’d gotten the news an hour earlier when a taxi-brousse had rumbled to a stop in his village, he reported to Lisette and myself. The driver, who’d passed through Bitam, had shared the story that had the marketplace all abuzz, that la blanche, l’américaine, the one with the spirit eyes, had such powerful juju that she’d not only scared off her attacker, but had flown after him in a fury.

  “That’s me,” I tried to joke. “Strange Fiona, making even the villain run off in fear.” Neither William nor Lisette cracked a smile. I looked at them both and promptly burst into tears, which went to show that ma
ybe I wasn’t as calm as I’d thought.

  William’s arms came around me and held me close. “I’ll leave you two,” I heard Lisette tell him, and then it was just the two of us as I cried and stopped, cried and stopped. William didn’t try to cheer me up, distract me, psychoanalyze me, or anything. He just held me over the next few hours and let it all roar through me.

  Amazingly, once I fell asleep, it was the deep, untroubled sleep of a child. I woke to sunlight, utterly disoriented. I heard William in the kitchen, taking a whistling tea kettle off the stove. When I shuffled into the room, he smiled at me.

  “What time is it?” I croaked.

  “Ten o’clock.”

  He made me coffee and I settled, still in a daze, at the kitchen table. “I’m off to make a call to Libreville,” he said. “Soeur Beatrice said I could use her office phone. You’ll be okay?”

  “Of course. I’ll make us some French toast while you do that.”

  “No, no. Just relax, Fi.”

  I was fine, I told myself firmly, and once he left, I set to work on the French toast, proving to both of us that I was capable of anything. When he returned, I smiled broadly at him from my spot at the stove. He looked skeptical, but smiled back.

  “You were able to make your phone call?’ I asked.

  “I was. I got a hold of Rachel. She says this is serious stuff and they want you coming in.”

  “No. I don’t need to.”

  This produced a wry smile. “Rachel said she thought you’d say that. She told me to tell you that Plan B would then be in effect. You are now a ‘volunteer of concern,’ and you should expect a visit from a Peace Corps Gabon administrator within two weeks’ time. And she wants you to call her tomorrow, once I’ve left.”

  “Fine. But it’s not going to change anything.” Or maybe it would. Because here was what we would discuss too: getting Jenny out of Oyem. Getting that Mitzic house for Jenny and Kaia for their second year. I would insist. No matter how crazy the idea sounded by day, I knew a mandate from the Great Beyond when I heard it.