The Order of Nature

by Josh Scheinert

  “A different one,” he joked.

  “I’ll say.”

  Saikou says she’s a dike.

  The sentence went by so quickly Andrew wasn’t sure he heard correctly. But from looking at Alex and Liv he could see that he did. Facing inward, towards each other, they kept quiet, all curious to overhear what the couple sitting next to them was saying.

  “No way. I’ve known her my whole life. Your friend spends one evening with her at Lamin’s party and convinces you she’s a dike?!” The woman, whispering, sounded incredulous. “Tell Saikou he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Tell him he’s not to talk about her that way to anyone.”

  Andrew’s back was to the couple, which was a good thing. They weren’t able to see his eyes widening with equal measure of alarm and curiosity.

  “I’m just telling you what he said. You know Saikou. He knows women. I don’t think he’d lie or make a mistake like this.”

  “What makes him think such a thing? How can he be so sure? He can’t be – he’s never slept with her. Did she tell him, oh sorry, Saikou I can’t sleep with you because I’m lesbian?”

  “He said he just got the feeling. From how she was with him. I’m not saying it’s true, but think about it. How many boys has she been with? You’ve said yourself she’s your one friend who you never understood why she couldn’t find a man. Maybe she doesn’t want one.”

  Andrew saw Alex looking at him. He wondered if he could see his heart pounding out of his chest.

  “Do you understand what you’re saying, you and Saikou? Do you know what it means if you’re right?”

  There was a brief, crushing silence behind Andrew before the woman’s voice started again.

  “One of my closest friends?! If it’s true, she probably tried so many times to come after me or another of our friends and we didn’t realize. That bitch.” She spoke the last word with such disgust.

  “Saikou said you should try and trap her. Trick her into going with a woman and then force her to confess. She would have to change or else run.”

  “It would serve her right. She could never be around us again. And not around our child.”

  They look so normal, Andrew thought to himself, before he, without thinking, turned his gaze to the young couple. His eyes fixated on both of them in a way that made it clear he had been listening to their conversation and disapproved of what they were saying. As his head steadied itself, unable to break away from staring at them with an expression of moral opprobrium shooting out from his eyes, he felt Liv’s hand tugging at his, trying to pull him back.

  “Andrew,” she whispered.

  He heard her, but his head didn’t turn back to her. He kept staring at the couple.

  “What man? What is it?” the young man wanted to know. “Why do you keep looking at us that way?”

  The harshness of the man’s voice broke Andrew’s stare. He looked away, nervously, back at Alex and Liv.

  “Nothing. Sorry,” he muttered.

  “I don’t think it’s nothing,” the man said.

  “Enough,” said the woman. “Leave him alone. He said it was nothing.”

  “It looked to me like he didn’t like the way we were talking. Did you? Or didn’t you.” The man was still sitting, but he was sitting up straighter, extending his neck out, broadening his shoulders.

  “Really man,” Alex broke in, “it was nothing.” Alex stepped forward, between Andrew and the man. “There’s nothing. He stares all the time. I’m telling you, it was nothing.”

  Liv placed her hand discreetly on Andrew’s back, which made him feel worse. In wanting, or thinking he wanted to confront this couple for their prejudice, all he did was create a situation that Alex had to fix with Liv comforting him.

  “Maybe it was nothing,” said the young man, relaxing back into his chair. “But I think your friend didn’t like what we were saying. All you foreigners coming in here, thinking you know everything, how we need to live. But this,” he said while pointing his index fingers to the ground, “this is Africa. We don’t want your gays and your lesbians. Your diseases. And don’t try to tell us we’re backward because this is our culture. It’s you who’ve been perverted. So don’t try to tell us how to live. Don’t come here to lecture me.”

  “Sure,” Alex said. “Like I said, it was nothing.”

  Andrew felt cornered. Between the wall and the young couple, the only way to go was forward, towards the counter. He looked again at the young staff. They were the people who worked on the front lines of the country’s development, in software, mobile technology. If there was going to be a group of people in the country more open minded it would be them. Now he wasn’t so sure anymore. He stood looking at them wondering how many felt the same way as the couple next to him. How many young, modern, and connected Gambians refused to accept being gay wasn’t an abomination?

  Turning his back just enough to pull away from Liv’s hand, Andrew quietly and without looking at Alex and Liv said sorry, before taking off, past the young couple, past the counter of Gamcel employees, down the stairs, and out the front door into the open air along a busy Kairaba Avenue. He breathed heavily looking left and right. Faces kept passing him by. In each one of them he saw a threat. A mother walked with her young child. He saw her eyes look at him before she looked down to her child. Stay away from that man, he imagined her saying. A middle aged man passed him by carrying several plastic bags. He lifted his head towards Andrew revealing a suspicious expression. The faces kept coming, passing him by on foot, through car windows. Each one, in slow motion, seemed to peer right into him. I see you, they kept saying, as he stood there alone, frightened and disoriented.

  “Andrew!”

  Turning back towards the Gamcel building, Andrew saw Alex and Liv walking hurriedly out the front door.

  That night, when Andrew told Thomas what happened, he half expected him to be furious with him. He wondered if the risk of exposure and feelings of betrayal would be enough for Thomas to end the relationship.

  “Now you’re being silly,” Thomas giggled as they lay in bed together. “You think you’re so famous that everyone in this country knows who you are? That this stranger is going to somehow magically discover your identity, call the police, and now the police are outside your window listening to us? All because you looked at him?”

  Andrew’s face stayed serious. He knew Thomas was teasing. The notion was preposterous. Still, as irrational as his fears and anxiety were, he couldn’t turn them off.

  “What Suleiman said last night, about the arrest, and this secret society, that doesn’t scare you?”

  “Of course it does. There isn’t much about this place that doesn’t scare me sometimes,” Thomas confessed. “This is why it’s important to know what to be scared of, so that we don’t always live in fear.”

  Andrew broke away from Thomas’s arms, lying on his back, staring through the mosquito net at the ceiling, saying nothing.

  “Okay. You shouldn’t have done what you did today,” Thomas offered assertively, making Andrew’s stomach sink. “But it’s done, and we’re lucky it was minor. A lesson for the future.”

  “How do I know I won’t do something stupid like that again? I didn’t plan to do this. I just did it, knowing I shouldn’t have. I couldn’t control myself. Really, I mean, why should you just have to accept everything the way it is?” he asked, turning his head to face Thomas, whose face had the look of worry on it.

  “Because this is the place I live in,” he reminded him in a whisper. “And if after all this time, you think you can change it, maybe we do have a problem.”

  18

  Suleiman’s newspaper published the article on the Monday, a day later than originally planned. When they didn’t see it in the paper on Sunday, Thomas and Andrew naively thought the story wouldn’t run, that somehow a source didn’t turn out to be reliable, or better yet, someone’s conscience got the better of them. Andrew’s irrational side felt relieved. He feared this would spar
k a witch hunt that, after the Gamcel episode, would result in the couple coming forward to name him as a suspected gay person. In his mind he envisioned himself grabbing a backpack with his valuables, hopping in a taxi to make way for the ferry terminal to cross the river and flee to Senegal.

  That morning, as with most Monday mornings, Andrew popped into Mr. Jalloh’s cramped and disorganized office to check in with him before heading into his classroom. Like every other day, a pile of newspapers sat on Mr. Jalloh’s desk. But on this day, at the top of the pile, Andrew saw a headline proclaiming, “SECRET GAY SOCIETY EXPOSED.” Beneath it was a picture of an average looking Gambian home, which Andrew assumed was the home near Senegambia that apparently housed this secret society. Moving closer, he read the subtitle under the photograph, “Senegambia home where secret group plots to advance LGBT agenda”.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Mr. Jalloh exclaimed as he watched Andrew discreetly glance at the article. “It reports how they have been operating for almost one year to find a way to change the Gambian legal system to favor the LGBT community.” Mr. Jalloh struggled as he pronounced LGBT. It was evident this was his first time ever seeing and speaking the acronym, which he read out with a deliberate effort to not stumble. “It’s a good thing they were discovered,” he declared, “otherwise people might think we are turning into America.” He chuckled giddily from his belly, amused by his own sense of humor.

  Andrew abruptly changed topics without worrying about being too abrupt, and asked Mr. Jalloh if there was anything happening in the coming week he needed to know about.

  “No, I don’t think so. A normal week.”

  “Great,” Andrew replied hurriedly. “Have a good day, Mr. Jalloh.”

  He was half out the door when he heard his name called out again. He stopped to clear the lump in his throat before turning to face Mr. Jalloh.

  “Yes, Mr. Jalloh,” he said anxiously.

  Mr. Jalloh stared up from behind his desk, his eyes were surprised and his half-open mouth looked confused. He thought to himself for a moment as if to remember something he meant to tell Andrew. “I wanted to tell you that I have received excellent feedback about your presentation on Friday. The District Coordinator was extremely impressed and wants to have a task force over the summer to make group learning a bigger part of the curriculum.”

  Slow to process that he was being praised, Andrew looked back at Mr. Jalloh. “Oh, that’s great. Thank you very much.”

  “He told me it’s a shame you are returning to America this summer. I told him I agreed.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Jalloh,” Andrew said before ducking back into the hallway, stopping to stand against the wall and collect himself for a second after dodging the bullet. Just then he felt a vibration in his pocket and took out his phone to see a text from Thomas. its in the paper.

  i know. saw it in jallohs office. gtg to class. talk after work

  k. bye

  bye

  Thomas saw groups of staff members all huddled together around copies of the newspaper at the front desk and in the restaurant and wanted no part of it.

  He left work early that evening for Andrew’s. His hours had already been cut back, and during the week he could leave at seven if no one was at the bar. He walked through the lobby, second guessing how his colleagues looked at him as he strode past. He made his way out of the hotel and up to the road to catch a 7-7. The traffic barely moved. As they inched along the road, police lights flashed in the distance. It was too early for a nighttime checkpoint to be set up. There was probably an accident. The passenger sitting in the middle of the backseat let out a heavy sigh to signal her displeasure with the traffic. She was an older woman, too big for the small back seat, wearing a dress of green and blue patterns, with hexagonal glasses firmly fixed on her face, and a shiny black leather handbag on her lap.

  “It is because of the gays,” the driver said, making eye contact with her through his rear-view mirror. He’d been driving this route for many hours now and they were approaching the house where the gay society met. The police had been there all day, he explained, so had curious onlookers and sporadic protestors. “They had to call more police because people started throwing rocks at the house.”

  “And where are these people now?” the older woman demanded to know.

  “Apparently they arrested this guy who owns the house early in the morning, before he had a chance to run away. But they don’t know any other members of this society.”

  She let out a loud sound, an umpf, making her displeasure known – with the traffic delay or the activist ring, it was unclear.

  The car kept inching forward to the flashing lights. Thomas felt the leg of the older woman pressing up against his. He felt himself perspiring under his shirt.

  “Driver, let me go down here,” he said. “I will walk.” There was nothing unusual or suspect about the request.

  The car stopped. Thomas opened the door, nearly falling into the dirt as the old woman’s body spread out into his vacated seat. He stood tall and gulped down the evening’s air as he fixed his bearings and then headed off, walking in the same direction the car drove towards.

  As he neared the flashing lights, he saw heavily armed police officers standing on the road at an intersection. A small crowd, about fifty people, also stood on the road, looking. The police formed a barrier preventing them from turning onto a side street off the main road.

  Thomas approached the commotion curiously and hesitantly, scared for what he might encounter. Visually, it proved to be anti-climactic. It was just a house. It looked like it did in the newspaper. It was two stories of beige stucco behind a red gate, which was open but blocked by a police jeep. A second-floor window in the front of the house was smashed. He asked a middle-aged man in the crowd if anything had happened lately.

  “No, not since this morning when the police raided. They arrested the owner of the house. The head gay!” he proclaimed with approving enthusiasm.

  Thomas, reluctant to engage the man any further, nodded and kept walking. His pace quickened as he fixed his gaze on the ground in front of him, paying no attention to the cars racing by next to him as they emerged from the slowdown. He looked at his watch. If he was going to Andrew’s, he needed to get back into a 7-7. But instead of flagging one down, he took out his phone and sent off a text. sorry, quite tired after today. gonna go home and rest. ttyl.

  As Thomas briskly walked away from the crowd of onlookers, he recalled one of his and Suleiman’s recent conversations. They were sitting late at the bar one weeknight, long after Thomas’s shift ended. Suleiman was trying to think of ways to keep Thomas out of harm’s way. It was a struggle.

  “Why don’t you go back to America with Andrew? Claim asylum.”

  “And how do you suppose I do that? I have no money, no way of getting there. And besides, I could never do that to Andrew.”

  “Why? I thought you two said you loved each other.”

  “We do. But it’s not so simple.”

  “Have you at least asked him?” Suleiman wanted to know.

  “No. It wouldn’t be fair to him. He has family. He has his life. I can’t turn that upside-down.” Thomas paused and looked down for a moment. Looking back up, he continued. “He hasn’t offered.”

  “You can say something to him, find a way to bring it up.”

  “It’s not something you bring up from nowhere, Suleiman. And also,” he added, looking resolute, “I don’t want to go. What would I do there? What could I do? This is where I live. I can manage.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “To us?”

  “Sure, or to you.”

  “I don’t know. I try not to think about it. Why can’t I just enjoy this now? If I have to worry about the future, I can do this later.”

  Suleiman could sense his friend growing uncomfortable each time they had this discussion.

  “Thomas, we can get you out of here.”

  “To where? America? Even you know y
ou can’t do that. Not with the people you know, and not with the people your father knows. Sometimes it’s better not to promise at all.”

  “I never said America. To Senegal, and maybe Europe if we tried. In Senegal you’d at least be safer.”

  “I don’t want to leave. At least not yet. Not while he’s still here.”

  Suleiman knew when to stop pushing. “Fine. But keep your head down.”

  Andrew skipped going to the hotel bar that Friday. Friends of his and Alex’s were meeting for drinks to watch the sunset and he decided to join. The plan was to meet Thomas on the beach by the hotel later, when he finished work, and they’d walk up to their spot together. It was their first time seeing each other since the article was published. Andrew’s colleagues talked about it constantly. Coverage throughout the week expanded, focusing on the arrest of the house owner. No one knew what criminal offense he was charged with, but that didn’t seem to bother people.

  “As long as he is away somewhere. And can’t try to infect the children,” said one of the teachers at Andrew’s school. Andrew wasn’t entirely sure which stereotype his colleague was referencing. Was he concerned about children being infected with HIV or with homosexuality? “I hope they will catch the rest and do the same with them.”

  The fact that the police only arrested one person, with a whole group still said to be in hiding, created a pervasive sense of alarm among many Gambians. Fear was the only emotion that Andrew seemed to share with them these days.

  That night Andrew and Thomas were nervous to see each other. Things had changed. People had been exposed. A man had been arrested. His friends, it was assumed, were in hiding or had run away somewhere. Both of them feared the calculus of their relationship would be different because of it.

  Andrew stood alone waiting for Thomas. He was at the water’s edge, holding his shoes, letting the wave’s ripples gently massage his feet as they made their final push towards the land before receding back to sea. It was a warm and still night, the winter’s cool long past. Andrew thought about all the different beaches in the world where he and Thomas could have been on when he heard Thomas speak from behind him.