by Gabi Moore
He stood when he saw me. Dylan.
The look of pure horror on his face nearly made me laugh out loud, and I would have if my throat wasn’t suddenly dry as a bone.
“What are you …what are you wearing?” he said quietly.
I walked over, glanced over at Mama Tembi, who had stopped rolling, and looked back at him.
“Well, it’s nice to see you too,” I said.
We hadn’t spoken in months.
Even the cat in the corner stopped licking itself and looked at us both. There weren’t too many people in the café at that time of day, but in that special way Malawians can eavesdrop while pretending not to, I could tell everyone had pricked their ears to whatever conversation was about to go down.
“Penny! Come inside! Look, your fiancé has come to visit, I’m going to get you both some Coke and then you can sit here at the quiet table, I’m sure you have a lot to talk about” Mama said, and put down her cigarettes to come and usher us both to a quiet part of the café. We stared at each other in silence while she fussed and fetched us two cold bottles of coke and then sat me down next to him. He didn’t get up.
My fingers were wet and cold on the bottle. I couldn’t make eye contact, but I could tell he was angry. He looked so crumpled. He must have flown over and taken the bus, just like I had, a lifetime ago. It may seem strange, but something about his face seemed so alien. The lines of it, the way his nose just seemed kind of mashed on as an afterthought. We had shared so many hateful text messages over the months that I didn’t expect to discover any fresh pockets of resentment for him, but somehow, seeing him like this and in the flesh, I was surprised to find how physically repulsed I was by him. He was so …soft. Had I ever been attracted to him? I was baffled.
“You should have come to me if you needed me to send you clothing” he said at last, and took a sip of his Coke.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“You don’t have to wear …that” he said, his voice cold.
I looked down at my blouse. A yellow and green batik printed in birds and triangles. It was one of my favorites.
“I like it,” I said simply. I suddenly had a strong instinct that the less I said, the better.
He raised an eyebrow. In my mind, we were as good as broken up. I had ignored him for months, he had threatened me, called me names, insulted my mission and much more. But here he was, from out the blue, showing concern for my clothing? I took a sip as well. I was angry that he was here. And more than that, I was expecting Vik, not him. True, I just wanted to flounce off and tell Vik exactly what I thought of his sorry ass, but still. He tightened his mouth and cleared his throat as though he was in some kind of rushed business meeting.
“I know that you may be having some confused feelings about a lot of things, and that’s OK” he started. I looked at him. Confused was right. Our engagement had been a joke, and now it was over. What more was there to say?
“I know you’re a prideful woman. But you’re young, and it’s fine. I do understand that. I know you think I’m a little hard with you, but I actually understand a hell of a lot more than you give me credit for.”
The café was mostly quiet. People chattered amongst themselves, but I could tell they were listening keenly. I took another sip, looking at him.
“And I’m here to tell you that I come in peace. I’m not angry anymore. If you stop this nonsense right now, we can pretend none of this happened, and I’ll let you come home and we can…”
“Let me come home…?”
I could see his nostrils flaring.
“Yes Penelope. It’s not too late. Don’t worry, I’m not angry. Just give this up and come home, please.”
I hated the way he said “please” like a threat.
I looked around the café and down again at my batik birds, flying chaotically across my chest.
“I’m not coming home,” I said.
He seemed exasperated.
“I don’t understand. How can you …this place is such a …what are you running away from? Why don’t you want to come home?” he said. For a brief moment, he sounded legitimately hurt.
“I like it here. And I’m going to keep staying here. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that.”
His nostrils flared again, and then all at once I saw the same old face I was most used to seeing from him. The righteously indignant face. The face gone pink with rage. This was the Dylan I knew. And up until now, I had never spoken to him like that, not to his face.
I was petrified, but I loved it. He sputtered a little, trying to think of what to say, then stared daggers at me.
“You are my fiancé, and you will not talk to me in that tone of voice” he said at last, almost spitting the words.
“I am not your fiancé,” I said quickly, and took a sip.
He leaned back in his chair and flashed an ugly smile at me.
“You’ve gone mad. That’s obvious. You walked away from a perfectly good relationship to come here, of all fucking places, to this dump, and for what? I just don’t get it,” he said, in a voice squeaking with fresh anger. I thought I felt the crowd bristle a little, but I was too focused on watching the shade of pink deepen on his cheeks.
“You don’t have to get it. I don’t want to be your wife.”
He frowned and leaned in close, as though he was about to learn a secret.
“What are afraid of Penelope? Whatever it is, we can work on it. We can go to counselling. I can make you happy. What do you need? Let me provide for you” he said. The words made my stomach lurch. I was realizing: I was angry too. Very angry. For so long I had been preoccupied with him all the time, with how angry he was and whether it was my fault that I had forgotten one maddening piece of information: I was angry!
I was furious that he had robbed me of so many good feelings, of so much time. That he had made me hate myself, that he had tried to squash me and control me and limit me, and that I had trusted him all the while. He had made me feel so dirty. And now, I wanted to make him feel ashamed for what he was for a change.
“What do I need? I told you so often what I needed,” I said slowly, and quietly.
His brows furrowed as he tried to think.
“You wanted …this trip? You wanted to postpone the wedding? What, tell me”
“I told you, almost every day, what I wanted, what I …needed.” He looked at me, bewildered.
“Well? What?” he almost yelled.
“I needed to be fucked,” I said, as slowly and darkly as I could manage.
The color fell from his face. I’ve never felt so simultaneously terrified but thrilled at the same time.
“Penny, your language…” he started.
“I needed to be fucked, hard, and you never gave that to me. I wanted it so badly. I begged you. That’s all I wanted. For you to love me…” I had to stop to make sure the choking in my throat didn’t turn into a full sob. I wouldn’t give him the privilege of seeing me cry.
He leaned in closer, embarrassed, and spoke in an urgent whisper.
“Of course, Penny, I understand, you have always had difficulty with temptation, but after the wedding…”
“There will be no wedding,” I said, finding my voice was strong again. I stared at him hard until my eyes burned.
He flopped back in the seat, a sinister look developing on his face.
“Is …is there someone else?” he said, almost incredulous at the idea.
“Yes,” I said. Why shouldn’t I be proud?
“You’ve…?”
“Fucked him? Oh yes,” I spat.
If there was one thing I couldn’t stand, it was squeamishness. I didn’t want to hear him mince his words and dance round the question and blush and fret. I wasn’t ‘seeing’ anyone. I hadn’t ‘slept with’ anyone. And I didn’t want to hear him say so. I could visibly see him swallow, then release as his mouth hung open. I had never made him this angry before. So angry that even he couldn’t think of some venomous barb to th
row my way.
I leaned back myself, not quite smiling, but very close to it. He thought I was a dirty little slut? He thought I had trouble with ‘temptation’? Well, just let him see how much of a whore I could really be. If he thought my body was dirty, if my desires were so unthinkable, well, let him to see how much I enjoyed it. Not only did I not care that he judged me, I actually relished it. I hoped I disgusted him.
“Penny …how could you?”
I could hear the anger gathering in his voice again. He seemed confused that I wasn’t cowering anymore, wasn’t apologizing like I always did.
“How? Oh, I’ll tell you how. With glee, that’s how. I met a man who actually loves sex, and loves me, and I let him fuck me so hard I thought I was going to die, and let me tell you Dylan, I loved every second of it. I sucked him, and I swallowed it all, and I let him put it in my ass, and…”
“Penny! For God’s sake!” he said, panic in his eyes. He looked as though he was about to jump over the table and physically restrain me if I didn’t stop speaking. But I smiled at him and raised my voice.
“And he’s big, Dylan, he’s so fucking big, too. He’d fuck me so good I’d hurt for days afterwards …I swear I never knew it was possible to be fucked so deep…” I said, rubbing it in. He thought I was disgusting? Oh, I’d show him disgusting.
“Penny, please stop,” he said. I thought I heard the crowd around us hush a little as people strained their ears to hear if I really was saying the outrageous things it seemed like I was saying. Stop? No, I hadn’t even started yet. What irked me was how concerned he was that other people could hear him. A room full of strangers, and he cared more about what they thought of him than anything else. How utterly pathetic.
“I’m carrying his baby,” I said.
This time, the room really did go quiet. Mama Tembi’s rolling machine stopped squeaking and I felt her flash a worried look over to our table. I could just tell she was contemplating coming over to fret with more Cokes. Dylan looked nervously around the room, as though he expected a hidden camera crew to come bursting out from behind the reed mats on the wall. He was smiling that ugly smile again.
“I’ll kill him,” he said, under his breath.
“Good luck trying. He’s not even in the country anymore. He’s left for Russia, and I doubt any of us will ever see him again,” I said, and in a split second his hand flew through the air and slapped my cheek, hard, ringing out in the café so hard it brought tears to my eyes. I recoiled, my hands on my face, and stood to take a step back from him.
The next thing I knew, the sound of chairs grating on the floor pulled Dylan’s gaze from mine as he watched half the crowd in the café shoot to their feet and come rushing over to the table. My friends. The farmers who had helped me plant the maize. They stood in silence, but their intention was clear as day. Though my cheek burnt hot, I glared at him, suddenly feeling backed up by the people here.
“Don’t touch her,” said a voice from somewhere in the crowd.
Dylan was standing too, clenched fists on the table, and a look of pure disbelief on his stupid face.
“You have got to be joking me,” he said.
As much as he hated my body, he still felt entitled to it, even now, even after I was so clearly Vik’s and nobody else’s. He reached over the table and roughly grabbed my arm, yanking me forward. I resisted, but he was stronger than he looked. He pulled me away from the table and started for the door.
“I’ve had enough this bullshit, you’re fucking coming home Penelope…” but before he could finish, the crowd had blocked our path.
“Leave her alone,” said another voice, this time one I recognized. It was Mama Tembi, parting the crowd with the dark gray barrel of the shotgun she kept hidden in a latch door under the counter. She pointed it square at him, cocked it and lowered one beady eye to the sight.
Dylan flung my hand aside and raised both his hands in the air. His face looked as though he was the one who had just been slapped.
“Get out of here, and don’t come back,” she said, and she meant every last syllable.
Dylan shot me a poisonous look and then glowered at the crowd again.
“Fucking animals,” he blurted, and then blustered out.
Mama lowered her gun and relaxed her shoulders. Everyone went to sit down, but I stood there for a while, looking at her. She frowned at me, but I knew she wasn’t angry. I ran up to her and threw grateful arms around her.
“You have a filthy mouth, girl. I wonder who taught you to talk like that,” she said, and I smiled and kissed her neck and hugged her more.
“Thank you. I love you Mama Tembi. Thank you so much for everything. I’m sorry. Thank you…” I said as I squeezed her.
She grabbed me by the shoulders and held me at arm’s length to look at me, motherly concern all over her face. She smiled.
“You think I’m running a charity here? You’re paying for both those Cokes sunshine.”
Chapter 24 - Viktor
It had been four years since I stepped foot in Mchinji.
Russia had been cold and empty. In Mchinji, I had always been rounded up to white, but in Moscow, I had been rounded down to black. The language was ugly to my ears, and the weather hostile. Oksana Mikhaelova’s family were chilly with me, and nodded and smiled and showed me the door, telling me politely that she had been dead for years and that would I please have the respect and dignity to leave and not upset her relatives any further. I bid my time on a fishing vessel, and kept to myself, and wandered for a while, a lonely, wrong-colored speck in a blizzard. One month turned into a year, and then, in the seasonless country, one year turned into four. My soul went to sleep. I spent time outside.
Now, back in Mchinji, strange parts of me were waking up again. Let me tell you this: there are no two places on the face of the earth more different from each other than Moscow and Malawi. It was almost comical.
I gave the driver some cash and greeted him, but my pronunciation was rusty now, and he scowled at me. The bus was the same, the roads were the same. The dusty red ground hadn’t changed and the goats and chickens scampering out the way may well have been the exact same ones I had seen on my way out, all those years ago.
I made my way down the aisle and found a seat near the back, and at the next stop, a young missionary got on and came to sit beside me. A buffed, clean cut boy with a TV accent and new shoes, he introduced himself as Damian and shook my hand. I said little about myself. I was Viktor. I was coming to visit family. After four years, I fully expected that my name would no longer ring any bells for anyone in the village, but the reality of it still stung the ego a little. My own clothes spoke nothing of my past. I was cleanly dressed, shaven. Tattoos hidden and the callouses on my hands long since healed and softened.
I was heading for my old cabin, or what would be left of it after all these years. I would see Mama Tembi later, if she was still at the café, but before anything else, I needed to see that land. I needed to smell the air, to touch the soil. It would be in bad shape, I knew. All the way on the flight here I had reminded myself of that: things would not be as I expected. I had to be prepared for the worst.
But this little pilgrimage was overdue now. Every morning of my life I woke up and my mind was still there, still in that place. I had moved around endlessly, spent endless mornings waking up in endless rooms. But the cabin in Mchinji was always there first. And inside it, Penny. A vision of the cabin always came with a vision of her. Bare shoulders, flaxen hair floating in waves around her glowing face. She would appear there, a split second before I woke properly. Living in my mind when I had done so much to erase everything else in there.
My body remembered her, too. Those dreamy days spent in the forests, in the fields, in the hazy nest the cabin made when it was dusk and we lit a pipe and lay together, hands clasped, naked and gazing at the stars peeping through the window… Whenever I came, she was in my mind. Onto this, too, her image was melded. To have pleasure was to think of
her; to think of her was to have pleasure. She was tangled into my mind and body and after four years, the knots were still tight.
The stranger Damian began to chat about this and that. He had arrived a few weeks ago and was loving his mission. They had started to revamp the old community garden here and he was so excited about how well it was going. They were really going to make some meaningful changes in the next few months.
“Met any interesting people in town yet? Mama Tembi?”
“Mama Tembi? Hmm… not sure the name rings a bell,” he said and I smiled with a pang.
As he prattled on, I found I couldn’t keep her face out of my mind. The way you could trace every little thought and feeling in her fine features; her pale eyes, so similar to mine.
“Luckily we have some really good people on our mission, honestly. Really passionate people,” he said, and I looked out the window at the dust and stray dogs.
“A lot of strange people around here unfortunately, so it’s good to have such a nice group to work with, you know, people you can trust…”
“Strange people?”
He smiled and waved off the question.
“Oh you know, we’ve all heard the stories of crazy people who come out here and get weird ideas …and then never go home again!” he laughed. Perhaps he had heard of me after all.
“What else have you heard about these crazy people?”
He seemed disappointed that I wasn’t interested in hearing about the mission’s garden.
“Well …just rumors you know. There are people living in the reserve, I think.”
“Crazy people?” I said and smiled.
“Yeah, I’ve heard about a woman who lives there somewhere, but she’s American? I don’t know. Just stuff I’ve heard.”
My heart kicked in my chest. A woman. I slammed my eyes shut and saw her face again. He carried on talking about this and that, but I was no longer really listening. My mind raced.
Eventually the bus came lurching to a stop and he had to go. I shook his hand again and he told me to come find him later, if I passed through again. I squeezed my hand round the straps of my small backpack and said I might. A few stops later, I got off too.
