by Neely Tucker
I slammed down the phone.
Vita and I roamed the house that night, all but breaking things. I threw book after book against the wall. I went in my office and shattered clipboards over my knee. We spit out every epithet, insult, expletive and threat known to either of us—and considering my southern roots and Vita’s urban flair, this was a fairly colorful (and extensive) array of language. I think it fair to say that both of us were unbalanced for a period of several hours. One of the risks of reporting on so many conflicts, it seems to me, is that you deal with so much violence and so many unstable situations that the whole process begins to seem ordinary. You get on the plane in one violent spot, land back at your home base a few hours later, then go back, and return and go back and return and go back and return, and after it gets to be years of this sort of mental and moral Ping-Pong, sometimes you have to shake your head to remind yourself of what is “normal.” I had interviewed enough people whose lives had been ruined to know better than to think disaster only happened to someone else, and the whole situation seemed askew, beyond reason. This, I thought, is how your life blows up.
Neither of us slept that night.
By nine the next morning, I had been for a ten-mile run in an effort to calm my nerves. Whatever benefit there had been to venting our anger the night before, ranting was no longer helpful. We needed something to break the logjam. There were no other flanking movements or misdirections or other pieces of documentation that we could obtain to nudge the process forward.
There was just the adoption order. Nothing else mattered now.
It was the last days of October. The parliamentary elections were in six months.
Other than the time Kaseke had come to our house, I had never seriously considered that we would lose Chipo. As I often told our friends, we wanted her more than the department did and, eventually, desire trumps bureaucracy. But with the political climate collapsing, our phone line tapped, the president naming individual journalists as enemies of the state, the law making foreign adoptions all but impossible—and now with the bizarre twist of the First Lady’s dressmaker denouncing us—I had to concede we were about out of options. If this had felt like a tennis match a couple of months ago, I was no longer so jocular now that we were down to match point.
“We need a silver bullet,” I said to Vita.
We were both in the office, drooped in our chairs, and she didn’t say anything. Instead, she raised herself, cup of coffee in hand, and went to the filing cabinet. She began pulling notarized copies of every document that related to Chipo’s birth, medical history, and our custody of her. I turned to the computer and, with a muttered curse, began to write a response to the bribery allegations.
The tactic we had decided to take was that Steve and Heather had done us a favor.
They had assumed we were much further along than we were. By accusing us of bribing Margaret Tsiga, whom the department managers had spent fifteen months preventing us from reaching, their own files would show the allegation to be false. If they said we bribed one of our foster-care officers, it might have been a body blow. Instead, we would treat it as a roundhouse that missed.
That was the plan, anyway.
I addressed the letter to Kaseke and, after pleasantries this time, it began: “Yesterday you informed us of allegations made by another client that we had taken ‘shortcuts’ during the fostering/adoption process. This letter is to clarify, I hope for the final time, the life-threatening situation that brought Chipo into our care. It appears the nature of Chipo’s illness at the time has been frequently misunderstood within the department, giving rise to allegations of premature placement in our home.”
I went on for three single-spaced pages, delineating every record in Chipo’s medical history, the corresponding emergency custody orders, the times and dates of every substantial meeting we had with department officers (sometimes it helps to be a compulsive note-taker) and listed, by name and title, every person in the department who had signed off on our files.
The name Margaret Tsiga appeared nowhere.
Vita, meanwhile, was assembling copies and documents, down to the receipt for the oxygen Chipo had been given in intensive care. It was 2 A.M. by the time we finished. The table held two empty take-out pizza containers and two bottles of wine.
We pulled Chipo out of her crib to sleep between us that night. She sat up in the middle of the bed about an hour later, saw both of us, and was delighted. “Hellloooo!” she sang out. “Hellloooo!” she said again, louder, when that failed to draw a prompt response. I woke up and said, “Hey.”
She went back to sleep. I couldn’t.
At first light, I was in the front yard, throwing a ball for the dogs to chase. By 7:45, I was showered and dressed in the best suit I owned. Thirty minutes later, I was in Kaseke’s office. I gave her the file, a brief assessment of its contents, and another one of my cards. “Call anytime,” I said.
Then I pulled rank. The art of getting mad, after all, is getting even.
I went a few blocks over to her boss’s office—that of Mr. Soko, the man who had signed off on our visit to the United States. I walked in without an appointment because I knew he wouldn’t give me one if I called. I sat in the front room for an hour and a half before his secretary, after speaking on the phone, came over and said he would see me at 9 A.M. Monday. It was then Thursday. I said fine.
I could not sleep that night, nor the next. I became so sleep-deprived I couldn’t concentrate on anything long enough to write a coherent sentence. I finally went to see Dr. Paruch, our friendly Polish doctor. He was a remarkable man. Raised in communist-era Poland, he had moved his family to Zimbabwe in the early 1980s, a country friendly to the Soviet bloc in the Cold War years. Somehow, on a state salary in an impoverished country, he had managed to put his two daughters through Ivy League colleges on scholarships. He counseled me not to worry so much, swallow the sleeping pills he gave me, and take the longer view of life. I promised to do the second and get back to him on the other two.
Monday morning, I was back in Soko’s office. I handed him the file, told him of the bribery allegations, of my father’s accident, and that I now had to return to the United States. I omitted my fears that foreign journalists were probably going to be deported within a year or two anyway.
He was very polite but firm.
“This is the second time you’ve been in my office, Mr. Tucker, and I must tell you I find this extraordinary. It is improper for parents to come to my office. This is the regional headquarters. Your concerns should be addressed to your caseworker, and they will take it to the head of the department. If there is a need, they should come here, not you.”
“I know that, Mr. Soko, and I’m very sorry to disturb you. I hope you will forgive me if I seem to be a pushy American. It is not my intention. But I came to see you because the problem is your lower staff members. They seem to believe anything anybody tells them and to delight in believing it. The facts seem of no consequence to anyone; our work at Chinyaradzo seems forgotten; it seems every manner in which we try to get involved is twisted to have some evil purpose. Now with my father’s injuries, I have obligations to two generations of my family on either side of the Atlantic, to my daughter here and my father there. I cannot fulfill one without the other, and I cannot do either without your help. I came to respectfully explain these things to you. I mean no disrespect by having done so.”
There was a pause. I held my breath.
“You have spoken well, Mr. Tucker,” he said finally. “I will see what I can do.”
THE FOLLOWING DAYS were miserable. It was the end of the dry season; the ground was parched, tempers were edgy. My father seemed to stabilize, but I kept an open plane ticket booked to Mississippi. I had to get back to work, filing short dispatches, but delayed any travel because I could not budge from the bribery allegation. The work didn’t add up to much, and what was left of my career seemed to be in freefall.
Then, late one afternoon, the phone
rang.
It was a secretary from the Department of Social Welfare. She asked me to hold. There were a couple of clicks, and then a woman’s voice came on the line.
“Is that Mr. Tucker?”
“It is.”
“This is Margaret Tsiga,” she said with a laugh. “You wouldn’t believe what people are saying about you and me.”
18
FRIENDS AND FOES
MARGARET TSIGA worked just across the hall from Aaron Munautsi, but it seemed like another world to me. When I walked in, she smiled, she laughed. Her voice had a warm, confident tone. She didn’t seem bothered by the bribery allegations. If anything, she was amused.
“So this is the mysterious Mr. Tucker,” she said, shaking my hand lightly. “Such things I have heard about you! My goodness. The director told me that Steve was saying you had given me money. ‘How much did I get?’ I asked. ‘And who is this man who gives me money for nothing? Ah, this is the man all women are looking for.’ ”
“If only that were me,” I said, trying to get adjusted to her pleasant demeanor. It was throwing me off. “I’m very sorry your name got dragged into this. I just don’t know what to tell you about Steve.”
“This is a rather unpleasant man,” she said. “I believe he thinks Africans cannot hear so well. He seems to shout everything he says.”
“Even hello?”
“He is not the type to say ‘Hello, how are you?’ Maybe he does to somebody. Not around here.”
She rustled around some papers and folders on her desk, and I recognized the familiar edges of Chipo’s file in her hands. She flipped it open and began to sort through the documents. She started to ask the standard questions and took notes. I heard my voice going over the saga one more time. I looked around her office as I spoke. It was a small rectangle, with a concrete floor, a small window, and tired white paint on the walls. The space was cramped, filled with her desk, a couple of low-slung bookcases and filing cabinets, and the chair I was sitting in, pulled up tight to the desk. The surface of her desk was neatly kept, but the shelves and the space around it were filled with stacks of notes and files. The bookcases, along the wall next to the door, were filled to overflowing. I was overcome, once again, with what a tiny slot our case filled, at how many other children were in some need of assistance, and how poorly equipped the department’s workers were to try to keep up. After a while she said she had what she needed for today and she told me I could go.
“The next time you come in,” she said as I stood to go, “could you bring Miss Chipo? I would like to meet this young lady. And also your wife. I hear she is lovely.”
I said yes, of course, and took a step toward the door. Then I thought for a moment and turned around.
“Does this mean you are actually considering our case?”
“Of course,” she said with her slight laugh, as if I were a student a little slow on the uptake.
“So our file is now in the adoption section?”
“That’s right.”
“Which means it’s not in the foster section?”
She laughed again. “Exactly so.”
I opened my mouth again, to ask what had happened to the bribery mess and if it was all finished. And then I remembered my brother once telling me that my problem in life was that I just didn’t know when to shut up. So I did, nodded goodbye, walked down the corridor to the exit, and then sprinted for the truck, grabbing the cell phone and calling Vita on a dead run.
“We’re out of fostering! We got past Munautsi!” I shouted. A whoop on the other end was her response.
We were by no means home free; if the adoption process took as long as fostering, we would never make it out of the country before the elections. We went on a charm offensive the next day. Vita, Chipo, and I went back to see Mrs. Tsiga, Chipo in a little denim dress, her braids pulled back in an upsweep. She walked in, holding Vita’s finger for balance. Tsiga, looking up from her desk, burst into a laugh. She pushed back her chair, leaned down, and opened her arms.
“Come, little sister,” she said.
Chipo walked into her arms as though she were a favorite auntie. She sat on her lap the entire time we talked.
“Boy, is she cool,” Vita said when we were getting back in the truck. “She’s more like Stella, or one of the women who work in the orphanage, than the social workers. Can you see Munautsi getting Chipo to sit in his lap?”
I came back in the building a couple of days later, bringing another sheaf of personal reference letters for adoption—the last batch had followed department regulations and just mentioned fostering—and I stopped as soon as I turned the corner into the hallway that led to her office. In the gloom of the unlit corridor, there was a line of seven or eight people outside her office. Some sat, some stood. One mother nursed an infant. A couple of other children scampered in and out. The door was halfway open, and I could hear Tsiga talking with a client already inside. I glanced at my watch. It was 3:30. I took my place at the end of the line, leaning against the wall and saying a quiet hello, getting nods in return. Clearly, these were not all adoption cases. Too many set faces, clenched jaws. Divorce and custody, deaths of parents, child support, allegations of abuse, charges of neglect, abject poverty—the somber laundry list of reasons people would be sitting in the Department of Social Welfare for hours on end. Tsiga was clearly involved in many areas of social work, not just adoption. I looked down the hallway, then walked back to the other corridor, where other social workers had their offices. No lines. No one else was in. I walked back to my spot at the end of the line and slumped onto the floor, back against the wall. I was already regretting not bringing a book. The line inched forward as the clock moved toward the 5 P.M. closing time. Nobody in the line budged. Half an hour passed, and then another. The rest of the department shut down. Cars pulled out of the dusty parking lot outside. At a few minutes before 6 P.M., it was finally my turn. And then a man came walking down the hall, two children in tow. He started to go in the office in front of me. I was about to protest when he winked at me and said, “I’m the husband. I’ll just be a minute.”
She stood up, smiling to greet him and calling out a friendly hello to me.
“This is my husband,” she said. “He always comes to wonder when I’ll be home.” They laughed, talked briefly in Shona, and then he was gone, giving me a handshake and walking to the door, children swirling around him.
“Don’t let me hold you up,” I started, and she waved me into the seat, dismissing the notion with another wave of her hand. “I just have so much to do. Yours is a small part. My husband, he was stopping to see if I was going to cook dinner or if he should make other arrangements.”
“He doesn’t mind you working late? You’re the last one here.”
“He’s used to it,” she said, with that soft laugh I liked so much.
“You have lovely children,” I said. “You have those two?”
“We have several, actually. Sometimes I seem to lose count.”
“You’ve got four, five kids? And you’re working late? And I’m thinking I’ve got a lot to do with one? You’re shaming me, Mrs. Tsiga.”
“You get used to it.” She shrugged. “I think you have some papers for me?”
I had almost forgotten the reference letters. I handed them to her, continuing the conversation about families for a few minutes. Over the next couple of weeks, as Vita or I brought her one document or another, the pattern was the same. She often had a line outside her door—her office was never empty—and to get to see her by 5 P.M., it was best to show up at least an hour earlier. I sat in the dim hallway next to the other clients and read one book after another. As always, there was no such thing as an appointment. She was in court, in interviews, or there was someone already in her office. In contrast to the workers I had experience with, she was there right on time each morning, or just a few minutes early, and she often worked past the close of the business day. She was so tired she often had bags under her eyes, and
yet she was clearly committed to working with some of the city’s most disadvantaged children. It was just plain inspiring, and our conversations often wound up drifting onto any number of subjects, not just Chipo’s adoption.
In the midst of this, as we began to feel some small ray of optimism, the phone rang one night after dinner. Vita handed the receiver to me, mouthing that it sounded like an American woman on an international call. I said hello, and Jo-Ann Armao, the assistant managing editor for metropolitan news at the Washington Post, said hello back. Jo-Ann was not one to spend much time on small talk, and she asked if I still wanted to work at the Post.
“Sure,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. Vita looked up. “The Post,” I mouthed silently, giving a thumbs-up.
Jo-Ann was talking about covering the city, about salary now, and I was waving to Vita in big country-cousin bye-byes, holding out my arms like I was an airplane, flying around the room, and she was shaking her head and laughing.
When Jo-Ann finished, I said of course I’d take the job. Then, using up my allotment for chutzpah, I asked for more money than she offered and asked how long they could wait before I actually showed up. We agreed on mid-February at the latest, nearly five months in the future and a month or so in front of the parliamentary elections. If the adoption didn’t come through in time, Vita and I had already decided that she and Chipo would stay behind with friends while I moved to start the new job. It was an unpleasant prospect, but there was no way I could go on reporting in the country. If I had to go, Vita and Chipo would move across town, settling into a spare room in the home of our friends Bill and Dumisille. Bill was a senior officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Dumi was from Swaziland in next-door neighbor South Africa and knew the regional ropes. They lived in housing that was property of the U.S. embassy. The residence would give Vita and Chipo some measure of diplomatic protection if things got unpleasant, and Bill and Dumi were uniquely placed to help us out if it came to that.
