Scarlett Bride (The Scarletts

by Brenda Barrett

  "I walk you home."

  Ashaki nodded. "Sure thing, Mango."

  "I am leaving here for Beni in the evening," Mango said roughly. "You want to come?"

  Ashaki shook her head. She would only run away if she found the diamonds. Otherwise she would have no means to live in Kinshasa. Mango was getting up in age and he was as poor as she was. What would they do in the city?

  "I thought you were desperate to escape Bekele." Mango frowned. "Obviously you are not desperate enough."

  Ashaki inhaled raggedly. "I am desperate but what would I do for money in Kinshasa? Where would we live? And how would we finance our journey once we leave Beni?"

  "You worry too much," Mango said snippily. "We would get by."

  "It is dangerous out there," Ashaki whispered, "especially for women. I am a woman, Mango."

  Mango chuckled. "You don't say?"

  "I am serious, Mango." Ashaki reached the hut that she used to share with her father and stopped. "Kinshasa is four days away."

  "Or six or ten, if we take some of the journey on foot." Mango shrugged. "It is rough going. I only told you because I thought you said you'd die if you stay here."

  "I did say it." Ashaki worried her bottom lip. "But I can't go with you, Mango."

  "Fine." Mango nodded. "If I make it back here in the future I expect that you'll be with Bekele. Married and hampered with another one of his babies, or maybe you'll die in childbirth like his last wife."

  Ashaki recoiled in her mind from the vision he conjured up. That would not be her fate if Oliver helped her. She wondered if he would.

  "See you, Avanga. God be with you."

  "You too, Mango." Ashaki sighed as she watched him limp away. He had been in the same boat incident that had almost paralyzed Bekele. She wondered if she would ever see him again.

  Maybe not. Mango had suddenly appeared in the village two years ago. He would probably show up in another village and rest there until he moved on. Her father said Mango had been a driver to one of the officials in Kinshasa before the war. He knew his way around. He would be fine.

  She went into the hut and looked around. It was the same as she had left it. There was nothing to steal except her two dresses. Her other pair of sandals was so worn it looked as brown as the packed dirt floor it rested on. Her father's iron box was padlocked and hidden under an old pair of pants under the mattress in the corner of the hut.

  Inside was her passport, her birth certificate, and her father's Bible. The little square box used to have other things like her father's official papers but he had burned them a year ago when he had just gotten sick.

  That same year he had insisted that she get her passport updated in the town of Beni. It was the only time she could remember leaving Kidogo since their flight from Kinshasa, a journey she hardly remembered.

  She sat down cross-legged on the mattress, covered with a thin sheet that she had washed and rewashed for years. It was so thin now in spaces you could see the sponge it covered.

  She looked around. She had dug up the whole place. The last place was under the very mattress she sat on.

  Her father's diamonds were nowhere to be found.

  She laid back and closed her eyes. She wondered if she would sleep. Since the mass rapes over in Friga she was super sensitive to the least sound. She heard the bleating of a goat as someone walked it down the road; she heard Mattiya, her neighbor to the right speaking in rapid Swahili as she scolded her daughter for something or other.

  She heard Keena on the left of her singing a popular Lingala song that had reached them in the village. A few people had radios and that song had been in heavy rotation for weeks now about a failed relationship. Both the men and the women loved it.

  There were so many things she had no clue about in the world. She heard about them but never saw them. It was just last year that she had seen television for the first time when she went to Beni.

  It had been amazing. She had finally watched a moving picture in English, a Nigerian movie; her father had cried through the whole thing. The movie was not sad but she didn't have to ask him why he cried. He wept for all the things that he had and lost, and that included television.

  And airplanes.

  And cellphones. She had seen that in the movie.

  And people kissing. Life had not been kind to Joseph Avanga.

  Instantly her mind went to Oliver, who treated her in a friendly, offhand manner that made her really comfortable with him. And yet aware of him somehow, like a skin prickling sensation if he came too near. If they married, would they kiss?

  Would he even want to kiss her?

  And what of Dr. David Wheeler? He wanted to kiss her; she could see it in his eyes but she didn't really think of kissing him. Maybe she should. They would eventually marry if Oliver had pity on her and got her out of the village.

  Both men were handsome. She closed her eyes dreamily. Dr. David had hair like the dusty banks of Lake Tumba in summer, sometimes golden, sometimes brown and sandy looking. His eyes were the color of the ferns that grew at the side of the river.

  The first time she had seen him she had stood in place for a full minute, unable to believe her eyes. The white missionaries who came to the Hands for Help in Kidogo were not usually good-looking or young. At least not enough to render her and the other women in the village almost speechless. But when Dr. David had stepped off the truck and on Kidogo soil she was bowled over.

  And then another man had stepped down after him and she and the girls standing in the school auditorium had made a collective gasp. It had been Dr. Oliver. His hair had been over-long then, and curly. He had stooped down to hear something that Dr. Sally had said and then a gust of wind had whipped his hair across his face. He had looked up then, tugging his hair behind his ears, and grinned and his eyes met hers.

  She knew it. He had seen her staring at him through the window and they had connected; he had grinned at her slowly, Causing all the girls crowded around the window to make a swooning sound.

  Of course they had quarreled about who he had looked at. He was the new Indian doctor with the curly hair and brown honey skin and killer smile which did strange things to her insides.

  The thing about Dr. Oliver was that he treated everybody with the same offhanded politeness. He was easy to talk to and friendly and very interested in people. He recalled the names of everybody and asked about their family members with the familiarity of a person living in the village for years. He had told her one day that he had total recall. Once it was said, he never forgot.

  Dr. David, on the other hand, was aloof with most people except her. He went out of his way to talk to her. She still could not understand why she got all tongue-tied and trembly when he was around.

  She had been trying to work it out for a year. She used to see him when she came to the clinic and say hi, then one day he told her she was gorgeous and she had not been the same since.

  Could one compliment have rendered her dumb?

  She tried to act normal around him but it was not happening. And the way he looked at her, too, had something to do with it. It resembled the way that Chief Bekele looked at her but without the heat.

  She cupped her head in her chin and willed herself to breathe in and out slowly. When she woke up, she would go to the missionary compound and have a shower in the girl's dorm and have something to eat in the cafeteria. She hoped that she woke up in time for dinner.

  Chapter Three

  Oliver woke up feeling less than rested and he blamed David and to a lesser extent Noel, the doctor who was on the top bunk whose snore was as loud as a backfiring automobile. He must have forgotten to use his plugs. Noel had worked the night shift as well. He hated when their schedules coincided like that because Noel was not a quiet sleeper.

  Oliver shared the room with three other doctors. The room had two bunk beds. When he had just seen it he had instant recollections of college and dorm life but as one of the doctors had pointed out, it could be worse; many
missionary doctors did not have the luxury of a regular bed or the kind of facilities the Hands for Help compound had.

  He swiped his hand over his eyes and shook his head. He hoped that tonight would not be as harried as the night before. He also hoped that he didn't run into David this evening.

  He had no such luck. As soon as he walked into the bathroom, which was set up like a dormitory too, with showers, face basins and toilet bowls sectioned off in a row of six. He could hear David singing in the shower at the far left.

  I got sunshine on a cloudy day...what can make me feel this way...my girl...

  Oliver rolled his eyes and headed for the shower farthest from David's. He was not in the mood to hear again any persuasion to marry Ashaki. He had so many arguments against it. He turned on the shower and exulted in the cool flow of water. In his imagination his wife would be older, maybe his age, independent and have a career. She would love him to distraction. He wanted the dream. And that was why he had never even thought of pursuing a relationship with anyone through the years. There were too many broken relationships and heartaches around him.

  And too many females who were unsuitable. He wanted to take his time. He wanted something close to perfection. He felt as if marrying someone to bail her out of a situation and to preserve for his friend was too sordid for words.

  Yet, he thought about it.

  He closed his eyes. He should think about something else, like the fact that in two weeks, he would be out of Kidogo and back to life in Jamaica. He had not lived in Jamaica for years. He only visited the past few years because of his father's side of the family, the Scarletts. They had become very dear to him, especially his uncle Lloyd and his aunt Daisy and his brother Reuben.

  He was also looking forward to meeting his new brothers and sister and hearing the latest developments in the search for his father. He also looked forward to sleeping on a king-sized bed somewhere.

  His thoughts were selfish, but when had he had time to do whatever he wanted? At twenty-nine he had just lived his life according to someone else's script. He had gone to medical school because his mother thought that he should be a doctor and then he had barely finished internship when his mother had declared that he should do medical missionary work.

  And he had gone along with it all.

  He needed to be himself for a while.

  He turned off the shower and dried himself off. When he exited the shower stalls he glimpsed David out of the corner of his eye with a towel wrapped around his midriff. He was brushing his teeth.

  "Stop!" David muttered with white foam flying everywhere. "I want to speak to you!"

  Oliver shook his head. "Can't hear you. You need to speak up."

  "I fed fop!" David shouted around the toothbrush.

  Oliver fanned him off. "Later, David. Not in the mood now."

  No one was in the room when he got dressed. He chose to put on a white cotton t-shirt and khaki pants. He slicked back his hair with his fingers and sprayed on some cologne. He was hungry. The dining hall would be semi empty around this time.

  Supper hours were coming to a close, which was perfect. The canteen lady Mbotu always saved his food anyway. He was the only one in the line when he went to collect his food.

  The options were varied tonight. He saw potato fufu in peanut sauce, stew goat with a variety of starches, plantain, bananas, potatos, cassava fufu and of course the ever-present fish.

  Fish was always a staple in the canteen because the river was nearby. This evening was steamed fish with okra. He liked how Mbotu did steamed fish. He always teased her that she did fish just like a Jamaican.

  Mbotu's rejoinder was that Jamaicans were the ones who got it from Africans.

  Tonight his choice of food was obvious, steamed fish and cassava fufu. The cassava fufu was the nearest he was going to get to Jamaican bammy. Mbotu served him with a smile and her usual comments about fattening him up to send him back home.

  He turned with his tray toward the quietest end of the canteen and that was when he saw Ashaki Avanga.

  She was sitting alone in the opposite corner of where he was heading. She had her head down and was playing in her food, moving a fried plantain from one end of her plate to the other and creating little whirlpools in her plate—idly swishing it in her sauce.

  His hand tightened around the tray. It was hard to leave her like that, looking so burdened down and downcast.

  He reluctantly headed over to her table and sat down. "You know, when I refused to eat when I was little my mother used to say, think of all the starving children in Africa. And here we are in a country in Africa. What should I say, think of all the starving children in Jamaica?"

  Ashaki looked up at him and smiled. "Oliver!"

  He grinned. "Now that's better."

  He closed his eyes and prayed over his meal. When he opened his eyes, Ashaki was looking at him a small smile on her lips.

  "You and Pastor Obagi are the only ones I see doing that."

  Oliver shrugged. "Force of habit. From my mother. A meal is not worthy to be eaten until God has blessed it."

  Ashaki nodded. "I am going to start doing it."

  Oliver smiled. "It can't hurt."

  "Tell me about your mother," Ashaki said, putting her hands under her chin and staring at him.

  "Potted version?" Oliver shrugged. "She is formidable, a force to be reckoned with. Her name is Honey, but she is not as sweet as the name conjures up. She is hard as nails. But she loves me more than anyone in the world. And she is hard because she has had to be. She was determined to raise a son worthy to be proud of."

  Ashaki nodded. "She is a lot like some of the mothers around here. With the absence of fathers it's a battle to grow sons to be proud of."

  Oliver nodded. "That's right."

  "And your father?" Ashaki asked. "Where is he?"

  "I have no idea." Oliver smiled at her. "I never knew him."

  "That's awful," Ashaki said feelingly. "I can't imagine growing up without my father in my life."

  Oliver smiled. "And I am happy that you did have him."

  "Yes," Ashaki sighed, "but now he is gone. Do you have any siblings, Oliver?"

  "Oh yes, quite a few. Some of them I have not even met. And I have a lot of cousins and other family members."

  "You can't wait to go back home and see them, huh?" Ashaki asked, her eyes getting downcast again.

  "I can wait," Oliver said lightly, "but I am missing them and home."

  Ashaki looked around and then leaned in closer to him. "Dr. Oliver, please, I can pay you to marry me."

  The fork clattered from Oliver’s fingers and he stopped chewing. "Ashaki..."

  "Don't say no," Ashaki said earnestly. "My dad said he buried diamonds; it's just that I can't find them. When I do find them, I’ll pay you."

  "Oh Ashaki, I don't want your diamonds, if you ever find them..." Oliver was wondering how to frame his refusal when she gripped his hand tightly.

  "I just need to get out of here safely, Oliver. You won't regret it."

  Oliver looked down at the hand that clasped his so tightly. "Ashaki, I..."

  "Look at me," she almost growled. It was enough for him to look at her swiftly.

  She wasn't looking like some uncertain girl who was on the verge of being sacrificed to the village chief. She was determined now; he could see it in every sinew of her pretty face.

  "I am from a country at war," she said passionately, "I know what death and decay and poverty look like. I know what being the fourth wife of a dark, ignorant man will be like. I have no intention of being a victim. So look, Oliver Scarlett, if you don't help me, you kill me. I am dead."

  She released his hand and sat back in the chair and stared at him unflinchingly.

  Oliver swallowed. "You aren't planning to do something drastic, are you?"

  "Suicide?" She laughed dryly. "All I need to do is to venture into the forest area. There is a tribe there that eat people. Human meat is a delicacy to them."

/>   Oliver pushed away his fish. Of course he had heard stories. He could not forget that one of the headlines that he had read coming into the Congo was that the rebels were eating pygmies and that people venturing too close to certain areas were captured and eaten.

  In certain villages there were no graveyards. It had been jarring and uncomfortable information to read. In this village people who ventured across the forest area for whatever reason never came back.

  "Let me think about it." He almost choked out the words. He couldn't stomach another morsel after the images of cannibalism danced in his head.

  ****

  He thought about it for two days. David left him alone for the most part. He was happy for that. Ashaki had done enough with her dramatic and all too earnest declaration. If you don't help me, you kill me. I am dead.

  He already knew that he couldn't say no. Especially when Bekele came into the clinic that Thursday. He was a big guy with bloodshot red eyes. He wore a bush jacket and stained khaki pants and he leaned heavily on a stick.

  "I am functional again!" he announced to the nurses who were changing the dressing around his waist. "Ask my wife Nena. She can hardly move this morning."

  Oliver flinched. He was happy that Ashaki was not in the clinic to hear this declaration. He was almost sure that she would probably run away to the tribe in the forest and beg them to eat her.

  But David heard and when Oliver went to the kitchenette, David was waiting for him. "Don't let him do it," he said it quietly. "I love Ashaki, Oliver. Help her."

  Oliver sat down at the table. "What would I need to do?"

  "I already alerted Pastor Obagi," David said eagerly. "He agreed that this is a good idea. If you marry her tomorrow, you will just have a week left. You can get the legal certificates by then. Ashaki already has her passport. She doesn't have any luggage. Sally will call the mission head in Beni when she goes today to arrange for two tickets out instead of one. It is not a hard thing for you to do."

  Oliver inhaled deeply. It wasn't hard, but was it right? Yes, maybe it was; people got married for less. He looked into David's worried green eyes. "Okay then, I'll do it."