The Gloaming (14 page)

We pass a boy grazing a cow on the verge. He's wearing a white shirt about ten sizes too big, and for a brief hallucinogenic moment I think it's the boy from Butiama. But we pass this boy so quickly and the idea that they are the same child is absurd. Gloria waves and he smiles and waves back.

Then she says to me: ‘The key is not to have anything they can steal and sell. No computer, no TV. Then they won't bother you.'

‘I just have a small bag.' I don't mention the box.

‘Traveling light.' She says this casually, but she's still seeking a revelation. Why do I only have a small bag? Did I leave in a hurry? Did I leave in secret?

‘My husband and I traveled a lot. I'm good at packing.' We shed our material lives, posting after posting, all those boxes, and we just left them behind, so by the time we arrived in Arnau, we had only the essentials.

‘Ex-husband,' she corrects.

‘It's recent. I'm still getting used to it.'

‘Ah, poor doll.' She pats my thigh.

This, then, is who I can be for Gloria: the wounded divorcee.

Easing the Toyota around potholes, Gloria says, ‘The electricity is totally unpredictable, so gadgetry of any kind is pointless. Hairdryer, TV, computer, and such. Though you don't have those, traveling light.' She stops at a low metal gate and beeps the horn. A security guard in blue uniform runs out to open it. He salutes.

‘
Habari
, Jamhuri.'

‘
Habari
, Mama Gloria!'

They chat for a moment. Her Swahili is good—fluent, I assume. And I think she's serious about her orphanage and her commitment. She tells Jamhuri I've come to look at the house. He glances in at me, smiles, the most brilliant wide smile, ‘
Karibu, Mama, karibu sana
!' Welcome.

We stand in the gloaming. The late evening light, soft and translucent, has made the world benign. The house is white and round and sheltered by red-blooming tulip trees. A hundred yards from the door, a low sandy cliff dips to the sea and a swarm of mangroves. White egrets flock to roost. The sun slips behind the mangroves, creating spangles and diamonds through the leaves. The air vibrates with the wild looping song of Bulbul birds.

‘
Karibu,'
Gloria says, and hands me a set of keys.

 

Gloria lives on the other side of the bay, but without a view of the sea. I've ridden over here on a bicycle I rented from Mickey. He owns a stable of bikes at the market.

‘I'm no Martha Stewart,' Gloria gestures down the hallway. ‘But it's got potential.' The house is a long cinderblock bungalow with seven rooms and three bathrooms set one after the other with military precision. ‘I'm leaving it to the kids to decorate. I want their crap on the floor, their socks in the sofa, crayons on the walls. Noise, mess, you know, that'll make it home.'

The house waits ready for them. The rooms have beds, the bedding neatly folded on the mattresses. There are toys, stuffed animals and plastic cars, a bicycle with training wheels and pink tassels on the end of the handlebars.

‘I've been promised the last permit.' She lights a new cigarette from the last. I study the orange-red packet with the logo of a racehorse. Why a racehorse? What connects horses to smoking? Or roosters? Gloria continues: ‘A couple of days, they assure me I'll have it. I have ten kids already, and another sixteen needing space.'

She tells me she had a revelation. She takes a long drag, exhales through her nose—a talent which secretly intrigued me as a child, for I thought of dragons. ‘I was in the dentist's office, back in Ashland, looking through an old
National Geographic
and there's a thing about children in Africa with AIDS. I was just about to start reading when the nurse came in and said Doctor Babbits was ready for me. I sat in the chair and Babbits gave me the gas. I have terrible trouble with my teeth. As I was sitting there with him drilling away and feeling a bit floaty, I saw those children. They were alone. They were hungry. They were scared and helpless. I started crying. It was unbearable. Babbits thought it was pain and gave me another hit. But it was the children.

‘I went home—trailer home, trailer park. I kept thinking how I was this fat, useless, middle-aged woman with rotting teeth. Eating, watching TV, waiting tables in an economically fucked, bigoted little town in semi-rural Michigan. “More coffee, sir?” “Can I take your order, Ma'am?” Ten bucks, keep the change on a $9.47 bill. The sum of my life. “Will that be all?” What if it was all? Fifty-three lousy cents.'

Exhale. Fresh cigarette.

‘I have got to quit these damn things before the kids come.'

The housekeeper brings in a tray of coffee and small, dry biscuits. Gloria looks at me enquiringly.

‘White, no sugar,' I tell her.

‘Figures,' she says, handing me a cup.

‘Does it?' I recall my own deductions about black coffee drinkers.

‘Ladylike, careful.' She takes hers white with three heaping sugars. ‘So I sold my trailer, emptied my savings. You'd be surprised how much money you can save up when you've got nothing and no one to spend it on. I flew to Dar, didn't know anyone, anything. Sure, I was worried that I didn't have enough money, didn't know what I was doing. But that was just brain blah-blah. I had conviction: I had to do something about those poor kids, they were all that mattered. That was two years ago.'

I'm genuinely impressed. ‘Just like that?'

Gloria snaps her fingers. ‘I even changed my name. Used to be Mary. Plain old Mary. Tired Mary. Mary of the sore feet. The other waitresses, we'd call ourselves Sisters of the Blisters. On the way to the airport I heard The Doors. And I thought, Gloria. Yes, I will be glorious. And you?'

These last two words jump out at me, unexpected as a barking dog. ‘Me?'

She raises her brow inquisitively.

‘I don't have a story, Gloria.' I can't hold her gaze, so I turn to regard the toys, clean and neatly sorted in boxes. ‘Just the divorce.'

‘Everyone has a story.'

‘Tom was the interesting one.'

‘Tom? The ex? Did he tell you you weren't interesting?'

‘It wasn't like that.'

‘Then what was it like?'

‘Usually,' I say. ‘Usually, people don't notice I don't talk. They're happy talking about themselves.'

‘Now, that is certainly true. I love talking about myself.'

‘He left me.' I know it's what she wants, the petty drama. ‘For another woman.'

‘Kids? Kids make a divorce real messy.'

We didn't want children. We wanted each other. Tom in the doorway, watching me put in the diaphragm. Pushing me against the sink, ‘I need you all the time.'

‘No. No children.' I start to tear up. It's like someone's sliced open an onion.

Gloria truly appreciates the tears. Her voice softens. ‘You're still young. You've got plenty of time.'

‘And you?' Ping! Lobbing back.

‘Children?' She puffs out her cheeks. ‘Son. James. But he's passed.' She reaches for the cigarettes. ‘Yes, James passed quite a while ago now.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Maybe you wouldn't be if you'd known him. He turned out wrong.'

It seems so much to reveal, this wrong, dead son, but she wants me to know about him. Who he was and his being dead defines her, pins her like an insect on a lepidopterist's board. I study her face and search for him. Did he look like her? I wonder where he fits into the dentist's office, the need to save.

At any rate, Gloria moves on. ‘Hey, I'm being pushy, too direct. That's the American in me. And, crap, am I going half crazy waiting for this permit. How about I show you around? We could do a little tour of Tanga's finest tourist attractions.' She adds this with a little smirk.

She won't take no for an answer.

 

Two days after the inquest, I saw Mrs Berger. She was walking along the path from Arnau to the bridge. I was on the way to the bus and hurried to catch up with her.

‘Mrs Berger?'

She stopped and turned. Her face was tightly drawn. Her forehead was deeply furrowed and the skin under her eyes smudged so dark a tone of blue I thought she had been beaten. She was a neat person, dressed so that everything matched her olive wool skirt. The neatness only exaggerated the disarray of her face. She looked at me blankly.

‘Do you know who I am?'

‘Of course.' She glanced behind me, to see if anyone was coming up the path.

‘I…'

I began.

‘I…'

‘What?' she said.

‘It's a relief,' I said at last. ‘About the inquest.'

‘A
relief?'
she said astounded. After looking into the hollows of her eyes for a moment, I looked down, as if on the ground among the wet leaves I might find what it was I should say. I'd chosen the wrong word. There was no relief. There was just another day.

She spoke instead. ‘William is dead.'

‘William?'

‘My dog. He was poisoned.'

‘By whom?'

She waved her gloved hand. ‘One of them.'

‘Are you sure?'

She began to cry, half turning away to hide herself. ‘The vet. Yes. It was rat poison. Placed in a piece of meat. He died in agony.'

‘I'm so sorry.'

‘It's because I said I loved him like a child. You're not supposed to love a dog like a child. A child is a sacred thing, oh, the only beloved, not a dog, a stupid animal.'

‘Have you talked to the police?'

‘And should they care?'

‘But it wasn't your fault.'

Now came a bitter eruption: ‘Of course it was my fault. It was your fault. We together.'

‘The inquest—'

‘The
inquest?
What does the inquest have to do with anything?'

‘Maybe William saw something—a cat, and you couldn't have—'

‘And maybe you, maybe you accidentally stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake.' She spoke in a rush, as if she had to get it out, had to lose control for just a moment. ‘Maybe not even accidentally. Maybe you are crazy, your husband left you and you drove at those children. Maybe you are wicked and spiteful. People say this, and maybe it's true.'

‘People say—' but I couldn't finish. I stepped back, but she stepped forward, her face close to mine. ‘You keep to yourself. Don't think I will talk to you. Don't think we will commiserate. You will leave and everyone here will forget about you. But this is my home. For the rest of my life I am not who I was before, I have the story. Always behind me they whisper, “She was the one, those three children, it was her.”'

 

I unhook my shopping basket from the handlebars and leave my bike with Mickey at the market. I take the
daladala
to Raskazone. Its route ends a couple of hundred yards before the Yacht Club. I'll have to walk the last mile to the cottage. The tout urges me into the back. He says I'll be one of the last off. Never having told him where I'm staying, I wonder how he knows. I assume I'm marked: a single, white woman, a circus freak or celebrity; everyone knows I'm renting the white cottage at the end of the peninsula road. Hopefully, everyone knows: no computer, no TV. Just a small suitcase and a box.

The
daladala
defies physics. Clearly, the center should not hold: the doors, floor and side panels should fall off. The wheels should pop like buttons, roll into the sea. But somehow it proceeds down the street, the tout hanging out the sliding door, Arabic music blaring. We are crammed inside: a total of eighteen adults.

Outside the Bomba Hospital women are ululating. Someone they love has died, a not uncommon event at the Bomba according to Gloria. Three people want to get on the bus, but only two get off. One of the aspiring passengers is a woman holding a baby against her chest with one hand and a young boy in the other. She argues with the tout, and he lets her on, directing her to the six-inch space next to me. She looks at me, then shifts her eyes to the boy, a question.

I nod and the boy climbs onto my lap.

He does not fidget, sitting solemn-eyed. He wears a school uniform, a blue shirt with striped tie and khaki shorts. I study the back of his neck, the deep groove of his nape and the perfect shape of his head. His skin is polished and smooth. He smells faintly of soap, a local brand like Lux.

The
daladala
jolts along the road, hitting a pothole so he is thrown back against my chest, his head on my shoulder. His mother chides him in sharp Swahili. ‘It's okay, it's okay,' I say. Because I want him there, I want him to lean his head against me, I want my body to hold his, to protect him from the road.

The tout bangs the side of the
daladala
. We've reached the end of the route. The boy turns and looks at me with large, dark eyes, ‘Thank you, madam.' I smile, ‘You're welcome.' I want to kiss him, I want to hold him. Absurdly, I want to make everything right for him, everything, forever; I'll pay for his schooling, his college, his shoes, his books, he'll become a doctor.

He and his mother get off ahead of me. Tightening the sling that holds the baby, she takes his hand roughly, pulling on his arm. Don't, I want to say. He hurries to meet her step, and they walk away up one of the sandy roads that spoke outward. He doesn't look back.

When, I ask myself, was the last time I held a child? I have no idea. But in that moment I realize I will never hold my own child. I cannot allow that life when I've taken it.

Kindermörderin
.

Something tears in me, something structural. I give way, my legs buckle. I'm kneeling on the sand.

‘Mama,' a voice says. A warm hand on my arm. ‘This way, this way.'

I'm walking. There are arms around me, holding me up. Voices. The word
mzungu
.