Tropic of Night (8 page)

Her mother’s girl, certainly, as I was Daddy’s. Families do split that way, although around the dinner table we were cordial enough, good manners being a family value at the Does’. Josey, being the child of Mom’s previous and never-to-be-mentioned marriage, did not have a horse in this race. Oddly, although he was a Mount, too, he looked rather more like us than he did like his mother or Mary. My dad tried to reach out to him, decent guy that he was, but Josey wasn’t buying it. Pride, I think. He had a terror of being beholden, something he certainly didn’t share with his mother, or other half sister. He wanted to be the one giving the gifts. Also, it was probably not much fun being Lily Mount Doe’s son. He left home early, which broke my heart. In my girlish dreams it was always the three of us, out on the boat, having adventures, learning stuff. Boy stuff, naturally. My mother gave up early trying to teach me girl stuff, especially as she had such an expert and willing pupil in Mary.

I am a little shaky in the pins on the way back to my post. Mrs. Waley looks meaningfully at her watch as I enter and exchanges some words with the filers. Smirks all around. It does Mrs. Waley good to note the deficiencies of her one white subordinate, and I don’t begrudge her that pleasure. I continue pulling files until lunchtime, which for me is one o’clock. Then I travel down dingy corridors to the cafeteria. Most of the time I go outside and find a patch of shade somewhere and eat alone, but today I am feeling too exhausted to make the trip. A spasm of nausea when the institutional food smell hits me. I pull a vanilla yogurt out of the cooler box.

I wish to be alone, but I’m spotted by two other medical recorders. Lulu waves me over to a table where she is sitting with Cleo. Dead Dolores, were she here, would be glad of company, and so I go also, doing this in her memory. They’re both eating salads from the bar, where you make them up and buy them by the ounce. They are both sturdy, round-bottomed and -breasted dark women with straightened hair, looking very much alike, although I do not think they are related. Both of them are American African Non-Americans, being naturalized immigrants from the island of Barbados.

Cleo makes a comment about my yogurt and they both chuckle engagingly. Both of them have acquired along with their citizenship the American body thing and wish to keep their size under control. They know that only the thin rise in America. They’re better educated than Mrs. Waley, and speak a more precise English. Both are enrolled at Miami-Dade, and will get their degrees and will ride their clipped imperial accents beyond even Billing, perhaps as far as Administration itself. Mrs. Waley regards them with suspicion; how can they, four shades darker than she, talk and act so white?

Lulu and Cleo feel sorry for me. Lulu is always giving me grooming tips. Dolores, child, that is not the right style for your hair, I must tell you that, no. Cleo, tell her, she should wear it pulled back, away from the face. And she has such pretty eyes, see it, girl! Dolores, you should get you some contacts, like me. They don’t cost that much.

And so on, in that musical voice. I bob my head, grin, and make excuses. I like them both and wish often that I were again myself so that we could be friends. I eat my yogurt slowly, willing my stomach to accept its bland nourishment. Cleo and Lulu are chattering about some neighborhood event. They live in the Grove, too, in the large island community there. They are always complaining about the Bahamians and Jamaicans, and explaining to each other and to me why these are both lesser breeds without the law. And, my word, the Haitians ! I allow their talk to soothe me, like the sound of a brook, without much attention to content. Nor is it much expected. Now some remarks about their Episcopal church, their minister. I am consulted here, being a Catholic, and the arbiter of doctrine therefore. I make a mumbling reply. It has been thirteen years and seven months since my last confession. I am badly lapsed but persist in a fragment of belief. Now that I have Luz, I will probably start church again. I wish to bring her up in the faith of my father.

I’m thinking vaguely about finding a church when Lulu says, “The police are not saying anything, but I heard from my cousin Margaret, she lives in Opa-Locka and she knows the family of that poor girl. Margaret heard that she was cut wide open down her middle and the baby was stolen away.”

“Not true!” exclaims Cleo, her eyes wide with horror. My eyes too.

“True, very true!” Lulu affirms. “But, what you can expect, them in Overtown!”

“Terrible, them, but …” Here Cleo lowers her voice and looks dramatically past her shoulder, then confides, ” Youknow what they want with that baby, heh? Haitians .”

“What?” Lulu put her hand to her mouth. “Jesus save us! You think for human sacrifices?”

“What else for? What I think is they should have a care, the authorities, before they allow some of these people in the country. I don’t say all of them by any means, but …” Here she stopped and I felt her stare. “Why, my girl, what is the matter with you now? You look like you are about to be sick.”

I let my spoon fall to the table, mutter something, grab up my cheapo bag, and dash to the toilet. Out of both ends this time, top first, then the other, although I can’t imagine there was much to purge, maybe old rubber bands, pieces of spleen. Another zero-calorie day for Dolores.

After, I find myself at the sink, washing, washing, mindlessly washing my hands until they are red and wrinkled. Am I developing an obsession now? That’s all I need, paranoid delusions, obsessional syndrome, this is what the intern will say when he admits me to Neuropsychiatric. I wish.

Oh, Cleo, it’s not Haitians, no, this is far beyond Haitians. Haiti is strictly minor league for this kind of thing: the most extreme voudoun, done by the most power-crazed bokor in that whole wretched island, is like an amateur company stumbling through The Iceman Cometh in Kankakee. What we have here, Cleo, in comparison, is Broadway, the ultimate source and font and center of all that, the pure neolithic technology, unadulterated by transportation and slavery, barely touched by the colonialists.

Has he found me? I recall once, when we were first in love, idly speculating on where we might live, as couples do, running through the cities, the countries, totting up the pros and cons. San Francisco? Pretty, nice climate, but everyone wanted to live there. Chicago, where we met, good school, teaching opportunities, terrible climate. New York, if you can make it there you can make it anywhere, blah, blah, and I’d said, Miami, and we both blew raspberries and laughed. Which is why I’m here, naturally. The last place we’d choose.

But now he’s here and he’s hungry, he’s building up his ch’andouli, his sorcerer’s power, using stuff that even Olo sorcerers don’t use anymore, that no respectable Olo sorcerer will teach. But he didn’t learn this from a respectable Olo sorcerer. He learned it from Durakné Den, the dontzeh, the abandoned, the witch of Danolo. Oh, yes, Cleo, I know just what happened to that baby. I’ve even seen it done, God forgive me.

I still, stupidly, think of him as he was at the beginning, the way we were together, or how I thought we were together. God alone knows how much of that was real. What above all blasts your confidence, makes you weak and small, poisons the past, erases the memory of joy, cripples even the possibility of joy to come? The betrayal of the deepest heart, that’s what, which is always self-betrayal. No one can do you like you do yourself. The other day, when I was in Kmart with Luz, we passed the candy counter and there they had a display of caramels, a whole glass-fronted case full of caramel cubes, and I swear the color knocked me back, and out of nowhere came the memory of the color of his skin, and synesthetically, its smell. My gosh, how I loved him! And, you know, even after he changed, even after what happened in Africa, I still thought that someday we would get back together. I thought it, actually, right up to the day he murdered my sister.

9/6 Air France 852 en route Paris—Lagos

Left Paris at ten-thirty in the morning after flying all night and will arrive in Lagos at four or so. I should sleep to avoid jet lag, but am too worked up.

Fellow first-class passengers are Nigerian kleptocrats, their wives returning from shopping expeditions, plus UN or NGO types, paler than the former group, less expensive wristwatches. Also two drunk Texans, in the all bidnis, lots of all in Nigeria so they tell me. Pronounce the name of the country Nigger-rhea. In Charles de Gaulle before flight, W. away buying duty-free, made themselves at home, heard I was going to Africa for the first time, regaled me with all sorts of useful information about the country. Should’ve told them to fuck off, I am too polite. W. came back and I introduced him as my husband?expression on their faces worth the first-class ticket. W. said I leave you alone for ten minutes and you’re practically joining the Nazi party? This is the last time I’m taking you to Africa! W. not particularly bothered by old-fashioned naked racism of the good ol’ boy type, hates cryptic racism of chattering classes a lot more, his worst hate = unacknowledged skin-tone racism of African-Americans.

Later. The Mediterranean is gone and we are over land again, over Africa. Reading Yoruba cosmology. It is a lot to take in. Yoruba cosmos divided into aye, the tangible world, and orun, the world of the spirits. At top of orun is Olodumare, creator god, but He’s really too high up there to pay attention to the small stuff. Orun is thickly inhabited by a variety of spirits, plus orishas ?deities or deified ancestors. Much of their religion = communication with orishas, divination or spirit possession, the orishas come down into aye and speak to their devotees. Key here = two orishas, Eshu, gatekeeper between worlds, also cosmic trickster; and Orunmila, aka Ifa, the orisha of prophecy. Whole thing runs on ashe, kind of spiritual gasoline. Every created thing has ashe ?rocks, trees, animals, people? asheboth ground of existence and power to make stuff happen and change. Social relationships determined by flow of ashe, also one’s personal fate and achievements. (Note X-cultural, how different peoples imagine some unseen, yet controllable force underlying life: ashe in Yoruba, ki or qi in the Chinese culture zone, cheg in Siberia. Westerners don’t believe?? Did we never or did we once and lost it. If so, why? Industry? Xtianity?)

Thinking of M., wonder whether I am making a mistake plunging back into fieldwork, especially fieldwork associated with sorcery. Can’t recall more of my experience in Siberia = problem. Some kind of allergic reaction to food or water. Is this true?

W. just up, grumpy and hungover, lovely African flight attendant brought hot towels and orange juice and aspirin and vamped W. I will not complain to the airline, I am used to it & it makes him feel better. Watched Africa unroll beneath us, empty, blank, ocher, the desert. We flew south-southeast, the land greened up underneath us, dry savannah, wet savannah, then true rain forest. W. grinned, said de jungle, recited Vachel Lindsay: then I saw the Congo creeping through the black, etc., in overly deep Robesonian voice. Not the Congo, but the Niger basin. Poetic license. The all men glanced over suspiciously.

We’re going to the Tropic of Night, I said, but he didn’t hear me.

Later, Lary’s Palm Court Hotel, Lagos

W. is right out, poor thing. Obviously, we landed. Usual stuff in customs and immigration, the guy looking longingly at my cameras and notebook computer; apparently it used to be quite bad here, but everyone is on good behavior since the new regime took over. Outside of baggage claim, two men from our outfit, Ajayi Okolosi, a driver, and Tunji Babangida, porter at the hotel. Ajayi said hello in English and I launched into my Yoruba greeting mode and slowly shook his hand: how are you; how is your wife; how are your children; how are your parents; is everything peaceful with you, and so on. Got big grin, language tapes work.

Outside, the usual scene at a third world airport, masses of poor people trying to grab a piece off the divine beings rich enough to fly. When they spotted Blondie, things got really insane, “cab, miss, cab, miss,” in my ear, trying to rip the backpack off me, rescued by Tunji. The car was a venerable Land Rover, and into this I was tossed together with my gear. W. was sitting there, looking stricken. Silence in car, squeezed W.’s hand. Our welcome to Africa, sad. Up front, Tunji messed w/ old tape player wired to the dashboard, and shortly the sounds of Public Enemy, top volume, song “Fear of a Black Planet.” Tunji checked to see how W. was enjoying this bit o’ civilization. Not much, hates that music. Tunji adoption of rap style from U.S., interesting, wonder how widespread, analogue to same among white teens. Search for cool universal?

Clouds of gritty dust, south on an expressway of some kind. Lots of cheap motorcycles, a few big, shiny Mercedeses with smoked glass, lots of yellow buses, military vehicles in numbers. Soldiers in trucks look like children.

Left the highway at a big intersection guarded by a white-gloved cop spiffy Brit-type uniform and whistle, traffic lights not working.

Central business district of Lagos is south of here, says Ajayi, on or near Lagos Island, and that’s where the tourists and the dozen or so tall towers are. We were going to Yaba, the real Lagos, much safer and cheaper, by the University. The streets narrower, heavily potholed, the big car lurched, I knocked against W. and laughed. He was distant and stiff, staring out the window; I wished T. would turn off that damn music.

Two of them are chattering away in Yoruba, of which I could understand hardly one word in ten. Over 300 dialects, musical language, though, talking sounds like singing a little. Streets lined w/ three-and four-story concrete block buildings, shuttered against the sun, painted white, every few streets a minareted mosque, or a church.

Passed a big street market. Ajayi steered carefully around knots of people, around stalls and stands selling food, drinks, cigarettes, raffles, clothing, shoes. The air smelled of garbage rotting, grilling meat, car exhaust, and something else, unidentifiable, high, sharp, slightly spicy, the base pong of the place. When I can no longer notice it, I will have settled in.