Thirty Girls. Susan Minot
own road and at last to the school drive.
Across the field Sister Giulia caught sight of the crowd of people near the gate. The parents were all there waiting. She saw the chapel blackened behind the purple bougainvillea, but the tower above still standing.
Many girls ran out to embrace their mothers who were hurrying to them. As she got close, Sister Giulia saw the parents’ faces watching, the parents still looking for their daughters. They searched the crowd. There was Jessica’s mother with her hand holding her throat. She saw Louise’s mother, Grace, ducking side to side, studying the faces of the girls. The closer they got to the gate, the more the girls were engulfed by their families and the more separated became the adults whose children were not there. These families held each other and kept their attention away from the parents whose girls had been left behind. They would not meet their gaze. In this way those parents learned their children had not made it back. When they came near Sister Giulia in all the commotion, she turned away from them. She was answering other questions. Some mothers were kneeling in front of her, some kissed her hand. She was thinking though only of the other parents and she would talk to them eventually but just now it seemed impossible to face them. Then she wondered if she’d be able to face anyone again, ever.
You have no idea where you are.
You sit among the girls. They’re in the shade, talking. It might be birdsong for all you understand or care. You think, I will never be close to anyone again.
SHE STEPPED OUT of the plane and over the accordion hinge of the walkway to continue up the tunneled ramp. One always felt altered after a flight. There was the pleasant fatigue of no sleep and one’s nerves closer to the surface as if a layer of self had peeled off and gotten lost in transit. The change was only on the surface, but the surface was where one encountered the world. Her surface was ready for the new things that would happen in this new place, ready for anything different from what she’d known.
There was a soggy tobacco smell at the gate and loose rugs with long rolls no one had bothered to smooth out. She stood in a line of crumpled people holding their carry-ons and inching forward to wooden tables where clerks slowly stamped passports after a sliding look from the picture to the face.
She was finally away. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt the expansion, the air humid, the door opening, dawn light reflected off a hammered linoleum floor as she descended an old-fashioned staircase to the black carousel empty of baggage. There was a long row of bureaux de change with one short counter after another empty and behind them a large plate-glass window with palm trees being eaten by a white sky. Lackadaisical drivers were leaning on the hoods of their cars, half glancing around for a fare. Dark-haired men strolled in short sleeve shirts, women in thin dresses moved slowly. Everything mercifully said, This is not home.
The first time she saw him he flew.
They were in Lana’s driveway, unloading alabaster lamps she’d had copied on Biashara Street when a white Toyota truck pulled up and a young man with shoulder length hair opened the door. He leapt over the roof of the truck and landed in a bowl of dust.
Lana gave him a big greeting, embracing him as an old friend, as she embraced everyone. She stepped back to study him, hands on his shoulders. He had on a dirty white hat with a zebra band around the crown. Nice, she said, flicking the brim. Jane, come meet Harry.
Jane set down her crate. Harry, Jane, said Lana. Jane, Harry.
Cheers, Harry said in a flat tone. His chin drew in and he regarded Jane with a strange stoniness, as if she were an intruder who ought to explain herself. The impulse to explain herself was an urge Jane Wood struggled to ignore, so getting a look like that unnerved her. At least that was how she explained the unnerved feeling.
My friend from America, Lana said. She looked back and forth between them. Her bright gaze took in things quickly and let them go, just as fast.
Harry leaned forward and kissed Jane’s cheek, surprising her. Karibu, he said.
The phone rang inside the cottage and Lana dove to get it, swerving past the crates crowding the foyer.
We’re going for sundowners, she called over her shoulder. You must come.
With Lana, there was always a must.
A short time later Jane found herself crammed in the back seat of a dented station wagon driven by a paint-spattered neighbor of Lana’s named Yuri. They were headed to the top of the Ngong Hills.
The suburb of Karen flickered by. Its dirt driveways and high concrete walls topped with curling barbed wire hid the airy houses Jane had seen with their long shaded verandas and scratchy lawns. Abruptly the station wagon came to a sort of empty highway, drove on it for a while, then tilted off up a steep rutted road, laboring at a tipped angle. At the top they righted themselves over a lip and arrived at a wide sloping field of tall grass which dropped sharply to a vast smoky savannah banked in the distance with low gray hills.
Striped cloths were spread on the ground and Jane noticed the sunset behind too was striped with grimy clouds. Lana unpacked a hamper and poured vodka and orange juice from a thermos and they drank from dented silver flutes while watching the sky and leaning on each other. A warm wind blew up from the valley.
Jane knew none of them save Lana and even she was a recent acquaintance, met a year before in London on a film set Lana was decorating. If Jane was ever in Kenya, she must come visit. When the possibility actually arose, Jane found Lana and discovered how many guests and strangers took Lana up on her invitation. She was a tall striking girl with a cushioned mouth and flashing eyes. She was also a splendid recliner, as she was demonstrating now, surveying the scene before her like an Oriental odalisque, radiating enjoyment. Her pillow at the moment was a large American man named Don who appeared to be relishing his position of support despite an awkward pose requiring that he brace an arm against a nearby rock. His unwrinkled khaki pants and new white running shoes extended off the blanket into the dry grass. Lana was telling him about a project she had set up where students looked after orphaned wild animals. She must take him there tomorrow, she said, patting his red and white striped shirt, as if knowing money were packed in his chest. Yuri had brought along a dimpled girl in army boots. Jane thought she heard her say she was pre-med, which was surprising. Yuri and Harry were talking about flying. They paraglided here, at a spot farther down the escarpment where the updraft was better. The French fellow wearing a bandana was a photographer named Pierre. Pierre was also staying at Lana’s, on the couch in the living room. His low-lidded eyes regarded everything with amusement. He was snapping pictures of the army-boot girl who seemed not self-conscious in the least.
The sky dimmed and the air chilled and they packed up. They took the bumpy road back to Nairobi as it darkened. Harry sat slumped in the back seat beside Jane. She learned his last name was O’Day. He asked her what she was doing here.
What indeed, she thought. Writing a story. Getting away. She could say all that.
Seeing the world, she said.
She’s taking us to Uganda, Lana shouted back over Édith Piaf’s voice warbling out of the dashboard. Her long bare legs were draped over Don’s lap and extended out the window. After drinks everyone was feeling jolly.
Jane told Harry she was there to write a story on the children kidnapped by the LRA in northern Uganda. Lana had matter-of-factly said she’d go with her and that morning Pierre asked if he might come, too. He was in between assignments—there was no famine or war to cover at the moment—and he wanted to try shooting some video, not what he usually did. He mostly shot stills.