About Face (4 page)

 

VIVIAN TOLD HER she could just dump her stuff anywhere while they went around to greet the members of the family compound, then the village chief himself. “It's a village. It's safe. Trust me.”

They walked from one hut to another, trailed by the dust their feet kicked up, dust Ruth would eventually learn to live with almost constantly, except during the brief rainy season. A throng of children followed them wherever they went, chanting and laughing, dressed in a melange of African fabrics and such exotica as a Detroit Tigers tee shirt. One or another of the kids was occasionally emboldened to wipe a finger across Ruth's bare arm or leg, then look at the finger to see if her strange color had wiped off.

Each time Ruth entered a hut for the introduction, she'd take a minute to adjust to the dark, the coolness, and the lingering smell of thousands of cooking fires. The people inside looked up at her and smiled in an international nonverbal welcome even though they didn't know her and probably thought she might as well be a space alien. Then came the ritual greeting.

“Asalaam-malekum.”

“Malekum-salaam,” she said.

“Nanga def?”

“Mangi fi rekk,” she said.

“Naka waa ker ge?”

“Nunga fe,” she said.

“Naka sa baay?”

“Munga fe,” she said.

“Jamm nge am?”

“Jamm rekk, alhamdulilay,” she said.

Taken literally, she was answering questions about her parents and her house—she thought—but accepted the Peace Corps's wisdom that it was all ritual, like saying “Fine” when someone asks “How are you?” even when you're sick as a dog. And it was the only currency she had to respond to the warm welcome she was receiving.

By the time the introductions were over, Ruth had begun her own transition to dusty monochrome. They retrieved her belongings and Vivian delighted the proud
guardien
of the luggage with a reward of five francs CFA, worth about two cents. Vivian took her to the living quarters she'd built two months before, over by the dunes, while providing a non-stop commentary on the construction process.

“The walls and roof are made of crintin. I didn't actually make the crintin, some of the villagers made it for me. They were anxious to do anything they could for me, but I really think they mostly wanted an excuse to just stand around and look at me because I was such a curiosity to them. After all, they'd never seen a creature like me before. It was wild, really wild.”

Ruth could see that the crintin consisted of the spines of palm fronds woven into a flexible mat, about five feet high and of any length desired. She didn't ask for any more details, fearing the length of the answer.

“See, I stuck these poles in the ground. Well, they're not poles exactly, they're saplings, but I had to look for saplings that were about eight feet tall and had a ‘V' at the top, and I stood the crintin up to be the walls, and then I attached it to the poles so they stand up straight. Neat, huh? And then I put more saplings between the V's to be like rafters, and the rafters hold the crintin that goes horizontally, you know, for the roof, and then I tied the palm fronds on to the horizontal crintin to finish off the roof. It's different from everyone else in the village, but it was faster and easier to build. And anyway, we
are
different from everyone else in the village.”

Ruth liked the look of the place. It was easy to understand: one room, with the “bathroom” over by the dunes. The crintin allowed in air and light, while clearly indicating the border between their space and the other members of the family compound. As Ruth had already experienced, they were a source of immense curiosity in the village, so borders were important. And the eighteen-inch gap between the top of the walls and the roof provided a perimeter of picture-window.

“Here's your cot,” Vivian said. “I thought you'd like it in the east part of the hut, so you can watch the sunset in the west, over the ocean, like if you're having a beer and writing letters at the end of the day, but if you'd rather, we can move it over there, to the corner where the kerosene refrigerator is right now. I call the refrigerator Ada, you know, from refrigerADA. But if we moved the bed, Ada would have to go over there, by the door, and then, when we sweep the floor we'd have to go around Ada on the way to the door and that could be a pain, and we have to sweep the floor all the time, really, or the sand piles up like crazy, so why don't you just try it this way for a while and see how it feels?” Then she took a breath.

It took Vivian about a week to exhaust her pent-up need to communicate in English. Other than the few hours a day they spent at their “jobs”—Vivian working with villagers to plant a vegetable garden to provide the vitamins missing from the traditional diet of rice and dried fish, Ruth setting up a dispensary by sorting and labeling American-style medicines—and the time they slept, the remaining time was devoted to conversation. If Ruth had something to talk about, fine. If not, Vivian filled the gap, having no tolerance for silence when English was possible.

Ruth learned that Vivian was the oldest of three children, that her father owned a bar and, when his first child disappointed him by being a girl, and no other children appeared to be forthcoming, he resigned himself to teaching her the business, including training her to be tough as nails. When her two brothers followed, ten and fourteen years later, he not only dropped Vivian's training and withdrew his special attention, but also did a complete turnaround, suddenly expecting her to wear pink and bat her eyes.

“Lots of luck, Pop,” Vivian said as she took a long drink of beer, then continued with the story of her parents' divorce. “They divided us up like so much property. I went with mom and my brothers went with dad. So I lost a parent and two brothers. I haven't seen them for about four years now. Or maybe it's five.”

“Oh, Vivian, you poor thing, how terrible.” Ruth secretly thought she could have done with a little estrangement from the suffocation of her own family.

“Yeah, well, that's the way it is. What about you?”

Vivian's interest turned out to be genuine, not just a step she had to go through until she'd get another turn in the spotlight. Ruth could gradually open up about her own family bones, not knowing if they qualified as skeletons or not.

There was her father, effusive and loving until things weren't perfect. “Then he just blows up. It's like he's just got all this rage inside and it's only a thin layer of skin holding it in. Meanwhile, Mom is flitting around, repeating her theme-song, “It's all right, he didn't mean anything by it.”

“Sisters and brothers?” Vivian asked.

“Just one. My sister Marge.”

“Older or younger?”

“Neither. She's a twin. Don't make a big deal about it. Please.”

“Really? A twin? Is it like you hear in magazine articles? Like a double? Like you know what she's thinking and she knows what you're thinking? A twin, wow.”

“No, not for us. We're fraternal, so we're no more alike than regular sisters. Except maybe, being the exact same age, it's a little different. I don't know. But we're definitely different from each other.”

“Different how? Do you look different? Do you both like coffee or tea? Stuff like that?”

“We look like sisters, I guess. But the physical resemblance is stronger than any other kind. We're just different. It's like she's the evil twin. She yells, she throws tantrums. She actually stamps her feet if she doesn't get her way. It's one thing for her to be like that with me, but she actually goes up against our father. The two of them go at it, and there I am, on the sidelines, hoping it will go away. Miss Goody Two Shoes. Which I have to be, to keep the peace. So, that's how we're different. The evil twin and the good twin. One can stand up for herself, one can't. But she got first choice.”

“Maybe it's the evil twin and the scared twin.”

“Is there a difference?”

“I guess I'm more like your sister. When I'm mad at someone, it's like they have their hand in front of my face and I can't see anything else until I say something and get that hand away. I could do with a little of your restraint.”

“Well, I pay a price. I wish I had a little of your balls.”

“Balls aren't all they're cracked up to be. Speaking of which, what do you think about hum jobs?”

Ruth's head spun with the non sequitur, the raunchiness, and the nosiness. After a second or two, Vivian continued with another non sequitur, and Ruth realized that not all of Vivian's questions required an answer.

“So, let me tell you about the wild family stuff here in the village. People marry each other, but for only about five or six years. Then they switch partners. Really, I'm not kidding, they switch. But there's more. The village is divided into seven sections, and everyone tries to get a spouse from a different section from the last one they had. The idea is that, when they die, they want people from as many sections as possible dancing at their funeral. Neat, huh? Kind of like spinning as many tops as possible at the same time. Oh, and speaking of sex….”

Even their disagreements were stimulating, like the times they argued over Vivian's macho attitude toward the health precautions.

“Come on,” Vivian said. “What are the odds that one tiny little microscopic amoeba will happen to wind up in the one ice cube made with unboiled water that I happen to have in my coke? And that the amoeba will be in the part of the ice cube that melts into my drink? Besides, the Africans have been drinking the water long before we got here with our superior knowledge, and they're not all sick and dying, are they? They're doing a whole lot better than some Americans I know.”

“Be rational.” Ruth tried to convey just the right degree of scientific objectivity. “Why take any chance of getting an amoeba in your system? The Africans have adapted their internal chemistries to their environment over generations and generations, but you don't have time for that.” She dropped her voice a few tones when she added, “And besides, who wants to have to put their shit on a slide for the Peace Corps doc to look at under a microscope? Euuuuwww!”

Vivian did get sick. During the worse of it, she was weak and green, though the visiting PC doc dropped off meds and assured them it would pass. What little strength she had went for vomiting and diarrhea, then she'd rest up for the next bout. Their intimacy deepened as Ruth read to her, stroked her head with a wet rag, sang to her. She even killed a chicken and made chicken soup. Vivian's illness subsided and Ruth was torn between love and anger. “Vivvy sweetie, you are my best friend in the whole wide world and I'm so sorry you're having such a bad time, but I have to tell you in all honesty that it doesn't pay for you to get well, because as soon as you're out of bed, I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!” They laughed until they cried.

Sometimes they struggled, as many volunteers did, with the idea of the United States, with its affluence that came packaged with crime, materialism, and empty values, purporting to teach traditional cultures to emulate it.

“Really, Ruth, it's ridiculous to think that these villagers, who know nothing about suicide and very little about emotional illness of any kind, where everyone knows his purpose in life and has a whole villageful of love, might someday be able to watch TV and actually want to be like us. That's so crazy. No,
they
should be sending the Peace Corps to
us
.”

“Right, like a reverse Peace Corps to teach us traditional values. Core Values. The CORE Corps.”

“With a model of a traditional village set up in Times Square.”

“And the villagers would show us how to care for people who need it the most.”

“Without bitching about taxes.”

“Right. And accepting everyone for who they are, without pushing everyone to be a doctor or lawyer.”

“Right. Or asking them when they're going to get married and have kids and settle down in the suburbs.”

They indulged in this or any kind of discussion they wanted, playful, serious, creative, impassioned, tearful, or a combination. They never needed to hurry back to a paper due the next day, never feared being pre-empted by a boy calling. The evening's only entertainment was a full discussion of the day's insights, with the guarantee of a willing listener, a hefty measure of understanding of both the words and the intentions behind the words, and acceptance. The relaxed rhythm of their lives was as much a new experience as living in Africa. Their life together was intimate, but not sexual, though visiting volunteers—and they got more than their fair share because the ocean in their back yard made visiting them like a trip to the beach—spread whispers about the two girls who were … “you know … really
really
close.”

When they were all talked out, they'd play Ray Charles on their battery-powered record player and do the twist to “What'd I Say” on the sand in the moonlight, until they were giggly and sweaty. They'd collapse and listen to the waves.

Long afterwards, when the dust had settled, Ruth realized it had been naïve to think their friendship would survive the transition from the hothouse of their close quarters, new experiences, and isolation to their lives back home. They didn't realize that, in the real world, they'd have to be satisfied with something less, and the diminution would be unacceptable.

When the rift came, though, they just thought they were arguing about the Viet Nam War. Vivian was counseling young draftable men on their limited options: try for Conscientious Objector status, aim for one of the few remaining deferments, flee to Canada, or fight. They were having dinner at Chuan Hong, a Chinese restaurant on the Upper West Side. It was Szechuan, a new kind for both of them, and they were enjoying its spiciness and novelty. Vivian tried to convince Ruth to join her in working for “Is Fighting the Only Option?”