Green City in the Sun (109 page)

     "Your grandmother?" Jonathan said. "An African woman?"

     Deborah avoided his eyes. It was easier to stare into the fire. She sat at the other end of the sofa, maintaining a distance from him, and said, "I
thought
she was my grandmother. It was what she wanted me to believe. She was the reason I left Kenya."

     Deborah's soft voice joined the whispers of fire and rain. She talked quietly, without emotion, leaving nothing out. Jonathan listened. He didn't move. He watched her tight profile, the fall of black hair down her back, untidy from the wind and rain. He listened to an incredible tale of Mau Mau freedom fighters and forbidden racial love, of childhood sweethearts, African and white, of a bachelor hut, of a funeral, of finding love letters, and of an old woman's curse. Jonathan was spellbound.

     "I had my aunt's journal all these years," Deborah said as she came to the end of her story, "but I never read it. I opened it when I checked in at the Hilton in Nairobi. And that was when I found out"—she finally turned to Jonathan, her eyes unusually dark, the dilated pupils reflecting the fire's glow—"that Christopher is not my brother after all."

     He met her straightforward gaze for a moment; then it was his turn to look away.

     During her story a log had rolled off the fire, and it lay at the edge of the flames. Jonathan got up, took the poker, and maneuvered the log back onto the fire. Then he straightened and gazed at the portrait over the mantel, an elderly man with white mustache, wearing a Boy Scout uniform. Lord Baden-Powell, who had forsaken his comfortable life in England to live in the Kenya wilderness.

     Jonathan was perplexed. What was it about this country that seemed to turn people's heads? What special magic made men give up lives of ease?

     He turned and looked at Deborah. She sat on the edge of the sofa, tensed, as if ready to run. Her hands were clasped tightly before her; her face was drawn. He was familiar with that look. It came upon her when she stood by a patient in the intensive care unit. She would watch the monitors with singular passion.

     "Why did you never tell me all this, Debbie?"

     She looked up, her eyes full of pain. "I couldn't, Jonathan. I felt so ashamed. So ... dirty. I just wanted to forget my past and start anew. I saw no point in dredging it up. I never intended to come back to Kenya."

     "It wasn't a lie you told me," he said quietly. "All you did was keep an unpleasant memory a secret."

     "But there's more. I thought I was part black, Jonathan. And I never told you that. I said I couldn't have children. That's not true. I didn't
want
to have children. I was terrified that my ancestry would show up."

     "You could have told me all this, Debbie. You know that I don't give a damn about race or color."

     "Yes, I know that now. But I wasn't sure about you at first, when we started dating. So I told you the same lie I had told others. That I had had endometriosis."

     "But later, Debbie! When we realized we were in love, when we decided to get married. You could have told me then."

     She bowed her head. "I was going to. And then you told me about Sharon, the woman you almost married. That she had lied to you."

     Jonathan was thunderstruck. "You're blaming
me?
You're saying it's
my
fault that you perpetuated your lies?"

     "No, Jonathan!"

     "Christ, Debbie!" He turned away from the fireplace and walked to the French doors. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he stared out at the gray rain.

     "I was afraid," she said. "I was afraid that if I told you that I had lied, I would lose you."

     "You thought our relationship was that tenuous?" he asked, looking at her reflection in the window pane. "You thought so little of me? You thought I was that shallow?"

     "But Sharon—"

     He spun around. "Debbie, that was seventeen years ago! I was twenty at the time! I was young and intolerant and an arrogant son of a bitch! Good God, I like to think I've changed since then. At least I thought I had. I thought that I was a reasonable man and that you saw that in me."

     "But when you told me about her—"

     "Debbie," he said, crossing the room and sitting next to her, "Sharon and I were two young, selfish people. The lies she told me were outrageous ones. They were intended to deceive, even to hurt me. But your lie, Debbie, was intended only to protect yourself and to protect me. Don't you see the difference?"

     She mutely shook her head.

     "Lord," he said softly, "you've got to know me better than that, Debbie. You've got to know that I love you too much to pass judgment on you because of your past. I wish you had told me about it long ago. I could have helped you come to terms with it."

     "That's what I'm trying to do now, Jonathan. Coming back to Kenya has less to do with seeing Mama Wachera than it has to do with me finding out who I am. Reading Aunt Grace's journal has helped me a little. At least now I know my family's history. But I still have this ...
rootless
feeling. I don't know where I belong."

     He searched her face, saw the honesty in her eyes. He took her hands in his and said, "God, I love you, Debbie. I want to help you. I could tell on
the phone. You didn't sound right. I got worried. So I canceled my surgery schedule and asked Simonson to take emergencies. All the way over here, on that damn jet, I kept trying to think what might be wrong. Lord knows this isn't what I expected. But at least it's not as bad as I had imagined."

     When Deborah didn't say anything, he said, "Is there more?"

     She nodded.

     "What is it?"

     "It's Kenya, Jonathan. I have this strong feeling that I must stay and help. In the past few days I've seen such poverty, such disease, people living in inhuman conditions. Except for a few caring individuals, like the nuns at the mission"—
and Christopher,
she thought, recalling how futile she had thought he looked, with his bag of medicines and all those desperate people—"no one seems to give a damn about all the suffering in this country. I feel this inexplicable pull at me, Jonathan. To stay, to put my medical skills to use here, as Aunt Grace had done."

     "People all over the world need our help, Debbie. Not just Kenya. What about our patients back in San Francisco? Are they any less in need of you because they're white and live in America?"

     "Yes," she said earnestly. "Because they have more doctors and better facilities."

     "What do those mean to Bobby Delaney?"

     Deborah looked away.

     Bobby Delaney was nine years old and fighting for his life in the hospital burn unit. He had been purposely set on fire by his mentally unstable mother, and Deborah was one of a team of physicians who were taking care of him. Having sustained third-degree burns over ninety percent of his body, Bobby now endured incredible pain and suffering, severe mental as well as physical trauma, living in a sterile bubble, where his only human contact was through rubber gloves, the only faces he saw, masked. For reasons no one knew, Bobby had singled out Dr. Debbie as his one friend. The way his eyes, in that poor, disfigured face, moved toward her each time she came in ...

     "You know he won't talk to anyone else," Jonathan said. "You know he lives for your visits. But there are others, too. All your patients are worthy of your care, Debbie."

     "I don't know," she said slowly. "I feel so strange, so undecided. Where do I belong?"

     "With me."

     "I believe that, Jonathan. But at the same time ..." She looked out at the Kenya rain. "I was born here. Don't I owe something to this country?"

     "Listen, Debbie. We all have two lives: the one we're born into and the one we seek out and make for ourselves. I believe you're caught in between the two. You need to find your way out."

     "I wish Aunt Grace were here. I could talk to her. She would help me."

     "Let
me
help you, Debbie. We can find a way out together."

     "How?"

     "We can start by having me read the journal."

     They made themselves comfortable on the sofa, Jonathan at one end, reading under a table lamp, Deborah curled up at the other end, pillows at her back. As Jonathan opened the old book to the first yellowed page, Deborah felt herself become lulled into a strange sense of complacency. There was something vaguely consoling about Jonathan's reading her aunt's words. She listened to the rain and closed her eyes.

     T
HE RINGING TELEPHONE
jarred her out of a deep, dreamless sleep.

     Jonathan was up first, answering it. He hung up and said, "That was the mission. Mama Wachera is awake and asking for you, Debbie."

     She stretched and rubbed her stiff neck. "What time is it?"

     "It's late. I'm more than half done with the book." Jonathan hefted it in his hand. "The earl's just been found dead in his car. Quite a family you have here, Debbie!"

     She reached for her sweater, which had dried by the fire, and said, "I hate to leave you, Jonathan."

     "Don't worry. You just go and get things sorted out with the old woman. I'll still be here when you get back."

     "I don't know how long I'll be."

     He smiled and held up the book. "I have plenty of company."

     At the door he held her and said quietly, "I want you to come home with
me, Debbie. I want you to find what you're seeking here, come to terms with it, and then lay the past to rest. The future belongs to us, Debbie."

     "Yes," she whispered, and kissed him.

     D
EBORAH REALIZED SHE
was suddenly very nervous. As she followed the night nurse down the dimly lit ward, she felt her pulse quicken, her anxiousness mount.

     Wachera was resting against pillows that had been built up to put her in a comfortable half-reclining position. Deborah saw that she was having trouble breathing. Dark brown eyes fixed on her and followed her as she came to the foot of the bed; they stayed on her as she came around and sat in a chair at the bedside.

     "You ..." Wachera said in a papery voice. "The memsaab. You came.

     Deborah was surprised. She hadn't heard that word in years; it had been banned upon independence. But she also noticed that the medicine woman was not using it as a respectful term of address.
Which memsaab?
Deborah wondered.
Does she think I am my mother?

     "You came," the ancient voice continued. "So many harvests ago. With your wagons and your strange ways."

     
My grandmother!

     "You were the only one among the
wazungu
who understood the Children of Mumbi. You brought medicine."

     And then Deborah realized:
She thinks I'm Aunt Grace.

     "You sent for me, Mama Wachera," she said softly, bending close. "Why?"

     "The ancestors ..."

     Wachera was speaking in Kikuyu, and Deborah was amazed at how easily she understood the words and then with what familiarity she herself now spoke it. "What about the ancestors, Mama?"

     "I will be with them very soon now. I will return to the bosom of the First Mother. But I go with lies and
thahu
upon my soul."

     Deborah grew tense. She watched the aged black face, still carved with dignity after nearly a century but looking strangely naked and vulnerable without the beaded headbands and great looped earrings that Wachera had
always worn. Now she lay beneath white sheets in a plain hospital gown, her long, sinewy arms laid out on the pale blue blanket. Deborah wondered if the medicine woman knew how stripped she looked, how divested of authority and power.

     "There was the last girl," Wachera said, her breathing labored. "I let her believe my grandson was her brother. It was a lie."

     "I know that," Deborah said gently.

     "So many sins ..." the old woman said in such a wandering way that Deborah wondered if she was even aware of her presence at the bedside.

     "My husband's daughter killed the bwana. I made her vow to keep silent while the bwana's wife stood before a council that was to decide if she should live or die."

     Deborah didn't understand at first; then she realized that Wachera was speaking of the earl's murder. She recalled what she had read of it in her aunt's journal. Njeri. Rose's personal maid.

     "How?" Deborah asked. "Mama Wachera, how did Njeri kill the bwana?"

     "She heard him leave the big house. She left the memsaab's sleeping room and followed him. He went in the beast that rolls on wheels. He went to the glass house in the forest, and Njeri saw what he did to the stranger there. She held on to the beast and rode it through the night. The bwana's window was open. She stabbed him. It was just punishment. But she grew afraid. She shot him with his own weapon."

     Deborah could picture it. The young African woman holding on to Valentine's car, perhaps crouched on the running board, waiting for an opportunity. Killing him because she feared for the life of her memsaab.

     "For a woman to die with sins on her soul is very bad," Wachera said. "Her spirit is restless; she never sleeps. And she haunts the woods and dwells with the wild beasts. I, Wachera, desire peace."

     She fell silent for a long time, her breathing becoming increasingly more strained, the flutter of pulse at her neck barely visible. Then she said, "The voices of the ancestors grow faint. With the coming of the white man, the ancestors began to depart Kikuyuland. To appease them, I fought the white man. But now that Kikuyuland is being restored to the Children of Mumbi, the ancestors will return."

     Wachera drew in a deep, ragged breath. When she let it out, Deborah heard the familiar rattle of death. "The
thahu
is ended," the medicine woman said, "as I promised. The land belongs to the African again; the white man is gone."

     Wachera looked at Deborah and seemed, for the first time, truly to see her. The wise old eyes became suddenly keen, and Wachera's mouth lifted in a brief, triumphant smile. "Memsaab Daktari," she whispered, "I have won."