Vain (11 page)

He jumped back into the jeep and steered us through before getting out once more and clos
ing the gate behind us. I cursed the setting of the sun, wishing I could stare at him unabashedly once more.

When we drove the small distance to what looked like a clustered village, droves of little children with dark faces and white teeth came bounding up before the je
ep had come to a complete stop.

“
Dingane! Dingane!” they all shouted as they raced around to his side of the jeep.

My door was clear of children and I could remove myself easily
, but Dingane had a tougher time of it. He began laughing, further bewildering me. When he could free himself, he began shouting in a bizarre tongue. I studied his face and saw perfectly straight, perfectly beautiful teeth shining in the most perfect smile to the crowd of children around him.

That’s when I saw them, noticed what
Dingane was trying to prepare me for. Children, all ages, missing arms, eyes, parts of their faces, even legs. I held back my gasp and met Dingane’s eyes. They were warm and full of understanding but for the children only. He looked at me sternly and his eyes conveyed what he wanted me to do.

I looked down on them, half-
smiling, trying so very hard to look sincere when all I wanted to do was run and lock myself away from their terribly shocking faces. I had never in my life thought humans could endure such physical damage and survive.

Dingane
held his hand out toward me and introduced me to them, finally using a word I recognized: my name.

“Sophie, Sophie, Sophie
,” I kept hearing over and over as the children tested my name on their tongues.

“Hello,” I greeted them shyly.

I was overwhelmed and incredibly and most surprisingly sad for them but had no idea what to say or do. They stared at me, smiling, when finally a young boy approached me and touched my clothing. I stood still. This was an invitation to all of them to surround me like they had Dingane and they enveloped me. They pulled on my clothing speaking animatedly in a language I knew nothing about. They forced me to their height where I could fully take them in. One little girl’s right arm was missing below her elbow, another little boy was missing a leg below the knee, another girl had some sort of bandage wrapped around the left side of her face. The injuries went on and on, but they didn’t seem to care or remember they had no arms or legs or faces. They carried on, smoothing my clothing over with their tiny hands or running their fingers over my hair. One little girl told me in English that they all found it to be soft.

I fought tears and tried to keep in mind that if I started bawling in front of the small creatures before me that they would have no idea what it was for.
I was swallowed by children but could still hear a booming man’s voice come from the direction of the largest dwelling on the complex. I say dwelling, but it was far from that. It looked like a large open run-down building made from very old wood.

“
Dingane, where is our prisoner?” the man’s voice cracked across the grounds making the children scurry from my side and glue themselves to his. “Yes, yes, you’re all very excited to see our newest member, but let’s all calm ourselves.” I stood. “Now, where is she?”

The man was tall but not as tall as
Dingane and he was middle-aged. His salt-and-pepper hair laid flat against his head but was rather full for someone I pegged for being around sixty.

“Ah, our latest victim!” he jested
, yet the words still made me more nervous than I already was.

He approached me and threw his arms around me, picking me up in one motion and swinging me playfully from side to side before setting me right again. “You must be the infamous Sophie Price! I’ve heard many things about you, child!”
he said in an accent similar to Pemmy’s.

“All good I hope?”

“No, not all good,” he stated honestly, making me blush. I
peered Dingane’s direction for his reaction, but his face was stoic. “But that is neither here nor there. It has brought you to us and that is all that matters. Second chances. I’m all about second chances.”

I could tell Charles was the type to find the good in everything. I wasn’t quite settled on whether or not I would like him. I was peculiarly leaning toward liking him and that amazed me. I looked to my left again and noticed
Dingane had already started making his way toward whatever fence he claimed needed mending.

“Ah, she’s here!” a fe
male’s soft voice exclaimed.

I looked to my right and noticed a woman
with burgundy, shoulder-length hair. She was also in her sixties and she was beautiful. I could tell she was the type of woman who, in her prime, would have had all the boys running around like imbeciles. A kindred spirit.

“Hello!”
she said, extending her hand.

I grabbed it and she tossed me into her arms for the kind of hug I’d never once gotten from a woman but
was so desperately in need of. It was the kind of hug a mother gave her daughter. I know, I’d seen Sav’s mom give her them many a time.

“It’s so nice to meet you, Sophie!” she sang in a lovely English accent, Lo
ndon if I were to have guessed.

“It’s nice to meet you too, Karina.”
I silently thanked the almost mute Dingane for mention of her name earlier. It would have been so embarrassing not to be able to say her name after such a warm hug.

“I suppose I’ll help Din with that fence then.
Let the ladies get acquainted.”

“Yes, yes,” Karina said, shooing Charles with her hand and leading me toward a cluster of buildings just to the left of the main building. She stopped and turned to her left. “Kate! Kate! Please see that
all
the children wash before bed?”

“I will,” a dark, beautiful African woman answered before gathering children’s hands and sin
ging them to their destination.

Kate was tall and exquisite. She looked like a supermodel
, to be frank. If I had seen her in Paris, I’d assumed she was there for the catwalks. It astounded me that she worked in the orphanage when there were so many outside opportunities to be had for her.

“This is to be your bedroom,” Karina said pulling me from my thoughts and pointing to what I thought earlier was an outhouse. I almost blurted
, “you can’t be serious,” but stopped myself immediately, remembering the missing arm of the little girl from minutes before. “It’s actually separated into two rooms,” she continued, swinging the door open to the room on the right. It was about as big as the toilet room in my bathroom back home. I peered inside and took in its contents.

Though it had a roof and floor, it didn’t have much else. There was a sink basin to the right but no faucet and a simple bed, smaller than a twin,
and no real floor. Essentially, it was uneven planks of wood on the floor, walls and ceiling and a makeshift door.

Karina took in my face and smiled. “It’s not the Ritz, I admit, but it is a roof, my dear,” she added sweetly.
“I’ll have Samuel bring your bags in for you. If you have no net, I can provide one for you.” She swung me out onto the red dirt path and pointed to the door next door. “You share a wall with Dingane, but he’s rarely there. Besides, both of you will be so busy and by the end of the day you’ll be so exhausted, your room will be used for sleeping and not much else. Any noise won’t bother you. You’ll get used to the night noises here as well. ”

I gulped
, not really sure I could get used to any of it: rooming next to someone who obviously found me repulsive, though I found myself a magnet to, “night noises” or the exhaustion part.

“Have y
ou eaten dinner?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I lied again. Too many butterflies had taken residence in my stomach anyway even if I
had been hungry enough to eat.

“Are you sure?” she asked agai
n, eyeing me like a mother hen.

“Yes, Karina.”

Her eyes crinkled around a smile. “Come. I shall show you the showers.”
Karina led me outdoors and back toward the gate where I spied two square hut-like objects. When we came upon them, I noticed they were crawling with five-inch bugs I’d never seen before.

“Oh my God!”
I shouted, grabbing onto her arm. I stared at the extreme creatures with the same horror they presented themselves to me with.
A land of extremes
.

Karina giggled. “They won’t bother
you if you don’t bother them.”

“Are-are they always there?”

“Yes, love but don’t fret. You get used to them.”
Oh my God, I’m going to reek like a freak. I’m never going to shower.

“You must shower, Sophie,” Karina chimed in, revealing psychic abilities. “This land is not kind. You must wash regularly to keep yourself free of disease.”
I swallowed audibly. “Of-of course.”

“My dear, we bed early here as we hardly ever have electricity and we like to rise with the sun. I suggest getting some sleep now. I would love to tell you that the water is warm most days but it is not.”

“I see.” I studied the showers with a blank expression. I was essentially going to camp for six months.

When Karina led me back to my room, the sun had set completely.

“Goodnight, love.”

“Goodnight, Karina.”

I walked into my room and almost screamed. Dingane stood there dropping one of my bags to the floor.

“Samuel was busy,” he said to explain his presence. He wanted it known that he didn’t want to be there.

“Ah, well, thank you, Dingane.”

“No problem,” he said, squeezing through the tiny room toward the door. I sat there swimming in the scent of his soap. It made me delirious.
My Lord!

He turned around and stood a foot over me, almost skin to skin. “You’ll want to lock your doors so no animals try to get in,” he said and left me to the Ugandan night with the
creak of my door slamming shut.

It echoed through me and I sat on my bed, not looking before I plopped myself down right on top of something slippery and
moving
. Naturally, I screamed and jumped. Dingane came running back into my room.
Shirtless
.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I-I...” I began but couldn’t finish. I could only point to the long black thing slithering its way on my mattress.

“Oh, it’s only a millipede.
Archispirostreptus gigas, to be exact. Take care if you come in contact with one, avoid touching your eyes and lips. They can be harmful.”

“Get it out,” I told him, eyes clenched closed. I heard the door open and shut and when I opened my eyes,
Dingane stood there staring at me like I was a fool. “Stop judging me.”

“Who said I was judging?” he lazily drawled. Broad, calloused hands rested on his narrow, exposed waist. I tried so hard not to look.

“I know when someone is judging me. I can read people with impeccable accuracy. You’re thinking
this spoiled brat can’t even handle a simple insect. How will she handle Africa?
”

“It is not an insect. It’s an arthropod,” he deadpanned.

“So you’re a nerd then. Great, glad we’ve established that.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Yes.”

“What?”

“Yes, I was thinking that you were a spoiled brat who won’t last two seconds here.”

My eyes widened at his candid response. I was taken aback. My mouth gaped open.

“I’ll show you,” I threatened, but it lost steam by the last word as he stared at me harshly.

Dingane rushed me in that moment and the movement stole my breath away. He loomed over me and I fought to keep my mouth closed. “Girl, you are the epitome of spoiled. I can smell it in your expensive perfume, in the quality of your ridiculous clothing, in the bracelet wrapped ’round that delicate wrist.” He closed the gap between us and all the air sucked from the room. “You won’t last out here. You’ll stay blind to the environment that surrounds you. You’ll live in your clean, perfect bubble and return to your posh life come six months. You are....
you
. I know your kind. I’ve seen it all before. You will never wake up. Not really,” he explained away before backing up and leaving me to my room once again.

I felt tears burn but I steeled myself. My hand clamped my
bracelet-covered wrist brutally and I shoved it down my fingers and let it fall to the floor. I yanked the bag I knew contained all my bedding onto the top of the mattress and unzipped it, removing all the contents I needed.

One goose down mattress cover.

One goose down duvet.

One goose down pillow.

One high-quality netted canopy.

One thousand thread count Egyptian cotton sheet set.

I looked down at my bedding and felt the urge to sob seep out of me. I stifled it with a hand across my mouth. I shook it away and stood on the mattress, hooking my canopy net to the hook on the ceiling before shaking out the rolled up mattress cover. I placed everything as it was meant to be, threw off my clothing, put on my pajamas and got into bed. I remembered the lady at the shops telling me to tuck the net into the mattress so I did as she instructed me to. I laid back on the impossibly soft bed and closed my eyes but all I could see was the little girl with the missing arm...