Vain (19 page)

Karina’s knocking at my door reminded
me I was there to do a job.

“Sop
hie, my love, are you dressed?”

“Yes,” I said, opening the door for her. Her face was white as a sheet. “What’s wrong?” I
asked, my stomach dropping to the floor.

“Mercy has measles.”

“Measles? How? I don’t understand.”

“A nurse confirmed it late last night. She will live, I’m certain, but the young ones, none of them are vaccinated and two of the children have fevers,” Karina
explained, wringing her hands.

“Why couldn’t you vaccinate?”

“We lack the resources.”

“Okay, well, what
does this mean? What do we do?”

“We cal
l Pembrook.”
This surprised me.

“What can he do?”

“There are a few options, but we have little time. He’d have to work with short notice.”
I grabbed my satellite phone and checked the battery. It was nearly nonexistent. I dialed anyway and sat at the edge of my bed while Karina paced back and forth on my creaky floor.

“Hello,” a shaky
Pembrook’s voice sounded.
I took a deep breath. It was so good to hear a familiar voice. “Pembrook!” I screamed into the bad connection.

“Sophie? Is that you?” The
connection broke. “...are you?”

“I missed that last bit,
Pemmy. I’m fine, if you asked. Listen, I need a favor. I’m running on low battery here and I need you to arrange for a shipment.”

“What...for?”

“Measles has broken out here at Masego and none of the children are vaccinated. Karina says there are several options available to us. Can you get in touch with Ford and arrange something?”
Several seconds of silence followed and I feared we lost him. “...I’ll contact you tonight. Charge....if you can.”

“
Thank  you, Pemmy!” I yelled before the connection broke.
Karina sat next to me. We were silent for a few minutes letting everything sink in.

“What if he ca
n’t get anything?” I asked her.

Karina wrung her hands continuously. “We quarantine
. We treat fevers. We hydrate.”

I sighed loudly. “Jesus, Karina. When does
it stop?” I turned toward her.

“It doesn’t stop, love,” she said, stopping and resting a hand on my shoulder, a wan smile gracing her beautiful face. “We do the best we can when we can and have faith it will all work out.” I nodded. “Let’s get something to eat and discuss what we ne
ed to do with Charles and Din.”

We sat at the tables, my satellite phone resti
ng in the center of our group.

“It’s dying,” I admitted, point
ing to the phone.

“We really need
a generator,” Ian said quietly.

“We can’t
afford it, Din,” Charles added.

“No one will have elec
tricity nearby,” Karina put in.

“
And the closest city?” I asked.

“The closest city with gua
ranteed electricity?” Ian said.

“Ye
s.”

“
Jinja?” he asked Charles.

“Probably.”

“How far is that?” I asked.

“Two an
d a half hours. Approximately.”

“
Pemmy could have called by then,” I told them.

“True
, but it’s our only other option,” Charles said.

Mandisa
came to my side and I slid her onto my lap without thinking, resting my cheek on her head. “What if I turned it off, waited a few hours then rang Pemmy myself later. That way we could guarantee ourselves the information?”

“I don’t think there’s enough juice to boot it back up,” Ian observed,
“but nice.”

“Nice what?”

“Thought. It was brilliant.”
I rolled my eyes.

“I was be
ing sincere,” he said, offended

“Oh,” I said sheepishly.

I turned toward the table once more and spotted Karina eyeing me with interest. I shrugged my shoulders in question, but she just grinned and shook her head.

“Then we go to
Jinja,” I conceded, slumping a little in my chair.

“I’ll take over your classes,” Karina said.
One of Mandisa’s friends passed by and Mandisa scurried from my lap toward them.

“Silly girl,” I muttered.

“She’s fond of you,” Ian said, when the others got up to get plates for themselves.

“I hope so.”

“She loves you.”

I whipped my eyes toward him.
“You think so?” I asked softly.

“I know so.”
This bolstered me like nothing ever could. If a child chose to love me even though I was so undeserving, did that mean I could earn Ian’s love? Could I become worthy? I studied his beautiful pale face, framed with messy black hair and piercing blue eyes. God, he was so fascinating to look upon.

“What?” he asked, running his hands through his
hair. “Do I have something on my face?” He smoothed his hands down his expression.

“No, nothing,” I answered, standing up to grab a plate.
Ian got up and stood close behind me a few seconds later and I could feel the smile on my face grow to impossible lengths.

“Will
Pembrook come through?” he asked the back of my head.
Now, I knew boys. Well. He knew Pemmy would try his best. He just wanted to talk to me and that brought the butterflies back.

“He will try his damn
edest.” I cleared my throat. “Have-have you been vaccinated?” I asked reticently, afraid of his answer.

“I was
the last time I visited home.”

“That’s good,” I said, relieved, lining the li
noleum with the toe of my boot.

“
Jinja’s a dangerous drive,” he stated.

“Why doesn’t this surprise me?” I added sarcastically. “What is it about this bloody place? It’s the l
and of every extreme possible.”

Ian grabbed my arm unexpectedly, the heat from his hand warming me to an impossible temperature, and turned me toward him. “You’re right but with extreme suffering, there is extreme happiness. With extreme earth there is extreme beauty.”
I thought on what he’d said and remembered the view from my plane when I arrived. “You’re right. Lake Victoria was one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s incredible.”

“The children here are
extremely
loveable,” I declared.

“Good one,” he said, smiling. “That they are.”
Four giggling girls walked by us arm in arm singing a traditional song, making my heart swell.
 

After breakfast, we grabbed the satellite phone and hopped in Ian’s truck. I took note of the rifle strapped behind the seats and my blood began to pum
p, adrenaline flooding my body.

“It’ll
be all right,” Ian assured me.

“How do you know?” I a
sked when he revved the engine.

“I don’t,” he sai
d, “but I’ll protect you.”

My heart began to slow and my breathing ste
adied...because I believed him.

The truck was too loud to hold any kind of conversation and that disappointed me. I was dying to talk about whatever that thing was that happened between us at the watering hole. I was determined to get to the bottom
of it as the sat phone charged.

The two
-and-a-half-hour drive was ridiculous to me considering all we really wanted it for was electricity. Jinja was surprisingly well developed since all I’d ever seen from Kampala to Masego was undeveloped land excluding a random petrol station here and there. Ian told me it was the second largest city in Uganda. I had to keep myself from laughing while looking on it knowing those statistics. The main roads were paved, which was a rare sight, but they were poorly maintained and buckled in many spots. The establishments were plentiful but mostly one story. The roads were filled to the brim with bicyclists. Our truck seemed to be the only one among a handful in the entire city.

“The source of the Nile is here,” Ian explained after parking in front of
a promising-looking restaurant.

“Get out!” I exclaimed, genuinely surprised.
He opened the door for me and I stepped inside. We were the only ones. An Indian woman called us over.

“Excuse me,” Ian said, “I wonder if you wouldn’t mind if we trespassed on your kindness for a little while. My friend’s phone is almost out of battery and we need to charge it. What would it cost us to use your electricity for, say, eight hours?”
She held up her hands to stay us and went behind a door, emerging with a pen and piece of scrap paper. She wrote down a number and I bent over to examine what she’d written. It read “2 American dollar.” I nodded at the figure and handed her two dollars from the small stash I’d brought. We set the phone up to charge and sat at a nearby table.

Suddenly things became uncomfortable between us. We both knew it was the only privacy we’d be afforded for some time and neither of us
was bold enough to speak our minds.
This is so unlike me
. I stared out the dirty window before me, watching the men in dress pants and button-ups cycle along the streets. The woman interrupted the awkward quiet by setting a pot of tea and two cups at our table.
Ian thanked her and poured the tea over a sifter to catch the leaves, handing me a cup. Our hands touched and a spark of literal electricity shocked our hands apart.

“Static,” I whispered. We stared at one another, our hands inches apart on the table. I brought my gaze down and inspected them. “Talk,” I ordered fin
ally, taking in his eyes again.

“The lesson.”
A breath whistled through his nose.

“I thought you hated me.”

He shook his head, his hair falling a little into his eyes. “I don’t hate you, Soph. I never did.”

“Th
en why treat me like a pariah?”

He sat back but kept his hands flat on the tabl
e, his eyes searched me deeply.

“You’re leaving.” I nodded in acknowledgement. “In a few short months, you’ll be gone, back to your life in America. I didn’t
want
to be your friend.”

I sighed loudly. “So that whole bit about knowing who I was, what kind o
f person I was. Was that bull?”

His eyes cast down. “No, I, uh, it wasn’t.” His eyes met mine again. “I’m just-I was quick to judge. I was wrong when I thought you couldn’t change.
So few can do it.”
I brought my hands down and wedged them between my crossed legs.

“You think I’ve changed?”

“Sophie,” he offered as if in explanation, his brows pulled tightly across his forehead.
Tears sprang silently and cascaded down my face.

“
Soph,” he said quietly, reaching for me, but I refused to budge. “You’ve been transformed for a while.”
I choked back a sob. It meant so much to me to hear those words.

“Then why?”

“I told you. You’re leaving. I feel like an idiot admitting to this but I confess, I don’t do well when people leave. I promise myself I won’t get attached. It’s a defense mechanism in my line of work,” he admitted with a slight smile.

“And now?”

“I-I would be honored to call you friend,” he said succinctly, with an odd finality, as if he meant this as more a fact than an opinion.

I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted to be his friend. I’d never been respected by a man before, not truly.

Click
.

And this was my new epiphany. Men wanted me. They all did, however briefly, but none of them wanted
to keep me
. That’s what I needed. I needed to be owned, loved. But not by a man. I knew then that I never
needed
to be kept by a man. What I
needed
was to love myself, to want to keep myself around. And in that revelation, I knew that if I
wanted
to keep myself, that a man wanting to keep me would just be a by-product. Who wouldn’t want to keep someone who respected himself or herself?

“And I would be honored for you to
call
me friend,” I finally told him once I’d collected myself.
His expression softened and he grinned at me.

“Your heart is startlingly beautiful, Sophie,” he stated after
a brief moment of fixed gazes.

My breath sucked into my chest at an alarming rate. There was no mention of my face, my legs, my ass, my breasts, my hair, my clothing, the way I carried myself, what I wore or how I wore it. There was no mention of me other than the part no one could even see. I’d been called beautiful so many times. It gratified me, validated me, but it was all empty, a facade. This was the first time someone had called me
beautiful and it actually meant something to me. The praise slammed into my skin and permeated my body, leaving me flushed and overwhelmed.