About Face (11 page)

She'd never had such difficulty looking inside herself and sorting out what she was feeling. This was not a recognizable sensation. She had no name for it. That was especially frightening.

Should she take this unexpected lack of enthusiasm as a sign to retire? David's thirty days were ticking away. Was she feeling pressured by that? No, don't be silly, that's not it. It's just that the project is so huge, her system was just protecting her. The excitement would surely come. Soon enough. It had to. As soon as she got started on the To-Do list. Maybe tomorrow.

Part III

CHAPTER 10

Knowing When It's Right

 

 

SHE FOUND HERSELF ALONE with Colleen in the elevator at the end of the day. Like Pavlov's dogs, they responded to the “ding” by exiting in lock-step. But then Colleen held back.

“Something wrong?” Ruth asked.

“I know you're probably, like, in a rush to get home, so maybe you don't have time? And this is not about business, it's personal? But could I maybe ask you for some advice, ‘cause you kind of know what to do about stuff?”

“I don't really know so much, I'm just older and more experienced than you. But you can ask me anything. I'll try to help.”

They started walking. “Well, I've been seeing this guy.”

“Hmmmmm … interesting. And?”

“I really like him. A lot. And he likes me too.”

“So far, so good.” And no question marks at the ends of
these
sentences.

“But I don't know if he's, you know, ‘the one.' How do you know? Do you think there's, like, one true love out there, a soul-mate kind of thing, and so if you don't know if he's ‘the one,' then it means he's not? Like, did you know as soon as you met David … if it's okay for me to be asking you personal stuff like that?”

“It's fine to ask me. But it's a big question. Want to grab a cup of coffee?”

“Cool. But do you have time? I mean, you're always in such a rush.”

“Today I have time. In fact, it would be nice to sit down, have some coffee, talk about anything besides work. And David's one of my favorite subjects.”

When they were settled in a booth at the coffee shop, Ruth asked, “You want the long version or the short version?”

“Long. If it's okay.”

“I love it. But, I warn you, I'll start at the beginning and wind around. Have faith, eventually I'll answer your question.”

“My ears are open wide.”

Ruth got lost in the telling of her own story.

 

AFTER FOUR MONTHS IN DJEMBERING, she'd changed. Her skin had darkened and hardened, the former from sun and dirt, the latter from Vivian. She no longer had a problem going to the bathroom outdoors. Even the flies had become a mere fact of life. Her life was no longer either a thrilling adventure or a desperate flight from her parents' expectations. It was just who and where she was, like a brand-new dress brought home from the store carefully wrapped in tissue paper that eventually becomes, simply, something you wear when you go outside.

When it was time for her first All-Country Volunteer meeting in the capital, she was eager to see the volunteers she'd trained with in Kentucky and compare stories about what they'd been doing. Plus she'd get to see the other Senegal volunteers who'd already been in-country when she arrived. And the idea of having more than one person to speak English to was downright thrilling.

After a predictably long and dusty ride to the capital, Ruth and Vivian found the Hotel du Port easily. Ruth saw the place through two sets of eyes simultaneously.

Her former eyes, the ones she'd used before she came to Senegal, saw a rundown building in a seedy section of town. Even the sign was missing the “r.” The floor was mopped but shabby, with occasional cigarette butts tic-tac-toe-ing the black and white tiles. The beggars were at their stations in the corner of the lobby. The owner of these eyes wondered what in the world she was doing at the Hotel du Po
 
t.

Her new eyes, only four months old, elbowed out the old. First they saw lamps and a radio, which advertised the presence of electricity! Then these eyes took in the real walls, made from concrete, with pictures hanging from them. And glass windows. With retractable shades.

Using a pencil that had been sharpened and re-sharpened so many times there was barely anything to hold onto, she signed in, first brushing away the flies that seemed to consider the hotel registry their home. When the desk clerk asked if they preferred a room with a shower or a tub, she thought she was the luckiest person alive.

After bathing, they put on shoes that covered their sandal-line suntan and cotton floral-print dresses that wrapped the clean skin that was still puckered from water they'd made as hot as they could stand. They set out, giggling, for a walk through town. They went up-hill from the port, on the cracked sidewalk leading towards the ring of tall palm trees framing the Place d'Indépendence.

“Do you believe all these cars? And look, traffic lights too.” Ruth knew she sounded like all the hayseeds she'd made fun of in New York. “I can't believe what I'm saying.”

“But look at the stores. My God, there are even supermarkets. Want to go into one and look around?”

“No, not yet. I don't think I'm ready for that yet. I need to walk around some more.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Vivian said. “Imagine, milk in packages being too much of a thrill. Can you believe it?”

As they walked up the narrow side street, they distributed small coins to the children who followed them. News of their generosity spread. Eventually, they told the gathered throng—using the local language and faces that were steeled not to show the pity they felt—to go away. They finally emerged from the shade of the narrow side street into the unrelenting sun of the Place, the center of the downtown, surrounded by big apartment and office buildings. Except for a few sedentary beggars and vendors, most people were headed someplace, whether in business clothes or traditional dress, carrying a briefcase or a basket.

The sun and heat were blinding. “Where should we go?” Ruth asked.

“Dunno. The meeting's in an hour. Wanna sit at a café? Wouldn't that be wild? Drinking coffee at a café?”

“Or beer?”

In the crosswalk to Avenue William Ponty, they passed a man on a bicycle with seven egg trays improbably balanced on his head and another walking with a bed on his head.

“You know what's so weird?” Vivian said. “Seeing all these people carrying stuff on their head looks amazing. But we see it every day. I guess it's being in the city instead of the village.”

“Context is king.”

They continued to walk, mostly in silence. The smell of burning leaves was ever-present, though fainter than in the countryside. Shops and vendors sold the exotic and the mundane. Mass-produced crafts for tourists were displayed close to authentic sculpture from villages where they'd been used for ceremonies. Batteries and key-chains were sold by kids, cigarettes and chewing gum by women. An old toothless woman sold peanuts, carefully weighed on an ancient balance scale and put into a newspaper cone. Modern shops sold imported French tennis and soccer clothing, electronic equipment, worsted fabric and lace, while outside them a vendor cooked pieces of an unidentifiable meat on skewers. The breezes blew the smoke right into his face, but he sat unmoving.

They were so tired from their walk in the exhilarating city, in the sun, with sensory overload, they decided to skip the detour to the café and just get to the meeting early.

When she walked in, Ruth was taken aback by all the white faces. She'd forgotten. Even the black volunteers looked, somehow, white. Her misperception confused her, but she later heard from her black friends that they frequently encountered this kind of color blindness, especially from Africans. To the Africans, Americans were white, even black Americans.

“Hey, Ruth.” It was Carol, a woman she'd trained with. They hugged as fervently as if they'd grown up together. “Wow,” Carol said, “has it really only been four months since Kentucky? How have you been? Where have you been? Is it good?”

Their stories poured out. Even though one was a white twenty-two-year-old, stationed in the south of the country to run a medical dispensary, and the other was an “older” volunteer at twenty-nine, black, stationed in the north, teaching English, they found their experiences remarkably parallel. They said “Wow,” over and over.

Ruth spotted Tom, another fellow trainee. He introduced her to his roommate. “David got here a year ago, so he's an old hand. He showed me the ropes. Literally, 'cause we've been digging wells. Talk about getting to know someone, try being down in a well with them all day. Marriage will be easy after this.” Ruth and David shook hands as Tom was called over by another volunteer. They exchanged the “where” and “when” and “what” of their volunteer service, as well as their American geography, then each went to talk to someone else.

Vivian accosted Ruth. “So, who was that guy? Kinda cute, don't you think? He's not my type, so you don't need to worry, but he might be—”

“Tom? He's in some village outside of Kaolack. It turns out he and I grew up a couple of miles from each other, but since we went to different high schools, we never got to—”

“I don't mean Tom. I know Tom. I mean the other one.”

“That's his roommate, David. Yeah, he seemed nice.”

“And cute.”

“Yeah, cute I guess, too.”

“So?”

“So what? Get off my back. I'm not as hungry as you.”

“That's what you think.”

The next night, after a long day of discussion sessions and problem-solving sessions, then a meal of fish and rice at the Peace Corps offices, all fifty-eight volunteers tumbled into the Bar Americain for beer and rock ‘n' roll.

The Volunteers stationed in remote villages, where there was nothing to buy with their monthly Peace Corps living allowance, had money to burn and a lot of partying to catch up on. They were happy to buy round after round of beer and feed the jukebox.

Ruth and David spent two beers' worth of time talking to each other, though each spoke to, and danced with, many others. Jacquie, the bar owner, finally kicked them all out at two AM.

As soon as they left the bar and started walking back to their hotel, Vivian said, “You were talking to that cute David for a long time. You want me to find another room for tomorrow night? I could force myself, you know. There's a really cute guy from Tambacounda I could maybe manage to get an invitation from.”

“Feel free if
you
want to, but don't do it on my account. It's not like that with David. He's really nice, but it's not like that.”

“Come on, don't give me that. It's always like that.”

“No, really, it isn't. I liked talking to him a lot, but it was like talking to a girlfriend. Like you just feel comfortable and easy. You don't have to worry too much about what you say. Natural.”

“But he's so cute.”

“I guess he is. But he has a girlfriend back home. And anyway, that wasn't the main attraction.”

“We'll see.”

“I hate when you act like you know it all.”

“Especially when I'm right.”

“We'll see.”

It turned out Vivian was right, but not exactly in the way she thought. Ruth and David became very good friends. After the weekend of that first All-Country Meeting, they saw each other at a few other volunteer meetings. They also each visited the other's village once, she with a bunch of volunteer buddies, he with his visiting parents. Every time they met, Ruth felt the same way, like she was coming home to something welcoming, something that fit. But it wasn't romantic.

David returned to the U.S. six months before she did, and they continued their friendship through correspondence. When she finally returned and they saw each other in New York, after he'd broken up with his girlfriend, the feeling of homecoming she'd always experienced with him was even more intense and the increased intensity eventually became, as Vivian had always predicted, sexual.

And the rest was, if not history, the more traditional part of the boy-meets-girl story.

 

“FINALLY, THE ANSWER to your question: No, it wasn't what they call love at first sight. I was a girl far from home—funny, we didn't realize back then that we were women—feeling very comfortable with a friend who happened to be a boy. But I think being good friends first allowed the passion to bloom later on. And to ‘stick,' if you know what I mean.”

Ruth dug money from her purse for the coffee they'd finished long before and said, “That might have been more of a story than you wanted, and I don't know if it helps, but it sure was fun to relive.”

“Thank you
so
-so much. It's
so
not what I expected and
so
something I want to think about. Because you hear all these stories like ‘I knew the second I met him that I'd be with him for the rest of my life' and you wonder if it's bull or if there's just maybe another way it could go. Oops there's my bus. Do you mind if I run?”

“Run, run, run. It's fine.”

Funny how things turn out, Ruth thought. The white-hot friendship with Vivian couldn't be transplanted from one place to another. But the friendship with David had blossomed.

When they'd first become lovers, she'd thought they'd wasted a lot of time in Africa. But later on, after several couple-friends' mad infatuation subsided, only to reveal they didn't much like each other, she thought maybe it was better their way. The friendship part is harder. Better to get that under their belts, so to speak, before passion muddies the waters. Because when they did become passionate, friendship definitely took a back seat.