Green City in the Sun (101 page)

     
I can never go back to Kenya. I must never see Christopher again. Aunt Grace is gone. I am alone. I must make a life for myself here, among strangers, in a world I was not born into.

     "Hi. Mind if I join you?"

     Deborah looked up to see a young woman in a turtleneck and jeans. She seemed familiar.

     "We're in physiology together," the young woman explained. "I've seen you in class. I'm Ann Parker. Can I sit with you?"

     Deborah moved over.

     "I don't know why I came to this party," Ann said. "It's just that the dorm is so empty and lonely. Everyone's gone home for the holidays. I'm not used to crowds."

     Deborah smiled. "Neither am I."

     "I come from a small town in the Midwest, so you know what I mean.

     "Where is the Midwest?"

     "Good question!" Ann laughed. "I sometimes wonder if I made a mistake coming to this school. This campus is bigger than the town I grew up in. It scares me sometimes."

     "I know how you feel."

     "I feel like shouting, 'Beam me up, Scottie!'"

     "Scottie?"

     Ann smiled. "I like your accent. Are you from England?"

     Deborah saw the golden savannas of Amboseli and the Masai herdsmen silhouetted against the blue sky. She smelled the red earth and the smoke and the wildflowers along the Chania. She heard the tinkle of goats' bells and the shrill, rapid speech of Kikuyu women on their shambas. She felt the strong arms and warrior's body of the man she was forbidden to love.

     "Yes, I'm from England," Deborah said as she checked her watch and allowed herself to think, for the last time, that at that very moment, on the other side of the world, the sun was rising over Mount Kenya.

D
EBORAH STARED DOWN AT THE LAST ENTRY IN
G
RACE'S
journal, dated August 16, 1973.

     "Deborah is in love with Christopher Mathenge," her aunt had written. "And I believe he is with her. I cannot imagine anyone I would rather have marry my Deborah, and I pray that I live long enough to attend their wedding, so that I can give them my blessings for a long and happy future together."

     Those were the last words Grace had written in her book. She died later that night.

     Closing the journal and setting it down on the bed, Deborah unfolded her aching legs and went to the window. When she parted the drapes, bright, unexpected sunlight stabbed her eyes. Startled to discover that it was broad daylight, she quickly pulled the curtains closed. Deborah realized she had read all night and through the morning, with no awareness of time.

     She turned away from the window and sank onto the bony little sofa that completed her hotel room. Resting her feet on the coffee table, she
settled back and gazed at the ceiling. Beyond the door, sounds of life filled the corridor: room service carts rattling by; porters calling to one another in Swahili; the periodic ding of the elevators. From her windows behind the sealed drapes, Nairobi delivered up its daytime cacophony of traffic, car horns, people shouting in the street below.

     Deborah hugged herself. Tears stood behind her eyes.

     It was too much-her family story. She felt as if a deluge had washed over her, as if she were swimming in a churning sea.

     They had been there all this time, the answers she had once gone to Wachera for about that other baby, the love child of Mona and David. The answers had been in the journal all these years, spelled out in Grace's neat hand: "We lost four lives to Mau Mau that night-my beloved James; Mario, who had been with me since the beginning; David Mathenge; and the baby, trampled...."

     And then, two pages later: "Mona is pregnant again. She says it is Tim Hopkins's child, a mistake, that she had been out of her mind with grief and didn't know what she was doing."

     Tears came to Deborah's eyes as the truth cut through to her soul.
I was not a love child after all. But a mistake.

     Deborah drew her legs up and hugged them to her. She bent her head and cried softly onto her knees.

     There was a knock at her door.

     She raised her head. When she heard the sound of keys in the lock, she jumped up and went to answer it.

     A room steward stood in the hall with his cleaning cart and an armload of fresh towels. He smiled apologetically and used gestures to indicate that he wanted to clean her room.

     "No, thank you," she said in English, then repeated it in Swahili when she saw that he didn't understand. He smiled again and bowed and pushed his cart away. Deborah searched for a Do Not Disturb sign, found one that read USISUMBUE, and hung it on the outside knob.

     She leaned against the door and closed her eyes.

     
Why am I here? Why did I come?

     The noise beyond her windows seemed to come through the glass in
urgent waves. She heard Nairobi's call but wanted to ignore it. Suddenly she was afraid.

     "You're afraid of something," a voice now whispered in her memory. Jonathan, six months ago, asking, "Why are you running from me? Is it me you're afraid of, Debbie, or are you just afraid of commitment?"

     She pictured Jonathan Hayes, tried to conjure him up and make him come to life, body and soul, here in this room. She tried to imagine how he would be at this very moment, getting her to talk, drawing her feelings out, helping her through this twisted maze she had gotten herself lost in. There was solace in thinking about Jonathan, comfort in his imagined presence. But as a specter he was too tenuous. At the sound of loud voices from the corridor he vanished.

     Deborah felt as if she were scattered in pieces all over the globe, half of them here in East Africa, the other half revolving purposelessly around Jonathan in San Francisco. Since her early days in California, fifteen years ago, when she had blindly fled a reality too strong for one so young and unforged to face, Deborah had led a piecemeal existence, tacking together an identity when and wherever she could. "Where exactly in Cheshire are you from, Dr. Treverton?" Jonathan had asked the afternoon they had met. Deborah was new to the staff, and she had been assigned to assist him in surgery. And to her own surprise, Deborah had found herself confessing that she was actually from Kenya, not from England.

     Looking back, she knew what had prompted the unexpected honesty. It was Jonathan himself. There was something about him, in his large brown eyes, as soul-seeing and commiserating as a priest's, and in his confessional voice, a sort of HAL computer voice, she had thought when she first met him. Everyone felt that way about Dr. Jonathan Hayes. People took their loves and frights to him, and he listened with consummate patience.

     That was not to say, however, Deborah had learned in their two years together, that he was a man to display his own heart upon his sleeve. Jonathan was not a demonstrative man. If he had feelings, they were carefully harnessed beneath an even-tempered, easygoing exterior. And that was why his sudden, impulsive kiss at the airport-when? yesterday? the day before?-had so startled her.

     Deborah shivered and discovered that she was cold.

     Her hair had long since dried, but she still wore only her bathrobe. But the decision of whether or not to get dressed was beyond her ability.

     
Christopher
, she thought at last.

     He was not her brother after all.

     She had been fighting thinking about him; from the moment she had closed the journal, she had turned her back on what had to be faced. Now it made her feel as if the floor had suddenly dropped away from under her. She clutched the doorknob as if to keep from falling. The very thing she had worked so hard for fifteen years to deny suddenly no longer existed.

     She was not David Mathenge's daughter. She did not belong to Kenya's black race.

     It took her breath away. Deborah managed to leave the door and make her way into the bathroom. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, at a face she had examined a thousand times for traces of a bloodline she had believed for so long to be there. How often she had studied herself! Scrutinizing every eyelash, every line and fold of her face, searching for the African clues, while at the same time praying that they would never appear, so that no one could suspect.

     She groped for the edge of the sink.

     
I ran for no reason. No crime was committed. I was free to love Christopher. I could have stayed.

     The tears rose again. Deborah felt ensnared. Jonathan would have helped her to control herself if he were here; he would have shown her how to master her confusion. But Jonathan wasn't here. Just the mocking image of the white woman in the mirror.

     She went to the bed and picked up the photographs: Valentine on a polo pony; Lady Rose, looking back over her shoulder; Aunt Grace as a young woman; four barefoot kids standing in the sun. Deborah now looked at the last three pictures.

     In her hasty flight from Kenya so long ago she had only packed a few things-Grace's journal; the love letters; a handful of snapshots. She had wrapped them all in paper and string, and there they had stayed for fifteen years. Deborah didn't know what the remaining three photos were of or why
she had chosen them, but as she held them up now she felt a strange longing come over her. A longing for the past.

     There was Terry Donald, his right foot perched on the carcass of a rhino, his right hand holding a rifle. He was the image of the Donald men: attractive and virile, beaming with confidence and masculinity, sunburned and safari-weary, third-generation Kenya-born.

     Deborah next looked at Sarah. She was young in this one, her hair not yet cornrowed, her smile still uncertain and girlish. Sarah was wearing a school uniform; there was a touching aura of innocence about her. The photo reminded Deborah of simpler days, better days.

     The last was of Christopher, standing on the bank of the river in dappled sunlight, wearing dark slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and collar open. He was wearing sunglasses. He was smiling. And he was so very, very handsome.

     Deborah gazed at him in wonder. The taboo was lifted. She was free to love him again.

     And then she thought:
What do I do now?

     She looked at the telephone on her nightstand. She remembered the mission, that the nuns were expecting her.
I should call them and tell them I'm here.

     But when her eye fell upon the blue telephone book, Deborah froze.

     She stared at it in nameless fear. It was as if her safe and secure hotel room had suddenly been invaded. The closed drapes and locked door were meant to keep the threatening things out. But they were here, after all, in the room with her. In that dog-eared directory.

     She reached for it. Thinking of all the people who might be contained in this book, people who were roadways into her past, Deborah felt a curious rush of excitement. It was like taking a journey.

     She found a listing for the Donald Tour Agency.

     Deborah had cut ties completely when she had fled Kenya. In fifteen years of carefully constructing a new life and a new persona for herself, she had set her face away from the familiar and loved names in Kenya. If she could not have Christopher, she had determined in her immaturity, then she would not have his country or anyone who lived in it. Along with the
Mathenges, she had cut the Donalds out of her life.

     A search through the phone book told her that Kilima Simba Safari Lodge was still operating in Amboseli; four more Donald lodges were also located throughout Kenya. She came across an advertisement. It showed a Volkswagen minibus gaudily painted in zebra stripes and a line that read "Donald Tours, with the largest fleet of safe buses and drivers in East Africa."

     So. They were still here, and apparently prospering. The Donalds. Sprung from Sir James, the man her aunt had loved, whom Deborah had never known.

     She was suddenly filled with a desire to see Terry again. And Uncle Geoffrey and Uncle Ralph. Now they seemed to Deborah to be more than just old friends; all of a sudden the Donalds were like family.

     
Family!
she thought excitedly. After so long there was someone she could talk to about the old days, someone who knew her, who would
understand.

     Deborah was suddenly afraid to turn the pages of the phone book. It frightened her to think of seeing Christopher's name printed there, with a phone number. It would place him too close. She had but to pick up the phone and dial. ...

     Then she turned the pages. Her hands trembled. She stared down. There were many Mathenges listed; there must be nearly thirty of them. She ran her finger down the list. The Mathenges skipped from Barnabas to Ezekiel.

     Deborah read the names again, more carefully. She went all the way down to the bottom and then started at the top again. But there was no Christopher among them.

     Did that mean he wasn't in Kenya?