Green City in the Sun (42 page)

     "It needed suturing ..." Grace said, her head swimming.

     Wachera reached up to the circular wall, where, Grace saw now, many gourds and leather pouches hung. Taking one of these, Wachera spilled something into her hand and held it out for Grace to see. In the brown palm lay iron needles of different sizes, strips of sheep tendon, and bark string. "The wound is closed," Wachera said. Then she returned the things to the pouch and the pouch to its hook.

     Grace watched her with eyes that refused to stay focused. The image of the young medicine woman blurred; she seemed to retreat down a long tunnel. Grace heard the singing voice again and realized it was herself. Why was she singing? No, not singing ... groaning.

     She sank back onto the bed of banana leaves. There seemed to be not an ounce of strength in her body.
My patients
, she thought. Where was everyone? Mario. Her head throbbed. She put a hand to her temple and felt something leafy there.

     Grace closed her eyes and lost consciousness.

     W
ACHERA SQUATTED NEX
t to the little girl and murmured magic spells as she removed the leaves and inspected the wound. There was a lot of angry redness and swelling, which meant evil spirits had invaded the flesh, so she
took some leaves from a pouch on her belt, put them in her mouth, chewed for a moment, then applied them to the wound that had been stitched with bark string. When new dry leaves were tied in place, Wachera examined the burn on the little girl's back. There was enough aloe juice in the gourd for one more treatment; then she would have to send David out for more. But where was he?

     She looked at the doorway. It was still raining. The downpour had not stopped since its onset; the whole world was gray and watery.

     Wachera covered the little girl again with the warm goatskins and turned to the memsaab, who was still unconscious. Wachera studied her. She had never been this close to a white woman, had never touched one. She stared at the curiously colorless skin, at the brown hair flimsy as cornsilk; she lifted the hands and marveled at their lack of calluses. This
mzunga
was like a newborn lamb, all white and soft. It amazed Wachera that such women survived in Kikuyuland. Yet they did, and more were arriving every day with their helmets that were wider than their shoulders and their clothes that protected every inch of their vulnerable skin.

     What made them come? Why were they here?

     The medicine woman sat next to the sleeping memsaab and laid a hand on the cool, dry forehead. The throb of life at the memsaab's throat, which was the energy of her ancestral spirit, was strong. She was healthy. She would live. But she would be half blind. There was nothing Wachera could have done about the memsaab's loss of sight.

     David came in, shook the rain off himself, and squatted by the fire. He stole a glance at the white girl sleeping in his bed. He wished she would die.

     Dropping some bark and roots into a pot boiling on the cook stones, Wachera instructed her son to go to the river and collect three lilies the "color of a goat's tongue." But he must not try to cross the river to the other villages, she warned, because the water was rising and its spirit would grab him and pull him under. She embraced David, thanking Ngai for sparing him, then watched him go back into the rain.

     When she returned to the preparation of the infusion, Wachera found the memsaab awake and looking at her.

     "How is Mona?" Grace asked.

     Wachera nodded to indicate that all was well.

     Grace tried to sit up. She was surprised to find her nightgown dry and herself clean. Then she realized the medicine woman must have bathed her.

     The hut was smoky and dark. The daylight coming through the doorway was pale; a curtain of rain fell steadily. Grace tried to orient herself, blinking in confusion. It was then that she realized there was something wrong with her sight.

     Reading the memsaab's face, Wachera said, "You were struck on the head. Here," she added, pointing to her own temple.

     Grace felt the leaf dressing on the right side of her forehead. She didn't remember being struck by the burning thatch. Then she moved her hand in front of her right eye and couldn't see it.

     "I could not save your sight," Wachera said.

     Grace looked at her in surprise. "How did you know I could not see out of this eye?"

     "It is the old knowledge. When a head is struck here, the sight is lost." She reached for an empty gourd, filled it with the infusion, and handed it to Grace.

     "What is it?"

     "It will strengthen you. Drink it."

     Grace looked down at the hot liquid. Its steamy aroma was not unpleasant, but she didn't trust the medicine woman. "What is it?" she said again.

     Wachera didn't answer. She turned away from the memsaab and went to the little girl, who had begun to stir. Cradling Mona in the crook of her arm, she brought a gourd to the dry lips. Mona drank, her eyes closed, her body limp. Grace started to protest. She wanted to push the medicine woman away from her niece and take care of Mona herself. But Grace felt sick again. She lay back down, setting the gourd on the earth floor.

     She thought about her eye. She knew that a blow to the temple could detach the retina; the same wound had blinded Admiral Nelson. And there was no cure for it. But how had this African woman known that?

     Grace tried to fathom her strange weakness, her inability to get up off this primitive bed.
I must get help. I must get word out. . . .
She thought of the mission workers, of her patients, of Mario. They had to be brought
back to the mission, to rebuild the clinic. She pictured Birdsong Cottage as she had last seen it, charred and gutted with the rain pouring in. Everything ruined.

     She listened to the rain. It lulled her. She watched the medicine woman patiently feed tea to a half-conscious Mona. The pungent scent of the infusion filled the hut. It seemed to invigorate, even in vapor form. What was in the tea? Grace reached for the gourd; her trembling hand knocked it over, and black tea spilled out, seeping into the floor.

     Wachera worked silently and slowly. She turned Mona onto her side, checked the dressings again, then tucked the goatskins in all around. Returning to the cook fire, she picked up the gourd Grace had knocked over, refilled it, and came to sit at the memsaab's side. This time, when Grace struggled to sit up, Wachera put a strong arm around her shoulders and supported her. The medicine woman brought the tea to Grace's lips, and she drank.

     "Do you have pain?" Wachera asked.

     "Yes. In my head. Terrible pain ..."

     David came in then. He set the three lilies down and retreated to the wall, where he sat cross-legged and watched. Wachera left the memsaab to work on the flowers. Separating roots and leaves, she dropped the petals into a measure of hot water, stirring it as it boiled. Grace lay helpless as she observed the simple process of making a decoction. Her head throbbed. She began to feel ill again.

     When the new brew was cooled, Wachera returned to Grace's side, helped her sit up, and brought the gourd to her lips. But Grace drew her head back. "Water lilies?" she said weakly. "I can't drink this."

     "It is for head pain."

     "But... it might be poison."

     "It is not poison."

     Grace looked up into the dark face inches from her own. Wachera's eyes were like the brown pebbles found in the river bed. They seemed depthless. Grace looked at the pinkish tea. Then she drank.

     "How do you feel?" Wachera asked a short while later, as she began to prepare millet stew on the cook fire.

     "I'm feeling better," Grace said, meaning it. The pain in her head was subsiding, and strength seemed to be returning to her body.

     She was able to concentrate now, to organize her thoughts. She looked at the boy sitting sullenly against the wall, wondered what he and Mona had been doing in the surgery hut, then asked Wachera if it was possible to get word to others where she was.

     Wachera stirred the millet, the beaded bracelets on her arms making a clacking sound. "The rain is very bad. My boy cannot go. I cannot go. When the rain stops, we will try."

     Grace imagined the world beyond the mud wall; she had seen storms like this before. The river would be swollen and churning; all paths and roads would be ribbons of mud; wherever people were they would be stranded there; and of those unlucky to be caught abroad in the rain, some would drown.

     When she was given a gourd of millet stew, Grace found she had appetite and ate with relish. Wachera first fed Mona, who seemed to hover in a half-awake limbo; then she took some stew herself. David gobbled his down and curled up on his side to sleep, his back to the others in the hut.

     G
RACE WAS THE
first awake. She stared up at the underside of the thatch, listened to the continuing rain, then slowly sat up.

     Wachera was still asleep on her side next to David, her body curved spoonlike against his, her arm covering him. Grace fought a spell of vertigo, then was able to shift from the leafy bed. She went to Mona and immediately checked the girl's vital signs.

     Grace sat back in alarm. Mona was burning with fever.

     She undid the leaf dressing on Mona's thigh and gazed in astonishment at the track of neat stitches. There was redness but no drainage. Then she inspected the burn on the girl's back. It would leave a scar, but because of Wachera's quick action, there was no sign of infection.

     So Mona burned from some other cause. And it could be anything; the cold rain; the medicine woman's mysterious brews; something
brought on by the bite of an insect, which lived in disconcerting profusion in this hut.

     Mona needed something to reduce her fever, and quickly. Without a proper thermometer Grace could not determine the exact degree of the temperature, but she knew the child was dangerously hot. Grace got up and went to the doorway. There would be aspirin up at the big house, in Rose's bathroom. But the rain stood like a solid wall between Wachera's hut and the ridge; the path to Bellatu, Grace knew, would be gone.

     Hearing a sound, Grace turned and found the young African woman awake and reaching for a leather pouch. Wachera seemed unaware that the memsaab was out of bed and standing at the doorway; in single-minded concentration she proceeded to draw roots out of the bag and begin to pound them between two stones. She then stirred the pulp into a gourd filled with cold rainwater and took it to Mona. When she lifted the gourd to the girl's lips, Grace said, "Stop!"

     Wachera ignored her.

     Mona's eyelids fluttered, her mouth opened, and a bit of the juice went in.

     Grace flew to Wachera and grabbed the gourd. "What are you giving to her?"

     "Acacia," said the medicine woman, using the Kikuyu name for the tree. "This will draw the fire out of her body."

     "How do I know it won't kill her? How do I know it isn't your medicines that are making her sick?"

     Wachera turned a cold, flat stare upon Grace. Then she reached out and took a firm hold of the gourd. "My medicines do not make the child sick. She has the evil spirits of sickness in her body."

     "Nonsense. There are no such things as evil spirits."

     "They exist."

     "Show them to me."

     "They cannot be seen."

     "And I tell you there are no such things. Mona is ill because she took some germs into her body. Tiny things which we call 'microbes' are making her sick."

     "Show me these microbes."

     "They're too small to be seen—" Grace blinked. She let Wachera take the gourd and watched Mona sip the medicine in her half sleep.

     When the gourd was empty, Wachera pounded more acacia roots, stirred them into cold rainwater, and drew the goatskin off Mona. Using a soft chamois, she sponged the girl's feverish body from head to foot.