Green City in the Sun (71 page)

     Her fear mounting, Wanjiru hastened her retreat up into the denser forest, moving as quickly and silently as her bulk would allow, pausing only when pain gripped her, and glancing back frequently to measure the distance between herself and the elephants.

     If the matriarch of the herd caught a whiff of human scent...

     Wanjiru moved as swiftly as she could through the descending gloom. Although daylight was now rapidly dying, she dared not try to circle back toward home, not until she was certain she was giving the elephants a wide margin.

     A ropy vine lay across her path; her foot caught on it, and she fell. She cried out.

     Wanjiru lay where she was and strained to listen. The low growl of the elephants, as they communicated with one another in the forest, was all around her. She lay perfectly still in the lowering darkness on the hard, damp ground.

     The herd was moving, she thought in rising panic, at the pace of a snail. They just seemed to stand in a spot and strip the trees, their ears making swishing sounds, their massive feet crushing everything underfoot. The forest grew dark; sounds changed from daylight melodies to sinister, nocturnal calls. Wanjiru was terrified of the night, and now she was about to be caught in it.

     Only one thing worse could happen to her, she decided as she waited in agony for the elephants to move on, and that would be for the rain to break.

     And it did, just as she was picking herself up to head back home.

     The rain was just a gentle drizzle, but Wanjiru could see only a few feet in front of her—the dreary shapes of trees and giant bush. She stumbled for
cover under a chestnut tree and was struck by a violent contraction. She cried out again and fell to her knees.

     It lasted longer than the previous pains, and she felt the ominous shifting of her pelvic bones.

     The baby was coming.

     
No!
she thought in panic.
Not here, where the wild beasts of the forest will steal him from me!

     Wanjiru struggled to get to her feet. She pulled herself up along the tree trunk, scraping her palms until they bled, and then, once she was standing, tried to conquer the pain so that she could walk.

     Forgetting the elephants, the lantana leaves in her abandoned basket, and the white man's curfew, Wanjiru managed to push away from the tree and take a few halting steps out in the light rain. She was able to walk. She clutched her abdomen and moved blindly into the drizzle, unaware, in her physical agony and in the confusion of the rain, that she was heading in the wrong direction.

     W
ANJIRU HAD NO
idea how long she had been walking. Night seemed to have come to the forest long ago; the rain had been falling steadily for hours. Her kanga, a piece of brightly colored cloth which she wore around her head in a turban, was soaked and plastered to her shaved scalp. Her skirt clung to her legs, making walking nearly impossible. But she pressed on through the rain and the darkness, scrambling over boulders and fallen logs, feeling her way among trees that were growing closer and closer together, trying desperately to find the direction home.

     She knew where she was. Wanjiru was stumbling up the slope of the mountains the white man called the Aberdares. To them the range was a national park, but to Wanjiru it was Nyandarua, "Drying Hide," the forest of her ancestors. She also knew that helpless, alone, and about to give birth, she was now in the territory of the deadly buffalo and black leopard.

     Once the pain was so severe that she collapsed and lay for a long time in the mud, the freezing rain washing over her, rocks and dead branches cutting into her.

     Wanjiru's hands and feet were numb; she felt none of the lacerations or the warm blood seeping from her wounds. She was barely even aware of the wet, the sharp cold, her hunger pangs. Wanjiru was centered in her belly, where her child was demanding to be released. But she held him in her; she carried her pain and torture inside her body, through the black forest and into the terrifying night.

     
Dear God
, she prayed in desperation as she stumbled, fell, then pulled herself up from the mud and plunged into the arctic void.
Lord of Brightness, help me!

     She pressed on. Sobs wracked her body as wet branches slapped her face and stung her arms. Her bare feet slipped over the muddy forest floor. The rain continued to come down, heavy and hard, seeming to invade even her skin and soak her to the bones. Wanjiru thought of her warm, dry hut, the bed of goatskins, the
ugali
stew bubbling on the cook fire, and the comforting presence of David's mother, patiently brewing medicinal tea. But the last thing this nightmarish forest contained, Wanjiru knew in despair, was warmth and dryness.

     Thunder clapped, and the ground shook. Wanjiru heard the trumpeting of startled elephants. She wondered where they were, if it was the same herd, if she was heading away from them or toward them. An icy wind cut through her sodden clothing, making the labor pains sharper.

     She plunged on, into the night.

     T
HE RAIN FINALLY
stopped, and eerie mists swirled up from the ground. Wanjiru had to push through branches laden with water, the cold wind blowing over her wet body. She felt as if the world were turning to ice and that she was going to be swallowed up in the freezing lakes and fogs of the forbidding mountain.

     Something warm trickled down between her legs. The birth pain was one continuous ribbon of fire. She ran out of breath. She fell against a tree. Wanjiru knew now that she was far from home, that she had been lost and wandering for hours, and that the baby was going to be born in this cold,
dark hell. All around she heard the scuttlings of wild animals; she sensed hyena eyes fastened greedily upon her, waiting for her to fall one last time. Wanjiru had heard the women in the marketplace tell of a woman who had been caught in the fields in childbirth and how hyenas had dragged the newborn baby off.

     
I'll kill my son first
, she thought as she clutched the tree, gasping, straining to keep the baby inside her just a while longer.
And then I will kill myself
....

     Wanjiru felt as if her body were being torn apart. She cried out. Then she screamed.

     She slid to the ground, tearing her cheek on the rough bark, tasting blood,
seeing
blood, and hearing, in the dense mist, the clicks and grunts of evil, scavenging animals.

     "Go away!" she screamed.

     Wanjiru felt around the wet ground for a weapon. Her hand curled around a rock. She tried to throw it, but she was too weak. Life was draining out of her; a sturdy, new life was pushing its way from her body. Her pain rose up and out of her skin and flew away to the low-hanging clouds and misty bamboo forests. Wanjiru was at the top of the mountain, and she knew she would never get down again.

     But her baby would not be food for the beasts. She would not let the wild animals of this terrible forest feast upon the grandson of the warrior chief Mathenge.

     Dazed and weak, the child nearly born, Wanjiru began to dig feebly into the mud. A grave, just big enough ...

     I
T SEEMED TO
her that she slept and that she was warm and dry. Half of her told her that it was an illusion, that she was still out in the cold, digging a grave for her baby. But another part of her told her that this was very real.

     She was back at the Native Hospital in Nairobi, where she had worked for five years as a nurse before leaving to live in the Nyeri District as David Mathenge's wife.

     She was having an argument with someone. "Why are our uniforms different
from yours? Why are our wages so much lower than yours? Why are you called 'sister,' while we must answer to 'maid'?"

     The face of her white supervisor materialized before Wanjiru. It was the self-righteous countenance of a woman who told Wanjiru that African nurses simply didn't qualify for the same status as white ones.

     And then Wanjiru, in her strange dream, remembered that this was why she had left the nursing profession. "We are discriminated against," she had complained to David. "African women receive the same training and do the same work, but we are not considered the equals of the white sisters. Why should I trouble myself?"

     At that point Wanjiru opened her eyes and realized, after some minutes, that she was staring up at the ceiling of a cave.

     She lay thinking, trying to discover if this was real or another dream. The bed of dry leaves underneath her seemed real enough, as did the pain in her hands and feet. The air in this mysterious cave was warm and dry but gently illuminated by a fire in the center of its rocky floor. Silhouettes of people hunched together and eating squatted around that fire.

     Wanjiru stared at them. Then she explored herself; she felt inside her body and realized that the baby was gone.

     She tried to speak; it came out as a groan. One of those by the fire got up and came to her. It was a woman holding a newborn baby. "Your son," she said quietly.

     Bewildered, Wanjiru reached up and brought her son, Christopher, to her breast, where he began feeding at once. She studied the woman who knelt at her side. By her features, Wanjiru guessed that she was a member of the Meru tribe.

     "Where am I?" Wanjiru was finally able to say.

     "You are safe with us. Don't worry, sister."

     Wanjiru looked around the large cave, craning her neck. She saw more people, many more, along the walls, sleeping in corners and on stony shelves. She saw furniture made of bamboo, large crates with English words printed on them, rifles stacked in the shadows. A strange silence filled the cave, considering the number of people it housed; but the aromas were familiar and comforting, and the woman at Wanjiru's side smiled reassuringly.

     "Who are you?" Wanjiru asked.

     "We found you in the forest and brought you here. You are among friends." The woman paused, then said, "The soil is ours." She looked down at Wanjiru, as if expecting a particular response.

     But all Wanjiru, in her exhaustion and confusion, could say was "I—I don't understand.
Who are you?"

     The woman's smile faded, and she said solemnly, almost sadly, "We are
uhuru
, sister. We are Mau Mau."

M
ONA THOUGHT THE TRAIN WOULD NEVER COME
.

     And then there it was at last: the whistle; the rumbling track; the smoke puffing up to the blue sky. People swarmed all over the platform—those, like Mona, meeting arrivals and others ready to clamber aboard and fight for a good seat for the ride up to Nanyuki. She stayed back by her Land-Rover as she anxiously watched the train slow down and come to a stop. She paid no attention to the first- and second-class cars, in which whites and Asians rode, but fastened her eye upon the third-class car. Finally—it seemed to take forever—she saw him step down.

     "David!" she called, waving.

     He looked up, smiled, and waved back.

     Mona pushed through the mob and met him halfway, saying, "I was beginning to think you'd never come! I've missed you, David! How was Uganda?"