Moore Than Forever (20 page)

Schooner shook his head, surprised. “Her name is ‘Baby Girl’?”

Looking up from the LCD screen of her camera where she had been checking photos, Mia echoed Schooner’s words, “Her name is ‘Baby Girl’? She doesn’t have a formal name?”

Schooner and Mia locked eyes for a brief moment. “Baby Girl,” his lips silently mouthed.

Sonkwe shook his head, “A lot of orphans come through without names and they are known as boy or girl.” He poured himself another cup of water.

Schooner looked at the little girl in his arms and then at Mia with a huge smile, “Be nice to me or I’ll get a younger model,” he teased.

“You do that, Pretty Boy,” she couldn’t help but laugh.

Snuggled back into Schooner’s shoulder, Msikana was finally taking the nap she had missed earlier.

Chapter Thirty-six

Three more facilities packed the next morning, the need for staff and equipment growing more obvious with every site visit as they ventured farther and farther from the center of the city.

“With all the visuals and stories, we should put together some kind of fundraiser when we go back home. Use L9/NYC as the host facility, do a fashion show and dinner or something,” Schooner was thinking out loud as they drove over to the construction site.

“We would need to do it in conjunction with a non-profit organization that the funds raised would be going to. Do you have an organization in mind?” Mia turned in her seat to face him.

He was silent, but the look on his face said there was anything but silence inside that handsome head. His shoulders began to move as if he were dancing to a tune only he could hear, then his head began to bop, the All-American boy smile slashed across his face. Had he not been behind the wheel of their rented Jeep, Mia imagined he’d be cutting it up on his imaginary dance floor.

“I think we should start a non-profit,” he was beaming as he looked into her shocked eyes.

“You want to establish a 501(c)3 organization?” Her tone more than implied, “Are you crazy?”

“Is that what it’s called? I’m glad you know this stuff. Yeah, that’s what I want to do. Start a 501 whatever,” he was sporting a very self-satisfied look. “You’ve done work with non-profits, haven’t you?”

“We’ve written fundraising campaigns and done special events, but that’s pretty much it. It’s a business, Schooner, you need a staff for it and you need to be very accountable that for every dollar raised the lion’s share of it is going toward the programs and projects for which it’s being raised and not being used for administration and overhead.”

“So, good business skills are necessary and strong contacts to people with a lot of discretionary income,” he pulled the Jeep into the parking area of the facility.

Laughing, “I don’t think it’s quite that easy, but those are two very important elements.”

Nodding, he got out of the Jeep. The architect and foreman were ahead of them in the field speaking with three other gentlemen. The architect was pointing to something that was currently nonexistent.

Slinging an arm over Mia’s shoulder, he pulled her close, and whispered, “Time for me to be charming and possibly generous.”

“You wrote the book, Pretty Boy,” she smiled up at him.

With raised eyebrows and their secret smile, he uttered their trademark phrase, “Showtime,” giving her a chaste kiss as he headed toward the men and she made her way over to the orphanage.

The toddlers were just about to go down for their naps when Mia poked her head in the room, all three came running to her as she was now a familiar face.

“I was waiting for you, Mia,” a very serious Msikana told her.

“Well today you are not getting out of a nap, young lady,” Mia reprimanded her with a smile.

“I don’t want to nap,” Kelvan chimed in.

“Is it alright if I read them a story?” Mia asked Bupe.

Taking her phone from her purse, Mia pulled up her book app and chose the beloved classic,
Goodnight Moon.

Settling into their mats, the three toddlers listened intently, before a strict Bupe insisted on lights out.

With the older students off doing laundry and household chores, Mia sat alone in their classroom sifting through the big blue binder that held the children’s biographies. As she sipped black tea from the northern province of Luapula, she took notes on the records and life stories that had been entered for each of the orphans.

Grabbing her phone, she pulled up a favorite picture of Nathaniel, his bright blue eyes shining with her devilish demeanor and his smile oozing all of Schooner’s charm. Feeling her throat immediately constrict and the empty pang in her heart, she put her phone back in her bag. It was impossible for her not to think of the love that surrounded him, the love he was learning to reciprocate as she turned each page in the binder.

As she transcribed facts about each of the children, facts that she knew would be the basis of stories used to engage club members and capital campaign donors, it was hard to assimilate that the horrors she was reading were about the sweet, happy, well-behaved children with whom she had spent the last few days.

Sitting back and taking a deep breath before moving on to the next biography, Mia was angry at the injustices suffered by these children. Reminding herself to stay detached, act like a journalist, she mustered up the resolve to move on to the next record.

Ezekial. Nine years old, birthday March 26th. That would make him an Aries, Mia mused. Chuckling out loud, he had been quite aggressive on the soccer field yesterday. Yeah, she could see him as an Aries. Her smile faded as she read on. A victim of sexual abuse before the age of five, he had undergone three surgeries before the age of seven to repair internal tears.

Again Mia had to sit back to calm herself and consciously talk away the nausea. These were atrocities. Crimes against children. What greater offense could there be in the universe?

Trina and Theone were twins, born Christmas day. Both parents were lost to disease and their grandparents were too impoverished and sickly to care for them. Thomas’ mother was a drug addict. Chibesa was abandoned on a road side.

Shell shocked. These weren’t just stories. These weren’t some mass-produced child-of-the-month club fundraising packages. These were toddlers to whom she had read. They were children who ran a soccer field with Schooner. It was a baby Nathaniel’s age with green mush all over his face. They were real children. And in that moment, Mia fell deeply in love with Sonkwe and Bupe. They were angels on Earth. Heroes. Rockstars. And if her faith in humanity had been rocked by the stories in the binder, it was immediately replenished by the goodness in the souls of the Bandas.

Mia held off on reading Msikana’s profile.
If that little girl has been sexually abused, I’m going to go postal on someone,
Mia thought.

With a slow exhale she gathered her resolve and turned the page.

Mia Silver never made it past the first line.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Schooner watched Mia peering out the Jeep’s window at the landscape as the urban streets of Lusaka rapidly receded in the rearview mirror. Had she not become so withdrawn and somber before they left the facility, he would have just assumed she was taking in the Zambian landscape and committing it to her mind’s eye. The rapid change of facial expressions, unmistakably told him that something was just not right.

Reaching over, he took her hand and gave it a squeeze, “You ok?”

Nodding, she greeted him with a half-smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes and immediately turned back to staring out the window.

“Do you want to skip the elephant orphanage today?” Their plan was to spend some time at the Lilayi Elephant Nursery that was adjacent to the grounds of their lodge. Mia had been looking forward to seeing the elephant calves and shooting pictures, and now Schooner was concerned that exhaustion was setting in and the emotional encounters that they had experienced at both the hospitals and orphanage were starting to take their toll on her.

“No. I don’t want to miss it. I’ve been looking forward to it all trip.”

“You sure,” he pressed, “a nap might be just what you need.”

Without looking away from the window, “I don’t need a nap.”

Traversing the remaining thirty miles out to Lilayi in silence, Schooner tried to put together the pieces of the day. Something must’ve happened when he was meeting about shipping logistics for the equipment and she was shooting photos in the orphanage.

“Did something happen today?”

She shook her head, no. Still not turning to face him.

“Do you want to talk about it, Baby Girl?”

Again, her response was merely a shake of the head.

Entering the Lilayi Elephant Nursery, Mia’s mood seemed to lift. Seeing the calves brought an immediate smile to both her eyes and her lips. Side-by-side, she and Schooner set their 24-70mm lenses onto their D800 camera bodies (holiday presents to one another). Nudging her with his shoulder, she looked up smiling. Photographing Zambia with Mia had been his dream, and he wished that she was feeling the same joy that he was.

“Ok, let’s go check this out,” and he slung an arm over her shoulder as they entered.

Leaning up on the railing of the viewing deck, the six calves came in for feeding. Handing them their bottles, filled with nutrient-enriched milk, they wrapped their trunks around the bottles, feeding themselves.

“That is so cute,” Mia was focusing in on the smallest of the calves, Nkala, who had been orphaned at three months old and came to the nursery depressed and not wanting to socialize with the other orphans. Nkala was finally joining the other elephants in activities and mud baths and the personnel were very happy to see this breakthrough.

Listening to the stories of each of these creatures was heartbreaking. The staff began to tell the story of Suni, an eight month old orphan that had been dragging herself along a roadside when she was attacked by an axe to her back, damaging her spine. Schooner could see the tears streaming down Mia’s face and pulled her close. Kissing the top of her head, he whispered, “Do you want to leave?”

She shook her head no and continued to sniffle and wipe away her tears which only escalated with each of the calves stories. Hiding her face behind her Nikon, Schooner knew she was trying to focus on her picture taking as a way to maintain what little control she had left.

Leaving the nursery, they made their way through the game farm to the Lilaya Lodge and on to their private, rounded chalet. Dominating the room was a beautiful, oversized four-poster bed with sheer white netting surrounds. Schooner took the backpack of Mia’s camera equipment from her and placed it on the bed.

Walking into the large bathroom, he immediately began to run a bath in the limestone soaker tub. With a satisfied grin, he emerged a few minutes later and sat down on the bed next to Mia, who was scrolling through the pictures on her camera.

“I ran a bath for you, why don’t you go soak in the tub and then come out and nap. I’m going to work for a little bit,” he kissed the top of her head and got up to pull his laptop out of his bag. Sitting down at the desk and flipping open his computer, he looked over at her. She hadn’t moved. “Tub now, Ms. Silver,” he voice was stern.

Begrudgingly, she stood and made her way to the bathroom. As she passed Schooner, she gave him a half-smile and the finger.

Laughing, “Right backatcha, babe,” and he swatted her ass as she passed.

Twenty minutes later she re-entered the room and headed straight for the bed, without uttering a word. Climbing into the center of the bed and getting under the covers, he let her be until he heard her breathing steady. Once certain she was asleep, he stripped off his clothes and curled up in bed next to her.

Whatever was troubling Mia concerned him. Was she just overwhelmed by the sad stories from the orphanage? Did the children just make her miss Nathaniel that much more? It wasn’t like Mia to fall into despair and not be able to verbalize to him what was troubling her. A bath and a mid-afternoon nap were hopefully all she needed to shake the darkness.

The night’s plans included dinner with the Castillos at the Lodge’s famed restaurant. If Mia woke up and still wasn’t feeling herself, he would call them and cancel and have dinner delivered to the chalet. The room had internet and satellite TV, they could relax, call home, watch TV from bed. The idea was starting to sound rather appealing.