The Garden of Burning Sand (23 page)

In the latter part of January, something shifted in Zoe’s heart. She knew she could no longer keep Joseph at arm’s length. He had been impossibly tolerant, treating her with kindness when work required collaboration but making no move to close the intimacy gap. It was she who had grown impatient. The situation required resolution. He deserved the dignity of a choice.

The next morning at work, Zoe received a call from St. Francis.

“Kuyeya had an accident,” said Sister Anica. “She seems to be all right, except for some pain in her neck. I’m taking her to see Dr. Chulu. Sister Irina asked me to call you.”

“What happened?” Zoe asked.

“No one knows. She just fell down.”

“You’re coming to UTH?”

“Yes. The doctor agreed to see her at fourteen hundred.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

She turned around and saw Joseph watching her. “Is it Kuyeya?”

When she relayed the news, he looked pensive, like he wanted to say something. She felt the pressure building in her chest. At last, her
mouth formed the words her heart had already chosen. “Why don’t you come along?”

He looked uncertain. “You want me to?”

She saw the query for what it was—a plea for acceptance. “I’ve missed you,” she replied, answering his question and her own.

They met Sister Anica and Kuyeya on the terrace outside the pediatric center at UTH. Kuyeya was holding her monkey by the arm and shifting her weight between her feet. Her eyes lit up when she saw Zoe, and her grimace quickly turned into a grin.

“Hi, Kuyeya,” Zoe said.

The girl made the balloon sound. “Hi, Zoe. Do you have your music?”

Zoe smiled. “I do. What kind would you like?”

“Can we play Johnny?” She hummed for a moment, and Zoe tried to make out the tune. Suddenly, Kuyeya said, “‘The one on the right was on the left.’”

Zoe laughed. It was the name of the song and also the first line of the chorus. She recited the next line: “‘And the one in the middle is on the right.’”

Dr. Chulu emerged from the lobby and greeted them. “One of the intake rooms is available. Shall we?”

At the sound of the doctor’s voice, Kuyeya stopped humming and began to moan softly. Sister Anica took her by the hand and led her into the waiting area, and Zoe followed. Nurse Mbelo stood beside an open door, holding a clipboard.

Dr. Chulu pointed at a chair beside the bed. “I need her to sit while I look at her neck.”

“I have your iPod,” Sister Anica replied, handing Zoe a canvas bag.

As soon as Kuyeya sat in the chair, Zoe placed the earphones over her ears.

“Can we play Johnny?” the girl said again.

“Of course,” Zoe said, selecting “Ballad of a Teenage Queen”.

When Kuyeya began to rock to the rhythm, Zoe joined Joseph by the door and watched Dr. Chulu perform the examination. He placed one hand on the girl’s forehead and used the other to probe the region between her hairline and collar. He asked Sister Anica a series of questions about the fall and Kuyeya’s discomfort, and then he observed her standing still and walking.

Eventually, he shook his head. “Her muscles are underdeveloped, but that’s common in children with Down syndrome. She shows no sign of imbalance, nor does she seem to be in obvious pain. The fall gave her a jolt, but I think she’s all right.”

Zoe wondered about an X-ray, but she knew the answer she would get. In state hospitals, technology was a luxury reserved for acute cases.

Afterward, Dr. Chulu walked with them to the parking lot. Zoe held Kuyeya’s hand until Sister Anica pulled the St. Francis van up to the curb.

“It’s time for you to go home,” Zoe said, removing the headphones and looking into the girl’s eyes. “I’ll come visit you soon.”

“Home is where the bee-eater lives,” Kuyeya said, swinging her monkey.

The Zambezi
, Zoe thought.
Charity left you with her happy memories
. “Would you like to see a bee-eater someday?” she asked.

“Yes. And a hippo.”

After helping Kuyeya into the van, Zoe tucked the iPod into her seat and slid the door closed. She stepped back and waved as Sister Anica drove the van toward the street.

“Are you sure she’s okay?” she asked Dr. Chulu.

“Kids get bumps and bruises,” he replied. “You don’t need to worry. What’s the status of her case? Have you found any new evidence?”

Joseph glanced at Zoe and said, “We found a new witness. It’s complicated.”

Dr. Chulu shook his head. “I still can’t believe we lost the DNA. My staff … I can’t believe one of them …” He clenched his fists. “Put me on the stand at trial and I’ll make Flexon Mubita so angry at Darious that he won’t be able to sleep at night.”

Zoe pictured Mubita with Patricia Nyambo and thought:
I hope you’re right
.

“I should be going,” the doctor said. “Call me if she starts to have pain again.”

Zoe walked with Joseph to the Land Rover. In the privacy of the cab, she asked him the question she had been suppressing for a month. “Did you get tested again?”

He nodded. “My CD4 count was 330. I started on ARVs.”

She exhaled, both anxious and relieved. “How are you doing?”

“I had some vomiting at first. I’m hungrier than I used to be. Otherwise, I’m okay.” He stared out the window. “The good news is the drugs seem to be working. I went back two days ago and my CD4 count was 625. My viral load was almost undetectable.”

God, the jargon is dehumanizing
, she thought, taking a left onto Independence and merging into the thick of afternoon traffic.
Once a person, now a lab rat
.

A wave of doubt washed over her.
This is his life now—drugs twice a day, side effects and opportunistic infections. Being with him won’t be easy. The virus will overshadow everything
. Almost immediately, she felt a backlash of guilt.
How can you think like that? You adore him; you want to be with him. The ARVs will let him live a reasonably normal life. If you let him go, you’ll never find another like him
.

Suddenly, she remembered something from the past, something her mother had told her at an Ethiopian orphanage surrounded by malnourished children wearing irrepressible grins:
“Life is a broken thing. It’s what we do with the pieces that defines us.”

“Look, Zoe,” Joseph said, “I won’t blame you if you’re having second thoughts.”

“I don’t regret loving you,” she said, struggling to hold back her tears.

He studied her intently. “Does that mean …?”

She nodded. “I don’t know how to do this, but I’m willing to try.”

Lusaka, Zambia
July, 2011

She was there, he knew she was, closeted away in the back of the flat. Doris had kept her after Bella’s death. He had confirmed it with the girls at Alpha. But he hadn’t seen her on the street. Doris came and went, as did her girlfriends and her daughters and the men who paid her for sex. But Kuyeya remained out of sight. The thought of her made Darious seethe with hatred. Memory, her name meant. The keeper of all wrongs
.

He made regular passes by Doris’s flat, scouting the area and hoping Kuyeya would appear. Most of the time he stayed in his SUV, staking out the building from a spot across the road. Occasionally, however, he struck up conversations with the street vendors or shared a smoke with men from Doris’s complex. He asked about their families, and about the children who lived in the building. He waited for one of them to mention Kuyeya, but none of them did. It was as if she were a ghost. To them she didn’t exist
.

As the weeks passed, he grew irritable. There were thousands of girls in Lusaka, but only one was the daughter of Charity Mizinga. That worthless
nganga,
Amos, didn’t have the brains to appreciate the medicinal power of symmetry. Fire needed to be fought with fire, a hex with another hex. There was danger in that, of course. If the original curse was supported by stronger
mukwala,
the whole plan could backfire. But Darious had no choice. The alternative was a shame he could not bear—his father’s rejection
.

One day near the end of July, he parked in his customary spot and watched Doris’s flat. Traffic was heavy at the end of the workday, which reassured him. Chilimbulu Road was a commercial thoroughfare. But the neighborhood was working class, and a Mercedes was an uncommon sight. Eventually, people would start to talk. And if they talked, they were more likely to remember. He didn’t want to give the police an unnecessary lead
.

He focused on Doris’s flat. The smokers were in their usual place. An old woman on the third floor was hanging clothes out to dry. Doris herself was probably still asleep, but her daughters were no doubt awake. The older one might be out with her boyfriend. She was a pretty girl. Before long, she would end up at Alpha, making more money than her mother
.

After a while, Darious grew tired of sitting still. He left the SUV and approached a girl selling
fritas.
His skin itched as he walked. He was tired of the sickness, tired of being exhausted, tired of the runs and the weight loss and the cough. He had to find a way to get Kuyeya out of the flat. Everything after that would be simple
.

He took a bag of
fritas
from the vendor and chatted with her about her family. He invented a story about three sisters and two brothers and their many children. After a few minutes, he mentioned his sister’s “difficult” child. He described the girl—the round face and flat nose, the eyes set wide apart, the limited speech
.

The vendor began to nod. “My cousin has a child like that. It is very hard.”

“My sister doesn’t know what to do with her,” Darious replied. “She keeps her in the back room, out of sight. I tell her to take her outside, but she’s afraid of what people will think.”

“My cousin is the same. People say the child is bewitched, but I don’t think so. She is just like other children. She likes to play and laugh and sing.” Suddenly, the vendor pointed at Doris’s building. “There is a girl like that who lives
there. She sometimes comes to play at my building. You should talk to the woman who takes care of her. Her name is Doris.”

“She comes outside sometimes?” Darious asked, hiding his satisfaction
.

“After dinner. Doris sends her with her younger daughter, Gift.”

Darious returned to the Mercedes and touched the amulet on his chest. In winter, dinner ended after sunset. It was the perfect opportunity
.

He cast a parting glance at Doris’s building and his heart skipped a beat. A woman was staring at him across the distance. Her dress was more conservative than the outfits she wore to the bars, but he recognized her immediately. It was Doris. He clutched the steering wheel and watched her scamper into her flat. She was afraid of him for good reason, given the lesson he had taught her. But there could be no doubt
.

She had seen him
.

Lusaka, Zambia
January, 2012

As soon as Zoe made the decision to embrace her feelings for Joseph, he took her out for a celebratory dinner at the Intercontinental, ignoring her protest that it was too expensive. He insisted that she dress for the occasion, and he did the same, showing up at the Prentices’ in a gray suit and blue tie that complemented his dark skin and eyes. When she met him on the porch, he looked her up and down and grinned at her red shift dress and heels.

“You’re gorgeous,” he said. “Why don’t we skip dinner?”

“You made me wear this,” she rejoined. “Now you’re going to have to wait.”

At the restaurant, they sat at a table by the grand savannah window and reconnected over oysters, tenderloin, and a bottle of French champagne. They talked about everything and nothing, bridging the gap of lost time with banter and laughter and stories. Beneath the good cheer of reunion, however, the current of desire ran strong. Studying him in the candlelight, Zoe realized again that she loved him. He was from a different world, but he was more attractive for it. He was steady but not boring, brave in the face of fear, and unafraid to talk about his
feelings. She couldn’t predict the future, but she trusted him with her life. It was more than enough for now.

After the meal, he drove her home in a silence alive with satisfaction and expectation. She took his hand without a word and looked out the window at the darkened streets. The summer stars twinkled high above and the quarter moon hung like a lantern in the sky. When they parked in the driveway, she looked deep into his eyes and said, “Come.”

He followed her into the house and down the lamp-lit hallway to her quarters. Kicking off her heels, she took him to her bed and kissed his lips. He pushed her back and cradled her face in his hands, saying with his eyes what she already knew in her heart. The pleasure that followed belied all of her deepest fears. She didn’t think about the virus, she thought only of Joseph, and afterward, she felt a deep measure of contentment.

She laid her head against his chest and listened to the beating of his heart.

“When I first met you,” he said after a while, “I thought you were arrogant. Now I realize that it’s passion that drives you, not pride.”

She laughed softly. “When I first met you, I thought you didn’t know how to smile.”

He stroked her hair and murmured, “Understanding takes time.”

“Stay with me,” she said, lifting her head and facing him.

“Of course.”

“I don’t mean just tonight.”

The next day, the universe seemed to smile on Zoe. In the morning, she received an email from Samantha Wu.

Zoe fired back an exclamatory email, then found Joseph in the kitchen and told him the news. Her enthusiasm proved infectious. Before long, they were wearing matching grins.

That afternoon, Zoe was sitting at her desk when a call came through. She didn’t recognize the number and allowed it to go to voicemail. A minute later, her iPhone vibrated. Curious, she picked up the phone and played the voicemail.

“Ms. Fleming, this is Cynthia Chansa. I apologize for being rude when we spoke. Charity’s death has been very hard for me to accept. I want to help Kuyeya. I don’t know if what I remember will matter, but I’ve put it all in writing. I’d like to send it to you, along with Charity’s letters. Text me your address, and I’ll put them in the post.”

Zoe sent the text with warm words of gratitude and then tried—but failed—to concentrate on the police medical report she was reading.

That evening, Joseph joined her for dinner at the Prentices’, and Tom and Carol went out of their way to give them privacy. Over chicken and couscous, Zoe gave Joseph a crash course on her father’s campaign. After winning the New Hampshire primary, he had lost South Carolina to the Governor of Kansas, igniting a debate among the pundits about his chances in the general election. Some claimed that he was too moderate, others that he wasn’t comfortable talking about religion, still others that his wealth put him out of touch with the American people. To make up ground, the Senator and his
SuperPAC fired a fusillade of attack ads at the Kansas governor. The polls responded favorably, but doubts persisted about Jack Fleming’s electability in November.

“All of this must be so strange for you,” Joseph said when she finished her summary. “Seeing your father’s every move analyzed and criticized, his whole life under scrutiny.”

She laughed. “Sometimes I think I’m going to wake up and find myself in the headlines. I’ve gotten a few queries from reporters, but nothing intrusive. Somehow his people have kept our relationship out of the press.”

His eyes became pensive. “Can I ask you a question? From a purely objective standpoint, what kind of president would he make?”

She hesitated, but opted for candor. “The Jack Fleming I grew up with would be a star in the Oval Office. He’s brilliant and charismatic; he has an even temper; he’s a collaborator, not a dictator; he’s an idea guy; he cares about people. But the Jack Fleming I’ve seen on television looks like a different person. He used to hate polemics. Now every time I listen to him he’s slinging mud at the President. It’s like he’s speaking with someone else’s voice.”

A few days later, Cynthia’s parcel arrived at the office. Zoe took it into the conference room and opened it carefully. Out of the manila envelope fell a stack of folded pages. The first was a letter from Cynthia herself.

Zoe set the letter on the table, struck by the convergence of her own suspicions and those of Charity’s grandmother. She thought back to her visit with Field and Agatha in Livingstone—the packets of
tu jilijili
on the floor, Field’s incoherence on the porch, Agatha’s agitation, and Joseph’s words in the darkened truck. “
Agatha didn’t want her. She thinks Charity’s family is bewitched
.” Another memory came to her: the way Agatha had fingered her wedding ring. Cynthia’s use of the word “hurt” was almost certainly a euphemism for “rape.” It made perfect sense. Agatha had tried to get Charity to move out, but Field had intervened to prevent it.

Then there was the matter of Charity’s “love relationship with a man.” Charity’s grandmother, Vivian, had suspected a man at the nursing school. Had she seen Charity’s journal, she would have been more specific. Charity was in love with a doctor—Jan Kruger. But what had prompted Vivian to ascertain that she was with child? Who did Vivian think was the father?

Charity’s letters did not tell her much. In them, she wrote about the past and encouraged Cynthia and Godfrey to take care of their grandmother. What references she made to Lusaka were devoid of detail. The only useful insight offered by the letters was a glimpse into
Charity’s psyche. When she left Livingstone in 1996, she still had a capacity for delight. In this respect, the letters contrasted dramatically with the third volume of her journal. The penmanship was the same, but by April of 2004 her joy had died.

Zoe stuffed the letters back in the envelope and walked to Joseph’s desk. For all that Cynthia had disclosed, she still couldn’t explain the genesis of Darious Nyambo’s hatred. Joseph took one look at her face and set aside the report he was reviewing. He read Cynthia’s letter, reserving comment until the end.

“This is interesting,” he said, “but it leaves gaps. We still don’t know what happened when she got to Lusaka.”

“Precisely. We need the housekeeper.”

Joseph nodded. “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

“I’ve been thinking about updating my wardrobe.”

He laughed. “I like the thought of you in
chitenge
.”

Early the next morning, they drove to the City Market in Zoe’s Land Rover. Before leaving the Prentice property, Joseph removed the GPS unit from beneath her bumper and put it with its twin in his truck. If Dunstan Sisilu was paying attention to their movements, he would think they were enjoying a Saturday morning at home. Nevertheless, Joseph took an indirect route and made two stops to ensure they were not followed.

They entered the market by the main gate and walked slowly toward Chiwoyu’s stall.

“I’ll meet you there,” Joseph said suddenly, ducking down an aisle.

Zoe shuffled along and watched the crowd, trying to suppress her nervousness. She passed Chiwoyu’s aisle and didn’t see the housekeeper. She turned down the next aisle and stopped beside a display of bags,
looking toward the entrance to the market. She saw a flash of black sunglasses, and her heart jumped into her throat. But the man wearing them was rail-thin and had a mane of silver hair.

She took a breath and walked the length of the aisle. She met Joseph on the other side.

“If he’s here, he’s invisible,” he said.

Zoe nodded. “It looks like the shoe vendor could use some company.”

As before, she took a seat on the vacant chair and watched the aisle. This time they didn’t have long to wait. At twenty past nine, a slightly hunched figured emerged from the exit. Zoe immediately recognized the housekeeper. She stood quickly and moved in the old woman’s direction. The housekeeper saw her when they were twenty feet apart. She lowered her head and tried to get past, but Zoe stepped into her path.

“Please listen to me,” Zoe said, knowing her time was limited. “Darious raped Kuyeya because he has AIDS and she was a virgin. His crime was not random. He hated her mother and he feared her. He was certain she’d cursed his family. The mystery is why. What happened between Frederick and Charity fifteen years ago?”

The housekeeper didn’t speak, so Zoe went on. “I’m convinced Frederick met her in Livingstone and offered her a job. I know she left nursing school and came to Lusaka. I know something painful happened. But I don’t know what it was. Somehow Charity ended up on the street as a prostitute. Somehow a girl who had all the promise in the world died of AIDS.”

To Zoe’s astonishment, the housekeeper began to cry. “What you say is true,” she said. “But I am old and have no one to protect me.”

“I can protect you,” Zoe said quickly. “I have friends in the diplomatic community. I can get you a new job.”

The housekeeper hesitated. “I must think about this.”

Zoe pulled a fifty-pin note out of her wallet, along with a pen. As she had done at Shoprite, she wrote her mobile number on the margin of the bill. “You can call me or send a text. The trial is the first week of April. We need the information soon.”

The housekeeper stuffed the money in her bag and headed toward the
chitenge
stall. Zoe watched her walk away.
Would I take the risk?
she asked herself honestly.
Would I defy the Nyambos and trust a stranger to keep me safe?