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∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
As I lookedout the rain-streaked window of the van somewhere near Mbour, at the flooding, the rutted roads, the cattle roaming alongside big rigs, young boys prodding them along, I could not have been farther, literally or figuratively, from the sun-drenched North Shore. The cognitive dissonance in my life was real, the contrasts always fighting for headspace.
“You okay?” Catherine asked, noting the glaze of my expression. It was a lot to take in, even for us, or at least for me. Catherine was at home anywhere. After New York, she had spent two years in the Peace Corps, and the villages of rural Africa were still perhaps her second home.
The communal tub of onions and rice, the shared spoons, the rodents scuttling through the kitchen: she didn’t even bat an eye. Catherine had not flinched when confronted with the facilities that afternoon. She had nonchalantly hiked up her skirt and gotten down to business, swarms of flies and filth around the hole notwithstanding. Of course she assumed those were the images I was ruminating on.
“I want a divorce.” It was the first time I had spoken the words aloud.
Everyone in the van turned to look at me. Three colleagues, including Catherine, and two representatives from the NGO riveted their gaze on me; even the driver darted his dark eyes from the road to my face in the rearview mirror.
«Merde,» muttered François, our fixer. He removed his hat and ran his fingers through his short hair, as though allowing my words to escape that way.
I laughed.
«Si,» I responded, «vous avez bien compris.»
Of course, he had understood. His English was excellent and the sentiment wasn’t exactly Chaucerian prose.
“When will you tell him?” Catherine asked.
“As soon as we get back to the hotel.” There was nothing pre-meditated in my plan. I had not thought about it even once before, the idea having fully announced itself to me. But as soon as I said it, there in that steaming, claustrophobic van, I knew it was true.
“You mean when we get back home?” Catherine clarified.
“No, I mean when we get to the hotel. Assuming I can get a strong enough signal to place a call on WhatsApp.”
«Merde, » she said.
We rode the rest of the way in silence, save for the squeak of the wiper blades and the hammering of the rain.
As I picked up the phone and opened WhatsApp, curtains of water descended from the heavens and beat against the roof.
“I want a divorce,” I practically yelled down the line, when Jake answered.
Even if the connection had been clear, the pounding from the rains would have nearly drowned out my voice. I swatted at mosquitos and thought about malaria.
“What did you say?” he asked. “You want what?”
“I want a divorce,” I hollered louder at the same moment the rains, those pounding ropes of water, ceased their cacophony. My ill-timed shout echoed off the walls and penetrated the neighboring rooms.
Admittedly, it was not my finest moment.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
“I always wonderedwhat happened to you. Thanks for finding me, Liss.”
The words sat gently in the little text bubble on my screen.
I always wondered what happened to you.
What cause, these gales? An absence, perhaps, known to the heart if not the mind, festering, untended, allowed to billow and build in the space of years? I saw suddenly how much I had missed my friend; the gratitude was mutual.
I sucked in my breath, quieted the storm, and debated where to start.
If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing right. My father’s mantra was drummed into my head since I learned to walk. As I review the trajectory of my life, I see I have both learned and applied that lesson well, and perhaps never better than when it all came crashing apart with Nao Kao.
The lesson, of course, is that there can be no half measures. Maybe if I’d believed in coincidence with as much fervor as I believed in fate, I wouldn’t have leapt so readily into the void. I didn’t believe in coincidence, though. That I’d been presented so quickly, so easily, with the opportunity at marriage – at a new identity – however inadvisable seemed, well, fated. In hindsight, I could see clearly, too clearly, that it was the enticement of this new identity, coupled with the attraction of needling my own mother, the formidable Rachael Zick who believed a woman should keep the name she was born with, that led me to say “I do” even when everything inside me screamed, “You don’t and you won’t; you shouldn’t and you shan’t.”
