Page 15 - WTP VOl.VII#5

boys had smelled the diesel.
One man climbed into the driver’s seat and started the ignition. I may have dreamt it, but the men did what I had willed and failed: levitate the empty truck out of its sink hole. Let the desert take it all. I was not going to die that day.
Moussa, Yaya, Chieck, and I followed the two boys and four men. I don’t know how long we were on foot, but the half mile wore like a marathon. The sun had changed position in the sky, listing from the top of our heads to our foreheads and in our eyes, even with my hat. I whimpered, feeling sorry for myself. I could have fallen to my stomach, face in the sand at each step, and did in fact stumble several times, but I wasn’t going to complain. If I felt worse than Moussa or Yaya or Chieck, it would be the remains of dysen- tery and could have been only incrementally. I was seeing and hearing things that weren’t there—insects flying and crawling under my clothes, auras around people and at the ridges of dunes, a buzz filled my ears that meant I was near to fainting.
I had disagreed with Chieck, earlier in the month, over his insistence on what he had termed, “La priori- té des femmes,” the priority of women.
I had said, “Priority is something granted by another. It can be withdrawn at will.”
Chieck had said no. “It was Malian men’s respect for women that granted them priority.”
I didn’t want priority. Priority was accorded a cen- tury earlier to a woman who had a spell of vapors. I wanted equality. Although maybe not so much at that moment. I desperately could have taken advantage
of some comfortable priority. But I wanted more to demonstrate that equality was warranted. Chieck watched me, glanced my way at every other step. It wasn’t my wellbeing that held his interest, of that I was sure.
~
A half hour later, the mercury still measuring 110o, we had crossed two ridges and entered Mbuna. Two dozen children met us on the way down into the village. The buzzing that surrounded my head had become a roar. I tried to smile, and I didn’t faint, but I remember my eyes feeling rolled back under blinking lids, running a dry tongue over my blistering lips, no longer being able to articulate words properly,
We were light-headed and sick, but our first obliga-
tion was to visit the Chief du Village, whose com- pound we found, leaving children jostling one an- other at the entry. The chief had one of three trees in the village. I stumbled and fell to my knees, and we waited on fraying mats.
I stared at the water and would have sworn I could see giardia protozoa dog-paddling toward my mouth, waiting to slither past my teeth and settle in my intestines even as my lips connected to the gourd’s edge—the edge itself spongy with microbes from the hundred pairs of lips that had preceded mine in that very spot.
What surprised me after this trial of body-versus- environment, was how quickly I recovered. Disorient- ed, on the edge of The End, shucked of language com- prehension, and miserably out of sorts, but eventually my body rehydrated, my ability to think returned, and my sense of humor was (mostly) salvaged. I’d buoyed up to the appearance of normal. Internally, though, I’d changed.
To anyone looking, I suspect I appeared stronger and, physically, I suppose I’d gained some muscle. Inside, though, I was starting to crumble, imperceptibly, per- haps, at each successive challenge, but cumulatively: my faux pas, the jokes at my expense, regular exclu- sion from inner circles, the stress of a forced cheer- ful demeanor. Something was happening. At home, depression showed itself as rage. Here, I put effort into my unflagging smile.
We didn’t notice the old man who had appeared un- der the tree. He spoke, and Yaya scrambled to his
feet, hands grabbing at the dust, then wiped on his trousers before being offered to the chief. Moussa and Chieck stood. I stood.
“Chief!” said Yaya, with a bow of his head. “Chief, thank you for greeting us.”
The old man was small, slight, and his light blue cot- ton robe had been hemmed up in the front from the ground. His head was shaved, his brown eyes bright but rimmed in red, and his mouth, when he smiled, looked like he was wearing someone else’s set of false upper teeth. The pleasure he took in our visit showed in the crinkles around his eyes. He shook hands with Yaya, Moussa, and Chieck. Not with me.
I understood the customs, if not always liked the rationales behind them, and tried to respect the social norms. For a very long time it never felt my place to question this or any other convention.
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