motions me over. She is in magenta this morning, a pantsuit, over a pink polyester blouse. I am thinking about the check and calculating how much it will be. At least twelve hundred. I go into her office and shut the door.
“What do you mean by coming to work dressed like that?” she says immediately. “Just because it’s your last day don’t mean I’m relaxing my standards. No ma’am. Overalls and a T-shirt? And not even clean. You should be ashamed of yourself!”
In fact, I find that I am ashamed. I murmur an apology.
“That’s not good enough,” says Mrs. Waley. “You all think you can get away with murder, but you can’t, not while I’m in charge, missy. You’re going to give me a full day’s work in proper office apparel, or I am not going to sign off on your separation check. What do you think of that?”
I don’t think anything. I absolutely have to have that check. I stand mute. Mrs. Waley goes over to her closet and comes back with a lime-green pantsuit on a hanger, wrapped in cleaner’s plastic.
She says, “Out of the goodness of my heart, I’m going to lend you an outfit. Here. Put this on!”
I take the hanger and start to leave. She stops me. “No, right here. Change right here.”
What can I do? The woman is crazy and I need my check. I take off my overalls and then my T-shirt, and stand there naked. Mrs. Waley has a triumphant expression on her face, as if she knew that I was, underneath my submissive mien, a girl who would go out of the house in the morning with no undies on. I realize then I am standing in front of Mrs. Waley’s window. There are dozens of people looking in, all my medical records colleagues, and yes, there’s Lou Nearing, too. Well, he’s seen it all before, hasn’t he? I feel okay about it, though, because it’s my last day. I press my breasts up against the glass and wave. I feel the cold glass against my nipples, and feel them get stiff.
I am in the hammock with the moonlight making patterns on the opposite wall. The A/C throbs away next door. Now I believe that I’ll stay in the hammock, and watch the moonlight fade and the sunlight arrive, and just wait for what’s next. Perhaps Luz will come down after a while, and when she can’t get any response from me, she’ll run weeping over to Polly’s and Polly will come. She won’t be able to move me either. After a while a cop and a couple of guys from Jackson will come, and they’ll take me away and some intern in neuropsych will shoot me full of Thorazine and then I’ll be fine. I’ll spend the rest of my life in and out of the nut hatch, not making any trouble, resting quietly. Perhaps I’ll even gain some weight. Luz will get a nice foster family, I hope. Then I’ll die, and wake up in this hammock with the moonlight playing on the opposite wall and the A/C humming …
Now I dream that Jake the dog starts to bark, and he doesn’t stop, a high-pitched, frantic barking. I hear Polly’s door slam and hear her tell Jake to shut up, but he doesn’t and then I hear Polly screaming, calling upon the Deity, which she rarely does in real life. A door slams again. A honeyguide darts across the yard in that dipping way they have, and I hear, or think I hear, the purr, purr WHIT of its song. Or perhaps another sort of bird. It doesn’t matter here in dreamland.
Now my back hurts, just as if this were real. I want to get up, and I do get up. I mean, why not? I dress with care, not forgetting my undies, in full Dolores rig, a long-sleeved aqua T-shirt with gay balloons in bright felt appliqued to its chest, and a midlength skirt in a bad cobalt blue: polyester, naturally. I take pains with my hair, to squeeze the last increment of ugly out of my turd-colored locks. I put on my awful glasses and step out on my landing to see what the fuss is about. Now I hear sirens.
I can see it quite clearly from here, on a big sheet of newspaper, right under our mango tree. It’s his way of telling me he knows where I am in real life. If there is such a thing as real life, I might be back in it now. Too soon to tell. How would I know?
TWENTY-THREE
10/31 Lagos-Bamako
Writing this on the plane, a charter. Personas non grata the two of us. My persona grated away, nothing left, really. Reaching inside, trying to comprehend. What did I do wrong? W. asleep, drugged. Can’t look at him, can’t imagine touching him again. But here he is, I sprang him. Went to see Musa. He screamed and stood very close. I could smell the alcohol on his breath, although he is Muslim. Gave him the money, thought he was going to demand something more personal. Would I have? For W.? Spared that.
Found W. lying in the corner of a fetid cell, on the floor. He was very glad to see me, pathetically glad, crying. W. not really a tough guy, not physically tough. Not like Greer. I saw they’d broken him completely, his fellow Africans. His face was swollen with bruises and cuts, he’d lost a couple of teeth, too. Later, back at the hotel, we had the Brit doctor who takes care of the oil people in to take a look, knocked him out with Dilaudid amp; the guy went over him. Fuckers had concentrated a good deal on his groin, as they always do.
Want my daddy, want Greer to be my daddy. This can’t be over, won’t let it.
Pilot just came back to say we have clearance. We’re going to Mali. Berne thinks that’s where we need to pick up the trace of the Olo, if there ever were any. I thought about just going home, but I want something to come out of this disaster. W. doesn’t express an opinion. So I will look. We’re taxiing. The plane is shaking so th
11/2 Bamako, Mali
Hotel de l’Amitie, the best in town, eighty bucks a night, I took a suite. Have arranged for an English- speaking doc, Dr. Rawtif, a Lebanese, to see W. He still looks pretty bad, but Rawtif says there are no breaks or internal injuries. The genital swelling has decreased, too. They were careful, it seems. I told him and the hotel staff that he was in a car wreck. No one believes this, but they are kind people.
11/11 Bamako
He left the suite for the first time today. Shaky on his legs. Still won’t talk about it. We had dinner in the hotel dining room. The place is modern four-star, you could be anywhere provincial, Hamburg, Toulon. Lots of Germans and French, a few Americans, mainly businesspeople and rich tourists. November is the best month here, the height of what passes for a tourist season in Mali. The rains are just over and it is as cool as it ever gets. We got the usual looks.
I left him this afternoon to visit the contact Greer gave me at the Musee National, a Dr. Traore, asked him about the Olo, got funny look. We spoke about old Tour de Montaille. According to him a charlatan imperialist. Made up stories about witchcraft, human sacrifice, to denigrate Africans, justify la mission civilisatrice. Conversation flagged. Asked him if I could make a financial contribution to the museum. Conversation cranked up again. Dr. Traore had spent a year at Chicago, so we had something in common. I wrote a check, got the run of the archives. He showed me around, the usual long termite-ridden wooden racks of crumbling papers, covered in red-ocher dust. Oddly enough, they have not computerized the catalog at the Musee National du Mali. I wrapped a bandanna around my face and poked around aimlessly for a couple of hours. An incompletely cataloged collection where I will spend rest of my life, manless dried-up stick of a spinster. No, divorcee. Annulee? Find I am more interested in my career now that my marriage has collapsed. If it has. He is quiet now, docile. It is almost worse than when he was being monstrous. Returned to the hotel to find him out cold. Dr. Rawtif has a free hand with the downers.
11/8 Bamako
A little scene in the lobby today. W. was just standing there amp; a tourist came up to him and told him to take his bags out, waving some currency. W. walked away amp; the guy came after him and grabbed him and W. punched him in the nose. Remarkable, since he is so uncoordinated. I saw it, too. W. grinned, for the first time in months, it seems like. Both of us in a good mood all day behind it. We went to the Grand Marche after that and had lunch, we talked, joked, almost like we used to be. That’s a big “almost.” Can hardly recall how we used to be. Maybe all a fantasy anyway. Romance = hallucination, M. used to say.
Bamako is a lot nicer than Lagos, there’s a lively buzz, a friendliness, and I have not seen evidence of the nastier sorts of crime. Fell in with an American nurse, a nun actually, Dolores something. Funny bird. She spends most of her time in the bush giving inoculations and other pediatric care. She gets around in a pirogue when she goes upriver and by moped otherwise. Asked her about Bambara lessons, which I’ll need, and she gave me some names.
11/10 Bamako
We have to leave the hotel because of W.’s dust-up. I asked him where he’d like to stay and he said anywhere he doesn’t have to see tourists. Talked to Dolores, later. She suggests living on the river.
11/15 Bamako
