The heat from inside the plane rolled over Hanley as he opened the rear door. He walked to the cockpit and opened the side windows to get air moving inside the plane. Outside again, he sat under the wing and hoped for a breeze to cool him. None came. He would wait fifteen minutes before returning to the cockpit. Jumma sat under a nearby tree, writing on a tablet held to a clipboard. Jumma’s intensity interested Hanley. Their conversations were always light, with the young Sudanese always smiling. When he would begin working, his concentration was startling. This was now particularly noticeable as he sat writing. With a furrowed forehead and lips pursed, he wrote slowly, seemingly with great care. Occasionally, his lips moved as he formed the words he deposited on paper. He was alone; the world around him had disappeared. Jumma stopped writing with the pen poised above the clipboard, the look of concentration gone. Slowly he rolled his eyes toward Hanley and stared at the American for a second and then lowered his pen.
“What are you writing?” Hanley asked.
“I’m sorry; I was just making some notes. Did I miss something you said?” he asked.
“No, I’m just trying to cool-off after being in the plane. No luck with that though. You look so serious. Must be important stuff you’re writing about.”
“No, just a list of the things I know I must accomplish today and tomorrow. Sister Marie Claire wants these things done and I must do them. She is not one you want to disappoint.” Jumma said with a smile.
“I believe that.” Pushing himself up, Hanley got to his feet and turned his attention to the outside of the plane. As he began his inspection, he noticed several spots of dried bird droppings on the wings and tail section. The drops were small and almost pure white. Retrieving a cloth from the back of the plane, Hanley scrubbed at the spots until they came off or at least until most of it came off. He realized keeping the plane clean would be difficult. Water was too precious to waste on an airplane. Thankfully, most of the dirt will be dust and it will come off as he flies, he reassured himself.
“I saw you rubbing your back while you were hiding behind the children’s clinic with Sister Marie Claire. Had she hit you?” the young man asked. He was now standing behind Hanley, the clipboard held at his side. His head was cocked to one side, his hand shielding the sun from his eyes as he watched Hanley scrub the bird shit from his plane.
“No. Well not at first. She did later. Why, does she hit people a lot?” Hanley asked laughing. He found the question humorous. He assumed a nun was capable of hitting, but he normally thought of nuns that hit as older women in severe black habits, smacking boys with their rulers in hallways, while children in classrooms smothered their laughter for fear they would be next. He didn’t see Marie Claire that way, at least not yet.
“If I tell you something, you must promise not to tell the Sister. Do you promise? If you tell her, I will have to leave, I think. Do you promise?” Jumma was starting to think that perhaps he had started in a direction that he would regret and his panic was beginning to show. He did not know this American at all and was already offering to share secrets. Maybe this is why America is so successful, Jumma thought; they get you to trust them but for no reason and then they are always a step ahead.
“I won’t tell. You can trust me.”
Jumma was still uncertain even after the older man’s statement. Trusting someone was difficult to do in Sudan, especially a stranger from another country. Now Jumma was really nervous. He had stopped trusting strangers when very young; perhaps now was not the time to start again.
“She hits people when they don’t do what she says. She only hits men; the white men. Usually the doctors and never a Sudanese or a priest; especially not a priest. The doctors talk about it when she is not around. They say she is a frustrated woman. They say she uses her fists because she cannot use her lips. They call it a nun’s kiss. One said it was the hand of God because God will not come to Sudan himself. They all laugh about it when she is not there to hear.” Jumma looked nervous about what he had just said and Hanley knew it was because he was feeling exposed, having just entrusted a relative stranger with a secret that could cause the young Sudanese some embarrassment if it got out.
Hanley said, “My grandmother was a hitter. She hit only her grandsons. Never anyone else as far as we could tell. She would punch us in the arm or slap our stomachs with the back of her hand. Never hard. I don’t think she started it until we were all bigger than her. She was small anyway. I haven’t thought about that in years. I really believe these were gestures of affection. Some people aren’t normally the type who touch and I think this was her goofy way of doing it.” Hanley explained.
“Goofy?”
“Unusual.”
“Then Sister Marie Claire is making certain she is goofy while touching the doctors because you can sometimes hear her touching them from another room.”
Smiling at Jumma’s description of Sister Marie Claire abuse of the doctors, Hanley turned back to the plane and entered through the rear door. A little more than five minutes had passed, yet the heat still cooked him as he walked to the cockpit.
“Jumma, come here will you?” Hanley shouted down the length of the old plane. He guessed
