THEN THERE WAS LIGHT UNDER THE DOOR AGAIN. DISTANT VOICES. THE RATTLE OF AN engine. Car doors thudding closed. Another plane overhead.
Julia’s mouth was dry. She stood and paced. And counted. And lost the count after about 250-something steps. The numbers always disappeared after 50, jumbling together. She needed to pay more attention, to keep her focus.
She needed to eat. Were they going to bring something to eat? To bring something to drink? If it was morning she had last eaten a day ago, at the health center. A cup of muddy coffee and some trail mix.
They might remember. You need to drink to live. She pounded on the door. No one came.
Julia imagined Carl, sitting at a computer in his compound, looking for news of her. Calling people. Trying to get help.
That was silly. Carl was dead. Sister Martha was dead. The kid with malaria was dead. She rattled the door and tried to jam the handle down again, but it didn’t break.
No one came.
She pounded on the door again.
No one came.
“Feed me! I need water!” Julia yelled. “Daniweil! Jonathan! Water!” Julia yelled again. “Daniweil! Jonathan! Fuck you all!”
No one came.
They owed her water. She deserved water. No one should be treated like this. Then she sat down next to the bucket of her urine and wrapped her arms around her knees. There might not be water.
Every day of her life there had been people around. Good people and bad people. Mostly pretty average people who never quite lived up to Julia’s expectations. Those people had lives that were pretty average. Lots of compromises. People who lived together and didn’t love one another. People who were crappy to their kids. People who had inappropriate expectations of one another. Maybe they didn’t pay attention. Maybe they had crappy values. Maybe they just wanted stuff—houses and cars and prestige, to be popular, whatever that was. To make money. People who spent their days in meetings where nothing was accomplished. People who sucked up to their bosses and tried to intimidate their co-workers. Some guy wanted a corner office, and that was his whole life. Some secretary wanted to fuck a manager, because she thought people would think she was brazen and free, and then she talked herself into believing the manager would leave his wife and kids for her, and she’d get the house with the swimming pool. Sometimes a guy who was a manager would leave his wife and kids, because he liked fucking his secretary and wanted to be able to fuck her whenever he felt like it, even at lunch. None of that mattered. It was all okay. It was all better than dying in a linen closet in the middle of Liberia—a place no one knew existed. The people at home were all people, and even if they were stupid and crass, they were around enough to keep one another from dying of thirst, from starving, from getting raped or slashed open by drug crazed man-boys who were hopped up by stupid African warlords, themselves made insane by impossible dreams of lust, power, money, and sex.
“Water! I need water!” Julia yelled. “Daniweil! Jonathan! Water!” Julia yelled. She yelled again and again. The light under the door was grey and strong, not red and weak. It was daytime. They could hear her, damn them.
If I’m going to die here, I’m going to die on my feet, not on my knees, Julia thought. I’m going to be dead a long time. I’m going to die fighting to live.
She rattled the door again and she kept rattling it, rattling, and then yelling. She took breaks to walk. Three paces up. One to the side. Three paces back. One to the side.
It wasn’t working. Julia felt alone and she felt abandoned and she felt impotent. Now it is coming out, she told herself. How I don’t really have what it takes. How I’m not really as smart as they always said. How I’m not really able. If I were smarter, if I had better skills, I could break out of this trap. But I’m not that smart, not really. All I’m good at is standing on line and taking tests.
What would Carl do if he were here? she wondered. He would talk his way out. He’d engage Jonathan, rather than confront him. Maybe.
And then sadness about Carl overwhelmed her. So close. Now lost.
Got to put yourself aside if you are going to think clearly, she told herself. That’s what they teach you in doctor school. Put the self aside. What did Bill Levin call it? Unself-interested advocacy?
That shit got me locked up, Julia suddenly thought. All that unself-interested crap. That was what brought me to Africa, and that is what led me here. That crap is going to kill me. I’m locked up in Africa, a zillion miles from home. They just killed a guy I loved. And people I loved. I’ll never have a life for myself this way. I’m going to get out of this place, even if I have to tear down this door with my teeth and fingernails.
Julia rattled the door so hard she thought the handle might break, and she pounded on it with her fists.
“Water! Water! Water!” she yelled.
Finally, there were footsteps and a voice to shush her, and a key scraped in the lock.
A flashlight exploded into Julia’s eyes. The room flooded with light. Another bucket thrust into her chest.
The door slammed shut again. Julia let the bucket slip between her elbows and guided it by pressing it between her inner arms and her chest, and then pelvis and legs, and squatted to bring the bucket to the floor. Then she felt the inside of the bucket. There was a large plastic bottle and a pot that had a soft warm lump that felt like a foam pillow or a breast and four cool lumpy cylinders that each had broken fibrous covers—likely four ears of roast corn.
Julia’s hands were tied, so she lifted the bottle with her hands, and then trapped it at waist level between her body and the shelving. She used the bottom of both sides of her hands to twist off the bottle cap, which fell onto the floor in the darkness. She was able to reach her tied hands around the bottle, and then she drank.
The water was stale, metallic, and brackish, and tasted like it had been standing outside in a rusty pot. It was warm. But it wet Julia’s lips.
The bottle dropped as Julia lowered it. It bock-bocked two or three times. She felt the water splash onto her feet before she found it with her hands, stood it up, and then lifted it into the new bucket, wedging it against the side with the corn and soft lumpy material.
She pulled off a moist piece of the lumpy material and put it in her mouth. It was spongy and smooth and tasteless—fufu—a soft starchy ball of cassava that filled you and soothed you as you ate it, and when you ate enough lulled you to sleep. She picked up one of the ears of corn, pulled the husk back, and bit into it. It was soft and mealy, tasteless and thick, and had she not been hungry, she would have spit it out. But she swallowed the corn and put the ear back into the bucket for later. Nothing to look forward to. Enough to keep functioning. Until whatever came next.
Chance favors the prepared mind, Julia thought. I’m ready.