October 2, 1978
The clinic was short-staffed because Francine was suffering from a stomach bug. As soon as Sally Beth sat at her station at the admitting desk, two young men were brought in with severe burns. One had fallen into a charcoal fire pit, and his friend also had been burned while trying to get him out. The two physicians, Dr. Sams and Dr. Davis, were tending to them, and Janie, the only nurse on duty, was busy with another young man with scalp lacerations and a possible concussion. As Sally Beth sorted through a throng of people with less severe ailments, a young black woman with an American accent came into the clinic with a moaning child in her arms. Sally Beth motioned her to the front of the line when she saw the state of the little girl.
“Your names?” she asked, pen poised over the lines of the admitting register.
“Alethia Bagatui. This is Mara Anihla. We need to see the doctor right now.”
“Can you spell that? And what’s wrong with her?” Sally Beth asked the woman as she labored over the names.
The young woman looked grim. “B-a-g-a-t-u-i. They know me here. Never mind the baby’s name. You can get that later. She has infection.” Her eyes glared, her lips were pressed into a thin line. “Excisement and infibulation.” She seemed to fairly quiver with rage.
Sally Beth had no idea what that was. She struggled to write it all down. “How do you spell that?” she asked.
“E-x-c—.” The woman’s impatience got the best of her. “Just put down FGM.”
“Triage is right around the corner here, there is a long line, but she looks pretty bad…” Sally Beth stopped. The woman had hurried around the corner, carrying the child and yelling, “I need someone here, please! I’ve got a baby with a really bad infection from FGM!”
There was a flurry of activity. Dr. Sams rushed from one of the examining rooms with Janie following close behind. He turned to her. “You need to stay with him. I think concussion is evident, and you need to stop the bleeding. Go ahead and stitch him up.” He turned to Sally Beth.
“Sally Beth, I need you in here. Alethia, did you just find her?”
“Yes. Her sister brought her in an oxcart. They’ve been traveling for four days from over near Natron. I asked her why she didn’t go to the hospital there, and she said somebody had told her I was the one to care for these children. She’s Somali, but this looks like the worst hatchet job I have ever seen. They’ve used acacia thorns.” She blinked her eyes hard a few times, battling the tears that leaked from the corners before she squared her shoulders and turned her attention back to the little girl. The child was nearly gray, chalky looking, and although she was unconscious, she moaned constantly.
“All right. Let’s get her clothes off her. Sally Beth, I’m sorry you have to see this, but it may not be the last one you have to see, so you might as well get used to it. Alethia, you just hold her and talk to her. Sally Beth, help me take her clothes off.” Gently, Dr. Sams began to tug at her traditional Somali dress. When he had stripped her, he gingerly pulled her legs apart.
Nothing could have prepared Sally Beth for the horror of the wounds between the child’s legs. What she saw looked nothing like the genitals of a little girl, but like a swollen, misshapen plum, pierced with inch-long Acacia thorns. Sally Beth gasped, trying hard to choke back the bile rising in her throat, and she had to grab hold of the gurney to keep from collapsing. She blinked, not believing her eyes. The child was almost completely sewn up with thorns.
Dr. Sams gasped. “Oh my ever-living God. This is awful; I’ve never seen a circumcision this bad. They’re usually good with preventing infections, but this looks like they didn’t even try.”
Though Sally Beth could feel as well as hear the pain and horror in his voice, she could not comprehend what she was seeing, the meaning of what had happened to this child. Her brain fought against the image, disorienting her and causing the room to tilt and the light to swarm. A slow dawning came to her: this was no accident. Someone had inflicted an incomprehensible cruelty to an innocent little girl on purpose. But why? Such brutality didn’t make sense, did not correspond to her conviction that children should always be protected and sheltered, to be innocent of pain. An amorphous darkness crept across her vision in denial to the sight before her. She simply did not want to see this.
Sally Beth, you are here for a purpose. Do you not know that I suffered more than this?
The darkness fled and the light stilled. She took a breath, standing straighter, and the details of the room clicked into sharp relief.
“Did the sister say anything?” Dr. Sams looked at Alethia while Sally Beth forced herself to listen to his voice. He glanced at her. “You okay?” Sally Beth nodded and took another breath, trying to think about what needed to be done. She could think of nothing, for she was fighting an overwhelming need to cradle the child in her arms.
Alethia shook her head, averting her eyes from the grotesque scene. “She looked sick and poor, and she was very frightened, not only for her sister, but she was afraid someone would be coming after her. I think she may have tried to stop the cutting, or she may not be circumcised and she’s an outcast. But whoever she is, she hasn’t been well cared for, whereas this child seems fairly healthy other than this.”
“I’m starting an IV,” he said, reaching for an IV packet and some tubing. “Get me some penicillin, and an irrigation syringe,” he barked. Sally Beth jumped to find the supplies.
“How old is she?” he asked.
“Five,” answered Althea.
“That would have been my guess. Sally Beth, find Janie and see if she has finished sewing that boy up. If she has, you trade places with her and watch him. Let me know if he tries to go to sleep on you,” he added as he turned to find a vein in the tiny arm.
Sally Beth left the room to find the nurse, then, her head still swimming with the image of the suffering child, she sat down to cuddle the boy with the head lacerations. Holding his hand, she focused on his face, smiling as she told him about the antics of her funny little Kit and Caboodle. From a distance, she could hear her own laughter ringing out clear and unforced while the heart within her screamed into subterraneous darkness, Lord God Almighty! Why? Why?
Later that afternoon, Sally Beth waited until the lines disappeared and Dr. Sams sat down at her desk for tea. She was still reeling from the horror of the morning.
“I know, Sally Beth,” he said before she could ask. “You’ve never seen anything like that child this morning, have you?”
“No, I haven’t. Nothing near as awful as that. What happened to her?”
He spoke slowly, with great sadness. “It is a practice among the people here—in all of Africa—to circumcise their boys, as we do in America. Of course, we do it when they are babies, and they are anesthetized. Here, it’s considered an important rite of passage, done in a coming-of-age ritual at around puberty. It’s very painful, but people regard the ability to withstand pain an important part of being an adult. Unfortunately, it also sometimes leaves them scarred for life, with a lot of problems.
“In some families—some tribes—many, actually, girls are not exempt from circumcision. Some do it at puberty as a symbol of entering adulthood, and some do it early, for a different purpose. I’ve seen it done as early as three, or as late as fifteen or sixteen. They will cut off part or all of a girl’s clitoris, and sometimes the inner labia.”
Sally Beth gasped, “Why?”
“It’s considered an important step for girls, tradition, a matter of family honor, an entry into womanhood—various reasons—and it’s important for some because it ensures chastity. A woman is less likely to be promiscuous if she doesn’t enjoy sex.” His eyes clouded and he gazed out the window for a long moment before he heaved a great sigh and looked more directly at her. “And then, sometimes, for good measure they infibulate—they sew the outer labia together so that it scars over and seals up. Traditionally, they used Acacia thorns, although not many do now.”
Sally Beth stared at him, horrified, as he continued, “As you can imagine, it can cause all sorts of problems. Once the danger of infection is over, you still have to deal with damaged urethras, and although they leave small openings for urine and menstrual blood to pass through, it can be inadequate and urine backs up into the vagina as well as the urethra. Then there’s terrifyingly painful sex once the girl is married.”
“But why? Why do they do it? And to little girls like Mara?”
He shrugged slightly, his head down. “It’s their way.”
“Why don’t you do something to stop it? Aren’t you supposed to be educating people so that they are healthier?” She had never felt such anger. “You have to make them understand how bad it is!”
Looking pained, he brought his hand up sharply to stop her. “I know how you feel. It’s more complicated than that, and to tell you the truth, Sally Beth, I can’t talk about it right now. I’m just too… tired.” He rose, slowly, as if a great weight pressed against him. “We can speak about it again another time, but please, for now, try not to think about it.” He walked out the door. She watched him go, her mouth open with rage and horror.
October 5, 1978
Francine was back on duty and the lines had dwindled to nothing. No one sat in the waiting room. It was a cool afternoon, but to Sally Beth it seemed the air inside the clinic lacked oxygen. She looked up to see Falla watching her, eyes eloquent with sympathy, although she said nothing.
“Falla, I think I need to leave early today. Could you handle things the rest of the afternoon?”
“Of course, Sally Beth.” Falla’s voice was as soft as the warm spot behind Caboodle’s ear.
She jumped up, leaving her desk just as it sat, without straightening it up or putting anything away. She could not stand to be in the room another minute. Walking past the shower building to where the bicycles were parked, she took one from the rack and made her way along the Ugandan Road for a short way before she turned east onto a lesser road. She had never been out into the community alone before, but she was not afraid, despite the fact that Pastor Umbatu and Dr. Sams had warned her to be wary. Many of the people she passed along the way recognized her, smiled, and waved. Only once did she see someone scowl and look in the other direction.
She had traveled perhaps two miles when she came upon another fork in the road, where she turned south onto a very rutted, grassy dirt road. She hoped she was following the instructions Janie had given her. The grasslands had given way to bush and forest. The huts she passed looked more dilapidated. Monkeys swung over her head, and she found herself startling at the forest sounds: loud, invisible things crying into the stillness of the day.
By the time she arrived at the white clapboard house with the big front porch beside the grassy meadow, she was covered in red dust. Her pale pink dress had taken on an orange hue, and she was sure her face was reddened by it as well. She brushed herself off before mounting the steps and knocking at the door.
Alethia Bagatui opened the door. Sally Beth smiled, holding out the bolt of fabric she had brought with her, a geometric matrix in bold blues on a white background. At least it had started out as a white background. She wished she had wrapped it up against the red dust. Not knowing what to say, she spent a moment brushing it off before she handed it to Alethia.
“Alethia? Do you remember me? I’m Sally Beth, from the mission clinic.”
“Of course, Sally Beth. Please come in. I never got a chance to thank you for your help the other day.”
She stepped inside. The house seemed to be laid out like an American house, with a living room/dining room combination. The area was filled with a haphazard assortment of Western toys, books, backpacks, and lined school papers. A crib sat in a corner, and bright clothing lay all over. A vase of lilies sat on the table. Sally Beth could see a messy kitchen off to the left. Four little girls peeked around the corner of the doorway.
“It’s okay, girls, come on out. Come meet my friend from America. She helped me the other day when I took Mara to the clinic.”
The girls poked their heads around the doorframe, and then one by one, they shyly eased themselves into the main room. Alethia moved about, picking things off the couch and chairs. “Excuse our mess, Sally Beth. We’ve been very busy lately and haven’t had much time for keeping the house up. These are my children, at least four of them. Priscilla, Juliette, Becky, and Lizzy. The others are upstairs doing their homework. Mara and her sister are napping right now. Did you come to see her? To see how she is doing?”
“Yes,” replied Sally Beth, grateful that Alethia seemed relaxed and friendly. She glanced at the children. The oldest looked about thirteen or fourteen, the youngest was missing three of her front teeth.
“I…” She faltered, and bit her lip. The image of thorns pinned into Mara’s flesh haunted her. “I brought you some material to make the girls some clothes. There are sewing machines at the mission, and I will help you with them. I thought maybe we could teach them to sew, if they want to.”
“Sit down, please,” said Alethia, picking up little dresses off the sagging couch and piling them onto a table. “Thank you. We have a sewing machine here, and if you would like to help us make up some things, you are more than welcome.” She turned to the children. “Girls, please go make Miss Sally Beth some tea. Do you care for regular tea or herbal? We have orange and chamomile.” She sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap, offering Sally Beth tea in the most civilized, quiet Southern accent, as if she were not aware that a child that had been hacked and butchered in the most brutal way was sleeping in the same house.
“I… uh, orange, please. It’s my favorite. I make it at home. I put orange zest in mine…” She stopped. She wanted to cry.
The girls disappeared into the kitchen, and within seconds, had begun a happy chatter in a language Sally Beth did not recognize. She smiled timidly at Alethia.
Alethia smiled back. “You are wondering about my story? Mara’s story?”
Sally Beth relaxed. Alethia was just a Southern girl, just like herself, and open. She felt her preconceived barriers dissolve.
“Yes. They told me about you at the mission, and I have to say, I admire you very much. Taking in children as you do, taking care of them all alone.”
Alethia shook her head. “No, don’t admire me. Just look at this house. I love these girls, but I am not much of a mother. It’s all I can do just to get them bathed and fed and get their homework done. With Mara being added to the mix, and her sister, too, I’ve been falling apart. Things haven’t been getting done.”
Sally Beth laughed. “If I were taking care of six little girls—eight counting Mara and her sister—I wouldn’t get anything else done, either! Here, let me help you straighten things up. Have you got supper going? I can help.” She stooped to pick toys up off the floor.
Alethia did not hesitate. She laughed, jumping up. “Sally Beth, I have prayed for a friend to come and help me. I think the Lord has sent you, and I am not too proud to pretend I don’t need your help. Would you mind helping the girls clean up the kitchen so we can start supper? I have to give Mara her antibiotics now, and I left two girls working on their math, and they really need my help. I’ll be right back.”
She returned a few minutes later while Sally Beth was in the kitchen breading okra and slicing onions. “Stay for supper,” said Alethia. I’ll radio the mission and tell them I’ll bring you home later so they don’t worry about you.”
Supper with Alethia and the eight young girls was lively and fun. The girls chattered in English, squirming in their seats while trying to be on their best behavior for Sally Beth’s sake. Priscilla, the eldest, kept nudging the younger ones, reminding them to eat with their forks, not their fingers. She looked like a prim mother fussing over her little ones. Mara was very quiet, and she still looked ill, but she smiled shyly at Sally Beth. Her sister also was quiet and sickly looking. Neither joined in the general conversation, but talked to each other in subdued tones. She did not understand any of their words. The two went directly upstairs when they had finished eating.
After the dishes were done, darkness descended over the big white house, and the girls gathered closely around Sally Beth. She could tell they were longing to touch her, but they held back, too shy or too polite to reach.
“I bet you girls have never seen blonde hair before, at least not this long and straight,” she said to them. Or maybe you haven’t ever seen skin this white? We call this fish-belly white at home.” The girls giggled. She slipped the elastic band off the end of her braid and began to unravel it. “Would you like to touch it? It feels different.”
Jayella reached a tentative hand forward. The others looked to Alethia, who smiled and nodded, and before Sally Beth could completely shake out the braid, they all six were sitting on her lap or next to her, reaching up to stroke the pale strands.
“Oh!” they cried. “It’s so soft. And fine. It’s beautiful.”
Lizzy made a face. “But your skin looks sick. I can see your veins through it.” She traced a faint blue line on the inside of Sally Beth’s arm.
“Lizzy!” admonished Alethia.
“Oh, I know!” exclaimed Sally Beth. “It’s no fun at all to have skin like this. It bruises easily and I can’t get out in the sun without covering up or using lots of suntan lotion. It is kind of sickly. I wish I had beautiful brown skin like yours, or soft black skin like Prissy’s. I bet you don’t get sunburned easily.” She stroked her hand along Prissy’s thin forearm.
The girls looked at her pityingly. “We still like you, Sally Beth,” said Prissy. “Your eyes are very pretty.” The others nodded. Jayella, the youngest, patted her cheek. “And white isn’t so bad, even though it looks like a fish belly.”
Neither Alethia nor Sally Beth laughed, although both felt like it, for neither wanted to offend the other. They were both remembering the racial tensions that existed in the United States.
“It’s a school night, girls, and it’s getting late,” said Alethia. “You need to go have your baths. Priscilla, please go get them started. Miss Sally Beth and I want to have a chat.”
The children were surprisingly compliant. Without any complaint, they let Priscilla herd them up the stairs while Alethia settled onto the couch, patting the place beside her, inviting Sally Beth to sit. After a moment of silence, she spoke.
“I know it was hard on you to see Mara the other day. But it’s common practice throughout Africa, although the Somali tend to do it much earlier than most people. It’s not often they get infected. They have their own medicines that work pretty well.” She paused before adding softly, “It’s rare that they are sewn up with acacia thorns, though. That’s what they used to use, but now they tend to use regular needle and thread.” Noting the look of horror on Sally Beth’s face, she hastened to add, “They do anesthetize, or some do. And the girls bear it pretty well. To them, it’s honorable to endure it.”
“But why?” burst out Sally Beth. “Why do they do it? Who does it? And why do the mothers let them?”
Alethia shrugged. “It’s tradition, an important rite, and it’s considered a matter of—well—personal hygiene, sort of, and it’s considered more aesthetically pleasing—and, to tell the truth—because mothers want their daughters to keep the family honor, just like our mothers back home.” She glanced slyly at Sally Beth. “Your mama ever tell you you’d better be a virgin when you get married?”
At Sally Beth’s dry smile, Alethia said, “It’s just that their methods are more extreme.” She touched Sally Beth’s shoulder and added gently, “It’s a different culture, Sally Beth. It’s hard for Westerners to understand.”
Alethia took a deep breath and went on, “My grandparents were Maasai; they became followers of Christ right after they got married. My grandfather felt called to preach the gospel, so the priest who ran the mission invited them to America to get an education. After Grandfather graduated, he got a job teaching at Payne University up in Ohio, so they ended up staying in America, but they came back to Tanzania as often as they could. My mother met and married my father here—he was working at the mission she came to every summer when she was in college. Then she started working at a church in Alabama, and they got married the next time she came back. He went back with her, and I was born there. I’ve lived both here and there for most of my life—my parents came here often. Their church in Montgomery is a sister church to one near here, and we’ve been the go-between, so to speak.”
Sally Beth grew impatient. If Alethia were so comfortable with the people here, why didn’t she do something to help raise awareness? Something to stop it. “I don’t understand why people don’t speak out against such a barbaric practice. I mean, it seems savage, one of those things that make people think Africans are not civilized. I grew up hearing that Africans were cannibals.”
Alethia shrugged. “Some of them are, and some of those are kind and gentle people otherwise. But Africa is many nations, many peoples; some are crueler than others, just like anywhere else. My people, the Maasai, are considered savage and warlike, and they circumcise their girls, but they respect the dignity of other humans. They’ve never kept slaves—have never sold even their enemies into slavery. Then, tribes in Guinea are considered more peaceful, but they enslaved the people they conquered and sold them to slave traders. In the same way, not every tribe circumcises. Different people have different ways of seeing things.”
Sally Beth was affronted by Alethia’s casual attitude. “But why doesn’t the church do something to stop it? Nobody talks about it at the clinic or the mission. It’s like they don’t care!”
“Oh, they care. We all care very much. But it isn’t appropriate for us to interfere.” She stopped and looked directly at Sally Beth. “How would you feel if someone from another country came into your home town, set up a church and a medical clinic and began preaching about how awful you and your culture are because you circumcise your baby boys? We have a job to do here, and that’s to help people and teach them about Jesus, not to condemn practices that they consider important—and have considered important for a very long time.” Seeing Sally Beth’s stunned look, Alethia softened her tone. “Many people do give it up on their own once they spend time with us and come to understand that it isn’t a universal practice. My grandmother was surprised to find that people don’t do it in America. She was circumcised like Mara was and sewn up with thorns. If she had not left here, she may have had my mother circumcised. I have aunts who have been cut, and their children, too.
“But why do they do it in the first place? Hack off parts of little girls that are important?”
Alethia turned to her, hesitating briefly before plunging on. “Okay, which do you think is prettier? This?” She composed her face into a gentle expression, eyes half closed, lips together and smiling slightly. “Or this?” She opened her eyes and mouth wide, baring her teeth and sticking out her tongue grotesquely. “That’s the way they look at it. They like a smooth, closed surface. It means chastity and cleanliness, and believe it or not, Sally Beth, it’s the women who are the biggest fans of it. Many times, it is the grandmother who performs the procedure, and I’ve known women who have asked to be reinfibulated after childbirth. That is, they want to be stitched up again.”
“Speaking of that, how do they manage? Childbirth, and sex, for that matter.” Sally Beth surprised herself at her own frankness with this young woman she had met only two days earlier. But it was important to her to know, to understand. How could these people who seemed so joyful and so kind do this to their children?
Alethia smiled gently. “It’s hard to understand. It’s a very patriarchal society. It is considered a right of a husband to open an infibulation. It’s pleasurable to them. Usually, women have surgery to prepare them for childbirth, but as I said, a lot of women ask to be reinfibulated afterwards.”
Sally Beth gasped. “That’s awful! And women don’t get any pleasure at all, do they? Just the pain!”
Alethia’s smile tightened. “People see things differently.”
Rage surged through Sally Beth’s arteries. She squared her shoulders, resolving then and there that she would change things. “Well, you may think you have no right to interfere, but I don’t see anything wrong with it! And I’m going to see what I can do to educate women, to show them that they don’t have to put up with that—that—”
Alethia stopped her. “Sally Beth,” she said grimly, gripping her hands and looking directly at her. “Do not. Outsiders have tried before, and all it does is insult people and drive them away. It completely reverses the good we can do here. All we have the right to do is to help them and tell them about God’s love, not judge them and condemn them.” Her eyes grew more intense. “I am serious. You can do a huge amount of damage—to these people, the church, and to yourself.” She stopped, started again, and hesitated again.
“Years ago, a Finnish woman went on a campaign to do just that. She went in to educate everybody, especially the women, and told them that FGM was a horrible crime to women—“
“FGM?”
“Female genital mutilation. It’s what we arrogant Westerners call it. I shouldn’t have called it that in the clinic. It’s condescending and belittling, but I was mad and my tongue got away from me. Anyway, this woman from Finland came, preaching against it. She won a few converts, but in the end, the entire village rose up against her, invaded her home one night, tied her to her bed, circumcised her, and then murdered her. This is something you don’t go messing with.”
Overcome with the knowledge of the horror Mara had suffered, Sally Beth felt like crying, but Alethia would not let her indulge in her anger. “Enough of this,” she said. “Let me get you another cup of tea, and then I’ll take you back to the mission. I need to get back in time to tuck the children into bed.”
“I think I should just go on,” Sally Beth said miserably. “It’s getting late, and you have a lot to do.” She stood.
“Okay,” replied Alethia. “I’m sorry I’ve upset you, Sally Beth. I sort of have gone through the same kind of outrage, although I’ve had a different perspective because my grandmother has talked about it. Just remember, all cultures do things that other cultures would be horrified about. In America, people get facelifts to keep from looking old. Here, that would be considered an atrocity. I know an American doctor who gets mad at people for piercing their children’s ears. It’s all a matter of how the culture perceives it. You may not be able to understand it, but you don’t have the right to condemn it.”
They walked out to the porch. Alethia flipped on the light. “Put your bike in my van. You should never ride into the bush on your own in the dark. You could easily get lost. Most of the people here are kind, and they would help you, but some are not. I don’t want to frighten you, but one way some people earn a living here is to kidnap people and hold them for ransom. To tell you the truth, you should not have ridden out here by yourself in the first place. She hurried Sally Beth out to an ancient van that was covered in bright, crudely painted flowers. On one side was written in childish letters:
“For GOD so loved the WORLD, HE gave his ONLY BEGOTTEN SON so that we may have LIFE EVERLASTING. John 3:16.”
As she dropped Sally Beth off at the mission, Alethia leaned over to hug her. “God bless you, Sally Beth. I will pray that He will ease your mind about Mara and others like her. Come back any time.”
“I’ll be back on Saturday,” she replied, “and we can start making those dresses.”
“I’ll pick you up. Stay the night, and you can come to church with us on Sunday. Pastor Kimkutu is no more long-winded than Pastor Umbatu, and afterwards we can picnic on the lake.” She grasped Sally Beth’s shoulder, giving her a look full of love. “Thank you, God, for Sally Beth. I’ll see you Saturday.”
Sally Beth felt humbled and beaten, and yet, somehow encouraged. Alethia needed a friend, and so did she, for she was suddenly feeling quite alone and alien in this strange land. She tried to tell herself that she should be less judgmental and more accepting, but the image of Mara’s infected wound made her wonder anew what was wrong with people who would allow such a thing.
Lord, I don’t know what to do. They tell me my job is not to tell people how to think, even if they think wrong, but just to show them Your love. If You were here, would You allow this? It’s hard to know what to do, or even to think, so please show me. And thank You, too. Despite all this misery, You have given me another friend. Someone from back home. I had forgotten how much I missed it and the people, and just an American accent. And John, too. Thank You for bringing him here. I’m beginning to feel like we all belong to each other.
Fourteen
October 5, 1978
Throughout the next day, Sally Beth nearly made herself sick worrying over the practice of female circumcision. She found herself looking at all the native women differently, wondering if they had suffered through the awful procedure. By teatime, she realized she was obsessing about it. You should not think about a person in terms of what body parts they have or don’t have. That makes you almost as bad as the people who rob these women of them. Think only of their hearts and their spirits.
She was relieved when, right before supper, John arrived, bringing mail, including a letter for Sally Beth. Glad to have something to take her mind off her conversation with Alethia, she opened it eagerly. “It’s from Lilly!” she exclaimed. “John, I’m so excited, I can’t read it fast enough,” she said, handing it to him. “Will you read it to me? Her handwriting is so sprawly it’s too hard for me to decipher.” She did not mind if John knew she had difficulty reading. He was as comfortable as an old sweater, and she knew he would never make fun of her.
“Sure,” he said. “I’d love to. Now I won’t have to wait to hear the news second hand.” He took the letter and unfolded it.
September 18.
“Wow, it got here fast! Only two and a half weeks,” he said.
Dear Sis, I am having the best—“she’s written best in all caps and underlined it four times”—the best time in my photography classes, so much that I don’t mind that I am having to take English and math! We have real-life assignments, and for my first one I started going to Tucker High football games and they let me stand right on the sidelines because I told them I was with the newspaper, which of course is a lie, but they are so excited to imagine that a newspaper photographer would come and take their pictures that they let me walk right on the field. I started taking some of the developed prints to the games with me, and their mamas love them—I took close-ups of the boys on the benches, and I am able to capture their excitement—and their misery when they’re losing—and they’re so cute and little but they think they are grown-up. Anyway, I sold a bunch of prints to their parents, and they went like hotcakes! It’s amazing. I haven’t even bothered to get a real job because now I am just going out into the streets taking pictures of children playing, and since I’m a girl and I talk to their mamas, nobody minds, and you wouldn’t believe it, but I have a real business going.
In my class we’re paired up with a partner for a show for the final—I got the only other “grown-up” in the class (everybody else is only eighteen or nineteen), who is the most fascinating person. He’s not my type, in case you’re wondering, he’s just a little too crazy and rough, (more yours!) but he’s very interesting. He has hiked the whole Appalachian Trail and wrote a book about it—he’s a real journalist and is taking photography classes so he can include pictures in his books. He also writes real pretty poems. I even understand some of them. Ha ha.
Anyway, he’s making me think more (imagine that!), and the professor likes what we are doing so much he is pretty much letting us make up our own projects, which will be worlds above what everybody else in the class is doing. Imagine the difference between Lawrence’s photographs and the first ones I took on the road. That’s about the difference between our work and the rest of the class.
So, long story short, we are going to finish the project just as quick as we can—there’s no need to take the whole rest of the semester to do what we can do in just a few weeks, then we’ll keep going and put together a book! Phil, my partner, says he knows a publisher who will publish it! I know these hills almost as well as you do and have a way to get to children, (and to tell the truth, I take better pictures than he does), and he’s a writer so we are going to do an “in-depth” (I love that word! Phil uses it all the time) photographic essay with poetry about the mountains, calling it “Flora and Fauna in the Alleghenies,” but instead of plants and animals, we’re going to call children “flora” and “fauna,” because children are as pretty as flowers and as wild as wild creatures. And every picture is going to be either a very beautiful child or one acting wild. Get it?? It’s an interesting challenge, making them as beautiful as we can (I’m learning to play with the light, and there are tricks you can do in the darkroom) or catching them acting like a crazy person.
Jimmy Lee is back and guess who came with him??? Ha ha. Tucker has no idea what’s about to hit it. So far everybody thinks Edna Mae is fat, and word is out that Myrtle is badmouthing her all over the place. I sure hope I’m there when Edna Mae meets her (tracks her down!) I just hope I have plenty of film in the camera when she does! They’re doing it all proper—Edna Mae is staying with Lenora and Ike and everybody is getting along like a house afire. I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t come home just in time for a wedding!
I hope you are having fun in Africa, and I wish I was there with you so I could take pictures (and to see you!) Maybe I will come over there someday. Everybody misses you and says to tell you hey.
By the way, Elvis Chuck called you on Sunday, and I just happened to be home for a change. We had a nice, long chat. He said he had called three times before, and he was beginning to wonder if he would ever get the chance to talk to you. Was he ever surprised that you had gone to Africa! Hope you don’t mind, but I gave him your address. I don’t know what you did on that bus (I was busy myself), but whatever it was, it sure made an impression on him. He sounded like he misses you.
John stopped here and looked at Sally Beth over the top of the letter. “Elvis Chuck? On a bus? Have I missed something?”
She blushed and laughed. “Oh, it was nothing. Lilly is just being silly. Keep reading.”
He looked askance at her, but returned to the letter: The house is empty without you, but maybe that’s because I’m hardly ever there either. I’m always out taking pictures. Click! Click! Smile! You’re on Candid Camera!
Love, Lilly.
P.S. Everybody looooves my car! You wouldn’t believe how many guys have asked me out because of it, but believe it or not, I’ve been too busy and working too hard to go out much. I’ve paid Jimmy Lee $30 already, and I think I can give him $30 every couple of months. He didn’t want to take it, but I told him you would kill me if he didn’t, and he didn’t want my blood on his hands. And Edna Mae says she’ll kill me if I mention one more time about paying her anything at all.
P.P.S. I’m taking a class called “women’s studies” that I signed up for thinking it would be about how to be a lady—you know, how to dress, walk, set a table, etc. I thought it would be easy because Mama already taught all that stuff, and we had it in home ec in high school, but it turns out it is a philosophy/literature class with stuff written by or about women. It’s not easy, but I sort of am enjoying it. My favorite author so far is Kate Chopin. Most of those writers have some pretty wild ideas, but they sure do make you think!
Love again,
Lilly
Sally Beth made him read it a second time, although she waved him on when he started reading about Elvis Chuck. She laughed at the part about Edna Mae and explained to John that Edna Mae was not fat, except in all the right places and that Jimmy Lee was acting crazy in love with her. She started to mention that he had gotten over Geneva awfully fast when she suddenly remembered that John had been in the same boat, but that John’s feelings for her cousin had run a lot deeper. She fell silent, not knowing what to say without reminding him of his loss.
He made it easy. “It’s still early. Why don’t we go up for an hour or so after supper, and you can see the sunset from the lake?”
“Oh, John, that would be just great!” Her excited little hop made him smile.
By the time they were aloft and skimming over the water, Sally Beth said, “I wish I could fly!” and before he knew what he was promising, John found himself saying, “Why don’t I teach you?”
“Really?” she squealed. “You’ll teach me? When can we start?”
“How about right now?” He started pointing out the instruments to her. “Here, you take over. Keep steady by watching this line here. See? That fixed line is us, and this one that moves is the horizon. Tilt to the right. See how the line is floating? Now, move back to level. That’s all there is to it.” He sat back in the seat and made a show of stretching and putting his hands behind his head. “Just wake me up when you get back to the mission if you need any help landing.”
Sally Beth laughed, and not just at John’s little joke. She was flying. She held the power of an aircraft in her hands, and she, and she alone, was keeping it aloft. Glancing upward, she pulled the nose of the plane up and sped toward a cloud. She wanted to whoop, she felt so powerful and free. The whole, wide sky belonged to her; she was swimming through air, through clouds, through the golden sunshine and the dust motes alive in the sparkling air.
He broke into her thoughts. “You want to try turning around?”
Yes, she did. She wanted to try loops and spirals and rolls and death plunges, screaming to the earth until the last second, and then pull up sharply into the pale blue sky and then do it all over again. The feeling was marvelous. It was like—like—she couldn’t come up with the right word for it, it was so big and freeing and wonderful. She had to make up a word. “It is tremendglorious! How do you turn around?” She banked to the left over the water without waiting for an answer.
“My word, Sally Beth. You’re a natural!”
He let her fly in wide, lazy circles as the sun sank lower, until the huge ball of orange flame just touched the western horizon, and then he asked the unthinkable. “Do you want to learn to land?”
She let out a little shriek. “Oh, yes!”
It took her three tries, buzzing the meadow by the mission and setting John’s hair on end, but on the third try, she managed a bumpy landing that made him wish he hadn’t been so generous with his offer. His brand new Skylane did not need to be jostled by an amateur landing. But he repented of his parsimony when she turned to him, eyes wide and glowing.
“Every time I learn something new, it takes me three tries to get it right, but, by golly, I can land this thing. And I can fly!”
Walking through the meadow of long, dry grass, gilded by the last sliver of sun, Sally Beth could not let go of the thrilling sensation of taking control of the craft and the air. She took advantage of the growing darkness, falling behind to spread her arms and pretend to swoop and fly. John glanced back once, then forced his eyes forward to give her time to enjoy this moment of sweetness. His own jubilation tickled in his belly.
When they reached the door to her room, he turned to see her gazing up at him, her face luminous with joy, and he felt his heart soften with the pleasure of knowing he had been the instrument of her gladness. She must have heard his thoughts calling to her, for before she could summon the will to govern her actions, she jumped up and threw her arms around his neck, hanging like a sparkling necklace. She was light and warm, vibrating with happiness. There was no choice but to bring his arms up around her.
She felt it first. The strength of his arms, the roughness of his cheek, the breadth and hardness of his chest sent a lightning bolt through her. She caught his scent, like summer grass and wind and sun, and she felt her heart hammering. A soft cry escaped her lips.
It pierced him, too, that lightning bolt, and then he was overwhelmed by an intense physical response that he never anticipated and did not welcome. Unprepared, he was frightened and angered by how it caught him unawares; he had no business flirting with Sally Beth or feeling this way about her. He tensed.
She felt the sudden apprehension gripping him, making him cold and rigid. Sally Beth let go of his neck; he released her, and she dropped to the ground, face flaming.
“Thank you so much, John,” she breathed. “Sorry, I got a little carried away there. I’ve never done anything so exhilarating in my whole life!” She gave a little gasp. “Thank you,” she said again.
He nodded, ashamed of his reactions to her and of his own fears. “I am real proud of you, Sally Beth. I’ve never seen anybody take to flying like that. You seem like you were born to it.”
“I know!” she agreed. “It felt like it was me flying, not just the plane. Like I didn’t even need the plane…” She trailed off, then looked up at him hopefully. “Do you think maybe we could do it again? I’d really love to learn and all, and maybe get my license?”
He relaxed. “Of course. I’ll teach you. It should take another—oh—couple of minutes for you to learn to take off. Maybe three. I still have my old plane back in Kenya. Maybe I can bring it up here and leave it with the mission so you can fly it when you’ve learned how.”
John swept his hat into an elaborate bow before he made his way back to his room, the shadow of his desire following him like a lost puppy.
Sally Beth was so happy she fell onto her bed with her arms outstretched and reimagined what it felt like to hold the plane in her hands and soar into the heavens. Tanzania was beautiful! People were kind and good. John was kind and good. She tried to stop thinking about that, but it was very, very hard.
October 7, 1978
On Saturday morning, Sally Beth packed an overnight bag and a portable sewing machine and ran to breakfast an hour before Alethia was due to pick her up. Pastor Umbatu stood before the others as he usually did to pray. His face was grave, lined with worry and tiredness.
“My friends,” he said. “I have some bad news. Last night I got word that an attempt was made on Idi Amin’s life two nights ago. Some dissidents in the Ugandan army who are weary of the way things are staged a raid on his home, but he and his family escaped by helicopter.”
There was an alarmed murmur. Pastor Umbatu held up his hand. “Then, yesterday, General Adrisi, the Vice President, was injured in a car accident that he suspects was contrived as a reprisal. As you know, there are many in the government and the military who are unhappy with Mr. Amin. General Adrisi is one of them, and now he and part of the army have declared a mutiny. My friends, it saddens me to tell you that the country is on the brink of civil war, but perhaps some good will come of this. We must pray that this is the beginning of the end of Idi Amin’s reign of terror over Uganda, and that God will cause a good and just leader to rise up in his place.”
There was a shocked silence before a cheer rose up from the Africans in the room. Pastor Umbatu went on, “Now, let us pray.”
The silence descended again. Sally Beth thought about the young Ugandans she had met the month before. Perhaps they had something to do with the attempt on the president’s life. They were so young, and they talked of peace; yet, somehow, they seemed to be capable of violence beyond her ken. The thought of death, vengeance, and brutality gnawed at her peace, clawing through her mind, until the floor began to spin beneath her and she was forced to her knees. For now, there was nothing else to do but pray for peace and good leadership for the Ugandan people. She took a deep breath, willing herself not to think about Idi Amin or his wrath today, but to concentrate only on what she could do. She would pray for deliverance and she would make dresses for little girls.
Sally Beth and Alethia had a constructive morning cutting out patterns and sewing sundresses, starting with one for Priscilla. “We need to make Prissy’s first because all the others get hand-me-downs, and by the time they make it to Jayella, she has way more than she needs,” commented Alethia. “Poor Prissy has only four dresses, while Jayella has over twenty.” She ran the scissors down a length of fabric while Sally Beth set up the portable sewing machine on the dining table.
“Is this a treadle machine?” she asked as Alethia rolled an ancient contraption over to the window.
“Yeah. We generally go without electricity during the day. I just am running the generator today so you can plug yours in. This treadle machine works fine, and it doesn’t use an ounce of power.” She wound the bobbin and threaded the machine.
“How did you end up being the mother of six girls?” asked Sally Beth. “Did you get all of them right here?”
“No, I started over in Dodoma. I was studying at the college there my junior year—that was five years ago—and I ended up dropping out so I could work at a mission right there in town. Lizzy was my first. Her mother had died of some sort of wasting disease—nobody could ever figure out what it was, but both she and her husband had it. When her mother died, her father was too sick to look after the children—there were five of them—so her sisters both took two of the younger ones, but Lizzy was left to take care of her dad. She was just seven at the time. When he died, the sisters were overloaded with children of their own, and neither one of them felt like they could handle another child, and they brought her to the mission. I just fell in love with her. I knew she was mine the minute I saw her.”
“So you really adopt them officially—you don’t just take them in to take care of them?” Sally Beth was growing more impressed with Alethia by the minute.
“Oh, yes. They need the assurance that somebody is going to claim them no matter what. They’ve been through so much in their short lives. It wouldn’t do for them to think I could just get rid of them whenever I got tired of them. Some of these girls have witnessed unspeakable horrors. What Mara has gone through is the least of it.” She bit a thread and held up the partially constructed garment.
“This is going to be cute!” She went on, “There’s a law that says a single woman can’t adopt, but there are a lot of orphaned children, especially in Uganda. Idi Amin has done his best to make orphans of the entire nation. If kids can make it across the border, they end up in orphanages here, and they’re overwhelmed with all the homeless children coming in. The Tanzanian government makes exceptions for Ugandan children with no known relatives, or even Tanzanian children if the orphanages get too crowded. It’s not been hard for me to adopt girls. They’re more careful about boys, but that’s okay by me. I think I am better at mothering girls.”
“Are you going to stay here? Will you ever take them to America to live?” Sally Beth wondered if she missed her home in Alabama.
“I go back all the time, but by myself and just to raise money, and I guess my life is here now. I had intended to go back permanently after school—I had a boyfriend back home then, and we were planning on getting married. He was at Auburn, and he’d come over for vacations if I didn’t go home, but after I adopted Lizzy, things fell apart for us. I don’t think he liked the idea of being a father so soon.
“After that, it seemed like the girls came at just the right time. I got Charlene and Charlotte right after I broke up with David. I was heartbroken over it, and one night I was sitting around feeling sorry for myself, and these two darling little girls, sisters, came to my door and told me they wanted me to adopt them. They were the cutest little things, standing at my door, looking up at me and telling me I had to adopt them because they were afraid the orphanage might separate them. Word had gotten out about me taking Lizzy, and so they figured I could handle two more. It was crazy, but they got me out of my funk in a hurry! I can’t imagine my life without them. The rest I got after I moved here. Ugandan.” She stopped talking, but her eyes told Sally Beth volumes. Priscilla, Becky, and Jayella did not need to be reminded of their past traumas. Alethia smiled at her girls and gave Jayella a cuddle. “We’re a real family now.”
Sally Beth was full of questions. She had never met anyone like Alethia before, someone who would sacrifice a comfortable life in America and take on being a single mother to six little girls. And who knew how many there would be before it all ended? “When did you come to Kagera?” she asked.
“Two years ago. I met the pastor at a Baptist church in Kakindu while I was in Dodoma, and he invited me to teach at his mission. I did for a year, then I got Priscilla, Becky, and Jayella, and I got too busy with them to teach anymore. Now I raise funds from America and Canada and that keeps us going. I go over there once or twice a year, do a tour, see my family and old friends. That’s how I built this house, with Western donations.” She finished a seam and removed a little dress from the sewing machine.
“Oh, gosh, I didn’t match up this square up in the front of the bodice,” she mumbled through the pins in her mouth. “It’s not far off, though. Hand me that seam ripper. I think I can adjust it.”
They worked all day. The girls giggled when it was time to try their dresses on, standing on a stool while Sally Beth and Alethia pinned up their hems. If Sally Beth had wanted to broach the subject about how many of the girls had been circumcised, she had learned that it should not be of concern to her as far as Alethia was concerned. But she was curious about something she had said the first day they had met. “Why did Mara’s sister say she had heard you were the person to bring Mara to?”
Alethia paused before smiling guiltily. “I know I told you not to get involved, and I have good reason to. I was like you in the beginning, determined to change things. Even though I knew my grandmother had been through it, the first excisement I saw made me so mad I wanted to go storming into every village in Africa and ‘enlighten’ them.” She splayed two fingers on both hands to make air quotes. “I’m afraid I said more than I should have to a village elder once. If you want to know the truth, that’s why I am here, and not still over by Dodoma. I am considered a persona non-grata there.” She smiled again.
“So now you know. I pretty much ran for my life—and for my lady parts!” The smile softened, then disappeared. “I have to be careful, still. My reputation has been hard to live down, and it took a while for the people to accept me. But they mostly have, now, because I have kept my mouth shut. Fortunately, not too many people know about Mara’s circumstances. They just think she’s another child that lost her family. But she does have a family, and I assume her sister will be taking her back as soon as she is healed.”
“Will it be okay for her to go back? Will her sister suffer for bringing her here?”
“No, I don’t think so. They love their children, and the fact that she brought her here instead of a clinic nearer her home won’t make a difference.” She paused, picking at a thread. “I won’t reverse her infibulation, in case you were wondering. It isn’t up to me, and besides, they’d just do it again once she gets home. I have to do what I can to ease some suffering, and in Mara’s case, to get the infection cleared up.”
She held up a little dress, eyeing it critically. “Not bad. I am so glad you brought us this fabric.” She pointed to the curtains and slipcovers on the couch and chairs made from a bright green, yellow, red, and blue cotton broadcloth, a field of flowers on a meadow. “I have about 2,000 yards of that fabric down in the basement, and I was afraid I was going to have to make every outfit from here on out of it. Some company in America gave their entire stock to me because it has a flaw in it. I mean, it’s pretty, but I’ve made us all curtains and bedspreads and some tablecloths, and everybody a dress out of it. I’ll never run out, and I’m sick of it.”
“Maybe you could donate it to somebody else. I’m sure people from the village would love it if you gave them some.”
“Yes, and then have to look it every time we go to Kyaka. Sorry. I’ll just have to take it to Nairobi next time I get over there.”
They went to bed late, after completing four dresses; the others needed only the hems by the time they were yawning so much they finally agreed to call it quits. “We’ll finish them up after church tomorrow. Do you want to come to church with us? We go to the Baptist mission a few miles from here up in Kakindu.
“Sure,” said Sally Beth. “I haven’t been up there yet.”
October 8, 1978
They didn’t make it to church the next day. During the night, Mara’s fever spiked, and by morning, her condition had worsened. Alethia put her in the bathtub filled with cool water. Sally Beth stood in the doorway of the bathroom at six o’clock in the morning and watched as the child lay spread-eagle in the water, her suffering wound red and unrecognizable as part of a human being.
“I called the mission. Dr. Sams said I should just get her to the hospital in Bukoba, and he’s going to send someone up here to get us.” She looked at Sally Beth with pleading eyes. “I hate to ask this, but—”
Sally Beth cut her off. “You go. I’ll take care of the children. I’m sure Prissy can tell me what to do. If you leave your van here, I can drive them to school, and church, and do whatever they need. The mission can live without me a few hours a day. I can go there after I get them to school.”
Alethia blinked back tears. “Sally Beth, I know God sent you to me. I could be gone a while. A week maybe? Or more. I just don’t know. I’ll take Sylvie with me.”
An hour later, Sally Beth was on her own with six little girls she had barely met, but that did not stop them from climbing into her lap and asking her to tell them stories. She did the only thing she knew to do. She wrapped her arms around them and told them about the frog and the mockingbird who traveled the world singing before sultans and princes.
Swallowtail Gap, West Virginia
“Ha!” said Geneva, although it was not so much a snort of laughter as it was an exclamation of disgust. She stomped into the kitchen. “You awful man!”
“Wha’d I do?”
“Lured me up to that rock where you do your thing and got me pregnant. Again. When I am just now starting to get my body back. What on earth has Lenora fed you all—” Geneva didn’t get to complete the sentence because Howard was suddenly kissing her so hard she couldn’t breathe. Or think. But when he let her go, she could laugh.
An hour later, they lay tangled in the Egyptian cotton sheets they’d bought on their honeymoon, their fingers entwined. He placed his free hand on her belly. “They could have the same birthday. Twins a year apart. I bet this one’s a girl.”
“No, knowing you, it’s another boy! Are you going to get me pregnant every time the stars fall? I’d like to have a year or so off, if you don’t mind. I might as well get rid of all my shoes and resign myself to the fact that I’m going to spend my life up on that mountain barefoot and pregnant.”
“I’m not so dumb, huh? Making sure you stay that way means I don’t have to worry about you running out on me.”
She giggled. “Just keep digging up gold. And make sure the mint patch doesn’t get torn up. I’ll forgive you this time, but you have to promise to take us all to Paris every single year. We keep this up, and you’ll have to buy a plane.” She fell into the quiet of his arms, pondering the possibility of having a personal plane, then giggled again. “Suppose we could get John to fly us around in his two new planes?”
“Wonder how he’s getting along now that he’s discovered Sally Beth’s in Africa?” Howard mused as Geneva laced her fingers through his and gave a contented sigh.
“I bet Sally Beth would love to learn to fly. You think we should maybe make an anonymous gift to the mission stipulating that one of the American women serving in a non-medical capacity gets a plane and flying lessons?”
He laughed. “You start getting too detailed, and they’ll figure something is up, especially if you get specific on every one of them. Telling John he had to set up a station in Kagera wasn’t so bad. You can pass that off in a lot of ways. Getting a plane for Sally Beth’s personal use, or setting up a scholarship for Lilly is going to be tricky. ‘Full scholarship for a twenty-one-year-old female student from Tucker, West Virginia who wants to study photography.’ Should we add ‘blonde hair’?”
“Snotty personality.”
“With a sister serving at a mission in Kagera, Tanzania.”
She sobered. “We really should do something for Sally Beth and the mission there. It sounds like they are doing good work.”
He stretched his arms over his head and lay back.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but what do you think about calling up your old boyfriend? Nobody knows money more than he does, and I bet he has to take some sort of oath about client confidentiality. He might be able to find us somebody to help us write these grants to be airtight. And besides, we need to invest in more than land. He might could help.”
“Chap! Really? You want to let Howard Graves in on the secret? You trust him?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. I trust him. But we don’t have to tell him about the gold. Just the oil.” He winked at her before pulling her closer and tucking her head under his chin, then he became thoughtful.
“That morning when he came looking for you up at the cabin, I saw something in him that I liked. He figured out what had happened in a New York minute, and even after I swore up and down you had been too sick to be interested in the likes of me, he knew. We had a stare-down for a minute. He let me win it, and he let me know he was letting me win, like he was telling me your happiness was more important to him than his own. That made me feel like there was something to him. And I guess you trust him. He still manages your money. Do you?”
She thought about it. “Yes,” she said slowly. “He is a good man, underneath that slick exterior. And he does know what he’s doing with investments. He made me rich enough, and I am happy to let him keep on making good bets for me. It would be nice to keep it in the family, so to speak.” She paused. “That’s another thing I love about you. You aren’t the jealous type.”
“Oh, I can be jealous. And mean. As bad as Myrtle. Just try and cross me.”
She snorted. “The way I see it, Myrtle has met her match. Have you seen Edna Mae? She’s twice Jimmy Lee’s size, and at least half again Myrtle’s. Sweet girl, though. Pretty face. I think Jimmy Lee’s got a keeper there. You think he can keep the secret from her?”
“He’d better.” He suddenly shifted, leaning on his elbow and looking at Geneva. “What would you think if I closed the mine?”
“Close it? How?”
“I’d dynamite it closed, seal it up. Clear out all the evidence from the creek and put things back the way it should be. I’m tired of being careful, always watching, always scared somebody is going to come up and find out what’s there. We’ve got all the money we could ever need for generations to come—we can’t even spend near all we’ve got, even if folks think we have an oil well, even if we give millions away. Jimmy Lee can stop working it, and Edna Mae or whoever he marries doesn’t even have to know about it. Heck, we can even pass off the money we invest with Howard as income from an oil well. If he finds us a good lawyer to take care of the grants, he’ll never know how much we really have.” He watched her carefully. “I’m just tired of this uneasy feeling, not trusting anybody.”
She laughed out loud. “Howard, I can’t even fathom how much money you do have! I just know you told me I can give millions away as long as nobody knows where it came from. If you want to seal up that mine, do it. But keep the cabin. And the garden. And don’t mess up the creek, or the mint patch. I’d give up all the gold in the world before I gave up that place.”
He kissed her. “That’s my girl. Now, I’m hungry. Let’s go have breakfast and then we can go check on the house. They’re putting on the roof today. Should I tell them to add about eight more bedrooms?”
“Very funny. I look forward to the day you are too fat and lazy to dance down the stars. I’m not safe until then.”