The next morning, I got up early, or at least, early for me, for the whole camp seemed alive with energy and purpose, and went looking for the girls and Chris.
Before I had taken a step out of the kitchen, I heard the helicopter take off, and then Suzanne, the lovely girl who had helped me in the kitchen the first night, came bustling through the door.
She smiled at me and gave me a piece of paper. Music paper, and a familiar scrawl that apologized for leaving without seeing me. Apparently there was trouble in a nearby refuge and Chris had gone to help out. He hoped to be back later that night, and wanted me to know that he’d spent the night dreaming of me, and our future together. He signed it “all my love, forever and always”, and I pressed his words to my chest like a lovesick teen.
My face must have shown my dopey disappointment because Suzanne laughed, a bright sound in the darkness of my heart, and drew me to the window.
“Look.”
She pointed to a group of children, mine at the centre.
“Look, they are practicing for your wedding. Do not worry, he will be with you for all of time. It is written in the bones.”
I could see the children dancing around, Lillia in the middle, wearing a mosquito net as a veil.
I thanked Suzanne and sank into a chair, trying to understand if everything I had seen and felt yesterday had been a mirage. Was I suffering from jetlag hallucinations? How could I possibly have committed my live, our lives, to a man I did not know at all?
And then I had an epiphany – a very loud epiphany in the voice of Mama Akanit.
“What is the essence of your question?” asked the booming voice.
“Are you questioning the wisdom of loving someone you don’t know? Could you walk away from this? Because if the answer to either of these questions is yes, then in my opinion, this is not love.”
“But how can we know for sure what love is?” I asked, well aware of the naivety of my question.
Mama Akanit let out one of her famous raucous belly laughs.
“Ah my child, do you hear yourself speak?”
As quick as night to day, her tone changed.
“When you turn on the switch and a light comes on, do you question what electricity is? And when you met this man, your heart lit up and yet you question the feeling.”
I felt a shadow block the light from the door and turned around to see her there, standing in the doorway, larger, as always, than life.
She shook her head, clearly bemused by my apparent confusion.
“Here, we take nothing for granted. At any moment, our breath may be taken away. Doctor Chris has lived this too, even beyond his job.”
I knew she was referring to the massacre that had led him, strangely, to me.
“You too, have lost things of value in the blink of an eye. So let me ask you this: if you knew that you could lose this love tomorrow, would you still want it? And if you were to die tomorrow, would you regret not having loved this man?”
She stood tall, stretching her extraordinary arms to the sky.
“I must go now and see love of a different kind. There are three new orphans arriving this afternoon and I must prepare.”
I sat there for the longest while, letting her words sink in. In another life, I would have run a mile from such strong feelings. Excessive emotion had always frightened the hell out of me, and after the hurt and anger of my husband’s betrayal, the only élan d’esprit I allowed myself, other than the occasional surge of rage, was the overwhelming love I felt for my daughters. Could it be that I was making excuses not to fall in love with Chris because I was afraid to feel again?
What, after all, was love? Once upon a time, people were put together in arranged marriages that prospered. I had taken stranger leaps of faith in the past, based on instinct and a desire to succeed. Maybe that was the essence of true love, unconditional like the mother has for her child, engaging in love before even knowing the child. Maybe love was defined by a lifetime promise, the kind Chris was proposing, a promise to love and honor the other, no matter what. In sickness and in health. For richer or poorer. Until death do us part.
I remembered the wedding of some Buddhist friends I had attended a few years previously, and the wise words of their celebrant.
“To say the words ‘love and compassion’ is easy. But to accept that love and compassion are built upon patience and perseverance is not easy. It is the work of a life time, the work of a life.”
Sitting out under the wide open sky, I thought of my marriage, and how, so long ago, we had said the words that sealed our union. Certainly, we had meant them at the time, but now, I could see, those promises had not been kept. Somewhere along the line, we had disengaged from each other. Sure, we were there in principle, walking the walk and talking the talk. But somewhere very early in our marriage, we let go of each other. Our passion degenerated into individual projects, a certain distant kindness towards each other, but our hearts no longer spoke to each other.
In that distance, measured in spiritual miles, a form of mutual distain installed itself. It seemed so distant now, and yet pertinent to my story, a point of reference where my past was to become my future.
Sanding up to dust myself off, I decided to go and join the girls, when I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye. My little friend, the boy who never spoke, was crouched against the rough brick wall of the infirmary. His eyes glowed bright with tears in the light, and for once I decided to go with my instinct. I walked over and sat down next to him, close enough that our legs were almost touching. Even though I knew he didn’t understand English, I decided to speak anyway.
“I’m not going to say that I’m sorry for what you have suffered. I think you’ve heard that enough. Everything that you have seen and done, had and lost – it is gone now and there is nothing I can do to change that, as much as I wish I could.”
I reached out slowly, daring him to take my hand.
“What I can do is this: I can promise that from this moment onwards, your life will get better. I promise to watch out for you, to take care of you. I don’t know how best to do this right now – this is something that we must work out together. But from this instant on, I am your godmother, and I will make sure that, no matter what happens in your life, you will be loved. By me.”
As I spoke, I realized that I was speaking to myself, to Chris and to this child, all at the same time.
I felt him move in closer to me and I knew, in that instant, that Ombeline was right. No amount of medicine or education or money or housing was enough for any one person. Only true and committed love was enough to save a life, to build a life, to have a life.
15
Epilogue