But now – like that – the midsummer night's dream was over. They were taking her away from her monsters. Her refugees. Her evidence.
Kokie had begun singing softly to herself. Ali returned to her packing, using the suitcase to shield her expression from the girl. Who would watch out for them now? What would they do without her in their daily lives? What would she do without them?
'...uphondo lwayo/yizwa imithandazo yethu/Nkosi sikelela/Thina lusapho iwayo...'
The words crowded through Ali's frustration. Over the past year, she had dipped hard into the stew of languages spoken in South Africa, especially Nguni, which included Zulu. Parts of Kokie's song opened to her: Lord bless us children/Come spirit, come holy spirit/Lord bless us children.
'O feditse dintwa/Le matswenyecho....' Do away with wars and troubles....
Ali sighed. All these people wanted was peace and a little happiness. When she first showed up, they had looked like the morning after a hurricane, sleeping in the open, drinking fouled water, waiting to die. With her help, they now had rudimentary shelter and a well for water and the start of a cottage industry that used towering anthills as forges for making simple farm tools like hoes and shovels. They had not welcomed her coming; that had taken some time. But her departure was causing real anguish, for she had brought a little light into their darkness, or at least a little medicine and diversion.
It wasn't fair. Her coming had meant good things for them. And now they were being punished for her sins. There was no possible way to explain that. They would not have understood that this was the Church's way of breaking her down.
It made her mad. Maybe she was a bit too proud. And profane at times. With a temper, yes. And indiscreet, certainly. She'd made a few mistakes. Who hadn't? She was sure her transfer out of Africa had to do with some problem she'd caused somebody somewhere. Or maybe her past was catching up with her again.
Fingers trembling, Ali smoothed out a pair of khaki bush shorts and the old monologue rolled around in her head. It was like a broken record, her mea culpas. The fact was, when she dove, she dove deep. Controversy be damned. She was forever running ahead of the pack.
Maybe she should have thought twice before writing that op-ed piece for the Times suggesting the Pope recuse himself from all matters relating to abortion, birth control, and the female body. Or writing her essay on Agatha of Aragon, the mystic virgin who wrote love poems and preached tolerance: never a popular subject among the good old boys. And it had been sheer folly to get caught practicing Mass in the Taos chapel four years ago. Even empty, even at three in the morning, church walls had eyes and ears. She'd been more foolish still, once caught, to defy her Mother Superior – in front of the archbishop – by insisting women had a liturgical right to consecrate the Host. To serve as priests. Bishops. Cardinals. And she would have gone on to include the Pope in her litany, too, but the archbishop had frozen her with a word.
Ali had come within a hair of official censure. But close calls seemed a perpetual state for her. Controversy followed her like a starving dog. After the Taos incident, she'd tried to 'go orthodox.' But that was before the Manhattans. Sometimes a girl just lost control.
It had been just a little over a year ago, a grand cocktail gathering with generals and diplomats from a dozen nations in the historic part of The Hague. The occasion was the signing of some obscure NATO document, and the Papal nuncio was there. There was no forgetting the place, a wing of the thirteenth-century Binnerhoef Palace known as the Hall of Knights, a room loaded with delicious Renaissance goodies, even a Rembrandt. Just as vividly she recalled the Manhattans that a handsome colonel, urged on by her wicked mentor January, kept bringing to her.
Ali had never tasted such a concoction, and it had been years since such chivalry had laid siege to her. The net effect had been a loose tongue. She'd strayed badly in a discussion about Spinoza and somehow ended up sermonizing passionately about glass ceilings in patriarchal institutions and the ballistic throw-weight of a humble chunk of rock. Ali blushed at the memory, the dead silence through the entire room. Luckily January had been there to rescue her, laughing that deep laugh, sweeping her off first to the ladies' room, then to the hotel and a cold shower. Maybe God had forgiven her, but the Vatican had not. Within days, Ali had been delivered a one-way air ticket to Pretoria and the bush.
'They coming, look, Mother, see.' With a lack of self-consciousness that was a miracle in itself, Kokie was pointing out the window with the remains of her hand.
Ali glanced up, then finished closing the suitcase. 'Peter's bakkie? ' she asked. Peter was a Boer widower who liked to do favors for her. It was always he who drove her to town in his tiny van, what locals called a bakkie.
'No, mum.' Her voice got very small. 'Casper's comin'.'
Ali joined Kokie at the window. It was indeed an armored troop carrier at the head of a long rooster tail of red dust. Casspirs were feared by the black populace as juggernauts that brought destruction. She had no idea why they had sent military transport to fetch her, and chalked it up to more mindless intimidation. 'Never mind,' she said to the frightened girl.
The Casspir churned across the plain. It was still miles away and the road got more corrugated on this side of the dry lakebed. Ali guessed there were still ten minutes or so before it got here.
'Is everyone ready?' she asked Kokie.
'They ready, mum.'
'Let's see about our picture, then.'
Ali lifted her small camera from the cot, praying the winter heat had not spoiled her one roll of Fuji Velvia. Kokie eyed the camera with delight. She'd never seen a photograph of herself.