I am in the hammock, with the moonlight making patterns on the opposite wall. The A/C across the way hums. No time appears to have passed. I understand now that I am under assault. My heart is knocking in my chest. This is bad, but not as bad as some witch-dreams I have heard of. People who don’t wake up, for example, found in the morning with the familiar eye-bulging expression, or drowned in blood or vomit.
Okay, easily fixed?no more sleep until further notice. I get up, wash my sweaty face, pull my painter’s overalls over my T-shirt, and make a big pot of coffee. I discover I am hungry, which I take for a good sign, so I make a three-egg omelette and toast to go with the coffee. I drink the whole pot; the last cup I take sitting on my landing outside, enjoying the tropical sunrise and the birdsong, trying to forget about the night. In Africa, I always used to rise with the birds. A flight of green parrots zips overhead, complaining. The palms rustle in the new sea breeze. I could be in Africa now, except for the coffee.
Luz comes downstairs and I hear the refrigerator open as she takes out the milk. I go in and supervise her pouring out over her Captain Crunch. She seems dull and irritable. I ask her whether she has had any dreams, and she says no, but that is probably not true. I get her dressed and we go off to nursery school and work. The routine calms me. I will be sorry to give it up. Last night at the ile seems like part of the dreams that came afterward.
It is my last day of work. I will pick up my check, deposit it at the credit union at lunchtime, and then take the car in for the work it needs. The check should be a big one, with the unspent vacation time and the rebate from the pension fund. Whatever happens next, it should be enough to keep us until I can set up in a different line of work. Or to buy a getaway. I think again of running. He knows I’m alive, but he doesn’t know where my body is … no, he doesn’t really know I’m alive, that was hallucination last night, that and the dreams. Just a bad dream. This is real. I bang the heel of my hand against the hard, old-fashioned plastic steering wheel. It stings.
I am actually glad to see Mrs. Waley. She is not glad to see me, however. I start for my desk, but she motions me over. She is in magenta this morning, a pantsuit, over a pink polyester blouse. I am thinking about the check and calculating how much it will be. At least twelve hundred. I go into her office and shut the door.
“What do you mean by coming to work dressed like that?” she says immediately. “Just because it’s your last day don’t mean I’m relaxing my standards. No ma’am. Overalls and a T-shirt? And not even clean. You should be ashamed of yourself!”
In fact, I find that I am ashamed. I murmur an apology.
“That’s not good enough,” says Mrs. Waley. “You all think you can get away with murder, but you can’t, not while I’m in charge, missy. You’re going to give me a full day’s work in proper office apparel, or I am not going to sign off on your separation check. What do you think of that?”
I don’t think anything. I absolutely have to have that check. I stand mute. Mrs. Waley goes over to her closet and comes back with a lime-green pantsuit on a hanger, wrapped in cleaner’s plastic.
She says, “Out of the goodness of my heart, I’m going to lend you an outfit. Here. Put this on!”
I take the hanger and start to leave. She stops me. “No, right here. Change right here.”
What can I do? The woman is crazy and I need my check. I take off my overalls and then my T-shirt, and stand there naked. Mrs. Waley has a triumphant expression on her face, as if she knew that I was, underneath my submissive mien, a girl who would go out of the house in the morning with no undies on. I realize then I am standing in front of Mrs. Waley’s window. There are dozens of people looking in, all my medical records colleagues, and yes, there’s Lou Nearing, too. Well, he’s seen it all before, hasn’t he? I feel okay about it, though, because it’s my last day. I press my breasts up against the glass and wave. I feel the cold glass against my nipples, and feel them get stiff.
I am in the hammock with the moonlight making patterns on the opposite wall. The A/C throbs away next door. Now I believe that I’ll stay in the hammock, and watch the moonlight fade and the sunlight arrive, and just wait for what’s next. Perhaps Luz will come down after a while, and when she can’t get any response from me, she’ll run weeping over to Polly’s and Polly will come. She won’t be able to move me either. After a while a cop and a couple of guys from Jackson will come, and they’ll take me away and some intern in neuropsych will shoot me full of Thorazine and then I’ll be fine. I’ll spend the rest of my life in and out of the nut hatch, not making any trouble, resting quietly. Perhaps I’ll even gain some weight. Luz will get a nice foster family, I hope. Then I’ll die, and wake up in this hammock with the moonlight playing on the opposite wall and the A/C humming …
Now I dream that Jake the dog starts to bark, and he doesn’t stop, a high-pitched, frantic barking. I hear Polly’s door slam and hear her tell Jake to shut up, but he doesn’t and then I hear Polly screaming, calling upon the Deity, which she rarely does in real life. A door slams again. A honeyguide darts across the yard in that dipping way they have, and I hear, or think I hear, the purr, purr WHIT of its song. Or perhaps another sort of bird. It doesn’t matter here in dreamland.
Now my back hurts, just as if this were real. I want to get up, and I do get up. I mean, why not? I dress with care, not forgetting my undies, in full Dolores rig, a long-sleeved aqua T-shirt with gay balloons in bright felt appliqued to its chest, and a midlength skirt in a bad cobalt blue: polyester, naturally. I take pains with my hair, to squeeze the last increment of ugly out of my turd-colored locks. I put on my awful glasses and step out on my landing to see what the fuss is about. Now I hear sirens.
I can see it quite clearly from here, on a big sheet of newspaper, right under our mango tree. It’s his way of telling me he knows where I am in real life. If there is such a thing as real life, I might be back in it now. Too soon to tell. How would I know?
TWENTY-THREE
10/31 Lagos-Bamako
Writing this on the plane, a charter. Personas non grata the two of us. My persona grated away, nothing left, really. Reaching inside, trying to comprehend. What did I do wrong? W. asleep, drugged. Can’t look at him, can’t imagine touching him again. But here he is, I sprang him. Went to see Musa. He screamed and stood very close. I could smell the alcohol on his breath, although he is Muslim. Gave him the money, thought he was going to demand something more personal. Would I have? For W.? Spared that.
Found W. lying in the corner of a fetid cell, on the floor. He was very glad to see me, pathetically glad, crying. W. not really a tough guy, not physically tough. Not like Greer. I saw they’d broken him completely, his fellow Africans. His face was swollen with bruises and cuts, he’d lost a couple of teeth, too. Later, back at the hotel, we had the Brit doctor who takes care of the oil people in to take a look, knocked him out with Dilaudid amp; the guy went over him. Fuckers had concentrated a good deal on his groin, as they always do.