I bite my lip, standing in the doorway trembling.
I can see without entering, even though the morning light is barely streaming in…i can tell he is gone. The way he is laying…i just know.
HIV has taken him, just like it will take me!
I cover my mouth with my hand as a sob tears its way out of me and i fall to the dirt floor – ignoring the fact that ill wake the baby who refused to sleep the night before and who id spent all morning getting to sleep so i could start the day.
There was wash, there was food, there was field work, there was….a burial.… I stop sobbing and feel myself going numb.
I sit there until the sun goes down and the babys voice has gone hoarse from screaming.
I stay there until the neighbor finds me there the next day.
…
…
The men turn away from the freshly turned dirt. I will be ok. The lady next door will continue to watch little Isaac so i can do the field work as normal, and when she couldnt id strap him to my body and work anyway…. …and i would still have enough to live on just as i had had as my husband had gotten worse and worse…i could start over. I was young.
I… could…maybe…maybe i could marry again.
I was a widow now with a child…not the best prospect. But i could make a future for Isaac.
I could send him to boarding school in just 5 years by saving everything and anything i could get my hands on while he grew.
Then i could move on somewhere else, and …i could start over. I would keep providing for Isaac secretly…I could do it.
i was young.
Id even take side jobs like weaving hair. Id been good at it for my Mother and friends in highschool….i hadnt finished school because of this man, but... I felt myself scowling. I was ok. I would be ok.
I wiped my palms across my wet cheeks and turned away from all the false promises left under the dirt where they belonged.
I started weeping just thinking of them, a laugh choking me. Even in the dirt, that mans flattering promises wouldnt grow.
…
…
I looked up from the dirt almost finished turning the last row for replanting for the next season.
The prior seasons harvest leftovers had been removed the last few days. The weeks following my widowhood had kept me busy.
Dry stalks that had scratched my arms and legs all morning now lay stacked in the pile beside the cabin for easy kindling. Some of it i would use to plug up open chinks between the wood slats of the house… I looked up from my work, wiping at the sweat dripping into my eyes with my forearm as a little child steps through the banana trees nearbye and stops.
Her legs are dusty. Her feet black with built up filth, toenails small – like theyd been chewed past the quick. Her pink dress is too small and torn, and no longer pink – but more pale dirty white. Her eyes are very large, yet her face is kind of frozen in place. Fear and curiosity.
“Eh?!” i was about to ask her who she was, what she was doing when a second child stepped out of the trees behind her, a boy who from his wide nose and small facebones was definitely her older brother.
He held the hand of another girl who looked to be a few years younger than the first.
It was not the rainy season at all yet the feeling was coming again – the feeling of cold pins poking me all over my body – the hair standing up on the back of my neck: dread.
I remembered when id last felt that…sitting in a simple cement room painted a dull orange, flies were buzzing around the doctors head. She blinked.
“what?”
“see the double bars? This means youre possitive. Now, this is not the tie breaker. You need to go to the government clinic in K— and they will give you a tie breaking test.”
I was HIV positive. The thin test strip in the doctors hand stared up at me innocuously. My blood dried on one side.
I hadnt been able to stop my hands from shaking as id signed the form consenting to the test that had already been done, and verifying that id recieved the results from the stated clinic. My baby had wailed all the way home, but i hadnt paid any attention.
Now my hands trembled on the hoe. I tried to speak, but my mouth only moved.
The boy sat down, his eyes were not curious. They were flat and hard. He jerked the girl down beside him. She didnt make any noise but tears trembled and spilled over onto her cheeks – dripping onto her bare chest. She wore a pair of torn green shorts and pink flipflops.
I swallowed and returned to hacking at the ground. What was this?
Did he…he’d…lied?
He had other wives?
Other children?
“youre Patriks wife?” the boy finally said. It sounded like a question, but i knew he was making a statement. “we are here now.”
Yes. My future was being made for me. I was trapped. There was no possibility now for me to be free again – to start another family.
But hadnt Patriks HIV already doomed me?
I stopped hoing and almost threw up on the ground. Id forgotten. I forgot!
I had almost forgotten how doomed i already was! With a sob i fall to my knees in the field and biting my lip i bend into a scream i swallow.
And after a few minutes of hyperventilating near the dirt, i wearily climb back to my feet and keep hoing.
I cannot let the children see me like this.
–
Will there be more?
My stomach twists with fearful apprehension.
…
…
I turn in the doorway – a vehicle is speeding away down the main road above. I can tell from the plume of dust against the sunrise and the sound of rocks thrown in the silence punctuated by a weak rooster cry.
There are little dark forms making their way down the road.
Are they coming for me?
No, i sigh with relief as they turn into another dirt path of Ruths house and continue my way back inside. I will lie with the children just a little bit more, until the sun makes its way thru the cracks near the roof – and the sun slashes the wall right where the kids have drawn some of the abcs with a chalk theyve found.
Id been woken by a need to pee.
There were more now than the week before. Id obtained 7 new children this week. 5 of them from a woman who actually came and dropped them off.
How dare she show her face! But i had the house. I was his last prize – his last conquest. The “lucky” last… Damn the house of Patrik.
It was barely constructed, had no floor and barely had walls.
I shook my head as i lay between the bodies scooping Isaac back into my arms.
Id had to kneel there in respect as she told me their names and told me that they were my problem now. The neighbors stood a little bit off, stopping their work to watch. It was humiliating.
Now there was 11 with me. Just me and Isaac and ten others. A few of them seemed resigned, some scared, and others angry. But they did what i said. I made sure of it.
Id cut a new switch this morning and id keep proving my power so they didnt rob me of what little sustainance i had.
I put them all to task.
Perhaps it would work out after all... I heard a scuffling at the front doorway.
“Madeline?”
I got up and poked out my head. A girl who looked close to my age stood there. She had a baby strapped to her back and she was followed by two boys who looked like they were twins. “Madeline?” she repeated. “we are Patriks children. We are here now.”
I felt utterly helpless as they entered, knelt, and then proceeded to find a comfortable spot among the bodies curled and crowded under the one mosquito net wed been given by the government clinic.
This is it then. I was reminded almost daily that i had no choice. There was nothing i could do but take care of these children until age took them from me or death took me from them. My stomach growled as the children squirmed around me restless with their own growing awakening hunger. I did not have enough to give them more than a few bites each meal, and now it would even be less. What was i going to do? We were already eating cornmeal poridge twice a day with a little bit of yuca sometimes, and then jackfruit for dinner; and i was still nursing Isaac.
…As hunger and weariness swept through me I wryly considered my options – or lack thereof as the sun rose to illuminate the little bodies all around me. …
…
…
We were able to visit Widows such as these. Of course i have taken literary freedom to create my own version of what i heard in their stories. I am sure the stories are more raw and brutal than i can imagine.
We were able with our host, to bring them some basic necessities like soap and skin ointment – a single bar of which would cost them 20kilos of corn (their own food supply) to trade for. This allows them to have some basic needs cared for while they still take the responsibility to sustain themselves; -unfortunately, such a long term constant need (such as food to help feed such families – which is very common here) is far greater than the finances available or the supply the ministry has here to cover.
…
The reality – the normal for people in Africa is like getting shocked when youre just going about your normal routine and plug in the vaccuume.
It is unexpected, and troubling.
It makes you stop for a second, to figure out whats wrong – but everything seems normal. …but you know somethings wrong – and not normal about what you felt.
Well, thats how it is for me. And there’s more than what i wrote here. More that makes you stop and look around.
I experienced it here in Uganda, and with it came the desire to leave.
To forget, to go back to my own normal. To be comfortable again. Where this normal doesnt exist.
– i stare into the banana tree corn fields…
the sky is blue, the clouds are moving like lace in the current of the ocean.
I breathe.
Im ok. Im ok. I am ok. Im ok, they are…they are…- this is their home. They are ok. …no…no, theyre not ok.
But, i am not God.
Ok,… All i have to do is listen. Whatever He tells me to do i will do. I will do…
I take a deep breath and turn back to the group of children.
I turn back to the girl who cant be older than 22 in the middle of them…the mans last wife.
The widow.
The person responsible for all these children now. – Children of all the wives hed had and abandoned until he got to her – and then died with. Children those wives had shown up with and dropped on her – to free themselves for other lives…. I imagine i know how it is…how it was…how it became … … …
And we visit widows all day. Because here, this is the norm.
