The days rush by like crowds of unruly children at a summer fair after dark, and I don’t make the time to tell you about the some of most remarkable moments that occur in the hours between sunrise and sunset. But let me try to tell you at least one thing that is worth remembering, worth pondering.
Last week I saw Christine for the first time since I returned to Nimule. She came with her uncle and her mother, a decent old mom who happened to willfully deceive the original caretakers of our home into believing that she was an aunt. A common trick among the families who come seeking our help, but a trick that we have nonetheless grown wise toward.
In times of struggle – in times of heartache – the true familial associations tend to reveal themselves. When Christine began to suspect that she was pregnant last November, she didn’t tell us. She ran to her family’s home in the neighboring village of Mugali; she ran to explain herself to the very woman who had brought her into this world.
Christine’s face looked thinner than it did nearly four months ago, and her eyes seemed weary with thoughts and questions beyond resolution. She wore a black skirt and a loose white blouse dotted with tiny clusters of red, blue, and grey. For most of her visit she leaned slightly forward on the couch, and no stranger would’ve been able to recognize that she was pregnant. Only when she leaned back did the bulge above her waist become unmistakable.
To our surprise, she and her family had come to receive our blessing. The family had decided, in stark contrast to our presumptions, to give Christine to the father of her child. In fact, they intended to go to the father’s home right after our benediction. Whether or not Christine had agreed to be handed over to the man, I don’t know and I didn’t ask.
Betty, her mother, had fallen ill shortly after we met in early December, and she only recovered her health a week or so before she came see us, again. We were the bookends to her sickness, and in her temporary infirmity she decided not to let her daughter go. Maybe she knew her weakened heart couldn’t withstand the loss. Maybe she knew she needed all her motherly strength to witness her daughter’s final transition into womanhood. Whatever the case, the intervening months gave the family enough time to set aside a bit of money and a put together a domestic start-up kit of sorts (pots and pans, baby clothes and bedsheets). They didn’t want Christine walking into her new life empty-handed. They wanted her to have something to show besides the evidence of her fertility.
Pastor Juma spoke to the family for several minutes, encouraging them and offering Christine a few tips on living in a polygamous household. Pump water and cook and help the other wife whenever and wherever you can. This way she’ll be easily persuaded that you are a woman who will give, and not just take. I flinched inwardly at his use of the word woman. Sitting there on the couch, as quiet as a landmine sewn in an abandoned schoolyard, Christine didn’t look like a woman. She looked like a sleepless girl, a child on the edge of a dizzy spell.
When Juma finished speaking he asked if I had anything to add. I told Christine that we still loved her. I think I told her that. And I said that she and the husband, and by extension her husband’s other wife, would always be welcome at our church. You have nothing to be ashamed of anymore. You are still our daughter.
After I spoke we prayed together there in the hard, almost accusatory morning light that came in through the open door and curtainless window. Then Christine, her mother and her uncle stood up and left, each of them passing through the light saturated doorway, each of them finding their own method of descending the unreasonably high steps to the ground. Christine skipped off the final step and landed with a impressive amount of grace for someone in her condition. I wanted to follow her out and stand on the veranda and watch her walk away, but I didn’t move. Instead I stared at the vacant air that she had briefly traversed as if I was trying to see the currents left in the wake of her tiny, conclusive, and terribly endearing hop.
A few days later, I sat through a somewhat muted worship service and only afterwards did I realize that Christine hadn’t been there. It was Easter Sunday, and looking back on the day it seems that in the moment I raised my hand and thanked the Lord for all he gives to this loathsome, lovely world and to my own private enigma (the spirit he put in my chest), I found I was touching the cold circumference of what was missing, the residual shape of a child’s life, the limits of a deserted country.
How strange to praise him even with this grieving and vacant shell at my fingertips…
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