Mists of the Serengeti(48)
“I don’t need a babysitter,” huffed Goma. “I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself and Scholastica. But if you’re staying on, no more hollering for me or Scholastica to check for lizards under your bed at night. Clear?”
Bahati had the decency to look slightly ashamed. “Anyone want breakfast?” He dashed out without waiting for an answer.
By the time I went downstairs, he had coffee brewing and was helping Jack load the car.
“You’ll be all right?” Jack asked Goma when she came to see us off.
“Fine. And so will Scholastica.” She wasn’t one to hug or kiss goodbye. “It’s this one I’m worried about.” She tipped her head toward Bahati.
“What do you mean?” he said. “No one takes me seriously around here. This is why I—”
Jack started the car, drowning out the rest of his comments.
“Bye, Goma.” I waved as we backed out of the garage. “Bye, Donkey Hottie.”
The clouds hung low that morning, muting the trail of dust we left behind. We passed riverine forests and wooded hills with towering termite mounds. Other times, the landscape turned dry and brown, with nothing but scruffy bush for miles. Then the road snaked around the Great Rift Valley, offering sweeping views that took my breath away. This vast trench in the earth's crust stretches from the Middle East in the north to Mozambique in the south. It is also the single most significant physical detail on the planet, visible from space. To be driving along it, hugging the steep walls, where I had once pointed it out on the map to my students, was completely surreal. Across the horizon, not too far in the distance, colossal thunderclouds trailed shawls of rain across vistas as wide as the sea.
As we approached, the rain washed over us in thick, diagonal sheets of gray. The wipers squeaked, double tempo, but it was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead.
“We’ll have to wait it out.” Jack pulled over and turned the car off.
Mother Nature was in full drama, knocking on the roof, the windowpanes, the doors, as if trying to smudge everything into a Monet masterpiece. It was a day of inescapable wetness.
Jack’s mood shifted, turning as somber as the sky. In the thunderous roar of the rain, I almost missed his words.
“She’s leaving me,” he said.
“Who’s leaving you?”
He kept his eyes fixed on his window, watching the droplets trail down the glass in fast, furious rivulets.
“Lily.” He pressed his palm to the pane, meeting the fading chocolate prints on the other side. “I’m losing the last of her.” If torment could be grasped, it would be in the pauses between his words. “My baby’s out there, under that big tree. I always watch over her. Every time it rains, I stand by her side. I think of her little body getting soaked by the rain and I can’t stand the idea of her being cold and alone. But today, I’m not there, and she’s leaving me. I’m losing my baby girl.”
He fell apart slowly, his walls crumbling brick by brick, as if the house he’d been living in was being swept away by a mudslide. When he cried, there was a rawness to it, an agony that spoke of denial, of an open wound that had gone untended. The sobs were stifled at first, like he was trying to hold his grief at bay. How deep he’d buried it, I didn’t know, but it washed over him in waves. He hunched over the steering wheel, his hands clasping and unclasping, as if searching for something to hold on to, to keep from getting sucked into the next surge of pain.
“Jack,” I said. But he was in his own world, lost to me.
It didn’t stop until he gave in to it, until he let himself drown in it, until his whole body shook as it ripped through his skin and bones. When he finally lifted his head, he was a picture of complete devastation.
I witnessed, for the first time, how someone can radiate pure strength from a place of pure pain. Sometimes the most heroic thing we can do is fight the battle within and just emerge on the other side. Because it’s not just one battle, one time. We do it over and over again, as long as we breathe, as long as we live.
Jack pressed his forehead to the windowpane, his breath steaming up the glass. Lily’s fingerprints were gone, washed away by the silver streams cascading down the sides of the valley. The thunderclouds had passed over us, and there was a watery sheen to the world. Everything was wet and slick and new. Rods of soft, luminous light shimmered in the puddles as a muted sun appeared through the haze.
“Remember when you told me that if I couldn’t speak to Lily, I should just listen?” said Jack.
“I didn’t realize you’d never truly let her go until just now—”
“I’m listening.” He pointed to the other side of the valley.
There, against the graphite horizon, a soft arc of colors hung suspended across the washed-out sky.
“A rainbow.”
“Lily loved rainbows. Everything was rainbow colored. Her tutu, key chain, socks, pencils . . .” He drifted off, as if rediscovering its beauty in the newborn light. “I told her to dance up a storm. And that’s exactly what she did. She got my attention. All this time I’ve been searching for her in the wrong places—in the rain, and in thunder, and lightning. And all this time . . . there she is, hiding in rainbows.”
We sat in silence, witnessing the miracle of sun and rain and color. Then Jack took a deep breath and started the car.