a bungalow called the lamanra—a kind of women’s dorm where girls sequestered themselves. Her trunk was deposited there, and she and Ulrika sorted through her things, looking for a suitable wedding dress. As she rummaged in the trunk, the clothes she’d brought from the States, the dresses she’d bought in Africa, her books and Bible and the letters from home, bound in rubber bands, it was as if she were making an inventory of a dead woman’s personal effects. She had to sit down, her heart fibrillous, her head as if it were about to float off her shoulders.
Ulrika looked at her. “You are having the nerves?”
She nodded, although nerves was too broad to describe the peculiar sensation.
Ulrika clapped her hands once and finally, then, rising, withdrew from the trunk a long red dress set off by a motif of light blue trees. “This one I think the best.”
Quinette spent the following day getting ready. She bathed under Ulrika’s calabash shower and sat for an hour while Pearl redid her braids, fastening scarlet beads to the tips. Afterward she tried to nap, but she was too excited. Finally, in the late afternoon, she slipped into the dress, the wide sleeves falling to her elbows, the bright red cloth, pinched at the waist, hugging her body down to the ankles. Kiki and Nolli draped her in necklaces that with their alternating bands of gold and black resembled slender snakes. Pearl covered her front with a bodice of blue beads and fastened bracelets around her arms; then, escorted by Ulrika and her soon-to-be-stepdaughter, she walked to St. Andrew’s church. It was the magic hour when woodsmoke perfumed the air and the sun spread copper over the dry-season grass and the distant hills took on the color of oxblood. The grounds outside the church were crowded with people, waiting under the trees with an almost palpable air of expectancy. They parted at her approach, and she saw Michael turn to face her, a smile arcing across his face, his beret cocked, his trousers bloused over polished boots, his shirt snugged to his middle by a black leather belt with an oval buckle. Behind him, in their best uniforms, his bodyguards were drawn up in two ranks, facing each other to form a corridor at the entrance to the church. A thrill bolted through Quinette when they presented arms as she and Michael, hand in hand, walked between them and passed through the open doors.
Inside, men and women packed the rows of half-log pews and jammed the side aisles. In front, drummers beat a solemn rhythm while a female choir in homespun surplices stood singing. Flanked by the canon and a gloomy Major Kasli, Barrett, garbed in minister’s black, waited at an altar covered in green cloth. Sunlight fell on it through the holes in the roof. Proceeding up the center aisle in a daze, Quinette was grateful for the support of Michael’s arm. Barrett’s voice sounded far away as he began to read from the service, pausing at the end of each sentence to allow the canon to translate his words into the Nuban dialect, for the benefit of the congregation. The same stuttering process had to be gone through when Michael made his vows, repeating after Barrett that he, Michael Archangelo Goraende, took Quinette Melinda Hardin to be his lawful wedded wife, halting for the canon, then continuing, “to have and to hold, to love and cherish . . .” When Quinette’s turn came, she felt as if she were speaking in a trance. They exchanged rings, which Barrett had brought from Nairobi. He pronounced them man and wife, they kissed to applause, and the drums and choir took up another lilting hymn as they started back down the aisle.
Before they were halfway to the door, the congregation on one side suddenly stirred. People were jostling one another, shouting and stomping their feet. A man raised a stick and swatted at something on the floor. An instant later a dark brown snake, thick as an arm and long as a leg, slithered across the couple’s path and down the aisle, out the door. There was a burst of gunfire, and when they went to look, they saw one of the bodyguards pick up the headless snake by the tail.
“Puff adder,” Michael said, squeezing Quinette’s hand.
Kasli shot him a look whose meaning was clear: the adder was an omen.
Michael squeezed her hand again. “Don’t pay any attention to him,” he said. “Snakes come