coming.”
She picked up White Dog and both children. The shampooing and nit picking and scrubbing of every piece of fabric in the house continued, off and on, until the day before the conference.
Will stopped by after work. “What am I going to do if the lice cop calls tomorrow? Tell twenty-seven delegates from thirteen Commonwealth African countries that I have to go home to deal with lice?”
“You have them too?” He took a step backward.
“No. But I’ll throw those urchins out on the street if they’ve given them to me.”
“You seem to have developed some passion around this topic.”
“I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”
“The boys got them last year. It took us three months …”
“Don’t tell me. Please.”
“How is Lulu doing?”
“The other day, I finished going through her hair. She jumped off the chair and put her arms around my legs. I was so surprised, you could have knocked me over.” On her lips she could still feel Lulu’s damp hair, the smell of coal tar shampoo, when she bent and kissed the top of her head.
“And Isaac?”
“Hendrik has an appointment with a deputy minister of correctional services later in the week. He told me this guy owes him a favor. Otherwise, no news.”
“What about you?”
“Don’t ask. And please don’t say anything sympathetic. I can’t handle it.”
The conference lasted five days, with the delegates housed at the university dormitory. About a quarter of them were members of indigenous populations. Two of the delegates were Seventh-Day Adventists, who couldn’t drink tea or coffee during breaks. “Starch water”—cow’s milk mixed with hot water—was what they preferred. One woman from Seychelles was nursing a baby. Each country was responsible for a two-hour presentation, a few with longer slots. In addition, there were anthropologists and sociologists from Cape Town, Lusaka, Nairobi, and abroad, experts on land use, economists holding forth about traditional economies, and one of Ian’s colleagues talking about indigenous art. Ian would have been there.
Four nights into the conference, Alice got a call from her boss. A Kenyan, a big vulnerable, blustery guy, had gotten drunk and was threatening to throw himself out a third-floor window. Alice asked Itumeleng to keep an eye on the kids and rushed to the university. C.T. was standing outside the dorm room with about a dozen people. One moment the Kenyan was raving angry and the next moment weeping. “Don’t go near him,” said C.T., as Alice made a move to enter the room. “He’s violent.”
“Get them away from me!” the man was shouting. “Stop staring!”
“Go back to your rooms, please,” said Alice. People drifted away. C.T. went away to call campus security while Alice stood watch.
After everyone had left, she stood at the threshold and asked, “May I come in?” The man made a movement with his head. She came and sat on the bed next to him. The window was open behind them. “What’s going on?”
“She won’t pick up the phone.”
“Your wife?”
“No.”
“Someone important to you.”
He nodded. “I hoped she would be my wife. My friend told me he saw her with another man.”
“How long have you known her?”
“All my life. She’s the love of my life.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Perhaps she will still remember how much you love her.”
“No. She says she doesn’t respect me.”
“Then you must find someone who loves and respects you as you deserve to be loved. And when you get home, you must stop drinking so much.”
He talked some more, and she listened. Finally without thinking, she told him about Ian. And then she was crying. It surprised the Kenyan, but she didn’t care. The weeks of holding back poured out of her. She closed the window behind them. In his tender, slobbery way, he comforted her. By the time C.T. and campus security arrived, it was all over.
The following day, the conference ended. She fell into bed, too wound up to sleep, and lay in the dark, eyes wide open. Once she’d seen a chart of the universe, from small to large. On one end was the tiny neutrino. Moving up in size was the core of an electron, protons, an atom’s nucleus, a hydrogen atom. Getting larger, a virus, a red blood cell, a grain of pollen, a poppy seed, a fly, a hen’s egg, an ostrich egg, a human being. A lion, an elephant, a baobab tree, the Victoria Falls, Mt. Everest, the moon, Mercury, Mars, Earth, the sun. Then Sirius, Regulus, Pollux. Betelgeuse. The Helix Nebula. The Crab Nebula. The whole of our