His eyes became pensive. “Can I ask you a question? From a purely objective standpoint, what kind of president would he make?”
She hesitated, but opted for candor. “The Jack Fleming I grew up with would be a star in the Oval Office. He’s brilliant and charismatic; he has an even temper; he’s a collaborator, not a dictator; he’s an idea guy; he cares about people. But the Jack Fleming I’ve seen on television looks like a different person. He used to hate polemics. Now every time I listen to him he’s slinging mud at the President. It’s like he’s speaking with someone else’s voice.”
A few days later, Cynthia’s parcel arrived at the office. Zoe took it into the conference room and opened it carefully. Out of the manila envelope fell a stack of folded pages. The first was a letter from Cynthia herself.
Dear Zoe,
This is what I remember. I hope it helps you. Godfrey and I came to stay with my grandmother in the village when I was seven. Godfrey was just a baby. Charity stayed in Livingstone with an aunt who lived near her school. After she received her twelfth-grade certificate, she entered nursing school. At that time she stayed with her uncle, Field, and his wife. I do not think it was a good situation, but she was close enough to walk to the hospital.
She visited us in the village many times. She also sent us money every month from an account her mother left when she died. Godfrey and I loved Charity more than anyone but our grandmother. Sometimes she took us into town to eat ice cream and see movies. She was beautiful and all the boys loved her, but she was only interested in her studies. She wanted to be a nurse. She talked about her brothers all the time. Their names were Jacob and Augustus. They died before I was born.
Something happened in Charity’s second year of nursing school. We didn’t see her as much. Her mind was somewhere else. During the rainy season, my grandmother had a stroke. Then Godfrey got sick with malaria. Charity came to the village with a white doctor and they took Godfrey away with them. I was scared he would die, but he lived. Not long after that, Charity came to visit us and said that she was leaving school. She said a man had offered her a good job in Lusaka. She said she would make a lot of money.
I was very sad. I was only eleven and didn’t understand. It was not until I was older that my grandmother told me what she believed about Charity’s decision. My grandmother was certain she was in love with a man but that the man did not love her. She didn’t know the man’s name, but she believed he was at the nursing school. She was also afraid that her uncle, Field, was hurting her. My grandmother tried to convince Charity to find a new place, but Charity was afraid of Field. My grandmother believed that Charity was pregnant. She asked Charity about these things before she left for Lusaka, but Charity denied them.
I do not know if my grandmother was right. It is possible that Charity had a love relationship with a man. It is possible that Field was hurting her. It is also possible that she was pregnant. In my own thoughts, however, I think the job was the reason she left. At that time, it was difficult for a woman to find a good job, even with a nursing degree. It is still the same today. The man who offered her a job was someone important. I have tried to remember his name, but it was long ago.
She never told us she had a child. You will see from her letters that she told us nothing about what she was doing in Lusaka. All I know is that she sent us money until Godfrey graduated from secondary school. Without her we would not have had food to eat, and we would not have been able to pay our school fees. She was like a mother to us.
Zoe set the letter on the table, struck by the convergence of her own suspicions and those of Charity’s grandmother. She thought back to her visit with Field and Agatha in Livingstone—the packets of tu jilijili on the floor, Field’s incoherence on the porch, Agatha’s agitation, and Joseph’s words in the darkened truck. “Agatha didn’t want her. She thinks Charity’s family is bewitched.” Another memory came to her: the way Agatha had fingered her wedding ring. Cynthia’s use of the word “hurt” was almost certainly a euphemism for “rape.” It made perfect sense. Agatha had tried to get Charity to move out, but Field had intervened to prevent it.