Leaving the boys to wait, I walk off to look around the compound. It’s past dusk, but there are no lights on. The shrieking of frogs and insects is nearly deafening. I thought Michael said they had electricity here, but maybe it’s only for the hospital. I pass a swimming pool that is now filled in and planted with vegetables. The guest rooms curve around the pool and lawn, and what was maybe once a restaurant, though it’s abandoned now, with broken tables and chairs propped up against the wall and a thatched roof that looks like it has mange. I stand looking at the tomatoes and corn that elbow for space in the kidney-shaped plot and wonder if I’ve seen this place before.
From somewhere beyond the garden I hear a woman cry out. I crane my neck toward the sound and see a glimmer of fluorescent light filtering through the hedge. I walk toward it and find a concrete path running between two long, low buildings, each with barred windows. The lights are coming from inside, and I walk to the open door of one. There are fifty or so hospital beds crammed in together, and there are even more bodies on pallets on the floor. No wonder the nun was worried about having extra beds. I see her across the room, flicking a needle, getting ready to give someone an injection. I hover at the edge of the darkness and hear the woman cry out again. She’s somewhere out of sight off to my right, down another pathway lined with more rooms.
“Habari ya jioni,” a voice behind me says, and I turn. An older nun with thick glasses is watching me from the doorway of a cluttered little office.
I return the formal good evening and stand awkwardly, not sure whether to stay or go. The woman cries out again.
“Don’t worry,” the nun says, seeing my face. “She is just in labor. She will be all right. She is young and strong.”
I nod, drinking in her accented Swahili. She sounds like my mother. I’ve all but lost my accent living in Sangui. Of course other refugees speak Congolese Swahili, but there is something very specifically familiar about the way the nun talks, her words sliding into each other. I swallow painfully. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother anybody. I can go.”
“No, it’s fine, dear. Do you have a relative here?” Moths bang themselves against the lightbulb over her head like a frantic halo.
“I’m staying at the guesthouse.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Oh? We don’t get many visitors anymore. You look very young to be traveling. You’re not alone, are you?”
I shake my head.
“Good. Girls shouldn’t walk around the town alone.”
“I’m pretty good at taking care of myself.”
She blinks, but doesn’t comment on how small and puny looking I am, like most people. Instead she says, “You are not from here, are you?”
“I am, actually, but I’ve been gone for a long time.”
“Karibu. Welcome home.” She smiles and the wrinkles in her face remind me of wood grain. I decide that I like her face. “I’m Sister Dorothy,” she says. “Since you’re here, maybe you can help me do something?”
“Oh, uh . . .” I look toward the patients, wondering what exactly I would be able to help with.
She smiles. “Come—they won’t bite. I need a strong pair of arms. What’s your name, dear?” She reaches back into the office and pulls out a tall stack of itchy-looking polyester blankets.
“Christina.” My name is out of my mouth before I can think to give her a fake one.
“Very pretty,” she says briskly. “It gets chilly in here at night, and we have new patients who’ll need these.”
I take the blankets, wondering if I should steal a couple for us just in case. I follow her, after a glance over my shoulder back toward the guesthouse.
Sister Dorothy leans down to a young woman in a bed just inside the doorway. Both of the woman’s hands are bandaged, and she holds them to her chest as the sister talks softly with her. Sister Dorothy takes a blanket from the top of my stack and spreads it over the young woman. The sister smoothes the wrinkles and the woman closes her eyes, never once looking at me.
We move to the next bed, an old woman with gray hair who is so withered and frail she practically disappears into the bedclothes. She’s asleep, but a small child with big eyes is sitting up in bed beside her, sucking his finger. He stares at me. He looks healthy, but I wonder where his mother is. Another blanket is delivered; I suddenly feel very guilty for thinking about stealing them. We move to the bed of the next woman, who is sitting up and has been watching us approach.
“A novice?” the woman asks Sister Dorothy, nodding at me.
“No, a guest,” the sister answers.
The woman’s nostrils flare. She says something in rapid French that I don’t understand. But the meaning is clear enough in the way she points at my face and makes a shooing motion with her hands.
“What did she say?” I ask.
Sister Dorothy takes a blanket from me. In Swahili, she says, “That you are very pretty. She gets nervous about militia breaking in, thinks pretty girls will attract them. Now, Georgette, we’ve talked about this. You have to relax or you won’t get better. Don’t worry about this girl. She’s welcome just as you are.”
Sister Dorothy goes on to ask Georgette in low tones how she’s feeling, while I shift awkwardly and try not to listen. Georgette shifts laboriously in the bed and speaks in French. Her pain “down there” will not go away, I gather.
Sister Dorothy nods and feels Georgette’s forehead with the back of her hand. “I’ll bring you some aspirin,” she says, and we move on.