If You Want to Make God Laugh Read online

  The view from there was of my makeshift wardrobe, which consisted of a pole balanced between two columns of raised cinder blocks. The few items of clothing I owned were hung up while my empty rucksack sat propped in a corner of the room. Amelia, the UN aid coordinator, would’ve had a fit if she’d seen it, since we’d been given strict instructions to be ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice.

  Where did you flee to, though, when you were already in purgatory and surrounded by hell on all sides? And how was running an option when it would mean saving yourself while abandoning hundreds of defenseless children?

  I lit the candle on my bedside table, pushing away thoughts of the threat across the border just as the light pushed away the darkness, and bent down to undo the laces of my boots. We usually wore flip-flops because of the heat, but they’d been banned that week because it was impossible to run in them. Boots made your feet sweat, but they wouldn’t trip you up or twist your ankle if you needed to sprint to safety.

  Once I’d kicked off my shoes, I pulled the wrinkled envelope from my pocket. I held a candle up to the postmark, careful not to let the flame lick at the paper. The letter had originated in Johannesburg, though the date was too smudged to read. There was no return address, but I suddenly recognized the handwriting even though I hadn’t seen it in many years.

  My pulse quickened as I set the candle holder down and slipped my finger under the envelope’s flap. I wriggled it until the seal tore and found a single sheet of onionskin paper inside. When I unfolded it, a Polaroid fluttered to the floor. I bent to pick it up and when I flipped it over, the face I beheld made my heart stutter. Setting the photo aside, I held the page to the light.

  Dearest Delilah,

  I pray that this letter finds its way safely into your hands. Please forgive me for being both the bearer of bad news, and for having to convey it in this impersonal manner.

  The page trembled in my grasp as impossible words marched across its landscape: Father Daniel . . . rectory . . . robbery . . . Joburg General Hospital . . . coma . . . fighting for his life . . . I had to read it three times before I understood its full import. The past was beckoning and I had no choice but to answer its siren call.

  I would leave as soon as possible.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ruth

  22 April 1994

  Clifton, Cape Town, South Africa

  I have to use my forearm to clear the mist from the bathroom mirror because my hands are both full: one holds a wineglass and the other, a razor. I’ve already swallowed the tablets, so at least I don’t have to clutch the pill bottle as well. Thank God for small mercies.

  “So much for traveling light when you die.” Muttering around the cigarette propped between my lips, I giggle when I catch sight of my blurry reflection. The smoke’s tip end is in my mouth while the lit filter smolders comically. Once my gaze lifts from my mouth, I stop laughing. My mascara’s badly smudged and has bled into the cracks around my eyes. I look like a raccoon in drag.

  I sigh, setting the glass and razor down. Aging is a bitch. Looking in the mirror and seeing a melting gargoyle face that absolutely isn’t yours is a bitch too. In fact, life in general is a bitch.

  Plucking the useless smoke from my mouth, I spit out flakes of tobacco. Once I’ve set it the right way around, I close the bath taps and then head back to the kitchen to get my lighter and top up my glass. It’s on the marble counter next to two mostly empty wine bottles and the phone, which I’ve left off the hook. I’m reminded to check the clock to see how much time has passed since I made the call. There are probably about fifteen minutes left, but the pills are making me foggy, so I can’t be sure.

  I light the smoke and inhale deeply. My eyes are drawn to the enlarged and framed magazine cover of myself from thirty years ago that hangs prominently in the lounge. It should console me that I once looked like that naked, beautiful girl staring defiantly back at me—a python draped around her neck, covering her breasts—but it doesn’t. She doesn’t feel like a part of me at all, just someone younger and wilder that I used to know.

  Tearing my gaze away from her, I distract myself with the view. It’s spectacular. The wraparound glass doors perfectly frame the twinkling lights of Camps Bay to the east, while the infinity pool just in front of the patio creates the illusion that you could swim right out of our home into the ocean.

  Well, I say “our home” but really, it’s Vince’s. I should never have signed that damn prenup. Hell, I was the one who suggested it in the first place. Stupid love makes you do stupid things. In my defense, I didn’t need his money when we got married. That’s not what we were about. But I’ve made a few bad decisions since then and I’m not quite as independent as I once was. To be perfectly blunt, this is the worst possible time to lose everything.

  Stubbing the cigarette out, I press play on the CD I’d cued up earlier, and then drain what’s left of the Kanonkop Pinotage into my glass. I prop the note to Vince against the empty bottle where he can’t miss it, and head back to the bathroom with a candelabra. Once the candles are lit (musk-scented to add to the drama), there isn’t much left to do except fix myself up as best I can.

  I remove the dark smudges and reapply my mascara and signature red Dior lipstick. My final decision is whether I should be naked in the tub or not. Naked would create more of an impact but the old body isn’t what it used to be. I want to remind Vince what he’ll be losing, not send him running for the hills.

  Deciding that killer cleavage is a girl’s best friend, I keep my La Perla lace bra and panties on, reclaim my wineglass and the razor, and then step into the bath. Setting everything down on the side of the tub, I sink into the water. Air Supply is crooning “Without You” loudly from the hidden speakers. It’s the song I want playing when Vince finds me. I’ve set it to automatically replay, as I can’t be sure exactly what time he’ll arrive.

  Things are getting woozy and I blink a few times to see better. The bath needs some blood for effect, but I really don’t want to have to cut myself too badly or bleed out too much, so I’ll only do that at the last minute. Even the sight of my own period used to make me queasy, before the onset of menopause.

  I sink lower into the water just to ease the strain on my back and take a sip of wine, careful not to let the bathwater flood over the rim and into the glass. Diluting award-winning wine would be sacrilege. Sweat runs down my forehead and pools into my eyes. Still no sign of Vince, but he’ll come. Of course he’ll come.

  What if he doesn’t come?

  I bat away the thought and close my eyes for a second. The water rises up to just below my nose. It’s a pleasant sensation that tickles.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Zodwa

  21 November 1993

  Sterkfontein, Transvaal, South Africa

  An hour after Zodwa drinks the infusion, the cramps begin. They start like ripples on a pond. Soon they expand into swells that rock her from side to side. When the pain peaks, it spills over into whitecaps, frothing until Zodwa kneels on the dung floor clutching at her belly.

  No. No. No.

  Her bowels loosen and Zodwa groans as she grabs at the bucket the nyanga left next to her. The scent of sage is no longer comforting. It has become the smell of suffering and it offends Zodwa even more than the stench of her own waste.

  Perhaps this is her punishment for trying to bend the Lord’s will to her own. She knows her mother would strongly disapprove of her being here trying to play God. When the cramps finally subside, Zodwa’s groans give way to whimpers. She lies curled up, shivering and spent, and watches as the nyanga rises from her place at the fire and limps over to her. She roughly spreads Zodwa’s thighs and then reaches down between them. Her fingers come away clean.

  “No blood. The baby will not leave. It has fought this battle and won. May you be stronger to win the other struggle. Now leave, child. You have made this old
woman tired.”

  There’s no money left to pay for a taxi home like she’d planned, so Zodwa will have to make the journey on foot. Considering her weakened state, she knows it will take much longer than the five hours it took to get here.

  She takes the first staggering steps from the hut, squinting in the sunlight. Her senses heightened, Zodwa thinks she can hear the wildflowers and insects along the pathway speaking to her. The cosmos’s pink and white petals bob in the breeze, nodding their agreement with the ancestors that she is, indeed, a disappointment.

  This, despite the fact that she tried so hard to do everything right: working diligently in class and studying by candlelight late into the night; giving a wide berth to the boys who congregated at street corners in packs; turning down offers of liquor and other distractions; being an obedient daughter and granddaughter; being a good friend.

  A good friend.

  Zodwa can no longer ward off thoughts of Thembeka, who she’s been avoiding since discovering her pregnancy. Thembeka: her best friend. Thembeka, whose boyfriend’s child Zodwa is now carrying. As difficult as breaking the news to her family will be, telling Thembeka will be infinitely worse.

  The prophesied misery is already beginning.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Delilah

  25 April 1994

  Goma, Zaire

  My departure from Goma in Zaire was a noisy and frenetic affair as children surged around me, pulling me in to the current of their exuberance even as I tried to wrench myself free.

  Michel latched on to my leg even as little Sonia begged to be picked up. Xavier, my colleague and closest friend at the orphanage, marched ahead of me, his rigid spine and brisk steps condemning me with everything he wouldn’t say. Wasn’t I the woman who’d told him just weeks before that she wouldn’t evacuate even if we were given those orders? And yet there I was, jumping ship without so much as a word of explanation.

  Doctor was nowhere to be found. I’d searched everywhere for the child that morning so I could say a proper farewell. The boy, already no stranger to abandonment, had decided he wouldn’t give me the opportunity. I didn’t blame him. Even as I took my leave, I knew it was the worst possible time to go.

  Considering what was happening across the border in Rwanda, my help at the orphanage was needed then more than ever before. The mass murder of the Tutsis was leaving thousands of their children orphaned, and the pervasive use of rape as a weapon of war by both the militia and Hutu civilians would create even more unwanted babies that would need to be taken care of. But staying was no longer an option.

  When I’d called the Johannesburg General Hospital ICU after getting the letter about Daniel, the nurse who answered my inquiry came back with a question of her own. “Are you a family member?”

  I’d swallowed past the lump in my throat. “No, I’m just a friend.”

  Even that was a lie. There was a time when I could have been so much more to him but I’d run away, trying to put as much distance between us as possible, fleeing both the church’s condemnation and my own shame at what I’d done.

  “I’m sorry, but I can only disclose information to family.”

  “Could you please just tell me if he’s okay? I’m calling from Zaire and am about to leave for Johannesburg to see him. I just need to know he’s okay. Please.”

  She’d softened at the obvious desperation in my voice. “All I can divulge is that he’s still in a critical condition.”

  At least he was still alive. I hadn’t been sure he would be, considering the letter revealing his condition was two weeks old. There was still hope if I could just get to him in time.

  The guilt that followed me out the orphanage gates still bogged me down hours later when Xavier dropped me off at Goma International Airport. He was a big man, in both height and girth, and he usually wore a big smile, an outward reflection of the optimism that drove him, but just then he looked forlorn.

  “Xavier . . .” I said, trailing off as we faced each other.

  I wanted so much for him to understand why I needed to leave, but there was no simple way to explain how almost forty years ago, I’d fallen in love with a priest and committed a terrible sin while in the process of taking my vows to become a nun. Excommunication had followed, and I’d agreed to leave the Catholic Church quietly in order to spare Daniel the shame.

  For despite how much I’d loved him—despite the fact that he may have wanted me to remain a part of his life and to hell with the consequences—I knew if I insisted on staying that he’d eventually come to despise me for it. Choosing to love him from afar was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do. Sometimes what we deem a sacrifice worth making is one that comes with a price too high to expect another to pay.

  There was no encapsulating a lifetime of heartbreak into a simple explanation and so I merely patted Xavier awkwardly on the arm, apologized, and then turned to leave.

  When the plane took off a few hours later, the sunlight glinted off Lake Kivu. I watched as Mount Nyiragongo’s volcanic peak became a harmless speck on the horizon. It was only once we landed in Kinshasa, and I waited to board my connecting flight to Johannesburg, that I finally began to feel some of the guilt lift.

  “I’m coming, Daniel,” I whispered. “I’m coming. Hold on.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ruth

  23 April 1994

  Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa

  I wake up in a hospital bed, which is all wrong. The clinical smell of it, the beeping machines and squeaking shoes on linoleum, the hideous cotton gown: all wrong.

  The only thing that’s right is Vince.

  He’s asleep in the chair next to me looking immeasurably sad. God, how hard I fell for that basset hound face with its noble jowls and soulful brown eyes, its five-o’clock shadow and incongruently dimpled cheeks. How I love it still even though it’s been so firmly set against me lately, hardened by disappointment and disapproval.

  Vince must feel my gaze on him because he suddenly opens his eyes. “Ruth.” It isn’t so much an utterance of my name as a statement of defeat.

  I smile to take the sting out of it. “Hey, baby,” I whisper. My throat hurts and I can’t figure out why until I remember the stomach pump and induced vomiting.

  Vince rubs his eyes, his giant hands briefly covering his face. His Armani suit’s all wrinkled and his silk tie is slack around his neck, a hangman’s noose. Gray chest hair peeks out through the loosened top two buttons.

  “Where am I?”

  “Groote Schuur Hospital,” he says.

  “You look like shit.” I smile. “You could at least have made an effort before you came a’ callin’.” I’m hoping for a laugh because that has always been our thing.

  Not anymore. Not even a smile. “You almost died,” he says.

  “No,” I scoff, too tired and weak to keep up the ruse. Of course, I didn’t almost die. I’d had absolutely no intention of dying. I just wanted to get his attention, that’s all. “I only took two Rohypnols.” Considering the number of pharmaceuticals I have in my handbag and the bathroom cabinet at any given time, I could have killed myself a few times over if I’d really wanted to.

  “You passed out in the bath and almost drowned,” he says flatly. “I got to you just in time to pull you out.”

  That gives me pause. Death is a complication of my suicide attempt that I didn’t foresee.

  I study Vince’s face to try to read what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling. He used to be an open book and as he sits there, he gives me one last glimpse into his inner workings and I know. My plan hasn’t worked. I can see it in his eyes and the way he’s crossed his arms tightly across his heart. I know this stance. It’s his defensive posture, and I hate when he uses it against me, as if I’m a threat he has to protect himself against. When did I become the enemy?

  I clear my thr
oat. “Still leaving me, huh?”

  I’ve never seen my stoic husband cry, not once in the twelve years we’ve been together. His tears are his answer.

  I nod once, accepting defeat.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Zodwa

  24 April 1994

  Big Hope Informal Settlement, Magaliesburg, South Africa

  The dog whimpers in its sleep, thrashing out with scrambling hind legs. It wakes Zodwa before dawn and sets the baby off hiccupping in the womb. Uncomfortable as she is, and as much as she wants to swat the dog away, Zodwa tries not to move in case it bothers her mother. They share a mattress on the floor of the shack, and as Zodwa’s belly has grown, so has Leleti’s irritation with everything she does.

  Zodwa lies awake listening to the squatter camp’s nighttime chorus, which is as much a companion as her mother’s labored breathing. The shacks in the Big Hope Informal Settlement are erected almost on top of each other, their walls offering no insulation against the cold, and sound travels unobstructed through the corrugated tin. Music, laughter, conversation, cursing, the sound of babies crying, and noises that could either be of sex or violence, or both, drift in and out like uninvited guests.

  When Leleti finally wakes to a distant cock’s crowing, she gets up and lights the burner on the paraffin stove. Zodwa wrestles her way up, wraps herself in a blanket, and walks to the communal privy to empty her bladder. She has to be careful in the dark not to stumble into the pile of stones that her mother adds to daily; knocking the shrine over would be an unforgivable offense.