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Fever
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
74 Fever M alaria, I’m afraid,” says the doctor. I am cold. Blankets score my skin. I am hot. I shiver. The rain clatters in my skull. It draws a curtain of beads across the window . The curtain is moving. My skin is grey with ice. The curtain of water is green as a mamba, its black-bead eye holding mine. Christine. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. Christine is gone in a mammy wagon, she wears a colored headcloth, orange and blue. She is going to find her family in the bush where the war is. The soldiers raped and flogged another Ibo woman to death. Christine waves from the lorry. I cry when we get home. Her white dress is on the chest in the hallway. Quinine is bitter. Her dress is ironed and folded. The fever comes and goes. My father is home from the front. He was an observer. He flew up and down. He flew up and down with Prince Richard. Every night the power is out. Voices. My father’s. The war will be over soon. The Biafrans can’t last. They’re surrounded. There’s no food or fuel left. Days slide into each other. I get up, I walk down the stairs, step by step, a long way between each one. I am watching Mission Impossible. My father is home from the embassy. He tells my mother, “I got a letter from Christine today. God knows how it got through. She wants a diplomatic pass. Her village is gone. She couldn’t find any of her family.” Christine is coming back. “She’ll never make it. Don’t tell the children.” There are pictures of Biafra in the magazines beside the T.V. Christine is coming back. The fever returns. I smell my mother, powdery, too sweet, she shakes a silver stem. “Don’t bite it by mistake. Leave it in until I come back.” Dad is going back to the war. Christine stands in a deserted village. There are no women pounding cassava. The yam patch is a charred square. She is wearing her white dress. She is in the bush. A child stands with a tight round belly, crying. That’s a photograph . A black march of ants crosses a heap of limbs rotting in the sun. My mother props the thermometer in a glass by my bed. “When is Christine coming back?” “I’ve told you a hundred times, I don’t know. It’ll be a miracle if she got the pass, let alone the money. We’ll just have to wait and see.” I know from her voice she doesn’t believe Christine will come. I turn my face to the wall. In a dream I see Christine. She stands in a triangle where three paths meet. Her feet are red with mud. There are no people, only the chatter of birds high in a breadfruit tree. The tree is one hundred feet tall. At the base of the tree is a snake coiled in fat loops around a breadfruit. Christine squats and speaks to the snake. It slides away. She builds a small fire and roasts the fruit. When she has eaten she walks on, choosing the wider track. I cannot see her eyes. I know she is coming. 75 C y c l e 1 ...