Cordon Sanitaire, and: Fabric, and: Detention and Multiplication, and: Our waiter wasn't wounded

Cordon Sanitaire

In the tropical rainforests, Ebola's foundin the fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family.Flying mammals. Bush meat. When it made its debutin the seventies, the zoonotic virus decimateda village near the Ebola River in the countryknown then as Zaire. Scientists named it afterthe nearby river, fusing water to disease, lifeto death—only their maps were wrong.Ebola, "the Black River," wasn't the nearest riverafter all, but by then it was too late.Maybe in the future local people will adaptivelymutate the Ebola River, linking it with the sourceof contagion in much the same way as the mobin Monrovia mistook health workers for carriers.(Only a fool trusts faceless, body-bagged alienswho incinerate your noble dead without markingtheir exit with touch—an irreverence so unconscionableit turns tears to blood.) When you walk through Freetownit's like walking on the skin of a drum.The city's shuddering paucity vibrates around you,a Gregorian secular chant of Need, Need, Need.Clinics and hospitals are empty of equipment and packedwith people waiting patiently to be saved. Children share bedsin the ICU—a ward so Dickensian it's unnerving to stepoutside and find cars and electricity. Last time I was there,hemorrhagic fever was waiting in the wings, which explainswhy hope wasn't yet amputated from circumstance.Armageddon leases this part of the globe from the British and the French. Every day a disasterthriller—minus the stars, financing, and spectators.(If a child dies and no one honors his journeydoes he really die?) The beautiful burned boyin the duplexed bed was photogenicenough to be a star. Yesterday, when newsf the Black Death flickered across CNN's ticker-tape,cordon sanitaire sounded humane. Today I watchgames of hunger, refuse to permit a boy's indigestiblesmile to play havoc with my Greek yogurt and goji berries.More bats will be eaten, more dead will lie in stateto be touched by villagers who knew them.A mother will kiss the tears of her boy becausehe's dying and the cord can't be cut.A black river runs through us, a microscopic worm on a string.

Fabric

I sewed like a daredevil when I was young—made my firstwedding dress from satin polyester as white as daVinci Veneers. Ieven hand-embroidered a frenzy of pastel flowers on the collarand the sleeves. Sewing a wedding gown is to dressmakingwhat Nascar is to driving—risky. I don't sew much anymore.13 years later, I bought my second wedding dress in Greensboro,North Carolina. It was the color of clotted cream, a snug sheathof beaded lace. A man shopping with his wife said, Even Brother Raywould love how you look in that, Sister, which sealed the deal.But after it was altered one of the seams was as crooked as a brokenfinger. Accustomed to making room for error, I said nothing, positionedmy large bouquet of gardenias just so to hide it. My wedding florist,a man called Mr. Tickle, saved the day. Comedy wins out in the end.Tension is the pressure placed upon the bobbin and the needle;speed is dictated by the right foot. Too much tension, too much speedand everything is ruined—which is why for two decades I've been meaning to sew a sari-length of silk into a blouse—a gift from friends who lived in India.The color of a bruised sunrise, the material is artfully female—a hose-sheer sendal, a lewd mousseline, a diaphanous pelliculeto be wound around my bare brown body like a loveror a shroud. Every few years when I open that drawer, the exclamatoryfabric prods me towards ambition. I make plans to dust off my vintageMontgomery Ward sewing machine, score the fabric with tailor's chalk,domesticate it with pinking shears, blind-hem stitch it, and reinforceits raw edges with...