Free A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve Page A

happened to you,” Margaret said. Adhiambo’s face never moved, as if she hadn’t heard her.
    At nine thirty, when Margaret opened the door to James, she was angry. He apologized before she could say anything.
    “The memsahib is having me make the breakfast and do the washing up. Because Adhiambo is not there to help with the children, memsahib is in a calamity.”
    “Never mind,” Margaret said. “I’m glad you’re here. Adhiambo won’t talk to me. I think she’s ashamed.”
    “Oh yes,” James said, nodding. His pressed white shirt and French-blue cotton pants were impeccably clean, despite his chores. “She is very shamed.”
    Margaret didn’t know if he meant
ashamed
or shamed by others.
    “She’s in the kitchen. See if you can get her to eat something.”
    As James walked through to the kitchen, Margaret sat in a chair by the front door in order to give them privacy. It didn’t matter much anyway, since Margaret couldn’t understand a word they said to each other. Was Adhiambo a Luo as well?
    When James emerged from the kitchen, Margaret moved to the sofa and indicated a chair nearby. She was still in her robe; she hadn’t wanted to be dressing when James arrived, worried she might miss him altogether.
    “Adhiambo is saying that two men broke down her door and demanded pombe. She didn’t have the pombe. She tried to run away, but one of the men, he catches her. Both men are very drunk, and they rape her because they are angry.”
    “Both?”
    “Yes.” James shook his head, folded his hands, and let them hang between his legs.
    “Is she hurt? Internally?”
    James looked away, unwilling to discuss female matters. He knew, however, that Margaret wanted Adhiambo to see a doctor, so he was forced to answer her. “Not so much. She is just all right.”
    That maddening phrase again.
Just all right
.
    “How can she be? Two men?”
    James was silent for a long moment. “Adhiambo has two brothers in Kericho who will come and punish the two men. They will be well and truly beaten. They will be apologizing to her maybe this night.”
    “James, she can’t go back.”
    “Where else can she go? I will go with her and fix her door. I am borrowing some good tools from Mr. Arthur. Adhiambo says there are medicines….” He let his voice trail away.
    “Then I am going with you,” Margaret said. “I’m not letting her out of my house unless I can see for myself that she is
just all right
.”
    It was an empty threat, and James knew it. Both he and Adhiambo were perfectly capable of walking out the door without her.
    “No,” he said.
    “Then I will call the police and tell them she has been raped, and she will have to answer many questions and perhaps see a doctor. I will do this.”
    James looked quizzical. “Why would you do this? Punish her more than she is being punished?”
    Margaret thought about the Masai and the Kikuyu and bits of Patrick’s argument at the picnic in the Ngong Hills. She closed her eyes and shook her head, making it perfectly clear that she wouldn’t do what she had just threatened to do.
    James stood. “I am speaking to her,” he said.
    From the sofa, Margaret could hear a prolonged and heated argument in foreign syllables. When it was over, James came into the living room and nodded.
    “I’ll get dressed,” Margaret said.
    “First we will take a bus, and then we will walk. She is all right to walk, but it is a danger to you.”
    “Not in broad daylight,” Margaret said, heading for the bedroom.
    She heard Patrick return and speak to James for a few minutes. He came into the bedroom and put the box of sanitary napkins on the bed. He went to the doctor bag he kept under the bed and removed a tube of antibiotic cream and pills Margaret didn’t recognize. He poured the pills into packets. “Give her these,” he said. “The white ones are for fever, should she get one, and these yellow are for pain. One every six hours.”
    Margaret had on jeans and a long-sleeved