Free A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve Page B

blouse. She had wrapped another scarf over her head and under her chin, tossing the ends over her shoulders. She put on sneakers.
    “We have to walk,” Margaret explained. “I don’t want a parade of little boys running after us and shouting,
‘Mzungu, mzungu.’
”
    “I’d rather we called a female doctor. You know Josie would come in an instant,” Patrick said. Josie was a colleague at the hospital.
    “I’d like to have her see a doctor, too,” Margaret acknowledged. “But she won’t. Patrick, she was raped by two men.”
    “Oh, Jesus Christ.”
    Margaret took the box of sanitary napkins and the medicines Patrick had given her and slipped them into her backpack. She added several hand towels.
    “It makes me hate African men,” Margaret said.
    “You can’t hate all African men,” Patrick pointed out.
    “I like James.”
    “There you go.”
    Patrick didn’t offer to accompany them or to escort Margaret back. He knew that negotiations had been completed. “Be careful,” he said.
    They took a bus and then walked single file, Adhiambo in front of Margaret, James and his toolbox behind. They followed a path that began at the end of a street and wound its way through bush and forest. Progress was slow because Adhiambo could not walk fast. Margaret searched the ground for ants and snakes and wished she’d worn her hiking boots instead.
    Climbing Mount Kenya. Only two days away. It seemed a remote and frivolous notion.
    They walked for twenty minutes. They stepped through a forest that separated one world from another. As they approached the edges of the shantytown, Adhiambo wrapped a second scarf Margaret had given her around her face to cover her mouth and chin, a gesture that caused Margaret to do the same. Margaret watched the ground, mimicking Adhiambo, who kept her eyes lowered. James quickly moved past them and took the lead.
    They entered a small slum of badly constructed rooms made from thin wooden boards, with roofs of tin or tires. Nearly every structure Margaret passed had boards through which she could see. The footpath was smoky with the scent of cooking meat. The smell was terrible, and Margaret wondered what the natives here would think of her smell, the mzungu smell. Perhaps it was just as noxious to them. Did James work every day in an environment he could barely tolerate? They passed dozens of children, all smiling, running after them. They were a parade, after all. Margaret had imagined that with her scarf and dark glasses, she would be barely recognizable as white. What had she been thinking? James picked up the pace considerably, and Adhiambo struggled to keep up. Margaret could only imagine how much it must have hurt to walk. But James seemed eager to get to where they were going.
    There were no streets, only footpaths, here and there an alley big enough for a small automobile. Margaret had been told that occasionally there would be a Mercedes squeezed into a similar alley in a similar shantytown, Mathari or Gatina. A member of the cabinet might be visiting his relatives.
    Eventually, James stopped and made a
tsk
sound. If this was Adhiambo’s home, it was in ruins. A broken door swung from one hinge. They entered the hut. A wooden flap that could be raised with a string from inside served as the only window. On the packed-mud floor was a mattress of pillow ticking. Adhiambo threw her scarf over it but not before Margaret had seen the stains. Glass shards were sprinkled over the marum. It looked as though they had come from a drinking glass. The room smelled of beer. On a wooden shelf was a sufuria exactly like the cooking pot Patrick and Margaret had at home, several mismatched plates, one other glass. Adhiambo’s clothes were on hooks or in a pink plastic basket. There was no rug, no sink, no bathroom, and only two chairs and one table. James indicated that Adhiambo should sit. She covered her face, ashamed again. She hadn’t wanted Margaret to come to her home, and now Margaret