An Inconvenient Elephant Read Free Page A

transforming my pulse into a great matching rush of blood.
    We stood on thick, wet gray rocks and let the spray wash over us. Speech was nearly impossible.
    â€œWe’re getting soaked through,” Diamond chortled into my ear, pushing me out from the cove of trees that we had taken refuge under and into the spray.
    â€œI don’t care,” I yelled back, pulling her with me. The water drenched us both, but we only laughed harder.
    I stood there in the splash-up of cold water and raised my arms. It was as though the falls were rearranging my molecules, laying me open, pores, heart, and soul, preparing me so that I could absorb the essence of Africa.
    I felt something here summoning me. The wild, uncontained fury beat against a door to my heart and forced it ajar. It was overwhelming, and I stood rooted in the steaming spray, trying to understand what was happening.
    I was unraveling, being torn into pieces that didn’t fit together anymore. Changing. Everything was joining together here and pulling me into it, the sky and the air and the pure white summoning of holy water. How could I leave?
    â€œDon’t change,” my mother had said to me before I left for Kenya.
    â€œYou’re changing,” Tom had said to me when we spoke a week after I had left.
    Tom.
    I loved him so much, I used to dream of him all the time. I used to hear his deep, rich voice in my ear cautioning me, you’re changing, you’re changing , and I wasn’t sure what he meant. After a while, I couldn’t talk to him.
    Then I realized I had changed. d I couldn’t help it. Or maybe I had always been like this, maybe I was just becoming more defined. I had felt something in Kenya, when I sat up nights with infant elephants and caressed their trunks and fed them formula, fighting so hard for their recovery. I remember thinking how I could never go back to an ordinary life again. I had loved Tom, and that was an important part of me, but my life in Kenya had become bigger. The falls were reminding me again how I had changed.
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    Diamond pulled at my arm and pointed. Arcing across the chasm was a rainbow, the bright colors forming a dazzling, jeweled bridge.
    â€œIt’s a good sign for our visit,” she yelled into my ear. “Eyes that see a rainbow will see good fortune.”
    I couldn’t answer her. There were no words left to me. I had been unfastened somehow, undone, changed all the way through, and I knew there would be no turning away from it.

Chapter 3
    â€œWHEN IS THE BUS LEAVING FOR CHARARA?” I ASKED a large woman in traditional dress and head scarf, who was sitting on the curb, eating pieces of grapefruit. Diamond and I had just returned from Victoria Falls to its namesake town, and were hoping to leave fairly soon for Charara.
    Next to the woman was a sign nailed to a tree that read, “ Renkini. ”
    â€œâ€˜Bus stop,’” Diamond translated for me. “That means this is the stop for the long-distance bus—the one we want.”
    I put down my suitcase and sat on the curb next to the woman and sighed. She gave me a shy smile and cupped her hands together, a Zimbabwe greeting. “When the bus is full, it will leave,” she replied softly.
    I looked up at Diamond, exasperated. “I hate that there’s never a schedule.”
    â€œThat is the African way,” she agreed with a shrug. “Things start when they start.”
    The bus in question was sitting vacant in a sunny spot not far from us, the driver leisurely sipping coffee and eating a hard-boiled egg. It was not really a bus in the conventional sense—it was a dalla-dalla , a chicken bus, with some regular seats up front and thick metal bars enclosing the rear.
    I watched the woman eat her grapefruit, ripping it apart with her thumbs and slowly sucking on each piece before finally chewing and swallowing it. What was I so impatient for, anyway? There really wasn’t anyone