Listening for Lions Read Free Page B

hospital, and many were carried away with grieving and wailing.
    Kanoro was helping in the hospital. Left to myself all day with nothing to do but worry, I was glad to take over the feeding and milking of our goats and the tending of our garden. When she had first come to Africa, Mother had tried to plant English flowers—daffodils, primroses, and wallflowers. In the unforgiving dry earth and hot sun they wilted and crisped and gave up. Now our garden held practical things: sweet potatoes and corn, the same things the Kikuyu grew in their gardens.
    I would hoe a row or two and then forget about my work, standing and looking at the hospital, listening to a hoopoe bird in the distance, wondering what was happening. It seemed unfair to me that everyone else was fighting the epidemic and I could do nothing. I argued with Mother each evening when she returned home, but she wouldn’t change her mind. After a while I saw how tired she was, and I took pity on her and ceased my pleading.
    Kanoro’s son, Ngigi, brought me the news from the Kikuyu shamba s, which were nearly deserted. The Kikuyumen were moving far away from the illness, accompanied by the women carrying their babies on their backs, their little ones skipping along beside them. Their goats and sheep went with them, but their crops, left behind, went untended, so hunger would go with them as well.
    On Sunday neither Father nor Mother left the hospital to come to church. This was more alarming to me than the illness itself. It was Sunday, and there must be church. I put on my one good dress and squeezed into my patent leather shoes. Trembling at my audacity, I stood at the pulpit where Father always stood. Only Kanoro and Ngigi and another Kikuyu whom I did not recognize came to the church. I read the fortieth Psalm, which always frightened me at first and then made me feel better, “He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.” I then went to our old piano, chased away a mouse that was nesting there, and played “Angels! Ever bright and fair,” which the four of us sang in wavering voices. After that Kanoro and Ngigi and the other Kikuyu left the church and I trailed after them, not sure that God had bothered with my poor attempt.
    Kanoro was waiting for me. “It is bad at the hospital,” he said. He looked at me strangely and then in a half whisper added, “The memsahib is not well.”
    In church the heat had made my dress cling wetly to my back; now I felt cold all over. “What’s wrong with Mother?”Kanoro only shook his head and walked off in the direction of the hospital. I ran after him and grabbed at his arm. “Kanoro, does Mother have influenza?”
    â€œIt is better you talk to your father.” He would say nothing more, only swatting at his face as if to get rid of an insect, but it was tears that he was chasing away.
    In the distance I saw a family bearing away a stretcher, the sounds of their wails like the mournful cries of the wood pigeons. Though the hospital had been forbidden to me, I pushed through the entrance, making my way through the crowds of Kikuyu and Masai waiting for news of their relatives. The wards were crowded. There were twice as many beds as usual. I had only just walked into the hospital when I came upon my father.
    His eyes were red, and his face bristled with a beard of several days’ growth. He stared at me and there was no welcome in his eyes. He asked in a gruff voice, “Rachel, what are you doing here?”
    I had expected an angry scolding for going against his orders, but the question was asked in a hopeless way, as if he carried a great basket of questions and was weary of the asking of them.
    â€œI wanted to see Momma,” I said, using the name I had called her when I was little.
    â€œI am afraid you are too late. Your dear mother has just passed away. I was coming to the