Woman of God Read online

  Air hissed through the vent overhead.

  I said, out loud, “Tell me. Are you God?”

  A little boy with big, blue eyes threw a fistful of candy over the seat back at me. His mother turned and apologized—“Scusa, signora”—and scolded the child.

  And, still, while I was seated in row 11, seat D, on an Air France flight to Paris, I was “flying” freely over adorable shops on a lane in the heart of the village. As I watched, a baby carriage rolled into the street, where it was struck by a car, full on, crushing the carriage under the wheels.

  I clapped my hands over my mouth and clamped down on a scream.

  I heard the words inside my head.

  This is yours. Take care of it.

  There was a sparrow in my now-outstretched hand. It was brown and black, with white streaks on its wings. It looked at me and blinked its sharp, knowing eyes. Then it flew away.

  I said, Come back.

  More birds joined the one that was mine. Hundreds of little birds, thousands, millions, all rising up from the trees and power lines, filling the air to the horizon and beyond, shutting out the sunlight until all I could see was a shimmering blackness.

  The vibration, like a voice inside my head, said, Can you care for your bird? Does it obey? Or does it have its own will?

  I spoke out loud, “Stop. No metaphors. Please.”

  An African village appeared in my mind. It might be Magwi, the closest town to our settlement. I had been there only once, when the driver who had taken me from Juba to Kind Hands had skirted the village center on the way to the camp.

  Now, I saw the whole town from my flight path overhead. I saw the individual tukuls and a church and low buildings built within the curl of an estuary. I saw umbrellas over the street market. I saw barefoot children herding thin cattle with sticks.

  I said, “Why are You showing me this?”

  You know.

  “I only know that I’ve lost my faith in You.”

  The “voice” resonated in my mind.

  I haven’t lost mine in you.

  Chapter 32

  A METALLIC squeal and warble called my attention to the public address system. A flight attendant announced the start of a movie and requested that passengers lower their shades.

  I lowered mine and tried to call up the now-broken connection to the presence in my mind. But the line was down. Had I imagined the voice, the birds, the close-up view of Magwi from above? Had I been dreaming?

  Or was I crazy?

  It was possible. Two months ago my brain had been deprived of oxygen for however long it had taken Sabeena to get me into that helicopter, find the appropriate needle, and shove it with surgical precision into my chest. I was technically dead for four minutes, maybe five.

  Oxygen deprivation can cause brain damage, but recovery is possible, even common. Top neurologists in Amsterdam had checked me out and declared my brain perfectly fine.

  Still, residual injury might cause hallucinations.

  Or possibly, because of this injury, a part of my brain that was normally closed off had become a two-way channel for communication with God.

  Was that possible?

  Was I delusional? Or was I hearing the Word of God?

  Either way, this “voice,” these visions, scared me a lot.

  I stared at the seat back in front of me. Lights flickered as a movie played on a couple hundred little screens throughout the cabin. Eventually, I got up from my seat and retrieved my bag from the overhead rack. I dug around until I found my iPad, and then I created a new page in my journal.

  I wrote, If I could ask God only one question, it would be the same question Aziza asked me not long ago. “Why must we suffer so?” This question has been addressed in biblical verses and theological writings and notably in the book of Job.

  But the answers seem hazy and theoretical on the page.

  In real life, I see suffering. And I see faith. And the second doesn’t cancel out the first. When I ask why, the answer comes back, “You can’t see from God’s point of view.”

  If today God was putting thoughts and words and images in my mind, He conveyed that He has faith in me. And He showed me a path.

  If I have no faith, how can I follow Him?

  If I follow Him, does it mean that I have faith?

  I thought about what I had written, and then I went to my email in-box and I typed:

  Dear Zach, You did nothing wrong. I’m a coward, and I’m sorry to have left without saying good-bye. I was afraid that if I saw you, I wouldn’t be able to go, and I must.

  I care about you very much, but I am a broken woman.

  All I can do is run.

  I won’t ever forget the wonderful times we spent together.

  Yours, with a sad heart,

  Brigid

  When the plane landed, I reread my email to Zach, and then I launched it.

  I got off the airplane with purpose. I stood in front of the arrivals-and-departures board and got my bearings. Then I crossed the airport and booked a flight to Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

  God called. I answered.

  Chapter 33

  BUT I couldn’t leave France just yet.

  There would be a two-hour wait in Charles de Gaulle Airport before my plane departed for Juba. And then there would be a change of planes and the next leg of my journey, for a total of twenty-six hours en route.

  I ate a croque monsieur at a fast-food brasserie. I had a beer. Then I had another one.

  I bought three new T-shirts in an airport shop, along with a pair of socks and a green rubber slicker. I washed much of my body in the sink in the ladies’ room and put on a new shirt, a pink one with the Eiffel Tower outlined in sequins. I purchased bags and bags of hard candies and some American newsmagazines. I found a seat at the gate and read for hours.

  The big stories were startling. There was a severe drought in California that threatened wildlife and agriculture. Sea level and pollution were up. Ice was cracking off the poles. Planes had crashed. There were terrorist attacks in several countries and a plague in Saudi Arabia. Nine people had been shot to death during Bible study in a church in South Carolina. There was another mass killing in South Sudan that tested my belief, not in God but in the human race.

  At two in the afternoon, I boarded the plane, and this flight was full. Again I had a window seat, and I didn’t wait for takeoff to fall asleep.

  I awoke to change planes in Dubai, and once we were aloft, I took a pill and slept again. I wasn’t in communication with God or anyone else, but while I slept, I was making plans.

  I arrived in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, at sundown. The sky was heavy with clouds, and there was a line of red at the horizon. I walked a half mile past the far end of the airport, to the bus stop, and I waited inside the shelter for the coach to Magwi.

  I was going there on faith, according to some kind of voice in my head that had suggested rather strongly that this was what I was meant to do.

  And I had my own reasons.

  I had to find out what had happened after I left the continent wrapped in bandages, going in and out of consciousness and having almost no awareness until I’d passed a month in a hospital in Amsterdam.

  What news I had, had come to me from Kind Hands. A paycheck had been wired, my health insurance had paid the tab, and in a brief email from Human Resources, I learned that my former colleagues, Drs. Wuster, Bailey, and Khalil, had each returned home, but KH wasn’t permitted to give out contact information.

  I was told that Jup Vander was missing and presumed dead. And there was no information on the whereabouts of a volunteer nurse by the name of Sabeena Gaol.

  As the rim of the earth burned red, five people and I waited for a bus in a lean-to shelter alongside Route A43. There was a tree across the road, two hobbled goats standing beneath it. The bus shed with the corrugated tin roof, the bone-thin animals, the nearly bare trees, and the brown dirt beneath them were more familiar to me now than Fenway
Park.

  Out on the highway, two cones of light bore down on us. The man sitting next to me stood up and pointed down the road, saying, “Miss. The bus. She comes.”

  Chapter 34

  THE BUS that rumbled and creaked and squealed to a stop looked as though it had been a veteran of many crashes. The side panels and hood were different colors. Windows were broken. The grille was gone. The tailpipe dragged. But there was a sign in the windshield that read God Is Good.

  Riding in one of these coaches was a test of faith all by itself. Juba Line was a serial killer. Buses collided with cars and carts, ran over pedestrians, lost control and flipped over in the rainy season, when the dirt roads turned into slippery clay and tires could no more get traction on mud than they could if the roads had been paved with ice.

  It was raining as I boarded the bus with my bags and went to the long bench seat in the rear. I shared my sweets with everyone but the chickens. I thought of the experience that had brought me back to Africa: the warmth of a presence inside my chest, the reverberation that was something like a voice in my head, and the images I had seen that I knew I hadn’t created by myself.

  I wondered again if I had slipped over the edge into psychosis, or if I was truly following a vision from God.

  Meanwhile, the rain poured down, and the bus slid along the road. After three hours of nauseating twists and sloppy turns, it eventually stopped at the side of Magwi’s main drag.

  As we passengers exited the bus, a hard, slanting rain beat on the rusted, multicolored chassis and the people who were running toward the bus shelter. The nearly toothless fellow in his twenties who had ridden next to me since the start approached me when I was out of the rain. He had told me that his name was Kwame, and now asked, “May I give you a ride, lady?”

  I thanked him very much, and, even though he was a stranger, I liked him. I got into the passenger side of his 1970s Dodge Charger, parked just beyond the shed.

  “Where are you going?” asked Kwame.

  “Is there a clinic here?” I asked him.

  “Yes, lady.”

  He gave me a towel from the backseat, and I thanked him again and dried my face.

  Kwame released the brake and revved his engine. We shot off the mark as the rain came down harder.

  Chapter 35

  THE RAIN sheeted down the wiperless car windows. I peered through the watery curtain and took in the shapes of the buildings along the darkened main street.

  The strip of road, the spindly trees, the silhouettes of the squat buildings, and the tall spike of the radio tower all felt as familiar to me as if I’d lived in Magwi for years. That both creeped me out and made me feel that I was supposed to be here.

  We cleared the small town and continued on down the road that was barely recognizable as a road. And I said to Kwame, “It’s right up there.”

  Kwame gave me a sidelong glance, and I read his expression. He knew quite well where the clinic was, but how did I know? Then something like recognition lit up in his eyes.

  That, I didn’t understand at all.

  He turned the car off the main road, onto a ribbon of muddy track. A few minutes later, he braked his junker outside a long wooden building with a sign reading MAGWI CLINIC under the peak of the roof. Tents were set up under the red acacia trees—a small village, I thought, of patients under care.

  A porch ran the length of the building and was furnished with white plastic chairs, some of them occupied by patients. Light glowed behind the glass, and I could hear the soft roar of a generator over the rain pattering on tarps, the car’s rusted body, and a peaked tin roof.

  I thanked Kwame for the ride, and I paid him in dollars and a packet of M&M’s. He was happy.

  “When are you going back to the airport?”

  I told him that I didn’t know, but for sure it wouldn’t be tonight.

  “I work at the post office, lady, if you need me.”

  I wanted to hug him, but that wasn’t the right thing to do. So I shook his hand, gathered my bags, pulled up the hood of my raincoat, and got out of the car. I waved as the old Dodge went slip-sliding away down the track to the road that divided the town.

  When the taillights were out of view, I felt a flash of panic. What the hell was I doing here when I could be in Paris, or Brugge, or Panama City, or Malibu—anywhere but this place? Oh, right. I’d had a vision of Magwi, and now I was here.

  I reached inside my raincoat pocket and felt for the rosary the cabdriver in Rome had given to me. It wasn’t in any of my pockets, and after a hasty search of my leather bag, I found that it wasn’t there, either. I’d lost the rosary somewhere.

  I turned back to face the clinic and saw that the people on the porch were staring at the dazed and dripping woman standing calf deep in the muddy water.

  A moment passed. And then a young woman got up from her chair and leaned over the porch railing.

  “Doctor?” she said.

  “Yes. I’m a doctor.”

  She clapped her hands together, smiled broadly, and said, “Welcome to this place. Come this way, Doctor.”

  She ran down the steps to meet me, led me up to the porch, and opened the door for me.

  I was in a corridor paneled with plywood and lined with people. A light flickered on the wall, and I saw a painted door at the far end. A teenage boy who was in the line pointed.

  “Doctor is there.”

  I said thank you and kept walking. If Sabeena had passed through Magwi, she might have stopped at this clinic. A doctor here might know where I could find her.

  If Sabeena was still alive.

  I knocked on the door, and the sound of my knuckles on wood suddenly brought reality home.

  I had been rash and probably crazy to travel for a day and a half to get to Magwi without any contacts or confirmation that I was on the right track.

  I had gone on faith, and I knew what would happen now.

  The door would open, and a doctor would say that he had never heard of Sabeena Gaol. Right after that, he would close the door in my face.

  I realized in that instant that I didn’t have a backup plan, and once that door opened, I had no plan at all.

  The door swung open, and inside the wedge of light, I saw a scowling face, a face I loved.

  She said to me, “Brigid? This can’t be you.”

  I reached out to embrace Sabeena, the woman who had saved my life. But I didn’t make it.

  I felt weightless and at the same time as heavy as rocks.

  My knees buckled, and I dropped to the floor.

  Chapter 36

  I WOKE up between clean sheets, looking over the footboard of a metal-frame bed.

  A candle burned on the bedside table, casting a dancing yellow light on the plywood walls and on the woman who was watching me from a chair by the window. She was wearing a white lab coat, and her braided hair was wrapped around her head like a halo.

  I remembered—or had I dreamed it? Sabeena caught me as I fainted and put me to bed. Had I actually found Sabeena exactly where I had looked for her? Was it really her? How else could this have happened except by some kind of miracle?

  I was nearly overwhelmed. I spoke in a whisper.

  “Sa-bee-na.”

  Ten feet away, Sabeena clasped her hands together and said, “Thank you, Jesus.”

  She came over and sat on the bed, and she stretched her arms out to me. I went into her hug and held her so tight. I no longer felt faint. I was jubilant. Oh, my God, Sabeena was here and alive. And I still hadn’t thanked her.

  “Thank you, Sabeena. Thank you for saving my life.”

  “My dear, of course, and you would have done exactly the same. My God, Brigid. I’ve missed you like crazy.”

  I prayed right there in her arms.

  “Dear Lord. Thank you for showing me the way to my dearest friend. Thank you for this amazing gift. Amen.”

  Sabeena said, “Amen,” and we rocked and cried for good long time, and then she rubbed my back and l
et me go, saying, “I had a feeling I was going to see you when I least expected it. But this, Brigid? I never thought you’d come right to my door.”

  “You just never know what I’m going to do next.”

  We had a good laugh, and then I said, “Lie down, Sabeena. Tell me what happened at Kind Hands.”

  She wiped her eyes with the heels of her palms, sighed deeply, and flipped around, and we shared the pillow.

  She said, “It’s an ugly story, Brigid. The day after you were shot, Zuberi came into the settlement with troops, big vehicles, and explosives. A lot of everything. They shot up the settlement. Burned down what would burn. I heard that Jup died.”

  “I heard the same.”

  “Most of the IDPs got out, but not all. I heard terrible stories, Brigid. Children and people who couldn’t run were just gunned down. The South Sudanese arrived at the last minute and fought a good fight. Zuberi retreated. Some of the survivors are here in Magwi. Some are in Yida or Jamam. Some are in camps in Uganda. So I’ve been told.”

  “How did you escape?”

  “On my two feet. When I came back from taking you to the airport, the action was just starting. My ride took off without me. I wanted to hide, but Wuster said, ‘Get out while you can.’ I started walking out. Many people did. I saw the smoke rising where the settlement had been and kept going for maybe two weeks. Then I got a ride to Magwi. I was needed. I stayed.”

  I wanted to ask about Jemilla and Aziza, but I thought she would tell me that she didn’t know where they were. Or that they were dead. I wasn’t ready to hear that.

  And then Sabeena rolled toward me so that we were lying face to face. She was excited.

  “Guess what, Brigid?”

  I said, “Give me a hint.”

  “I got married.”

  “No. You did not.”

  She smiled and nodded. Showed me her ring. I squealed. She squealed, too.