1.

 

I was feeling tired and humorless. I knew when I returned, my landlady would be angry. I had forgotten to take out the trash. The evening before I left, I was laughing too loudly into the night. I could not enjoy my trip. Each time the waves crashed against the side of the deck I could feel them pressing against my arteries. All the water looked like Robitussin. I coughed a wad of phlegm into my hand, rubbed it into the plastic of my folding chair.

I was highly afraid of flying. There was one transatlantic passenger ship stationed in New York– the RMS Queen Mary 2– but it docked in Southampton, United Kingdom, which would extend my train travel by several weeks, and include another more perilous boat ride down the Ivory Coast. I made arrangements with a cargo ship (cargo ship captains are highly sensitive and empathetic people, on the whole) to tag along to Senegal, where I could then make the final leg of my journey by car.

On my first night on board, I had asked the porter (who was only employed on this journey for my accompaniment) what cargo the ship was carrying. It was indeed full to the brim with two-tonne metal containers, and although I had inspected them myself, I found no labels or identification. The porter (fat, Hispanic, shittily dressed) brought the tip of his Newport to his lips. “Clothes.”

I later confirmed with the captain, with whom I shared a room: the ship was transporting waste clothing and unrecyclable textile material to Africa. I was quickly made paranoid about bed-bugs and got into the habit of regularly washing my sheets. The captain didn’t have much to do - the weather was temperate, the waves mild, the autopilot fully functional – he would watch as I folded laundry, faced away at his desk, engaged in a game of solitaire.

“So, you’re going to Africa, are you staying in Africa?” he would say. He was racist, obviously, but I wouldn’t get into it with him.

“No, I’m just meeting a girl.”

“Okay, okay,” he would reply, reshuffling his deck, talentless at the game. “Maybe you’ll like it there and stay.”

“If I was going somewhere cheap but modern– yeah. But the village? No.” Or if I could choose my own hours at work. For the week at sea, I had scheduled time off, since I had no assurance that Wifi would work consistently so far out in the ocean. But once I arrived on the mainland I would have to clock in at odd hours, the time difference severe. It wouldn’t be sustainable long term. Maybe if I had picked the Philippines, Thailand… maybe then it would be worth it. But I was happy that I had chosen a black girl, since I was black, and we got along well, and I didn’t have to worry if she was using me for my money, like American girls might.

From my cabin window I had a good view of the sunset. A fiery gate of hell. And then nothing. Total darkness. I didn’t want to cause too much fuss at night, since my roommate was a light sleeper and his well-rest was a factor in the safety of the entire crew, so instead of asking for a lamp to stay on as a nightlight, I’d open up my iPad and play games. I liked Raid Shadow Legends. If I was able to get a signal, I’d send a message to my sweetheart.

 

The boat isnt too bad. A little gross. Lol. Whateves.

 

She’d reply with sweet things. Emojis. Scriptures. It was nice. I knew she stayed up late to do it. I dreamed about things I wasn’t used to dreaming. I’d often wake up dehydrated and ill. Distinctly not sea-sickness. More of a flu, eyes red and watery, body hot and chilled. I kept this information from the captain, the porter. And when I didn’t have laundry to worry about, I sat on the deck, used the breeze to heal me, looked out into the inky purple Robitussin sea.

 

2.

 

The first thing I did when we docked into Dakar was find a barber. I wanted to look nice and clean and highly American. The Senegalese barber, who was thin and around my age, gave me a serviceable fade that made me look a little younger.

In Senegal, I imagined, the water would be brownish but fruitful. The climate would be hot. Maybe I’d find myself quickly accustomed to my ancestral homeland– the feeling of the air, the taste of the dirt. In school I had some friends from Africa. You could tell before they spoke. Their hair was always a little longer, their clothes a tad cleaner, and they were never allowed on sleepovers or field trips. None of this I envied. After my haircut I sat out by the pier for a bit and watched the fishermen haul nets of clams onto the shore. I didn’t eat clams. Food in the states was easier. I kept it simple as a bachelor and shopped for microwavable meals at Aldi. Hungry Man was regularly on sale. And when I had a date over– which was a relatively rare occasion at my age– I was good at cooking pasta dishes, chicken alfredo, vodka sauce, primavera.

It’ll be nice to have someone to cook for me, I thought, as I collected myself and made my way off the pier. Dakar was not at all dissimilar to New York. More like the boroughs. It reminded me of the environment of Flushing, Queens– lots of street vendors and dollar stores and markets and residential blocks mixed with recognizable McDonald’s and Duane Reades. In Flushing, by Roosevelt Ave, there were occasionally women leaned against doorways, in cheap polyester skirts and cropped t-shirts. I did not see similar signs of prostitution here in Dakar, but perhaps I simply did not know yet where to look.

The car I had arranged for was being held by a gentleman by the name of Youseff, a handsome light skinned twenty-something with his hair done in twists. My sweetheart had suggested his services, as he was a good fellow from the same village as her, a third-cousin even, and spent his time working in the city. Renting his car was a great deal on my end– Expedia estimated that a traditional rental would be around thirty USD a day– Youseff was charging me fifty flat for my two week tenure. I took a taxi to his apartment. It was plain and unremarkable besides some religious iconography: a crucifix, a portrait of the Madonna. There were a small minority of Christians in Senegal, my darling and her extended family being part.

“How was your flight?” Youseff said, his voice low and thick with Africanized French. I sat at the table and watched as he took a kitchen match to light the stove– almost instantly bringing to boil a big pot of what I could only imagine was a stew. My nose ran. It was humid.

“Voyage,” I corrected. “I came by boat.”

Youseff nodded, not understanding. “Ah. Maybe Maryanne should take a plane to America, and you can take a boat to America with the luggage.”

“We shall see.”

He presented me with a large bowl of the stew and I picked at it for the remaining hours before sundown, as Youseff explained the details of my journey ahead. It was a seven-hour drive from Dakar to Tambacounda, the region in which my sweetheart’s village was located. I would be wise to carry large canisters of gasoline with me, so that I did not have to stop, and although Senegal was a safe country, to be conscious of the possibilities of abandoned landmines in the previously war-torn Casamance region (which I would only encounter if I greatly diverted from my route).

“And be kind to my little cousin,” Youseff said, suddenly overcome with emotion. He wiped a teary eye with the edge of his shirt, a Washington Redskins jersey that could have very well been part of a textile waste shipment, and looked up to the ceiling, as if praying. “Maryanne is a precious girl to me. She is humble, virtuous, and gentle.” He laughed, looked back at me. “And she lights up the universe with her smile.”

“I completely accept that responsibility,” I replied. “I have the utmost respect for your women. Maryanne is someone I’ll cherish in this dirty, nasty, world.”

“I haven’t seen her since I came to the city to work. Two years,” Youseff said.

“Makes sense, it’s a long drive.”

I felt awkward as Youseff embraced me. When he pulled back, I sneezed into my palm. He handed me his car keys and a bundle of paper maps. And I was off.

 

3.

 

The GPS on my phone was unreliable. The maps Youseff had lent me were written in French. When I drove into Kaolack, a city nestled against the Saloum river, I was so disoriented that I nearly took the highway into Gambia, which would have spit me out into Casamance. It was nearing three in the morning, and I realized that perhaps my judgment was suffering from lack of rest. My eyes looked awfully bloodshot in the rearview mirror, and I had noticed a slight shake in my hands, indicating I may faint. I could not drive another five, six hours. I found refuge at a Hotel de Paris, which was outfitted with a pool that might soften the blow of my travel delay.

Now comfortable in my room (which was cleaner than I had expected based on the eighty-five USD price tag), I updated my sweetheart on my situation:

 

Got turned around. No big deal. Staying in a hotel and driving again tomorrow.

 

I tried to sleep but still felt as if I was at sea. Here, too, the world was terribly dark at night, despite the few city lights I could see flickering from my hotel room window. As I lay in bed I felt a rocking motion, the crashing of water, and braced myself by holding onto the bed sheets. I desperately needed an Imodium. I rang the front desk. The raspy concierge informed me that the rest of the staff had gone home for the night, and as my affliction was not an emergency, I would have to wait till morning for room service, which would be limited to hot tea, coffee, and a breakfast fruit bowl. I cursed him and hung up, writhing in agony.

Thankfully daybreak was near. At 6am a pretty little girl in a white housekeeping uniform dress came to my door, holding a kettle of coffee. She looked like my Maryanne– very young, very clean. Her hair was braided in tight cornrows against her scalp. She had bright eyes and no makeup. I tipped her well and asked her to sit with me for a while, since I was feeling so ill and lonesome and tired. When I asked, she gave me a puzzled, embarrassed look. The fact of the matter was that I was a handsome American, the prodigal black man, returned home, finally, with the wisdom and spoils of western ingenuity. She perched herself against the edge of my dresser like the little bird that she was.

“What’s your name, sir?” the maid asked.

“Quentin Brookes.” I deeply appreciated her usage of “sir,” a luxury of respect that was missing from The States.

“Where are you from, Mr. Brookes?” she asked.

“New York. Do you know New York?” I said. The maid clasped her hands together and smiled wildly.

“Oh! Yes, I know New York! My auntie lives in New York!”

“Why don’t you sit near me, instead of on that dresser?” I instructed, and she obliged. She smoothed out her dress and sat very carefully on the edge of my bed. I took a sip of my coffee. Dark black, but so sweet, burning sores in the purple of my lips.

I extended my time at the Hotel de Paris to fall into the bad habit of making love to the maid. And to recover and regain my strength, as my flu-ish bug was stubborn and I feared being on the road for too long with it. I told Maryanne that the car was having trouble, that I took it upon myself to have it serviced completely, and that I would hold Youseff blameless in the matter. Maryanne was trusting and gentle to me. She continued to send me scriptures, photos of the sunrise, stupid predictable poems.

The maid would slather herself in sunscreen before sitting out at the hotel pool with me. At first, she was self-conscious to be seen in my cabana, reasonably nervous about the rumors that might spread, or how her boss may react to her new ‘days off.’ The raspy concierge did indeed give us the evil eye whenever we walked through the lobby in our bathing suits. Her coworkers, though, the other young little maids, would giggle and wave– a playful jealousy that I could tell made my concubine very proud. When I wasn’t logged onto work, I would take her into the city and buy her whatever cheap dress excited her. I’d take her out to dinner and she’d sit on my lap.

It occurred to me that if Maryanne found out, she would be particularly heartbroken, even though our relationship had been so far entirely online, and she never had any assurances that I would stay faithful to her in America. But perhaps my sleeping with a Senegalese girl would be particularly humiliating. It was– now that I really thought about– a despicable act of gluttony. But love simply wasn’t so easy in The States. This was the part that Maryanne could never understand. The loneliness. The enormously high standards that western women held. What more could drive a man to travel half across the world than the love of women? The respect of women? To feel and hold and possess and own.

At any rate, the physical distance of Kaolack and Tambacounda– four hours by car– was reassuring that my secret would remain uncovered.

Three days into my stay at the Hotel De Paris, as my little maid slept on my chest in the African sunshine, my phone began to ring non-stop. Maryanne was obsessively calling. After a bit of procrastination (I really did not want to speak to Maryanne during this affair, my heart simply could not take it), I told the maid to go upstairs and wait in my hotel room. I took the call and was greeted by heaving tears. My first thought was that I had somehow been found out, that the concierge had tattled on me, and that my sweetheart was ready to cancel all of our future plans of love. This was not the case.

“Oh, Quentin, my baby,” she said, in a familiar voice that reminded me that I loved her. “The worst has happened. The sun shall rise no more.”

Youseff was dead. Pneumonia.

A hard worker in life, Youseff’s unlucky employer knocked on his apartment door when his absence was unexplained for two days in a row. The knock pushed the unlocked door open– unfortunately Youseff was discovered to be no more, face down on his couch. One could imagine the humidity.  It is a terrible thing to die alone, Maryanne said, that pretty broken English. I was worried that since I was so recently around him, that I had caught what he had.

“My best friend,” Maryanne said. “We were children together. I loved him.”

To be completely honest I was taken aback by Maryanne’s passion in her grief. I myself couldn’t even give the first name of any of my third cousins. If a second cousin died, maybe I’d recall those Thanksgiving sleepovers, a graduation photo, or a long-forgotten Facebook Messenger thread. But I suppose village life was different. I, of course, made the resolve to end my affair and go to Maryanne immediately. It was my duty as a man to comfort her. The little maid cried and cried as I packed. Something must have been lost in translation between us, and she threw herself to my feet; she looked up to me as if I was God.

 

4.

 

Such a long, long road. A very wide highway. Maryanne, your husband is here to love and protect you. He has travelled great distances to pluck you from the jungle, the desert. He has navigated the seas. He has traversed foreign cities and learned their customs. He will steal you and bring you home to Elmont, Long Island. I half fell asleep on the road.

Eventually I came to my exit, which quickly narrowed to a single-lane, then to a dirt road that stretched from the city of Tambacounda, into the hum of the savannah. The sun had risen and drenched the plains in pink Pepto-Bismol. It was many miles until I began to see the signs of village life. The errant cattle. The lone motorist. The straw thatched roofs. Miraculously, the GPS had regained functionality, but Youseff’s instructions were simple enough: turn right at the Mosque, follow the road twenty miles. I eventually reached a maize field, drove through it on a small pathway meant for motorcycles, and arrived: the village of my sweetheart, Maryanne’s home.

She was in all black, on her porch, fanning herself with a magazine. She looked even more tired than I did! Her pretty brown eyes were dulled and yellowed, and her straightened hair was frizzing at the roots. I got out of my car and outstretched my arms to her. Slowly, she rose, came to me, and buried her face on my shoulder.

“A lot of people are getting sick in the city,” she said. “It’s been on the radio all morning.”

“It’s a dirty city, that makes sense.” I replied. She looked up at me. I took the opportunity to kiss her. “I’ve been feeling a tad ill, but I’m better now. It’s good I was stuck in Kaolack.”

Her village wasn’t too primitive. It looked worse on face value– the huts, the water-well, the livestock. But the children were well fed and happy. And the women were all dressed nicely, in both western and traditional clothes. I met Maryanne’s mother. She was a few years older than me– her face was hard and angular. She barely spoke. Her bottom lip would curve, her eyes would narrow, but the most that would come out was a “d’accord,” “okay,” or “yes”.

We had no privacy in Maryanne’s hut. There was no love making. The home was shared by several siblings, the mother, of course– I was asked to sleep in my car, which in many ways was preferable since I could log onto work and run the heater during the night. The savannah was surprisingly cold when the sun disappeared against the horizon. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand why the nights were so dark here.

In the evenings we sat by the radio to listen to football (soccer) games. The little siblings, all brothers, took a liking to me and would sit on my knees and cling to my shoulders. They cheered and laughed while listening. Maryanne would sit away in the corner and work on something menial. She was solely in charge of mending the clothing, plucking the chickens, and washing the floors. Her grief, though, was too heavy. She’d get a bit of work done, wipe away a pregnant tear, and take a walk outside. When she returned, she would return with a sermon.

 

The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.

 

One day, when she was on her walk, I peeled off the children and went over to her bed. Under her pillow (I saw the edge of it sticking out from across the room, which led me to investigate the matter) was a faded photograph of Youseff. Maryanne’s mother clicked her tongue.

“She was close to her cousin?” I asked. Her mother clicked her tongue again.

“Yes, Quentin, yes.”

I tucked the photograph back under Maryanne’s pillow and resumed my spot by the radio. The soccer match came to an end and the news began. I was beginning to pick up a good deal of French. La peste… à Dakar… It seemed that they were dropping like flies in the city.

 

5.

 

Maryanne packed only one trunk. Her mother did not cry as she left, but her brothers ran after us for half a mile, cheering and laughing, throwing corn husks at the back of the car, and Maryanne smiled and waved at them, throwing kisses.

“Now that we’re alone, I feel like I can finally talk to you, Maryanne,” I said once the road widened and I could see the outline of Tambacounda in the distance. She nodded and kissed me on the cheek. It was her first sign of affection since I arrived.

“I’m excited to see your big house in New York, baby. I’m excited for our new life together.” She looked out the window. “You are my knight in shining armor, Prince Valiant.”

“I know.”

I decided to get her some new things from the city. I refilled my gas canisters once we reached Tambacounda proper and had Maryanne direct me to a store to find a good dress for a wedding. The shopkeeper wore a thick cotton mask and charged me two hundred USD for a lacy white gown.

We returned to the highway and Maryanne dozed off with her head pressed against the window. I had a nagging urge to circle the Hotel de Paris once we reached Kaolack. Tempt fate. I wouldn’t make contact– my parting words with the maid indicated that there were hard feelings– but maybe I could catch her outline in the window, or see the concierge sweep the front steps. Mishtah Brookes…  Why won’t you take me to New York, Mishtah Brookes? In a few hours Kaolack appeared around us. The afternoon sun beat down and the streets were distinctly quiet. I woke Maryanne and told her I needed to stop for directions. She settled back into sleep.

As I pulled into the parking lot of the Hotel De Paris, I noticed that the blinds were drawn and the pool was closed. It was a windy day and bits of trash swirled in the air, picked up dust and jettisoned into the desert. The concierge was where I had imagined him, sweeping pointlessly as the steps refilled with debris. I drove away without getting out.

 

6. (Epilogue)

 

The fishermen had gone from grey to green, and the shoreline was littered with refrigerated trucks. When we arrived to Dakar, Maryanne begged me to visit Youseff’s apartment, promising she wouldn’t be too long– that she would ensure that we didn’t miss our boat home. I had the same arrangements as I did on my arrival journey. The same boat captain, the same porter. I called him and asked him when was the absolute latest we could board. He sternly told me that I’d receive no special treatment. The ship would leave when it was scheduled. Furthermore, there was a serious possibility that all ships would be docked indefinitely if the mysterious Senegalese plague was confirmed.

Still, I could not deny Maryanne this last request here in her home country, even if I denied myself my visit to the little maid. We took empty streets to the empty apartment. Maryanne touched everything. The light switch, the couch, the utensils in the kitchen, the mat on the bathroom floor. She wrapped herself in his blankets. She took a pair of scissors and cut a square of fabric from his shirt. The Redskins jersey. I watched all of this quietly– sat at the little table where Youseff fed me just last week. I had nothing good to say so I chose to remain silent. When she had satisfied herself, let out a tearless wail from his bedroom, I led her downstairs and back to the car.

At the pier we watched stiff bodies float into the sea.

“I’m surprised they aren’t being burned,” I said. Maryanne felt afraid and took down to the cabin. Eventually, the horn blew, the engine engaged, and I followed her as well.