Facing the Sky

I woke up exhausted, unable to sleep with images of the five children's hopeless faces floating in my mind. There was no definitive plan beyond taking them; there was the unknown of how everyone would react, us, them, their father. I looked out the vehicle again nervous, but content and excited in doing right.

We weaved between the green walls of sugar cane beneath the grey clouds hanging near the land, tiny droplets pelting the car windows. Sitting in the front Aunt Jennifer, our impending silent force; the father’s children feared her; she berated him at his wife’s funeral for not buying the customary burial linen; he complained in front of the entire family of its cost. She said she was going to beat him and so it was bought.

“Are we going to tell him that we are taking the children?” I asked her.

“No. He’ll figure it out when they don’t come back.”

Crossing his plot, I asked her if she had been there before. Yes, she had, matter-of-factly, walking casually; purposeful, but at ease, as if every day she risked confrontation with abusive men neglecting their children.

Agnes ran up to her jah jah, hugging her fiercely then me. The children weren’t ready despite us telling them we would be there two hours earlier. I walked around; I didn’t see the little one. I went into the house.

I entered a dark room not ten by ten feet with a narrow wooden bench against the mud and thatch wall resting on their dirt floor. There were two doorways without doors to either side. I entered the even darker and smaller room to the left; Rachel lay on a torn woven mat with sheets of dirty clothes.

She slowly got up when she saw me and Agnes came in to get her ready. The children bathed each other and dressed, quickly, but not efficiently, like children imposed with self care. They moved with a hushed frenzy; they were told we were just going to hospital, but I think they sensed something different.

After lunch, we took them to the local government hospital. We entered a large open room filled with rows of benches, partially divided with a walled operating room in the middle. There were a series of doors leading to separate treatment rooms flanking the side walls. The doctor that Stephen told us to see was not available, so we stuck our head into the office of the only doctor on the premise. He gave Ester a hard time.

“You have come too late. People come in the morning. You come back tomorrow.”

Ester tried to stand her ground, but she appeared stuck. I was just outside the doorway peering in then took a few steps towards him and asked, “What are your hours?”

“Eight to four.” I looked at my watch then gave him a dirty look.

“It’s three.”

Flustered he threw his hands in the air. “Okay, you go wait.”

There wasn’t even anyone else there waiting. I made a face at Ester.

“These doctors here. They go to school, but they don’t have the heart,” she said moving her hand towards her chest. “He probably wants to go to his own clinic.” (Government doctors usually have their own clinics and pharmacies where they make most of their money by referring clinic patients to their private practice and stealing clinic drugs to resell in their pharmacies.)

After waiting briefly the doctor that we had come to see arrived. He wrote prescriptions for the worms, coughs and rashes, an x-ray referral for Richard and two HIV tests for the youngest, Sylvia and Rachel. Richard waited in the back for the x-ray and we took the others for the HIV tests. Ester and I masked nervousness.

I had prepared myself for Rachel to be positive. She was the youngest, only four, and her mother had just died of the disease. And she was so sick, the rash, the cough, tired; it seemed inevitable.

Rachel’s finger was pricked first. She cried briefly. Her older sister Sylvia, however, was petrified. She had been ever since she learned we were going to the hospital. She feared the needle, and began tearing as she watched the thin sharp plastic enter Rachel’s flesh. Sylvia squirmed away as Ester tried to hold her and the nurse attempted to steady her hand. Finally, blood splattered onto the slide.

We were ushered back into the main waiting room and sat in silence. Ester and I looking at the kids who were slowly experiencing joy after hours parted from their father and misery; little Rachel bouncing from bench to bench, Beatrice breaking into gentle smiles; Sylvia was still tense, and I think Agnes knew why we were waiting; she sat with butterflies like me and Ester.

After about fifteen minutes, the staff motioned us towards them from behind the counter; the results were ready. The man spoke to Ester in Lugandan for several moments. I didn’t know what they were saying, but suddenly Ester flashed this face.

“They were negative?!” I asked excitedly.

“Yes, both of them!” Ester exclaimed with tears in her eyes.

“I can’t believe it,” I said also almost crying.

“Yeah, I am really, really happy. I thought Rachel was positive.”

“Me too,” I confessed.

We waited on the benches for another hour and a half; the x-ray technician was in a meeting. Little Rachel kept asking for her mama.

“I want to see her. I know she’s here,” she whined to Agnes in Lugandan, fidgeting on her lap; too young to understand that mama was never coming back from the hospital the girl saw her in just a few weeks before.

We watched the sick carted in by relatives off the back of boda bodas, African versions of EMTs and ambulances. A girl of about twelve was carried in unconscious with blood gushing from her head already staining her pale chiffon dress. Her body disappeared behind the door of the operating room; the kids freely entered to look, curious. The staff slowly emerged from some of the side doors surrounding us entering the operating room and leaving again, no urgency. I motioned the children back towards me. The nurses didn’t seem to mind their presence, or that of their patient’s. After going into the room for a few moments, one of the nurses reappeared speaking in Lugandan. Ester glared the back of her head as she walked past.

“What did she say?” I asked, not understanding why the woman wasn’t assisting.

“She said there waz too much blood.”

Tired of waiting for the elusive technician, we finally left. With the children at home, I went to town for the medication and to buy mattresses and blankets for the kids; their new home was now a tiny room, maybe a dozen feet square, but with a real roof and a concrete floor, about a half a mile from Stephen and Margaret’s house.

The children bathed in our bathroom, soothed habo jelly on their bodies, reemerging clean and shiny, almost recognizable except for their same dirty, torn clothes. I fumbled through my drawer and closet for shirts and pants that might fit. Agnes put on a pair of pink pants and magenta t-shirt, I told her she looked better in it than me, I don’t know if she understood exactly, but she smiled shyly.

After dinner, Ester walked them to their home. The house was suddenly quiet without the kids. There was still lots to do: Richard’s x-ray, enrolling the kids in school, buying them uniforms, school shoes and school supplies, and flip flops, clothes, underwear, basins, plates, utensils, cups, utensils, thermos, and food. I was exhausted from the rolling emotions and constant stress, but eagerly anticipating the coming days, hopeful about their growing happiness, education, health and future.