from home, her life completely changed.
“You don’t have to tell me what happened,” her Aunt Sophie had said. “But from now on, you’re going to stop running away. You know that song they sing on Sesame Street? ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’? Well, honey, it’s not easy being black, either. You have two choices. You can keep running and hiding and blaming the world for your problems, or you can stand up for yourself and decide to be somebody important.”
“How do I do that?”
“By knowing that you’re important. First, you get an image in your mind of who you want to be, child, and what you want to be. And then you go to work, becoming that person.”
I’m not going to have his baby, Kat decided. “I want an abortion.”
It was arranged quietly, during a weekend, and it was performed by a midwife who was a friend of Kat’s aunt. When it was over, Kat thought fiercely, I’m never going to let a man touch me again. Never!
Minneapolis was a fairyland for Kat. Within a few blocks of almost every home were lakes and streams and rivers. And there were over eight thousand acres of landscaped parks. She went sailing on the city lakes and took boat rides on the Mississippi.
She visited the Great Zoo with Aunt Sophie and spent Sundays at the Valleyfair Amusement Park. She went on the hay rides at Cedar Creek Farm, and watched knights in armor jousting at the Shakopee Renaissance Festival.
Aunt Sophie watched Kat and thought, The girl has never had a childhood.
Kat was learning to enjoy herself, but Aunt Sophie sensed that deep inside her niece was a place that no one could reach, a barrier she had set up to keep her from being hurt again.
She made friends at school. But never with boys. Her girlfriends were all dating, but Kat was a loner, and too proud to tell anyone why. She looked up to her aunt, whom she loved very much.
Kat had taken little interest in school, or in reading books, but Aunt Sophie changed all that. Her home was filled with books, and Sophie’s excitement about them was contagious.
“There are wonderful worlds in there,” she told the young girl. “Read, and you’ll learn where you came from and where you’re going. I’ve got a feeling that you’re going to be famous one day, baby. But you have to get an education first. This is America. You can become anybody you want to be. You may be black and poor, but so were some of our congresswomen, and movie stars, and scientists, and sports legends. One day we’re going to have a black president. You can be anything you want to be. It’s up to you.”
It was the beginning.
Kat became the top student in her class. She was an avid reader. In the school library one day, she happened to pick up a copy of Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith, and she was fascinated by the story of the dedicated young doctor. She read Agnes Cooper’s Promises to Keep, and Woman Surgeon by Dr. Else Roe, and it opened up a whole new world for Kat. She discovered that there were people on this earth who devoted themselves to helping others, to saving lives. When Kat came home from school one day, she said to Aunt Sophie, “I’m going to be a doctor. A famous one.”
On Monday morning, three of Paige’s patients’ charts were missing, and Paige was blamed.
On Wednesday, Paige was awakened at 4:00 A.M. in the on-call room. Sleepily, she picked up the telephone. “Dr. Taylor.”
Silence.
“Hello … hello.”
She could hear breathing at the other end of the line. And then there was a click.
Paige lay awake for the rest of the night.
In the morning, Paige said to Kat, “I’m either becoming paranoid or someone hates me.” She told Kat what had happened.
“Patients sometimes get grudges against doctors,” Kat said. “Can you think of anyone who …?”
Paige sighed. “Dozens.”
“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”
Paige wished that she could believe it.
In the late summer, the magic telegram arrived. It was waiting for Paige when she returned to the apartment late at night. It read: “Arriving San Francisco noon Sunday. Can’t wait to see you. Love, Alfred.”
He was finally on his way back to her! Paige read the telegram again and again, her excitement growing each time. Alfred! His name conjured up a tumbling kaleidoscope of exciting memories …
Paige and Alfred had grown up together. Their fathers were part of a medical cadre of WHO that traveled to Third World countries, fighting exotic and virulent diseases. Paige and her mother accompanied Dr. Taylor, who headed the team.
Paige and Alfred had had a fantasy childhood. In India, Paige learned to speak Hindi. At the age of two, she knew that the name for the bamboo hut they lived in was basha. Her father was gorasahib, a white man, and she was nani, a little sister. They addressed Paige’s father as abadhan, the leader, or baba, father.
When Paige’s parents were not around, she drank bhanga, an intoxicating drink made with hashish leaves, and ate chapati with ghi.
And then they were on their way to Africa. Off to another adventure!
Paige and Alfred became used to swimming and bathing in rivers that had crocodiles and hippopotamuses. Their pets were baby zebras and cheetahs and snakes. They grew up in windowless round huts made of wattle and daub, with packed dirt floors and conical thatched roofs. Someday, Paige vowed to herself, I’m going to live in a real house, a beautiful cottage with a green lawn and a white picket fence.
To the doctors and nurses, it was a difficult, frustrating life. But to the two children, it was a constant adventure, living in the land of lions, giraffes, and elephants. They went to primitive cinder-block school-houses, and when none was available, they had tutors.
Paige was a bright child, and her mind was a sponge, absorbing everything. Alfred adored her.
“I’m going to marry you one day, Paige,” he said when she was twelve, he fourteen.
“I’m going to marry you, too, Alfred.”
They were two serious children, determined to spend the rest of their lives together.
The doctors from WHO were selfless, dedicated men and women who devoted their lives to their work. They often worked under nearly impossible circumstances. In Africa, they had to compete with wogesha—the native medical practitioners whose primitive remedies were passed on from father to son, and often had deadly effects. The Masai’s traditional remedy for flesh wounds was olkilorite, a mixture of cattle blood, raw meat, and essence of a mysterious root.
The Kikuyu remedy for smallpox was to have children drive out the sickness with sticks.
