MUSTH
FAIR TO SAY, I was in a ribald state the summer before my fiftieth birthday. I had intended otherwise: a book deadline, a couple of credits toward a masterās in theology, more hours on my meditation cushion. Instead, I awoke in the early hours of Sunday, July 8, 2018, in the back of a diesel pickup somewhere west of Rock Springs, Wyoming, and turned to the woman sleeping beside meāin her midthirties, skin like alabaster, Iād thought it was only in Victorian novelsāand said to myself, āThis canāt go on.ā Or I said it aloud, and Till woke up, a light sleeper like I am.
āWhy?ā she asked. By the white glow of my headlamp, Till resembled the statue of Aphrodite at the Met in New Yorkāthe one from the imperial period in Gallery 162, you canāt miss it if youāve been. Aphrodite, the goddess of romantic passion and beauty and fertility, portrayed nude, as if surprised in the act of taking a bath. By now, though, the arms sheād used to cover her breasts, her pubis, those have long been broken off, not by her.
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āOh Till,ā I said; around about weād gone all night. āLet me count the ways.ā
Was it better to face out of the prevailing wind or into the rising sun?
In the end, weād compromised and had parked so that the back of the pickup faced southeast, canopy lid open toward a molten black sky, stars clear as Morse code, dits and dahs. The days of our lovemaking, the moon and Mars also had been coupled but preparing for opposition by monthās end. Knowing about it, youād think weād have burned up, all that heat and war and us, gliding between them. Right now, the moon was a waning crescent, not in its full power, still a good two hours from setting. It looked exhausted, dragging that bellicose little planet along with it all night.
āYou havenāt given us a proper chance,ā Till said. She started to cry.
āI know,ā I said. āIām sorry.ā I rubbed her shoulders, a runnerās physique, built for distance, endurance. āBut still, no.ā Iād tried not to rush into Till the way Iād rushed into all my previous relationships: like a tornado, lovers have told me, hair awry. But a cyclone doesnāt know it has a nameā or that itās hitting Florida. And Till was a severe weather advisory of her own: drugs, depression, also red ribbons of proud flesh up both her arms. Now, having rushed into each other anyway, I had such a sickening feeling. All I could think of was my own bed, alone. Till hadnāt been a
crimeāwe hadnātābut the timing was awful. So yes, the timing had been the sin.
āYouāre homophobic,ā Till wept.
āI know,ā I said. That is, Iām not. I am not afraid of women who have sex with other women, or men with other men, or any configurations thereof. Whatever consensual adult relationship: free to be in my book. But Iād confessed to Tillāin the way you do, sleepily, unguardedly, in the darkāthat I am afraid of something inside myself that is tied up with sex and gender, childbearing and rearing, marriage and divorce, but that refuses to be hogtied by any of it. Whatās the mot juste for that feral thing? Whatever it is, itās forever dragging me off-piste, very insistent.
Also, I wasnāt over a glassblower with whom Iād pledged foreverānot forever. One moment, living with him in a yurt weād put up together in the shadow of the Teton mountains: composting toilet, marigold petals, sourdough starter. The next moment, weād flipped like an axe-head; I hadnāt seen that coming. Weād been so inseparable, cloistered like a pair of monks; weād even dressed alike, someone had pointed out, lots of wool and linen. Then, such an unholy breakup: disruptive, the way sudden things are, also loud and public. Not at all in keeping with the Tibetan prayer flags, the twin hammocks, the shared wardrobe. Why thenāmy friend Megan had been right to askāhad I not built an alligator-filled moat between myself and Till, at least until the dust had settled?
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Instead, kicking up more dust.
Complete strangers will ask, āWait, are you . . . ?ā
Itās a small town with a long main street, the Intermountain West, and for nearly three decadesāsince my midtwentiesā Iāve lived in a dozen places in the two valleys on either side of the Teton mountains, both called Teton Valley, one in Wyoming, one in Idaho. Residents refer to the whole place as Wydaho, home to the annual Federal Reserve meeting, realtors, lawyers, climbers, ski bums, hunters, knee surgeons, teachers, and people like Till and me. Also, my three children spaced out over more than a dozen yearsāSarah, born in Zimbabwe; four years later, Fuller in Wyoming; eight years after that, Cecily, also Wyoming, same hospital. Same herds of elk in the snowy meadow outside the window, warm scents of salt, musk, and crushed vegetation.
āAll the same father?ā people have asked, staring at my children as if they didnāt add up. Once, at the shared picnic table between the zebra and emu exhibits at the Idaho Falls Zoo, a mother of many had asked, flicking her finger between my kids, āWas that planned?ā Iād pitied her, her big hair, her acrylic nails, her five under seven. For me, everything had been planned; certainty had been an entitlement. You could take that to the bankāor from the bankāback and forth.
Iād still worried about the state of the world, though, and Iād advocated for causes Iād believed in. But Iād never thought life would serve me up something that could stop me dead. Iād assumed that Iād always have agency and options.
I was never going to need the loving arms of an Idaho Falls mom of many.
Life was never going to have me in such a noose.
Iād loved napping on the queen-size bed in the main bedroom with the kids after lunch on hot summer afternoons, books tented over our faces. Then projectsāart supplies and newspaper and brushes spread all over the dining room table, classical music. Sergei Prokofievās Peter and the Wolf, of course, also Benjamin Brittenās The Young Personās Guide to the Orchestra. Then a cup of tea and a brisk walk with the dogs and often also the horsesārain or shine. After their fourth birthdays and until they could outwalk me, Iād expected my children to be able to walk their age in milesānot daily, but when neededāat roughly my pace, no whining, no stopping every two seconds for a snack or water.
When you eventually read your Jane Austen, Iād admonished them, youāll see. Even a Regency-era heroineāalbeit Elizabeth Bennet, so the feisty oneāthought nothing of walking three miles cross-country on an empty stomach just to visit her sickly sister. You can read for yourselvesāpeople were forever catching colds and dying and putting their lives on the line for love because things were as mentally ill back then as they are now. The kids and I would put our hands to our foreheads, like heroines, and say, āIt wonāt rain!ā and plunge out into the world, whatever the weather. āHold on Jane!ā weād cry to our imaginary ailing sister, āIām bringing broth!ā
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Iād taught them the art of storytelling then on our daily walks along river and creek bottoms, meandering through aspen groves or up and over the little forest pass south of our houseāannouncing ourselves to wildlife, āHere moose! Moosie! Moose-moose-moose!ā And all of us stopping now and again to inspect and fortify our many fairy houses and goblin hovels along the wayāhalf a dozen on each of our favorite trails, hours of absorbed upkeep. Me finding a moss-covered log in the meantime and reading half a short novel.
Iād had zero tolerance for sulking, and itād been understood that whatever we were doing, the children were expected to participate in that activity enthusiastically. Enthusiasm, from the Greek entheos: possessed by gods, in gods, gods within, like that, weād played with words, and in words. Iād told them life is too short for a bored child or a boring sentence. And Iād told them there are no bad words but rather only bad ways to use good words. Also, phone manners, weād practiced those on our walks. āHello, this is Fuller, to whom would you like to speak?ā That had been our son age five, future congressman of the egalitarian Utopia toward which we seemed inevitably to be headed.
We were approached in airports, restaurants, after church: āWhat a beautiful family you have.ā
āThank you,ā Charlie and I would always say. Charlie, eleven years my senior, handsome in a long-suffering way: Baron von Trapp getting us safely over the Alps. We were
very theatrical, the kids and I; weād been able to perform musicals or play charades for hours, stuck in a bus depot, or in a train station, or in a humid departure lounge on one of Charlieās expensive budget holidays, mostly around Central America and Mexico. Forced Family Fun, weād called these adventures. Count Your Spots, a game for long car rides along winding coastal roads: carsick children, prickly heat, bedbugs. Backpacks filled to bursting with board games, art supplies, crafts, calamine lotion, Imodium.
Meantime, Charlie and I, both of us sleeper cells within the marriage, not on the same side, it turned out. They leave it so vague in the Anglican confessional, the authority under which weād been cojoined in the horsesā paddock on my familyās farm in Zambia, 1992: āWe have left undone those things which we ought to have done; / And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; / And there is no health in us.ā Up at 4:30 to write before breakfast, kids, a string of menial part-time jobs, ten novelsāall rejected. Finally, believing itād never be published, Iād written a memoir, mostly a love letter to my wild childhood starring my wild mother. My mother had hated it; my father and sister had refused to read it, hating it on principle. Charlie had resented its success; my dreams at the expense of his, heād said. It hadnāt been my intention to infuriate my family, alienate my spouse. Iād thought Iād written a flattering, funny, lighthearted take on my childhood. But critics and my immediate family agreed: my brand of honesty was brutal. Why could
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I not have been more like Elspeth Huxley? Sheād written very nice books about growing up with her family in Kenya: flame trees, mottled lizards, sepia. Iād felt wounded, misunderstood; so, too, had my family. But a writer worth her salt is both the pointer and therefore also the disappointer. In the service of truth, a writer must court eviction from her tribeāand from any tribe that would claim her.
Charlie had withdrawn; Iād wandered.
The Bo Chi Minh Trail, my longtime editor at National Geographic had called it. Bo, because itās my childhood nickname, short for Bobo, slang for baboon. And the rest of it, because obviously. By the end of the marriage, I had been frantic. A bluebottle trying to get out of a jam jarādrinking, riding alone as fast as I could, just my mare, Sunday, and I, often until after dark. Also, dalliances. My heart had rarely been in it, these extracurricular flings, certainly not my soul. But having started down that road, I could neither see the end of it nor how to turn back, this very public business with Till, for example. āDid you really just say āmot justeā?ā Till said, sitting up and knocking over our lamp, plunging us into darkness.
āFerfucksake, Till.ā
āSorry.ā
The enteric nervous system, thatās the gut brain.
The gut brain canāt measure the diameter of a circle or write a book or do your taxes, but it knows everything else about everything else. The gut brain saw Till coming long
before I did. She was my own funhouse reflection walking toward me. How could she be otherwise? Till, simultaneously flighty and aggressive: Bambi with rabies. Sheād studied my work in college, the early memoirs. She could quote whole passages of my lifeāas written by meāback to me. I felt both studied and misunderstood. āNo way,ā sheād said, having made an allusion Iād not understood. āYouāve really never watched Gilliganās Island ? Not even once? Not even by accident? Itās like you were raised under a rock.ā
Then weād talked about that and about how childhood casts a perspective on everything else that happens in your life, probably until you die, unless youāre like the Californian New Age guru Byron Katie. She awoke, fully enlightened, at the age of forty-four, on the floor of a halfway house in Los Angeles in February 1986, a cockroach crawling across her foot. Itād been nothing but bliss for her ever since. Iād liked that about being with a woman, the more interesting and varied pillow talk. Also, taking it in turns to read poetry in the morning before turning on Wyoming Public Radio, KUWJ 90.3 on the dial. My children had been weaned, bathed, and ferried around to the voices of Nina Totenberg, Audie Cornish, Ira Glass.
So different from my childhood, theirs.
Iād been raised in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, in the 1970s and 80s; no one was ever calling my name. I was self-reliant, but we werenāt allowed to be very self-preserving. āI celebrate
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myself,ā the American Walt Whitman wrote in his late edition of that famous poem, āand sing myself.ā That had really struck me when Iād finally read it, in my early twenties by then. Imagine believing in a self, any self, yourself that much. Not us. Weād had none of Whitmanās adoration of self-reflection and frank curiosity. It hadnāt been in our national characterāor in the national interestāto ponder what it was to be. We were all Rhodesians. Weād sung about that in one rousing voice.
One rousing settler voice I should say, even when weād spoken Shona or Ndebeleāand especially when weād spoken Chilapalapa weād whitewashed everything: God, language, the bottom of trees, rocks, police stations. Pamwe chete; together only, we said. Wafa wafa, wasara wasara; you die you die, you live you remain, we said, very severe, very severed. For my part, Iād been a keen Rhodesian as a childāa quick learner, an enthusiastic if confused little racist. White, dependent, brainwashed from fetalhoodā there was, as far as I could tell, no otherwise.
But Iād also been observant, sensitive, bright, and curious, a white settler minority child raised in a Black indigenous majority land. I hadnāt noticed the inhumanity of war or the wrongness of racism or the insanity of both any more than Iād have noticed inclement weather had I been born in a hurricane, but I did notice that the world seemed bent on tricking the goodness out of everyone. And Iād been unable to help blurting it out: the inconsistencies, the outright lies,
our hypocrisy. Iād named names. āThereās always one little traitor, usually a child,ā my mother would sayāsheād level her gaze at me. She also is not subtle.
āLoose lips sink ships,ā sheād say, landlocked as we were. Iād been unable, almost from the start, to adhere to the settler virtues of sweeping things under rugs, of being seen but not heard, and of ramming downāand screwing upā my feelings. I had known my place, however, in the rigid Rhodesian hierarchy: roughly on par with a puppy-mill poodle, a bit inbred, crooked teeth, but at least you can teach it to hunt, not like a Pekingese. An English alcoholic aunt of my fatherāsāmost of his aunts were alcoholic, as was his mother and her twin, but the way they drank, you canāt say it enoughāhad kept a brace of Pekingese on the dining room table and a dule of doves in the bedroom. It was normal for people in our circles to prefer their animals over their children and to die youngāof gin, guns, and other accidents of the soul.
Certainly no one we knew outlived their hips or knees; weād been raised in the expectation of short, colorful lives. Kids from the rural districts, my sister Vanessa and I, had been sent off to boarding schools the year we turned eight. Our dormitories were old army barracks, steaming in the summer, freezing in the winter. Our matrons were widows, spinsters, usually mid- to late-stage alcoholic, mustachioed. Theyād patrolled the halls, punished us for whispering after lights out, and dosed us regularly with anthelmintics for
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intestinal parasites. Other than those first few weeksāwhile it had been dawning on my seven-year-old self that Iād be incarcerated like this for most of the next thirteen yearsā Iād loved it all: the camaraderie, the carbolic soap, everything extreme.
We rural kids had run in packs, certain of our farmbred superiority, tougher than townies.
Over our heads, Alouette gunships flew Rhodesian special forces on raids into Mozambique. āOur men,ā weād called them; boys, really, some were still growing. Theyād been the older brothers and cousins of kids Vanessa and I were at school with; weād seen them sometimes on leave. Theyād had pimples up close, sunburns; the boys vowed to be them, the girls vowed to marry them. Thatās whoād been jumping out of helicopters. It had all been so familial, it touched everyone; the newest baby was born already kissed with our conflict. No one comes away from a war with their innocence intact. What to do in the event of excessive bleeding?
On Tuesday afternoons, there were junior first aid classes run by the Rhodesian Red Cross. Iād signed up right away; we were all in this thing together. What about bone fragments? What if someone is unconscious but still breathing? A couple of times liberation forces from across the border had launched mortar attacks; no one had gotten any sleep then, crammed under mattresses praying out loud for our soldiers to prevail against them. āAh Father, who art in heaven,ā weād chanted. Thatād shaped me, too, I can see
now. All the violence, and all the God, and all the rush of being alive, staying alive; everyone armed to the teethāall the settlers, that is.
Meantime, not in the highveld and the tree-lined suburbs but in the lowveld and the borderland rural districts, settler kids had been expected to be able to fire over their parentsā dead or dying bodies, should the occasion have arisen. During target practice, my mother had sung, āOlĆ©, I am a banditā and had emptied half an Uzi magazine into the treetops. Sheād been an eager but terrible shot. Also, deadly serious. By the time I was five, all the settler-owned farms above ours, those abutting the Mozambique border, had been taken out in attacks by the liberation forcesāgooks, weād called them, terrs, spooks. We were jumpy and armed but also casually violent and callous, as you must become in warāor die.
Curtains, toast, scribbled, snuffed, slotted, donnered; weād had a hundred words for murder. Children grow toward the light and away from the shade, mostly. Itās not personal; itās just the place you land. The more a child is blocked from the light, the more crooked sheāll grow in her determination to reach it. Iād landed squarely in the impenetrably dark umbra cast not only by civil war but also by the death of an older brother from meningitis nine months and twenty days before I was born. The happiest day of my motherās life had been his delivery, sheād told me afterward; the worst was when heād died, one of them. One of the other worst
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days of my motherās life had been when my toddler sister drowned the year I turned nine.
January 1978: Olivia floating face down in a neighborās duck pond, rainy season. Sheād been put under my watch, and Iād wandered off, distracted. The Red Cross course Iād taken at school wasnāt joking: dead is dead. You could feel it. I could, her lips so blue, so irreversible. The pain of her deathāthe awful truth dawning and dawning until I was staring into the full sun of itāshocked me into a state of hyperwatchfulness, the birth of my inner stenographer: a nonstop tickertape, this personās movements, that personās absence, exits, entrances. Afterward, on the weekly hairwashing nights at school, Iād lain underwater, trying to atone. Also, to assuage the terrible pain; it was like I was being stung to death by wasps.
One wasp at a time, but soon the whole vespiary in my head.
Then, like Carl Jung said, āUntil you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.ā My not telling anyone about that whole vespiary in my head wasnāt me being resilient, or stoic, or even me sticking to the script of silence, it was me coping, but the stinging was still always there, an agony so terrible you imagine it should kill you, except that it didnāt. Dumb, guilt-sharpened pain sat with me and inside me, until one hot morning, back on our farm for the Easter holidays, Iād been crushed by my horseāa proud-cut bush pony called
Burma Boyāvery deliberately itād seemed to me and after that Iād just been in pain.
A sea of pain, in which I was swimming, everywhere I turned, more pain lapping. I hadnāt been grateful when it came, but Iād been relieved. Iād been expecting something of the sort, penance. Also, the horse was a homicidal creature and it hadnāt been the first time heād peeled me off, bucked me off, scraped me off. But I thought for sure heād killed me this time. Heād never, having dumped me, thundered back to finish me off, a sort of solo stampede up and down my spine. Iād been able to feel my lungs emptying of air and failing to fill up again. Thereād been also lots of dust, blunt heavy hooves, and the sound of him grunting as heād delivered the blows.
Breath was life; Iād wanted it.
Iād made one last high-pitched plea for air, like a winded cicada, then waited for death.
Only then had the horse given up and wandered off to graze.
āNo, no, no, Bobo. You want something with a bit of spunk,ā my mother had reassured me when weād bought him two years earlier. The horse had savaged me when Iād attempted to groom him and had lain down in the dirt when encouraged to trot; heād bolted, bucked, bit, and kicked. āThree hundred Rhodesian dollars, that was a lot of money back then,ā Mum said decades later; she rarely forgets the cost of anything. After the accident, Iād been driven to
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hospital from the farm in the back seat of our old Peugeot station wagon; minesweeper, army escort. By that stage in the war, there were curfews from dawn to dusk; the movement of all Black people was severely restricted and no white settlers from our valley could travel into town without military escort, too many landmines and ambushes.
The Rhodesian army officer in charge of the convoy had come to the window, Euan Kay; some names remain seared into my brain even now, decades on. Anyone kind, or very unkind, I never forget. āJislaaik, my laaitie,ā Euanād said. āLook at all this hunna-hunna just for you.ā Heād given me a wink, āYou must be quite special, hey,ā then heād banged on the roof, āOkay, Tim,ā and off weād lurched. Dad at the wheel chain-smoking, loaded Browning 9mm between his legs. Mum, with her Uzi submachine gun sticking out the passenger window, checking her lipstick in the rearview mirror. At each bump and corner, Iād screamed. āAt least her lungs are working again,ā Dad had said.
The Umtali Hospital was beautiful: white stucco over red brick, tiled rooves, Dutch facades, sweeping verandas, someoneās sumptuous idea of a place to while away a bout of malaria. āHow can you bring me a riding accident in the middle of a war?ā The orthopedic surgeon had been furious with my mother. My skull had a hoof-size divot kicked into it, a couple of my young ribs were bent, but it was my spine that had really inspired Dr. StandishWhiteās ire. āSheās too young to be this smashed up,ā heād
