Why
I watch the girl, her hair cropped neatly against her scalp, sitting on a stool in the front yard and petting Cooper while she waits for her mother, our cook, Rose. She is the first Malawian child I’ve met who isn’t afraid of our dog, and I guess her to be about 8 years old. When Rose let slip last week that her youngest daughter was named Why, I couldn’t resist asking her to bring the child over so I could see what she looks like. All six of the girl’s older siblings, it turns out, have boring Christian names.
The introduction to Why was embarrassing—she curtsied with one knee on the ground and stayed there until I told her to get up—and there is nothing in her demeanor, as I watch her pet the dog, that explains her name.
I go into the kitchen to find Rose.
“Why Why?” I ask her, then suddenly realize she might think I’m stuttering. “I mean, how did you choose your daughter’s name?”
“She wasn’t planned,” Rose explains, looking down at the floor as she always does when she addresses me. “We took precautions.” She pronounces the last word slowly, a term clearly reserved for this one topic—the story of why Why.
“We followed the nurse’s advice, but I became pregnant anyway. That’s why my husband named her Why.”
Later, I watch through the window as Rose leaves with Why, the smell of her chicken-and-rice dish simmering on the stove. Cooper follows the girl to the front gate, wagging his tail as if he wants to leave with her. For the rest of the day I carry around an image of Why petting the dog, along with the sound of her name, of my question, echoing in my head: Why Why? I wonder if her name is spelled with or without a question mark. At first, I’m eager for Philip to come home so I can tell him about her curious name, but as I mull over the story behind it, the randomness and injustice of it all, I decide not to share it with him after all.
Instead, I open my notebook. Beneath Address, Square, Tonic, Spoon, Express, Surprise, Nobody, and Somebody, I add: Why. Then I reread the list of names, notice how crooked some of the letters are, and decide to rewrite the whole list on a fresh sheet of paper, keeping the letters contained in symmetrically printed lines.
Until recently, I used to break up my days by visiting Philip at his office at noon, bringing him his lunch in a colorful basket I found at the market soon after we moved here. He always greeted me with a kiss and talked to me while he ate, but eventually he had less and less time to spend with me when I delivered his lunches. He explained they were short-staffed at his office, but whatever the reason, he also started working later in the evenings. If I didn’t know him as well as I do, I’d suspect an affair. But it’s not lost on me that his busyness started right after we returned from our home leave three months ago.
A few weeks ago in October, when the hot season had just begun, I waited for him in the lobby for a good 10 minutes. Finally, feeling restless, I stepped into the heat, venturing out of the compound just beyond the security checkpoint. Across the street, a young woman, her head scarf and dress a drab shade of brown, stood talking in Chichewa to one of the local staff with an embassy badge hanging from a cord around his neck. She held a basket, a replica of my own, filled with little knit booties and caps for babies in very un-African shades of pastel pink and blue and yellow. Even as part of me wanted to turn away, I felt myself taking a step toward her, as if the colorful contents of her basket were tugging at me. I thought of my pregnant sister back home, how I’d procrastinated long enough in sending a gift for her baby shower.
“How much do they cost?” I asked the woman, realizing as the words came from my mouth that I didn’t have any kwacha with me.
“Not expensive, madam,” she answered, pushing the basket toward me.
“Actually, I forgot to bring money,” I said. Behind me, one of the guards called out that Philip’s secretary, Eunice, was looking for me.
“Next time then,” she said, placing the basket on her head.
Inside the compound, Eunice was motioning to me. “Your husband is ready to see you now,” she informed me, as I entered the air-conditioned lobby. The long wait and the heat had made me irritable, but the thought of climbing the stairs to Philip’s office to receive his scratchy-bearded kiss on my cheek, to talk about how much work he had or how insufferable the weather had become—in short, any topic but the one I wanted to discuss—incensed me even more.
I handed Eunice the basket without a word and turned to walk back to my car, trying my best to tune out her voice as she called after me, “Mrs. Huffington, are you all right?”
Now I spend my days puttering around the house, tidying up and establishing order in my new life. At first it was a matter of putting away half-started projects and sorting though craft supplies. I folded up the unfinished quilt, disassembled the quilt frame, and stowed away the sewing machine. For two days, I organized all of the beads into separate glass jars, sorting them by size and color and arranging the jars on a shelf so that they formed a rainbow of reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, and indigos. I hung and rehung the bougainvillea paintings on the living room walls so they were perfectly straight and spaced, and then decided to give them all away, preferring the walls to be pure white.
Every laundry day, I re-iron and refold our clothes. Even though I’ve shown the houseboy several times how to iron Philip’s shirts and fold our clothes so the creases are straight and symmetrical, the socks in tight bundles, he never puts the same care into it that I do. Then I arrange all our clothes by color in the closet and drawers.
For a few weeks, the women from the quilting bee and the golf club left messages on my cell phone, inviting me for tea or tennis. But I knew if I confided in them, Philip and I would have been ground into a million pieces by the rumor mill. I never called back, and the phone has stopped ringing.
Lately, I’ve been preoccupied by my search for the best place to keep my notebook of names—someplace where I can be sure it won’t be lost or stolen. But I still haven’t found the right spot, so I carry it around with me, always safely in my hands or at my side, as I move from room to room. At night when I place it on my nightstand, I can feel Philip watching me, but he never asks to see what’s inside.
