CHAPTER THREE
Sadou Maurie lived. Pascaline got to collect on her bets. And while she was at it, she also downloaded her mail. And then threw her own private celebration. The internship didn’t start for two weeks.
The limited connectivity in the bush country had delayed her getting the message, but she finally had work! TCG had accepted her application to join the space elevator build crew. Yes, it was only as an intern, but she was going to take the job.
Ha! Take that, university administrators. The most important work on the planet, and she, Tchami-Sadou Pascaline Magdalene Awa, was going to be a part of it. Or rather Pascaline M. Tchami would, with her name shortened down and westernized to fit in corporate forms just like it had been for that attempt at college all those years ago.
With nothing else better to do, Pascaline went home to tell the world. She hoped it would rip Uncle Benoit’s heart out. No more minute little controls about where she’d go and what she’d do. No more spending weeks as Aunt Julienne’s shopping companion to carry her things while being threatened with involuntary makeovers by Aunt Fatime. The excuse of academic scheduling conflicts was growing more and more thin, but Pascaline wasn’t going to need any of that anymore. She reveled in anticipation.
The way the baked heat of the helicopter cabin flash-dried any attempt at sweat heightened her old anger. The thin blast of cool air from the overworked air conditioner added dust to the already unpleasant ride. A cabin air filter at least needed to be cleaned, a corner of Pascaline’s mind noted. She better sic her cousin on them to nice them to death and get the maintenance caught back up before they started killing people.
Pascaline logged it.
The corner of her phone showed her location was being tracked by one of the aunts or uncles. She rolled her eyes. Where were they when she’d had Maurie burning up with a sudden onset fever and no clear idea which of the nearest clinics had a capable staff?
Maurie was her only regret. If Grandpere had to keep sending her out into bush country to fix broken stuff, someone needed to watch out for her.
If Grandpere had ever listened to Pascaline’s opinion, they’d have a team of devoted animal haters conducting biological warfare against all the slithering, skittering, and flying disease carriers living next to family business holdings. But he ignored her, and this last time it had nearly killed Maurie. She thought about warning Grandpere but gave it up as impossible to get through to him. She always argued, and he never listened.
This, along with a general disinclination to do anything other people would label charity work, was why Maurie and not Pascaline was always the one Grandpere called when he had a mission of mercy. Some of the people in Sadou’s employ had to be from cities and major towns. But the ones with extended family in need invariably lived somewhere inaccessible and inhospitable. He’d send Maurie to get their dry well re-dug, their electricity restored, or their access roads repaved. And Pascaline went with.
Pascaline let herself imagine the luxury of Kilimanjaro. They did research there. It was private land owned by a corporation. They probably made regular gifts to important people in Tanzania and other important people in Kenya to keep it free of interference, but Pascaline didn’t really care about that part. Uncle Fabrice—no, Uncle Chummy, she needed to start calling him the name he went by outside the family—he would have arranged something stable.
That beautiful new private city-state had the planned ground station for the space elevator. They had electricity that didn’t brownout. Houses without compound walls around them. New streets with top-of-the-line traffic controls and automated trash removal. Even the public restrooms were clean. She’d seen the documentaries and noticed the things the people being interviewed hadn’t even thought to mention, because it hadn’t occurred to them that those things might be unusual. It was a rich place where everyone got richer just by being there.
The parent company was TCG and Uncle Chummy worked for them, so naturally she’d used Tchami as her last name instead of Sadou in hopes that someone would recognize a relative of an important man. Forms rarely had room for all the names a person collected. And for once, family might help her instead of getting in the way.
But whatever—the important thing was that this job was away. She’d seen the stunning views of the wildlife refuge the company ran through an entertainment division. If they could afford that much care for beasts, the human living conditions were going to be amazing.
Pascaline couldn’t wait.
No more irritating bowing and scraping to aunts and uncles to keep the trust payments coming into her meager bank account. The bets on Maurie had plumped her account balance up again, but even better was the news that had finally set her free to tell everyone exactly what she thought of them.
Other less important messages had also waited for her. Her cousin Reuben needed more money. This part-request, part-demand came from his mother Aunt Julienne. Something about jail and lawyer fees. Delete.
Pascaline skimmed and junked the pile of increasingly irate messages from Uncle Benoit. She could have gone to Yaoundé and found some unnecessary make-work from Grandpere, but Uncle Benoit’s tone had changed. Intrafamily trouble, and she didn’t have to care. Not that she would have cared per se, but she’d have had to pay attention to know who was gaining power or losing it and who she had to be polite to this week or risk losing her welcome.
Large expenditures and embezzlement, Uncle Benoit mentioned. And Grandpere. He didn’t say it directly in the messages, but the words had a copy-and-paste generic feel to them, like he’d been sending almost the same thing to a lot of people and Pascaline’s youth hadn’t earned her much in the way of personalization.
Something came from Great Aunt Mami too. And that was odd.
“I found a boy you’ll like.” That’s how she started the message. No introduction, no greetings. The time stamp was recent unlike the rest of the mess, so Pascaline responded.
“Aren’t we passed arranged marriages?” she typed.
“No. And the correct usage is past, not passed.”
Pascaline sighed. Her comm device showed the little bubbles that Great Aunt Mami was composing something more.
“And don’t blame autocorrect. You have a top-of-the-line device, which I know, because I paid for it.”
“Yes, Great Aunt.” Pascaline flexed her fingers and prepared to really enjoy herself. “And I’ll be returning it. I’m paying for all my own things from now on.”
An image appeared on the screen making a raspberry. “You and what lottery?” Showers of bills falling from the sky replaced the face and were followed by a line of trees sprouting cash instead of leaves.
Mock me, old woman. You and your “paid for” doctoral education and resulting prosperous career. Pascaline typed, “There’s this space elevator. I’ve got work.”
“Of course.”
Pascaline startled. Maybe Uncle Chummy had noticed her application, and he had needed to help it along to get her the position, and then he’d mentioned it to Great Aunt Mami? She’d hoped to get the spot without help. She pushed down a pang of hurt.
“Did Uncle Chummy tell you?”
“No, the spirit world has a deep sensitivity for multination corporations and financial windfalls.” Pascaline reread that twice before Great Aunt Mami added to it. “You’re supposed to either agree with my amazing psychic powers or point out that Fabrice is my father’s second wife’s youngest.”
“Yes, Great Aunt.” Pascaline reconsidered. If Great Aunt Mami was representative, then the rest of the family wasn’t going to even notice her grand escape.
“Yes, Great Aunt? Yes, Great Aunt?!? You’re starting to sound too much like Maurie. So boring. I hope you haven’t changed that much or this boy won’t be a good match. He’s coming north and you can meet him and accept the engagement tomorrow. Give you time after you land to settle in and freshen up.”
“No, Great Aunt.”
“That’s my girl!” A grinning snake emoji punctuated the sentence. “Oh, and watch yourself, Little Benoit is up to something, like usual. A lot of family members have checked in at WuroMahobe last few days.”
Pascaline stopped answering. Whatever Uncle Benoit did was no longer any of her concern.
“But don’t you worry, Pascaline. I’ve got plans for you. Big plans, and I won’t do you the indignity of telling you about them. So be prepared to be surprised. My Fabrice might have told you some of it, but I’m quite sure he’s left most of it still to your grandpere to announce.”
Great Aunt Mami sent a final video short of herself leaning in and winking. “You are going to work harder than you’ve ever worked in your life. Believe it.”
Pascaline did not dignify that with an answer. The internship’s details specified a forty-hour workweek, free meals at the deluxe cafeteria, and full access to several gyms including one with an Olympic-sized pool.
The pilot noticed when Pascaline’s head came up after ending the conversation with Great Aunt Mami. He waved at her, clearly unaware of her report on the helicopter’s maintenance status. She gave him a nod. He’d probably be pissed, but if she proved to be right about the cabin air filter not being the only thing in need of checking, she might have saved his life. Or not. Sometimes aircraft did malfunction on the ground instead of in midair. She took comfort in the imagined annoyance all the aircraft maintenance people would be directing her way.
Helicopter blades thunder far too loudly for the pilot to make conversation, so she arrived almost happy.
They circled over WuroMahobe. Ant lines of dump trucks streamed from the limestone quarry road to the plant. The mountains of extra silica and iron oxide seemed in good supply. The primary and secondary crushers for the low and high calcium carbonate limestone lines were running smoothly. No glitches in the loaders or trucks stalled on the side of the road waited for her to save them.
Over a rise, upwind, the workers’ town spread out with the Sadou family compound rising first and highest. All the houses here were constructed of quality concrete block well fitted with cement mortar, but the owner’s compound had a bit extra. A fifteen-foot wall enclosed a large courtyard with the rooms of the house encircling it and wide windows appearing only on the second floor. The first-level rooms did have windows but only on the interior. The rear of the mansion-sized house shot up to a third story with more rooms and windows streaming in light. The greenery of the interior courtyard flowed up trellises to an open-air patio on the roof on the front house.
During some weeks this or that department from the cement plant or the quarry would be hosted for a celebration here, but in the dry season heat, nothing seemed planned for the coming weekend.
The helicopter set down on a mowed landing pad outside the family compound and promptly lifted off again as soon as she was out. Dry yellow-brown grass crunched under her shoes. The takeoff blast whipped Pascaline’s clothes against her with hot air even the rotor’s speed couldn’t turn cool. The sensation of slowly baking to death wrapped Pascaline in a smothering hug before she’d dragged her bag the few steps to the front door.
A jumble of parked vehicles surrounded the few trees tall enough to provide meaningful shade in the empty savannah. The drivers had ignored the orderly painted parking lines in favor of cramming as many vehicles as possible into the limited shade. Great Aunt Mami had been right. There were a lot of family members here.
Alone in the full blazing sun, Great Aunt Mami’s ten-year-old compact car with faded red paint sat in prim alignment with the parking lines. The two bumper stickers on the car read, “Payback and Pay Forward” and “Cheat me and I’ll hex your ass.” PPF was her one-woman microbank. The threats and semi-spiritual mumbo jumbo were pure Great Aunt Mami.
Uncle Benoit had no car here in the paltry shade, but that luxe golf cart right next to the largest tree trunk was so out of place it could only belong to him. Some of the assistant plant managers’ houses had garages. She’d bet her last centime one of them had evicted his own vehicle to make a space for Uncle Benoit’s and that this golf cart was the way her uncle went to pick it up.
The lure of air-conditioning inside stopped Pascaline from turning and flagging down the pilot to beg a trip back out to some larger town.
That and the fact that she didn’t even know the pilot’s name. Maurie would have known something like that, and if Maurie flapped her arms up and down and looked beseechingly at the sky, any helicopter pilot who’d just spent a trip being charmed and delighted by her cousin would happily turn right around and land again to take her back onboard.
Pascaline had no such delusions about herself. The helicopter soared overhead and landed again a quick hop away, dipping out of Pascaline’s sight behind some single-story roofs. In this factory town, it would be at the garage and hangar area on the other side of the workers’ homes where some of those who kept the plant’s machinery running also maintained a supply of helicopter parts and fuel.
Pascaline could hear the yelling before she stepped up to the door.
She held the front door open with a shoulder and dragged in her bag. The rush of coolness would dissipate if she stayed in the doorway, so Pascaline stepped inside.
The spacious foyer had the interior patio-side windows clamped shut against the heat, but the streaming light made the cool tile floor sparkle. A welcoming space in spite of the people occupying it, she looked up to greet the family.
Uncle Benoit, Aunt Fatime with her husband Uncle Moise, his brother Uncle Jacques, and Aunt Julienne, cousin to Uncle Benoit’s first wife, waited just inside. Great Aunt Mami stood off in the corner by the coffee carafe. She held onto the little pushcart like a walker and glared at the whole room.
“Good afternoon, Great Aunt,” Pascaline said.
Uncle Benoit shook his head at her. “Now is not a good time, Pascaline. We can see you a bit later.”
“Now is fine,” Great Aunt Mami snapped back. “Because we are done here. Not another centime from me! Do you hear me?” Her voice rose and cracked, but there was still fury behind it.
The old woman abandoned the coffee cart and stalked through the circle of seated family members. She held up a finger and shook it at Pascaline.
“You should have told me about this.” Great Aunt Mami shook with a whole-body tremor. Rage.
She thinks Uncle Benoit told me whatever his newest scheme is and I kept it secret from her. As if anyone tells me their plans voluntarily. Pascaline moved out of her way, but the woman adjusted her path to come nose to breast and glare up at Pascaline.
“Don’t you ever trust these jackals.” Great Aunt Mami turned her head and spat on the floor. Then she stumbled, and Pascaline had to catch her or let the old woman fall on the floor.
The fight went out of her great aunt. She seemed to shrivel in on herself. “Open the courtyard door. I need to go get my things.”
Pascaline complied, and Great Aunt Mami left through the courtyard.
Uncle Jacques coughed awkwardly to fill the silence and quiet conversation started up about coffee and who needed refills. Aunt Fatime accepted another cup.
“What just happened?” Pascaline said.
Uncle Benoit took a long sip from his coffee before answering. “A woman who has been pretending to be part of this family for a long time without making a contribution was finally spoken to about it. She’ll come around.”
“Great Aunt?” Pascaline wasn’t able to keep the incredulity out of her voice. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Uncle Benoit rolled his eyes, and Pascaline’s already low opinion of the man dropped even further. This man was going to be eviscerated. Lions would eat his flesh and carrion birds would scatter his bones. And yet Great Aunt Mami had been the one wobbling out with tears in her eyes, not him.
Pascaline swallowed hard and said nothing.
“My brother.” Uncle Jacques cleared his throat and made a deferential nod at Uncle Benoit. “Old Aunt Mami is one issue. But, about the other, I still say it’s a bad idea.”
Aunt Julienne nodded along and continued an argument from before their joint attack on Great Aunt Mami. “Grandpere knows his business, and he’ll step down himself when it’s time. Don’t go pushing things!”
The courtyard door hinge gave a loud squeak as it reopened.
Great Aunt Mami stood there, letting the heat rush in and the cool air slip out.
“I’ve decided to cut my funding of all estates at the end of the month. If you don’t appreciate what I do for the family, you can do without. But I’m staying and making use of all this mess I’ve paid for until then. If you try to have the staff remove me, remember who pays them when the budgets don’t close.” She motioned to the maid holding the door who’d turned still as a statue. “You can close the door now.”
“And enjoy being the latest victim,” Great Aunt Mami gave Pascaline a bitter smile, and the focus of the room turned to Pascaline.
The door closed.
“I’ve been out with Maurie working on Grandpere’s bushland projects. I don’t know what’s going on,” Pascaline said, using her blank not-understanding face. It worked occasionally, even with family, though never with Great Aunt Mami. But her oldest living female relative was no longer in the room. “I’m sure you have many things to do, so I’ll go as soon as you let me know what you needed.” The deflection and acquiescence had been automatic. She’d forgotten she could burn all these relationships now.
“That’s not the way we do things in this family,” Aunt Julienne said with a long-suffering tone. Something twitched in Uncle Benoit’s face, and Pascaline felt inspiration hit. It would be more fun if she didn’t tell them straight out that their hold on her was gone.
“Oh, is Reuben out of that Luxembourg jail? I had meant to send him a care package, but…” Pascaline let the question trail off using gestures to convey uncertainty about his current status. She’d had no such intention, and they’d all realize that if they thought for another moment about her instead of themselves. But if at least two of them fell for the same misdirection…Bingo.
“It wasn’t his fault,” Julienne snapped back at the same time as Aunt Fatime said, “Well, he’s not from my side.” The squabble broke out instantly.
Pascaline made her escape.
Only Uncle Benoit caught her eye long enough to deliver a stern glare.
She did agree, actually, that Reuben hadn’t done much wrong which was why he’d been sitting in jail awaiting trial for six months instead of laughing it up as a free, much less ethical, man.
He’d have not been charged at all if he’d been willing to give evidence, but that wasn’t going to happen with that cousin. He had too much respect for people who shouldn’t be respected.
When a man gave him work, he supported him. When he later discovered the work wasn’t completely pure, well, he’d blame himself, saying, as he had in a long apologetic message to the extended family, that he should have figured it out before he linked himself to the organization.
Loyalty sucked.
Pascaline wouldn’t let herself be taken in like that. Not even for family. She stepped out to the interior courtyard and firmly closed the door behind her.
They could figure out she was gone after she’d left. Telling anyone in advance would be a waste of breath.
Pascaline ducked behind a large bush immediately on entering the courtyard. She wasn’t getting called back in there until she’d had time to check her messages in detail and find out what had exploded while she’d been in the bush with Maurie.
“Idiot family.” It would be good to be free of them. But Great Aunt Mami with all her money had looked destroyed, not elated. Uncle Benoit could be nasty when he chose to be, but the end of the strange conflict she’d witnessed bothered Pascaline. She didn’t know what was going on and hated it.
She found the maid who’d been holding the door for Great Aunt Mami not too long ago. Pascaline made a grunt to get her attention and pushed her bag at the woman with a small bill. The woman accepted it with as much delight as if Pascaline had said something polite and known her name.
“Which room, Ms. Sadou?” she said.
“Wherever my aunts and uncles are least likely to find me.”
“First floor, left corner suite. The interior hall is being retiled, so it’s only accessible from the garden entrance.”
“Perfect.”
“But the air-conditioning is shut off for that section of the house, since it’s not in use.”
“Because the people laying the tile don’t count,” Pascaline noted.
“Yes, ma’am.” The maid shrugged, her face carefully expressionless, but her tone held wry understanding. “And the ones cleaning up, but we don’t count either.”
“It’s still perfect.”
The woman nodded and led off with Pascaline’s bag.
A new arrangement of pots and hanging vines divided the courtyard into alcoves. Greenery abounded in greater quantity than her parents had tolerated during the couple years Pascaline had lived here as a kid. But unless they’d changed the masonry, she still knew the place.
Any of the doors to the back part of the house would serve, but with a staff member to follow, she wouldn’t have to guess her way through the plantings. If the current family member managing the plant hadn’t knocked out too many walls, any of the further doors would open into suites of rooms for family visitors. She could hide out in one at random and call the helicopter hangar to get out of here. The dusty orange tinge of today’s sunset threatened dangerous flying weather, but tomorrow might dawn clear.
Pascaline stumbled upon an occupied alcove before she reached the room. The maid murmured an apology and sped through the neat collection of wicker chairs to a break in the planters. A few doors to the lower-floor private apartments were visible just beyond.
Great Aunt Mami reclined in the closer lounge chair with her tough-cased business laptop and a drink on the table beside her. Pascaline had asked for a place her aunts and uncles wouldn’t immediately look.
The maid had neglected to mention her great aunt. Pascaline considered demanding a return of her tip.
Great Aunt Mami seemed as much a queen at her leisure as she’d always been until she turned her head to see who’d come and showed puffy red-rimmed eyes.
“Okay, good,” she said. “Close it, please.”
A gardener working on some trailing vines pushed closed a window, picked up his shears, and left for another part of the courtyard garden.
“Jacques likes to see plants rather than more cement when he’s off work,” Great Aunt Mami pointed out.
Pascaline suppressed a groan. “He had them make it into a puzzle garden?” The window just closed was the front living room’s furthest west window. And it opened into the same room where she’d left her uncles and aunts some time ago. Turned completely in the opposite direction, a straight line had been cut through the oversized planters by shifting a few this way and that to allow the staff a reasonable access to the first-floor visitor apartments. With the window shut, no one inside the room could hear them, and Great Aunt Mami sat too low for them to see her. But Pascaline had a clear view of the group.
“There are worse hobbies than gardening.” Great Aunt Mami pointed out. Her glare implied she was thinking something like, He could enjoy ruining other people’s lives like your dear Uncle Benoit.
“And you don’t mind the annoying path shapes because it lets you listen in on their conversations,” Pascaline said.
“So ridiculous.” Great Aunt Mami shook her head. “Can you believe I actually thought they were planning to push your grandpere out?”
“Sounds like they are.” Pascaline pointed out.
Great Aunt Mami shook her head more violently. “Fabrice can’t allow that. Not now. But me…” She opened her hands. “There’s nothing he’ll be able to do about that.”
“Why do you even care?” Pascaline asked. Great Aunt Mami could sometimes be induced to explain if asked the obvious questions with enough bluntness.
“You are such a stupid little girl.” Tears, again, ran down her great aunt’s face, so Pascaline didn’t try to retaliate for the insult. Not that fighting with Great Aunt Mami ever seemed wise. Uncle Benoit and the others still sat inside the room drinking coffee and talking about things with big gestures and frequent smiles.
Great Aunt Mami shifted the computer off the table and onto her lap. “Might as well save what I can.” She glared at the keys.
“Everything I’ve done.” Great Aunt Mami paused her typing to waggle her right hand at the glass bottle on her table as an example. It was a mango juice blend from an orchard further south, a product of one of the little business she’d funded. Pascaline had seen the bottles in European airports sometimes. “Even the little ventures that were really doing well. This will erase it all.”
“Uncle Benoit is not going to drain your bank account.”
“Will he not?” Great Aunt Mami’s red-rimmed eyes stared into hers. “He won’t have to. My businesses will merely start having troubles. The shipping service I have them using belongs to a second cousin of your Aunt Julienne’s. More things are going to fall off the back of trucks. When sales people need to travel to ensure good relationships with buyers, the Sadou friend at the visa office will not waive the fees anymore and may well insist on double payment for the times they’ve traveled before without paying. These aren’t fat-margin businesses. They are small independent enterprises that can make enough profit to support one smallish family or maybe two, if everyone works at it consistently.”
“You could hex him,” Pascaline suggested. That had been Great Aunt Mami’s thing. Even her bumper sticker, produced by yet another small print-on-demand business, said so.
Her great aunt sat up and focused fully on Pascaline. “You know better than that.”
“They say you gave Uncle Chummy a blessing, and it made him rich.”
“Yes. I did.” Great Aunt Mami finally acknowledged it, and then proceeded to shatter Pascaline’s perspective on family history. “I introduced him to your grandpere back when we were all a lot younger, and Fabrice impressed the family with his smarts, and they sent him off to school in Germany where he made a lot of good friends with other very talented people. Fabrice did it all entirely on his own after that start. But it was a very good start. Your grandpere’s uncle ran the family then, and he felt very guilty about me, so when your grandpere and I went to him about helping Fabrice get an education, he was more than generous.”
I could’ve used a blessing like that, she thought. Pascaline pushed the bitterness away. The powerful great aunt sat hunched and uncomfortable in a chair designed for relaxation.
“That’s still a blessing for Uncle Fabrice,” Pascaline said and sat down next to her great aunt. “I’m leaving, so you should really go ahead and do whatever you want to my aunts and uncles.”
Her great aunt squinted at her. “The coast isn’t that far away.”
Sometimes it took effort to follow her great aunt’s comments. Aunt Julienne did have that yacht in Douala, and Uncle Benoit and other extended family members did like to cruise together. So she supposed they might go farther than the usual Mediterranean route if there were something interesting to see. She supposed they could just head south and sail around the Horn of Africa. Or they could extend a Med tour and go through the Suez. Over on the African east coast they might pull in at some port like Mombasa in Kenya and then take a train or private aircraft inland to see a niece working on the space elevator construction project.
“Uh, I haven’t actually been to Kilimanjaro, but the map is pretty clear that it’s not particularly coastal. And I’m no angel investor with small businesses they could destroy, so I won’t be risking my job to take time off and give guided tours to unauthorized family visitors.” Pascaline paused and added, “And I still don’t understand why you haven’t cursed any of them yet.”
“You don’t really believe… And how could you think… You aren’t really… Huh.” A look of pure bafflement washed across her great aunt’s face. “Oh. Okay.” Great Aunt Mami fixed Pascaline with a level look. “I don’t care if anyone else thinks we’re blood or not. You need to understand some things.” She held up a hand. When Pascaline flinched at the beginning of the curse gesture, Great Aunt Mami rolled her eyes and turned her palm inward before flaring her fingers to begin ticking off points one finger at a time.
“One. The contract is for a launcher here, or sort of here. Definitely not at Kilimanjaro. They don’t have room to do supply launches from there at the same time as they’re constructing the ground station and figuring out how to get the tether line set up. Lifted from Earth to orbit could be done, but it’s much more efficient to build at geosynchronous orbit and drop it down. But that requires a lot of carbon in near Earth space where it’s not very plentiful. So that’s where we come in. We’ll have to find a mountain of our own that works.”
Pascaline didn’t interrupt even though she was only partially following Great Aunt Mami’s explanations. These were not aspects of the space elevator’s construction plan that had been publicly available, and Pascaline had been reading every single TCG press release.
“I figured your grandpere’s engineers would work something out with one of the more stable mountains on the coast so the payloads have a lot of our country to fly over before anyone has to deal with other nations’ airspace,” she continued.
“Two. Curses and blessings are only as useful as the superstition of the person being afflicted. Fabrice is sweet but suggestible, especially back when he was young and needed a bit of confidence to go out and do his thing. Benoit and the others of his generation are far too jaded to care one bit what I say.
“Three. You have far more to lose than you think you do.”
Great Aunt Mami twitched the last two fingers on her hand. “I don’t remember what the last two points are. Maybe your ancestor spirits hid them from me for your own protection.” Great Aunt Mami arched an eyebrow. “Or perhaps there aren’t any such creatures at all.”
Pascaline squirmed internally at the pitying expression on the old woman’s face. “My internship contract is for a position at Kilimanjaro.” And I’ll be leaving just a soon as possible, she promised herself.
Great Aunt Mami didn’t believe in spirits and yet she invoked them all the time. Pascaline was glad she hadn’t leaned back in the chair. It had felt almost safe to have some kind of witch queen in the family, but now she half expected the sky to open up and drop lightning on the woman.
Great Aunt Mami laughed, a look that fit her far better than the earlier tears.
“You should see your face,” Great Aunt Mami said. “It’s like I just told you outer space is a colonialist myth.”
Something scuttled behind the front leg over the wicker table closest to Great Aunt Mami. It darted across to hide under a large planter. A roach of some kind maybe, but no, it waved a stinger. Pascaline jerked her feet away from the scorpion. She still wore her tightly laced bush country boots, but…
Great Aunt Mami wore red plastic sandals. Comfortable things in the dry season heat, if you expected to be indoors or in a well-maintained courtyard.
The scorpion with its sting tail held high darted from the planter’s shadow under Great Aunt Mami’s chair to another planter behind her. It dodged around Great Aunt Mami’s heel when the older woman shifted it back. The old woman nearly crushed it with her exposed foot, and the scorpion scurried on, unconcerned.
Pascaline’s warning died on her lips.
Great Aunt Mami peered at Pascaline and shook her head. “Just so you know, I think your uncle and the rest of them will still go through with that engagement I put together for you. And”—she held up a hand—“you should seriously consider it. Get married a few times and you’ll have a lot more families to fall back on if one of them turns out to have idiots in the younger generation eager to run people out.”
The bitter twist on Great Aunt Mami’s face eased and her usual laugh lines deepened. “And I do know there’s no way Grandpere Moussa, Little Benoit, or even Baby Maurie will let you go off to try to take another outside job now. With the education you’ve gotten, they’ll expect you to pay back. You are the only credentialed engineer in the extended family, you know.” Great Aunt Mami’s eyes twinkled. “So you’ll be managing this project no matter what. Oh, and even if they did let you skip out, I do still have plans for you.”
Pascaline opened her mouth and snapped it shut again.
None of that was true, or rather it might be almost true, and she couldn’t let it be. Pascaline stood back up, careful to avoid stepping on anything with a stinger. It was time to flee. But politely.
How do you tell a woman you think she’s a witch when she’s just confessed to not believing in her own power?
You don’t. And you try to make sure she doesn’t curse you accidentally.
“May I get you anything, Great Aunt?” Pascaline slowed her exit for a few moments. The old woman wasn’t one to make idle threats and something about being in her plans didn’t sound particularly pleasant to Pascaline.
Great Aunt Mami flapped a hand in dismissal. “Don’t worry about all that.” She pointed at the window and Pascaline’s aunts and uncles. “I can fix them. They just surprised me, and…” She nodded to herself as if assessing something private but important. “It hurts.”
She focused intently at Pascaline. “I have everything I need. Have had for a while.” Great Aunt Mami considered Pascaline with an expression the younger woman couldn’t read. “You, though. Not so much.”
Not what Pascaline had expected to hear, but maybe another hint might come if she pressed. She cast a glance over Great Aunt Mami’s head at the window into the front of the compound. Uncle Benoit had taken a position in the middle of the circle, about where her stool had been, and seemed engaged in calming the group down. She figured she had a few more minutes before they’d send someone out after her, and that only if she was even on Uncle Benoit’s agenda for the evening at all.
“That lot is trying their very best to ruin us.” Great Aunt Mami’s expression of disgust and the eye roll she directed at the group inside shocked Pascaline with its familiarity. She’d seen that look in her own mirror far too many times.
Great Aunt Mami winked. “I will have to select some fine curses for everyone, so don’t worry. I’ll get mine back.”
Pascaline suppressed a shudder and changed the subject. “So about that not having everything I want thing…” Pascaline rolled her shoulders to show what she hoped would come across as honest inquiry. “Do you have any suggestions?”
“Need. Not want. You do already tend to get what you want, which is likely why you don’t have what you need.” Great Aunt Mami’s familiar enigmatic grin flashed across the old woman’s face. “And absolutely, I do have a suggestion. Why don’t you go meet your future husband?” Great Aunt Mami’s expression was pure satisfaction. “Not that I care one way or another,” she added with a sly look at Pascaline.
“Wait.” Pascaline backed away. “You’d said engagement before. Possible engagement, right?”
Uncle Benoit made a gesture out the window toward her. Not good. She’d stood in the wrong place where they could all see her. She didn’t want their attention just yet. If the family was trying the semi-arranged-marriage route again so soon she needed time to plan. And to find out what contract Great Aunt Mami was talking about.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t something she was ready for. Dealing with family required careful planning because they didn’t just go away forever afterwards. She could quite easily offend everyone. Had in fact.
Time to do some research and make plans.
Pascaline fled.