Antoinette’s Fish, by Gudrun Cram-Drach
Chapter 2
Gam looked like an older version of Mom. They both had the same almost black hair that ran past their shoulders, and light green eyes. Gam’s eyes were rounder, and Mom’s pinched a bit as if she always had a thoughtful question to ask. Mom must gotten her father’s eyes, but Annie didn’t know what Grand-dad had looked like. He died when she was a baby, and Mom was never one for putting family pictures on the walls. Most of her pictures of Annie were still trapped in her digital camera, or on a flash card somewhere in her desk.
There were differences too. Even though she was older, Gam seemed more youthful than Mom. Maybe it was because she was so active. She hiked a lot, SCUBA dived on a regular basis, and was constantly busy with her work. Before she met Gam, Annie thought the life of a scientist would be sedentary, long days spent staring into a microscope, or typing notes into a computer. But it was Mom whose life was still. She spent her time hunched over her jewelry bench, clutching her little tools, and staring through a magnifying glass in what Dad always said was not enough light. Mom had wrinkles around her questioning eyes and never sat up straight.
Annie and Gam spoke through Skype for the last time that night. Gam did look a bit tired, but the time zone there was 8 hours ahead of Maine, so it was much later for her.
Gam made sure Annie had packed all her SCUBA gear, a hat and sunglasses. She said Annie could have some outfits made in the village, but she should to bring enough bug spray, toothpaste, and chocolate to get her through the summer.
A few weeks before, Gam had hinted that she wouldn’t mind if Annie packed a few extra pieces of chocolate, and that Almond Joys were her favorite. Annie dutifully bought a 24 pack of the blue and white bars with her own money the last time she went with Dad to the Costco.
“I can’t wait to see you cherie,” Gam said, re-pinning her barrette.
“Me too Gam. It’s only a few days now.”
“Kiss your mother for me,” Gam said. “And your Dad.”
Gam always said this at the end of their conversations, and Annie never did it.
“I will, they send their best,” she lied, but then told the truth. “Love you Gam.”
“Love you too,” Gam said, and reached forward to disconnect. With a beep, she was gone, and Annie felt like her journey had begun.
They had Greek pizza for dinner, because it was Annie’s favorite, and as she ate the last of Dad’s olives, Mom informed her of a change of plans.
“We will both be driving you to the airport tomorrow.”
“But Mom, I thought you were too busy.”
“I am, but you’ll be gone for the whole summer and I’ll really miss you. I can take one afternoon to see you off correctly,” Mom said. “Besides, it’s going to be complicated, checking you in as a minor traveling alone. Dad will need my help talking to the airplane people.”
Mom winked at Dad as she said this.
“I’ve been on them flying machines before, you know, Claire,” Dad said, brushing a shaggy lock of hair off his forehead and making a face.
“Yes babe, I know. But you’d rather just stay in Maine, wouldn’t you?” Mom said.
“Well, of course I would,” Dad said. “No good reason to leave.”
“There are no lions, or cichlids in Maine,” Annie said, wondering if Dad would remember that cichlids were the kind of fish Gam studied. “And no Eiffel Towers.”
“And that’s why we’re letting you go, cause you care about that stuff. Just don’t forget about us when you’re visiting—uh, when you’re on your great adventure,” Dad said.
Mom hadn’t talked to Gam since before Annie was born, not even while Annie was planning her trip, and Dad had never, ever met Gam. In the past, when Annie had asked Dad why he didn’t know his mother-in-law, he got a weird expression on his face, like they weren’t supposed to talk about it.
So they didn’t.
And Annie figure that, on top of flying around the world all by herself, her parents probably worried about her spending time with Gam, but she wasn’t sure why.
Out of her immediate family, Annie was sure that she knew Gam the best. The fact that her parents kept their distance from Annie’s relationship with Gam made it possible for her to get close to the older woman, and she could tell Gam anything. Kayla often complained that her parents hovered when she was visiting her own grandparents, as if they were afraid she would say something stupid, or pick her nose. But both girls had once decided, after a very frank conversation with an old woman in the park, that old people were pretty cool, and it was young peoples’ own faults for acting all stiff and weird around them.
Annie’s other Grandmother acted like an old person, fragile and tottering, and completely out of touch with the rest of the world. So Annie was happy she could think of Gam as a friend, and it was obvious that Mom trusted Gam enough to let her go.
The next day Annie slid into the bench seat of Dad’s pickup truck, her bag in the flatbed behind them. Mom was wearing her usual cut off jean shorts, spotted with bits of enamel from painting designs onto her jewelry, and Dad’s welding goggles were still strung around his neck. They both had tired eyes and Annie knew they had gotten up extra early to work before the drive. Even though she had to hold her carry-on bag on her lap and lean her knees to the right every time Dad worked the tall gear shift, Annie was glad they were all going down together.
Even though Mom fretted the whole way.
“You’ll call us when you get to Paris, once you’ve found William, or even before you’ve found him if you want to. You have the calling card? Do you have everything you need in your bag? Ear plugs? Extra water?”
“I can’t bring water through the security check,” Annie said.
“Oh that’s right, but you’ll buy some on the other side. You have money? And those potable water pills? You’ll need those when you get there. We don’t want you getting diarrhea.”
“I have everything I need to stay healthy, and I have medicine in case it doesn’t work,” Annie said, hoping to avoid any more poop talk.
“What about a mosquito net?” Dad asked.
“Gam has one for me there. And I have my icky malaria pills—”
“I still think you’re too young to take those,” Mom said.
“Well the doctor doesn’t, and I really don’t want to catch malaria,” Annie said. “It’s the largest killer of children under age five in Tanzania.”
“You are certainly prepared,” Dad said, impressed by her vast knowledge of the country.
“Better safe than sorry.”
They passed a grassy bank with the words “Logan Airport” spelled out on it in purple flowers. Then they drove through a sea of orange signs with terminal names and lists of airlines. Dad pulled a paper ticket from a machine, and they parked.
“Claire, remind me to pay this before we leave the airport,” he said, and hoisted Annie’s bag onto his broad shoulder.
Annie knew she would be leaving this airport in a plane, but the thought of her parents walking back to the car without her made her lonely for them. What would their summer be like? They were so quiet, each one so deeply involved in their own work, sometimes Annie thought that if she wasn’t there to talk about things, they would forget how to speak all together.
Annie swiped her passport through the self service kiosk, and when the agent called her name, she led her parents to a counter where Dad dropped her backpack on a scale and the agent wrapped a tag around its strap.
“I wish I could pack like that,” the agent said, eyeing Annie’s flight itinerary. “Ten weeks and only one bag. But I suppose you haven’t packed much makeup or a hairdryer.”
Annie heard her mother scoff. In addition to not having a cellphone, Annie was not allowed to wear makeup either.
“You’re just too young,” Mom said, as usual. But what Mom didn’t know was that most of the girls in Annie’s class, and some of the guys too, had been wearing makeup for years.
Annie gave her bag to the TSA guys so they could run it through the huge x-ray machine, then when she turned around Mom was in tears.
“Please careful,” she said, gripping Annie’s hand as they walked to security.
“I’m not going into a war zone Mom, I’m visiting Gam,” Annie said, finding it difficult to keep smiling.
“Not yet,” Dad said, kissing Annie on the cheek. “Things change fast over there.”
“Dad, you really need to leave Maine more often,” Annie said. Then she threw herself against her parents, her arms opened in a wide family hug that she knew would thrill them. She felt her mom’s hand rubbing her back, and her Dad gripping her shoulder.
Dad gave her a laminated card with a set of phone numbers on it, and a small calendar on the back.
“This is where we will be this summer,” he said. “And when.”
Annie looked at the card.
“Mom made me laminate it, in case you take it diving,” Dad said, making a face.
“Didn’t you tell me Chris does that?” Mom asked. “You see, there’s Dad’s number at the crafts school, and there’s a tiny chance I’ll have to go to the Free Trade factory in India. If so, that’s the number for the director there. I’ll tell you if I am going, of course.”
“We’ve also given you Uncle Ed’s number in New Hampshire, and Mrs. Watson.”
“I know Kayla’s number, sheesh,” Annie said. It was getting easier to feel exasperated with them, but she didn’t want to lay it on too thick. “But this is good, in case I get sick or something.”
“That’s what we thought,” Mom said. “But please, don’t get sick.”
Annie saw what looked like a soccer team of teenagers approaching, all in the same white windbreaker. Some of them were good looking, but she didn’t want to get stuck in the middle. There was nothing more annoying, no matter how cute they were, than a big group of boys.
“I should get in line,” Annie said. “I love you guys.”
“We love you too honey. Call us when you get there.”
As she zig-zagged through the path of ropes and poles, Annie’s stomach did a somersault. It was finally happening. She looked back just in time to see her parents turn away, her father’s tall head bent down over her mother, then they were enveloped by the teenager boys.
Annie was one of the first people to board the plane, and she had a window seat in the very front row of the economy section. She could stretch her legs out straight, and her row had its own video screen which played sunsets and nature scenes during the thirty two minutes and twenty nine seconds it took everyone to board. Annie timed it with her new diving watch.
Annie wasn’t afraid of flying, even though this was the longest trip she’d ever taken, and her first time traveling alone. Once they were in the air she wiggled out of her shoes and fell asleep before the drink service started. She got up to pee a few hours later, then she slept again until she heard a loud bing and the lights were on in the cabin.
It smelled like coffee and butter, and the captain announced they would landing in two hours.
Annie pulled out the small writing book Kayla had given her as a going away slash birthday present. It was black and had off-white colored pages, and Kayla said her aunt, who was a writer, used these books to write down her ideas all the time, so Annie should too.
There was a woven ribbon tucked in the center of the book, and Annie marveled at how much she would have experienced by the time she had written that many pages.
She flipped to the first page.
Jambo (that’s Swahili for hello), We are about to land in France. The flight was fine, I dreamt about my SCUBA test on Crescent beach. Chris gave me a 96, by the way, almost perfect. I hope it’s enough to keep up with Gam.
“Something to drink Annie? Tea? Hot chocolate?”
Annie looked up at Kim, the flight attendant who had walked her to the gate from security, and checked in on her several times during the night.
“Hot chocolate sounds great.”
Kim gave Annie a bendy styrofoam cup and dropped a warm box on her little table. There was a greasy croissant in it, and after Annie ate that and sipped at most of her chocolate, she returned to her journal.
She wondered if she should have started writing in more of a scrawl. She wouldn’t be able to keep up the perfect printing she was currently using while adventuring with Gam.
Just ate my first croissant. Three days in Paris before I head south with William. I know this trip is about Tanzania, but I am excited to have time in the “city of light” — oh, I figured out why they say that. It’s not a translation of the word “Paris,” like I thought, but it’s because Paris had a lot of schools during the Age of Enlightenment, and because they started using street lights very early. “Paris” comes from one of the Gaulish tribes that were there before the Romans came. Europe is so complicated.
When she got off the plane, an Asian woman dressed in a red suit met her at the gate. She introduced herself as Madame Kim, and did not smile when Annie told her that the woman who helped her in the American airport was named Kim too.
Annie could tell that Madame Kim did not want to be helping, or even talking to, a kid. They skipped to the head of the line at customs, but then Annie’s backpack took forever to come up on the baggage carousel. Annie apologized profusely, even though it wasn’t her fault, and by the time they were walking through the double glass doors out to the terminal, Madame Kim was nearly spitting with impatience.
“Do you see your friend?” she asked.
“I, uh, I don’t know.” Annie looked into the crowd of people on the other side of the barrier. Everyone around her was speaking French, and she smelled perfume and that cigarette scent that lingers on a person after they’ve just smoked outside. “Maybe he’s in the back.”
“Go look for him. Come back to me if you do not find him,” the woman said
Annie searched for the face she’d seen so many times in Gam’s pictures. She did two loops through the crowd, then went back to the double glass doors.
Madame Kim was gone, and there was a “do not enter” symbol on the glass doors they’d come out through. Vowing not to panic, Annie dropped her bag beside a pay phone and found her calling card. She picked up the receiver and punched a button with a British flag on it.
“Hello?” Dad sounded sleepy. Annie forgot she would be waking them up.
“Hi it’s me, I’m here,” Annie said.
“Give me the phone,” she heard her mother say. “Honey, are you okay?”
“Yes of course. You said I should call,” Annie said. She decided not to mention to her parents that the airline lady abandoned her in the terminal. No sense in worrying them, yet.
“Oh good,” Mom sounded really tired.
“Go back to sleep Mom,” Annie said. “I love you.”
“Okay honey, love you too,” Mom said, then Dad came on the line.
“Annie?” he asked.
“Yeah Dad?”
“Keep in touch,” he said, rather businesslike.
When Annie got off the phone, the large hall was nearly empty. She looked outside. Beyond the big glass windows, she saw a thin African man in a pink button down shirt walking toward the door. He had a clipboard under his arm, and a pair of glasses hung from a string around his neck. Annie watched him enter the terminal, look down at his clipboard, then turn it forward so Annie could see her name was written there.
“William!”
The man looked around, then spotted Annie running toward him. He didn’t smile, but waited for her to stop, then reached out a hand.
“William Mbego,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Annie adopted his formal tone.
“I’m glad to meet you too, Doctor Mbego,” she said, shaking his large hand up and down.
“Do you have all of your things?” he asked.
“I’m ready to go,” Annie said. William spun around and walked away.
“Good. I am sorry for the delay, I had a few troubles this morning. Normally I would have parked,” William said when Annie caught up to him. “But today we are pressed for time.”
His African accent dragged As into the word time.
“The housekeeper, Fatima, is waiting in the car.”
William opened the back door of a boxy silver hatchback. Annie threw her backpack across the seat and got in.
Fatima the housekeeper was sitting in the front seat. Annie expected someone like Mary Poppins, but she was young like Chris, had little black braids that fell around her face, and pretty eyebrows.
“Salut,” she said.
“Salut,” Annie said, smiling. That was French for “hi.”
The car dipped when William climbed into the drivers’ seat. He scanned Annie’s face in the rear-view mirror, and she frowned. Gam had described her work partner of 10 years as ‘gracious and smiling,’ not worried and tense, like this man.
They pulled out into a traffic jam. Annie had forgotten the fact that Paris was a big city, like Boston or New York, and would have commuter traffic at this hour. Annie tried to read the illuminated signs on the road that said things like “A4 [arrow] A84 30 mn.” If A4 was a highway, she figured it would take 30 minutes to get to A84, another highway. Annie wondered if that was a good or bad length of time to travel the distance.
Then they were driving on a smaller, slower, and more cramped highway with frequent on and off ramps.
Fatima turned around in her seat.
“Welcome in Paris,” she said with a heavy accent.
“You speak English?” Annie asked.
“I learned when I was working for your grandmother,” Fatima said. “I work for her since 7 years. Before, I had the English only I learned from school. It was not enough.”
“Did you go to school in France?” Annie asked.
“Marrakesh,” Fatima said with a smile.
“Oh Morocco, cool.”
Then William stopped the car a little too fast and both Annie and Fatima lurched forward. Outside the windows Annie saw narrow, tree-lined streets and a crowd of people crossing in front of them. They wore all kinds of different clothing, business suits with pointy shoes, jeans and t-shirts and grungey hair-dos, bright African printed outfits with matching head wraps, even Muslim women in long burkas that covered their faces.
William huffed impatiently at the traffic light, which was low and on the side of the road, instead of hanging over the intersection.
The buildings were high around them, and ornately decorated with fancy marble façades and elaborate iron railings on their many balconies. Dad would have been impressed.
They rolled down a long hill, then turned left and Annie saw a panoramic view of Paris.
“Over there is the Eiffel Tower, and there is Montmartre, you see the church on the hill?”
Annie searched the broad landscape. She saw buildings she felt she should know the names of but didn’t, and a patch of skyscrapers off to one side. It was as if Paris had quarantined its business people to their own little neighborhood, so they wouldn’t taint the rest of society with their strict schedules and briefcases.
Then the view was gone, and William was pulling into a parking space that seemed way too small for the car.
“We are there,” Fatima said.
It was a fat, square building that looked about five floors high. On either side of it were shops, one of them a grocer with Arabic and French words on its yellow awning, and the other was a clothing shop with loud music playing inside.
After three narrow flights of dark, creaky stairs, William opened the apartment door and it was light again.
He put his keys on a little table and disappeared through a another door.
The living room was bright white and there were fresh flowers on the table.
“Are you hungry?” Fatima asked. “I can cook a breakfast.”
“I did have a croissant on the plane,” Annie said, trying to pronounce ‘croissant’ with a French accent. “But I am a bit hungry.”
“A café?” Fatima asked. “With milk?”
Annie stifled a giggle and nodded. Coffee was another of those things Mom said she was too young for. But Mom wasn’t here, was she?
Fatima disappeared through another door.
Annie walked to the tall windows and looked out onto the street. It was still fluttering with people, going into shops, carrying long loaves of bread, and rushing to the corner where a set of stairs descended into the ground. It was probably a subway stop. A sign at the top of the stairs said “Belleville.”
“Okay let us talk a moment,” William said behind her. Annie had been so engrossed that she didn’t hear them come back in.
William placed a stack of papers on the dining room table that had filled with breads and jam and butter, and three coffee cups on saucers. One of them was large and looked creamy and rich, like hot chocolate, and the two small ones held steaming black coffee.
“We are meant to leave for Dar es Salaam on Thursday morning,” William said, glancing at his papers. “That means you will have two days to rest and visit the city.”
Annie knew all of this, of course.
“I am afraid I have many things to attend to before we leave, so I will be unable to visit tourist attractions with you,” William said. “But Fatima has offered to accompany you anywhere you wish, perhaps a museum or a monument.”
Fatima’s cheeks bulged with baguette as she grinned at Annie.
“You are tired from your flight. I suggest you take some sleep this morning, but not too much or you will not sleep tonight.”
William finished his little cup of coffee and stood up.
“Aren’t you going to eat with us?” Annie asked.
“I have an appointment,” William said, then he picked up his keys and left.
William seemed so cold and distant, not at all how Gam had described him. But maybe it was a cultural thing, William was the first African man she had ever met. Maybe her American ways made her misinterpret his behavior. She had read about that somewhere.
“Do not be bothered by him,” Fatima said. “He is, euh, grenky, lately.”
“Grenky?” Annie asked, sipping her own creamy coffee for the first time. It was like very bitter coffee ice cream.
“I forget the word, in a foul mood,” Fatima said, blushing.
“Oh, grumpy,” Annie said. It was a word Gam often used in her letters. “But why is he grumpy?”
“I cannot know,” Fatima said. “He does not tell me his business.”
Fatima looked nervous and Annie suspected she really did know what was bothering William, but didn’t want to say it.
“What do you want to do today? Sleep some, then do tourism?” Fatima asked.
In spite of her sleep on the plane, and the coffee, Annie was starting to feel tired.
“That sounds good.”
Annie followed Fatima into the kitchen, which was light yellow and looked like it hadn’t been refinished since the 1940s. She put her dishes in the sink, then Fatima led her down a narrow hallway, showing her la toilette.
And that’s what it was, literally, a toilet, in a closet, at the end of the hall.
“Where is the rest of the bathroom?” Annie asked.
“The bathroom is here,” Fatima said, pointing to another door. “The toilet is there.”
So strange.
“William uses the guest room now, so you will sleep in the Doctor’s room,” Fatima said. She opened the door and inside there was a high bed with a lacy white bedspread, a large aquarium, and Annie’s backpack perched on an oak rocking chair in the corner.
“It is six hours earlier where you came from, you must be very tired,” Fatima said. “Here are some towels if you want to do a bath, or you can just rest.”
Annie lay back on Gam’s bed and found her pillow cool and soft. The window was open but there was no screen in it, and warm air drifted in. She turned her head and saw the aquarium was full of cichlids, swimming back and forth. She recognized some of them from the books she’d studied, but didn’t remember their names. Then without even noticing it, she drifted away.
A little while later, maybe it was only a few minutes, Annie heard footsteps pounding down the hallway. They shook the walls like in Annie’s house in Maine. They passed again. Maybe Fatima went to use la toilette, but they sounded too heavy to be those of a woman.
Then she heard William huff, like he had in the car.
Annie got up and peeked out her door. Down the hall, past the walls covered with photographs and swirly French molding, there was a door ajar.
“Hello? Hello?” William said from behind it.
Annie crept down the hall.
“Yes, good,” William said. “Jambo.”
William said a few things in Swahili which, even though Annie had studied the language with CDs specially borrowed from the University of Maine library, she didn’t understand. Then he spoke in English again.
“Yes I’ll speak to him.”
There was a pause, then a deep male voice came on the other end of the line, so deep that Annie could hear it clearly in the hall.
“William, we cannot find her,” the voice said.
“You have asked all the villagers? The chiefs? The children?”
“We have asked everyone within 30 kilometers.”
“What about at the Central Research Station?”
“I spoke to Mr. Davis this morning, not one person has heard from her.”
The deep voice on the end of the line chuckled.
“What is it?” William asked.
“There are some who say it’s Gustave,” the voice said.
“Ridiculous. Gustave is a myth.”
The soft th sound at the end of myth disappeared when William said it, and it took Annie a moment to understand what he meant.
“But Doctor, you told me she has disappeared before. It is not so unexpected,” the voice said.
“Yes that is true, but—” William dropped his voice. “I am to bring her granddaughter to visit on Thursday. They have planned this visit for years, she would not just wander off.”
Then William pushed the door closed and continued his conversation in such low tones that Annie couldn’t hear a thing.
But she didn’t need to hear anymore. Gam was missing!
