Night Must Wait Read Online Free PDF

Cockroaches the size of mice. No time for mascara, orange sticks and manicures. Or bridge parties.
    "Don't make me feel like her," Wilton said.
    Wilton swerved around a particularly large pothole. Did Wilton expect panic and flight? Gilman wasn't stupid. The Eastern Region where Gilman worked was the native territory of the ambitious boisterous Igbo. They grasped everything modern, including Christianity, and spread out over Nigeria taking the best jobs. No wonder Nigerian Northerners were killing them.
    "It's only a backlash against modern ways and Christianity. It won't last," Gilman said. "And I'm not Igbo. Not to worry."
    "Or Christian. You willing to test that?"
    "I love it here." Was Wilton listening? "Not going to stay forever, but I'll go when I'm ready and not a day sooner. Hey, you know you won't make Lindsey or Sandy go home any more'n me. You brought us to Africa, but you can't send us back. We're not like the two-year people."
    They all joked about the two-year people. The temporaries who left as soon as their contacts expired, desperate for the taste of hamburger, strawberries and jello, whipped cream out of a can, frantic for all the illusions of safety that the familiar promised. Gilman had worked emergency room shifts at Bellevue and could have told them a few things about safety in America. But it wasn't a perception of facts that took them back home.
    Wilton didn't answer her.
    They stopped under a mango tree at a roadside vendor's stand surrounded with piles of coiling orange rind. The orange seller was a woman, neatly braided rows of hair and the flash of white teeth, a sleeping baby on her back. Under her tree, the green shade felt cool.
    Gilman smiled a greeting but stopped when the woman turned her head. One eye swollen shut with a trace of matter trickling onto the smooth brown cheek, making a dark trace that spread where she had wiped and wiped again during her day of selling oranges. She blotted the corner of her eye with the end of her blue- and-yellow wrap. Gilman went back to the car.
    Behind her she heard Wilton greet the vendor in Igbo and the woman's soft appreciative welcome. Gilman finished rummaging in her bag, stuffed a vial and a tube into her pocket and came back to the stall. She watched the woman spinning off the long green coil of fragrant peel from the orange in her hands. You hardly ever saw an orange orange in Nigeria. Light yellow green was the usual hue, not at all what Gilman had expected. The vendor added the stripped fruit to her display basket.
    "I'm guessing trachoma," Gilman said.
    "You want to fix it," Wilton said. "I'll translate."
    She talked in Igbo, her tone steady, positive. With an expression of hauteur, the vendor leaned back. She stared at Gilman, forcing Gilman to realize that earlier the woman had addressed only Wilton. What was the matter? Was Gilman too blonde? Too blue eyed and alien? The woman cupped her hand protectively over the eye and turned away.
    "Do you see? There's some in both eyes." Gilman spoke fast, hoping Wilton could use the information as persuasion. "It can go chronic, cause blindness—corneal involvement then scar tissue. It may be why she chose so shady a spot with mosquitoes even at midday. I see a lot of trach at the mission hospital and the Methodist clinic too. It's those goddamned flies."
    Wilton shook her head. Gilman followed her gesture to step back and wait.
    "She doesn't want you to touch."
    "I can't diagnose for sure if she won't let me evert the eyelid."
    "You can't fix everything."
    Still Wilton spoke again to the woman, moving her hand at Gilman to stem her words.
    "Not too eager," Wilton said. "Resist the impulse to indiscriminate charity. Go on back to the car, Gilman. I'll tell her you're the best."
    Set up again. Gilman began to smile, encouraged. But Wilton came back to the Citroën with a trio of the peeled oranges in her hands, frowning.
    "She's afraid you'll hurt her," Wilton said. "She's been hearing stories of