The Consequence of a Rose Garden

It was the first rose of spring, protected from the wind, petals heavy with sweetness. I cupped it in my hands and drank the fragrance: luscious with notes of musk and citrus. I closed my eyes as memories unspooled from every rose I ever met, from my great-grandmother’s garden in High Point, North Carolina when I was four, through a trip to Switzerland in the 70s where the roses were as big as my head, to a few straggly pink ones I stole from the Smith gardens only months before. A giggle startled me and I opened my eyes. Where was I? Lesotho. It was my second week on campus. I was still jet-lagged.

“Lumela, M’e. U rata lirose.” (Greetings, mother; you like roses.) Sister Lucie’s black and white habit set off her gold-toned skin so that I instantly wanted to photograph her, and after I faltered in her language, she switched to English. She was the gardener and rose-keeper, one of five Basotho nuns at the little Anglican chapel, wide-eyed and so cheery that she skipped when she walked. I was still dazed by loneliness, so I accepted her invitation to join her and the other four nuns in their kitchen for tea. I hadn’t even realized that Anglican nuns were a Thing, and I was curious. Sister Patrice held a Master’s degree and taught a few university courses; Sister Gertrude, the cook and housekeeper, spoke no English but served us all and then sat down with us, heaving a sigh. Sister Patrice apologized in advance for Father Clement, who I would soon meet, if he drifted in for tea. “He is old, you know, but his heart is good.”

Father Clement, English by birth, had just turned eighty, was notorious for speaking his rather fragmented mind, and enjoyed refusing. He refused to wear shoes, even while celebrating Mass. He refused to bathe more than once a month (“a waste of water”). He refused to limit his readings to scripture and was as likely to quote D. H. Lawrence as the gospels. His homilies were stream-of-consciousness, but in his chapel, all images of Jesus and Mary were African, and a wall mural depicted God as a smiling grandmother with dreadlocks. I liked him before I met him.

A week later someone banged on the door of the guest house late at night. I was huddled in two blankets, trying to read, my fingers numb so it was difficult to turn the pages of my book. I could see my breath as I called out, “Who’s there?”

“It is I,” a female voice called out in careful English.

I waited.

“I'm Sister Lucie! Please, we need you!” 

Twenty minutes later, Sister Lucie and I stood shivering on the roadside, waiting to hail a mini-taxi heading for Maseru. The taxis held 20 people and would not leave until they were full, so there was no schedule, no way to predict how long it would take to get from A to B.

The other sisters (except Sister Gertrude, who remained in the kitchen) had gone to Maseru to hear Archbishop Tutu. Most of them knew him personally, as he had been the chaplain at the University of Lesotho from 1970 to 1972, before he became famous in South Africa, before he became Bishop of Lesotho, and before Father Clement arrived to take his place. It was an all-day celebration, with Bishop Tutu’s talk reserved for the finale, so by the time he spoke, the driver of the chapel van was passed out drunk and unable to drive the nuns home. They called the chapel through the University switchboard and asked Sister Lucie to come with someone who had a drivers license and could bring them, the van, and the unconscious driver back home.

Me.

What I didn’t know is that the chapel van was almost out of gas (no gas stations open on Sunday night), the brakes were undependable, and the steering was loose. The night sky was blue-black, studded with a band of intensely sparkling tiny lights (the Milky Way, I learned later). There was little vehicular traffic, only the occasional mini-van taxi, but as I drove the pot-holed road, carrying a payload of nuns and one loudly snoring drunken man, I watched goats materialize out of the darkness and blanketed figures arise smack in front of the van. I laid on the horn, coasted down all the hills, and wondered continually if we were about to die.

“Sister Patrice,” I called out, interrupting a stream of conversation (Lama mama ROO me), “we are almost out of petrol. The brakes--” I gasped, steering sharply to avoid a boy and a cow. 

“No worries,” she called from behind me, full of cheery confidence. “We are praying for you all the way.” She held up a rosary and waved it so I could see it in the rearview mirror. 

At some point I must have screamed as I ran into a ditch and steered back onto the road. (I might have yelled “Fuck!” It’s possible.)

The nuns applauded. 

Then they started singing. In four-part harmony, in Sesotho, what must have been hymns. Celestial music rose up from their voices, resonated in my bones, filled all the crevices of my body with vibrations, calmed my anxiety with its beauty. “How likely is it,” I thought, in snatches when I could think, “that a poor bastard from North Carolina should be driving across the roof of Africa in a choir of angels?”

Squawking chickens rose up in dim headlights and disappeared to the left and right. I’d haul on the emergency brake to slow us down as we careened toward a goat. I thought, “If death comes for me now, at least I was alive when it came.”

Note: this is a continuation of a memoir begun here, continuing here, the most recent preceding episode here. 



Migraines continue. I am posting when I can, as often as I can.