On Common Ground. Tracy Kelleher
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All the women reached into the deep folds of their dresses. Lilah had to laugh. It was a sign of progress that the towers were functioning, and that women were growing familiar with the equipment even though the likelihood of receiving calls was remote. Still, given the loudness of the ring tone, Lilah knew it was for her. She held her phone aloft to let the other women know, then rushed through the raindrops into Esther’s mud hut. “Hello,” she answered. Very few people outside her organization and her family had her number.
“Lilah, it’s Mimi.” The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Mimi Lodge, Lilah’s roommate from college. Always outspoken and very smart—some might say too smart for her own good—Mimi had gone on to be a television news correspondent.
“Talk about a voice out of the blue. Where are you calling from this time? Chechnya? Afghanistan?” Lilah asked. If there was a hot spot in the world, chances were that Mimi was there.
“Close. Waziristan.”
Lilah cringed. People sometimes questioned her sanity about traveling to Congo, but Waziristan? The northwest region of Pakistan was a known stronghold of terrorists. “Promise me you’re calling to tell me you’re safe,” Lilah implored.
“Not to worry about me. I’m in my element. It’s you I’m calling about—with news.”
“Don’t tell me—actually do tell me—that someone has decided to give Sisters for Sisters millions of dollars after seeing your piece on TV?” she asked.
“No, but there’s the possibility.”
“I’m always open to possibilities, long shots, even highly unlikely probabilities.”
“It’s like this. Seeing as you’re such a hard woman to track down, the alumni office of our illustrious alma mater, Grantham University, contacted me through my television network. They were hoping I could hunt you down directly.”
“Oh, please, there is no way I’m making a contribution to Annual Giving. I barely make enough money to pay the rent on my hovel of an apartment—and I use the term hovel generously,” Lilah decried. After college, she’d landed in Brooklyn, and for some mysterious reason that only the gods of real estate understood, her block had defiantly escaped the rampant gentrification that had swept the rest of the outer borough.
“Actually, it’s the other way around. They want to give you something.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Lilah ran her hand through her chestnut-brown hair, which despite the practical clip holding it back in a ponytail, was frizzing madly in the rain and humidity.
“I kid you not. Apparently, the feature I did on you actually penetrated the mostly deaf ears of the ivory tower powers-that-be. Now the university wants to honor you with a big alumni award at Reunions this June. Who’d a thunk it, heh?”
Lilah knew that Mimi didn’t harbor any great fondness for Grantham despite her family’s long history of involvement and support for the Ivy League institution. Nor was Lilah particularly the Reunions “type.” What was the point of rehashing your college days? Or seeing people from your past you really could do without? She could think of one person in particular—boy, could she ever. Then there was the more fundamental anxiety. Ten years out—had she measured up to her own expectations? And the more troubling thought, If I accept the award, will they figure out I’m no longer some sterling idealist?
But those doubts were for her ears alone—something she’d have to work out. So Lilah retorted with the slick sarcasm that so often substituted for wit and intelligence among her fellow Grantham alumni.
“So why exactly would I want to wax poetic about my time at that dyed-in-the-wool chauvinist bastion?” she asked, using Mimi’s withering expression for Grantham. “I mean, can’t I just accept the award without showing up to Reunions? ’Cause I’m not totally convinced I can stand there with a straight face, listening to the university president give some rah-rah speech about all my good works somehow being an outgrowth of that special Grantham spirit. And the thought of rubber chicken served under a tent by the boathouse? Please. Is there anything worse? Oh, right—sleeping in a dorm room all over again.”
Truth was, she’d die for a dorm room right now. Tonight Lilah would be sleeping on the dirt floor on a thin straw mat. Not that she was complaining, mind you, when she had so much compared to the villagers around her.
Speaking of which, Lilah angled to the side to let one of Esther’s daughters carry an earthen platter of baton di manioc, boiled palm leaves filled with a paste made from starchy manioc tubers.
“I feel your pain, really I do,” Mimi responded from thousands of miles away. She, too, had mastered the glib speak. “But look at it this way. Does Miss America get her cr-own in absen-tia?” The satellite line had a slight delay, and the transmission sputtered.
“I get your point. I get your point,” Lilah replied. “But aren’t Reunions in June? That’s…that’s not going to work out. Our first major fundraising race in Europe is at the beginning of that month—in Barcelona. I couldn’t possibly miss that.”
“I’m pretty sure they’re at the end of June, but, c’mon. This is Mimi here. Your bosom buddy? You and I both know you’re manufacturing excuses. The real reason you don’t want to go back to Reunions and accept this award is Stephen.”
Lilah hadn’t spoken her ex-fiancé’s name in almost ten years. And she wasn’t about to start now. And why bother to rail against the cruelty of love when her friend flat out didn’t believe in love? Or so she had claimed many a time over. Too many times over, Lilah sometimes thought.
“From your silence, I presume I hit the nail on the head. Well, let me tell you. I have just one thing to say in response.”
“Grin and bear it?” Lilah offered.
“Oh, please. What do you take me for? A leader of a Girl Scout troop? My kind of pep talk is…” She proceeded to string together several swearwords in a highly creative and visually interesting fashion.
Crude, but effective, Lilah couldn’t help thinking. “So you really think I should go, then?” she asked.
“Yes, of course I think you should go. Not only do you deserve all the praise in the world for what you’re doing, you’ll have those old coots eating out of your hand. They’ll see this brilliant, cute young woman, and they’ll immediately feel the need to help. The next thing you know, they’ll be writing monster-size checks to support your work. You might even think about upping your own salary from near poverty line to something where you could afford to go to a decent hair salon.”
“Hair salons? They still have them?” Lilah asked facetiously. Reflexively she fingered her bangs, slowly growing out from her last feeble attempt at giving herself a cut.
The light shower had turned into a thick curtain of rain, and the sound of drops hitting against the thatched roof formed a steady rumble. The red dirt on the floor was already transforming into a rusty-colored slime, the same mud that coated the soles of her hiking boots.
From her position in the doorway of the hut she could see Esther, along with two other women from the village, cooking rice, beans, bananas and more manioc. Through the haze of smoke she noticed two large cauldrons cooking meat—probably chicken and goat. Today had to be special if meat was on the menu.
These women who had suffered so much were unfailingly generous. Who was she to balk at attending some awkward ceremony and meeting a few strangers at Reunions if it meant helping them out?
Lilah rubbed her sticky palm down her sundress. The outfit was a concession to the festivities, but she’d paired it with her usual hiking boots because there were too many poisonous snakes for her to consider wearing sandals. Not a great look but always practical.
She exhaled through her mouth with resignation. “All right. I hear the wisdom of your words. Just tell me whom to contact about setting up my triumphal return to our beloved alma mater. And