May We Be Forgiven

bets and expectations are off.
    The flight from Durban to Johannesburg is fine, and as we prepare to board our plane home, the children, still riding high, rush to buy last-minute things: Simba chips, sparkling lemonade, as though they will never see South Africa again. Johannesburg is like a transfer station for all humanity; fortunately, once again Sofia arranged for a people minder to shuttle us from one plane to the other.
    I think of the house, of George and Jane. I know I am overtired, but it’s like I am seeing it, feeling it all again, or maybe more like feeling it for the first time. Suddenly it is all alive for me, it is all right there, in gory detail, to be touched. It seems unreal—I can’t believe it happened, I can’t believe it was earlier this year and that we are now in a South African airport, waiting.
    I think of what Londisizwe said about releasing what lives inside and realize that I did not drink my noontime tea. I will ask for hot water as soon as we’re on board the plane. I think of Londisizwe, of the foul smell that escaped—the children laughing as I writhed in pain. “Very good,” Londisizwe said the morning after the first dose, when I told him how ill I felt. “It is good that you feel sick—that is just the beginning of what is inside of you. … But you felt it,” he says, happily slapping my shoulder. “That means you are not dead.”
    I am feeling it again at the airport; bile rises in my throat, tasting like a combo of fermented leaves and animal shit. I swallow it; it burns hot and sour going back down.

    “ W hose child is this?” A customs agent points to Ricardo.
    “Ours,” Nate says.
    “I am their brother,” Ricardo says.
    I take out the letter from his aunt and give it to the agent, who calls another agent over. They ask me if I have a phone with international calling. I say yes and hand it to them so they can call the aunt, who says that Ricardo has not been kidnapped. Satisfied, the officer asks Ricardo if he had a good time in South Africa. “Did you ride on an elephant?”
    “No.”
    “Bungee off a cliff?”
    “No.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I played soccer,” he says.
    “Good on you,” the agent says, smiling, flashing loose tobacco bits in his teeth, as he hands back our passports and gives each of the children a small piece of hard candy, just the size you could choke on, which I immediately confiscate.

    O ur arrival in New York is delayed by thunderstorms; we circle the airport for what seems like hours and then land in Boston for gas and fly back to Kennedy. I text the pet minder from the tarmac at Logan to say we’re delayed. He writes back, oddly chipper, “We are ready and waiting, looking forward to welcoming you.” Something about his tone makes me nervous. “Everything okay?” I ask. “Just dandy,” he texts back. Oh no. …
    Landing in New York, I feel a kind of flat-footed relief that we are back in the land of Mets and Yankees, of traffic and abrasive people.
    The United States Customs agent asks me to open my suitcase.
    “Where are your clothes?” he asks.
    “I gave them away,” I say.
    “Are you opening a business?” he quizzes, looking through all the merchandise acquired.
    “No, I took three kids on a trip, and this is the stuff they got; there was no room for clothing.”
    “Why didn’t you just buy another suitcase?”
    “Didn’t want another suitcase.”
    “You want to hold my babies?” Ashley asks the agent.
    “Did you know that in South Africa they sell the clothing that we put in the recycle bins in church parking lots?” Nate says. “You think you’re donating your old clothes to needy people in this country, but your clothing is being sold to impoverished people for profit.”
    “Guess it was like an educational trip,” the customs man says, closing my bag and pushing it towards me for a zip-up.
    “Fact-finding mission,” Ashley says.
    “I almost got circumcised,” Ricardo offers. “I still want to but he said no.” Ricardo gestures to me like I’m the bad guy.
    “TMI,” the man says, stamping our passports and urging us on.
    “What does TMI mean?” Ricardo asks.
    “It means some things are private,” Nate says.

    W e walk outside, the heat smacks us down. The transition from the oxygenless chill of the airplane to an eggs-on-the-sidewalk broiler is too abrupt, we are instantly sticky and cranky.
    “You’re late,” says a rumpled guy holding a placard with “Silver”