fifty-nine

In an interesting turn of events, it would appear that Akou is not actually forty years old, despite what her records in our database indicate.

I sat with her this morning and chatted while she did her arm exercises. She wanted company, so together we touched our fingers to our thumbs and flexed our wrists up and down and up and down, and all the while we passed the time talking about our families.

She has four children. Her oldest is a girl, and when I asked that girl's age, Akou hesitated a moment before answering. When Anani, the translator, relayed her words back to me, I understood why. Her oldest child is thirty-five. I pressed her a little further and found out that she was twenty-four when that child was born.

I burst out laughing as I did the math. I’m not sure if she ever learned how to add, but when I spelled it out the sum to her, her smile was more than a little guilty.

She paused for a long moment, visibly debating with herself whether she could tell me the truth, but in the end decided that I could be trusted. Through Anani, her plan came out.

I didn't know if you did surgery for old people. Maybe I would be too old and you would say no to me. I thought forty would be a good age for surgery.

I don't know what it's like to live in a system where medical care is so difficult to access that the choice to lie becomes an easy one. I don't know what it's like to live for three years with a tumor growing across my back and no real chance of it being removed. I don't know how it feels to pin all my hopes on a ship full of foreigners who are only in port for a few months every few years.

All I know how to do is smile back in the face of all this, to make jokes and hug a fifty-nine year-old lady who reaches back with her one good arm to fling it around my neck and whisper sweet words into my ear.

I wish you were my baby, too. Then you could stay with me forever and make me laugh all the time.