Don't Look Back by Achut Deng

Author:Achut Deng
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

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Half my body was paralyzed when Adual arrived the next morning with a bowl of porridge and my portion of the bimonthly rations she’d collected the previous day. James and Mara met her outside the hut to claim the bag of supplies and tell Adual about the snakebite.

Adual dropped the sack of beans and hurried over to where I lay.

Mara followed her. “I did my best. I’d never treated a snakebite before.”

“Why isn’t she moving?” Adual asked when I didn’t sit up to greet her.

“Her left side is paralyzed,” James said, picking up the rations.

“She will regain movement again eventually,” Mara added, “if she survives. I’ve heard it happen with others. But if she doesn’t—”

Adual shot her a warning glare.

“We still expect you to bring us her rations until the next head count,” James said. “We have many children to feed.” Then he and Mara took my rations inside their hut.

Adual removed Andrew’s blanket from my legs. Her eyes widened, and a sharp intake of breath slipped through her lips.

“What’s wrong?” Unable to move my left leg or sit upright on my own, I lifted my head and propped myself up on my right elbow to angle my body enough so that I could see my foot. My leg was swollen from my toes to below my left kneecap. I started to cry. “Am I going to die?”

“No.” Adual covered my legs with the blanket. “I know what to do.” She pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I have to go get something. Don’t worry. I’ll be right back.”

She must have run to her tree because she returned sooner than I’d expected. She knelt at my side, removed the blanket, and held up the thin wooden needle she had used to remove guinea worms from my feet during our long walk across southern Sudan. “I have to lance the wound, or the infection will spread.”

“Will it hurt?” I asked.

“Your foot is numb, so you should not feel much pain.”

With a steady hand, she slowly pressed the needle into the tight, swollen skin around the snakebite. Creamy yellow pus seeped from the cut. Then, just as Mara had the night before, Adual pressed on all sides of the wound with her fingers. Cloudy pink fluid oozed from the small incision. She wiped it away and pressed again. As she worked at cleansing the infection from my foot, she spoke to me with reassuring words and gentle tones. She repeated the process until bright red blood flowed from the cut. Then she pulled me into her arms and helped feed me the porridge she’d brought. When the bowl was scraped clean, she placed it on the ground and started to stroke my head.

“It’s all right, Rachel. I’m here.” She wiped tears from her face with the back of her hand. “You will survive this. I will make sure of it.”

Calmed by her voice and words, I closed my eyes. She continued to stroke my head until I drifted to sleep in her arms.

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