by Minot, Susan
Where are we going? Agnes whispered.
Into the bush, I said. But what did I know?
Near the chapel we passed through a thick band of smoke and I heard glass breaking. Rebels were hitting the windows with clubs. Smoke streamed out of the chapel door but I saw no flames. Maybe they will not burn it down, I thought. Nearby the Jeep was also burning and we worried it might explode because flames were there.
We walked out of the school gates onto the drive. But soon we veered off that road. We walked and walked in the night without a path, then we would find a path again. We got used to seeing in the dark. I made out the long line of girls. Later I learned there were about one hundred and forty of us in that line. We came to a place of marshy water and were made to walk through and became wet up to our chests. The smaller girls held on to the chests of the others or were carried. The water would be over their heads. When we emerged from the water, Agnes pointed to her feet and one sandal was gone. Agnes was always this way, losing hair clips, losing her papers.
We did not know where they were taking us. We did not know if we would live or die. You now have a new perspective. You do not care so much about the thorns scratching your legs or that your shirt is wet. You notice other things. Above the trees dawn was lightening from dark blue and it made me think of my family in our house in Lira, all sleeping. My mother was the one who decided I should go to school at St. Mary’s in Aboke because I would learn more there. You might make something of yourself, Esther, she said. The ground was still dark, but I could see my light-colored sneakers.
Then the sun rose and spread behind us in a bright band lighting the scraggly branches gray in front of us, and I felt it as if my mother or sisters were offering their hands in help. That light appeared quietly. For an instant I had the feeling I would sometimes get of the world being a sweet place and how lucky I was in that life, then immediately saw that I might not be so lucky now. Inside us were new feelings of fear. The good world was overlapped by another one. We walked on the road again, then turned for the last time off into the bush.
The rebels had not been so visible to us, walking with guns strapped across their chests, thirty of them, maybe forty. As it lightened, their faces appeared. Kony was not there. We did not know then, but Kony would not go on raids. The man leading us was named was Mariano Lagira. He was a fat one. But he walked as if he was not fat, he walked quickly. Always two or three soldiers walked near him. Some soldiers were very young, younger than me, eleven or ten years old. Even they were carrying machine guns with necklaces of bullets. The young ones looked the hardest. One tall rebel had two scars, one down his forehead and across his mouth and then one going the other way, as if someone had crossed him out. I heard a girl scream then a gun shoot.
Some of us had broken off to escape. Some were brought back. Later we learned that Irene had escaped at that time.
A rebel shouted, If you do like this again we will kill you. Everyone heard.
We went up and down hills. The sun rose and it was morning, but unlike any morning we had ever had before. It was the same thin sun and there were the usual thornbushes with flaking bark we see every day of our lives and dark green leaves like narrow beans along thin branches. One girl, Patricia, she would not stop crying and two rebels hit her on the back and shoulders till she stopped. If we looked to watch, they would raise their guns till we looked away. We learned quickly how it was to be.
We were tired but still we walked. We crossed another swamp and again got wet. We were made to crouch down which was supposedly resting. It was muddy there and I held Agnes’s hand. She had on the white nail polish we put on two days before and it was good and bad to see it.
I mouthed to her, It will be okay. She nodded. Her mouth was open in a round shape, wanting to believe me, but not so sure.
We went farther, down in a valley. We climbed a hill.
The commander Mariano Lagira said, We will stop here.
It was about one o’clock. There was some shade and we were made to sit.
It was then that we saw her thin figure coming up the hill. It was Sister Giulia, our headmistress. She had come after us, having followed in the night. Mr. Bosco our math teacher also was with her. Mariano Lagira saw them. He said to us, to all the girls, You stay here. If you do not stay we will slaughter this nun before you.
We kept down our heads, but were able to see what would happen. Sister Giulia was not wearing her habit so we saw her light brown hair we had not seen before with a kerchief over it. Sister Giulia, she is very small, with thin arms and skin so light her nose becomes pink in the heat. She is nice to everyone and a fair headmistress and gives soft handshakes to her girls.
We watched with worry and hope when she went to sit with Mariano Lagira. We could not hear her voice, but we saw her take out her rosary. She bowed her head and kneeled down. At least Mariano Lagira was not slaughtering her. Then he was kneeling also, praying beside her. Afterward he took her hand to stand up. They had tea. In another place some soldiers spread batteries on the rocks to charge them in the sun. Sister Giulia had a piece of paper and was writing something, leaning on her knee. Then she was gone from the chair. Then she was by a small hut, washing her hands from a plastic jug.
The afternoon passed in this way, watching Sister Giulia.
The sound of the helicopters came then, growing louder, and soon they were close and all was confusion. Rebels moved everywhere. Quick, they said, pushing us to the ground and pressing branches on our backs. Take branches this way, they said, and covered our heads, as if we were in a school play, acting as trees. Bullets came flying. We kept our heads down, praying. Dust swirled.
When the sound faded, everyone stood. I had scratches on my arm from a tree and Agnes’s face was half pink dust from being pressed on the ground, but we were not hurt. Judith, our head girl, had blood on her neck. A bullet had passed over her skin. She had been shot. A rebel handed her strips of cloth for a bandage. Was this the one who had been hitting someone moments ago? Judith shot. Yesterday this thing we would have never known.
We were made to line up again. At St. Mary’s we might be made to go in a line, but now we were here to be counted if we were all there. During helicopter attacks an escape could happen. Some ran to find us. We who remained prayed for them. In any event, no one was brought back.
Later we were given cassava leaves which we ate, being hungry. It was not our usual supper. Then they began to select some girls to move to a place apart. Louise was pointed to, I was pointed to. Also Janet and Charlotte and Jessica. I saw they were picking strong-looking girls. They pointed to Agnes. And Lily and Helen, also picking the pretty ones. We did as we were told and went there.
It was evening, perhaps around seven o’clock. Insects had started their song, coming out in waves from the trees. Mariano Lagira was by the hut, sitting with Sister Giulia. He had taken off his beret and his head was without hair.
What are they doing? Agnes whispered. He was drawing with a stick in the dirt.
Hush.
In this way we watched our fate decided.
Sister Giulia stood. She approached us where we sat. When I saw her face and its unhappiness I knew it was bad news. She was being permitted to speak to us.
Be good, she said. Girls began crying and reaching for her sleeve. She shook her head. You must not cry. You must be strong.
We tried to do as she said. But some of us had things to say and this was our last chance to say them. Sister Giulia looked down, listening and nodding, then shaking her head, then nodding again. She was too upset to write, so Louise took the pencil and listed our names as Sister Giulia watched us. She looked at each one, telling us she would not forget us. She looked me in the eye and I held on to that look.
Then we saw that Agnes had slipped aside to the other group, and when we whispered it, Sister Giulia closed her eyes and said she must come back. Agnes did as she was told. It must be this way, Sister Giulia said, shaking her head, not believing it.
Sister Giulia left, taking some of us with her while thirty of us remained.
That first night lying on the ground before sleep I asked myself, How did we get here? Your life is your own one moment then suddenly it changes and belongs to someone else. In the past I have felt as if my life belonged to someone else but that was for love. I felt my life leave me and belong to his life. I liked that belonging; I chose it. Later however I learned it might not be so good to belong that way either.
People interfere with your life and decide things for you then your body develops an angry feeling unsettling to your stomach.
The first days are still vivid for me. I would not be sorry to forget them, but so far they stay. Things latch on to you and are not so easy to unlatch. You may try to forget, but forgetting happens without your trying, when you no longer care.
None of us knew how long we might be with the rebels, if we would live or die. For myself I tried to keep a calm place inside me. This place I thought of as my soul. I pictured it in the shape of a white marble bowl. No one could disturb that bowl, it was old and curved and the one and only property only mine. I would keep that white bowl in my mind. I used to think God sat in that shallow bowl. Now I do not know it.
The day after our abduction, again we footed it through the bush. They kept us together, the girls from St. Mary’s, making us carry what they had stolen from the school. The rebel with the scar of an X walked near us, wearing boots with no laces. He was tall like a Dinka, but I do not know if he was from Sudan or not. Later we learned his name was Majok. Agnes and Louise were with me. Agnes wore the sneakers of Alison, too big for her but they were shoes. She wore a nightshirt with her skirt. I had on our school uniform, the white shirt with a collar and our blue skirt.
The rebels did not allow us to speak with one another and so we learned to whisper, or wait till they were away. It was very hard not to talk. I used to feel, If I do not speak, I will burst. I looked to Louise. She did not always talk so much before, but when she did it sounded natural, as if she had been speaking all along. Her words were not soft or shy, they just did not happen all the time. While others were talking, I used to see Louise watching them sidewise, listening, and feel she was listening more than others, learning something more about what they were saying than they even knew. With Louise you would get the feeling you talked too much.
Louise took the role of our protector. She was that girl who knew what was going on. If you wanted to know what to do Louise was the one to look to. She was tall and you had the feeling she could see over our heads farther into the surroundings and warn us if danger was coming. Indeed, this is what she did. Louise had a mournful containment. She had shallow eyes and a long chin and looked like a picture the nuns had shown us of St. Lucy holding her eyeballs in a plate. She knew which rebels you might talk to and which ones to stay away from. She was brave, but cautious. Perhaps this is why she has still not escaped. She will try only if she is sure of it.
At the end of that first day we came to a village where we found another group of children who had been with the rebels for some time. Their feet were swollen and their clothes dirty. From the huts women brought bowls of food. Mariano Lagira sat on a stump with other officers and ate with women who sat nearby or fetched him water.
We learned, in whispers, that for weeks these other children had been just walking. Look at the skin worn off my feet, one girl said. They do not provide us with enough food.
Have you tried to run away? I asked. In the first days you kept thinking of escape. A voice in you said, I may get away soon. Another voice also said, You must not run and endanger the others. You must not be killed. Those two voices came to us at the beginning and never left.
The girl shook her head. Tipu Maleng can see where we will go, she said. Then we will be killed. This girl was like a trembling animal in a bush.
Louise frowned at me. She knew the Holy Spirit would not be trying to stop them. I saw also a girl there I knew from Gulu. She wore a yellow dress with spots of muddy water dried into dots. She stared at me. She would sometimes come to our church in Lira. We did not speak, because she was sitting alone far away. She smiled at me, but I did not smile back. I did not dare.
Later we left that place and were taken not far to an area that had been cleared. We heard shouting from the place we had left and soon rebels joined us and they had with them this girl from Gulu. They told us she had tried to escape. A rebel with mirror sunglasses gripped her arm and others were hitting her to move.
Now you see what happens when you try to run away, the rebel said.
Then they tell us, Gather firewood. We look around for sticks. No, they say, bigger ones. I pick up a few and put them in the pile. The rebel with the sunglasses takes the sticks and gives them to us.
They say, Stand here. We stand in a circle where they point. In the middle is the girl from Gulu and we watch this rebel kick her with his boot. Then he hits her, his short arms holding a stick.
You. They point to Louise, tall and strong. Sunglasses hands her his stick. You kill that girl, he says.
The girl from Gulu is now on the ground curled on her side holding herself as if sleeping. Her eyes are squeezed tight and her mouth is bleeding. Louise stands there.
If you do not do this, instead we will kill you, says Sunglasses. All of you.
All of us? I think.
Louise holds her stick, dangling. She hits the girl on the leg but not hard.
Majok the Dinka steps over. No, he says. He takes the stick, turns it around and hits the girl with the bigger end. She lies on her side with her knees up and jerks a little.
Louise hits. The stick makes a sound.
Everyone must do this, Majok says. The Aboke girls will learn the example.
All of you will kill this girl, Sunglasses says.
A prickling feeling spreads on my forehead and the air crowds me, making me feel smaller. It is hard to breathe. With an effort I keep breathing. Maybe I am going to faint, I think. But I keep standing. I do not want to hit the girl, none of us wants to hit her. But we are not allowed the choice.
We are each made to step forward. Agnes has tears wetting her cheeks. The rebels push her with their guns. I hold a stick and do not move forward and am pushed from behind by a hard hand.
You hit, says the voice behind me.
One time in our garden a hedgehog came charging out of the trees, being chased by something. I grabbed a shovel and hit his neck when he came close. He jumped back and ran off. I did not like hitting him. Up close I saw his skin with the rough hair over it and it seemed as real as my skin and the thud was a terrible sound.
Everyone is hitting now. My stick comes down and the girl no longer jumps. Maybe she does not feel it anymore. One hopes this, and to hope this is a terrible hope. Most of the sticks beat only the legs. Everyone fears to beat the head.
My gaze looks at what is happening but a small gate in my brain makes a space and I leave through it. What I am watching continues on, in a separate place glassed off, in a universe of its own. The hands holding my stick are no longer mine.
By now the girl’s face did not appear to be sleeping, it was covered with blood. In this way that girl was killed.
She was not the last dead person I saw. The girl from Gulu was the first. Later I learned her name was Susanna. She is now one of the tipus who come in my dreams. Many dead people come, and when Susanna is there, she comes in her yellow dress and says, I am the girl from Gulu. You have killed me.
I say, I did not mean to kill you. They made us do this thing.
She looks at me.
I say, Please, will you forgive me?
And the girl from Gulu shakes her head. She says, No.
After that day I am a new person. I am no longer a person who has never kille
d. I am now a person who will always ask herself, Could I have not done that thing? At the time I thought, This is the worst thing that would ever happen. Later I stopped deciding what the worst things could be.
What if, when they told us to hit her, one of us did not pick up a stick and one at a time everyone refused it? What if instead they had killed us all? Would that have saved the life of the girl from Gulu? I think the answer is no. I must believe it.
Should I have refused in any case? I have only one answer to that: I do not know. I did not refuse, so I must believe this was the thing I must do. But I am never sure.
In the morning I wake here in my bunk feeling a thumb is on my throat. It feels like a bruise, but I have not been hit. Sometimes the ache travels up the back of my head and I feel a strap tightening. Perhaps I am getting sick.
We walked many miles those first days. You might think you were headed to a new place, then realized you were again where you had been. The rebels, they do not move in a straight line.
Once, crying, Agnes said, Let us ask God to kill us. Louise said, No. Let us tell him as long as we are alive to keep us this way so we may see our parents again.
On the fourth or fifth day, we walked all morning. Agnes stayed beside me. It would have been worse if we had not been together, we had ourselves at least. We came to a place with huts and a cleared area marked with branches and rocks around it, a rebel compound. Near the center of the circle was a cross of thin trees. On the ground, drawn in the dirt, they had made a map of Uganda.
A soldier approached us. He was wearing a green hat with flaps over the ears and tiny braids in his hair and had a bone necklace. So you are the girls from St. Mary’s, he said. Why do you make so much trouble? We learned our abduction had been in the newspapers and also on TV. Why are you so special? he said. He hit Janet with the back of his hand. Why are you on the radio?
