Thirty Girls

by Minot, Susan

  What about your real family? Where is your mother?

  His face did not move. My mother is dead.

  I told him I wanted to see Kony.

  He believed I was making a joke.

  No. I have something important to tell him, I said.

  What could you know of important things? He was taking a pebble out of his boot, but I saw he was listening.

  Bring me and see. Maybe he will thank you for it.

  He put on his boot. I don’t know, he said.

  After this for some days I would see Ricky near the fire or passing by while we dug roots. He said nothing. But other rebels were nearby. Once I was able to ask, Will you take me? He shrugged, but I saw his interest. The next time I had a chance I said, I see you are not able to go to Kony. He looked at me, then seemed to look inside himself. There was more interest in his eye.

  Finally, while we were collecting firewood, he came to me. We will go to Kony, he announced.

  Now?

  When I say.

  We didn’t always know what day it was, but sometimes I would see the date on the watch of a rebel. I was surprised to find that more days had passed since our abduction than I would have guessed. Time was longer, not shorter.

  Finally the day came and Ricky said, Now we go. Greg Lotti was away and this may have allowed for it. I walked in front of Ricky. He said, If this is a trick you will be sorry.

  It is not a trick.

  Anyone can say something and make it sound true. Saying it makes something exist which did not exist before. Once the words are said, it becomes real, whether true or not.

  After a short walk of an hour we arrived to Rubanga Tek at another different hut. Children were pushing each other around outside and women nearby hit them. Ricky approached a guard. This girl wants to see Kony. The guard stared at him. He wore a brown football shirt with gold numbers.

  I undestood then that Ricky had not arranged it. We were just coming in this way and it made me worried. The guard entered the hut. When he came out he went to talk with the women, forgetting us. We waited. The guard looked at us, not caring.

  Finally, Ricky went again to him. Can we see Kony? he said.

  Kony refuses to see you, the guard said. What? Does this girl belong to you?

  Ricky frowned, as if he were concentrating on a serious matter, but I saw he was embarrassed. I had to think quickly.

  I am returning this to Kony, I said. I slipped my bracelet from my wrist and held it out. So far I had kept this one thing of my past life.

  The guard took it, knowing I was lying. He would take that bracelet perhaps for himself, who knows. He returned to the hut and we stood waiting. A shout came from the hut and Ricky looked at me with worried eyes. What would happen now?

  You come, the guard said, his gold thirty-nine in the door.

  He was not holding the bracelet. We entered the dim hut and waited for our eyes to adjust to the darkness to see the people there. Kony was the only one sitting on a chair. There were two guards holding guns and two officers with braid on their shirts, one with gray ruffled hair often with Kony. The women sat with children in their arms, Kony’s children. I saw a St. Mary’s girl there, Helen. She was holding a child. I did not show I knew her.

  Who must see Kony?

  She has said it, Ricky said, and stepped away from me, not to be blamed.

  Seeing Kony’s face again made my body split apart from me. He wore a baseball hat and beneath the brim I saw impatience in his face. I felt I would not succeed.

  Kony remembers this one. You are one of the girls of Aboke. Again you invite yourself. A woman’s vagina must be watched carefully or the devil will enter her.

  The women nodded.

  So you are having a child, he said and nodded, sure of it.

  No, I said. I remembered his thin braids slapping my shoulder like tassels. I bent to my knee in front of him. I have danger to report to Kony.

  Kony smiled all around, as if this was preposterous.

  Go on.

  A rebel is saying things against Kony. I spoke quietly, not looking at him.

  Women leave now, he said. Those on the floor rose up and took the children away. Helen did not look at me. She was a girl I always liked but had never made friends with at school. She kept apart from most girls, but I admired her. At this moment I even had the thought of how I had missed my chance to be a friend of Helen.

  Who is this man? Kony was no longer smiling.

  The one they call Chunga. And I told him what I knew.

  Kony turned to his commander with the gray hair. Do you know this Chunga?

  The man nodded, looking at me. He is from Kotito.

  What do we know of him?

  Sometimes he is not right in the head, the commander said.

  He is against Kony?

  It is possible.

  I looked at them now. I thought, Am I watching to see if I would have a man killed?

  Bring this man Chunga to Kony, he said. Where is he?

  The soldier whispered to the other officer, who was wearing a khaki shirt and had a narrow beard on his jaw. When the soldier stepped back, the officer said, He maybe is with Omona in Nebbi.

  Can he not come from Nebbi, then? Kony said.

  Yes.

  Then he will.

  This girl can go, Kony said. I hope you speak the truth.

  May I have a blessing? I said.

  He looked confused. Are you sick?

  In Sudan there were many sick among us and we were sometimes given medicine. For diarrhea you were given dead water—stream water that has been boiled, so it is no longer alive—mixed with shea oil. You would take three sips for the Holy Trinity and get better. But this medicine did not help for the AIDS. Nothing would help but Kony’s blessing. Maybe I did not believe it, but Agnes did.

  It is for my friend, I said.

  The rebels did not speak of AIDS. If you had AIDS they might let you escape. Or they would paint a white cross on you and if the cross fell off, it revealed that you were HIV positive. In this case you were to be bathed in a river, and if he was nearby Kony prayed over you. If he was not, a controller or technician would pray. As you left the river you were not to look back or you would not be cured.

  Kony’s head dropped back on his shoulders and his eyes rolled up. He made a strange gurgling sound. One knee was going up and down fast. Some people said Kony did not sleep. Some said he used drugs. When I looked at him I had the reminder of his wet mouth and other unpleasant things he did to the girl on the bed who was me. I looked away.

  Finally he said, If you are right about this Chunga, Kony will bless your friend. Who is she?

  One called Agnes.

  He turned to the man with the narrow beard. Kony will remember this, he said. The man nodded, but he was watching me with unhelpful eyes.

  We left that hut.

  It was possible I was with child then, but how did he know it? In any case, it was to be the child of Greg Lotti.

  Some days passed and we heard the news Chunga was dead. We heard that his lips were cut off, then he was executed by a firing squad.

  Kony did not come to give Agnes a blessing. She was by now always lying down. She might stir the pot cooking over the fire, but was too weak for jobs in the bush. Then some time later Kony came to our camp, and when the sick ones were brought to the river Agnes was also brought. So he gave Agnes a blessing after all without knowing it. The river was like a sheet of tin, and the children were made to walk into it. Kony poured the water on Agnes out of a jerry can. It splashed on her three times.

  A week later, a group going to Uganda decided that Agnes would travel with them. She should no longer be in Sudan. Agnes was crying, knowing she was too weak to make the journey. I told her she would be going in the direction of home and this was her chance to escape. Maybe they would let her go and she might be home at last. I told her she was lucky. She was even too weak to argue, she only cried.

  The morning she left I gave her
a kerchief and a water bottle. I am following after you soon, I whispered.

  I watched Agnes go with the group straggling away. One girl we knew, Lisa, walked beside her, holding up her arm. Agnes looked back at me with an unhappy face. I could still see the old Agnes inside that face, but it did not show on the outside. Then she faced forward, walking. I tried to feel hopeful for her, but like everything with the rebels it had gone dull—the hope I mean. I was sorry she was leaving me. I worried she would not make it.

  I waited for the chance that she might look back again, but I did not get that chance.

  It was not long before it showed, that baby in me. My monthly bleeding had stopped for many months, but this happened in the bush with many of us girls. So when my stomach started to become wide as I was also becoming more thin, I had to believe it. Soon I felt the small feet pushing against me inside and had to ask myself, Do I hate this baby? Was it his fault his father was a rebel? I put my hands against the hard places pressing and whispered, Your one and only mother is here.

  Still, I did not feel easy. I carried around this stomach. Sometimes pregnant girls also got released and sent back. What good was a girl who was pregnant? But we were to give Kony’s family more children. Lotti made it as if he had the decision. I will not send Mummy home, he said.

  I could sleep alone though. They stay away from you when you are pregnant. Once a rebel was walking close behind me, as if I were making an invitation to him. I was not, but he kept walking near and muttering things. When he stepped in front and saw my belly he moved away, no longer bothering me.

  The rainy season is not yet here but it begins sometimes to rain. Last night the roof of our dormitory was drumming with the sound. On the top bunk I felt it near me, in my head. The sound of rain is a comforting sound. I remember at least when it seemed that way to me.

  Turns out I have learned nothing.

  VI

  Refuge

  12 / Hospitality in Lacor

  GREEN BUSH SPREAD on either side of the road like rumpled fabric spread out to dry. The light was low and the red melted road deserted. At one point the white Toyota came to a fork and idled there, hesitating. Harry turned it onto the rough road, toward the north.

  A figure appeared and they pulled over. An old man limped toward the driver’s window, holding a gnarled stick with gnarled knuckles. Was this the right road to Gulu?

  The man gazed at the road behind them and gazed at the road ahead. He stared at it for some time. At last he spoke in Swahili: When you reach Kanudini, after Aber … his voice trailed off. His bottom jaw swiveled, arranging the few teeth he had. Then—

  Everyone in the truck waited, his voice was hoarse as a preacher’s—Then you ask the people there.

  They reached Gulu in early evening. The town was peaceful. An abandoned tank sunk into a dirt lot had children scrambling over it like a jungle gym.

  They drove down an unpaved alley of towering eucalyptus smelling of mint. A boy walked toward them, herding a few goats with a stick.

  Jane said, It’s like a dream.

  Above drooping leaves the evening sun was cracked in a marble sky.

  It was a one-story house. In the open door stood a handsome man with silver hair. He wore a white shirt, khaki pants and work boots. He looked past the woman standing on his darkening doorstep, handing him a torn piece of napkin, to a white truck ticking quietly in his driveway scattered with pine needles. The passenger door was open and another woman with bracelets glinting on her upper arm had a long leg extended out of it.

  He looked down at the bit of napkin. How many are you? he said. His Italian accent matched the dark skin and bluish shade around his eyes. I have no idea who wrote this note, but will assume it’s someone I once knew.

  Jane explained about their trip and said she hoped he might suggest a place to stay.

  You can stay here tonight, he said. If you can assure me your being here will help the people, I won’t turn you away. His manner was not insistent, but smooth and natural and perhaps fatigued. I have two guest rooms. The girls stay in one, the boys in the other. Where are you all from?

  The passengers in the truck came straggling forward.

  There’s a pool in back, if you’d like a swim. Jane looked toward a dark stand of tangled trees amazed a pool lay there. I have work to do at the hospital. I eat dinner at seven if you would like to join me.

  The man led them into a wide entranceway with a skylight above. The back of a low sofa with wooden arms sectioned off a living room holding other simple chairs. On the walls were framed silhouettes of African figures and carved totems of local art. The floors were wooden with small rugs. The house looked clean and unlived in.

  Don had a call to make and followed the doctor back down the driveway to the high wall of the hospital complex they’d passed on their way in. Wish me luck getting through, Don said, and rolled his eyes at Jane, in case she wasn’t aware of how far at the ends of the earth they were.

  The pool was painted a black green and sat in a rectangle of concrete surrounded by uncut grass which could not be described as a lawn. With the trees hovering it was like being in a swimming hole in the woods.

  Weird to be in a pool here, no? Jane said, treading water in the deep end.

  A lot is weird here, Pierre said, looking happy.

  The water felt wonderful and clean.

  Shut up and enjoy it, for God’s sakes, Lana said. It’s heaven. She kicked hard and dove underwater and her arms pushed out fanlike into wide breaststrokes. She broke the surface, gulped for air then slid under again.

  Harry sat at the edge with his feet dipped in. The high grass came to his shoulders.

  Not coming in? Jane said.

  Didn’t bring my suit.

  Neither did we.

  The swimmers were all in their underwear. Jane did some brisk laps. Again Harry was the figure of restraint: swimming here was maybe inappropriate. She swam hard till her arms ached. She floated underwater where it was very peaceful. When she came up, Harry was no longer sitting and she just caught his figure disappearing around the corner of the house. With his departure the pool lost much of its allure.

  In the shallow end Lana and Pierre had their arms around each other and were swishing in half-circles, whispering. Jane went under again and in the mute water remembered the nuns talking about another sister who’d recently had a heart attack: She just jumped a little and died. She went home. That’s how they put it.

  If only death were so gentle, Jane thought. She broke up through the surface.

  Don stood above in silhouette. How’s the goddamn water? he bellowed. Lana looked over, exposing her throat and smiling, staying draped around Pierre.

  It’s marvelous, she said. We’re loving it.

  Carlo Marciano’s kitchen was small and beige with bare counters and a Formica table in the middle with two chairs, like a kitchenette in a motel. For Lacor, this was deluxe. A glass bowl with packets of sugar sat beside a coffeemaker. Lana suggested getting the rice out of the car, but Dr. Marciano, gracious and unsmiling, said he had a good supply of spaghetti if that would satisfy them, and filled a pot with water and set it on a burner. He took a head of lettuce out of the refrigerator and Lana took it as if she were a nurse at an operating table, knowing her job.

  The doctor offered his guests water and took jelly glasses from the cabinet. He directed the men to get chairs from the dining room. Lana chopped the lettuce and sprinkled on oil and lemon. They ate on plastic plates the color of Band-Aids, elbow to elbow around the table.

  The doctor answered questions about his life. He’d been in Lacor for over forty years now. He and his wife, Medka, also Italian and also a doctor, came in 1956. At the time, there was only one small clinic in Gulu. They ended up starting the hospital here, assisted by various NGOs, till it grew into the largest rural hospital of its kind in Northern Africa.

  It has also served from time to time as a refugee camp, he said. As it does at the moment. Even with guests
crowded at his table, he had the air of a man accustomed to eating alone and speaking little. He had no superfluous gestures or social tics. He was a man ruled by duty. Jane felt as if she were dining with Abraham Lincoln.

  Ten years ago, he told them, his wife operated on a patient who’d been wounded in a battle. You see, there have always been conflicts here. They say it’s a different war, but it’s the same war. My wife was removing shrapnel; shrapnel is very hard to remove. During the operation she cut her finger on a sharp steel edge and became infected with AIDS. She died five years later.

  The girls stared at the doctor’s face.

  We had to hide that she was sick, he said. If you are infected you are barred from practice. So we told no one. She was still performing operations just days before she died. Medka was a very good doctor.

  The boys looked down at their empty plates.

  I still think, he went on in an even tone, that she is behind me as I walk down the hallway. I think she’s in the other room while I am making dinner. Then I remember.

  There was silence. Dr. Marciano had a face of acceptance.

  Lana’s eyes were full of tears, but her voice was steady when she broke the silence. She finished the work she had to do, she said.

  The doctor’s mouth turned down as if to say, Perhaps.

  They finished their spaghetti and did the dishes. Dr. Marciano cut slices of oranges and set them on a plate.

  Hey, Harry said, lifting his glass of water. Cheers for letting us stay.

  The only reason you are here is because I welcome the opportunity to entertain ladies, he said. He pushed back his chair, nearly bowing. Now I must go to bed.

  Everyone stood and thanked him and after he left sat back down.

  I need a drink, Lana whispered.

  We have that wine in the truck.

  I’ll get it, Pierre said. He stood and trailed his hand over Lana’s shoulders as he left.