Thirty Girls

by Minot, Susan

  They continued into another building much like the first, went through it, and eventually reached the final courtyard. Women there sat in the shade of a far wall; children circled a dribbling faucet. Behind the wall was a dark density of trees.

  Bridget thanked them and said she must be getting back to work. They could find their way out. It is a pleasure to have this visit, she said, and walked off, hands swinging.

  The sun was high and white. Don patted his pockets for his sunglasses. I don’t know about you, he said, but shouldn’t Pierre be getting this shit?

  In each place they had come, Jane felt the field of her being tilled and turned over. Don Block looked the same here as he’d be anywhere, head tipped back, hand in his pocket jiggling change. His manner said, No matter where you put me I will remain this way. Even in a hospital refugee camp I am a man impatient with the idiot late for our lunch meeting.

  They’re in the old wing, Jane said to be rid of him.

  His sneakers made small explosions of dust as he hurried off. Jane sat at the edge of a dry fountain in the center of the courtyard and wrote in the green notebook. Harry sat beside her. She didn’t look at him, but liked him near. Here among the wounded and displaced she was relieved of herself and having him there felt in balance with the world.

  A boy rolled a de-spoked bicycle by them leaping back and forth through it.

  You’re very skillful, Jane said.

  Harry spoke in Swahili. The boy did a double take, surprised. The boy chatted with him for a while then left, energized by Harry.

  I gave your bracelet away, she said, still writing.

  You what?

  This morning. To a woman with nine children who was eating fried flies.

  Oh.

  Will you get me another? she said lightly.

  No.

  She kept writing. I thought she could sell it, she said, justifying herself. She wanted to keep the balance. She felt him looking at her and glanced up. His face was near, an expression sizing her up. His face told her she was not to be trusted measuring the worth of things.

  She bent back to her notes, focusing attention on the page, not him. Sorry, she muttered.

  Forget it, Jane, he said. His tone was mild and unreadable, and she pretended to believe he didn’t care.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Don, a light blue blur crossing far off, the only hurrying figure in this place of slowly moving things. His head reared back when he spotted them and his long arms rose into in an exaggerated shrug of What the hell?

  Someone’s ready to go, Jane said, and stood. She took the reason to move.

  They caught up with Don on the road back to the house. They had planned to go into Gulu to find a hotel.

  Is everything okay? Jane said.

  Fucking great, Don said.

  What’s the matter?

  I found them balling back there.

  Jane nearly laughed. What?

  Well, maybe they were finished by the time I got there. But they’d been recently going at it, that much was clear.

  Harry showed no sign of listening.

  Wow, Jane said.

  Yes, Don said. That’s what I thought. He imitated a girl’s voice: Wow. He turned to Harry instinctively walking behind and shouted, What’s with you people here?

  What? Harry said.

  You people.

  What people?

  You! Don screamed. Here!

  Harry calmly shook his head, walking on.

  Here! Here! His hands waved in the air.

  Jane saw he meant nothing less than all of Africa.

  13 / The You File

  WHO SAID you choose your life?

  You have gone away and new things steer you. Wind, hands. Some cruel, some kind. There is madness in the dark and madness in the morning with the smell of smoke.

  You wade in the water, walk on your knees. Sometimes they take your hand and bind you. No one looks you in the eye. You listen to what they say, some is true, some not.

  You meet yourself before falling asleep. You may have been gone from yourself all day but you are there when you close your eyes. You lie on the leaf of yourself and sail into dreams. People there fly. You may not be able to steer, but at least you are able to bear it.

  You are a child again and the powerless world expands around you. Some days you say, It will be all right. Other days, It is too much to bear, no one can bear this. Then people do, they bear it.

  There are always others worse off.

  14 / What Comes Back to Me

  SINCE RETURNING, I have the feeling that my life has a hole in it and now I am missing that hole.

  I have sharp pains at night and before sunrise the fluid breaks. I am brought to a hut and lie on the straw mat with pain all day. Louise is in the doorway, then gone. The woman tells me, calm, unsurprised, It will be all right, but her face is worn out, and when she checks between my legs, she shakes her head. Lotti, I hear, is nearby, but not appearing. I want to get away from the pains but have nowhere to go. My body is not ready to push that baby out. At night tight straps squeeze me, like knives. Another woman puts her hand inside, saying the baby does not sit right. She tries to turn it, with the other hand on my stomach.

  So it went for a day and night. I ate nothing, drank water. Maybe I will die this way, I thought. In the morning the worn-out woman returned. Now we must push. It was like being attacked from inside. Did hours pass or minutes? Who knows. The feet came first, then one arm was out and they were moving me around to pull that baby out. They were frowning, shifting me. They didn’t want to break the arm.

  Then the baby came out at last. It was a dark color, not moving, its neck was choked. It had been that way for some time.

  She doesn’t need to see this baby, the woman said. It was taken away and buried. Perhaps it passed by Greg Lotti on its way. I thought at least there was not another person to join the rebels. But my feelings—they did not appear to me.

  These things come back to me: In Sudan, washing clothes in plastic buckets after a battle, rebels nearby laughing and passing around a bottle, I washed blood from a small skirt. When we poured blood from gum boots it sat like red glass on the dust, then sank in, more slowly than water.

  There was a girl named Doris who gave me a pain. She would say we were abducted because we were sinful. Kony’s tipu told him to punish us because we are Acholi. Look at what we did, for instance, at Bucoro.

  I saw Agnes showing interest. Agnes, I said. Do not listen to this one.

  We were shaken awake in the night and made to get up and steered to a clearing where others were gathered. Kony wanted to speak with us, a spirit had woken him telling him it was time to pray. We knelt and bowed our heads. Kony prayed in the name of Jesus, he prayed in the name of Muhammad. He prayed in the name of Alice Lakwena. He was the father who would lead us and all his family to the glory of the resurrection and we must pray for the sinning we’d done.

  I was beside Doris but she was not even listening. She was looking toward the rebels and I saw she loved one of them. I turned to see Ricky, that one who had taken me to Kony, the one with no mother.

  In Sudan, in a dry riverbed. A group of rebels arrived. We were some distance away in the shade and saw them crouching in lumps on the sandy ground, praying. Sometimes when they prayed, it meant they were going to kill you. They were praying for your soul. But not this time.

  When they were finished, Louise looked at me, meaning there was something of interest there. The group was picking up their guns and there among the figures was Philip. His back was to us, but I knew it to be him. I did not know he had been taken. He wore camouflage pants, a dark T-shirt with a gun strap across his back, and a camouflage hat with flaps over the ears. You would only have a gun when they believed you were with them.

  I waited to see if he would turn. I could not know what would happen, for me or him. I did not know if he would come near. Then Philip moved from that place and we could not see the whole ditch and I could
no longer see him. Some rebels climbed out of the riverbed and came toward us. A group of children was following behind and there was Philip, pushing some children to stay in line. He pointed his gun toward us in the shade and it seemed as if I met his eyes, so my heart was pounding. When he looked easily away, I thought we were too much in the shade to be seen.

  I was weaving roof thatch and my grass was in a tangle. They came near us and then Philip was there, close by. I kept my head down but my eyes were seeing everything. The children walked near and he too was near. He looked at us girls sitting among the thatch and saw me and passed by.

  When a person you love moves by you with flat eyes that will not see you, it is a shock to believe it.

  So this life goes. You suffer and think nothing new can come to you, then a new suffering comes you had not imagined.

  I saw Philip one more time after that. We were in Uganda after a raid in a place with other rebels, preparing food. I brought some sorgham to the children and found Philip sitting there among them. His head was shaved with a white scar on the side. He had no gun, but still wore camouflage pants. This time he saw me and frowned.

  Do I know you? he said.

  Philip, I said. It’s Esther. Was he teasing me? He used to tease so much. His voice was regular. I handed him a banana leaf with sorghum on it. He accepted it and dropped it splat on the ground. He began mixing the sorghum in the dirt, then ate it off his fingers. He stared at me. Mother is angry, he said.

  What? I watched him eat the dirt.

  You did not come and she needs you to take the baby. He’s been crying, crying. Philip rolled his eyes. Can you at least do that?

  What baby?

  Go on. She will whip you.

  Philip, there is no baby. We are not home.

  She was everywhere, screaming for you. She needs help with the baby! he said. Another rebel came over and waved me away. He was not surprised to see Philip eating dirt.

  Afterward, when I returned, I said these things to Louise. Esther, she said, Philip has gone mad.

  Later we learned that Philip was hit in the head by a fragment in battle and afterward was not the same.

  What else comes back to me: We are stealing food. Most villages we come to are deserted. We sleep in the empty huts, then continue on.

  A week after she left we found Agnes.

  We were moving to another camp and had been walking for some time when we came to a place with a very bad smell. We knew by now the smell of death. The rebels walked us away from this smell, and one went looking there. I saw a red cloth in the grasses and my body knew it was terrible. The rebel called out and they did not worry if we also moved closer. Then I saw it was Agnes. She lay facedown with her arms and legs out at angles and dirt creased in her red shirt. These arms and hands of Agnes’s, I thought, they had held me. Her face was sideways to us with eyelids so swollen it did not look like her face.

  The rebels stood over her, saying this and that, then deciding nothing. They said, Let us go.

  We got back in line. Louise hooked her finger in mine, then dropped it right away. We did not look, but when someone touches you, you don’t always need the eyes. Eyes may go deep but touching goes another deep place.

  Later when I was apart making my toilet I had a feeling which had not visited me in some time, of needing to weep with my whole heart. I was there weeping, but no sound came. Agnes was my best friend in the world.

  Will anyone know the pain I am enduring? I thought. Then, Why would it matter that they did? What difference would it make?

  Each of us will all die one day. Some of us before others. The first time you meet death, it is a surprise. Up to that moment you have not believed it possible. You know it is there, but do not know it close-up until it takes away forever someone you love.

  For a while I moved about as a ghost.

  The man was so drunk you could not tell if that was why he stumbled around or if it was because he had no arms. The rebels were laughing at him as if at a clown. He had foam around his mouth and kept moving as if he had to get somewhere, as if there were someplace he could possibly make it to.

  My heart by then was hard. I had a cruel feeling and did not try to get rid of it. If you were stone, nothing would hurt you.

  I say this now because I am ashamed for it. I felt shame then and I feel shame now. It winds deeper and deeper inside you so it will not come out.

  Helen heard them at night by the fire say they were going to test the river with us. All night we listened to the water rushing from the recent rain. The lazy one with no front teeth, Olet, said, If they can make it across, then we will follow.

  That morning we went to the water. A girl, Mary, was beside me. She was not one of the Aboke girls, but she was now also a wife to Greg Lotti. I found her one day in the dark corner of the hut where I stayed with him. Greg Lotti had ordered it. She was a tiny thing and looked at me with popping-out eyes so I might explain what would happen. I could not explain. Rebels were nearby. I told her with my eyes, This is how it is here. She stayed near me, quiet as a cat for some days, and so I was her friend. She was eleven.

  At the river Mary whispered she could not swim. Her village had no river, so how could she ever learn? The river was swollen with ropes of brown water rushing by. She was frightened to cross. I told her, You hold on to me. Mary was small, so I could help her.

  We gathered at a place the animals had smoothed. Stones jutted into the water and made a still round pool apart from the moving hump of river. First we were made to pour water over our heads to protect us. Then we were put in a line and given a rope and told to hold that rope. Greg Lotti was standing back with the others. He had cut himself on his chin and there was blood on his face, perhaps from shaving. He looked for a second, then not again.

  They said to Louise, You with the long legs, you go first. Then you, you go next.

  The one with the missing teeth said to me, Go.

  I did not believe it would be all right. The water was cold at first then warmer. It came to my knees and when we hit the moving part swirled up to my ribs. Mary held the rope with one hand, but at the fast water dropped the rope and held me with both hands. She was, however, very light. We did not speak. Her fingers were digging into me. I did not mind. The rope did not always stay stretched tight, and when loose it was not so easy to hold. I did not trust that rope. You must let the person in front of you stay ahead to keep it tight or there would be spaces and you did not stay close. Instead I trusted my feet. In fast water if you keep one foot on the ground before lifting the other the water will not push you over.

  I took slow steps. Water pressed at my side, curled around me and continued past. Mary clung on the side downstream, protected. Her legs did not reach, so I had the weight like an animal hugging me, but water makes a person lighter. I thought perhaps it would be okay.

  In this way, we crossed the river, or did not, for not everyone made it across.

  A person ahead of us splashed over and pulled the rope so another behind her fell, pulling others. I too went over into the water and quickly stood. But coming up, Mary was not with me. I reached my arms and did not find her.

  The rebels were shouting from the shore as if we were meaning to make trouble. We saw a girl floating away. She grabbed a branch at the other side. It was Helen. This was before I saw her at Kony’s, before she saved herself to become one of his wives. Some girls who had reached the other side waded to that branch to get her. I looked farther down the river and saw a dark head being carried away. It was in the middle, not reaching the other side, not grabbing on to anything. The ball was in sight on the surface then it disappeared. The rebels noticed and shouted. Bring her back! they said. But no one was near. No one did. Maybe the river would push her to the side far enough away so she could escape. Maybe this would be lucky for Mary. I hoped this, but we did not see her again.

  I am allowed one night to go home. I visit and think my mother will each minute come around the corner, but of course
she does not. Neighbors come and everyone looks at me. My father sits in his chair, pats my head and drinks his beer. Aunt Karen makes the food my mother would make: chicken in sauce, rice, plantains. At the table my father passes me a bowl of rice, already looking to the salt. I don’t know if he is pained for my sake, or his, unable to see me as the same daughter as before. I am there, but I do not feel among them. A gray curtain comes down and I am apart with only myself.

  Even now I do not lose the urge to escape. Even if I know I have returned I am still in the habit of thinking of escape.

  In the bush you never forgot that one day you might have the chance. This life perhaps would not go on forever. Each day you wondered, Is this the day? And you would answer, Not yet, not today. You waited for the right day. You learned you had more patience than you thought. Somehow patience came. You might not feel patience in you, yet it was there. At least, you told yourself, I am alive.

  Then at last the day arrived.

  Before sleep Louise whispered, We are moving tomorrow. She heard them talking by the fire. I was sitting away, because a girl who is in her period must sit far from the fire. She also must not touch anything that a rebel will touch. For those days I could sleep near the girls. That night Greg Lotti was in another place and no other rebel was bothering me so I was rested. Whenever we moved, there was the chance, even a small chance, so each time before we moved we would ask, Is this the time of my chance?