One String Guitar

by Mona de Vessel

  “Hi, my name is Betty. How are you today?” She asked looking only at me. I glanced at Francine as she scanned the room lingering on the white and silver of the instruments shining brightly around us. Francine carried the little boy up on the examining table and sat down next to him. I sat on a small stool.

  “Can you please ask her to remove her coat?” The nurse asked. Her face was small and perfectly formed, without a single wrinkle. Wisps of blond hair dangled loosely around the line of her jaw, beyond the confines of the ponytail holding a small mass of limp, shoulder-length hair. She had not glanced at either of them once.

  “How old is the child?” Nurse Betty asked pen in hand. I translated and Francine answered each question mechanically.

  “Four. He just turned four.”

  “What kind of symptoms has he had? What is the reason for their visit today?” Betty asked with feigned interest.

  “Belly ache, fever, chills at night. Difficulty sleeping.”

  I thought about Francine’s vulnerability. How she needed to expose herself to strangers. She folded her coat and placed it on her lap. Her body was smaller than I would have expected. She was thin, brittle almost, or was it that she was wearing clothes too large for her? I suddenly felt strange being responsible for this stranger who would need to peel layers of herself in front of me.

  The nurse began firing questions. Does this hurt, what about this? Does he have an appetite? How often does the child have a bowel movement? How many times a night does he wake? I translated. Francine glanced at me and then down at her coat on her lap. The nurse and I shared a common bond: I translated the world she measured: weight, age, height, blood pressure, temperature. These were the statistics of Francine’s physical realm. Her body was pumping blood, it was a living machine. Inside, wrapped around the vessels of blood and muscles, behind the bones, existed the spirit of Francine.

  “I am going to need to draw some blood from both of them.” Blondie addressed me. They were invisible. I told Francine what to expect. She nodded and looked down again. As the nurse approached the child with her needle, she addressed him for the first time.

  “What’s your name?” she asked in an overly high-pitched voice.

  No one answered. In a normal tone, and now without a faux smile, Blondie asked me almost annoyed. “Do you know what his name is?”

  “No, I don’t,” I told her the nurse before asking Francine the name of her child.

  “His name is Innocent,” Francine answered.

  “Innocent.” I translated.

  “Innocent, as in not guilty?” asked the nurse laughing.

  “Yes, I giggled nervously.”

  Francine looked up and scanned my face trying to understand the nature of my laugh. I was not laughing at her. How could I explain? Seeing the needle in Blondie’s hand, Innocent began to cry.

  “It’s OK. Sweetheart. This won’t hurt. I promise.” She was back to her high-pitched voice resembling a dog whistle.

  Innocent stared at the woman through his tears letting his cries turn into a wail.

  Blondie whose surface patience had suddenly vanished turned to me. “Can you tell him that it won’t hurt? I have to draw this blood, otherwise, we won’t be able to figure out what’s wrong with him.”

  I knelt by Innocent who was sitting in a chair next to his mother.

  “Do you like ice cream?”

  He stopped crying and listened to me intently. Then, in between sniffles, he nodded yes.

  “Good, because after we’re done with this place, we’ll go get some ice cream.” Innocent sat very quietly and looked at Blondie stoically, waiting for her to do her job.

  “He’s very warm. I’m certain he has a fever,” she said as she placed her hand on his little arm and held it straight as she drew the blood. Innocent did not budge. He kept his eyes on me, as if keeping my promise required him maintaining eye contact.

  “All done,” she said, putting a BandAid on Innocent’s arm.

  “OK, now for your temperature,” she held a thermometer under his tongue until it beeped.

  “104.3. The doctor is going to want to look at him.”

  I told Francine, who continued to sit very still on the chair with her coat neatly folded.

  Blondie drew blood from Francine and then disappeared. The three of us waited in silence. I wanted to say something to this woman whose experience I was translating, but I had nothing to offer. Innocent’s legs dangled in the air. He moved them back and forth, two small pendulums swaying.

  The door opened. Blondie had returned with a doctor.

  “This is Doctor Schneider, he will examine the child.” Before leaving the room, she gave Innocent a lollipop. The boy took the small treasure in his hand and examined it as if he had never seen candy in his life.

  “What seems to be the problem?”

  I translated every word Francine gave me.: fièvre, vomissement, mal de ventre, il ne dort pas la nuit.

  “He has trouble sleeping at night.”

  The doctor glanced at Innocent, who was sucking on his lollipop very slowly.

  “And how long has this been going on?”

  “Since he was born.”

  “Tout a commencé quand il est né,” Francine had said to me. Everything began when he was born. She had spoken the words like it had been a jail sentence.

  The doctor knelt by Innocent’s side.

  “Innocent’s physical health is not good. He is severely dehydrated. We will have to conduct more tests. I’d be more comfortable if we kept him overnight for observation.”

  “Is his life in any danger?” Francine asked.

  The doctor cleared his throat. “It’s too soon to tell. We’ll know more once we’ve run a number of tests. He’s extremely dehydrated. I’d like to keep him overnight, so we can get some fluids back in him. You can probably pick him up tomorrow after we’ve run some tests.” I translated the flow of words determining her child’s fate: Innocent doit rester à l’hôpital.

  Her stance was tense but she said nothing. She nodded. She hadn’t touched or looked at Innocent once. She sat while the doctor examined her in turn. He prodded her, told her to open her mouth, he listened to her heart. Innocent continued to lick his lollipop ever so slowly as if he were alone in the room.

  “Everything seems OK, although you do appear very tired. Are you getting the rest you need?” Like most doctors, he was not listening. Without translating, I answered him directly. “She is not sleeping. The boy is not sleeping either.”

  “Well, I can prescribe some sleeping pills, which can help her get to sleep at night.” I was getting angry.

  “How will she help her child, if she is sleeping through his cries?”

  “Que dit-il?” Francine wanted to know what the doctor was saying.

  “He wants to know if you want some pills so that you can sleep at night.”

  “Yes, tell the doctor to give me the pills.”

  I felt angry but translated her request.

  “Good, I will write the prescription.” It was an easy fix. The doctor shook Francine’s hand and then mine.

  “The nurse will come back to take the child to Pediatrics. You can call tomorrow to see if he can be picked up.” He turned to Innocent who was almost done with his lollipop. Francine began putting on her coat slowly. Innocent looked at me with the same look as when I’d told him about the ice cream.

  “Ice cream?” he finally said in a small voice.

  I was such a shit. Why had I promised something I could not deliver? I spoke quickly, barely looking at Innocent. “You can get ice cream tomorrow. First, you have to stay with the doctors for one night,” I told the child in French. I hated myself for not knowing how to talk to children. Stay with the doctors? This was no way to talk to a child. Innocent stood very still, he looked at me as tears began to well. His little arm was stiff as he held the lollipop stick in the air. I did not know which hurt him more, not having ice cream or having to stay behind.

  Nu
rse Betty came back. “If you’re not going to carry him, it would be best to put him in a wheelchair. He should be quite weakened by his dehydration and fever.”

  I translated the nurse’s words for Francine, who stood impassive, as if she had not understood a word I’d said.

  “I’ll carry him,” I said, leaning down to Innocent.

  “Je peux te porter?” May I carry you? I asked him. He nodded solemnly still trying to process the absence of ice cream in his near future. I reached to take his hand, but he was still holding the lollipop stick. “Would you like to throw this away?” I asked him. He shook his head no. I scooped him into my arms allowing him to hold on to the precious lollipop. Francine walked beside us in silence. She depended on me. I was showing her the way. I watched the dark chestnut of Francine’s skin, smooth like parchment. I wanted to touch her hand and unite her to her own child somehow. But instead, I walked by her side carrying her child in my arms. I was only a vehicle of words; I transported meaning between Francine and the world of medicine. I was invisible. I liked the invisibility, the slipping away inside the comfort of this foreign language where I could hide in the mother tongue of the woman who had raised me.

  Chapter 5 – Francine

  Syracuse, New York, 1998

  The two women drove home from the hospital in silence. Francine invited Elbe into the house. She thought about the strange stench she could discern as soon she opened the front door and felt embarrassed.

  “Tu sens?” She asked Elbe. Can you smell it?

  “Je ne comprends pas. Je sens quoi?” Elbe did not understand why Francine was asking her about a smell. Francine could not shake the feeling of the house smelling old. Old and pourri. Rotten coming from the inside. Was she being polite, Francine wondered. Was she losing her mind?

  Elbe looked around the large house which reminded her of an oversized boat, shipwrecked on a beach, no longer serving its purpose in the waters. The house must have been grand at one time in its existence. But that was no longer the case. Elbe did not know why, but she often thought of the world of oceans, even though she had grown up landlocked her entire life.

  The women sat in the living room, which was a large, mostly empty room with a large beaten brown corduroy couch and a scratched wooden coffee table.

  “Un thé?”

  “Oui, merci.”

  How Francine loved and loathed French. How beautiful it was. No matter how many years she spoke it, she never stopped appreciating its melodious sweetness with its elongated vowels and the glottal stops English lacked. But Francine never once pretended that speaking French was part of her heritage without remembering the brutal history associated with the colonization of the Belgians in her country.

  Francine came back carrying a platter with cups, a pot of tea, sugar, milk and a plate of cookies.

  Un sucre, merci. Non, pas de lait. “Sugar, no milk.” Francine loved sugar in her tea. In fact she loved sugar in nearly everything she swallowed.

  Comment avez vous appris le français? Francine couldn’t help ask Elbe how she came to learn French.

  J’ai été adoptée. Ma mère est française. “I was adopted. My mother is French.” Elbe took a quick sip of tea to swallow the moment. She hated discussing her roots, the past, the lineage of ancestors she would never meet.

  Je suis indienne. Indienne d’Amérique. In French, like in English, the word Indian could refer to someone from India or from the Americas. “I am Indian. Indian from the Americas,” she specified to Francine, as if anyone could possibly mistake her for anything else.

  Francine noticed how Elbe had spoken of her parents like one speaks of strangers. She had detected the tension in her voice in the way she had referred to being adopted, as if something as normal as raising a child one had not birthed was a big deal. Francine did not understand why Americans needed to render such simple things so complicated. She had not given birth to Devota and Sophie, but now they were her children. In America, everything seemed measured, and counted. Everything was as tight as a knot.

  Il faut que j’y aille. “I have to take off,” Elbe told Francine while finishing her tea.

  Ça va aller,” Elbe added. “Everything will be alright.” What did those words means exactly? What was alright? Francine no longer knew. She thought about the barrack near the checkpoint where she had lost everything four years earlier. Francine had spent so many moments wishing death on Boy; now that he was in a hospital, would God know if she had changed her mind? She closed her eyes. Francine had wished for Boy’s death since he was born and now that he was sick, she wished no harm would come upon him.

  “Oui, ça va aller,” she responded to Elbe. Francine reviewed the doctor’s words in her mind over and over again. We need to run more tests.

  Francine thanked Elbe for her services and watched her car drive away in the stillness of a snowy night. Francine knew in that moment that she shared a bond with Elbe she could never define. A bond of shame and danger and love all entwined into their knotted roots and the blood lines of their legacies.

  That afternoon, the children came home from school and Francine thought of Boy and his absence from the clamor of their voices at the dinner table. Jean de Dieu worked afternoons and evenings at the local boxes factory and rarely came home before she went to bed. She found comfort in the distance between them, in the way their lives had been pulled apart by the demands of American responsibilities and work.

  When night fell and settled, she kissed Angélique and Sylvie goodnight in their room and she thought about how she could almost pretend Boy had never existed.

  Francine considered taking the sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed her, but instead she slipped out of bed quietly and sat by the window watching the hard heavy flakes fall outside. For a moment Francine had thought it was rain and she said out loud: “This will be good for the crops,” she said outloud, even though she remembered there were no crops to grow here in this land of the Americas.

  In the camp, they had tried to grow vegetables. Sometimes they grew, sometimes they didn’t. And when they did, the hyenas would come and eat almost everything they had planted.

  Francine sat on the couch and thought of Boy lying in his hospital bed; she thought about the barrack near the checkpoint where she was raped in the dark while her children were outside waiting with their dead father. She thought about Innocent’s face, the same face as the man who had come to her that night, except the eyes of her child were filled with sadness. Francine could feel the vastness of the house engulfing her as she tried to conjure some emotion for her child she had just left behind. All she could sense was the hospital’s metallic stench still on her—the stench of danger, of death and all of the moments that followed. Will he live or die? What do I want? She did not know.

  Si tu veux qu’il survive, il survivra. This is what the voice inside her head had told her. “If you want him to live, he will survive.” How could she think this when only God decided who lived and died?

  Part II

  Chapter 6 – Francine

  Four Years Earlier

  Rwanda, Spring 1994

  I remember the time “before” like a dream. I remember the night everything changed. April 6, 1994. Mélanie, my youngest daughter, was turning two the next day and we were going to have a large party with the family. I was baking her a cake. The kitchen smelled sweet with vanilla and butter and the small pieces of chocolate I’d hidden inside the batter to surprise Mélanie when she’d take her first bite. My middle child, Sylvie, who was six and a half, was helping me with the batter. Knowing I would make a cake for her sister, she badgered me all day from the moment she woke up to let her mix the batter. All morning, she tugged at my sleeve, “Maman, will you let me help you? Will you let me help you, Maman?” and finally, I had agreed. I agreed to let my daughter make the first and only cake she would ever make. I remember her eyes; she had my eyes—we shared the same look on the world. I liked to say that she and I came from the same place, just 24 years a
part. I remember her little hands holding the large wooden spoon as she tried with all of her might to mix the eggs into the flour and butter. I remember her little braids bouncing alongside her head as she struggled with her mission. She was holding the spoon with both hands and making little grunting noises to match her grimaces as she pressed on with all of her courage. She was courageous my little girl. She had the courage of an angel.

  My husband, Fidèle came home two minutes after I took out the cake from the oven. I remember because I heard the sound of his footsteps and when I pushed the oven door shut, he was standing there with a smile on his face.

  “It smells good in here,” he said in Kinyarwanda. We hugged. I was happy to see him. Maybe I knew we wouldn’t be together much longer. Maybe I could feel it already. My mother-in-law, Maman Jeanine often talked about the world of spirits and how she could talk to them.

  “Never spit on the ground, especially not in front of your enemy! They will take your spit and cast a spell on you,” she would warn me. I remember laughing. I laughed because I was afraid, I laughed because I did not understand what she meant. Fidèle he was always quiet when she spoke of such things. For a long time I thought that his silence was a sign of his respect for his mother. For a long time I thought he was like me, that he didn’t believe in that nonsense, as I called it then. But now that I look back, I think Fidèle and Maman Jeannine both knew about a piece of what was to come. The spirits must have warned them I think. And this is why my husband was silent.

  Sometimes I get stuck on the smallest moments. I get stuck thinking of words I would have liked to have said to them. I think about strange things. Mélanie’s shoes, the sandals she wore on the last day. I try to ask myself whether giving her better shoes would have changed anything. I think of our canary’s strange and frantic chirp when we left the house. I think of Sylvie and the way she cried when I sent her to bed before the cake was out of the oven. I think about her face and the way she looked at me before she turned her back on me in the kitchen. I think of her little upper lip quivering, of the way she whimpered when I kissed her good night, of the way I never gave in to her fancy. I curse myself sometimes. I curse myself wanting to change the smallest gesture. Take back the smallest word. I curse myself and then I remember how foolish it is of me when I am already cursed.