One String Guitar

by Mona de Vessel

  “This is just like holding you when you were born. This boy is a mirror of yourself.” And for a long time, I only saw myself in him. But now that I sit in hell with my children, watching my husband’s blood grow colder with each minute that passes, I see him in my boy.

  I took Michel and Angélique by the hand while Christian and Sylvie walked next to us. We made our way to the checkpoint. I searched again in the shadows for the presence of Yellow Shirt but he had vanished. The man in charge was holding a machete in one hand and a beer bottle in the other. I could see the drunkenness had already gotten hold of him. The way his body swayed from side to side as he waved some people past the checkpoint. My eyes were peeled on the blade he was brandishing with each wave, with each distorted laugh he let out like a wild animal.

  The mad woman’s voice came back to me again in this moment of uncertainty. I wanted her gone. I wanted silence in my head so I could pray and ask the good Lord to help us pass to the other side. I heard myself praying inside my head, Good Lord, let us cross and be on our way to your house my Lord. Let us come to you and be in the protection of your house of prayer.

  The mad woman quieted my prayers. You will lose another child. Another child needs to be sacrificed for the rest of you to live. Which one will you choose? She whispered to me. I wanted to scream and yell at her and tell her to be quiet. I wondered if she heard me because I did not hear from her again for quite some time.

  When it was my turn to pass there were two men now deciding who would live and who would die. The eyes of the first man with his machete and beer landed on me. He saw me for the first time. I saw him see me, and the fear coursed through my blood as he swayed back and then forward like a tree in a raging storm.

  “Look at the cockroach and her children! Look at her!” I watched the other man and searched for signs of God or the devil in him. But I saw nothing. He looked like a colleague of mine; he looked like Joseph who worked at the hospital with me, only his clothes were tattered and speckled with blood. As the Jackal continued to eye me, laughing, the other man looked at us calmly, like someone weighing the measures of the world. I kept the children behind me, shielding them from the men. I stopped as far away from the Jackal as possible.

  “Come closer!” He barked as he gestured with his beer-holding hand for me to approach him.

  “I can’t see your face. I like to see the eyes of the Tutsi women because you can see the devil in them.” Then he laughed again, throwing his head back. I tried not to look at the machete he was holding. I inched my way closer to him past the other man who eyed me with stillness. The silence that came from him reminded me of my mother’s words growing up: “beware of the quiet rabid dog, have no fear of the raging lion.” I had never understood her words until that moment standing at this checkpoint.

  I wanted to back up again so I could shield the children from the menacing man. But if I moved away, there was no telling was would happen to us. I could still hear the mad woman’s voice resonating in my head.

  You will lose another child. Which one will you choose? I could not look at him without turning my head to face him. I did not want to defy him in this way and yet I desperately wanted to know if he held a weapon. I could not remember a weapon. I only remember the speckled blood on his checkered shirt and the quietude of his ways. My eyes were on the Jackal now who had suddenly grown quiet. In the silence that followed, I was almost beginning to miss the man’s laugh. I could feel pain in my belly from the blows of yellow shirt in my womb. I pushed away the pain. The Jackal looked at me.

  “Go on! Pass! Just be gone. I feel nauseous looking at one more cockroach!” He waved me by. But suddenly I felt the arm of the brooding man grabbing hold of me and I heard his voice for the first time:

  “No! She should die.” The way he said this, so quietly, so tranquil and calm, it made me want to scream in terror. But I said nothing.

  “Get on your knees and pray for the last time.” He said to me again. The Jackal went from looking surprised to laughing hysterically. He was laughing so hard he had to drop his beer bottle to the ground and fold his body over. I got down on my knees and the children began to cry. They were crying behind me and I turned to hold them. I wrapped my arms around the three of them and held them tight. Maybe they would spare my children. They could kill me but spare my children. I thought about the mad woman’s words and I began to gain hope; if I had to choose between one of my children, maybe I could choose myself and spare them all.

  “Bring me that girl,” the man said pointing to Angélique crouching behind me. He had picked my next child who would die.

  “No! Please, not my children.”

  The mad woman’s voice whispered in my ears. Never show your fear, never tell the devil what you really want. He will now kill the child you fool! She was right. I looked up again and saw the brooding man holding a machete high above my head. He leaned forward and reached for Angélique behind me. He grabbed my baby who began to screech, like a wounded bird. I heard myself pray out loud.

  “Our Father who art in heaven...” Next to me, the Jackal had stopped laughing. He began to heave and wretch and then he threw up on the ground next to me. The brooding man waited patiently for my prayer to end so he could kill my daughter. His arm came down quickly with the silver of the machete reflected in my peripheral vision. He was killing my daughter. I raised my arm and shielded Angélique from the blow. I heard it then, the blunt sound of the blade cutting into my bone and then the pain, sharp and suddenly numb. I felt nothing. The blood began trickling around the wound, trails and trails of blood pooled down and then dripped onto my daughter’s face. She was screaming now, screaming so loud, I thought her vocal chords would break. Brooding man was laughing. And then he stopped. He pulled the machete away from my arm, as if it had been a tree trunk he was in the process of cutting down. Something else was happening around us. I heard some screams, a woman was screaming and then commotion and some people were running behind us. And then I saw him standing there. Yellow Shirt running up to brooding man and the Jackal:

  “Some cockroaches have run this way and are fighting back with rocks. You have to come.” His eyes met mine. He looked at me for a second and everything stood still and I could have sworn that I saw shame in his eyes. And then I heard him:

  “Let her go and come with me.” Brooding man looked at me for a second. I watched for motion in his machete-holding hand. But it was still. He looked at me for a second and back at Yellow Shirt again and then they were gone. My arm was bleeding badly. I tore a piece of my dress and wrapped my arm tightly. The checkpoint stayed open for a few minutes. I got hold of both of my girls and told my boy to run.

  “Run as fast as you can! Run!” I yelled. And we ran into the mad streets of Kigali on the first night of my widowhood.

  Chapter 8 – Francine

  Everything I had known up until that point became useless. It was as if the world had been turned upside down, leaving only a few familiar remnants to remind me that I was still alive and we were still on earth with the living. My children and I ran in the rumbling shadows of the city until we could not run anymore. I was still bleeding from the moment with Yellow Shirt, and the deep cut in my arm. The children were only able to move slowly, but we were moving forward toward the church of my childhood, Église Sainte Famille.

  I recognized the corner of Avenue de la Paix and Avenue de la République, with its long artery linking the heart of the city to the smaller neighborhoods. Everything I knew had eerily changed, like a dear, old house haunted by ghosts. Angélique began to cry. I noticed that her feet were blistered and raw. Her right foot was bleeding slightly. I went to pick her up but my wounded arm made it impossible for me to carry my child. I put Angélique down on the ground and held her by the arm.

  We saw a horse running wildly down Boulevard de la Révolution with madness in its eyes and its ears stretched back. Sylvie began to scream. Christian stood frozen next to her staring at the wild animal flaring its nostrils
as it ran past us. We heard its hoofs echoing in the distance. Our lives hung on the edge of every second passing. The world had been turned on its head. The children and I continued on our journey past the roundabout of Place de la Constitution, making our way along the walls of the city where wildflowers grow. The air, which usually smelled sweet and moist with the fragrance of spring, instead hung heavily with the stench of rotten flesh and blood.

  We came face-to-face with three bodies piled on top of one another, their limbs entwined, their flesh cut open in wide gaping wounds made from the chopping motion of a machete. The children stopped and stared but said nothing. I pushed them past the bodies and onto the street where a trail of blood had made its way. We passed a family of four: a young woman, probably her mother, and two young children around Sylvie and Angélique’s age. They, too, were Tutsis, walking in the opposite direction. It wasn’t in the lines in their faces or in the curves in their cheekbones that I recognized their bloodline, but in the fear in their eyes. We eyed each other, each of us on our way to or from death; we eyed each other, wondering which was the path to safety.

  The children and I saw packs of dogs making their way around us as we slinked along the edge of the city’s walls. I had always liked dogs and never feared them until that day, but these animals had been rendered wild and mad by the scent of blood. We passed the dogs quietly without making eye contact. Being among the living, we were of no interest to them.

  We walked in silence until we saw the red-brick church at the bottom of the hill in front of us. There stood the tall, safe haven of my childhood. In the night air, the church appeared gray; as if the killings had somehow washed the church walls of its familiar pink hue. All around, the streets were quiet—eerily quiet—but beyond the walls of the courtyard where we entered, we heard the whispers and voices of countless people packed together in the courtyard. As we moved forward, I began to see their faces, hundreds of fearful and tired faces, bloody faces, long, drawn-out faces, the faces of people who had forgotten they were still living.

  I looked at my arm and it was still bleeding badly. I knew I had to tie another strip of cotton tightly above the cut so that circulation would be stopped altogether. I also knew that this would surely result in me losing my arm altogether unless I received medical attention in the next few hours. The children and I were so hungry we could barely move. I kept them nearby and went in search of food. There were many men among the crowds, some of whom resembled the Tutsi tribe of my people and others who were visibly Hutus. Was there any truth in the eugenics propaganda we had all been fed by the Belgians about the definitive physiological differences between the Tutsis and the Hutus? Was it really possible to discern, without a doubt who belonged to which bloodline? I did not know anymore. But these men’s broader features and shorter bodies made me wonder who they were and why they were here.

  The doors of the church were closed. I stopped and asked a woman who was sitting on the ground alone in the courtyard why the doors were closed.

  “This is so people do not escape at night,” she said to me without raising her head. I felt a chill and I heard the mad woman inside me snickering. I willed her to be quiet.

  In the early morning, right before the doors of the church opened, a miracle happened. I woke up and saw my daughter Mélanie standing there, playing in front of me, like she had never gone away. She was running through the courtyard, chasing a butterfly. In that moment, I knew that God existed. He hadn’t left us completely. Mélanie was running. She giggled, letting out this little laugh that slipped out of her like a hiccup. Then, she hopped and skipped away and she was gone. Had I dreamt her up?

  Quickly, I made sure the others were sleeping, and I went after her. I hadn’t run since the night before when I had to try to save my life in the streets. Now I was running after a ghost.

  When I found her again, Mélanie was sitting in the dust looking at the butterfly on the ground. I stopped abruptly by her side and accidentally kicked up some dust in her face; the butterfly flew away. She coughed a little and looked up at me. That’s when I knew that something was different. This wasn’t my baby girl Mélanie. This little girl chasing a butterfly around the church courtyard wasn’t my child.

  She squinted, trying to shield herself from the sun. I tried to smile. I tried to give her something more than just a lopsided smile and a dried up heart, but I had nothing else to give her.

  “What is your name?” I asked her.

  “My name is Sophie.” For a moment, my heart sank. I asked her the question no one should ask in these places.

  “Where is your family?” For a moment she considered this. She looked at me again, she had shifted slightly in the sand so she could use my own body to shield her from the sun’s direct light.

  “My maman is over there,” she said pointing to the other side of the courtyard, “and my papa is up there.” Her small finger pointed toward the sky.

  “He’s up in heaven with God.” Maybe this was a sign. I took it as a sign. First the resemblance with Mélanie and then the butterfly and now the mention of God, out loud, in the mouth of a child. Even that morning, I knew that it was meant to be like this. She and I. We were meant to find each other. For a long time, I thought she was no more than two and a half, a precocious child. But later, she showed me that she was four by holding up her fingers. She took me by the hand to a corner of the courtyard where a woman my age was sleeping with another older child, clearly Sophie’s larger version. I stood silently watching the woman and child as they slept.

  Sophie called out to her mother “Maman! Maman!” The woman woke in terror. Her eyes landed on me first, scanning me to determine if I had come to harm her. I raised both hands up in the air instinctively, to show her that they were empty, to show her that I had come in peace. Her body relaxed a little; she blinked rapidly as she gathered herself. Sophie nestled against her mother’s body, making herself small on her lap, already partially occupied by her other child’s head. I sat down next to them, pulling all three children in front of me. The four of us sat on the ground of the church’s courtyard.

  “You met Sophie. This is Devota.” The visibly exhausted woman indicated a visibly sick and weak girl of five who was about the same size as my Angélique.

  “I’m Alice,” she said pointing to herself tiredly.

  “Francine.” I simply responded making the same gesture as Alice had, resting my hand on my chest. Secretly, I hoped for friendship with this stranger.

  “This is Angélique, Sylvie, and Christian.” I introduced the children. Sophie was eyeing Angélique curiously. Children have the uncanny ability to push out everything else around them and to focus on the present moment with absolute abandon. But I remembered where we were and everything else that had happened before and I began digging for information.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked Alice.

  “We arrived the day before yesterday. But we got locked out of the church. I went into the convent right there yesterday.” The nearby building she indicated was much smaller with a small corrugated roof covering a tiny patio area.

  “Sister Imaculée fed us, me and the children.” She ran her hand over her face slowly like she was trying to wipe away the exhaustion from her body. “We stayed at the convent during the day but then we decided to come back to the church. It was too late to get back inside. They lock the doors at night.” Alice looked scared and tired.

  “Do you have any food to share with us? I asked her. “My children and I haven’t eaten in two days.” I saw her hesitate in her instinctive response to help, she was starting to reach into the folds of her clothes but then she held herself back. I looked into her eyes. She had long, drawn out lines of exhaustion on her face.

  Finally, she said, “Yes, I have this, if you want.” She pulled out a piece of bread from the folds of her clothes.

  “Thank you!” I said, taking it without hesitation. These were the most sincere words of thanks I had ever uttered in my life.
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br />   The piece of bread was small, but it would help us keep going until the next opportunity for food. I split the piece into four morsels and gave one to each of the children and took the smallest for myself. We ate in silence.

  Suddenly, the doors of the church opened. We rose quickly as if we were in a hurry to enter the house of the Lord. As we approached the opened gates, I looked inside the church and sensed the fear moving through the hundreds of people huddled against each other in the enormous building as the light poured all around them. The wide open space of this place of worship had been turned into a makeshift camp. I wanted to believe that we would be safe here, but my heart was telling me otherwise. I could feel danger in the eyes of these people who had been here for days; in the trails of all they had already survived. I could smell death in the air, lingering like a stench, even in the corners of the Lord’s house.

  I watched little Sophie and her family walking ahead of us and I could not stop thinking about my baby Mélanie and husband Fidèle. I couldn’t stop seeing Fidèle’s face, the way he looked at me right before he got shot. I could feel pain pushing inside me, the way that man had pushed his way into my body the night before. I wanted to wash their sins off of me, wash the blood that had congealed between my legs.

  I stepped inside the church with my children. I could barely recognize the house of the Lord where I had once visited to pray with my family as a child. At first I could not discern what had changed in the appearance of the church. The walls of the church were still their distinct pinkish-red brick color. Sainte Famille had been the place where I’d come as a little girl with Maman Hélène and Papa François. I was the youngest of six children and was the mischief of the family. My parents called me “Kalulu, little wild animal” on account of my foolery.

  Now, nearly two decades later, as I was entering the same church with my children, running for our lives, I realized that what had changed since the last two decades when I had first set foot in this church was not the color of the walls, nor the hordes of people seeking refuge, but rather a new presence that had never existed here before. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and when I opened them again I knew that this presence was the devil in the house of the Lord.