“She told you to get out,” Sylvain said gesturing towards the exit pointing his gun in Jean de Dieu’s direction. We scrambled to gather the children and our belongings before landing outside in the heart of Kabuga just in time for nightfall.
We never spoke about his identity or mine again. We never said the words Hutu or Tutsi, the words that saved or killed people. That night we slept outside on the moist earth after the rains and waited for the sun to rise.
The next morning, we made our way to a refugee camp in Goma near the border in the Congo. Travel was dangerous and the roadside trenches were the graves of most travelers, but we we’d heard that some people, especially mixed Hutu/Tutsi couples were sometimes selected to go abroad. We traveled to the camp without too much trouble. The night we arrived, it rained. I took turns carrying Sylvie then Michel until they became too heavy. Sylvie and the others all cried, except for Angélique whose little face full of dirt remained stoic. The children were all so very hungry.
When we reached the border with Congo, a woman walking with a cane who couldn’t have been older than thirty stopped us. “Those camps are worse than Kigali where the killers were running free.” I never forgot her words and when we arrived I knew that she was right.
They say a woman’s emotions are not her own when she carries life inside her. The camp is where the crying began. I would cry all night and when the light would rise outside I was still crying. I’d move around the camp and go about my day forgetting the tears in my eyes trailing alonside my cheeks. Jean de Dieu would lie very still next to me and wait for the crying to stop. There was the time when he put his hand on my head and I screamed out and pushed him away or the time when Angélique must have touched me by accident and I pushed her away so hard that she fell. She didn’t cry, but she looked scared; like she knew there was a demon inside me. When she touched me I’d heard my own cries and wondered who it was. There were also the moments when the children’s voices brought me back to myself with the fear in their eyes and their need for love. These were the moments when I would hold them and rock them as I had when they were babies. I didn’t know my children much anymore. A mother’s touch brings back memories of the others. Sometimes I felt bad for being a mother to the living, when all I wanted was to hold the dead. There were days when I was angry that they were here and the others were not. And other days still—and I don’t like to think this—when I even resented my remaining children for being alive. I often wished I’d died that day. But dying was not as easy as I thought. The Lord had given me another chance and He asked me to care for my children. He had even asked me to care for the baby inside me.
The first night at the camp, I didn’t sleep. I could hear the others sleeping. I could see their shadows at night, their bodies on the ground and it made me think of nights in the church. Ghosts come out at night and that first night at the camp was a night for revenants to visit. Sometimes I think spirits are laughing and saying, look at her now, all alone with that Hutu, those sickly children and this baby growing inside her. I think that human suffering is laughable when you watch it from heaven.
The camp was full of killers. A woman like myself, especially a Tutsi was just waiting to be slaughtered. People were sometimes killed in their sleep; I knew that I needed to become Jean de Dieu’s wife if I was to survive. On our tenth day in the camp, Jean de Dieu placed his hand on my belly and said: “It is time for us to be married.”
The next day, we gathered the children and washed each one in preparation of the ceremony. I washed my hair and made my body clean. I could not be cleansed of my sins but the cleansing of my body made me feel closer to God. Jeau de Dieu called Father Juvénal, the priest of the camp to carry out the ceremony. We stood in the open field of the camp near the white barrack tents used for intake. The children stood around awkwardly looking in our direction, waiting for the ceremony to start. People milled about, some gathered to watch our wedding, even though they were strangers. While others carried on and went about their business around us, as if this occurrence was the most banal thing in the world. Father Juvénal opened an old worn bible and read Matthew 19:4-6 solemnly to us:
“At the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one. What therefore God has joined together, let man not separate.”
I thought of my marriage to Fidèle. I remembered the day when we had been married at Saint Paul’s church where Rose had escaped death with her children. How could God unite a man and a woman, as he had done for me and Fidèle, only to have him taken away from us? Was there really such a thing as a sacred union? I knew that this marriage meant nothing more than a ticket for me to have better protection in this new camp where we lived. Father Juvénal’s words floated flatly around the hustle and bustle of the camp around us.
“We are gathered here today to honor the union of this man Jean de Dieu Lucien Nkunda and Francine Marie Fernande Shingiro. Dear Lord, we ask that you bless the union of Jean de Dieu and Francine, as they are children of your flock, dear Lord. We ask that you forgive their sins and wash their hands of the crimes they may have committed in your name dear Lord. We ask that you watch upon this couple Lord and their children from another union, as you will watch over their unborn children born under this union. We thank you dear Lord for your mercy and for your forgiveneness. Amen.”
Wash their hands of the crimes they may have committed in your name dear Lord. Those were the words Father Juvénal had spoken to us. Did he know something I didn’t?
When the ceremony was done, Jean de Dieu embraced me, placing his lips on mine. I realized this was the first time I had ever kissed this man who had just become my husband.
That night, we spent our first night together as man and wife. It was easy at first to be Jean de Dieu’s wife. Boy was getting ready to be born and he knew that I couldn’t give him anything with my body. And he asked for nothing. I didn’t talk about Boy. Never mentioned him. But he was excited at first, I think. I remember after that first night together, he put his hand on my belly. “I hope it is a boy.”
I hoped for the same. Boys don’t get raped.
I thought about telling him that I had no desire for him, that sharing my flesh with him would only come out of desperation, out of a way out of wanting for myself and my remaining children. But I said nothing.
The past came to haunt me when the voices came. They came mostly at night when I would scream and wake everyone around us. But I was not the only one overcome with ghosts in the dark. The camp became alive when the sun set. Many of us made sounds we couldn’t control. In the bunks near us, I heard the same woman screaming the same phrase in her sleep, over and over again:
“Pas ici, pas ici.” Not here, not here, like she was trying to shoo away some beast. Keep it at bay.
When I began crying out that night, I knew that the others would not say a thing. They knew my voice, as I knew theirs. But Jean de Dieu was not ready for this. He sat up on the cot and shook me violently.
“Wake up, Francine! Wake up!” The touch of his hands on my shoulders and his shaking of my body would cause me to scream even louder. I couldn’t remember who he was or where I was and I thought he had come to get me and the baby. I looked for the baby everywhere. I looked for my Mélanie, but she was gone.
I remembered this was all a dream and the others were gone.
At first Jean de Dieu was kind. He was kind that first night. “It’s OK. It’s OK,” he whispered in my ear, as he tried to hold me but I pushed him away. When the voices came, I didn’t like to be touched by anyone, especially not by the hands of a man; even if he was my husband now. At first Jean de Dieu didn’t seem to mind me pushing him away.
“Are you OK?” He would ask sweetly.
“Yes,” I would tell him so he would leave me alone. I lied and we returned to darkness. I didn’t sleep, but I waited until I c
ould hear his breathing changing next to me. And I felt quiet again. I tried talking to the ghosts. I tried to reason with them. But I think they were angry at me for trying to start a new life with a new husband. After the marriage, they came to visit me more often until the day Boy came. One day, the baby just came.
The rains came before Boy came out. Full heavy rains with big drops. I listened to drops whipping the earth. Dust pushed into itself and grew quiet. I closed my eyes and smelled the earth. Sweet and strong like manioc. The air smelled like rain, heavy like the clouds were going to open. And I was crouching in the hills with the boy readying to come. I call him “Boy,” but the women in the camp named him: Innocent Philippe Xavier. Innocent to remind me that he is a child of God. I was in the back of the camp, all the way on the other side from our living quarters where we keep the wood and carry the water. That’s when the pain came. Cut me up, like metal. Like the machete, only it was inside me now.
“Don’t carry that, it’s not good for the baby,” The women in the camp would say each time they saw me doing heavy labor. But I had stopped thinking a baby was growing inside me long before he was born. And when he came, I called no one. No one came to me. It was getting dark around me; I crouched in the bend in the road where it curves like a woman’s breast. I smelled the rain before it came. Pungent and the smell of my own blood. Like metal, woman’s blood and Boy’s blood too.
Boy just slipped out of me like a tilapia when he was born. He came out of me in silence and then he cried. His voice scared me. Reminded me he was a child and not the devil I thought I’d been carrying all this time. But when I saw him, I knew he wasn’t evil. He was just a baby. He came quickly. He was my sixth child; I knew how to bring them out. But with him, it was different. God brought him out on account of him being different.
Boy’s head was small and round. I held him in my arms and smelled the earth on him, and, long after I’d washed him, I still smelled blood on him. I felt no pain after the birth. Not like the others. The empty feeling took the pain away, now that my belly was empty. When I held Boy, his body was small and narrow. Not like my other children. Not like my ancestors. I wanted to bring him to the place where we relieve ourselves and drop him in the hole. But I made a deal with God. Never break a deal with God. The fate is worse than death. I didn’t look at him when he was born. I washed him but didn’t see him. I fed him but didn’t see him. I held him and felt how small he was. Small and round like a ball and I knew he came from the outside.
I didn’t want to hold him. Not at first because it reminded me of the past. Reminded me of Mélanie’s tiny body in my arms, my last baby before Boy. And I just wanted to be alone. I couldn’t stand the sound of his baby voice screeching all the time, asking me for something I didn’t want to give.
Jean de Dieu was happy about him being a boy. “I knew it would be a boy,” he said when he was born and took him in his arms, like he was the proud father.
Jean de Dieu began loving the boy. I try to remember this now, and it seems like a lifetime ago. But in the beginning, Jean de Dieu began loving the boy. He would wake me up at night when the child would cry and he would tap me. The child’s cries themselves rarely woke me but Jean de Dieu would gently nudge me and I would slip the child on my chest and let him suckle me. If I lay there and closed my eyes I could almost imagine it was the little one. I could almost imagine that she was still with me and that I was feeding her. This fantasy sometimes brought me joy.
Jean de Dieu looked out for the child. I carried him on my back during the day and then, in the afternoons, Jean de Dieu would walk around with Boy in his arms and carry him proudly. I liked the relief of being left without the child. I could get more work done around the camp and care for Angélique, Sophie, Devota, and Michel while Sylvie helped me around the camp.
When Boy would cry for food, Jean de Dieu would bring him back to me. He would bring back the crying hungry child to me so that I could feed him. I could see the bond forming between them, like a chain forming quietly without my noticing it. Even the child found comfort in his eyes; it was like he was beginning to know Jean de Dieu. He was beginning to know his touch. And when he cried and Jean de Dieu carried him, he would often stop immediately. The bond between them began to confuse me. I would look at them, the two of them when Jean de Dieu was not looking and I would begin to see the resemblance between them. I could see Jean de Dieu in the boy’s face. Or the boy’s face in Jean de Dieu and the fear came out of nowhere.
After Boy was born, the ghosts came to see me during the day as well. It was as if they knew that things were changing around me and they were becoming uneasy. One day, as we were standing outside while the children were inside, Jean de Dieu announced:
“Soon, we will have children of our own,” he smiled again. That same smile he had on his face when I first met him in the church.
I thought of his hands on my body. I thought of hands and feet and limbs everywhere and the voices in the church. I thought of the smell of their bodies. Their breaths against mine. And the darkness. I thought of the cold of their blood on me. And the way they made their way inside me. I began feeling the nausea again. The way it had come to me on the day I was raped. That’s when the words slipped out of me. The words slipped out like pebbles falling out of my pocket.
“They raped me and the child grew inside me.” He was silent, and for a moment I didn’t know if he had heard me the first time. I didn’t look at him when I said this. I didn’t look at him at all. I heard voices again all around, and I asked myself if they were voices from the present or voices from the past. Boy began to cry. He cried this fierce little cry that sometimes turned his cheeks darker; and it seemed he knew we were talking about him. The silence scared me more than anything, so I turned to look at Jean de Dieu, but he wasn’t looking at me, but at Boy. Jean de Dieu was looking at the baby and for a second I got scared he would hurt him.
I picked up the child in my arms and I gave him my breast. I let him feed to quiet him, to make the place grow silent again so I could try to find my way around this. I tried to find the words: “It happened at a checkpoint in Kigali.” Once I’d started the story, I couldn’t stop and I didn’t care if he was listening to me or not. I didn’t care, but I couldn’t stop the words that were just coming out of me like puss, like an infection, like a disease, a monster that had been unleashed.
“One of them was young; I tried not to look at him. He was holding a bottle of Primus beer in his hands. And he was drinking it. He was drinking it and laughing. This strange laugh, excited laugh like he couldn’t control it. Like he was caught in a fit of laughter. And the other two, they were older. Maybe 20, and one of them punched him in the arm.
“Shut up. Just shut up. You’re going to ruin this,” he said. Ruin this.
In one instant, my memories flooded back and I was on the ground; one of them standing over me. He kicked me in the side. A pile of bones. Something snapped, this little sound of branches snapping inside me. I felt a sharp pain in my ribs. I knew that he had broken my bones. I said nothing. I just lay there. They tore off my clothes. They tore off my clothes and the young one was laughing again. He was done drinking his beer, and he pushed the older one out of the way.
“Let me stick this inside her, he said holding the bottle up. It was broken. I would die in that place with these men while my children were alone. I thought about the children and I closed my eyes. Dear God, who art in heaven. I heard God laughing at me. I thought of the others he had allowed to die. I wanted to scream. How could I think that God would save me when he didn’t save the others? What made me so special?
“I’m first.” One of them said. He tore his body into mine. Nothingness engulfed me. I felt no pain. I felt no fear. I kept my eyes closed. He said nothing. When he was done, he was off me. I knew the young one was going to be next. He was just a boy; something of an animal in him too. He landed on me, and spit in my face. He punched me in the face. I opened my eyes, involuntarily. I wanted to di
e. God, don’t save me, let me go fast. God was not with me that day.
“When I am done with you, I am going to take you to the mass grave with the others and I will kill you. I will cut you up,” the boy said as he ripped into me.
With each word, he pressed harder and faster, grunting like an animal. I tried to see the others but I couldn’t. I didn’t know if they were there. I closed my eyes. Then he was done.
He kicked me in the face. My mouth bled. He took the broken Primus beer bottle and brought it close to my face lashing me with it. I heard myself screaming.
One of them kicked him out of the way.
“This one is not going to make it,” he said seeing all of the blood I had lost. His eyes filled with disgust as if he’d come upon a slaughtered animal rotting in the sun. I heard the sound of cars, an engine, and then footsteps. The men were gone.
I stayed there for a minute and didn’t move. I thought about running. I thought about trying to escape, but I didn’t want to move. I remembered the children all alone at the barrack in the checkpoint, and I knew that my reason to live had only to do with wanting to save my children. I needed to save them. I pulled myself off the ground and made my way back to the barrack. The men were gone.
Jean de Dieu was looking at me. His eyes bore into me. I tried hard to remind myself where I was, who he was and why he was looking at me. Boy had stopped crying. Jean de Dieu said nothing that day. He said nothing the next day. But he never touched Boy again. Never held him in his arms, never looked at him again.
Everything changed with Jean de Dieu after I told him where Boy came from. It was like he was a different man looking at me with new eyes. I don’t know when the fear really began. Maybe that’s when I began being afraid of him. I feared his hands at night, on my body. Everything blurred in my mind, the way it always does at night. It was hard to remember whose hands I feared the most.
Safety was not something we could conjure. It did not have walls, doors, or even locks. Safety was not an armed RPF soldier who could guard us at night. Safety was not silence in a time of killing. Safety was something we had created for ourselves, a made-up world of kid’s imaginings. A world of paper castles and matchstick figures who could walk away, unscathed, from the wreckage of our country. I brought Jean de Dieu with me into my made-up world of the safety I thought he would offer me. He had no knowledge of his presence in my paper mâché cell. He knew nothing of the mutability of the walls in which I placed us all, me at the center and him holding the children in his arms. How could he have known that I had created everything in my mind that held us together? How could he have stopped my imaginings? In this place of perfect stillness, there was no desire. I wanted nothing to do with his body or mine. Limbs remained untouched, body parts unshared. Mucous and semen, saliva and sweat remained unshared in this world where I existed with Jean de Dieu. Sometimes the child pulled me out of this reverie, tugging at my nipple, demanding the viscous quality of my milk. He would pull me tightly out of my dream, drawing on the demands of the body, his and mine. My breasts would produce milk at the sound of his cries, or the sound of the dogs barking outside. Each minute sound, their pitch tugged wildly at my organs. Jean de Dieu’s desire also pounded on the roof of my world each night with a violence that woke me. He would come to me at night, pushing his body against mine. I tried telling him about the pain in my belly but he shrugged. He just shrugged leaving me contained in the world of my own making. In the morning we both liked to pretend that nothing had happened. We both had different reasons. Male pride drove his pretense while mine was held by my fragile balance in the shell of my life.
One String Guitar Page 17
