Resurrection in May

by Lisa Samson

  He tsked and ran his boot along her thigh. “Such a shame. You should never have come to Rwanda.” Then he leaned down, his mouth next to her ear. “We didn’t need you then. Nobody needs you here now.”

  The voice sounded so familiar. Emmanuel, one of the deliverymen from nearby who’d drop off Yvette’s wares to her store? May wasn’t sure. She thought so. He’d always been friendly, if a little reserved, but that was the way of some of the Hutu.

  Did he know she was alive? And was there some shred of humanness left that felt sorry for the lack of life all around?

  She’d never know. But he walked away.

  She opened her eyes to a slit. Yes. It was Emmanuel.

  When night fell, May decided to try another tack. There was no way, in her current state or even in a healthy one, she could bury the village. She had only two options.

  Not knowing if it was something at which the Church would cringe, she felt sure God would give her a pass considering the circumstances. She deserved that. The only other option was to let the bodies rot. She knew deep in her core that wasn’t right. These were her grandmothers and grandfathers, her children, her aunts and uncles, cousins and friends. In a village that size, there wasn’t one person whose name she did not know, who did not know hers. She’d laughed with most of them as she learned their language, cried with some as they shared their sorrows, eaten with all.

  And so, at the foot of the altar, she piled their bodies side by side like lumber across the front of the church, two deep, then arranged them down the aisle. She grunted, dragging them into position, sweat covering her skin and soaking into her clothing, running down her face and back. She pulled the fifty or so bodies outside indoors. She tried to match up the right limbs with the right bodies, like some grisly puzzle, but it was so difficult unless there was a ring, a bracelet, she recognized. She wept over feet and hands and arms and kept saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wish I could do this right. But I can’t. I just can’t.”

  She laid those limbs she did not recognize beneath the altar. She was so sorry.

  And though she didn’t realize it as she arranged them, when she stood at the back of the church she saw they made up a cross, Father Isaac at the head like a crown of thorns.

  As the sun began to rise, she lit a candle and lifted the bowl of holy water from its cradle on the wall by the front door of the church. With a branch from a bush outside, she sprinkled the water over the cruciform of bodies and said the Agnus Dei over and over again.

  Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world.

  Have mercy on us.

  Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world.

  Have mercy on us.

  Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world.

  Grant us peace.

  Over and over, candle in hand, making sure she recognized each body for the precious friend it had been, hoping her feelings were wrong, and this wasn’t all for nothing, that as Father Isaac liked to say, “In our flesh we’ll see God.”

  And then, oil. She should do something with the oil. In the cabinet to the side of the altar, she found the vial Father Isaac used when anointing the sick, something they did a lot around the village. She loved accompanying him. People felt so loved and cared for, just because of a little oil, a thumb, and Father Isaac’s smile and kind words.

  She repeated the process of recognizing each person, swiping a cross of oil on each head with her own thumb and saying, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, may you rest in peace.”

  May figured any bishop worth his salt would shudder at her feeble attempt at a sacrament. But obviously, with what had happened earlier, God wasn’t much worried about people anyway, so what could it hurt?

  Someone might come back soon. Or not, now that they thought the people were all dead. But she couldn’t be certain. And they couldn’t either. They would figure some might have fled into the woods. Maybe some did. It was so hard to think about who might be missing. Perhaps some people got away, trying to make it for the border. She hoped so.

  The morning sun had crept over the horizon, and fear crawled beneath her scalp, but still she moved on, stumbling among them, waving away flies, making crosses, making crosses.

  Finally she was done. Exhaustion overtook her to such a degree, she didn’t know if she could continue. Too tired to go back to the mission house, May slid the ointment out of her pocket, pulled off her shirt, and rebandaged her wounds with the rest of the altar cloth. She sat for a while next to Father Isaac. Not planning to, however, she fell asleep and woke up as the sun was setting.

  Awoke with a start to the sound of gunshots.

  “Oh!”

  Her breaths racked her torso.

  She balled her hands into fists and summoned the remaining kernel of her will. There. There, now. And she stood.

  She removed Father Isaac’s red stole from the closet where he hung his vestments, the stole for use on martyrs’ feast days, folded it, and tucked it into the waistband of her jeans.

  The crucifix, heavy and of thick wood, came down next. And she felt almost like a Roman soldier as she lifted it off its peg, its weight slamming against her chest, a pain ripping through her heart. Is this how Jesus felt? Arms lacerated from the whip? The thought comforted her, oddly enough.

  She couldn’t hold it, so she placed the cross beam over her shoulder and dragged it behind her to the mission house, the arms of the corpus digging into her shoulder blade. She wondered where to place it and eventually decided to put the crucifix against the wall in the room where they used to teach school and gather to feast. She placed the stole on the small table next to Father Isaac’s bed.

  She siphoned the gasoline out of the mission’s decrepit Rover. Soon a bucket was full, and she lugged it into the church, careful not to let much slosh over the side. Oh, how her wound-ribboned arms smarted and ached down to the bone. By this time May felt like she had dragged the entire world behind her. And the world was pitiful, and it was dead.

  She wondered what would be best. Pour the gasoline directly on the bodies, or on the benches and hope it would spread?

  Well, the purpose was to keep them from rotting any further. Out of respect for her friends she never would describe the stench. She never did know how she managed what she did.

  May decided to pour the gasoline right onto their clothing.

  The first bucket took care of the crossbeam of bodies. The second bucket covered the support beam, the limbs, and Father Isaac. She fell to the floor beside him and wept, feeling so full yet so empty, the fumes of the petrol eating at the lining of her nose, but she couldn’t move.

  Yet in my flesh I shall see God, he seemed to say. It’s all right, May. Be at peace.

  “It’s too much to ask,” she muttered.

  By the time she grabbed the long matchsticks they used to light the gas stove in the mission kitchen, the stars pricked through the fabric of the night to look down. May was glad for the company. Her grandfather showed her some constellations when she was young, and she’d long forgotten their names, save one, the galaxy Andromeda, but they’d remained the same and that was all that seemed to matter.

  Standing at the door of the sanctuary that had once lived up to its name so grandly with Father Isaac around to give it credence, she saw it for what it was: a giant, rough-hewn, wooden tomb. She couldn’t have known then what was happening all over the country; that people were being burned alive in churches.

  “Imagine my thinking it couldn’t get any worse than what was happening in our village,” she said later. “Ours was very typical.”

  She’d removed the crucifix, the chalice, the patens, the tabernacle. Even the souls of the people that made up the Body of Christ were gone. It was a crematory, an indoor funeral pyre, yes.

  She struck the first match and set it on Father Isaac’s chest. She couldn’t watch it take root, so turning, she struck the second match at the end of the right crossbeam, igniting the bright green and y
ellow dress of the first woman she’d called Grandmother, a widow who had cared for her grandchildren upon the death of their mother, her daughter. Third, upon the shirt of the old grandfather who cooked meat in honor of her arrival the summer before. Finally at the foot, she set the burning match to her friend Jeannette, the woman with three children whose bodies were arranged on either side of her, whom she’d gossiped with late into the night.

  She allowed some sort of coping anesthetic to soak into the fibers of her brain, heart, and soul, and the part of her that sat in journalism classes rose to the surface and she thought, Who ever gets to see a sight such as this?

  When her story came out years later, people criticized her for thinking like this, but every writer who wrote to her said they sympathized, pausing to remember their exact feelings as they stood over the bodies of dead loved ones, so that someday they could use the memory to write realistically.

  She stood at the door watching as flames spread, eating up disease and pain and death. An all-consuming fire.

  Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

  Up the aisle the flame ran.

  Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done.

  Over the cross beam to meet in the middle.

  On earth as it is in heaven.

  Father Isaac, already a ball of fire.

  Who could forgive this? she asked of him.

  And she could say no more. It was enough, and it would never be enough, because if this was kingdom come, it didn’t seem better than anything else. It was worse.

  May subsisted on whatever she could find. She didn’t want to risk making a cooking fire, so she ate raw fruits and vegetables, bananas mostly, sweet potatoes, beans and peas from household gardens. Some days she didn’t eat at all.

  And now, so much death. And the fear! It never left, following her around during the day and crawling in with her at night in the mission house where she slept under Father Isaac’s bed. The closest she came to praying was to ask him, “If you can see me, put in a good word.”

  And no offense to the hound who was still hanging around, and she was thankful for him, but having her own dog’s warm body with her, kissing Girlfriend’s wrinkled face, would have made bearable this storm in which no cloud break cottoned the horizon.

  During the first week of May, after the church had burned, they came back, said, “No bodies left in the road. Somebody did this. They can’t be far.”

  She managed to hide in the bushes, her backpack hastily packed with Father Isaac’s stole, bandages, all the ointment she could find, and some clean underwear. Fear that the dog would give her away bit at her straining muscles as she squatted in the foliage.

  They searched every home, the mission house, and for spite, burned every structure in the village to the ground. Now May had no shelter.

  The murdering swarm continued for another two months and so did May, though she never knew how. Some of her wounds festered, and she tried as best she could to cleanse them with the water from the well, each dab and wipe excruciating. Only the antibiotic ointment kept them from killing her, she supposed. She didn’t know much about that sort of thing, she just faithfully dabbed it on. Some of the slashes had closed up, she noted with a sort of satisfaction. While everything around her was in decay, it was good to know her body could still heal.

  There were times she looked at the charred remains of the church, pictured those once inside, and thought how lucky they’d been to have been burned after they were dead.

  Day ran into day. Night into night. Nights were the most excruciating, every sound magnified in anticipation of their return.

  She slept amid the trees, the backpack under her cheek, Father Isaac’s stole pillowing her head a little more. Shivering in the evening coolness, only the clothes on her body for covering, and soon they would be tatters. May clung to the memories of the people who had died, telling herself over and over again it was all worth it, to have known them, to have loved them. Some days she convinced herself of this. Others, well, she couldn’t no matter how hard she tried.

  And the days walked, bringing the nights along on their backs, and May lost count. But she figured several months had passed.

  When she heard a motor coming closer one day, which turned out to be early July, she realized this was her chance to end this all formally. Emaciated, infected, aware of the definition of the word weary as only a woman in prolonged childbirth understands the word, May stood by the well, arms crossed. It didn’t matter what they did to her, it couldn’t be worse than it already was. She was ready. She just hoped it would be quick. No more rape. Just a quick chop to the neck and it all would be over.

  The roar of the engine and the jangle of the shocks on the pitted roads grew louder, her heart raced, and she broke out in a sweat. There was still time to run—the thought raced through her brain, but her weariness won the contest. Because she had no fight left. There was only one way out of this.

  —So be it. You wanted to know what your life should be about, May? Maybe it’s about getting to the end and not caring whether you live or die.

  Did she have to go through all this to get here, to this, this nothing?

  Something whooshed out of her, from the top of her brain, traveling down the length of her spine, her thighs, her knees, her calves, her ankles, and through her toes.

  She began to laugh, hugging her sides, as she leaned against the well and slid down, her bottom behind her heels. Wasn’t life a trip? Try to do something good and end up worse off than when you were partying and ignoring God at all costs?—Yep, kill me now. You want me to pray, God? How about that? Let me die.

  Once again her unspoken hopes fell on deaf ears.

  The Jeep came into view, and she saw that the driver and his companion wore the blue helmets of UN troops. She was safe. More or less.

  • 6 •

  August 1994

  Sister Ruth knew before anybody else in Beattyville that the unrest in Rwanda had boiled over in April. They’d prayed every night. And every day, no word from May. Claudius made each action, each breath, a prayer, dedicating it to May’s safety. But as the months passed, with no letter or phone call, he began to give up hope. The folks at Harmony Baptist supported him as best they could, but after a while people just didn’t know how to keep up the same level of intense concern. So while his fears escalated, their actions waned. It couldn’t be helped.

  Except for Sister Ruth. She came over every day with reports. None of them encouraging.

  “She stayed,” he said to Ruth. “I can just feel it.”

  “Let’s hope she was smart enough to get out while there was time.”

  And while Claudius crossed his fingers, he knew if May had escaped, she would have contacted him.

  They held their breath for three months, then four, until he could take it no longer. He and Ruth sat in his living room after Sunday night church, drinking coffee and worrying. “It’s been over for a month now. Surely she’d be back by now. We should try and find her parents,” he said. “He’s a sociology professor at UK.”

  “I’m on it,” Ruth said. “There can only be one sociology professor named Seymour there.”

  She returned around noon the next day, set her purse on the hoosier, and set the kettle on the boil. “Well, she’s home.”

  Claudius didn’t realize how tightly he’d been strung until all the cords of his muscles loosened at once. He grabbed a chair back for support.

  Ruth continued. “She was in bad shape, machete wounds on her arms. She was in a hospital in Kenya for a week and then was transported back home. She’s been resting there for about three weeks now, and they’re getting her into therapy. You can imagine.”

  He couldn’t.

  “Is she eating?”

  —Now why ask that, Claudius?

  He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Machete wounds? Lordymercy. Lord have mercy.

  “I didn’t think to ask that,” said Ruth, turning to slide two teacups out of the c
upboard. “But he said she won’t talk about it. So they don’t know the details. Just that she was by herself in that village for three months.”

  “Oh my, Ruth.”

  “I know, Claudius. That poor little thing.”

  “We should go see her.”

  Ruth shook her head. “Not yet. I asked. Dr. Seymour said he’d phone when she’s ready to receive callers.”

  Claudius walked out of the kitchen into the yard. He circled around and around the chicken coop. Didn’t know what else to do.

  A week later a lean man with a gray ponytail, dressed in climber’s shorts and a gray T-shirt, knocked on his front door.

  “Mr. Borne, I’m Michael Seymour. May’s father.”

  Claudius threw the door open wide. “Come in, come in.”

  He sat Dr. Seymour on the leather couch, then perched himself in his easy chair. It seemed dim in the room, the skies outside promising rain. A downpour soon, if he had to hazard a guess.

  “How’s May?”

  “Not doing well.” He rubbed his palms over his thighs. “She’s refusing to say anything in her therapy sessions. It’s almost like she’s made of stone.”

  “I’m sure it will take awhile.”

  “She found one of her old school friends, and she’s been going out and drinking a lot, getting home late, two or three in the morning.”

  Claudius nodded. “Stands to reason.”

  “It does. But she can’t go on this way.”

  “No. I’d guess not.”

  “She talks about you a lot, though.”

  His heart jumped. “Is that so?”

  “She wants to come here.”

  “Oh, my!” Indeed.

  “I think a setting like this would be better than Lexington and her old haunts. She was a little … untamed.”

  “I gathered that a bit.”

  “We spoiled her. Only child. My wife had to have a hysterectomy after she was born. I guess we let her get away with too much.”

  Claudius knew nothing about parenting, what was too much, what was too little. But he knew a little about May. “I imagine it would be hard to say no to that face.”