“Five more minutes?” Rachel pleads.
He sighs heavily, takes the dreamcatcher from her and unwinds the yarn to find a beginning point and try to salvage it. Fact is, Rachel is about the only thing he and his wife have in common. Both of them expected so much more from their marriage, from each other. From love. Merilee has accused him, more than once, of having affairs. That would be so much easier than the truth: he simply doesn’t love her, not the way he loved Lillian—maybe still does.
“Dad,” Rachel says in a high, squeaky voice. “You didn’t really mean it, about us going away without Mom. Right?”
“No, of course not.” Henry picks at a knot that refuses to unravel. Who is he kidding? The two of them going to Africa? Not likely. “Just a silly idea.”
Henry, I wish you could see my new home: A white clapboard farmhouse with a wraparound porch, nestled into the foothills of the Virunga Mountains. It’s beautiful! The rich soil is perfect for growing vegetables, banana trees, and flowers that I can harvest and sell to local restaurants and at the Saturday market. The sunflowers, golden stalks of sunlight, are my favorite. Zebra, impalas, and caribou are frequent visitors. They graze in the yard, and you can hear the occasional snarl of a panther or roar of a lion at night. I can’t wait to move in and start my new life.
Henry returns the dreamcatcher to his daughter and takes her hand in both of his, kneading her palm to warm his icicle-like fingers. Lions roaring…just like the Disney movie he and Rachel watched on TV a few Sundays ago. Man, what he wouldn’t give to take photos of animals that aren’t behind bars at the zoo. “What I meant,” he says, his voice floaty and soft, “is that I have a new story to try out on you. There was this guy who woke up from a long sleep.”
“Like Rip Van Winkle?”
“Kind of, but this guy was only asleep for eight years instead of twenty. When he awoke, he found a canoe that could take him anywhere. Somewhere he could be happy, like before he fell asleep.”
Rachel scooches closer, her face squinched in concentration. “This boat must be under some kind of spell. I’ll bet it takes him to a magic castle.”
“Kwizera,” Henry says, the word tingly on his lips. I’m calling my place Kwizera. “It means hope in Kinyarwanda, an African language.” That’s what I wish for you, Henry.
He stares into the sprays of light in the fire pit and imagines finding the kind of happiness Lillian has discovered. His mind starts snapping photos of the places he visits while dreaming up bedtime stories with Rachel, and the movies they sometimes watch: Creepy moss-covered castles in Europe where Dracula or Frankenstein might live. Egypt’s mystical pyramids and Lawrence-of-Arabia-style deserts. Sand-crusted kasbahs and those crazy marketplaces in Marrakesh. Why should he wait any longer to actually go and see those places? Sure, that’s a good use for the money he’s been socking away, an investment in finding himself—like Merilee is doing with her EST self-help stuff.
“Dad!” Rachel’s shrill cry breaks through Henry’s thoughts. Smoke. That’s the first thing he sees. Sparks flying. For chrissakes, it’s that mess of sticks and yarn. He lunges toward his daughter.
“Hold still,” he orders, so she’ll stop jumping up and down, flapping her arms. “Drop the dreamcatcher. Now!” But, instead, his daughter twirls around as if she’s trying to get the damn thing airborne. Orange and gray embers float around her, settling on her windbreaker and in her hair. Henry scoops her into his arms and rolls to the ground, away from the fire. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” he repeats over and over, shielding her from the showering sparks.
She’s crying but not hurt, probably just scared, looking up at him for a cue. “Okay,” Henry says, forcing a smile. “Let’s get you in that tub.”
“Rachel? My lord, little girl, my lord!” Merilee is running across the lawn, stocking-footed, a hand clasped at the collar of her housecoat. She swoops in, yanks their daughter away and pushes Henry aside.
“Daddy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s not your fault.” Merilee throws a sharp glance at Henry.
Rachel nods fervently. “I was trying to save the dreamcatcher. I dropped it.”
Henry’s eyes follow to where she’s pointing: the rocks surrounding the dying fire.
“I saved it for you, Dad.” Rachel holds out the dreamcatcher, broken and charred.
“That’s good, real good.” It’s all Henry can do not to run and grab the slip of light-blue ashen paper on a boulder, an edge still glowing.
“Well, it’s over.” Merilee takes Rachel’s arm and marches her toward the house.
“But what about the story?” Rachel whines.
“I’ll come upstairs and finish it after your bath,” Henry promises, ignoring his wife’s final glare. He picks at the singed letter with the tip of a shovel and salvages a few scraps. With each shovelful of dirt he dumps on the embers and sticks, a heavy thud reverberates in his chest along with a single word: Kwizera.
“YOU AWAKE?” HENRY WHISPERS. RACHEL kicks the covers off with a grunt.
“The story,” she says sleepily. “I’ve been waiting.”
Henry kneels by her bedside, strokes her hair while he weaves a tale about the two of them searching for an ancient kasbah where ghost-like genies called jinns have stashed stolen treasure, riding atop their trusty camel and trekking over mountains of sand.
“Are these good or bad genies?” Rachel asks. It’s an important question for an eight-year-old, one that Henry considers carefully.
“The thing is,” he says, “jinns aren’t all bad or good. Sometimes they help people but you have to help them too. They’ve hidden this treasure for the two of us, and we won’t know what it is until we get there. We won’t know what they want us to do. We can’t know, it’s a mystery.” And then he stops, can’t finish the story, his throat gritty as if coated with sand.
“Is it over?” Rachel asks, disappointed.
“We find the treasure chest…” Henry’s voice breaks. He clearly sees himself driving to his office in the dark, taking down the photo of the girl in the church window hanging on the wall and removing the savings account booklet hidden in the back of the frame. The excitement of the adventure has been sucked dry, the jewels in the treasure chest turned to dust. “No wait a sec,” he says with a phlegmy laugh that sticks in his throat. “Like I said, this story’s a mystery. There isn’t an ending, not yet.”
“We’ll figure it out.” Rachel yawns and snuggles back under the sheets.
“Soon.” Henry kisses his daughter. “I promise.” He clicks off the bedside lamp, ruffles her hair. Sure, they’ll figure out the end of the story when he comes back. He turns to leave, and then as an afterthought picks up the soot-covered dreamcatcher from where his daughter dropped it on the floor. He’ll finish wrapping the yarn on the plane ride and mail it to her from Africa to hang over her bed.
ELEVEN
{ February 1976, Rwanda }
FROM THE ROAD IT’S HARD TO TELL IF there’s a farmhouse at the end of the gravel driveway; all that Henry can see is the dense forest. Eucalyptus and pine, from the smell of it. In the distance are the towering Virunga Mountains from Lillian’s letter, so dark they appear almost purple against the gray clouds. But where are the banana fields? Vegetable garden that Lillian harvests for the Saturday market? All he sees is a balding red clay field sprouting tufts of leaves that could, he supposes, be attached to something edible underground. He pushes open the gate with his index finger, and notices scratchy letters engraved in the driftwood-like sign nailed to a tree trunk: KWIZERA.
It’s instinctual, the way Henry raises the camera to his eye, searching for clues as he walks slowly up the winding path. He snaps a few photos of an oasis of banana trees surrounded by a moat-like irrigation ditch, a ballet of starlings flitting in and out of the water. He stops in the front yard, pivots and shoots: a busted fence, a few scrawny goats grazing on patchy grass. A sleepy-eyed baboon watches from the tin roof of the house, scratching his balls dispassionately. Had
n’t the letter mentioned something about caribou and zebra? Pivots and shoots: a few tall sunflowers to the left of the porch reach up, as if gasping for air, from a jumble of thorny vines. Pivots and shoots: crumbled limestone steps, a torn screen on the front window. Where’s the wraparound front porch? He had imagined Lillian sitting on the top step with the children around her, singing songs like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. He walks briskly around the back of the large but dilapidated stone house to explore. Okay, maybe he’s built up his expectations too much. This sure as hell doesn’t look like anything he’d send to the photo editor at Life, unless maybe he wants to publish a story about another shattered dream.
The backyard, if you can call it that, is more of the same: a slash of red dirt and scrubby bushes with some kind of irrigation ditch trickling down the center like a tear. But it’s not totally hopeless. There’s a tall stack of lumber to one side, a rusty green tractor that may or may not work, and an assortment of shovels and rakes splayed on the ground. Two monkeys sit atop the tractor, examining a purple gardening glove. One flicks his tongue at it like a child might test the flavor of a lollipop.
“May I help you?” a distant voice calls.
Henry startles, doesn’t see a living soul but the monkeys, and then turns toward the forest. A woman—at least he thinks so, from the baggy clothes it’s hard to tell—is heading toward him, balancing a shovel over her shoulder like a rifle. One of the monkeys scurries past with the glove, makes a break for the trees. She runs after him, shouting, her straw hat flying off. Definitely a woman.
Henry squints into the sun. It’s been ten years, but Lillian appears nearly the same. Nearly. Now, the perfect flip of smooth hair falls in soft curls around her face, short but not boyish. The stylish but prim pleated skirts and short jackets she used to favor have been traded for Levis and an oversized denim work shirt over a white tank top. She leans on the shovel, catches her breath, waves the glove as if she just scored in flag football. Well, she’s still the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. Henry’s mind flashes on holding her in his arms on the rooftop of his apartment complex in Atlanta. Their private island. How could he ever have left it, left her? The scar on his eyebrow seems to fade away.
Lillian walks closer, recognition lighting up her eyes, and then something else. “You came,” she says, like a question.
“Took me a while, but I finally made it.”
“Yes…” She’s standing right in front of him now. “You did.”
Henry is spellbound by her face: a light sheen of sweat on her forehead, a curl that begs to be swept from her cheek. He could—what, hug her? How he wants to kiss her. He punches his fists down into his pockets. Some of the best months of his life took place when his photos began selling at a few galleries and he could afford to take Lillian out to nice restaurants and jazz clubs, sitting right in front of Miles, Muddy, and Thelonius instead of ordering in pizza and listening to their records. He was earning a reputation for capturing the emotions of the turbulent mid-sixties. Folks actually wanted to see the world through his eyes. Tent City in Lowndes County, where Eldridge Cleaver was organizing rural blacks to vote. The rubble of a church that was bombed one Sunday morning not long after the march in Selma. One photo of a young white boy helping an elderly black woman onto a bus sold for more than he earned in a week at his steady gig at the alternative newspaper.
“How?” Lillian asks. “How did you find me?”
“It wasn’t easy. Took me a few months to find that orphanage in Kenya, and then all Reverend Morton could tell me was that you had left for Rwanda. I was too late.”
“There were so many children here who needed a home.”
Henry’s eyes flick from the tractor, to the ditch that smells of sewage, to the tin-roofed house. Are there any kids here? Not likely.
The light in Lillian’s eyes fades into embarrassment. “I never thought you’d come,” she says, kneading the purple glove in her hands.
“But the letter,” Henry says. She had practically invited him here, hadn’t she?
“I needed someone to believe I could turn this…” She sweeps her hand toward the house, and then drops it to her side. “I needed someone to believe in me. But I never thought, not in a million years, that you would actually show up.”
Henry digs his hands deeper into his pocket. He must be the worst kind of schmuck, coming here to take photos and profit from her pain. Goddamn how he wants to kiss her, hold her, tell her everything will be okay like he means it. “I came to see what you did with the money. Our Someday account.”
“Never spent it. Didn’t seem right without you.”
Henry nods, an idea sparking. He could still take photos for Life and give her some of the money he earns. They could both make their dreams come true.
“And now, you’re here,” Lillian says, her voice lilting with hope. “You came.”
“I came…” The camera around Henry’s neck is heavy, the strap digging into the back of his sunburned neck. They spent hours on the rooftop, making plans for their Someday account: they would keep saving ten dollars each week. They would wait until it was legal for them to marry, safe for their children. How might things have changed, he wonders, if he had found the courage to grab onto what he really wanted instead of being satisfied to make plans for someday? Instead of giving up, begging Merilee to take him back. “I came to help,” he says, taking the shovel from her.
{ February 1978 }
Henry slathers whitewash onto the new fence, three thick boards bound with barbed wire to keep the occasional lion and elephants out and the baby goats in, the sweat drenching his skin with satisfaction. He makes a mental list of what needs to be done before he takes off on a freelance assignment to film footage of the spring mountain flowers: The sump pump is acting up again. The baboons made a mess of the storage shed where Lilly keeps her gardening tools. And then, the toilet in the bathroom shared by two teenaged girls who recently moved in needs a new thingamajig so it flushes every time. Rahim Kensamara, who owns the hardware store in Mubaro, will know what it’s called. The last stroke of paint—he slaps it on with a flourish, like an artist signing his name. Rembrandt and Picasso have got nothing on him.
The first year was rough, between scouting out work from ad agencies in London and Johannesburg, and making the ramshackle farm into a real home. That year, they spent down their savings account and the investment has paid off. He waves at Lillian, sitting on the sturdy steps of the front porch—wooden now. It’s not The Sound of Music, but she is weaving baskets with Marie and Keza. People from town are starting to ask if she has room for more kids, not just orphans but children of parents who simply can’t afford to take care of them since the Hutu government has cut back on jobs that Tutsis can hold and taken most of the rural farmland. Lilly really is making a difference with these kids, and she’s able to pay Enoch and Dahla a decent wage. She seems, overall, happy.
Henry stops painting to survey the agricultural masterpiece he has created with the help of Enoch and a few men from town. The corn’s knee-high already and the root plants are budding nicely now that they have a working tractor to properly till and fertilize the land. The banana trees that fan out nearly to their neighbor’s property will be ready to harvest by the time he returns in a few weeks. If he can sell footage of the gorillas as well as the wildflowers, maybe they can afford to hire some help with the fall harvest.
And then there’s his surprise Christmas present for Lilly: a blueprint for the farmhouse she’s been building in her head, going over the details as they lie in bed at night. The older children—at least fifteen of them—will sleep in the main house, and they’ll build a nursery off their master bedroom in the farmhouse for two or three cribs. Ten older children and two in the nursery, Henry thinks, but he lets Lillian dream for now.
Man, Merilee’s Uncle Jerry sure was right about cable TV booming. Ted Turner is a genius in Henry’s book. And, others are catching on. There’s talk of more than one thous
and channels eventually. Ad agencies that only produce television commercials are looking for nature footage in exotic locales. He has more freelance video work than he can handle—no time for shooting still photos anymore. That’s okay, at least for now. What’s important is Lilly’s dream is coming true. She deserves this, and so much more.
He walks toward the shed to put away his tools and get a can of diesel to fill the Jeep. Tomorrow is Tuesday. He knows what day it is only sometimes: Friday is when Dahla hangs wash on the line, Saturday they go to the market, and Tuesday morning Lillian sends him into Kigali or Ruhengeri early to pick up barbed wire, batteries, fertilizer, whatever supplies they’ll need for the week that can’t be found in the small town of Mubaro. It’s a good life, not perfect but damn good.
There’s a secret sadness that flickers in Lillian’s amber eyes sometimes, gray and smoky like a candle being snuffed out. It’s there in the way she cringes a bit when he kisses the back of her neck, forgets that she doesn’t like to be touched unexpectedly. He watches her with his own sadness some evenings when the children are busy with homework, and Dahla and Enoch have gone home. Lillian tends to the sunflowers and dahlias in her own private garden, working by moonlight. Sometimes, until after Henry turns off the lantern in their bedroom and pretends he’s asleep.
Their sadness blankets both of them as she sleeps at the edge of the bed with her hand on the nightstand. Henry keeps waking himself up so that he doesn’t roll toward her in his sleep. He doesn’t touch her on these nights or the next day, tries not to take it personally—at least not anymore. But she’s fine with the children, hugging them, linking arms as they walk. Protective.
These past two years, he has figured that she needs someone to protect her. He’s done it without asking questions, without needing answers. He just wishes he could protect her from whatever she’s hiding from him.
TWELVE
{ February 1978 }
In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills Page 9
