In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills

by Jennifer Haupt

  LILLIAN SITS IN HER FAVORITE SUMMER SPOT, a narrow bench atop the hill that overlooks Kwizera and the forest beyond. The sunflowers thrive here; green leafy fingers tickle her arms. From here, she can take in so many blessings: The field behind her is more green than brown; the corn is nearly ready to harvest, golden rods of teff not far behind. The slope of patchy grass is finally thick enough to support a small family of goats. Down the hill is a red brick house with five real bedrooms, two beds in each, that has a tile roof instead of the tar that oozed a gooey mess onto the kitchen floor last summer during the heat wave. Across the yard is a white farmhouse that still smells of fresh lumber and paint that she and Henry share. At the side of the farmhouse, near the gardening shed, two teenaged girls, Marie and Keza, the first orphans who came to live here last year, are hanging laundry, fresh from a new washing machine—no more dragging a basket of clothes to the river.

  Dahla calls from the front porch of the brick house for breakfast. Marie and Keza run over to the bench, each claiming one of Lillian’s hands. Her arms swing back and forth as they walk, sweeping away the heaviness from her steps. She stops on the porch, tells the girls to head inside without her and looks out toward the mountains, offering a prayer of gratitude. Henry’s making good money and a few small grants have come through, enough to bring in several more children within the year and pay for high school for the older girls. She has so much to be thankful for. So much at stake to lose.

  Her fingers coil around the cold metal cylinder in her jacket pocket. Dear Lord, give me strength… She purchased the Colt 45 at a beer house in Kigali months ago, and has been hiding it in a toolbox in the gardening shed, trying to summon the courage to use it. Her heart beats faster at the thought of what needs to get done today, while Henry’s off filming gorillas.

  “Come now, eat some breakfast,” Dahla calls in a motherly tone, even though she’s barely into her twenties.

  “In a minute.” Lillian runs her thumb over the knoll of the trigger, testing the weight it would take to pull it. The trigger jiggles and her hand flies out of her pocket. Her stomach clenches as if a bullet has been released. Instead of going to the kitchen, she walks across the yard to the farmhouse and waits.

  A few minutes later, a tall man, who Lillian briefly considered handsome when they first met, walks up the driveway. He’s buttoning and unbuttoning the jacket of his navy suit. His hair is smooth and glistening, his teeth white and pointy, like cat teeth, Lillian thinks as she opens the door. “Good morning, cherie,” he says.

  “Gahiji,” she says, acknowledging their agreement. She doesn’t return his bow, stands perfectly still, except for a thumb rubbing the barrel of the gun in her pocket.

  “A pleasant day, yes?” he inquires, as if this was a casual visit from a neighbor out on a stroll. As if he hasn’t stood on this porch, or met her at a hotel in Ruhengeri when Henry was in town, the first Tuesday of every month for the past two years. How has she let it go on this long?

  She first met Gahiji Kayibanda at the government headquarters in Kigali, while requesting a permit to open an orphanage. The deputy seemed to pull the three thousand US-dollar figure out of thin air, but Reverend Morton had warned Lillian that bribery was a common business expense here. She paid with Gahiji’s guarantee that this would, of course, be a one-time fee. But he showed up on her porch a few weeks later. An additional two thousand dollars was needed for a construction permit, a farming permit, and a business permit. The cost of being an outsider. She had already met many people—Tutsi and Hutu alike—whose land had been seized by the Hutu government.

  Most of Samuel’s insurance money was gone, and using the Someday money that Henry had sent wasn’t an option. Not for this. There was some seed money that Mama had collected at the church, but it was strictly budgeted for food and other essentials while she applied for grants. Gahiji feigned sympathy, an arm around her shoulders that set her skin crawling. “Perhaps we can work out an arrangement, one not involving money,” he practically purred. “I do think we could enjoy each other’s company.”

  Now, Lillian leads Gahiji around to the back of the house, doesn’t want him in her front hallway where guests hang their hats and coats. He is not a guest. They walk down the hallway, past the bedroom she shares with Henry, to another bedroom nobody uses. There’s a desk in the corner, scattered with papers so she can tell Henry this is her office. Gahiji slides by her, doles out what he must think is a come-hither smirk, an eyebrow cocked in a practiced way that she used to consider comical. Lillian’s lips form a thin line as she recalls that same look on his face, at the café in Mubaro where she and Henry sometimes wait out the hot afternoon sun with a glass of iced tea and a beignet. A few months back, Gahiji approached their table and flashed his teeth as he offered Henry his hand. Shortly afterwards, he started demanding money again.

  Her fingers curl around the gun; she could shoot him in the back and be done with it. But the blood, how would she explain the stain on the floor to Henry? She waves a hand toward the bed. She can use the sheets to muffle the discharge and then wrap him up in the blanket. She begins to pull the gun from her pocket, but her hand won’t stop trembling. It was one thing aiming at tin cans on tree stumps in the woods, but what will Gahiji do if she only wounds him—or misses altogether? What will happen to Kwizera? Her kids? “I can’t do it, just can’t,” she whispers, letting her coat drop off of her shoulders and to the floor, the thud of the gun reverberating in her chest.

  Gahiji stands behind her, his hot stale coffee breath in her ear. “If it helps, cherie, think of the mzunga I share you with.”

  Lillian steels herself as he unbuttons her shirt, and then his hands cup her breasts. She mentally wraps herself in the rough sunflower leaves for protection against his slippery touch, her entire body tensing into this thick second skin. While he’s on top of her, purring and petting, she keeps telling herself this is her choice. She is not a victim. This is far easier than murder.

  After Gahiji leaves, Lillian sits at the desk and pulls open the only drawer with anything inside of it. She withdraws a purple velvet box that holds the memory of New Year’s Eve 1969, several weeks before Samuel was scheduled to begin his tour of duty in Vietnam.

  “You should have a ring,” her fiancé of several months said. “It’s not much—”

  Lillian hushed him with a quick kiss. She couldn’t take her eyes off the silver band etched with delicate flowers. Elizabeth Taylor’s big ol’ diamond couldn’t have made their love any more real. She threw her arms around Samuel’s neck so he wouldn’t see the tears. A year apart seemed like a lifetime. How was she supposed to wait that long to become his wife?

  Now, her thumb caresses the velvet bed where the ring once rested as her mind sticks on the matching band Samuel wore: a rope of vines that twined around his thick finger. She shudders. His hands. So strong around her waist as they kissed good-bye at the airport. Three short months later, those same hands appeared waxen and cold, crossed over his chest against a blue army uniform. His wedding ring appeared much too large, as if his hands had somehow shrunk. She had the strong urge to reach into the coffin and rub his fingers, warm them. What stopped her were his nails: an unnatural bright pink against dark skin. She tucked her own wedding band into the breast pocket of Samuel’s stiff shirt.

  Standing under the shower, water hot enough to draw Gahiji’s scent out of her pores, her skin is slick with a combination of relief and shame. And then, there’s something else. Is she a coward for not following through with murdering Gahiji? Or, is she due just a bit of pride?

  Long ago, she made a commitment to nonviolence, a vow that was mightily tested by Reverend King’s murder. His assassination was as good as a broken promise; all bets were off. Lillian’s entire world became an angry, mistrustful place. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee dropped the “nonviolent” and became allied with the militant Black Panthers. Henry was attacked and moved back to Florida, marrying his high school sweetheart not long aft
erwards. Samuel chose the Army, a controlled violence. Deirdre moved to Oakland to become more involved with the Black Panthers and started carrying a pistol in her purse. Despite all of this, Lillian held strong to her belief that nonviolence was the only way to secure long-lasting change. It was a show of faith. Now, it occurs to her she’s being tested again.

  She examines her face in the mirror: star-like lines crease the corners of her eyes, lips that were once soft and pink are now dark as the ochre clay. She brushes her ruddy cheek with calloused fingertips. Would Samuel even recognize her now? Four years at the orphanage in Kenya had not prepared her for the hard work of restoring Kwizera. The former owners, a Belgian couple, had given up on growing coffee here and left the place a shambles. At first, the work was therapeutic. She didn’t mind the sunburn and blisters, falling into bed at night one hundred percent achy. Every morning she awoke fully refreshed. But it soon became clear that the men from town she hired on didn’t take orders well from a woman. They stared blankly at her as she told them the day’s chores, and then did little work. She needed someone to rely on.

  Henry arrived here six years after Samuel died. Six years and her grief was still tender. The farm was falling apart. She was falling apart. Henry was a godsend. And, it was plain to see he had found his way to Kwizera for the same reason she first came here. They both needed a place where they could cultivate a home. They worked hard and became stronger together. She is proud of the strength of character grooved into the landscape of her face. This farm has become part of her, the dust of the soil on her skin even fresh out of the shower. If she uses the Colt 45, she will not become stronger, only tougher. Something inside of her will harden, as Deirdre hardened after she moved to Oakland and took up with the Black Panthers. If this is another test of her faith, she will have failed miserably.

  Lillian peels the sheets off the bed, bundles them with the dungarees and blouse she wore this morning and throws on her jacket, the gun smacking against her hip as she walks. She’ll find a way to keep paying Gahiji, maybe sell the pearl necklace that belonged to her grandmother, a gift from Mama when she turned eighteen. Gahiji will tire of her soon, when the creases around her eyes and mouth deepen.

  She deposits the sheets in the washing machine in the shed, places the gun back inside the tin box where she used to store her gardening tools, and pockets a pointy-tipped hand shovel. Then, she heads deep into the woods, to the bend in the river marked by the mopani tree with butterfly-shaped leaves. There’s a patch of sunlight on the riverbank where delicate purple and white pansies grow. She carefully, lovingly, digs up a hefty clump of wild pansies and then digs a bit deeper. She deposits the metal box, heavy now, and then replants the flowers where they belong. They need the mossy, stream-fed earth, would never survive in the hard clay of her garden near the house where she will claw at the earth with the trowel, working furiously, until all that’s coating her skin is her own sweat.

  THIRTEEN

  { New York, September 1985 }

  HENRY SLIDES ONTO A PLASTIC STOOL, fingers drumming the silver-rimmed black Formica bar littered with overflowing tinfoil ashtrays, smudged glasses and crumpled napkins. The place is nearly deserted. Looks more like a warehouse—cement floors and faded brick walls—than a nightclub. His mouth waters as he considers the bottles lining the shelves against a mirrored wall behind the bar. He shakes his head at the bartender, a young guy in a strategically torn black T-shirt, a mop of stringy blond hair flopping over one eye. “I’ll wait,” he says, fingers closing around the soapstone locket, solid against his chest, with Rachel’s picture inside. Where is she, anyway?

  Two nights ago, he made the mistake of coming here after the band was in full swing, the base pumped up so loud that the floor shook and some god-awful gal jumped around onstage, screeching like a chimp in heat. Henry sat on this stool, nursing a whiskey and watching. Watching as his daughter offered a smile, a smile just for him, but only because it was too loud to actually hear his order. He pointed toward the bottom shelf of bottles. It had taken Rachel three tries before her hand landed on whiskey, not Johnny Walker but he didn’t even care, the way her face lit up when he gave a thumbs-up that she’d guessed right. When the glass landed on the bar in front of him, he nearly seized her hand. She stood there, expectantly; he imagined she was waiting for an explanation. Why now, after eleven years?

  “Three bucks,” she shouted. Henry reached toward her, his fingers trembling, and deposited a ten-dollar bill in her palm. “Keep the change.”

  Last night, he swigged from a bottle in his hotel room and dialed the phone number of the one person who might be able to tell him what to say to his daughter. Holy Moses, she hadn’t recognized him sitting right across the bar. “You’ll be happy to know,” he slurred, squinting at the harsh lights of a theater marquee directly out the window, “you were right. She didn’t have a goddamn clue who I was.”

  His ex-wife sighed but didn’t sound happy. Exasperated was more like it. He had been floored when a letter arrived at Kwizera last month with Merilee’s return address. Liver cancer. She was at the top of a transplant list but it made her think, nonetheless. She didn’t want their daughter to be alone in the world, without a family.

  “Tell her you’re back for good, or at least a while,” Merilee said. “That’s what she wants to hear.”

  “I can’t say that.”

  “Well, you never were a liar. I’ll give you that much.”

  “No, I never lied to you.” Henry hadn’t wanted to get married or have children, at least not right away, she knows that’s true. After moving back from Atlanta, he took a job as a photographer at her uncle’s ad agency with the idea of saving money to move to New York, or maybe travel around Europe by train for a while and build up his portfolio. Merilee had been, not exactly enthusiastic, but at least game to tag along. And then, three months later, she delivered some news of her own: her period was late. He has never been certain the pregnancy was an accident, but then what did it matter? He volunteered to marry her and to take care of her and their child, of course he did, that’s what a stand-up guy does. He was faithful, despite her suspicions, but looking back he could see that wasn’t enough. Of course she was bitter; who wouldn’t be? Married to someone you knew wanted to be somewhere else.

  “I’m sorry, Merilee,” he said into the phone, the marquee lights blurring.

  She laughed. One sharp crack, like a slap. “Henry Shepherd, don’t you dare apologize to our daughter.”

  “For chrissakes, Mer—” His throat closed around his wife’s name. Couldn’t she give him a little credit for travelling halfway across the world to make amends? “I am sorry.”

  “I know, Henry.”

  “I want her to know.”

  “Sure you do. It’ll make you feel better.”

  “Rachel, too.”

  “But how do think she’ll feel, seeing you walk out the door again?”

  Henry opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  “Go home,” Merilee said. “Go home to your family.”

  HENRY HEARS RACHEL BEFORE HE sees her at the other end of the bar. Her laugh is light and airy, almost musical. The notes float over clinking glasses, thin lines of smoke marking the air. He startles, as if awakening from a dream; she’s right in front of him with a beer for the guy on the next stool. How long has he been sitting here, staring? She must think he’s a stalker, a creep, she must think—

  “What can I get for you, sir?” she asks. He points toward the bottom shelf, his voice stuck in a hard shell in his chest. Rachel puckers her lips a bit to one side and then a smile starts in the crinkles around her eyes, exactly like when she was a kid.

  “I remember you,” she says, snaps her fingers at him. “Whiskey, neat.”

  “Yeah…yeah, right!” Henry nods vigorously, as if his daughter has miraculously guessed his birthday or weight. Or his name. “That’s been my drink since…” He takes a breath that turns into a sharp laugh. “Can’t remember—since befo
re you were born.”

  Rachel’s face turns soft as she studies him with…what? Recognition? He takes a bandana from his pocket to mop his face. Tears. Sweat. Bloody hell, he can’t stop laughing like a crazy person. “I’m sorry, it’s just…I’m sorry.”

  “It’s cool, you’re fine.” Rachel leans toward him. “Tell you what, I’ll give you a double. No extra charge. Looks like you could use it.”

  She’s saying something, maybe about the band coming onstage again soon, but Henry can’t hear over the roar of blood crashing behind his temples. It’s not recognition he sees on her face but pity, just fucking pity, that’s all it is. She seems to pour the amber liquid in slow motion. The exchange of the drink for three dollars will take less than two minutes, and she’ll be on to the next customer. And then, this moment will forever pass.

  He swallows hard, the shell in his chest now a solid lump that will not dissolve. He can’t help but think of the tumor growing in Merilee’s liver. A donor, that’s what he needs. Someone to give him what it might take to be a real dad to this young woman who doesn’t look a thing like him except for the wild curls, but he would recognize her anywhere. Maybe it’s a missing gene, or something he learned—didn’t learn—from his old man. But he could change everything right here and now. He could tell her that he came back, not just to apologize but to stay for a while.

  His lips are dry, the lump in his chest throbbing as his daughter slides the glass toward him. What if he walks away and says nothing?

  Lilly knows his shortcomings and loves him anyway. She allows him the freedom to come and go as he pleases. And each time he returns, his life at Kwizera is whole and intact. Nothing much changes there. If he walks away, Rachel will still be smiling and laughing, flirting with that guy, a guitar slung over his shoulder, at the other end of the bar. If he walks away, right now, nothing will change for her either. Who’s to say that if he were to reveal himself it would be for the better, anyway? Would she accept the apology of her selfish old man as easily as she poured a crazy guy a double shot? And what if she can’t forgive him, what then? It’s not like he can go back in time and do things differently.