In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills

by Jennifer Haupt

  “You needn’t worry,” Nadine says, as if reading Lillian’s mind. “School is good. I have my friends, my music. I’m happy.”

  “I’ll always worry about you,” Lillian says. She sent Nadine to a private high school in Uganda to keep her away from the ugliness after the genocide and then, thankfully, there was the scholarship to Nairobi. But she can’t protect her daughter forever. “Mother’s prerogative.”

  “Maman…” Nadine turns quiet.

  Lillian stops and offers her full attention.

  “Maman, I like having a friend here too.”

  “Rachel.” Lillian has seen them talking on the porch, kicking around the soccer ball with the children. She assumed Naddie was merely being polite, entertaining her. “You two are friends?”

  “I’m teaching Rachel to speak Kinyarwanda, and she teaches me what American teenagers say. What’s cool.”

  “You’re helping each other.”

  “Sometimes,” Nadine says hesitantly, “I tell her about Papa Henry. Is that all right?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “We both miss him, Maman.”

  “Of course,” Lillian says. It hadn’t occurred to her that Rachel Shepherd might be able to help her daughter in some way.

  AFTER NADINE RETURNS TO ROSE’S room to sleep, Lillian climbs the stairs to the attic. She keeps her flashlight trained on a silver glint in the back corner as she crosses the room. She kneels and runs her hand lovingly over the dented topside of the bulky metal suitcase. The lock is broken, and the handle fell off somewhere on the bus ride between Nairobi and Kigali, years ago. This old thing has carried a lot of weight over the years.

  She snaps open the suitcase and carefully removes the purple tunic. Her wedding dress is light and airy on her palms, as if it might float away. She scans the items underneath: onyx candlestick holders, one with a walnut-sized chip in the base, which they used only on special occasions. A tattered gold-threaded silk scarf that Henry bought for her in Morocco. A crumpled poster of Van Gogh’s Starry Night from the New York Museum of Modern Art that Henry insisted on keeping. A mancala board, the green and blue marbles missing, that they kept in the bedroom along with a scorecard of who was the reigning champion. These are the things they salvaged when the Hutus destroyed their home during the slaughter. The rest of it—broken dishes and pottery, splintered furniture limbs, the rugs soaked with urine and beer—could all be repaired or replaced.

  Her hands shake as she removes a brown leather album, flips through the pages of photos, taking note of the yellowed cellophane slots where the postcards had been. There’s a brief note on the back page: Cricket, I think of you often on my travels. This album is for you.

  The words blur as Lillian reads and rereads the brief note. She closes her eyes, but the words are still there. On the night Henry left, he told her to mail this album to his daughter, an afterthought after he had packed it in the rucksack along with his camera bag and a few items of clothing. “It’s better that you send it, even if you have to wait a few months until the post office in Mubaro is open again,” he said. “You’ll send it, Lilly.” Tucker wasn’t wrong to mail the postcards to Rachel, Lillian concedes that now. And she wasn’t wrong to hang onto this album that didn’t belong to her. It was a show of faith that Henry would return and mail it himself. At least, at first.

  She closes the suitcase and places her palms flat on the cool metal. Mama had packed it with sweaters and thick socks for the snowy winter in Cleveland, where her sister’s family lived. Lillian sat on her bed and looked past her mother, out her bedroom window at the stark branches of a beech tree in the front yard. She’ll never forget that night; it was the first time she felt her baby kick, the happiest and saddest moment of her life. She knew he was a boy, would be strong and proud like his father. How would she give up her last remaining piece of Samuel?

  Early the next morning, before her flight, she crammed into the suitcase a few books, her diary and a favorite pen, a shoebox filled with letters from Samuel, and a bottle of cologne that smelled like Mama. She was never coming back to her parents’ house, would take her baby somewhere far away, somewhere safe where they didn’t need much money to get by. She hung onto this plan until she awoke in the hospital three months later, her baby gone, her womb still and cold. “Your healthy baby boy is with his new parents,” the nurse said cheerily. “You’re so brave, miss, giving him to a family who can raise him right.”

  Brave. Lillian rubs at the dullness of a deep dent in the suitcase. She can never take in enough children, can never give enough of herself to them, to make up for not finding the courage to keep her child. So then, why can’t she help the child Henry gave up?

  TWENTY

  SUNRISE ISN’T A TIME OF DAY RACHEL’S EN-tirely familiar with, except sometimes passing Mick in the kitchen as she drinks chamomile tea to coax sleep, still jittery from work, and he’s brewing his first cup of coffee before jumping into the shower. Now, she rolls over toward the window to admire pale pink fingers of daylight spreading over the banana field, both missing and not missing the constant drone of traffic on the streets below her Soho loft. New York has an artificial 24/7 day, no downtime, always something exciting going on whether she’s restless at two p.m. or two a.m.

  Over the past week, her body has become in tune with nature’s cycle of night and day. There’s not much to do after the sun goes down and the electricity is switched to “conserve” mode, so sleep comes early and easily after reading or writing in her journal. Sometimes, like this morning, she awakens with a hand on her stomach, searching for Serena turning somersaults. The ache was allayed by the predawn exuberant wahoo-wahoo chant of the male baboons in the forest. She stayed awake to listen to the symphony of birds that ushers in the first light of day. They all sound different, and she’s determined to figure out their names. “Cu-coo-ah, cu-coo,” she mimics. This one might stump Nadine, who has an incredible ear. A musician’s ear. It’s amazing how she spots birds the same color as the leaves, by their warble or whistle, before they take flight overhead.

  THE SKY TURNS FROM PINK to orange, to bright blue, within a matter of minutes. Rachel stretches lazily. There’s still plenty of time before the bakery in town that sells thick espresso and melty beignets opens at eight or eight-thirty. She opens the nightstand drawer to retrieve the journal dating back to months before coming here, and flips through early sparse recollections of her father that she had wanted to pass on to Serena.

  Now, the notebook is nearly filled with details about Henry Shepherd. He has become almost a mythical character, this buccaneer who took Nadine and her cousin Sylvia on a camping trip into the mountains in search of rare golden monkeys, and taught them how to chat with the gorillas through grunts and gestures. Henry Shepherd helped to turn a rundown farm into a home in a hundred different ways; this much Lillian would share with her. Tucker has great stories about the two of them sharing beers with a local shaman for a year before the village elder finally agreed to teach them how to distill medicine from leaves, flowers and tree bark.

  Mister American’s daughter. That’s what the people in town call her. Everyone seems to have known the white man with the camera. They stop her on the street to reminisce about their friend with the big guffaw of a laugh who always had a story about some big adventure he had gone on or was planning. Henry Shepherd. Rachel can’t reconcile this larger-than-life persona with the details that are shading in her own memories of her father: a quiet man who rarely smiled. He was usually gone before she got up in the morning. After dinner, she would peer out the kitchen window at his silhouette in the dark, or sometimes drag a blanket out to the yard and lie down on her back, next to his lawn chair, both of them staring up at the stars. It seemed forbidden to speak to him. He was there but he wasn’t—like now.

  Be patient. That’s what everyone keeps telling her. But how long is she supposed to wait for Lillian to show her something more than the fence Henry must have mended a thousand times? How the hell lon
g is she supposed to wait for her father to show up? He must have picked up the letter Tucker sent before she arrived. He must know she’s waiting for him.

  The light streaming through the open window turns bright. Rachel shoves the notebook under her pillow, throws an arm over her eyes as if sleeping, and listens to the sound of twittering giggles coming from the other side of the door. She imagines Rose and Zeke daring each other with seven-year-old bravado: Go ahead, open it! The door creaks open and she lets loose with a roaring yawn, stretching arms over her head, setting off a burst of laughter and the scurry of small feet running down the hall. Rose is braver than her friend, but not by much. The tiny girl dressed in a clean but faded pink dress, a cascade of braids falling to her shoulders, takes a half-step into the room. She clutches a tattered lion to her chest.

  “Good morning, Rose. It’s nice to see you and Kingston.”

  “Jambo, Madame,” she whispers, eyes wide, chin on the lion’s bright orange mane.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better.” Rachel swings her legs out of bed. Rose claps a hand over her mouth, laughter escaping through her nose, eyes darting from Rachel’s T-shirt to the floor.

  “I agree, pretty silly.” Rachel stands so Rose can take a better look at Scooby-Doo, stretching the T-shirt down over Mick’s pajama bottoms. “Scooby’s been my favorite cartoon since I was even younger than you.”

  “Scooby?”

  “That’s this crazy pup’s name.”

  Rose comes closer to see. Rachel notices bruises on her wrist, no doubt left from a needle too large for the twig-like veins. The last time she saw Rose, a few days ago, she was in bed hooked up to an IV. She reaches out to snap shut a loose barrette, her hand landing lightly on the girl’s shoulder. “Scooby’s a detective, but not nearly as brave as Kingston. Your buddy looks like he’s been through a lot.”

  “He has the name of a lion Nadine’s grandfather once knew,” Rose says. “He was a hunter, but Kingston was his friend.”

  “Friends with a hunter? Must be a special lion.”

  “Yes, quite. He protects the animals in the forest who are not so big and need his help.”

  “Sounds like a good buddy to have on your side.” Rachel pats the one-eyed beast’s lumpy head, noticing where it has been sewn up at least once. “I bet he’s had a lot of adventures in his day. I’d love to hear about how he lost his eye.”

  “That would make a fine bedtime story tonight,” Lillian chimes in from the doorway. How long has she been standing there, watching, Rachel wonders, retracting her hand from Rose’s shoulder. She steps aside as Lillian enters. Rose practically sprints down the hall upon hearing the news that it’s time to get ready for school.

  “It’s her first day back in over two weeks,” Lillian explains. “She’ll go for months without a flare-up but then…” She pulls up the quilt on the bed and fluffs the pillow in one motion. “Well, it’s no way to be a child.”

  Rachel feels like a kid herself, in oversized pajama bottoms and a cartoon T-shirt, watching Lillian tug a wrinkle out of the quilt. “You don’t have to do that,” she says, and then grabs her sweatshirt at the foot of the bed before Lillian can tuck it neatly into a dresser drawer. She hugs the sweatshirt to her chest. “I’m sorry, that came out wrong.” It’s all wrong, everything she says and does—even her clothes. Jeans are way too heavy; why didn’t she think to bring a skirt? Lillian stands hands-on-hips and frowns at the bed, trying to scare the wrinkles out of the quilt, no doubt. She settles on smoothing her earth-tone batik skirt that match a forest green T-shirt, nearly the same outfit as in the newspaper photo from more than a decade ago. Her face is more deeply lined now, but not much, her hair still far more black than gray. Rachel admires how she doesn’t wear a speck of make-up, so unlike her mom.

  Merilee was insecure about her looks, as if that’s all she had to offer and it wasn’t enough, even after she came home “empowered” from the EST training in San Francisco the summer after her husband left. For years, Rachel thought EST was a religion her mom had joined, no men allowed. Merilee kept saying she had to divorce Henry; she didn’t want to but it wasn’t a choice.

  Lillian’s eyes dart around the room, and then she closes them briefly as if to reset something in her head. “I clean, it’s what I do,” she says, sitting on the edge of the bed, her gaze dropping to hands clasped in her lap. “Some people eat, or talk too much. I clean.”

  Rachel slips into the sweatshirt and fumbles with the zipper. Nervous? The Lady of Steel? Around her? The thought is like a crack of light under a heavy door she can’t figure out how to open. “It could be worse,” she mumbles into her collar and takes a seat next to Lillian. “I laugh—the more nervous I am, the louder it gets. So embarrassing.”

  “It has occurred to me that you possess an incredibly broad sense of humor.”

  Rachel glances up. Did the Lady of Steel crack a joke?

  “You are funny,” Lillian continues matter-of-factly. “Rose obviously thinks so. I also see your kindness with the children. I appreciate how difficult it may be, being here so soon after losing your baby.”

  “No, it helps.” Rachel places a hand on Lillian’s arm, without thinking, and then it’s too late to take it back. Lillian pats her hand before getting up to dust off the dresser with her kerchief. It hits Rachel that she does consider them all her children, not just Nadine. As much as she still misses Serena, maybe Lillian feels that same way about every orphan who has ever lived in this house. About Henry Shepherd. “Thank you, for letting me stay,” she says.

  “My daughter enjoys having you here.”

  “I’m glad we’ve become friends.”

  Lillian turns from the dresser. “Nadine could use a friend.”

  Rachel sees the struggle on her face. Yes, it’s difficult having her here as a constant reminder that the man she loves is gone. And, yes, she wants her to stay. She’ll do it for her daughter.

  “Since you’ll be here a while longer,” Lillian says, “we need to have an understanding.”

  “Anything.”

  “I can’t go after him.”

  “But he’ll come here.”

  “There’s a good chance he won’t.”

  Rachel rubs her left temple to stop the rumbling. Hearing the words she has thought, has feared, sets off an avalanche of questions. “He must know I’m here, right? Why wouldn’t he come back?”

  “He stayed here for as long as he could.”

  “Why did he leave?”

  “I think the brutality became too much for him. There wasn’t anywhere to turn away from it, so he left. I can’t fault him for that.”

  “But you do blame him. For what?”

  “I only asked him to come home once,” Lillian says. “Two years ago, there was a trial in Arusha, Tanzania for the man responsible for the murder of Nadine’s family and many others at the church. It was one of the first trials conducted by the International Tribunal for genocide criminals. Nadine was subpoenaed but couldn’t go through with testifying. She was terrified and could have used Henry’s support.”

  “He never showed up,” Rachel says. Not for Lillian. Not for Nadine. Why would he show up for her?

  Lillian shakes her head slowly, her face seemingly aging, the lines deepening. “I’m sorry. I can’t go chasing after him again.”

  “I understand,” Rachel says. She understands that it’s up to her to find her father, a man who obviously doesn’t want to be found. Either that, or go home.

  A FEW DAYS LATER, NADINE awakens Rachel, coaxing her out of bed with a mug of coffee. “There’s no time for breakfast before we leave,” she says.

  Rachel groans, still mostly asleep. “Leave?” The birds haven’t even fully tuned up yet.

  “We’ll eat at the market. Lillian’s gone ahead in the Jeep to find a good spot.”

  Rachel takes a few sips of coffee and then jumps out of bed, pleased that Nadine—maybe Lillian, too—actually wants her to come along.

  Walking to the
market on a Saturday morning is an event in itself, Rachel notes as Nadine grabs her hand and weaves through the crowd lining the main road: women with baskets of fruit and water gourds balanced on their heads on crowns of thatch; men pushing wheelbarrows piled with grains, tea leaves, and coffee beans; a handful of brave bicyclists ringing bells. She pulls at the waistband of the skirt Nadine lent her, a bit too snug but way better than jeans and nobody even seems to notice she’s wearing black high-top sneakers, which she’ll swap out for stiff new sandals once they get to the market. Nadine seems almost proud, stopping to introduce her to people she knows. “Meet my inshuti from New York.” Friend. It’s the first time Rachel feels like she fits in here.

  A boy with a thin scar across his forehead nods tentatively as he approaches. Nadine looks through him, so unlike her. Rachel glances over her shoulder as they pass and watches the boy disappear into the crowd. “Before the genocide, we were best friends,” Nadine says. “I lost many friends, both Hutu and Tutsi.”

  The road ends at a dusty field where people are setting up tables and spreading out blankets, staking out their territory at the market. Rachel is swept up in the carnival of activity, unloading Lillian’s Jeep and arranging baskets of the week’s harvest on a card table she recognizes from many games of mancala in the gathering room at Kwizera. More and more vendors, mostly women, show up with colorful pyramids of fruit, beaded jewelry, spices, straw brooms and bamboo rugs, woven reed baskets of all sizes, embroidered blouses and batik skirts, carved mahogany boxes, and sticky beignets that pacify little ones while their mothers shop.