In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills

by Jennifer Haupt

  Rachel’s gaze drops to the fist clenched in Lillian’s pocket and then to her amber eyes, flecked with sparks of confusion and something else. “C’mon, Naddie, let’s get going before the beignets cool,” she says. “I’m sure the groceries can wait until tomorrow.”

  Lillian’s lips part but no words come out. It scares Rachel to see the Lady of Steel this way. Fear. That’s what is lodged in her eyes, in the sloped shoulders that make her suddenly appear old.

  “We can pick up some supplies for the Christmas party on Saturday,” Rachel adds quickly. “When I was a kid, my mom and I made cotton ball snowmen and strung popcorn to hang on the tree.”

  “That sounds lovely,” Lillian says. She draws herself up tall and walks back into the field.

  THE GOOEY SMELL OF BEIGNETS turns Nadine’s stomach, knowing who is pulling them out of the oven. Madame Kensamara used to come to their home to make bread with Umama every Sunday after church, with some of their other neighbors. The women baked and the men sat on the front stoop drinking home-brewed banana beer and smoking cigarettes. The children played tag and jumped rope in the backyard. Christian Kensamara, Chrissie back then, used to protect her from other Hutu boys who were bullies, their classmates as well as his brother, Felix. But that was before.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come in?” Rachel says, holding the bakery door open wide, as if this might tempt reconsideration. Nadine holds her breath, smiles as her new friend offers to bring her pastries, and then hurries down the street, past the burnt-out cement storefronts with boarded up windows and piles of rubble that used to be a pharmacy, a café, another bakery. She barely notices the soldiers, who stand on the street corners in brown uniforms, smoke cigarettes and stare dully as she passes by. The Tutsi soldiers have become part of the scenery during the past six years, blending in with the dusty, bland surroundings. Part of her longs to go back to school in Nairobi, with its tall gleaming buildings and people dressed in bright colors; but, even with all the sorrow and pain, Rwanda will always be home.

  Stepping through the strands of blue and silver beads that hang from the door frame of one of the few rebuilt shops in town is always an adventure, far better than any shop in Nairobi. She surveys the large, dimly-lit room. Where to begin? A dozen wooden tables are stacked with paperback books and tennis shoes that look used, single pens and markers, backpacks and notebooks, cans of Campbell’s soup and tins of sardines. You never know what you’ll find in here. Nobody asks Monsieur DeGarr where he gets these luxuries. Perhaps it’s true that he buys for a small price what the street children can beg from diplomats and aid workers or steal from bigger shops in Kigali, only an hour’s bus ride away. This is not Nadine’s concern. Her task is arranging for Rose and the other children to have an abundance of shiny materials to dress up the old fig tree in the backyard. Every Christmas, Maman makes sure there are presents under the tree before waking the children. How does she manage it, getting up even before Tucker to surprise everyone with boxes wrapped in festive paper she saves from year to year?

  Nadine gravitates toward a table scattered with bright silk-like blouses, her fingers grazing the glossy fabric. Maman should have something luxurious she would never consider buying for herself. Something to make her feel special, if only for a few moments while opening a package. A hand drops lightly onto her shoulder, spinning her around. A small cry rises to her throat, where she must keep it.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” Christian Kensamara says.

  “So, now you follow me?” Nadine straightens, as if a steel rod has been inserted into her spine. She coolly regards the hand now on her upper arm but does not remove it.

  “I’m sorry,” Christian says, the softness taking Nadine off guard. For a brief moment, his touch is warm and reassuring again. The touch of her friend, Chrissie, who walked her home from school, one hand gripping hers, the other carrying a board with nails in it. “Please, inshuti,” he says, “go back to school early. Don’t talk to the attorney who visited your home yesterday. It is best, inshuti—”

  “Do not call me that, Christian,” Nadine snaps, shrugging off his hand. “We are not friends.” She goes rigid, trying to control the trembling that begins somewhere between her stomach and chest. It is the place where she will always be that scared young girl at the church, the girl who looked out of a cracked door and saw her friend, holding perhaps a machete, she couldn’t be sure. She doesn’t remember except in the place deep within her that will always be afraid. He was guarding the door of the utility shed, making certain she did not escape. A spike of anger quiets the trembling; he begged her to believe that he was, in fact, protecting her, until Papa Henry could safely return.

  “It’s true,” Christian says, “we are not friends anymore.” He touches the scar on his forehead, made by his own brother’s knife. Felix had tried to scare some sense into him when he, at first, refused to join the Interahamwe. “But it’s also true that the soldiers from Kigali would have killed me if I didn’t cooperate,” he continues. “They would have killed me as easily as they did everyone else.”

  “My parents.” Nadine says flatly. “My uncles and aunts. My cousins. Friends.” She sees a distant image: she is standing on a chair to look fully out her tiny bedroom window. There, in the field where Madame Kensamara grows coffee, are Chrissie’s father and other men she recognizes, some fathers of Hutu schoolmates, along with the men who came in a truck from Kigali to organize the local militia. They sit there all day, watching, making sure nobody—Tutsi or Hutu—leaves their homes. This goes on for a few days, and then a week. The food is running out in the houses that have been marked with a red “X.” No water. No electricity.

  She and cousin Sylvia slept in her parents’ bed at night, and during the day they all sat in the gathering room. At first, Baba amused them with stories about growing up in Swaziland. After a few days he sat motionless in a chair, his face ashen, while Umama cleaned or knit. She and Sylvia played card games to pass the time. They all talked to Baba, but it was clear he had already left them. She could see it in her father’s faded eyes. It was a small blessing, knowing that Baba’s spirit was perhaps back in Swaziland when some of the men from the field, including Rahim Kensamara, pounded on their front door and beat him to death, making Umama watch. Nadine heard Umama moaning, begging them to kill him swiftly, while she and Sylvia hid in the rafters above their bedroom.

  “You are happy in Nairobi, yes?” Christian says.

  She shrugs, not wanting to give him any absolution. He went to Uganda shortly after the genocide and didn’t return for the trial of his father and the others who organized the massacre. Why should she believe he wants to help her now? He reaches out his hand, but stops short of touching her again. “Now that Felix has been released from prison,” he says, “you need to go where you are safe.”

  “I am not afraid,” Nadine lies. Her heart is pounding against her ribs like a parrot in a too-small cage. At the church, Felix Kensamara amused his friends by making a joke of her life, asking Chrissie if they should keep his playmate alive so she could tell what happened. Now, Felix is afraid she actually will talk. Is he still proud of what he did?

  “Believe this, Nadine,” Christian says. “You must go.”

  She waves her hand through the air as if to wipe away a foolish boy’s useless threat. Her eyes briefly meet his. She sees the history they share. The fear.

  “My brother will hurt you,” he says softly.

  Nadine freezes, her hand suspended in air. Felix used to sit on his back porch, watching her and Sylvia on the swing set and playing tag with their friends, with a look of bemused disdain. Felix was the leader of the older boys at school who didn’t just call the Tutsi girls names but sometimes followed them after school, pushed them down hard and took their schoolbooks. Felix joined the Interahamwe, the Hutu militia, of his free will, months before the truck loaded with soldiers carrying guns and handing out machetes to Hutus came to their town.

  Nadine turns to
leave, but Christian blocks her way. “Promise me,” he says. “You won’t talk to the attorney. You won’t testify at the gacaca. It’s the only way I can stop him.”

  “I do not need your protection.” Nadine pushes past him. “I am not a child anymore.” A wave of nausea erupts and she rushes out the door. It’s the smell of the shed: turpentine and ammonia for keeping the church clean, and something so vile that she kept a hand to her nose until she realized the disgusting smell was her. It was the smell of the stickiness on her body, the crusted blood, not just her own, and the filth. Dirt from the ground, dirt from the men who had lined up fifteen of the girls taken from their neighborhood, several as young as Rose, and ordered them to remove their clothes. Adia, Marie, Rashida. She remembers all of their names. Cousin Sylvia. She sometimes awakens at night, even still, to soak in a scalding hot tub. But it is not possible to ever be clean again.

  It’s all she can do to control the trembling as she walks home with Rachel. Alone in Tucker’s room, her room while Rachel’s here, she retrieves an impala-skin satchel from the top shelf of the closet. Holding the hide to her chest, waves of calm surge through her.

  Nearly three years ago, on Umama’s birthday, she was digging up wildflowers in the forest to plant at her family altar. Delicate pansies for Umama, tough spiky thistle for Papa, daisies for Sylvia. Her trowel clanged against something hard—a metal box—under the moss that grew along the riverbank, where the purple pansies thrived. There was something exciting about opening the box and unwrapping the plaid dish towel, as if she was opening a gift. She stared at the gun for a long time, sunlight warming metal, fusing it to her palm. Yes, she thought, it was a gift from Umama to give her the strength needed to go to Arusha and speak of things, in front of a courtroom full of people, that her body knew but her mind could not yet admit. Knowing the gun was hidden beneath the loose floorboard under her bed made her feel protected. It was comforting to know that, if need be, she could rely on something with more power than she had.

  Now, she removes the gun from the satchel. It fits her hand perfectly. She checks the chamber: five bullets remain. She fired the sixth one into the forest on the day before leaving for Arusha, dropping the weapon with the force of the unexpected explosion, the shake of leaves on a nearby tree, the chastising screams of a chorus of monkeys. She vowed never to fire the gun again. She would give it to Tucker, not wanting to upset Lillian, after the trial. But the longer the gun remained in the satchel under her bed, the more she grew to depend on its existence. It protected her while she slept, kept the nightmares away, rather like how Papa Henry had explained his dreamcatcher.

  Many nights at school, especially since the Tribunal attorney first called, she has missed being able to pull this gun out from under her bed to feel the coolness against her skin. Sometimes, she imagines the gun in her hand, pulling the trigger when the Hutu men forced their way into her family’s home. Umama, Baba, come quick! We’ll go out the back window, run through the woods, down the hill to the river. She dreams of her family walking at night, all night, hiding in the water and breathing through reeds during the day, for a week or as long as it takes to reach the Uganda border.

  In her dreams, there are no gunshots in the front hall, no smell of fear on Sylvia’s skin as they hold each other in the closet, no blood-soaked pale blue sofa where Umama holds Baba for the last time. Now, she inhales a sharp breath and nuzzles the nose of the pistol into the notch between the wings of her ribs, the place where the tremble begins. Her finger caresses the trigger with a knowing that is soothing. Freeing.

  She startles at a knock on the door. “Sorry, I’m coming,” she shouts, remembering her promise of a bedtime story for Rose and Zeke. She places the gun back in the satchel and cinches it tight. Could she actually use it? Could she stop the tremble forever?

  RACHEL SURVEYS HER BELONGINGS SPREAD out on the quilt, and then the open suitcase at the end of the bed: definitely too small. She sets aside her favorite faded-white jeans, the blue and gold batik shirt Nadine gave her and a bulky flannel shirt to wear on the plane, but she’ll still have to leave some things behind. The corkboard propped up on the desk, for one. It’s bigger than her suitcase, even if she disassembles the pieces of her father’s life.

  She surveys the time capsule, a work of art, really: a cracked leather camera strap slung over one corner of the frame, the dreamcatcher over the other side. Dried purple daisies that Nadine collected from the soccer field are pinned in place throughout the collage of photos and notecards that the two of them have cobbled together over the past month. The centerpiece is her necklace of animal beads, pinned like a frame around the postcard of a lion sunning on a rock. She removes the dreamcatcher swiftly, as if tearing off a Band-Aid, and hangs it back in the closet. Nadine can keep this fairytale notion of protection that Henry Shepherd dreamed up. The rest of the board she’ll take apart later, after Mick calls, and pack in a bag.

  She picks up the phone in the kitchen on the first ring, anxious to share her good news. “I’m leaving on Sunday, your Saturday night,” she tells her husband. “Either way, it’s only two more days. I’ll be home in time to go to the Catskills for Christmas.” It is a good plan, good for her marriage. And yet a sadness rises, souring the sweetness of Mick saying that he and Louie will pick her up at the airport. It’s not only her father she’s leaving here. Lillian is finally warming up to her, actually confided in her about the Kensamara brother.

  “I love you,” Mick says.

  “I love you, too,” she says, but it comes out like a question. Her mind flashes to Tucker, who’s at the hospital in Kigali with Rose. He wasn’t sure they’d be back by Saturday for the party. How will she say goodbye to them? To Nadine?

  “Listen, Ray, I know going to my folks’ house for Christmas isn’t your ideal holiday.”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “How about a low-key New Year’s Eve? Just you and me, and a bottle of Dom Perignon. A new beginning.”

  “That sounds heavenly.” Rachel sighs. Yes, a good plan.

  “Some of the bluesy-jazz stuff you like. A little Ella, a little Coltrane.”

  “We can throw in a Springsteen album for you, but no Metallica.”

  “Deal.”

  The phone is warm against Rachel’s cheek as they make plans for Christmas. They’ll drive up into the mountains after the presents are all opened and make angels in the virgin snow, eat lunch at the diner that serves meatloaf and macaroni. Comfort food. It’s been so long since they’ve been in sync, bantering playfully instead of negotiating like plea-bargaining attorneys.

  “So, I talked to Ma.”

  “About?”

  “A memorial service for the baby. She wants to do something special on Christmas Eve.”

  Rachel pulls the phone slightly away from her ear, a metallic buzz in the connection creeping in as her husband unfolds his own plan. A special prayer at Midnight Mass. Ma’s already planted a fruit tree, pears he thinks, in the backyard before the ground froze. They’ll each sprinkle some of the ashes under the tree. Aunt Somebody’s coming from Baltimore with a silver urn. “It’s been in the family for two generations.”

  “No,” she says. “Just…no!” Didn’t he get her last email? On New Year’s Day, they’ll take Serena’s ashes in the box at the top of their closet and spread them in the fresh snow in Vermont. Maybe, the note was lost in cyberspace. Maybe, he just didn’t get it.

  “C’mon, Ray,” Mick chides. “I want her buried at the cemetery in town with the rest of my family.”

  “That’s not what I want,” Rachel says. The buzzing on the phone line, or maybe it’s just in her head, grows louder. “Mick? Are you still there?”

  “Look, we tried it your way last time.”

  “My way?”

  “You packed up the nursery, alone.”

  “I was in shock. I didn’t know.”

  “You found a way to move on. Alone.”

  “I didn’t know what else to do.”


  “No,” Mick says sharply. “You made a choice.”

  Rachel inhales gingerly, as if she’s been punched. After the first miscarriage, she was stuck in a lonely, timeless kind of hell. During the ten weeks she had been pregnant, she kept waiting to become a mother. She never felt different in any of the ways the books described. No mother’s intuition, no dreams about the baby growing inside of her, no glow when she looked in the mirror. Not even morning sickness. She wouldn’t have known she was pregnant except for a craving for chopped liver, was far from certain she knew how to be a good mother. She kept waiting for the metamorphosis she had always imagined, terrified it was merely a myth.

  “Now, I’m doing what I have to do,” Mick continues, “to move on.”

  “From me?” Rachel asks weakly, but he doesn’t answer. Or, maybe, his voice has fused with the cottony buzz.

  The first miscarriage had been, in a way, a relief. A horrible relief, the pain of it a thick residue on her womb that could not be sucked away. She was terrified it would infiltrate her blood, flow through her veins, turning her skin a sickly yellow shade of shame, terrified that her husband would see the putrid relief if they packed up the nursery together. But this time has been different, from the moment she felt Serena turning somersaults, jabbing her with tiny fists. She felt Serena growing stronger and bigger. She worried about her. Loved her. There was no magic moment of transformation, but now she is a mother. Still.

  “We both need to put this behind us,” Mick says. “This…thing we’re stuck in.”

  “Serena’s death,” Rachel says softly, the buzzing replaced by a peaceful stillness. Have they ever actually named this thing? Said their baby’s name aloud after the miscarriage?

  “Don’t be morbid,” Mick snaps, and then apologizes. “Look, I want to save this marriage, I do.”

  “So do I.”

  “But, Ray, I’m not like you. I need my family.”