“Me, help you?”
“No, Nadine.”
Rachel steps toward the truck. “Where is she?”
“We don’t have much time.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“We must stop my brother. He’s angry—”
“Didn’t you tell him Nadine’s not going to testify?”
“Felix believes it’s a trick. He thinks you have the photos and plan on using them at the gacaca.” Christian starts the engine. “You must come with me, tell him it’s not true.”
Rachel is frozen with indecision. How can she trust this boy who took her passport in the first place, and quite possibly tricked her father into going to the church? “We’ll go to Kwizera, get Lillian and Tucker,” she says. They’ll know what to do.
“There’s no time, Madame. Felix is with Nadine at the church.”
THIRTY-FIVE
NADINE TILTS HER HEAD ONE WAY AND the other, imagining the pieces of light refracted onto the floor and walls through the stained glass windows are a fortress. Nothing can touch her. Umama’s lullaby vibrates in her chest, just as it did when she was curled up under the blue tarp during the massacre. Sleep my love, and peace attend thee all through the night; Guardian angels God will lend thee, all through the night.
She breathes in remnants of frankincense and myrrh. Forgiveness. Reconciliation. Will the gacaca really make these things possible? Her family and most of her friends are gone, but Chrissie is still here. She needs her friend. She does want things between them to return to as they were before the day six years ago when everything changed. She squeezes her eyes tightly.
Before.
But this is what comes to her: crows screaming, circling above, the Greek chorus of something like a grotesque opera. She listened to the cacophony to distract her mind, confuse her body. Dust and pebbles coated lips that were not hers; useless tears turned to dust on the impervious clay ground. The pain in her groin, far worse than the blade at her throat, seemed to dissipate into the harsh cackles above. Hot breath in her ear faded into a wisp of wind as she floated away from the pain.
She watched from up high with the crows as Felix soiled her body and the other boys, some who she recognized from school, did the same to Sylvia and their friends. Afterwards, she lay with one cheek pressed to the ground, one arm under her body, palm sticky with oozing blood. She watched her other hand, which lay limp near her face, entranced by fingers shaking spastically. It was her hand but not; it was a large spider, legs dancing, body paralyzed.
“Get up, cockroach.” Felix yanked her limp body from the ground, like he was hoisting a sack of teff. She fell against him, arms flailing, her legs seemingly unfamiliar with gravity. She clawed at his arms and neck, imagining that her body belonged to the lion her grandfather had befriended in the woods. Kingston would protect her.
Felix slapped her and twirled her around, a blade, sharper now, against her back.
“I’ll do it,” Chrissie said, suddenly beside her. He patted her bare shoulder, twice. A signal she couldn’t decipher.
Felix grunted. “You are a child like she is. Her friend.”
“Remember what the general from Kigali told us. First, you must kill a friend. After that, it is easy.”
The tip of the knife prodded between Nadine’s shoulder blades as Felix considered his choices.
“I want to be a soldier like you, brother,” Chrissie said, his voice husky. “I want to be a man.”
Now, Nadine’s eyes open wide as she hears footsteps outside the church window. Her hand goes to the impala-skin satchel tied around her waist, presses the outline of the gun against her hip bone. She remembers the crows screaming. Felix laughing, shoving her at his brother. The sensation of falling, stumbling into her friend’s arms. Felix taunting, “Look at you, afraid to even touch the cockroach. I promise, she doesn’t bite.”
She doesn’t remember Papa Henry pushing Chrissie out of the way and wrapping her in a soft blue shirt that hung nearly to her knees. She only recalls staring down at his hands fastening the buttons, ashamed that he had seen her naked. He had seen Felix on top of her. She kept her eyes on his hands. “Don’t tell Umama and Baba.”
“No, of course—” His voice broke as he pulled her to his chest. A shudder that could have come from either of them ran through her and settled in her groin; the shockwaves of pain would never completely fade.
“Shhh… quiet now, Nadine,” he whispered. “I’ll be back for you. Just try to think of your mama’s voice, maybe a song.”
“Hey, Mister American, you want to go with them?” Felix shoved Papa Henry toward the shed. “Take some photos?”
Nadine began crying hysterically. No, she didn’t want him to see any more.
“Back to work, mzunga,” Felix ordered, “or I go tell my father.”
“Nadine, remember what I said,” Papa Henry shouted as two soldiers led him away.
“Stop crying, Nadine,” Chrissie hissed in her ear. “You must stop or he will make me kill you, right here.” And then, there was only the sound of the crows as her friend took her into the shed.
Nadine keeps her eyes on the sanctuary door as it clicks open, fumbles in her bag—Kleenex, bobby pins, a hairbrush, a cluster of coins—and grips the thin slab of steel. The door swings open. The orb of light surrounding her shatters. Felix steps into the room, his eyes darting around and landing on her. He looks nearly respectable, dressed in a white button-down shirt and black chinos, except for a thick number tattooed on the side of his neck. His prison identification number. A mark of honor for militant Hutus.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Nadine says. She slipped him a note after the service, asking him to meet her when the sanctuary emptied out.
He shrugs. “What do you want?”
Nadine stands perfectly still, holds her breath. Maybe Felix won’t see how badly she wants to run.
“What?” he barks.
“Leave me and my family alone.”
He waves a hand through the air as if swatting away an insect. “No gacaca, no trouble.”
“Christian, too,” Nadine says.
Felix narrows his eyes. “My brother will do as I say. Besides, soon he will go back to Uganda, you to Nairobi, me to Congo. All of our troubles will be over. Forgotten.”
“No.” The word springs from Nadine’s chest.
“Cockroach, we have no more business—”
“I remember,” Nadine blurts. Maman is right. Staying silent has made her feel helpless and weak for too long. “I’m not scared of you anymore. Leave us all alone or I will testify.”
Felix sighs loudly. “So, now you remember? Prove it.”
The smirk on his face is cruel and pitying as Nadine tells him some, but not all, of the secrets she has kept to herself. It’s too painful to recall aloud how she and the other girls had been ordered to strip in the shed and then line up outside, naked and cold, each one with a boy at her side holding a machete. “I remember your father telling you and the other Hutu boys that what you did to us was your right. Your blessed initiation into manhood,” she says flatly. And the Tutsi girls’ initiation into the hell they deserved. Justice is what Rahim Kensamara called it.
“If you remember so good,” Felix says, “then tell me something. Why didn’t my brother carry out orders and kill you?”
Nadine licks her lips. Why?
“Your brother slammed shut the door to the shed. He called me terrible names…” She remembers Chrissie frantically rummaging through the paint cans and shovels, kicking at clothing and trash on the floor. “He threw things at me.” A pair of underwear. He couldn’t find a dress or shirt that wasn’t bloody or in shreds. He did find a large blue tarp and tented it over a stepladder in the back corner. Sit here, under the ladder. Don’t move until I come back, even if you hear the door open.
Nadine places her hand to her nose. The smell of dust and turpentine, and something like rotting bananas grew so intense that she scraped a tiny hole in the tar
p. And then, there was something odd: the faint smell of chocolate. A cruel trick of hunger; her last meal had been breakfast yesterday. Or had it been the day before? Sometime later, curled up in the dark, head to knees, she noticed a crinkling sound in the breast pocket of the flannel shirt Papa Henry had buttoned up to her collarbone. She ripped off the wrapper of the Snickers bar and devoured it, the intense pleasure on her tongue shameful, sucking the delicious gooeyness from her fingertips like an animal, not caring about the dried blood and dirt mixed in.
“Why?” Felix repeats loudly. “Why didn’t Christian do as he was told?”
“Because…” Nadine’s breath is hot in her lungs, her skin turning flushed and prickly. That day, Chrissie acted like a real man. He saved her life. He guarded the shed and told everyone he had buried his friend, and then went to find Papa Henry when it was safe. So why isn’t she grateful? Why is she angry with him? “Because he was a scared little boy.”
Over the hours, as daylight faded, she picked away at the hole in the tarp, making it large enough for her eye. She watched a spider weaving a web. All the while, she wondered why. Why hadn’t Chrissie killed her?
“My brother was foolish,” Felix says. “It might surprise you to know it was me who took him to our uncle’s house in Kampala. The others wanted to kill him for saving your wretched life.”
“Am I supposed to thank you for sparing your own brother?”
“You should be grateful to me as well as Christian, grateful you are alive.”
“No, it is not so.” A tremor begins in Nadine’s jaw, igniting her entire body. When Papa Henry opened the door to the shed, it was nearly the second nightfall she had been there. He helped her up, her legs weak and useless. She saw, outside the open door, the bodies on the ground. Her stomach tightened with a convulsion that brought up putrid-sweet liquid and the memory of begging whimpers and screams. Her friends. To this day, the smell of chocolate makes her nauseous. While her friends were being murdered, she was eating chocolate and nuts, safely hidden under the tarp. What right did she have to fill her belly? To live?
“Why are you spouting all of this nonsense anyway, cockroach,” Felix goads. “I don’t care to hear any more.”
“I needed to tell you.” Nadine clutches the satchel. “I won’t testify at the gacaca, but not because I don’t remember.” She looks at Felix across a chasm of light. She may find forgiveness for him, someday far in the future when time softens her memories and he becomes merely a stupid boy following orders. Not next month, though, it’s too soon. And she may never forgive Chrissie, her best friend, for saving her life.
Felix takes a few steps toward her. “I didn’t come to hear your sad story.”
Nadine fastens her hand tighter on the satchel.
“Give them to me. The photos that mzunga Shepherd took that day.”
“You are crazy.”
“The woman Rachel, his daughter, your friend…” Felix takes a few more steps, eyes fixed on the satchel. “She came here with the photos didn’t she?”
It all happens so quickly: his face twisted into sheer hatred. A tightness snakes through her lungs, as if the blade of his knife is once again pressed to her throat. She grips the gun, unsure how it got into her hand. A hot jolt of metal thrusts her backwards, the edge of a pew sharp against her thighs, a shattering rumble above. She shields her head as splinters of blue and gold glass cascade around them. Felix lunges for the gun but she’s quicker, standing over him, both hands on hot metal, shaking but firm.
He looks up at her, a hand raised to his face but she sees the fear in his eyes. She lifts her chin. So, this is what it is like to have power.
“You’re right,” she says, “I do owe you.” Umama and Baba, Sylvia and her friends. The screaming crows that wake her up at night. The filth under her fingernails that can never be washed away. She startles as the door swings open; another shot fires, but it’s not Felix who cries out and then falls at her feet.
GLASS EXPLODES INTO THE SKY from the church window, showering slivers of sunlight everywhere. Rachel shades her eyes, as if looking straight at the sun. Christian runs ahead of her, into the church. Another shot rings out. “Nadine!” Rachel yells, pushing open the sanctuary door. She stops short: Christian’s lying on the floor, clutching his shoulder, Nadine at his side.
Felix is standing over both of them with a gun. “Stupid girl,” he says. “It’s all her fault.”
“We have to get your brother to a hospital,” Rachel says, calmly she hopes, her eyes on Nadine.
“Oya,” Christian gasps. “No hospital. They’ll ask who did it.”
Rachel kneels next to the boy to look at his shoulder. “I’ll call Tucker on the radio in your truck.”
Felix aims the gun at her. “No calls!”
“You can’t keep protecting him,” Rachel says to Christian. “You can’t—”
“He’s right, it’s my fault,” Nadine says. “I did this.”
“No, inshuti.” Rachel stands and holds out her palm as if offering Felix the pink locket resting in it. He raises the gun to her head but she doesn’t move. “You started this,” she says. “You can end it. Tell me where you got this.”
“It belongs to my mother.”
“No, I bought this locket for my dad’s Christmas present. I was seven. There’s a photo of me inside.”
Felix glares at his brother, says something in Kinyarwanda, and keeps the gun trained on Rachel.
“Oya,” Christian says. “No more killing, brother. No more.”
“Nobody needs to die.” Rachel steps sideways to shield Nadine. “We’ll take Christian to Kwizera. Tucker will stitch him up. But first, I need the truth. Where did you get this? What happened to my father?”
Felix’s eyes dart from his brother to the locket. “Henry Shepherd is dead.”
Rachel closes her fist around the stone heart. Her legs buckle, her hand dropping heavily to her side. “You…” Felix killed her father. Now, he’s aiming the gun at her chest. “You can stop this,” she says. “Please, stop this.”
Felix shakes his head, a flash of soft sadness crossing his face. “Madame, there is no stopping it.” He cocks the gun and raises it slightly, and then Christian bursts forward with a roar of strength and grabs at his brother’s legs. The two brothers topple as the gun goes off and Rachel sinks to the floor, blood pooling at her feet.
THIRTY-SIX
{ August 1998 }
HENRY CROUCHES BEHIND THE THICK trunk of the old fig tree, close enough to smell the tang of sage and roasted goat meat in the air but far enough away not to be seen in the square of light that is the window above the kitchen sink. Inside, his family is sitting around the weathered mahogany table, Lilly holding Rose in her lap. No, that’s not right; Rose is nearly three now, big enough to perch atop a pillow on a chair. He imagines that Lilly keeps the hum of conversation going by asking each child about their day. How did Nadine do on the math test she was tied up in knots about? Did Thomas resolve his squabble with a friend?
He squints at the square of light, picturing each of the four boys and six girls who were living here when he left. How many have graduated from high school and moved on? Have others taken their place during the past four years? Did Naddie get a scholarship to college? Does she still play the flute? His gaze falls to his shoes. Lilly will be glad to see him, of course she will. She wants him back for the trial. But what happens after that? The uncertainty keeps him here in the dark where he has watched the window for the past several hours, trying to find a way to walk through the door to his home.
He pats his jacket with a shaky hand and extracts a blue pill from the lint and Kleenex in the breast pocket, lets the bitterness melt on his tongue. It had seemed like such a good plan: He would show up with the photos in his rucksack, be a hero for a brief moment and then take off again before daylight. He can’t stay, the Hutus would kill him, Lilly knows this. But now, hearing the murmur of her and the children, the clink and scrape of silverware on plat
es, the clang of a pot on the stove as someone refills their plate… For chrissakes, he can’t leave his family. Not again.
Henry gasps, his breath catching in his throat, as Lillian appears in the window, leaning over the sink, her upper body floating in the light. He stands flat against the tree to get a better view. She’s washing dishes, talking to someone he doesn’t recognize who’s drying and stacking plates on the counter. The girl comes to the back door and looks up at the sky. Henry lets out a painful sigh. Nadine. She’s a young woman now. Beautiful.
“Maman, come look,” she shouts excitedly. “The crocodile’s out tonight.” Lillian appears in the doorway, wipes her hands on her apron and places an arm around Nadine. They’re so close; Henry takes a step out of the shadow and then stops short, the force of something like a large hand flat against his chest. He thinks of this shape-shifting entity as a jinn who makes sure that he eats, bathes, craps, sleeps. It keeps him alive, but at a cost. That’s the deal he made at the church. The only way he could snap the shutter button, take the photos that saved Nadine’s life and his own, was to give up a piece of his soul.
Thirty-six photos. These images are the first things he sees when he awakes each morning—doesn’t even need to pull them out of the desk drawer anymore—just in case he doesn’t remember the nightmares. If he were to move back into the farmhouse, these images would, without a doubt, follow him there. He didn’t realize that this was part of the deal.
The victims of the massacre live on in the part of his soul that became vacant as he snapped photos at the church. The place where he used to take photos of things that made him feel vital and alive: gorillas and orchids, Lilly and the kids, the shadows that shift over the green, tiered foothills as morning turns into afternoon, and then blend in with the dark night sky. All of the beauty he once loved about living here in Rwanda. Gone. He is truly alone.
After Lilly and Nadine go back inside and the light in the kitchen dims, the ceiling of stars seems to drop a notch closer. Henry lifts his hand, as if he might harness the bright jewel of light at the tip of the crocodile’s tail. For a moment, he is at peace with his solitude.. He shades his eyes against the infinite glittering path of the Milky Way. The stars are the eyes of the dead… He read that somewhere. No, it was in a Disney movie about space that he had watched as a kid.
In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills Page 29
