The Girl Who Smiled Beads

by Clemantine Wamariya

  My body was changing, which was terrifying. In the water line I heard the women talking about whose husband was cheating with whom. Rob cheated, all the men cheated. They needed to feel better than somebody, and the easiest people to feel better than were their wives.

  I was such easy prey for a man with something to prove. I was nobody—an eleven-year-old girl who belonged to nobody. I did not stand in the water line after 4:00 p.m. for fear of being raped. Even earlier in the day, I tried to do what I had done since age seven. I tried to puff myself up and make myself bigger, 100 feet tall and 150 years old.

  But sometimes it felt harder than ever. Claire and I had already had five types of lives and we’d built nothing. I shot down every conversation. I trusted nobody.

  One day, in the line at the water pump, Mariette ran off and I left my jugs and wheelbarrow in my place while I chased her. When I returned, my water jugs and wheelbarrow had been moved to the side, to eliminate my place in line. The women kept talking, gossiping—whose husband was cheating on who—but I could no longer hear them.

  I kept thinking, I can’t listen, because if I listen I will kill myself. Staying alive is too hard if you end up like this.

  * * *

  Inside the compound I did have one friend, Rhoda. Her mother was our landlady. Her younger sister was Joy, the self-appointed policewoman of the shared bathroom. Together they lived in an apartment with several rooms at the corner of the compound near the gate, and they were fat, which everybody envied. Fat meant you ate three meals a day. Fat meant you rode the bus instead of walking endless miles.

  Rhoda was a couple years older than me, tall and light-skinned, with thick, beautiful black curls and a hideous white skirt with floral embroidery that she loved. She lazed around, chewing on her tongue, the tip of it hanging out of the side of her mouth like the tab on a can of soda.

  Her laziness was not slothful. Her laziness was relaxed. She was languid with the certainty that she did not need to hustle. Life would take care of itself. After she ate cereal, she put her spoon down exactly where she’d finished and walked away. She dropped her dirty clothes and left them on the floor. Someone else would clean up.

  Despite living here, in Chibolya, Rhoda’s mother instilled in her children a sense that their world was perfect, and it was, compared to mine. They ate meat. They traveled to visit family in Livingstone, Zambia, near Victoria Falls. They attended school. Rhoda was too lazy to study, but she let me touch her notebooks. I still had my pencil case with my name on it. I would have gone to school in Rhoda’s place if I thought I could have passed for her.

  * * *

  For thirty minutes a day, the sunlight hit our one window just so and the glass became a mirror. I was drawn to the mirror but also repulsed. In the reflection I saw my aunt. I saw my mother, but my mother’s hair was always down, wavy and luminescent. Mine was an ugly, self-braided mess.

  A boy began coming around. He was fifteen and lanky, and when he dropped by he brought candy for Claire’s kids. I wanted no part of him. Within a few months of living in Chibolya, Rob had a girlfriend he made no effort to hide and was back to beating Claire. If Claire complained about anything—eating once a day, living in one room—Rob said, “Go back to Rwanda! Do you even have any family there?”

  * * *

  Immigration started cracking down. About six months after we arrived in Zambia, Claire quit going to the market because people without papers were being thrown in jail.

  Rob got caught by immigration police. He was reckless about seeing his girlfriend. A soldier stopped him one night on the way home from her house. He had no visa, so he got thrown in jail. I thought Claire might disown him. Rob probably hoped she would.

  A woman we met on the bus invited us over on Sundays and let us watch TV. She had an abusive husband too, and she advised Claire to stick it out. He’d shape up when the kids were older, the woman told Claire. He’d want Mariette and Freddy to love him so he’d stop beating on her.

  So most mornings Claire packed up ugali and stew, if we had any, and walked the seven miles to bring it to Rob in jail. While there, she made a point of lingering at the door of the prison director’s office, asking him, “How was your lunch? How was your tea today?” After she’d exchanged niceties with the prison director half a dozen times, she said, “I’m not leaving until you hear my story.” She lied and told him that Rob was the breadwinner. He sold clothes in the market. We needed him to feed the family. Immigration made exceptions for parents with small businesses.

  The director released Rob the next day.

  * * *

  Claire’s dedication to Rob didn’t help her. When he returned from prison his behavior was worse than ever. All the women in the compound were afraid of him, though the truth is almost all the women were afraid of almost all of the men.

  Women were used to the idea that they would suffer, that they would feel low. For the men, it was hard to reconcile their expectations and ideas about masculinity with this life. As a result, they overcompensated with wild displays of rage, open affairs.

  We were so poor that we didn’t even have full bathroom privileges, just the toilet. Rhoda’s sister, Joy, complained if we had guests over too frequently and they used the bathroom too much.

  One night Rob came home angry and beat up Claire. It was very late, almost 11:00 p.m., and when he finished he screamed, “Take your kids and get out!” Chibolya started closing down at dusk and was terrifying in the dark. So much desperation, so many bodies packed so close together.

  Still, Claire immediately picked up Mariette and I picked up Freddy, and we hid outside the courtyard gate in the bushes. We could not leave the kids with him. We did not want him to find us.

  I felt ready to be evil. I wanted to break a window and attack Rob with shards of glass. I wanted to break my whole world. I had so much anger at Claire built up. I hadn’t asked to parent these kids. I hadn’t asked for all the moving. Claire now had bruises everywhere. Crouched and shaking, she tried to reassure me, as if I, too, was a small child. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll figure it out…” I could not take it.

  “That man just kicked us out of the house that you paid for, that you paid for by going to the market every day to bring home money and food for the kids and for me.” I had never said anything before that acknowledged what she’d done for me. I had never acknowledged her strength. I was desperate for her to recognize mine. “We need to take care of our kids, our beautiful kids,” I said. Our kids, not just her kids. Not his kids. Our kids, Claire’s and mine.

  We stayed there, in the bushes, for an hour. Then we snuck back into the compound and knocked on the door of an older woman. She let us in for the night.

  * * *

  A week later Claire brought me and the kids to live with another family on the edge of Lusaka, in a modest neighborhood of tiny stand-alone houses with tin roofs. Claire was scared. We were eating once a day. The home belonged to a first cousin of the woman who invited us over on Sundays. The cousin, too, had left Rwanda generations ago. She wore long house dresses and offered to take me and Claire’s children in. I loved her hands, her long nails painted red, her skin hennaed from knuckles to wrist. I sat in her kitchen for hours and watched her cook. She chopped, peeled, and stirred with precision. She never chipped her nails.

  Every day, in her kitchen, she followed the same pattern: First she cooked all the starches, then all the vegetables, then the fish. When she finished, she made mandazi. She rolled them in extra sugar, or extra cinnamon, or chai spices—whatever Freddy or Mariette requested.

  “Clemantine, I’m going to braid your hair,” she said. “Come here, sweet girl.”

  “Clemantine, we’re hungry. What are we hungry for?”

  My body kept filling out. So she took me shopping. We bought a crinkly black dress, knee length, short sleeved, with tiny purple, pink, and white flower
s. It dried fast in the sun. I loved it because it fit.

  * * *

  Claire made money sending faxes for a while. She met an official at the Belgian consulate by walking into the office one day and pretending she was there to sell a necklace to his secretary. Once inside, she charmed the man into letting her use his fax machine to try to learn about our parents. From there it was an easy hustle to start sending faxes for neighbors, for a profit.

  By then it was safe to return to selling in the market. She sold bras, underwear, and shirts on commission, and she also met a woman who was part of a UN group providing refugees with microloans to start small businesses. Claire applied, still the A student, still the Canadian anthem singer, not waiting to be saved by anybody but herself. When the woman heard Claire’s story, she said, “I’ll be your aunt or whatever you want to call me!”

  When Claire made a little more money, Mariette, Freddy, and I returned to living in Chibolya, with Rob. Every day, at 4:00 p.m., I dressed up and walked around the block with the kids, all of us clean. Sometimes I did an errand, like buy salt. It didn’t matter. That was not the point. The point was to be seen in the world.

  I wanted to say, I am here. I need you to see me, I need you to see that I am here. You, world, cannot make me crumble. I am alive, I am alive, I am alive. I wanted everybody to turn, stare, and say, “Oh my goodness, look at that beautiful dress. Who do we have here?” I needed to tell myself, every day, I exist. I am bathed, my hair is washed. My clothes are ironed. I am taking care of these kids. These kids are clean. I, too, am clean.

  For that one hour, I felt proud. Not just dignified but certain, impermeable, a rock. The sun that turned the window glass into a mirror had confirmed my existence. But I needed to see my body—I needed to own it.

  Almost every other minute of my existence, I felt the pain of being nobody’s child, the sting of the assumptions people make when you don’t have a mother and you don’t have a father. People assume you’re adrift, in play. They assume that you are vulnerable. They assume your needs are lesser, that your will is broken, that your body can be bent to theirs.

  But clean, in that dress, holding Mariette and Freddy’s hands, I felt like somebody’s somebody. I whispered to myself the words I needed to hear. “Beautiful girl, sweet sweet girl, look at how the dress fits you.”

  Back in the compound I took it off. I started dinner with the terrifying stove. By the time Claire came home, I had returned to being a maid.

  * * *

  Claire came home one day with news. The UN woman—the one who gave microloans and whose house Claire prayed at—told Claire that the UN had launched a program for refugees who’d survived genocide to gain entry to the United States. The United States, to Claire, was the ultimate land of hustling and rewards. You could start a business and grow rich. You could have six cars. You could have a faucet with beer on tap. When you landed, somebody would take your hand and give you everything. They would buy you shoes. They would buy a house. You would have a phone. Would Claire like to apply? the friend asked.

  The following day Claire dressed in her jeans, boots, and crisp white blouse and walked to the American embassy. The UN woman met Claire there and helped her fill out the English forms. Among the information requested was a list of family members. Claire included Rob’s name.

  The woman scoffed. “Claire, that’s very stupid.”

  Claire had told her about Rob. His cheating had become even more brazen. His girlfriend, a woman in her early forties, came by in heels and bright lipstick to pick up Rob at our house. She often carried department store shopping bags. If Claire told her to stay away, she spit. “What can you do about it? I can report you to immigration.”

  Yet Claire was unwavering. “If God gives us all the opportunity, we need to take it. What will I tell my kids? Maybe he will change when we get to America.”

  * * *

  Three months later, Claire received news that she had been called in for an interview. The interview was on a Monday. She told Rob the Friday night before. “You’re going to America?” he said. “You don’t care about anyone in Africa? You don’t have anyone in your life?”

  Claire was impassive. “If you want to go, go. If not, I will go with Clemantine and the kids.”

  That weekend, for the first and only time, Rob ironed Claire’s clothes. On Monday we all dressed up: me in my black dress, Claire in her jeans and crisp white shirt. Rob shined his shoes. I braided Mariette’s hair. Freddy kept his shirt tucked in over his belly.

  I had never been to the part of Lusaka with the embassies. It was a giant garden filled with tall trees, manicured and clean. In the embassy we waited in silence in a long line. I hated lines. Nobody spoke. When the clerk called us, he asked Claire about our lives, about leaving Rwanda. I didn’t listen.

  On the way out the clerk whispered to Claire, “You passed. I should not tell you this, but you passed. Don’t tell anybody.”

  * * *

  Now I had this secret, this glistening, gorgeous secret that I turned over like a marble in my mind. We were going to America, land of The Jetsons and Zoom. Claire promised that when you land, straightaway they buy you shoes. Everybody becomes rich. The country was inviting us. We would belong. When you don’t belong to a country, the world decides that you don’t deserve a thing.

  We started deep-cleaning our house. Claire bought us new clothes. Our puffy jackets. Plus brand-new white Keds sneakers, a maroon shirt with a white stripe on the collar, and skinny jeans for me; OshKosh overalls and a flowered shirt for Mariette; a blue-and-gray-striped shirt and jeans for Freddy.

  The night before we left, Claire gave our pots and bedrolls to the older woman who’d taken us in when Rob kicked us out of the house.

  We rode a bus to the airport.

  I cried the entire flight to Chicago. No one would find us now.

  16

  Years after that first show, when I was twenty-three and a junior in college, Oprah called to say that she wanted to fly me and Claire, first class, to South Africa, to attend an event at her new high school, the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, just south of Johannesburg.

  The school was a fantasy—wide lawns, stucco buildings inlaid with traditional basket patterns, frescoed murals of girls dancing. Oprah spoke and then I spoke, and after that Oprah squeezed my hand and said, “My girl, my girl, my girl.”

  I wore a green chiffon dress, the same shade of green as the girls’ school uniforms. After the event we took pictures. I noticed, in the school’s front lobby, three dolls, one small, one medium, one large, all beaded from head to toe, all with round red eyes.

  “Did I have a doll with beads?” I asked Claire. In my conscious mind I’d forgotten about the story Mukamana had told me.

  Claire had no patience for these questions. “No, you did not have a doll with beads.”

  “Why do I remember a doll with beads?” I asked.

  “It’s that story. You were always asking me to tell you.”

  Claire then walked off, shutting down that conversation for the day.

  The following morning we returned to the school. Again I stared at the dolls.

  “Can you please tell me that story?” I asked Claire. She looked exasperated with me. I hated that expression. I’d seen it ten thousand times. The expression said, Don’t push me. I don’t need you. You are a negative drag.

  “Remember?” she finally deigned to say. “There was a girl who smiled beads…”

  That was enough. The story came rushing back. It now made sense: my bracelets, all my beads.

  The traditional Rwandan fable starts with a barren mother. She’s miserable and desperate for a baby, as every other woman in her village has a child. When she walks down into the valley, to fetch water, she prays for a child, and while she’s praying, the rains come in.

  The water comes down and the thun
der roars but still the woman keeps praying. She wants a child to love now, and to care for her later, when she grows old. The thunder rattles louder, and the woman prays louder still, louder than the thunder itself.

  “Who is the woman whose cries are louder than mine?” the thunder demands. “You. You must stop.”

  The woman refuses. The thunder demands again and grows irate. So the mother offers the thunder a bargain: she’ll quiet her prayers if the thunder gives her a child. The thunder agrees.

  Months later, the woman gives birth to a beautiful baby, the most beautiful girl in the village, the most beautiful girl she’s ever seen. The baby is part thunder, and therefore part magic, and her smile is so bright that whenever it crosses her lips, out flows a gorgeous trail of beads. The mother is filled with pride and jealousy, and feels terrified that her daughter will be stolen, so she locks her in the house. Yet one day, when the mother goes to the market, she forgets to lock the door. The girl who smiles beads walks out and disappears.

  The mother searches everywhere, through her whole village, over the next hill, all through the night. She asks neighbors and strangers if they’ve seen her girl and they all say yes. The beads, they say, they saw her beads just this morning. Not her body, just her glittering contrail. They looked for her, they wanted to see her, but she was always gone.

  The thunder, hearing that his daughter is lost, comes down from the sky to find her. He lines up all the girls on all the hills and makes them smile on command. When he finds the girl who smiles beads, he takes her back with him to his home in the sky. Her mother returns to crying—she is childless again.