by Minot, Susan
Yes, Arthur said. You would.
Arthur also said he had read one of Jane’s books and told her that he liked it very much. Everyone appeared surprised to hear it and looked at Jane as if she’d undergone a transformation.
I thought you were a journalist, said Pat McAlistair. Jane hadn’t thought Pat noticed anything. He seemed one of those men propelled forward by unthinking exuberance. So now she was surprised.
No, she said. I’m just faking it.
Later they danced on the lawn. At one point Pat picked up his wife in his massive arms and carried her, running out of the circle of light made by the fire into the darkness toward the lake, and that was the last they saw of them.
Daphne had worked for a professor at the university in Kampala. Helga was an expert on trauma in children. She thought Jane should talk to Helga. Lana and Don begged off and went instead to the flea market where Lana had heard there were great deals on fabric. Harry and Pierre took Jane. They sat in front and Jane found that sitting between two men in a truck driving new roads gave her a splendid feeling in both body and soul.
Kampala was a city of hills, and they wound up the southern residential area on a bleached switchback alongside whitewashed walls interrupted by metal gates. In the distance was a green plain, then the lake, a soft navy blue which grew larger and mistier as they climbed higher. Near the top they turned at the appointed number up a short vertical driveway paved with a grotto of rocks, to a modern house perched at the edge of the hill.
The doorbell was answered by a woman with cropped gray hair and a square, handsome face. Helga wore no jewelry or adornment, presenting herself as simple, unfussy and efficient. Her lidded gaze suggested arrogance.
Tea is coming, she said in a German accent. Come in. Like many people in the healing profession, Helga had an unsmiling expression and a neutral tone of voice.
A large window took up one side of the house, framing the hazy air and ruffled lumps of trees. The lake beyond sparkled from this height like broken glass. They sat on a low sofa around a low table. Jane saw not one thing of color in the house. A young Asian woman appeared with a tray. She set it down, swinging a thick shiny braid off her shoulder.
This is Sunali, Helga said. When she looked at the girl, her face changed, softening into something private and warm. Sunali nodded, barely glancing at Harry and Pierre, and set down cups and lined up spoons and put out paper napkins with her small hands.
Helga turned to Jane, businesslike. So, you are going to see the children? Sugar?
Jane told her what story she hoped to report on.
Yes. The nuns, of course, We’ve all heard that story. It’s gotten a lot of attention. It travels well. Everyone likes it because it’s dramatic. I suppose it captures people’s imagination.
Well, it captured mine, Jane said. She wasn’t sure if she was being insulted.
You, Helga said, turning to Harry. What do you do?
Drive.
Helga nodded, looking at him solemnly. This was acceptable.
Helga hadn’t been back to the north in over six months, she said. She was too busy here, teaching. But things hadn’t changed up there, as far as she could see. She’d been in Uganda for eighteen years, but Kampala was changing. They saw all the construction going on. Then she talked about the disaster of Idi Amin. Did they know he deported most of the Indian population, who were, she pointed out, the economic strength of the country? And now, she said, we have Museveni. She shook her head. This apparently spoke for itself.
Are you from India? Pierre said to the beautiful girl.
No, Helga answered for her. She’s Samoan.
There was a long pause and Jane asked more about the children.
When you talk to them, Helga said, ask about their escape. They are able to speak of this with enthusiasm. The escape is the first time they are able to act on their own behalf after having been powerless for so long. The period of captivity they feel as a blur, it is how they manage it. You can ask them about the small bits of their daily life with the rebels and a bafflement descends.
I suppose they want to forget it, Jane said.
They still have a lot of violence in them, said Helga. It’s hard to dispense with such things. Not many of them get over it, you know.
May I have more tea? Pierre said, holding his cup up to Sunali.
As Sunali poured tea, Helga placed her braid on her back, holding it like a leash.
Of course one is not allowed to say it, Helga went on. One mustn’t even believe that there’s little hope for them. But it’s true.
Do they know you think that? Harry said.
The children? Oh, no. I just study them. The more we learn, the more we hope to help them. She left the braid on Sunali’s back and admired it there. Sunali kept still, accustomed to being admired.
Did you grow up in Uganda? Pierre said, taking his cup of tea. Sunali appeared deaf.
Helga spoke for her. She doesn’t speak English.
Swahili?
She speaks Samoan.
You speak Samoan? Pierre said to Helga.
Certainly. Sign language would have gotten a little tiresome after ten years.
The girl didn’t look more than twenty-five, Jane thought. She pictured them, as she was compelled to do whenever she saw a couple, in bed with each other.
As if sensing Jane’s observation, Helga tucked the hair behind Sunali’s ear and spoke in German. Sunali smiled. Of course she speaks German, Helga said.
Driving home, Harry said, Looks like Helga is doing a little child abduction herself.
That girl was giving me the eye, Pierre said.
Really? Jane said. She was so out of it. Things opened in one place and shut in another. Girls with allure had secrets. Was Helga kind or cruel? What were the secrets of girls with allure?
As they wound down the powdery roads, Harry took Jane’s hand and held it against his stomach. The world felt fine.
It was Sunday, and water skiers were drawing white Vs on the purple waters of the lake. Next door, coolers were being carried down to the yacht club where people had gathered for a barbecue. The men were pink with sunburn, and women in large T-shirts sat cross-legged in shorts, their painted nails relaxed on armrests, visors on their heads. The talk was of the buyer of Idi Amin’s compound around the corner and how he was planning to turn the land into a resort.
Behind the cows grazing at the far edge of the lawn, Harry could be seen practicing with his glider. Jane watched him. He stood on a low crest with the ribbed chute puffed out behind him. Now and then he took a step and would be lifted into the air, then land in slow motion, as if he were walking on the moon. From the screened window the Ink Spots were crooning Someone’s rocking my dreamboat …
Aren’t you coming? Pat McAlistair strode across the scratchy lawn, bare-chested and barefooted. People always wanted you to join in.
So, some time later Jane found herself riding in a chipped outboard, where people one at a time were dragged tilted on a creamy wake. The thought came to her that this area of the lake was once full of bloated bodies floating downstream after an Idi Amin massacre.
It was her turn; she jumped in.
The water was warm and thin and dark like tea, with no salt taste. She struggled her feet into the cut-in-half rubber slippers attached to the water ski and crouched, white knees showing in the brown tea water. Hold your arms in, they yelled as she braced herself. The boat burst forward with a high rev and she kept stiff and was miraculously pulled up. The bottom of her feet skimmed the water surface as she followed the deafening noise of the motor. Water sprayed in a plume when she turned, the wind was hot on her wet skin. After a few spins, she released the wooden handle and sank slowly like a statue lowering in quicksand. The boat cut a sharp turn and returned to her, idling. Lana, in a black bathing suit with a neckline plunged to her belly button, jumped in. Jane slid her the ski.
The boat had been driven from a driftwood dock on the other side, but Jane could see th
e house from here. Can I get back this way? she said.
Sure, said Pat McAlistair, coiling the rope, looking with intensity at the other boats.
Jane swam toward what looked to be a bed of thick growth. Up close she saw it was the water hyacinths they’d been talking about, the vegetation clogging the shore and threatening to choke the inlets. The leaves of the water hyacinth were large and rubbery and the stems thick dark cords winding around each other. She began to pull herself through the tangle, unable to touch bottom. As she penetrated the bog, she had the odd sense, which came to her when traveling, of being slightly behind herself. It was as if the person thrashing through this woven marsh was ahead of her in the future and she, her real self, was watching and hadn’t quite caught up. She wasn’t far behind herself, she was within sight, but she wasn’t quite arrived at this new unknown place. She wasn’t, as the phrase went, in the moment. The sensation was unsettling, but also stimulating. There was relief, as if a chance were still there for her, before she caught up with herself, to gather parts still at odds with each other and in the lag time to allow the scattered bits to be pulled together and nearer to being whole.
Her thoughts turned from herself to Harry. How odd it was that once you kissed a person he infiltrated you. After lunch, while she painted the view with Daphne’s watercolors he’d sat behind her on the concrete deck, his legs straddling her, encasing her. Her body accepted the occupation of him, whether chosen or not. Apparently being occupied by a man did not have to do with suitability or personality. The body decided and the mind followed, helpless. This usurpation seemed to be, she noticed, relegated to females.
She thought of Harry saying his mother was the coolest person he knew. It was better than his mother being a nightmare. A nightmarish mother was something to contend with, though adoration was another hurdle. Jane had met his mother, Sheila, the night before they’d left Nairobi. She was a trim woman with short hair and an intelligent expression, standing at the fridge, looking for supper. Karibu, she said to Jane, neutral. Good trip, she said when they were leaving. She and Harry’s father were scientists, specializing in livestock. Harry’s mother was clearly not the sort of woman to let her body override her mind. That is, she appeared to be an adult.
The weeds were hard to haul through. The stems were strapping across her chest.
She heard Lana shout and turned around to see her following, her broad shoulders visible above the rug of growth. Looks like you picked the easy way back, Lana called. She appeared, however, to be making effortless progress through the tangle. Her body twisted side to side as if she were dancing a rumba. Lana looked to be very much where she was, and always did, unbowed by obstacles in her way.
The last night with the McAlistairs, they went out to dinner at an Indian restaurant off the Gbaba Road. It was in a house on the second floor with a screened-in porch perched in the trees. A Bengal wall hanging covered a fireplace. At most of the tables sat people with light-brown skin. Many Indians had returned to Uganda after Idi Amin’s banishment in the eighties.
The rice arrived beside the vegetables upside-down in scoops.
At the next table were two handsome men with whom Lana soon made friends. They were doctors. One was an Italian who not only was a paraglider but had just returned from years of working in the north. He told them they had to go to the hospital at Lacor. It was run by a man named Carlo Marciano and was the best hospital in the north, no small achievement given where it was. He scribbled a note on a paper napkin. Tell him I sent you, he said. He was retiring for a while. You can’t work there forever, he said. You begin to go mad. Jane looked at his young face, ragged around the eyes. He and Harry fell into an intense discussion. He was headed to Ethiopia to paraglide.
When Jane was ten, she had decided to be a doctor. She liked dissecting animals in science, and healing sick people seemed like a good thing to do. She pictured herself touching the glands by children’s ears and walking purposefully down a hospital corridor, the way doctors did on TV. But it turned out being a doctor required a lot of reality and a lot of being in the world and Jane found herself drawn more and more into the world of dreams.
Don picked up the torn piece of napkin. This ought to be a big help, he said.
Everyone was learning to ignore Don. Jane folded the note and carefully jammed it into her stuffed wallet.
So, Lana said to her new friends as the check was being examined. She slapped her thighs with gusto. Where can a girl around here go dancing?
The next day they set off for a war zone.
7 / Independence Day
AFTER WE TURNED OUT the lights in the dormitory we could hear the wrappers crinkling from the sweets the sisters had given us for the holiday. Agnes was in my bed with me. Agnes and I usually slept together in any case, not just because the rebels were nearby. We hugged each other, pretending to be worried, but we were not really. We had locked ourselves in with the steel bolt. We were safe. We knew about the LRA cutting people’s mouths off and stealing from the villages, but I myself had not seen a rebel. They did not show themselves and hid in the bush. One girl at St. Mary’s, Alison, had an uncle taken when he was fifteen and a week later he was found, not alive, tied to a tree. Margot’s brother had been taken during Easter week in Nebbi and had not come back. You would hear these stories.
Then you find you are in the story. The story is happening to you.
Agnes fell asleep first, as she always did. I heard her breath turn thick, but I stayed awake. I had a math test on Tuesday, and I was thinking how after Tuesday I would be glad that math test was over. I went to more interesting thoughts. I thought about Philip, the boy of mine. I thought about his hands. His hand was two inches higher than mine, we’d measured. I thought about the last time home in Lira, when we kissed behind the library. He said to me I was different from the girls he knew, but he meant it nice. I remember that night having a safe feeling I was not to have again.
We woke to the banging.
Across the ceiling, lights bobbed like car lights on a bumpy road. We heard shouting, then a large thing banging, banging on the outside wall. They were stoning the glass in the window past the bars. Girls started to cry and others quieted them, putting their hands over their mouths. Maybe they would not know we were inside if we remained quiet. I sat up, with Agnes squeezing her arms around my waist. I kept my eyes in the direction of the banging. They know we are in here, I was thinking. About a hundred and fifty girls slept there. They know the building to find us in. Other times when the rebels were near, we were taken by the sisters to town to stay with different families in small groups. But this time we did not go and this time they had come.
Quick, I told Agnes. Go under the bed.
Other girls were there also. Then noise flooded in. From below the mattress I saw flashlights and the shadows of the rebels climbing in the window. They had pulled out the bars. They came stomping in. Electric lights were switched on, and the first sight of them was frightening. We saw them now. We saw their faces. They had on brown berets and red berets and baseball hats. Some had braided hair and dark glasses. Many wore camouflage shirts. Everyone was screaming. The rebels hit us.
Do what we say or we kill you! They spoke in Acholi. They spoke English also. Line up here! Now!
Agnes was frozen beside me. I held her ankle. She started to move and I gripped her to stay.
Then they pulled the mattress off the bed. I let go. Okay, I thought, we cannot escape them. Agnes was crying. Stop, I whispered. Do not let them know it. I saw Agnes’s face try to keep this idea. We were pushed together roughly. Girls tried to put on their shirts or dresses. The rebels held pangas and guns and with a free hand picked up things, shoes and clothes and blankets, throwing piles on the beds. They told us to carry these things. Some of us found suitcases. Others made bundles with sheets.
We were made to stand in a line, and they collected us in groups of five or six and wound a rope between us at our waists. When a girl cried, they shouted, Qu
iet! Maybe they would hit her. Abigail was taking her shoes from the floor and a rebel hit her back, making her fall down. His sunglasses reflected the lights. He was not old; he was young, fifteen or sixteen.
The rebel tying our rope had a chain around his neck with a light-blue oval charm of the Madonna. He tied our hands. I tried to press out my stomach to make extra room but only managed a little. The rope stayed tight. I did not like it, but I found no choice. We had to do as they told us.
Agnes at least was behind me.
In front I had Louise. Louise was tall for fourteen and our best football player. I looked at her strong back, and when she turned I was glad to see she was not crying. We looked at each other without speaking.
Pick up your luggages, they said. I took my backpack. I managed to put my feet into sneakers. Agnes had found only her sandals. I had the thought she’d be sorry to walk in them, a thought next to more important thoughts such as, Am I going to die? I noticed Louise had no shoes either, so I kicked her leg. She understood and starting looking around.
They unbolted the door, hitting it with their guns instead of just sliding it to the side, and we were led across our courtyard. The light from the dormitory reached a small distance across the grass. Smoke blew over us and we smelled burning. The lights at the entrance to the sisters’ area were bright and shone on the white gravel. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the figures of the children crouched against the cafeteria building, hiding. I looked away to protect them.
We walked together, attached by that rope.
Then across the grass I saw a shadow running small as a dog toward the music rooms. A rebel ran and caught up to the shadow. He picked it up. It was a smaller girl, I think Penelope. He didn’t bring Penelope back, but pulled her over to the trees where it was dark, and I did not want to think what he was doing to her over there. She was only ten. Only the other day I was sweeping the sorghum platform when Penelope came and said, I know you. You are Esther. Her six pigtails were held at each end with a different plastic barrette. I am a good sweeper, she said. Want to see? I gave her my broom and Penelope swept for me, concentrating hard. She asked me how old I was. I said I was fifteen, though my birthday was not for a while.