“Maman, Maman, Christian is gone.” I looked around and saw that my little boy was no longer there. The children had always stayed by my side since we’d arrived in the church. This place was like a city, a crazy market place with confining ramparts forcing all of us to recoil on our own weakening humanity. Where was my boy? I ran outside into the courtyard where the sun was beginning to shift into a trailing afternoon light. The air was cooler now, but the stench of the dead floated around us like a thickening balm. There were people everywhere, some, newly arrived, were being detained right beyond the gates of the church as militia asked for money. I saw Jean de Dieu and Wenceslas standing together. I needed to find my boy before nightfall. This was the single thought that pushed me into motion. I heard their voices. Jean de Dieu did not see me. I slid behind a group of people who were making their way towards the church entrance. I heard them:
“Tomorrow, the journalists and UNAMIR will be there. We cannot, in all good conscience, let these bodies rot in the sun.” Wenceslas threw his head back and began laughing grotesquely like a strange circus clown. Jean de Dieu looked at him, I thought I saw fear in his eyes but then he smiled and he shook Wenceslas’ hands.
“So, we have a deal?” Wencelas said holding on to Jean de Dieu’s hand as he was about to pull it away.
“Deal.” I heard Jean de Dieu respond before he walked away behind the church, leaving Wenceslas alone to admire the breadth of his work in the dozens of bodies left to bury.
I ran away quickly before Wenceslas could see me. I had to find my boy before nightfall, before the closing of the doors. Where could he have gone? The courtyard filled with bodies and people waiting to enter. I knew that I couldn’t cross the gate past the courtyard to the street without risking loss of re-entry into the church. Would Christian have left the church walls? What if someone had taken him? Why would anyone take him when there were too many mouths to feed, too many lives to save? A stranger’s child had no value to a survivor.
When I began looking, I saw that there were hundreds of children who were my boy’s age. Hundreds of boys like my own, roaming the church alone, squatting in corners, sleeping against the back of a relative, huddled in the arms of their mother. But no matter where I looked, I could not find my son.
As I was about to leave the courtyard to re-enter the church, I saw Jean de Dieu making his way from the pile of bodies with a wheelbarrow full of entwined limbs, feet on top of feet, hands knotted around unrecognizable faces, puffy and swollen, purple in places where the flesh had already peeled away from the bone. I watched him wheel these corpses away as others carried more bodies behind the church. I stood watching this strange procession of death, when I heard one man say to another:
“They will never find them there. No one will find the bodies in the garage.” When I returned inside the church, I noticed that everything had dimmed already in the dwindling afternoon light. It was then that I began to believe in miracles. I saw them sitting there, Christian and Michel were talking to their sisters. Before I had a chance to hug and kiss him, I found myself grabbing him violently by the arm.
“Where were you?” Christian jumped; his body recoiled as he watched me fearfully. Seeing the fear in his eyes, I released him.
“I thought you were dead.” I whispered to myself. “I thought you were dead, like the others.” I began to cry wrapping my arms wide around my children. I cried for a long time until I fell asleep. When I woke, the church doors were closed and we were confined again to the darkness of night and the wails of the ailing.
That night, Jean de Dieu did not sleep by my side. The next morning, I saw Berthe sitting at the front of the church with two other people I did not know. Wenceslas pointed to them giving them orders to carry a task. I still wanted to talk to Berthe about my fears with Jean de Dieu.
That afternoon, journalists came as Wenceslas had predicted. They wanted to write about the living conditions in the church. Wenceslas had selected three people to talk to the press to tell them how safe we were now that we were staying in the house of the Lord. Berthe was among the ones selected to fabricate this reality. I heard her talking to them almost in a whisper and for a moment, I wondered if they knew that this woman was lying to save her life. Father Wenceslas was sitting with them the whole time. He nodded and smiled and even placed his hand on Berthe’s shoulders as she began to cry. When the journalists asked her why she was crying, I heard Berthe saying:
“Sorry. It hasn’t been easy. It hasn’t been easy since the beginning of the killings.” And when she said this, Wenceslas and the journalist both seemed satisfied with the answer and the interview ended.
I didn’t see Jean de Dieu for two days after that. I did not know which I feared most: his absence from our sleeping area at night or the truth I was seeking.
On the third day, Jean de Dieu returned. When I tried to talk to him, he simply remained quiet and stared off in front of him in silence. When night fell, I heard a woman screaming in the distance and then people gasping in response. Someone had just gotten killed in the darkness and fear spread around the church like brush fire. I searched for Jean de Dieu’s hand in the dark. When I found it, he pushed me away and recoiled in the other direction.
“What is that sound?” Outside beyond the church walls, I heard a series of pops that sounded like fireworks on a wedding night.
“Jean de Dieu, what is happening outside of the church?” He did not answer. More pops resounded outside. Clearly the militia were shooting outside and someone had gotten hit. I held the children close to me. I could feel Angélique besides me, Sylvie, Christian and Michel. I pressed my body against theirs and lay down flat on the ground. I heard one of the children whimpering beneath me as another shot resounded in the darkness.
“Jean de Dieu? Are you there?” I could not feel him nearby. I heard people rising. If people panicked, there would be a stampede. There were no lights in the church at night, and I had learned to make my way in the dark around the mass of sleeping bodies. People began to move and usual reference points vanished. If I moved quickly, I knew that I could reach the church wall to my right within seconds. Hundreds of people were moving. Some were running, others were trying to get up. I knew that if I stayed on the ground, the children and I would be crushed.
“Sylvie and Christian! Hold on to me.” I yelled in the midst of the commotion around us. I stood and grabbed hold of Angélique and my youngest boy. I could only hold two children and I’d chosen Angélique and Michel without thinking twice about my choice. Later, I realized I was trying to make up for that day in the church when I let go of Angélique’s hand in the face of Yellow Shirt’s menace. With the chaos around me and the absence of light, I had no way of knowing whether or not Sylvie and her brother had managed to hold on to me.
“Sylvie are you there? Christian?”
“Yes, maman. Yes maman.” I heard their pitiful voices reply among the rumble of voices around us.
“Keep holding on and walk behind me,” I told them. The mass of bodies around me pressed its way into us. My plan was to remain as close to the wall of the church as possible so that I could remain away from the panic of the masses. But suddenly as I was pushing my way through the crowd, I realized that I could not feel Christian next to me anymore.
“Christian, are you there? Christian where are you?” I began to scream now. I could barely hear myself screaming among the screams of others and the sound of gunshots outside. The four of us reached the wall.
“Get down on the ground.” I said to Angélique, Sylvie and Michel. “I need to find your brother.” I let go of the children’s hands and I heard Sylvie crying out:
“Maman, don’t go! Don’t go Maman!”
“Just stay down. I’ll be right back.” I disappeared into the mass of writhing bodies. I tripped on the limbs of someone lying on the ground. People were trampling the body trying to make their way across. I heard someone screaming:
“Stay away from the church walls, they are shooti
ng at us.” I had not thought of the walls being a dangerous place to be. I suddenly felt trapped between the will to find Christian in the crowd and the thought that I had to move my other children from the proximity of the walls. That’s when I heard the mad woman in my head again. I hadn’t heard her since that night at the checkpoint with the children when she told me that I would lose another child.
Look at you running like a rabbit in a field, she whispered. I heard the laughter in her voice in the way she said the word rabbit.
You are the hunted. And soon, you will need to do the hunting. I tried to push her voice out of my head as I made my way around the people screaming around me. I heard a man yelling.
“Everyone get down! Get down everybody!” A woman began to wail.
“My baby! My baby! They shot my baby!” I tried to train my eyes to see beyond the shadows. But no matter how hard I tried I could only discern shapes and shadows moving quickly. I was becoming disoriented. I had been turned around several times in the chaos of people pushing their way around me and I was uncertain of the location of the wall. Where had I left my children? I knew that even if I wanted to return to them, I would have to wait for light to return.
Where was Jean de Dieu now? I’d lost him shortly after he’d pushed my hand away from his. Why had he grown so quiet? Where had he been for two nights before this one? These were answers that seemed unimportant in the face of this moment.
You see the way, now. You can see your way through the darkness of the human heart. Soon, you will become one of them. And when the mad woman said this, she laughed.
Once you kill, it is easy to kill again. She continued. A hand suddenly grabbed hold of mine and pulled me.
“This way.” I heard Jean de Dieu’s voice in the darkness. I found myself letting go, letting my body be pulled like a magnet slowly peeling away from its union with gravity. Everything I knew was slowly fading away. And as I made my way through the darkness with this stranger, I knew that the path to survival resembled nothing I had ever seen before.
We made our way into a small room. I heard Jean de Dieu fumbling for a key and then a door opened and I saw a faint trail of light inside as we entered. Jean de Dieu quickly closed and locked the door behind us as if we were being chased by a monster. I pressed my back against the door to catch my breath; as I looked around I saw the room was lit by a candle. I could discern the shapes of people’s bodies in the distance. There were dozens of faces all around us. I was afraid to see who was among us in this secret room. Who else had access to safety when the others were getting killed outside? My heart squeezed madly. I needed to leave this room and go to my children. I tried to leave but the door was locked.
“I need to find my children. Let me out! I need to find my children!” I was pounding on the door now. I heard her laughing inside me.
You think you can save your children by running with the devil? And when she said this, I felt a hand taking hold of my shoulder.
“There is nothing you can do for your children, right now. Just sit down and rest for a while.” I looked at the hand resting on my shoulder, the strange slender fingers, I’d never seen up close before. I wanted to scream, to let out a scream louder than the screams of the women who were crying for their dead children right outside this room. But when I went to scream, I saw the menace in Father Wenceslas’ eyes and I felt the tightening of his fingers on the lines of my shoulders.
I slid along the door’s surface and began to cry quietly in the low rumble of a weep I’d learned to master since childhood. I needed to become invisible; if only I could disappear then I could leave this room and be with my children. I cried for as long as my eyes were able to produce tears. And when I stopped, I noticed that the people around me had forgotten I existed. My eyes had grown accustomed to the absence of light and I could see the faces of the men and women sitting on chairs, leaning against the walls as clearly as I would have in daytime. The mad woman had grown quiet inside me now. I think even she didn’t know what she was going to find among these walls. I saw Jean de Dieu talking to a man I had never seen before. They were whispering in the corner of the room while others were playing cards or sleeping. The gunshots had stopped outside and people were no longer screaming beyond the door. I thought about asking for a way out again, but I knew that the only way out was from within. If I was to survive, I needed to connect with the people in this room. I recognized some of the faces. What was the common bond between them? What linked us all in our confinement of safety? My heart almost stopped when I saw Berthe slumped over, alone in the corner of the room. Her eyes were open, she did not appear to be sleeping, but her body was still, as if she were trying to make herself as small as I felt. Why was she here?
“Berthe, are you OK?” I said placing my hand on her shoulder. She jumped as if I had startled her.
“Hmm? Yes, yes, I’m fine.”
I scanned the room, were all of these people Hutu? I remembered the lessons I’d learned in childhood about recognizing the races. Hutus were stout and short. Tutsis were tall and slender but even I had been fooled into not knowing the origins of my own father. Jean de Dieu noticed that I was no longer crying and he came by my side.
“You feel better now?” his voice was calm and confident, unlike his cool and distant way a few hours ago. I looked up and saw that Father Wenceslas was playing cards with the man who had been by his side during the roll call in the church nearly a week ago. I wanted to blurt out who are these people? But I knew that strategy was the only way to win this game.
“I feel better. Yes.” I answered trying to control my voice.
“Good,” he said, placing his hand on my shoulder. I noticed Wenceslas pausing in his game of cards to look at us from a distance. Berthe was looking at me now. I wanted to speak with her but I didn’t know who were my allies. We exchanged glances in the dimly lit room and for a second, I noticed sadness in her eyes. The room was discernible now. I could see every single person clearly outlined, as if each person were held in some deep contrast to the others. The man sitting a few feet away from Berthe was the man who’d also been questioned by the journalists. The two men standing next to the table where Wenceslas was playing cards were among those who had taken the bodies to the garage behind the church along with Jean de Dieu. We were all players in this game of evil. What were the rules?
At dawn, I felt someone shaking me abruptly. When I opened my eyes, I realized that I had fallen asleep on the floor where I’d been standing before. Jean de Dieu was kneeling by my side.
“Francine, wake up! Wake up Francine. It’s time to go!” My heart began to race. I could feel it in my throat as I thought of the children.
A new current ran through the church: a collective wail rose from various corners of the holy house that I’d never heard before. I quickly made my way around the groups sitting and standing inside and around the pews. I noticed dozens of people tending to the wounded, mourning the dead. Knowing that I needed to start with what I knew, I ran back to the wall where I had left the children. Clustered like frightened dolls, Angélique, Sylvie and Michel were still in the same place where I’d left them, holding on to each other.
“Maman!” Michel yelled as he saw me running towards them. Even Angélique who had been silent for days now seemed relieved to see me.
“Maman, where were you?” she asked. I could hear an incriminating tone in my daughter’s voice. I looked at my children and didn’t know what to say.
“I was taken somewhere.” I heard myself answer. “I could not return. Have you seen your brother?” The children shook their heads no. I knew they were hungry and I needed to get them some food, but first I needed to find my boy. I drew a plan in my head. First, I would have start with the farthest corner of the church and circle my way in a spiral until I’d made my way all the way around back to the center.
At first, I saw nothing. My mind was blank. I could not absorb any of the images I was seeing as I made my way through the devastated church.
Slowly, life around me came into focus. Dozens of women were wailing around the church, carrying dead or wounded children. I saw a young boy cradling an old woman in his arms. He struggled under the weight of his grandmother’s body as he cried quietly. Everywhere I looked there was a wounded or dead body, some were alone; others were tended to by their relatives. My heart began to sink. I could feel that something was terribly wrong. “Christian!” I knew screaming was useless. My voice was drowned by the mothers already mourning their own. I recognized none of the faces I saw as I made my way around the spiral of the church. That’s when I heard her again.
Go to the heart, and you will find him. I’d never heard the mad woman speak to me as an ally. She had always been an enemy, a buffoon laughing at my misery. But now, she was trying to help me. I ran to the center of the church, only feet away from the place where I had lost Christian the night before. That’s when I saw him. I recognized the blue of his shirt, like the blur of a river’s waters gorged by the rainy season. I felt my heart stop, for a second, for a minute, for eternity. I saw his hand, curled up on itself, like he was trying to hold on to a treasure in his tiny palm. I moved, I think I moved, but I could not feel my limbs as I made my way to him. Hundreds of people were writhing and walking around us. Everyone was searching for a piece of themselves, a severed piece of their spirit soaring high above us watching our human misery. Christian’s body was still. My boy wasn’t moving and when I touched him, I felt the coolness of the night still wrapped around him, like an eerie blanket.
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