by Lisa Samson
A cousin of her friend Priscilla, who had arrived earlier in the day, said, “A few Hutu are doing the right thing, hiding friends. But it is at their own peril. The Interahamwe are storming houses to find where we are hidden.”
The men began to plan, the women to gather food for the inevitable flight. And as the UN Jeep pulled up, they heard gunshots edging closer.
The Hutu among them pledged their allegiance. “We will not kill you.”
They all stood in a cluster around the mission well Father Isaac had dug for medical use, fearing the lake water was contaminated. May pictured her backpack on the floor of her bedroom at the mission house. Empty. And no time to pack. No time to make a careful decision. There were but two options.
The children clustered around her. Everyone cried, “Take us! Please!”
The officer barked. “Get in, lady!”
“Can we take more?” she asked. “Father Isaac? What about you?” She turned back to the soldiers. “He’s from Swaziland!”
“All right. But get in. Now. We won’t be coming back.”
She wanted to hate the soldier, but she couldn’t. What a hideous job he had.
“I’m not going,” said Father Isaac. “I cannot bear to leave my friends now, in their darkest hour.”
The soldier rolled his eyes. “Ma’am?”
She looked over at Jeannette, a woman alone, mother of three children, who’d befriended her from the first day. May had listened to her detail her heartache due to a promiscuous husband and desertion. She’d eaten her food and slept on her floor a night or two as well.
Jeannette’s eyes brimmed with fear. “Go,” she whispered in earnest. “You must!”
“I can’t.”
“What good will your death do any of us?” Jeannette hissed, her dark, round eyes filled with fear. “Go, May! Go!” Her grip tightened on May’s arm as she pressed her forward.
May turned to the officer, knowing she’d rather be dead than disloyal.
“Nobody would ever think less of you for escaping,” Father Isaac said. “You’ve done so much, learned so much. You’ve grown. What good will your death be?”
She thought of going home, running into her relieved parents’ arms, but inside her, a grief and a shame at even entertaining such a thought flared painfully.
“I can’t leave. Go on. I’m staying.”
The soldier smirked. “Lady, you’re a crazy person,” he said, Belgian accent thick. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
“A little.”
“You’ll die.”
“We have faith,” Father Isaac said.
“Hope it does you more good than it did the others.” The officer nodded to the driver, and they pulled away to the frightened shrieks of the people whose bones seemed to melt inside them.
They all huddled together and wept as the pop of gunfire ricocheted over the green hills.
She’d loved Rwanda so much. It wasn’t like the pictures of Africa in books—those long, dusty, parched plains. No. Rwanda was like a jewel, a green, deep gem, lush and filled with life. Down the hill from the mission sat the lake, soaking up the blue of the sky. She thought of splashing there with the children, doing laundry with the women.
She didn’t know what she had pictured before arriving in Rwanda. Something more backward. But most of the people were literate, most went to church. And while they didn’t have a lot of the modern conveniences, they understood the value of education, of moving forward. Many of the villagers were sacrificing to send their children off to university.
Now they prayed the college kids were safe in their academic enclaves. In the bigger cities it would be easier for them to get out of the country. That’s what their families were saying, and May hoped they were right.
That night Father Isaac lit a candle in the kitchen and opened the Bible. The humid darkness settled over their shoulders and down their chairs, flowing onto the dirt floor. Gunshots ricocheted, sounding closer than ever. They were trapped in a womb ready to birth them into a world they had no way of comprehending beforehand.
“You should have gone,” he said. “Nobody would have blamed you.”
She said nothing. It was done. She was glad, for now that the terror of the inevitable had enveloped her and all possibilities of escape had flown away, she might have jumped in the Jeep. The people in the village had loved her so well. Here she must stay.
The two Hutu families left at Father Isaac’s urging. “You will be co-opted to join in. Best to remove yourself from temptation.”
Sixteen people piled into a van and a car and headed for the border, hoping to make it into Tanzania without being dragged into the fray.
After praying for their safety, Father Isaac’s full lips intoned Psalm 91. “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of Jehovah, he is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust. For he will deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover thee with his pinions, and under his wings shalt thou take refuge: His truth is a shield and a buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day; for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday … There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy tent. For he will give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.”
They came the next morning, the Interahamwe, a multi-limbed monster with claws of steel. Many of the villagers had joined May and Father Isaac at the mission the night before, and they prayed long into the night that the pestilence of violence wouldn’t reach their village. Now the soldiers streamed down the main pathway like a river of machetes and shouts, of gunfire and boots. Most of the village had gathered inside the church, hopeful for some sort of house of refuge, some sanctuary.
Father Isaac began to pray the Our Father and they prayed with him, choking out the words, gagging them out in fear while those who remained outside the walls screamed as they were butchered by people they’d gone to school with, did business with, maybe even loved once upon a time. May huddled with women and children, trying desperately to get her arms around them all, feel the flesh on flesh of them to her, make them one in fear, in pain, in suffering, in death.
—Jesus, help us.
This is sorrow, she realized, acknowledging the ache in her chest. This was not her war, her people, but she was among them, yet not part, not really. This is the ultimate outcome of racial hatred, she thought. This is what that fancy word genocide means.
“Why doesn’t God step in?” she whispered softly.
Priscilla heard. “Because the evil men must do their evil, so the good men can stop them.”
“But you’re going to die! Aren’t you frightened?”
Priscilla kissed her cheek. “More than words can tell you. But I am ready to see my Jesus.”
And the words of prayer rasped on and on. May wouldn’t have been surprised if “great drops of blood” had appeared on anyone’s forehead. They were going to die. Is this what Jesus felt like, she wondered.
But it didn’t matter. The prayers didn’t matter and neither did the sacredness of the church walls. With shouts and blood-rage they entered swinging, the machetes growing larger and thirstier with each swing. Limbs were hacked off. Breasts. Ears. Women and girls were dragged outside into the bushes and onto the road. May was one of them. One pair of hands bit into her wrists. One pair pulled up her skirt and ripped off her panties.
When her attacker finished, he reared back and slammed her face with his fist.
The bite of a machete brought her back to consciousness, its edge slicing into her arm, and she prayed she wouldn’t lose anything, dear God, don’t let them amputate something. Please. She watched a few of the villagers stumble with no arms as they tried to keep living. They soon fell to the ground. She prayed they’d
die quickly. Especially the children.
People lay around her in pieces, the thirsty, dry earth drinking the blood that flowed from their wounds. Such dark people. Such bright red blood.
The man whose job it was to kill her was halfhearted about it. With a rough boot, he kicked the sides of both her knees. She lost consciousness again to the grim bleating of sobs.
May wakened to the darkness and a dog licking her wounds. It was a brown houndish creature who looked as worn and fragile as she felt. Yvette’s dog. Yvette ran the village store, a rotund woman who told stories so often she didn’t bother to ask if you’d heard them before. The dog whimpered and turned toward the well, displaying a deep gash on his left haunch. Other women, raped as she had been, but shown no mercy, lay beside her, sightless eyes staring out from the pools of blood and flesh their bodies had become.
May shoved back a sob. She crawled toward the mission well where she’d passed the time with her friends, oh, the shooting pains in her arms and legs. The gashes burned and tore with each movement. But she realized having both arms and legs with which to crawl was a miracle.
She drew water, for herself and for the dog, whose name she never could remember. She drank from the bucket, then set it on the ground for the hound.
Somehow she gained her feet, her knees buckling with pain. Back inside the church, moonlight blue through the windows, all was silent. More of her friends lay on the floor, over the benches, strewn like clothing after an earthquake. Oh Jesus, she breathed in deeply, and looked toward the altar.
Bile filled her throat, and she searched for a clear spot to throw up. Nothing. She waited, frantically backing up, but her stomach took the wheel and she ended up spewing on Fabrice, a teenager who had taught her how to make beans. No! Such an insult to that dear girl. Dear Lord, how the shame took root. Her private parts throbbed and ached, the fragile skin torn and abraded. How many had taken her? Thank God she didn’t know. Everything was so cloudy.
Were they all dead? So soon? How late was it?
She heard a gasp from the altar.
Father Isaac lay in front of it, clutching the rough tabernacle, holding the Blessed Host to his stomach.
Tears burned as she crawled over bodies toward the man she could call father in more ways than one. A gurgled breath issued from lips that had granted her absolution and taught her how to pray again, lips that had laughed as he told her his stories of hope and humor amid dirt, ashes, and sickness. Hope filled her, then despair when she saw the gashes on his head, the upper half of his right ear sliced clean away, the remainder red with blood.
“Father,” she whispered.
“They didn’t take it? The Blessed Host?”
He didn’t even realize he held the tabernacle in his arms. She was so glad she didn’t have to lie.
“No. You still have it.”
“I feel numb, May.”
“Maybe that’s better.”
He smiled, baring bloody teeth.
She knelt beside him and gingerly lifted the box from his arms, setting it next to her. Her wounds began to throb with such vigor she gasped.
“Did they cut you too?” he asked.
“Yes.” She put his head in her lap, feeling woozy from loss of blood.
“The others?”
She stroked his soft, wooly hair and the dark skin of his cheeks stretched over such high cheekbones. She’d always thought him so beautiful. Everyone did, some saying the love of Christ shone from his face, making him more pleasing to the eye than he would have been normally.
“Everyone else is dead, Father. At least it appears that way.”
One hundred and fifty people. Gone.
His last words were silent and wet, and she thought if anybody deserved the martyr’s crown it was her dear friend, her spiritual father who dragged her from death to life. They say our tears are kept in a bottle in heaven. But May had to believe some of them were more precious than others.
“Forgive,” he mouthed.
She held his hands and laid her head on his chest as his heartbeat slowed further and further. And she whispered to him, thanking him for the good food he made and served with his grand smile, for the prayers of concern he prayed over her, his large hands resting on her head, for the pieces of candy that magically appeared on her nightstand in the mission house. She sang the songs he taught her, songs about Jesus, his great love, his tender care.
When Father Isaac’s final breath was taken, she stayed still for as long as she could, until his body began to grow cold. It might have been hours. She gently laid his head on the floor and crawled to the cabinet holding the altar cloths, the only clean cloth she could think of. She ripped them into strips and tied them around the gashes on her arms.
“Let me live.”
May tried to do things decently.
The book of the Gospels and the prayer book Father Isaac used during Mass—she didn’t know what those books were really called— were missing. So she rummaged through Father Isaac’s study and found his Bible, the onionskin pages worn thin, the sides tarnished with years of use among the villagers. But she couldn’t find his personal prayer book.
They all deserved a Christian burial, didn’t they? They’d loved Christ, built a faith on him, and no wonder, with a man like Father Isaac to show the way. She’d have to wait until nighttime to do it, but she’d try. If she had to do it on her own, she would.
In the mission house she waited, having drawn a bit more water from the well, as the night thickened, hoping the Interahamwe wouldn’t return. She knew better than to pray they wouldn’t.
Had she been duped?
She found large tubes of antibiotic ointment in the infirmary and some gauze bandages. She shoved them into her backpack. She was smart enough to realize then she needed to keep it with her like a diabetic would keep his insulin.
She cleaned the gashes on her arms. Nine in all. Four on her right arm, five on her left. The water sluiced away the dirt, dragging the particles away, lighting a fire on her nerves where the gashes went deep. With needle and thread she stitched the three most profound wounds together, shaking with the pain. But she persisted. Yes, she’d asked God to let her live, but she wasn’t sure he’d heard her. Best to do what she could.
“Oh, Father Isaac,” she whispered, thinking how sad her thoughts would make him. Yet he would understand. She knew that too. When news that his mother and his sister, the last of his family, had perished with AIDS, she’d held his hand as he wept.
“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord,” he had whispered over and over through his sorrow.
“But it’s so horrible,” she’d said. “How can you stand it?”
“Someday all this will be over, May. All will be made new. It is the only hope I have at times like this.”
“You really believe this?”
He’d smiled through his tears. “If I don’t, I’m greatly mistaken about my vocation.”
Sitting on her bed, she dabbed the ointment on her wounds, then wrapped them. She looked like a mummy. She felt like one.
—I want to go home. I want to go back to Borne’s Last Chance. I want to go home.
The hound dog jumped on the bed and threw himself next to her, and she slipped her fingers into the matted fur atop his head as he lay on her thigh with that guttural, doggy sigh. She dozed.
The sun rose and set, and she clothed herself in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt to keep the bandages together. Barely able to bend her knees, stiffened and bruised from those booted kicks, she began her task nevertheless, slipping into the tool closet in the mission house and finding a shovel. How deep should she bury them? She’d never be able to bury a hundred and fifty people six feet under. Would it be all right if she put several in one grave? Families together? The widows in one place? What about the orphans? She’d bury them with Father Isaac. That seemed right.
She hobbled behind the church and began to dig under a tree in the spot where Fa
ther Isaac taught the kids each Sunday before Mass when the weather was fine. She lifted the spade, slammed it into the ground, and cried out in pain, gasping as the wounds, the healing serum they exuded having dried, split open again. For fifteen minutes she repeated her actions, lifting the spade, slamming it to the ground, and she made almost no progress. Only divots, small crescents of earth showed any evidence of her work.
She fell down onto the dirt. “I can’t do this,” she sobbed.
Voices of the dead whispered in her ears. She ground her palms against her ears, but they remained.
Get used to it, she told herself.
Leaving the shovel to lie where it had fallen from her grip, she hobbled back inside the church and fell asleep next to Father Isaac’s corpse.
The next morning they came back, rolling through the village with shouts. Fear, coiled for the night inside her stomach, sprang forward, and May grabbed Father Isaac by his shirtsleeves. She rolled his body on top of her, his face resting on her own. Thankfully, she’d closed his eyes the night before.
—Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe.
The soldiers came through, kicking bodies, kicking, kicking their way to the front.
—Please. Please.
Barely breathing, she lay with eyes closed, thankful for Father Isaac’s head atop her face. They couldn’t really get a good look at her that way. Right?
Two of the men joked in their language. “That blonde one might be just as good dead,” said one.
“You are a sick man.”
“Come, come. What can it hurt? She’s dead.”
How could she do this? She’d be warm inside. She could lie as unresponsive as possible, but how could she fake rigor mortis? If he lifted her up, he’d know she was alive.
He stood over her and Father Isaac, and May swore she could feel the weight of his shadow as it blocked the sun coming through the round window over the altar.