The marketplace fills up within the hour, people bargaining fast and furious. A young girl passes by carrying a bolt of magenta and gold batik cloth on her head, and sets it down amidst a rainbow of fabrics on a nearby table. “I’ve never seen quite that shade of purple,” Rachel says, wishing she knew how to sew.
“It’s from Egypt.” Lillian plucks a few brown leaves from a bucket of dahlias. “Too expensive, if you ask me.”
It doesn’t take long before the baskets on the table are empty and Lillian goes to buy supplies. Rachel notices a group gathering at the end of the square, under a tall, knotty acacia tree. There’s a man in a suit handing out flyers and answering questions.
“He’s come from Kigali to explain the gacaca trials,” Nadine says. “Our leaders have decided there are too many people in jail, too many murderers to ever prosecute them all in the slow government courts. Many of the judges and attorneys were killed during the genocide or fled to other countries. So, now the new president has a plan. Local judges will be elected, and then communities will gather to tell what they remember and pass judgment on their neighbors. There will be some test cases to see how it works, in Mubaro and several other provinces.”
“Six years…” Rachel notices a woman balling up the flyer and tossing it on the ground as she walks away. “That’s a long time to wait for justice.”
“Most of us don’t expect justice, not really.”
“Then, what?”
“The goal of the gacaca is reconciliation and forgiveness.”
“Letting go of the past.”
“Not so much letting go as finding a way to live with it.”
By late morning, everyone is packing up. Lillian counts and recounts the money in a satchel tied around her waist. “Maybe I can get a few last-minute bargains,” she says, eyes on a man hauling sacks of rice into his truck.
“Let me.” Rachel reaches for the nylon pouch under her T-shirt. Lillian flicks a hand toward the money—nonsense, she couldn’t possibly—and walks away.
“She really does want that purple fabric,” Nadine confides. “Next week, we’ll come back and buy some. She’ll accept it as a Christmas gift from both of us.”
Rachel snaps shut the pouch. Why does it sting so, the way Lillian still treats her like a guest? “Thanks for the tip,” she says.
“It’s cool, dude.”
Rachel laughs. “Dudette. That’s the official female terminology.”
“Okay then, inshuti, we will be the dudettes of Kwizera. Sawa?”
Rachel nods. Very sawa.
AFTER LUNCH, WHEN EVERYONE HAS finally cleared out of the kitchen, Rachel sits at the counter for a while longer before dialing the phone. It’s six hours earlier in New York, so Mick’s probably home from racquetball by now. To her surprise, this phone call was Lillian’s suggestion on the way back from the market. Her husband answers on the second ring. He sounds so close, just across town in his office.
“It’s nice to hear your voice,” he says.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I still feel terrible—”
“No need.”
Rachel sighs. Maybe they both needed some distance. A little time.
“So. How’s the search for your dad going?” Mick asks.
“Good,” Rachel chirps, and then rushes to ask what she’s missed during the past week. Sure, the search is going just great, money well spent. Her father hasn’t even called and Lillian flat-out refused to help find him. She presses the phone to her ear while Mick gives her the highlights: three new clients, a garbage strike, and a snowstorm that’s expected by Christmas. It’s all so mundane; it sounds wonderful.
“How are things on the homefront?” she asks. Suddenly, she’d give anything to be calling to ask him to pick up fresh pasta and a bottle of wine from Balducci’s for dinner. Six weeks now seems like too long to be away. “How’s Louie?”
“Crazy mutt’s been hanging out by the front door a lot. Waiting for you to come home, I guess.”
“Nice to know I’m missed.” Rachel waits a beat before asking about Thanksgiving. Mick has always spent the holiday with his family while she went to Jacksonville to eat turkey with Merilee.
“Ma had a big spread, the whole gang was there except for Aunt Irene and her kids. Baltimore was snowed in.”
A pit forms in Rachel’s stomach as he goes on about how, two days later, he’s still stuffed. She was homesick, missed her mother so, on what was just another day here. Not even a mention of the holiday, except Lillian’s declaring it an abomination, a celebration of the slaughter of the Indian Nation that she doesn’t miss one bit. “I could come home early, for Christmas,” she says. “It could be nice, just the two of us.”
Mick laughs. “Yeah, right, like Ma would let us miss Christmas.”
“Right,” Rachel says. Miss Christmas? “I was thinking more like renting a cabin in Vermont and making angels in the fresh snow.” She pauses, giving him a chance to chime in, and then continues haltingly, “We could buy a Charlie Brown tree. One that needs a home. String popcorn. Dried cranberries.” Make paper heart ornaments with single word wishes written in green and red magic marker. Peace. Snow. Chocolate. Joy. Baby.
“Sounds nice, but…” Mick’s voice fades into a silent no. “Keep me posted if you change your flight.”
The phone is warm and moist against Rachel’s cheek. “I should hang up,” she says. “I don’t want to…” Cry. Yell. “…rack up Lillian’s phone bill.”
“Ray, wait a sec.”
She takes a sharp breath.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for, I do. I’m just trying to get on with my life, too.”
Rachel’s knuckles are white against the receiver for long moments after hanging up. Time seems to stop and rewind. Ray, wait. I miss you. Come home. That’s all it would have taken for her to book a flight on the next plane. But her husband didn’t say that.
RACHEL HEADS BACK INTO TOWN, despite the stagnant mid-afternoon heat that has sent everyone else indoors for a few hours. The streets are nearly deserted except for the soldiers standing on corners, wearing green fatigues and bored expressions. The first few times she walked through town alone, she quickly passed by the soldiers, head down. Now, she meets their eyes, returns a proffered smile or else simply nods. A few exchange the local greeting with her: Amahoro. Peace.
There’s a hole-in-the-wall shop, down the street from the bakery, that rivals the collections of kitsch at the thrift shops near her loft in Soho. It has tables laid out with everything from piles of tennis shoes to plastic dolls with too-red lips, to basic art supplies. It’s a respite from the sun. She takes her time, filling a basket with loose crayons—pennies each—for Rose and Zeke, an unopened box of felt-tip pens for Nadine, a cool pen/flashlight for Thomas and one for Robert, and a new notebook since her journal is nearly filled. An idea forms as she stuffs these treasures into her backpack, and then plucks other items from the tables: colored notecards, silver tacks, and a thick black Sharpie marker. Her final purchase is a corkboard, so large she carries it with both hands, like a shield, back to Kwizera.
Later, after everyone has turned in for the evening, she sits on the floor of her room with the notecards and a pen, surrounded by the postcards her father never mailed, the transparent globe with his footprints in the snow, the animal necklace he sent for her thirteenth birthday, and the nearly filled journal, flipped to the beginning. She writes down snippets of memories on notecards with dates, and then tacks them onto the blank corkboard, which is propped up on the desk under the window with its view of the mountains.
She moves the postcards, notes and photos around, one way and another, trying to grout together a father she can love even if he doesn’t show up. By the time the wick of the lantern is nearly burnt down to the quick, the corkboard is a haphazard timeline with too many empty spaces she can’t fill in. Too much time has been lost.
There’s a tap on Rachel’s door. “I saw the ligh
t,” Nadine says. She offers a tray with biscuits and two cups of tea. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Rachel opens the door wide. “Come in—please.”
Nadine studies the corkboard on the desk for a few minutes, and then goes across the hall to Tucker’s room, where she’s been sleeping. She returns with an armload of framed photos and arranges them carefully on the bedside table, as if setting each one in its rightful place.
Rachel sits on the bed to examine the photos. She’s drawn to a girl with braids who is smiling up at a statuesque young woman with short, smoothed-back hair. They look so happy, holding hands. And yet there’s something foreboding about the photo, the sun filtering through the trees behind them, casting a net of shadows. “You and your mother?” she asks.
Nadine nods. “I was twelve. It was right before Umama died.”
“You look a lot like her.” Rachel takes her wallet from her purse and pulls out an old photo of Merilee, before the cancer settled into her skin. “My mom died last summer.”
“She’s quite pretty.”
“People say I look more like her than my father—except for Lillian. She says we have the same eyes, she can see him inside of me. Something like that.”
“Yes, I see it. A softness of the soul.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Yego. Quite good.”
Nadine sits next to Rachel and tells her about the other photos: her seventh birthday party, children sitting around a table with cake smudged on their faces. The baptism for a newly-born nephew, a cousin’s wedding that took place in the gazebo that used to stand in Lillian’s backyard. There are photos of uncles and aunts, cousins, and grandparents. Now, all dead or moved away.
“Do you…” still go to church? Rachel wonders, picking up the baptism photo. Was the massacre at this church? Instead, though, she asks, “Do you still believe in God?”
Nadine shrugs. “People say God lives in the ten thousand hills of Rwanda. During the genocide, he became lost in the Rift Valley. He wandered for ninety days, tears so thick he couldn’t see straight. It’s a nice story, but I can’t believe it.”
“Your parents were Tutsis, right?”
“Umama never spoke of being Hutu or Tutsi. She refused to say, although I’m certain she was Tutsi. Baba came here from Swaziland when he was young. His family is Zulu.”
“Ah, his father is the lion hunter. Rose told me about him.”
Nadine smiles. “That is a story I tell only for Rose. He was inyangamugayo, a respected elder in the village. People came to him with disagreements and he made peace. That was many years ago.”
Nadine gets up to take the Gators baseball cap off the wall and gives it to Rachel. “I miss Papa Henry, too,” she says. “I share the love you have for him. I hope that provides some comfort for you, as it does for me.”
Rachel’s eyes dart to the corkboard. The soft longing in the girl’s voice makes it impossible to hold her gaze.
Nadine picks up the heart-stenciled frame on the bedside table. She removes the photo of Papa Henry showing her how to use a camera, walks over to the corkboard and places it over a bare space. “Sawa, inshuti?”
Rachel hands her a thumbtack. “Sawa.”
Nadine reaches for one of the blank yellow notecards from the pile on the desk and a pen, writes a single sentence and then pins it on the bottom of the corkboard.
Rachel reads the note once, and then again: April 1994—Papa Henry finds Nadine at church. She shakes her head. “Tucker found you both in town.”
“No, inshuti,” Nadine says softly, “Papa Henry came for me. He came to help me.”
“How,” Rachel says hollowly. “How did he find you?”
“Everything’s mixed up. I’m not quite sure.”
“But my father was there, at the church.”
“He saved my life.”
Rachel rubs her temples. Everything’s mixed up for her, too. Tucker lied about her father finding Nadine in town. What else had he lied to her about? And Lillian… Jesus. “Does Lillian know he was there?”
“Please, Rachel, you can’t tell Maman.” Nadine squeezes her hand. “No one can know, especially not the lawyer from Kigali who is asking questions.”
“About what happened at the church?”
Nadine’s shaking now, swiping tears from her face. “I promised I wouldn’t tell. I promised.”
“It’s okay, inshuti, I won’t tell,” Rachel soothes. Who did she promise—her father? And why? What exactly is the secret Nadine and Henry Shepherd share?
TWENTY-ONE
{ April 14, 1994 }
HENRY SHEPHERD STANDS ON THE FRONT porch of the main house taking photos of the mountains against a backdrop of pink-and-orange streaked sky. He likes to start the day with a few moments of reverence for the natural beauty that cannot be destroyed. He sets down his camera and sits on the top step for another small luxury. He rolls an unlit cigarette between his fingers before lighting it, takes a long drag and then carefully snuffs out the butt before returning it to the crumpled pack, counting and recounting the four remaining cigarettes.
The sun will be up soon, waking Lilly and the children sleeping on blankets, some only a sheet, in the kitchen, the gathering room and the halls. He glances toward the low hill that separates the main house and farmhouse from the fields; it’s been quiet all night, after six days of chaos. No gunfire. No screams. Not one plea for help on the shortwave radio in the kitchen. He takes a few steps. If he’s lucky, all he’ll find out there on the other side of the hill is the last of the sweet potatoes or some over-ripe fruit the monkeys and Hutus have overlooked.
A rumbling startles him as a United Nations truck appears in the driveway. Two Belgian soldiers dressed in helmets and uniforms, carrying rifles they aren’t allowed to shoot, jump out of the truck. “Last chance,” says a well-built young man sporting a blond buzz cut. “There’s a plane arriving at the Kigali Airport in three hours, turning right back around for Nairobi. It’s getting too dangerous for flights to land here anymore. Miss this one and you’re on your own.”
Henry sweeps an arm toward the house. The soldier shakes his head; they had this conversation when he was here two days ago—not to fight the Hutu militia arriving from Kigali, but to evacuate foreigners. Sorry, diplomats and aid workers only. No room for locals.
“I’d appreciate a lift into town,” Henry says. “We’re down to dry oats and sugar.” For the past two weeks, Lilly has been boiling water from the river over an open fire. Yesterday, the water was an unnatural, murky color.
The soldier cocks his head toward the bed of the truck, where four other white men are sitting, suitcases between their knees, heads down. “Amahoro,” Henry greets them as he climbs in, his camera around his neck. They don’t even look up at him.
The main street of Mubaro is deserted except for a handful of looters rummaging through burnt-out storefronts with empty shelves and cafés with dirty dishes on the tables. Henry stands where the truck dropped him off, paralyzed, staring up at an orange-threaded sky: a black cauldron of buzzards is bubbling over, some swooping down around him. He doesn’t know where to look, can’t settle on a meaningful response to the corpses lying in the street. Repulsion. Sorrow. Horror. Nothing is enough.
For as long as he has lived in Rwanda, there have been spikes of Hutu violence against their Tutsi neighbors, but this…for chrissakes, it’s surreal.
He’s heard stories of Tutsis forced from their homes, their cattle stolen and their belongings burned in their front yards. A friend of a friend in Kibuye, near the Congo border, or someone’s uncle in Butare down south. Tucker has horrible stories about the attack on the hospital in Kigali five months ago. But Mubaro has always been protected by the Virungas, just a few hours from the safety of Uganda. The trouble has seemed far away, merely stories. Until now.
He takes a few steps to lean against the scarred trunk of a eucalyptus tree, its ashen limbs scattered across the road like a disemboweled pachyderm. The smel
l of kerosene is still in the air; some of the branches were used as torches. He scans the ground for something to steady himself, and then stumbles toward a Florida Gators T-shirt he gave to a young man who works at the market where he sometimes buys hard candy for the children. He kneels to the ground, but there is no identifying the skin hanging from the bones of what was once a familiar face.
A kind of rigor mortis settles into his own body, forming a protective shell. He stands and photographs the rust-splotched logo on the T-shirt. Nobody should see these atrocities, and yet he feels responsible to serve as a witness. He walks zombie-like, stepping over bodies, taking more photos. He peers into storefronts to try and find food, water—something useful, if not hopeful, that he can bring back to Kwizera.
Heading through the banana field that leads home, a half-loaf of bread tucked under his jacket, Henry stops at the sound of footsteps behind him, a child calling out. He barely recognizes the kid, tall with a glistening red slash on his forehead. What was his name?
“Mister American, come,” the kid says, seizing his hand. “It is something special only for the men. Papa sent me to get you. Good, you have the camera.”
Henry’s toes curl as if stubbornly digging into wet sand. Christian, that’s it. Rahim Kensamara’s younger boy. He sometimes busses tables at the only café that serves burgers.
“Come.” Christian’s voice is urgent. Commanding. No longer the voice of a child. “The girl Nadine needs you. Right away.”
TWENTY-TWO
{ London, December 5, 2000 }
THE SMELL OF FRIED FISH AND THE ROAR of a cheering crowd is deceptively inviting from the street, and Tucker steps heavily down the stairs into a dark, near-empty pub. A soccer game blares from the TV that occupies the entire back wall. The bald dude wiping down the bar nods as he takes a seat, and then turns his attention back to the game. “Norwich is up by one,” he says. Tucker’s more interested in the way the gray rag skims along the veneer, a fat greasy streak dissolving and then immediately reappearing as if the surface is alive and regenerating the grime.
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