The Girl Who Smiled Beads

by Clemantine Wamariya

  My mother spent her mornings at church, just up the hill, and her afternoons in the garden, which was her Eden. There she taught me the names of plants—cauliflower, bird-of-paradise—and how to care for each, which ones needed to be in the cool soil under the mango tree and which needed direct sun. She grew oranges, lemons, guava, and papaya; hibiscus, plumeria, sanchezia, anthurium, geraniums, and peonies. I would pluck the stamens off the tiger lilies and rest them above my lip, the orange pollen leaving a bright powdered mustache.

  Saturdays my mother dragged me, Pudi, and Claire to clean the homes of old people. The old people were so cranky. They yelled at us if we ate the fruit that had fallen off their mango trees. My mother didn’t care if they were mean.

  She also took in girls from the country, young women who, before they married, wanted to spend a year or two in a big city with malls, office buildings, cathedrals, and paved roads, earn a little money, and see the world. These women worked as nannies, or they helped in the kitchen, or they cleaned and laundered clothes. My mother insisted that Claire and I learn how to do these chores alongside them. We were never to think we were better. I didn’t mind the work. I wanted order in my world. Even at four, I was compulsively neat, straightening the shoes by the door and re-sweeping the slate in the courtyard.

  Claire hated housework. She did not want to be slowed down. She had big plans and could not wait to break free—to go to college in Canada, where many Rwandans dreamed of moving because it was like America except that they spoke French. French was the second language Rwandans learned in school, as the Belgians had colonized Rwanda. If not Canada, Claire wanted to travel to Europe—anything to live in iburayi, Rwandans’ all-purpose expression for “abroad” or “away.” Claire had a godmother who lived in Montreal who sent her the most fabulous gifts: a watch with a silver band, a green rain set with matching slicker, umbrella, and boots.

  My dreams, at age four, were far less adventurous. I wanted to be fed ice cream and pineapple cakes. I wanted to wear a teal-blue school uniform and grow into Claire’s clothes.

  * * *

  My mother dressed tidily, modestly, always, as if to say, I’m here but I’m not here. Don’t look at me. She wore a T-shirt and bright kitenge, or long wrapper, to garden, and a long pleated skirt with a high-necked blouse and sensible black low-heeled shoes to church. Her heels never made noise. She never wore makeup, only a bit of Vaseline to brighten her lips. She’d absorbed the potent Catholic-Rwandan-postcolonial ethos: You want to stay as invisible as possible. You don’t want eyes on you. Mastering that was my job growing up: to learn how to be proper, how to be quiet. I was an unenthusiastic student.

  Many of our neighbors’ families were exuberant and different—Muslim instead of Catholic, Zairean instead of Rwandan. I wanted to taste how they prepared their beans and study the designs on their plates. I wanted to celebrate Ramadan and the Indian holiday Diwali. Some days, when I visited neighbors’ homes, I picked through their bedrooms and bathrooms, looking at their hairbrushes, toothbrushes, medicines, and soaps. I wanted to know their secrets—not the deep dark ones, the little human ones. I wanted to know what their bodies were like.

  My mother would try to discourage my curiosity, reproaching me with the words ushira isoni—you are not shy. Rwandans, especially girls, were supposed to be reserved, contained, nearly opaque. When I walked with my mother into town, I’d point to each house and ask, “Who lives there? How many kids? Is anybody sick?” I didn’t fit in.

  One day, when she was in her kitenge in the garden, she heard on the radio that a friend had died, or kwitaba imana—the idiom means “responded to God.” She started to cry. That was the first and only time I saw my mother cry. Adults in Rwanda do not cry. Children can cry until they learn to speak. Then it’s time to stop. If you absolutely must cry after that, you have to cry like you’re singing, like a melancholy bird.

  I begged my mother to let me go to the funeral. I wanted to know how funerals worked. My nanny, Mukamana, who I loved and adored, ironed my best cotton dress and buttoned me into it, and I took my mother’s hand as we walked down the gravel road and across the bridge toward town.

  Rwanda is all hills. Mukamana said that the creator, Imana, hadn’t wanted to stretch out the land, as he wanted Rwanda to be unique. Near the church, we joined fifty people sitting on long benches arranged in a rectangle under a tree. Everybody was silent or whispering. My mother, like the rest of the adults, remained calm and composed. I sat there, staring at the adults’ faces, very confused.

  I did not hear God talking to anybody. I just heard a priest offering comfort, some hymns. After the service I asked a few of my mother’s friends if they’d heard or seen God, and they took my hands in theirs and patted them, as if to say, You’ll understand soon enough.

  But soon enough was too far off. I wanted to understand right then. In my short life, death was an idle threat, a sibling’s joke—Pudi or Claire saying our mother would kill me if I picked too many roses. My mother did her Rwandan best to explain. She told me death was a welcoming home. But I felt aggrieved, even insulted, by the obvious oversimplification of what it meant to die. In my four-year-old imperiousness, I believed I could handle the truth. I thought I deserved to know. I demanded it.

  After the funeral I spent as much time as possible around old, sick people. I tagged along with my mother when she went to read them scripture. I wanted to listen for God talking to them, calling them home. Did a person need to respond to God when God called? What if you wanted to live? If God was just extending an invitation, you could decline, right? You could say no thank you and stay where you were.

  * * *

  My days were filled with the indignations of being young and spoiled. I hated the lotion my nanny applied after my bath. I hated my bathrobe. I wanted the robe with buttons, like Claire’s, and if not that, I wanted to be allowed to dress like Pudi. Pudi’s given name was Claude and his nickname came from his love of Puma and Adidas. My mother indulged him by letting him wear his bright red Adidas soccer jersey under his school uniform, even though the jersey smelled.

  Daily, maybe hourly, I begged Mukamana to tell me stories to help me make sense of the world, like that the gods shook out the ocean like a rug to make waves. My favorite was that there was a beautiful, magical girl who roamed the earth, smiling beads. When Mukamana told me this story, she said, “What do you think happened next?” and whatever I said, whatever future I imagined, Mukamana would make come true. Mukamana wrapped her long, curly hair in a magnificent cloth, and she slept in my room with me, each of us on our own bed. She taught me songs to get me through my morning ritual: rise, pray for the day, make my bed, brush my teeth, wash my face, fix my hair, get dressed, greet everyone.

  I refused to do anything until she told me a story, and she used my desire to get the upper hand. “Well, if you take a nap, I’ll tell you a story. If you don’t do it then I won’t tell you.”

  Growing up, I wanted to be like her. I wanted to tell stories and dance for others like she would do for me. All Mukamana’s stories involved singing and dancing, tapping out rhythms with her feet. Her stories never had set endings. She always asked, “And then what do you think happened? Can you guess what happened next?” She was the only one willing to help me understand why the sky was so high, or where water first came from.

  * * *

  My father owned a car service. He built the business gradually, like any good entrepreneur: first one car, then two, then a small fleet of minibuses, and by the time I was born a big commercial garage on a busy street that smelled like car oil and dust.

  He was solid, thick-chested, broad-shouldered, with a wide forehead and a broad smile, plus ears that stuck out just enough to take off his intimidating edge. He worked long hours. I didn’t see him much. On the evenings he was home, I fought with Claire over who would bring him his leather slippers. Claire knew this was the best time to as
k for money or new Nikes. I wanted to trade his slippers for a taste of his beer.

  My father worked so hard to build this—a middle-class home. When my parents married, they didn’t have enough money to throw a wedding. Now, some afternoons, if it was hot or business was slow, my father came home to nap. I knew that I was meant to be quiet while he slept, to stop playing and screaming in the garden, especially near his open window. But one afternoon Pudi and I started playing in the mango tree and I forgot.

  Discipline was usually my mother’s province. She was strict and understated. When we misbehaved, she made us kneel in the corner and face the wall, sometimes holding stones over our heads. It was awful. When someone in the family lied—usually it was me—my mother would boil water and have all of us sit around the pot. “If you’re dishonest and you put your hand in there, it will burn,” she said. “If you didn’t do it, your hand will be just fine.” One of us always confessed.

  Claire hated my mother’s punishments more than the rest of us. They enraged her and filled her with shame. “Why don’t you just beat us, like everybody else?” she asked our mother.

  But that afternoon, when my father came home to nap and I neglected to be quiet, it wasn’t my mother who punished me. It was my father. He opened the window, called me into the den, and smacked me in the face. I can still feel the heat. I peed on myself.

  That was the most cruelty I’d ever seen.

  * * *

  When I was five, I started kindergarten. By then I had a new baby sister. I felt threatened, as all older siblings do, and begged every day for my mother to return her. I considered running away.

  Kindergarten was a privilege. Neither Claire nor Pudi had gone, as my parents hadn’t had the money when they were little. My school was beautiful, nestled on the hillside, with a glamorous teacher who wore high heels that clicked against the hallway floor. The place smelled like crayons. We sang, made clay bowls and mugs, and ate lunch in the shade.

  Each day, with my lunch, I carried a green thermos of milk tea. I considered myself the most special child there, maybe the most special child in all Rwanda, because one day Mukamana picked me up carrying the green umbrella, slicker, and rain boots that had belonged to Claire. It was monsoon season, warm and pouring. I slipped on Claire’s green boots, and I begged Mukamana to take the long way home, around the next hill through town, not directly over the bridge. I wanted to be a one-girl parade showing off my posh rain gear.

  But Mukamana told me that we couldn’t take the long way because it was flooded. I was furious.

  I forgave her only when I found Pudi waiting to play. The rainwater was gushing off our red roof into the slate courtyard. He stole the soap from the kitchen and slicked up the slate. We ran and slid until my mother snapped and demanded that we come inside.

  Shortly after that, Mukamana disappeared. I asked my mother why and she said the intambara—the conflict. That word had no meaning to me, no story attached.

  * * *

  Another nanny arrived, Pascazia, and she was not Mukamana, so I hated her. She did not tell me stories the way Mukamana had. She did not wrap her hair in an elegant cloth. One day, Pascazia came to pick me up at kindergarten in the rain, and she did not bring the green rain boots and slicker.

  On our way home, we passed a group of men singing and dancing in the street. They were sweaty, carrying green, gold, and red flags. It looked so festive, like a carnival. I was entranced by the large drum. A dozen pickup trucks were parked by the side of the road, with a crowd gathering behind them to watch. I wanted to stop and sing and dance with the men, and usually Pascazia was happy to dawdle. She liked to ply me with mandazi, or beignets, so I was always patient while she talked to her friends. Now I begged for mandazi so I would at least get to join the crowd and stare. She refused.

  The next week, just before we crossed the bridge and were starting up the hill to our house, we saw a crowd in a circle. People said someone was getting stoned for stealing. I didn’t understand what was happening. There were more flags, red, black, yellow, and green, and more singing and marching. I was transfixed. Mukamana had told me an old story once, about men fighting each other with spears, up in the hills. Those spears left many broken hearts and broken bodies. The broken men, she’d said, still lived in hiding. Were we among those men, in those hills, now? I asked Pascazia. She yanked my arm. She made us leave.

  At home I tattled to my mother. I didn’t know what I’d seen, but I’d been mesmerized and I knew that my seeing it was wrong.

  “Where did you go? Why did you pass?” my mother said to Pascazia, a sharp rebuke. Her lips pulled tight over the gap in her teeth. She almost never raised her voice. “You shouldn’t have walked that way.”

  A few days later Pascazia disappeared. I never went to kindergarten again.

  * * *

  You know those little pellets you drop in water that expand into huge sponges? My life was the opposite. Everything shrank.

  First I was forbidden to play in the mango tree. Pudi tried to entertain me in the house, fake-reading to me in French. He was supposed to be learning French in school but he never studied. So we just looked in the books at the pictures of Tintin, and Pudi made up stories. We traveled together to the jungle with Milou, Tintin’s dog. A lion would appear and we’d escape to the caves.

  Next I was forbidden to play with my friend Neglita. She was my oldest playmate, one of my few friends my age, and I thought she was perfect. We made up fairy worlds. She let me set the rules. We collected petals and bits of moss, and the fairies wore the petals as dresses and lived in the moss.

  Not long before the stoning, my mother had walked me to Neglita’s house to play. On the way we gathered seedpods, and in Neglita’s yard she and I set the pods on hot rocks and waited for them to pop. I slept over at Neglita’s house that night, and when my mother came in the morning I didn’t want to leave. As a sort of promise, she suggested that I lend a sweater to Neglita and that I take one of hers home. That way we would have a reason to see each other soon, to trade our sweaters back. Neglita’s sweater was blue and smelled like eucalyptus. I wanted mine back, but I never saw Neglita again.

  The radio was now on all the time, a horrendous hiss. Pudi took me to see Rambo, screened on a bedsheet at a neighbor’s house. I had never seen a gun fired, let alone real combat. I was so scared that I ran home alone without my shoes. After that, all the kids in the neighborhood became obsessed with Rambo. They cut their T-shirts into tank tops and wore bandannas on their foreheads. The boys found sticks and hid behind trees and pretended to shoot.

  Houses were robbed, simply to prove that they could be robbed. The robbers left notes demanding oil, or sugar, or a TV. I asked adults to explain, but their faces had turned to concrete, and they nudged me back into childish concerns. Sometimes the men left grenades—that’s what I heard, though I didn’t really know what a grenade was. I just knew they could cut you into a hundred pieces. I thought there must be hundreds of tiny fires inside. How else could one blow up a whole body? That little thing, that much power?

  * * *

  Some days the world felt green, some days it felt yellow, but never a happy yellow.

  All the girls who lived with my family returned to their hometowns. The only person who worked at the house now was a security guard, who stood in the front garden and smoked cigarettes in the evening while my father was at work. When my father returned home I still brought him his slippers and he still gave me a sip of his beer. But he listened to the radio and there was no wide smile. Just here’s a sip, be quiet.

  Our curtains, which my mother had always thrown open at five each morning, suddenly remained closed. The drumming started up again, loud and far away. Then the car horns. My father stopped working after dark. My mother saw men, not boys, wearing Rambo-style boots and marching near the church. She stopped going to church. Instead she prayed in my room, where
my siblings now slept sometimes, because it had the smallest window.

  No one came over for dinner anymore. My mother served carrots and lentils, so many carrots and lentils. The potatoes she once used for stews came from the market, and nobody in my family went to the market anymore.

  The electricity flickered on and off. The water stopped working. There was shushing, so much shushing, so much pressure to be quiet and still. Checkeka—shush, be silent. My parents said checkeka to me a hundred times a day.

  There were more nights than days. I cried when the sun went down. Someone left a grenade at our neighbor’s house. By then I was six.

  Soon after that, my uncle died. That’s what my mother said: He died. I asked if he was called to God and she said no. I heard conversations I didn’t understand about them coming. Them—always them, plural, spoken with a hiss. Guests had always been important. Guests were special. When guests arrived my mother put out roasted nuts and Coke. Them was not guests.

  We sat in the house. Lights off. Everyone prayed, but nobody talked. No more teasing from Claire and Pudi that I was adopted, no more fearmongering that when my tooth fell out a new one wouldn’t grow in its place. There was nothing—no parable for the world closing in on itself, no fantastical story like the sky kissing the ground to make the morning dew.

  Nobody tried to explain anything at all, except Pudi, who on occasion would step out of his Rambo fantasy to make up ridiculous tales: There’s this one bird who takes chickens and babies and little kids, and that’s why you can’t be outside at noon. If it’s thundering you can’t wear red, because if you wear red that’s a target for the thunder to eat you up.