After Before

by Jemma Wayne

  “Get up,” Emily heard the other man demand of her brother.

  From the tree, Emily peered between the branches and saw Cassien lying on top of a grave. He was covered in blood, both his ankles sporting deep gashes where his achilles tendons had been cut, but he looked straight into the eyes of his attackers and not once towards her. Instinctively, Emily’s arms pushed away from the branch – she had to help her brother, she had to go to him – but his words echoed loudly in her head: don’t come down, no matter what, promise me, promise me. She had promised. She froze.

  “Get up,” the man repeated, knowing that he couldn’t.

  Cassien scrambled. He brought himself up onto his knees.

  “Murderers,” Emily heard him snarl.

  “Cockroaches,” the man spat. “You are so high and mighty, you think you are better, but you are nothing but cockroaches, a plague on Rwanda, an enemy of our country. It was you who murdered our president. You are the murderers and you think you can get away with it, you think you are better than us. It is time you were cut down to size.”

  With this final remark he swung his machete at Cassien and hacked at his bleeding ankles. Again and again he swung while Cassien screamed and writhed in pain and Ernest stood watching. Emily clung to the branch. When the man moved up to Cassien’s wrists Emily closed her eyes and prayed fast, rushing through all the prayers she knew, then again bargaining with God, begging Him. When there was no answer, she began to sing to herself silently: their song, the winner’s song with the irritating tune. She repeated it now with fervent sincerity, round and around, to drown out his shrieks.

  For some time the slashing continued, the sound of bone being cut rivalled only by the thrashing sounds from her 14-year-old brother: screams that sounded sometimes like the child she remembered, and sometimes like the man he would never grow up to be. Emily removed her hand from her mouth and, her fingers webbed with vomit, tried to cover her ears, but she could only ever cover one ear at a time – with the other hand she had to keep hold of the branch – so no matter how tightly she squeezed her eyes closed and buried her head in the leaves of the tree, she could not prevent herself from hearing, nor imagining the sight below her.

  By the time the killer had reached Cassien’s neck, his shouts had been dismembered from him along with his parts. There was quiet, a deadly, deathly quiet, and cautiously Emily opened her eyes just in time to witness the final blow: a stroke just beneath her brother’s young, handsome jaw; a mere formality of a slow, intimate slaughter.

  “So there is one more?” the man asked Ernest, out of breath when he had at long last finished, but nonchalant, as though he was tired from a game of football.

  “A girl,” Ernest confirmed, his voice faltering slightly. “And another boy, with the rebels.”

  “Well the girl can’t be far. We’ll return for her tomorrow. We’ll need some more energy for her hey?” he laughed, and as they walked away Ernest laughed with him, a deep-barrelled laugh that made Emily think of the veranda, and her parents who by now were most likely lying dead upon it.

  All day Emily clung to her branch. Everywhere there seemed to be Hutus. She could hear them calling to each other. Some voices drifted over the fields, trudged the route from school, and rustled through the leaves in everyday gestures of greeting and mundane activity – bring in the washing, lunch is ready, call your brother – surreal now in their normality, obscene. But others pierced the air in high-pitched shrieks: an absurd mixture of fear and euphoria. Emily couldn’t move. Her fingers wouldn’t work, though she had blown on them and wiggled them and tried to make them obey her if only to clutch more steadily to the branch. She had promised. To stay there until he came.

  Guilt crept up the tree. She should have broken her promise. She should have done something. But what? The events of the last few hours had taught her quickly and acutely that she could trust nobody, and she understood that in a village swarming with Hutus and frighteningly absent of Tutsis, she could not descend from her tree. Perhaps later, in the dark, she could shimmy down, let the night cloak Cassien’s remains, and make it inside and on to her Uncle’s house in the neighbouring village. Perhaps later.

  For the time being however, that tree, selected for her by her dead brother, was her only hope of salvation. She didn’t yet have the courage to inspect what lay beyond its roots. The screams and wails that still echoed inside her head had been enough. She didn’t want to see the reality behind them, to have it confirmed. Ernest returned to the graveyard three times that afternoon, calling her name, promising to look after her. She was sick twice more. The second time, only bile.

  In the evening, the dogs arrived. Not domestic animals, but wild African dogs looking for food. Emily heard them barking in front of the house and shuddered. The year before, Simeon had had an encounter with a pack of dogs like this and lost a chunk of flesh from his calf to them. They appeared sometimes from the edge of the bush, their eyes black beads of ferocity laced on too-tight thread. Papa said they were scavengers, the worst sort of predator, and Emily lifted herself on the branch, craning her neck to see what they were scavenging now. Their tails were in the air as they sniffed at something on the veranda, licking, chewing and eating.

  It was too much. Without pausing to think, Emily let go of the branch and slid down the trunk of the tree. Though there was no longer anything inside her to throw up, as soon as she hit the ground and saw Cassien’s body, she gagged again. Flies buzzed around the stumps of his limbs. She shooed them away and wished his eyes would close, wished his mouth would not be upturned in that uncanny expression that looked almost like a grin, but his lips didn’t move, and the insects returned immediately. She swiped at them again. They manoeuvred themselves a few inches away, then returned once more, mocking her. Strong in their numbers. Her body shook through fear and exhaustion, her legs grew unsteady, her arms flailed. Finally she could do nothing but leave her brother to his tiny persecutors.

  The house was quiet. She stooped at the threshold and gathered a handful of stones and rocks, as many as she could carry, before pushing open the door. Across the floor were thick streaks of red where someone bleeding had been dragged, but no bodies, no evidence of the sounds she had heard. Without thinking she grabbed the bucket that stood by the door and a cloth from the sink and began scrubbing furiously, driven by an idea that if only she could get rid of the blood, then the truth too could be cleaned away. But the barks came again. Emily dropped the cloth, now dripping red, and pressed on. The door at the front of the house was hanging from its hinges and Emily nudged it open. Outside this door, she had once waited for glimpses of her father to return from work, she had sorted vegetables with her mother and bleached sheets, she had watched clouds and made up songs with Cassien, she had loved the world that unfolded hot and sticky and full of colour before it. Now, instead, three black dogs stood like shadows on the threshold tearing pieces of flesh from her memories.

  Emily felt her stomach contract but she forced herself to look more closely and immediately she recognised the blue of Rukundo’s T-shirt. It was new that month. He had liked the way his toned, muscular arms had tugged gently at the cotton, and although Emily had teased him she had secretly agreed that he looked handsome and strong, and a little like Gahiji. Now his arms were not poking through the sleeves where they should have been. On the floor nearby were Papa’s glasses, shattered, and Mama’s red dress, the one with the black trim, fanned out like the tail of a peacock. On top of it lay Simeon’s body, his face collapsed in on itself like a broken doll, his back shredded, dark blood staining the soil around him. It was not possible to identify the rest of the remains. They were too badly disfigured, or strewn at angles so inhuman that it was impossible to say how they might once have been held, or moved, or used to run or cook or swing from trees or turn pages of a book or stroke her ankle.

  Emily felt a roar welling up inside her, an explosion of feeling and horror, but somehow she stifled it back down and stepped closer still. The
dogs snarled as she approached, but intent on their feast didn’t bother themselves with prey still capable of fighting. Emily observed this, and as she did she was possessed by a sudden, reckless rage. Lifting one of her stones she launched it hard at the nearest dog. It yelped, then growled fiercely, but did not look up as it threatened her with a set of sharp teeth and continued with its meal. Emily lifted another stone and hurled it harder. This time the dog jumped and turned to face her, but she hit it again, then a second dog, then the third. Suddenly, it seemed to Emily that no matter what else happened, she could not let these beasts loose on her family. She could not let it happen. The men that had come, she was powerless against, but the dogs she must stop, and in that moment, she felt no fear.

  One after another she threw her stones and when she ran out of them she scrabbled on the ground for more. The dogs leapt towards her but she pounded them again and again and again. When they tried to ignore her and return to their meal, she hit them on their noses. When they approached, dripping blood-tinted saliva, she hurled larger rocks harder. Eventually, they grew confused, and irritated, and finally began to back away. And Emily ran after them. She hadn’t planned it, but all at once chasing them, beating these mindless, bloodthirsty beasts was essential, and the only thing she could do. The distance between them stretched. She ran faster. Her legs were weak and shuddering and filling with acid, but she struggled on blindly, shouting, cursing, running on and on even after the animals had long disappeared from view. Finally she stumbled into a field of sweet potatoes where abruptly she wondered where it was she thought she was going, and collapsed gasping onto the ground.

  It was then that she heard the voices behind her. Raised, exhilarated voices, some of them calling her name. She recognised at least one of them but this time it wasn’t Ernest’s. Emily’s head pounded and she couldn’t think straight. She tried to raise herself to run again, to climb another tree, but there were nothing but sweet potatoes all around her and when she lifted herself onto her feet, they shook and she collapsed once more. Almost lifeless, her face lay flat on the cool soil. The voices grew closer. In her paralysis she wondered if there were caterpillars nearby, or snakes. She hated both. Again she tried to move, but the shaking of her body was convulsive and she could not tame it. She could not escape. She could not hide herself from the voices and when they reached her they laughed.

  They ordered her to stand up. When she stood and fell they laughed again. Six of them, each bearing a machete or a masu or a spear, six intoxicated men leering and jeering, six faces that even through her mental fog she knew. Some were her father’s age, some her brothers’, one hers, almost, only a year older, a face she knew so well. The boy who’d once been her friend, her best friend, her almost more than friend, the white-patched kid who’d stuck up for her and played in her yard, and just months ago tried to kiss her.

  His jaw was chiselled now. Taller than when she’d seen him last, he’d grown somehow into the body of a man. His green-grey eyes bore the same intensity of the past months, the same disturbing passion that had begun all the troubles between them, but now there was something else: fear, bewilderment, uncertainty - as though he was caught in the throes of a game that had got out of hand. As though they were up a tree together and realised they had climbed too high. At the flicker of such an old emotion, her heart lifted. “Jean?”

  He shook his head but she pleaded.

  “Please, don’t. Don’t let them.”

  Almost immediately she realised her mistake. The other men looked to her old friend with indicting question marks in their eyes, and all at once the uncertainty in his own clouded over with embarrassment and humiliation. She’d seen these emotions before too. And they were dangerous.

  “Get undressed,” he told her.

  The other men roared with laughter and danced about gleefully, but Emily didn’t move. She couldn’t. She stood, staring at Jean’s familiar face, and Jean stared back. When he spoke, it was slow and with a new, unnerving menace.

  “I said, get undressed,” he repeated, not taking his two-tone eyes off her. “Take off your clothes, or we will take them off for you.” Jean, who in class didn’t know what to say, who looked to her for answers. He took out a cigarette, lit it, and mockingly offered it to her. “Come now, you think because you are a Tutsi you’re too good for us?”

  “No.” Emily wrapped her arms protectively around herself and the men jeered. “I don’t think that,” she said loudly for their benefit, and then lowered her voice to a whisper for him. “I never thought that. Jean, you were my best friend. I only wasn’t ready. Please, don’t do this. Jean.” She should have stayed silent. The more she implored him, the more her familiarity seemed to anger him, and egg on the others. But she couldn’t stop saying his name, beseeching him, as though she could somehow make him see the madness, and stop it: Jean, please, Jean.

  “Shut up! Undress!” he shouted abruptly, waving his hands to silence her.

  “No.”

  He punched the air.

  “Now Emilienne.” His demands were almost desperate, but she would not help him this time. “Undress. Undress you cockroach!”

  The words struck her like a slap.

  “Fuck you,” she whispered, “I will never undress for you.” His spitefulness seemed so childish. They could have been arguing again behind the schoolhouse. But this time, months after the first, her rejection didn’t embarrass him into retreat.

  “Then we will do it for you,” he retorted instead.

  At this, the men grinned, stepped closer and postured with their weapons, but while Jean stood there in front of her, she could not bring herself to beg again.

  “Do what you like,” she declared calmly, overcome with a sudden, strange serenity. “I’m not afraid of you Jean. Or any of you. I don’t care what you do.” As she spoke, she felt herself growing in confidence and in that moment she believed her foolish words. She wasn’t afraid, she didn’t want their mercy, she wanted only to make them as angry as she was. It was obvious now that she was going to die, so it was better to make them mad, to fuse their tempers, to rile them enough to kill her quickly, to silence her in one blow, one shot of a gun, one strike from a spear, something fast and awesome and less painful than the slow torture she’d watched her beloved Cassien endure. “You’re all weak,” she taunted them. “You’re killing us because you’re weak and envious. And pathetic!” she directed at Jean.

  “Shut up!”

  “Stupid! And pathetic!”

  Jean raised his machete, took a running leap towards her, and brought it down hard upon her head.

  “Emily?” Lynn was leaning over her, dabbing her neck with a handkerchief. “Shush Emily, you’re fine, you’re here. I’ve got you.”

  Emily realised that she was sobbing, and her clothes were wet.

  “You fainted dear. You dropped your tea,” Lynn explained. “Perhaps you should stop. Perhaps that’s enough for today.”

  “I’m sorry for the mess.”

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  Lynn gave her the handkerchief. Deliberately she poured Emily another cup of tea, adding three sugars, and handed it to her.

  “Luke reminds you of Jean,” she stated.

  Emily nodded. “They look nothing alike. Except the eyes. Half green. Half grey. Two things at the same time.”

  “Do you want to tell me what happened? Do you want to carry on?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never told it before. You might think… I, I feel so - ”

  “You mustn’t be ashamed. You’re not responsible for what others do to you. Only what you do to yourself.”

  Emily nodded. Tears continued to roll silently down her face. “I’ll try to tell you,” she muttered. “I’m sorry if I cry. When I tell it, it is like I’m there again. And I can’t stop it, I can’t stop them, it comes so fast, but - ”

  “What dear?”

  “I think you were right. I think I have to keep going now. Work it out, the order, get it straight
.” She touched her scar. “But I don’t want to remember it.” She began to sob again. “They all did - it pulls me back - it poisons me - they poisoned me - and his eyes were so, so… ”

  “Go slowly Emily,” Lynn said. “Take it slowly. When you woke up, what did you see?”

  Faces. Mostly Jean’s, though it wasn’t only him. They all took their turn and often didn’t even wait for it, two or three of them tearing at her flesh at once, pawing her, stripping from her not only her clothes, and her virginity, but every last shred of her childhood and vestige of hope. For hours. Some of the time she fell again into unconsciousness, but the men kept slapping her awake, demanding of her.

  “Beg, you Tutsi.” Or making her crawl before them. When she could distinguish it, there was fear still in Jean’s voice, hesitation, but pleasure too, a wild, mad gratification.

  “Who is pathetic now?”

  She prayed that God would end it, she prayed she would die, she tried to embrace the haziness that seeped from the gash on her head. But what was happening was altogether too vivid. Their hot, rough hands all over her, inside her; pain ripping through her body, starting in the area between her legs that her mother had taught her to be protective of, then burning violently until she was numb; their laughter; the soil in her mouth when they pushed her face into the ground, its evening coolness; the smell of something sweet yet putrid; the taste of them; a tooth coming loose, spitting it out and noticing how dark her blood was; their hardness; the rosary that span round and around her head; their laughter; beer sprayed over her; blows to her stomach, her head, her bottom; not being able to breathe or speak or answer when they continued to make their demands; their laughter; her nose being held while they took it in turns to stuff parts of themselves inside her mouth; gagging; her nose breaking; her arm dislocating; blood; their laughter.

  When they’d finally had enough, they ordered her to stand and get dressed, told her she was indecent and that they didn’t want to look at such a vile animal as herself. She tried to stand but collapsed immediately.