Strength in What Remains

by Tracy Kidder

  The people told him: “If you don’t show us this talking head, we will kill you.” And the man said: “Let’s go. If you don’t find the head talking, do whatever you want to me.” And the people said: “Let’s go!”

  When they came upon the head, the man started talking to it, but the head said nothing. The man insisted, but the head did not say a word. Upset because the man had lied to them and wasted their time, the people beat him. They beat him until he was unable to walk. After they had left, and the man was writhing on his back on the ground, the talking head laughed at him and said: ‘Didn’t I tell you that you would be killed by your own tongue?’”

  You were warned not to talk to others about problems in the family. “Keep it in the kitchen,” you were told. You might not be praised for being a quiet child, but if you talked a lot you were scolded. “Hora!”—Shut up!—“You talk like birds in the morning,” his father or grandfather would say. Or: “You talk as if you were raised by a widow.” Or, more gently: “Better not to ask a question, because you might not like the answer.”

  FOUR

  New York City,

  1994

  Deo pushed the grocery cart down the sidewalks of Eighty-ninth Street. There were times when he felt crushed by the height and humiliated by the splendor of the buildings in this part of New York. They reminded him he was alone and completely out of place. There were also times when he didn’t see the buildings or other people passing by, but rather a parade of his family: his mother smiling shyly, showing her glossy teeth, which people in Butanza praised; his elder brother, Antoine, short, stocky, emphatic about everything, joking that all the loads they carried on their heads as little kids had stunted his growth. He could hear Antoine’s big laugh so clearly! But then his mind would take a wrong turn. Once again he would be looking in the window of that hut with the roof that had been burned, the memory that kept surfacing. The family mutilated on the floor. What had become of his own family? Then he would imagine them, Antoine and his mother and sister and little brothers and his father and grandmother and Lonjino, lying violated and dead in the dirt. And then he’d realize that his cheeks were wet, that he’d been crying in public, while pushing his cart down the sidewalk, making a spectacle of himself.

  But today, a day in late June 1994, he felt too sick to think about anything but the causes of gastrointestinal pain. He gritted his teeth, his stomach muscles flexing around his rising nausea, trying to strangle it. He hadn’t been able to eat all day. He imagined worms gnawing on his intestines. He probably had intestinal worms or amoebas, he thought, from all the dirty water he’d had to drink on the run. A doctor could find out for sure with stool studies—tests he could do himself, if he had the equipment. He had seen the names of doctors around Park Avenue, on little brass plaques. Whatever they might charge would be more than he could pay. He knew the broad-spectrum antibiotic to rid the gut of parasites. But did you need a prescription to buy Flagyl in America? What would the drug cost here?

  At least this wasn’t a difficult delivery, only three crosstown blocks, and he already knew the address, right next door to that peaceful little church, St. Thomas More. And there was no service entrance, just a front door, a few steps up from the sidewalk.

  A woman opened the door almost at once, and she held it open for him as he shouldered his way in with the bags. She was smiling.

  “How arhh you?” said Deo. He had added this to his repertoire. He still struggled with the “are,” however. He’d worked so hard from childhood to pronounce the French “r” just so.

  The woman smiled and said she was fine, thank you. She said something about showing him the way to the kitchen. He asked her if this was a church, and she said, yes, this was the rectory. Wanting to make a good impression, he said he was very interested. She had a friendly-sounding voice—the voice of a good tipper perhaps. He didn’t notice much else about her until, after he’d deposited the groceries and was walking back with her toward the door, she asked him, “Parlez-vous français?”

  “Mais oui!”

  Her name was Sharon McKenna. She was dressed in a skirt and blouse. She was slender, and she had very pale skin and very blond hair, so blond he couldn’t see if it was turning white or not. She might be as old as his mother, she might be ten years younger. Her French wasn’t impeccable, but good enough for a conversation. She asked him get-acquainted questions. Carried away by the chance to speak, really speak, feeling too sick to remember his lessons, he told her more than he ever told a stranger now—not only that he came from Burundi but that he had escaped from the violence there and in Rwanda. Before he left, she gave him a five-dollar bill, after rummaging around in an untidy-looking bag.

  Maybe it was just the tip that made him carry away an image of a beautiful person, of a woman who would look elegant even if she were dressed in an old blanket. But it was more than the money. She had seemed interested in him, and worried by his circumstances. Deo thought he would be welcome if he went back to see her again. Which he did, a few days later.

  He found himself telling her he had been a medical student. He said he was determined to go back to school and become a doctor, and she seemed so enthusiastic about this that for the moment he felt it might actually be true. But then she asked him about his parents, and he didn’t know what to say. She said she’d been hearing a lot about Rwanda on the news. He thought, “God, what should I tell her?” Everyone was dangerous, maybe even this woman. He felt like running away. He answered as vaguely as he could. When he left, she gave him a hug.

  It had been so long since anyone had touched him with affection. But, no, he thought, she asked too many questions. If he saw her again, she would gusimbura him for sure. But clearly she was someone who would help him if she could. He decided to write her a letter. His African friend at the grocery wrote it for him. Deo looked up some of the medical words, though most were cognates of the French. He copied the letter out carefully in his own hand. He had beautiful penmanship when he tried; maybe she would notice.

  Dear Sharon McKenna

  I’m very glad to find this short time in order to tell you that I’ve some troubles which make me too hurt (bad)

  In fact, since before yesterday, I feel pains around intestines and have difficult to go to the toilet (constipation) I’m telling you all these problems about my health.

  I spent all this last night without feeling asleep even if I worked hardly. I think that these pains are caused by intestinal parasites like especially AMIBES or ENTAMOEBA HISTOLYTICA because of all these symptoms.

  In this way, I’d like I have a treatment against these troubles, but unhapply I don’t see how I can find a Doctor for consultation on one hand, and how I can pay him on the other hand because it may be very expensive while I’m too poor to pay. So, I don’t know if you could find for me medecines called FLAGYL or help me in other way.

  I am here to SLOAN’S even if I’m ill. That’s a pity!

  Thanks a lot for your best comprehension.

  God bless you.

  He brought the letter to the rectory in the morning and left it with the receptionist. The very next day, Sharon appeared at the store. Her doctor, she said, had agreed to see Deo for free. The man was pleasant, and the examination was thorough. On the walk back, Sharon told Deo that the doctor didn’t think there was much wrong with him, except that he was far too thin. The doctor had told her, “Your job is to fatten him up.” She also said that she’d told the doctor Deo’s story, hoping to get him interested in a potential future colleague, but all the doctor could suggest was that Deo’s chances might be better in Canada. Sharon drew a map that showed where Canada was in relation to New York. Just to look at the drawing made him weary. He didn’t want even to try to imagine the journey. A few days later, Sharon took him out for a walk. She showed him her doctor’s report and translated it. “The tests are normal. Let me know how I can help you.”

  So his problem was maybe part exhaustion, and maybe lack of protein, and certainly
psychosomatic. He wasn’t sure this was good news.

  Then Sharon asked him whether he liked girls.

  For a moment Deo couldn’t speak. The doctor must have told her that Deo might have AIDS, and Sharon must be thinking the same—that he had been a philanderer back in Africa, where AIDS was mainly a heterosexual disease, or that he had been selling himself to men here in New York. How could she think that? She wasn’t the person he’d imagined she was.

  Yes, he liked girls, Deo said aloud. He wouldn’t speak to her again. He couldn’t bear even to look at her. He would avoid her from now on.

  But in fact he couldn’t. He wasn’t going to forgive Sharon, but when he went to see her the following week and she said she had missed him, he had to admit to himself she was a beautiful person after all, and that he had missed her, too.

  He had told her he had to learn English to get back into medical school. She took him to an odd little store, full of old-looking lamps and furniture but with a rack of shelves of old books, where together they found a bilingual copy of Le Petit Prince. She bought it for him. It didn’t cost much. He devoured it, first reading it in French, then memorizing the English text. Another time he took her to the huge Barnes & Noble and showed her a physiology textbook he’d found some weeks before. He thought he only wanted to share his enthusiasm for this book. He wasn’t asking her to buy it for him. It cost eighty-one dollars; it was hard to believe that a single book could cost that much. But Sharon said, “Let’s get it!”

  This was a sackful of borrowed salt, but Deo couldn’t help himself. “Oh, that would be so great!”

  The text was written in English, but he could study the drawings and photographs. He took the book back to the apartment of the Senegalese, where he stored it in his suitcase and visited it from time to time.

  He brought Sharon words he’d written down and asked her to translate them into French. One time he was talking to her inside the rectory and asked her the meanings of some of the words he’d been hearing in the park. He should have known better; there were other people around, including a priest.

  “What does this word, ‘motherfucker,’ mean?”

  Her face turned red. She whispered hastily, emphatically, “I’ll tell you later.”

  Sometimes he wished he hadn’t asked for Sharon’s help. She decided to teach him to pronounce “are” correctly. She kept making him repeat after her, as persistent and patient as she’d probably be when helping a child. She handed him pages written in English. “Okay, now read this,” she’d say, just as if he were in first grade.

  Sharon was like the brother you fought with for your share of the blanket at night and thought you never wanted to see again, you hated him so much, and then felt so glad to find in the morning lying on the mat beside you. More to the point, she was like a mother, who couldn’t stop worrying about you, who couldn’t help reminding you that you still needed her help, which was infuriating because in fact you did.

  They often went for walks. One day she told him, in her cheery, raspy voice, that she was going to show him Central Park. He ended up sitting on a bench with her—she’d brought sandwiches for both of them—and listening to her say, “Oh, look at that pretty bird” and “Look at these pretty flowers.” She was trying to distract him, he knew, trying to cheer him up. At the same time, he was thinking: “I hate this woman. This woman is crazy. I’m not five years old. I know what a bird is. Yes, I know that is a flower. And I know Central Park better than you do. I sleep here.”

  He would never let her in on such thoughts. And she must never know he slept in the park. When she had asked him where he was living, as she was bound to do of course, he had told her he slept on the floor of an apartment in Harlem. He gave her the address and phone number of the Senegalese clothing factory. But he made the mistake of also telling her that he had seen a person killed in Harlem, right outside his window. From then on, she gave him no peace. She was going to find him a safe place to stay, if it killed both of them.

  He disliked spending time with her inside the rectory, because invariably a parishioner or priest would happen by and Sharon would say, “Oh, Father So-and-So, this is Deogratias,” and then he would have to listen, half comprehending by now, as she told what she knew of his story, and often the third party would say he’d heard about genocides over there in Africa and that terrible thing between Hutus and Tutsis, and which was Deo, Hutu or Tutsi? Just hearing those terms made him start inwardly. He would feel completely alert—that would be adrenaline. Often the aftermath was a throbbing headache.

  Sharon decided he should write a brief account of his life, which could be used to help him with potential benefactors. This struck him, forcefully, as a very bad idea.

  It scared him to tell anyone he was a Tutsi. How much worse it would be to write down the fact on a piece of paper with his name on it and tell what he had witnessed. Especially since by now she was calling people all over New York, trying to get him help. God only knew how many people she was calling. Just the calls she told him about included priests and official-sounding organizations, and even—this was chilling—the Burundian consulate and the Burundian Mission to the United Nations. She could end up talking to someone who could get more information about him and come and find him and kill him. Or hurt relatives or friends in Burundi. If he wrote down his story, there was no telling who would see the document.

  He wanted to tell her: “Look, just do what you can to help me, don’t even talk to other people about me.” But he couldn’t. She was so warm and generous, never neglecting to give him a hug before they parted, and so sure that this document would help, that he decided to comply. But not entirely. He didn’t use the real name of anyone in his family, he omitted many details and changed others, and he completely altered the geography of his life. Mostly he wrote about what a good student he had been. Sharon enlisted the services of an elderly priest, to refine her translation of Deo’s French and type up the thing.

  She was inflicting the Talking Head on him. And she was trying to borrow salt all over town. She described some of her schemes. In English, they would have gone like this: There was a woman, a friend, she was a little unstable, she drank a little too much, but Deo shouldn’t worry about that, but anyway this woman had said Deo could do some work, like painting, around her apartment, which was a very nice apartment, and of course the woman would like him and find a little spot in her apartment for him to stay.

  The result that time was both good and bad. Good because the woman paid him six dollars an hour, bad because he went to her place and painted woodwork after twelve hours of delivering groceries. And the woman didn’t seem to like him. He’d be painting away and without any warning she’d say in a rather harsh tone of voice, “It’s time to stop. Now go.”

  He was working there one evening when Sharon appeared, saying he had to stop work and come with her right away. There was this nice old dentist she knew whom they were going to call on. Maybe he would have a place for Deo to sleep.

  He didn’t want to go. What had she said about him to this stranger? Deo told Sharon he was tired. She said the dentist’s place wasn’t far away. This at least was true. The three of them sat in a tiny kitchen, Sharon and the elderly man talking and talking in English, Deo trying to pay attention but losing more and more ground. So he had no idea what was coming when the retired dentist leaned across the table, reached out a quavery hand, and hooked Deo’s lower front teeth with an index finger.

  Sharon translated. The old dentist said that Deo needed braces.

  Deo felt a flash of anger. What else would he have to endure? What further insults? For the rest of the time there, Deo kept his mouth shut tight. For the next several days, he was aware of trying not to smile in public.

  Of course, the dentist wasn’t about to take him in. But something promising came out of the encounter. Sharon said she knew how he could get his teeth straightened for free, if he wanted them straightened—at the New York University dental school. He wouldn�
�t mind, but dentistry was for later. The search for a place continued.

  She took him to see a nun who ran a boardinghouse of sorts. Sister Leontine. “She’s great,” Sharon said.

  Sister Leontine had a place in Harlem, which she had turned into a refuge for homeless people just out of prison. A basement place and packed with people. The sister probably was a great person, Deo thought. And it was wonderful of Sharon to take him there. Sharon could live in this chaos happily enough. She was a person who would just come shining and smiling into hell, he thought. But he didn’t want to be in this place. He’d rather be alone. He’d rather sleep outside.

  Fortunately, Sister Leontine said that Deo could stay but would have to sleep on the floor because all the beds were taken. So he was able to decline the offer politely and still let Sharon know he was grateful.

  Declining wasn’t always so easy. A wealthy friend of Sharon’s was having a birthday party in Central Park, a real fête. Sharon’s friend had said she could bring Deo. It would be a wonderful party, Sharon said, it would be good for him, he’d really enjoy himself.

  Deo thought fast. He said he couldn’t go, he didn’t have a dress shirt or a tie or a jacket.

  But Sharon said that was no problem. St. Thomas More collected old clothes for the poor. And a lot of the clothes were very fine, she said, because this was a wealthy part of town. Sharon said something about having gotten her own “start in clothes” this way. She took him down to the church basement and rummaged cheerfully through a pile of big plastic bags and outfitted him.

  How much energy the woman had! Deo wanted to ask her to stop trying so hard. But he hated the idea of hurting her feelings, and the weariness surrounding him made it too hard for him to resist her. The only way to keep her from doing too much was to avoid her, and he tried that, but then he would go back to see her when he needed something. But this made him feel he was behaving like a spoiled child. The only solution was to let her do as she pleased. As she sat with him and told him about yet another possibility for housing, he would let his thoughts drift away. Eventually, she’d ask him in French, “Do you understand?” Sometimes she’d have to repeat the question. “Quoi?” he would say, as if startled out of sleep.