Say You’re One Of Them (39 page)

Slowly, Maman removes the gold ring from her finger and holds it out for Papa.

“Sell this and take care of yourself and the children.”

Papa backs away, his eyes closed. When he opens them, they’re clouded, like a rainy day. Maman comes over to me and places the money in my hands and puts the ring on top of it.

“Don’t go away, Maman. Papa loves you.”

“I know, Monique, I know.”

“Is it because you went out last night?”

“No, no, I did not go out last night!” she says. I leave everything on the altar, kneel in front of Papa, and beg him with all my love to forgive her even though she’s lying. He turns away. I go back to the sofa. “Your papa is a good man,” Maman says, hugging me.

I push Jean against her, but she avoids his eyes. I think of Le Père Mertens. I plead with Maman to wait for him to return from Belgium to reconcile them. “If you confess to Le Père Mertens,” I say, “Jesus shall forgive you.”

There’s a light knock on the door. Maman sits up, pushing Jean off like a scorpion. Someone is crying softly outside our door. Maman walks past Papa to push aside the table and open the door. It’s Hélène. She’s sprawled on our doorstep. Maman quickly carries her inside, and Papa locks the door.

Hélène is soaked in blood and has been crawling through the dust. Her right foot is dangling on strings, like a shoe tied to the clothesline by its lace. Papa binds her foot with a towel, but the blood soaks through. I hold her hand, which is cold and sticky.

“You’ll be OK, Hélène,” I tell her. She faints.

“No, Saint Jude Thadée, no!” Maman exclaims, gathering Hélène’s limp body in a hug. “Monique, your friend will be fine.”

I can hear a mob coming, but my parents are more interested in Hélène. Papa climbs onto a chair, then onto the table. He opens the hatch of the parlor ceiling and asks Maman to relay Hélène to him.

“Remember, we’ve too many up there,” Maman says. “When I came down, you had five in there . . . and I put two more in just hours ago. The ceiling will collapse.”

They take Hélène into my room, and Maman pulls open the hatch. A cloud of fine dust explodes from the ceiling. They shove Hélène’s body in.

Now I understand—they are hiding people in our ceiling. Maman was in the ceiling last night. She tricked me. Nobody is telling me the truth today. Tomorrow I must remind them that lying is a sin.

AS
THE
MOB
CLOSES
in on our house, chanting, the ceiling people begin to pray. I recognize their voices as those of our Tutsi neighbors and fellow parishioners. They’re silent as Papa opens the front door to the crowd, which is bigger than last night’s and pushes into our home like floodwater. These people look tired, yet they sing on like drunks. Their weapons and hands and shoes and clothes are covered with blood, their palms slimy. Our house smells suddenly like an abattoir. I see the man who attacked me; his yellow trousers are now reddish brown. He stares at me; I hold on to Papa, who is hanging his head.

Maman runs into her bedroom. Four men are restraining Tonton André, who still wants to kill us all. I run to Maman and sit with her on the bed. Soon, the mob enters the room too, bringing Papa. They give Papa a big machete. He begins to tremble, his eyes blinking. A man tears me away from Maman and pushes me toward Jean, who’s in the corner. Papa is standing before Maman, his fingers on the knife’s handle.

“My people,” he mumbles, “let another do it. Please.”

“No, you do it, traitor!” Tonton André shouts, struggling with those holding him. “You were with us when I killed Annette yesterday. My pregnant wife. You can’t keep yours. Where did you disappear to when we came last night? You love your family more than I loved mine? Yes?”

“If we kill your wife for you,” the Wizard says, “we must kill you. And your children too.” He thuds his stick. “Otherwise, after cleansing our land of Tutsi nuisance, your children will come after us. We must remain one. Nothing shall dilute our blood. Not God. Not marriage.”

Tonton André shouts, “Shenge, how many Tutsis has Papa hidden—”

“My husband, be a man,” Maman interrupts, looking down.

“Shenge, answer!” someone yells. The crowd of Hutus murmur and become impatient. “
Wowe, subiza.
”

“My husband, you promised me.”

Papa lands the machete on Maman’s head. Her voice chokes and she falls off the bed and onto her back on the wooden floor. It’s like a dream. The knife tumbles out of Papa’s hand. His eyes are closed, his face calm, though he’s shaking.

Maman straightens out on the floor as if she were yawning. Her feet kick, and her chest rises and locks as if she were holding her breath. There’s blood everywhere—on everybody around her. It flows into Maman’s eyes. She looks at us through the blood. She sees Papa become a wizard, sees his people telling him bad things. The blood overflows her eyelids, and Maman is weeping red tears. My bladder softens and pee flows down my legs toward the blood. The blood overpowers it, bathing my feet. Papa opens his eyes slowly. His breaths are long and slow. He bends down and closes Maman’s eyes with trembling hands.

“If you let any Tutsi live,” they tell him, “you’re dead.” And then they begin to leave, some patting him on the back. Tonton André is calm now, stroking his goatee. He tugs at Papa’s sleeve. Papa covers Maman with a white bedspread and then goes off with the mob, without looking at me or Jean. Maman’s ring and money disappear with them.

I cry with the ceiling people until my voice cracks and my tongue dries up. No one can ever call me Shenge again. I want to sit with Maman forever, and I want to run away at the same time. Sometimes I think she’s sleeping and hugging Hélène under the bedspread and the blood is Hélène’s. I don’t want to wake them up. My mind is no longer mine; it’s doing things on its own. It begins to run backward, and I see the blood flowing back into Maman. I see her rising suddenly, as suddenly as she fell. I see Papa’s knife lifting from her hair. She’s saying, “Me promised you.”

“Yes, Maman,” I say. “You promised me!”

Jean is startled by my shout. He stamps around in the blood as if he were playing in mud.

I begin to think of Maman as one of the people in the ceiling. It’s not safe for her to come down yet. She’s lying up there quietly, holding on to the rafters, just as she must have been last night when the man in the yellow trousers attacked me. She’s waiting for the right time to cry with me. I think that Tonton André is hiding Tantine Annette in his ceiling and fooling everyone into believing that he killed her. I see her lying, faceup, on a wooden beam, with her mountain belly, the way I lie on the lowest branch of our mango tree and try to count the fruit. Soon, Tonton André will bring her down gently. She’ll give birth, and my uncle will cover her mouth with Belgian kisses.

JEAN
YANKS
THE
CLOTH
off Maman and tries to wake her. He straightens her finger, but it bends back slowly, as if she were teasing him. He tries to bring together the two halves of Maman’s head, without success. He sticks his fingers into Maman’s hair and kneads it, the blood thick, like red shampoo. As the ceiling people weep, he wipes his hands on her clothes and walks outside, giggling.

I wander from room to room, listening for her voice among the ceiling voices. When there’s silence, her presence fills my heart.

“Forgive us, Monique,” Madame Thérèse says from the parlor ceiling.

“We’ll always support you and J-Jean,” her husband stammers from above my room. “Your parents are good people, Monique. We’ll pay your school fees. You’re ours now.”

“Get this dead body off me,” Grandmaman de Martin groans from above the corridor. “It’s dead, it’s dead!”

“Just be patient,” someone close to her says. “We’ll send the dead down carefully before they fall through.”

Some praise God for the way my parents’ marriage has saved them. Grandmaman de Martin becomes hysterical, forcing every-one else to rearrange themselves in the ceiling in the corridor. I identify each voice, but Maman’s voice isn’t there. Why hasn’t she said something to me? Why doesn’t she order me to go and shower?

All the things that Maman used to tell me come at me at once and yet separately—in play, in anger, in fear. There is a command, a lullaby, the sound of her kiss on my cheek. Perhaps she is still trying to protect me from what is to come. She’s capable of doing that, I know, just as she stopped Papa from telling me that he was going to smash her head.

“I’m waiting for Maman,” I tell the ceiling people.

“She’s gone, Monique.”

“No, no, I know now. She’s up there.”

“
Yagiye hehe?
Where?”

“Stop lying! Tell my mother to talk to me.”

The parlor ceiling is now creaking and sagging in the middle, and Madame Thérèse starts to laugh like a drunk. “You’re right, Monique. We’re just kidding. Smart girl, yes, your
maman
is here, but she will come down only if you go outside to get Jean. She’s had a long day.”

“
Yego, madame,
” I say, “wake her up.”

“She’s hearing you,” Monsieur Pierre Nsabimana says suddenly from above the kitchen. He hasn’t said anything all this while. His voice calms me, and I move toward it, my eyes fixed on the ceiling. Someone begins the Catena in a harsh, rapid whisper. It’s not Maman. She always takes her time to say her prayers.

“Do you want your
maman
to fall with the ceiling on you?” Monsieur Pierre says.

“No.”

“Then, girl, leave the house, and don’t come back!”

The ceiling above the altar begins to tear apart from the wall, and people scurry away from that end, like giant lizards. I pick up the broken crucifix and hurry outside.

There are corpses everywhere. Their clothes are dancing in the wind. Where blood has soaked the earth, the grass doesn’t move. Vultures are poking the dead with their long beaks; Jean is driving them away, stamping his feet and swirling his arms. His hands are stained, because he’s been trying to raise the dead. He’s not laughing anymore. His eyes are wide open, and there’s a frown on his babyish forehead.

Then he wanders toward the UN soldiers at the corner, their rifles shiny in the twilight. They’re walking away from him, as if they were a mirage. The vultures are following Jean. I scream at them, but they continue to taunt him, like stubborn mosquitoes. Jean doesn’t hear. He sits on the ground, kicking his legs and crying because the soldiers won’t wait for him. I squat before my brother, begging him to climb on my back. He does and keeps quiet.

We limp on into the chilly night, ascending the stony road into the hills. The blood has dried into our clothes like starch. There’s a smaller mob coming toward us. Monsieur Henri is among them. He’s carrying a huge torch, and the flame is eating the night in large, windy gulps. These are our people on Maman’s side, and they’re all in military clothes. Like another soccer fan club, they’re chanting about how they’re going to kill Papa’s people. Some of them have guns. If Papa couldn’t spare Maman’s life, would my mother’s relatives spare mine? Or my brother’s?

I slip into the bush, with Jean on my back, one hand holding the crucifix, the other shielding my eyes from the tall grass and the branches, my feet cold and bracing for thorns. Jean presses hard against me, his face digging into my back. “Maman says do not be afraid,” I tell him. Then we lie down on the crucifix to hide its brightness. We want to live; we don’t want to die. I must be strong.

After the mob runs past us, I return to the road and look back. They drag Maman out by the legs and set fire to the house. By the time their fellow Tutsis in the ceiling begin to shout, the fire is unstoppable. They run on. They run after Papa’s people. We walk forward.

Everywhere is dark, and the wind spreads black clouds like blankets across the sky. My brother is playing with the glow of the crucifix, babbling Maman’s name.

Although his parents had played a prominent role in our diocesan events and development for decades, I first came in contact with Father Uwem Akpan in 1988, at his home village of Ikot Akpan Eda. He was one of the 150 parishioners of St. Paul’s Parish, Ekparakwa, who were waiting to receive the sacrament of Confirmation that bright Sunday morning. Shortly before Mass, it was realized that the catechist, who had prepared the candidates and led them through the rehearsals for the celebration of the sacrament, had suddenly taken ill and was indisposed. As churchwardens scrambled for a replacement, Uwem stepped forward and volunteered to be the master of ceremonies on that occasion. He was seventeen, rather stern-looking in his dark “French suit,” as we say in Nigeria. He had just graduated from secondary school and was bent on joining the Jesuits. He had never been a master of ceremonies before. When I asked how he would lead the other candidates and the congregation through the day, he quickly said he would be coming to the altar to consult the bishop on what to tell the people. Many times during that Mass, Uwem had the church in stitches as he ran the commentary with a straight face, using everyday language to say what the sacrament of Confirmation meant. He was fluent in both English and his native Annang language.

It was when I invited Uwem to live and work with me in the Bishop’s House that I really came in contact with his depth, passion, and courage. He always said things straight from the heart. He was impatient with what he called “abstract” theology. He read widely and bombarded me with questions about the Catholic faith. Sometimes, his focus and intensity were made bearable only by his Annang humor and ringing, mirthful laughter. As I followed the progress of his Jesuit priestly formation in Nigeria, the United States, Kenya, Benin, and Tanzania—and in the conversations we had when he visited home, about his struggles to write in the seminary—I began to sense that there was no way this Ikot Akpan Eda man could be a priest without using the common man’s language to probe the terrain within which modern Africans are living out their faith. Therefore, I was not very surprised when he started giving African children a voice in fiction.

It is my belief that the publication of
Say You’re One of Them
is a bold attempt to enlighten readers about children in Africa, fueled by a passionate desire to create a safer place for children all over the world. Father Uwem, we in your home diocese of Ikot Ekpene are proud of you. May God continue to confirm your faith and bless your talents and courage as priest and poet.