Broken Memory (4 page)

“This boy is fragile,” Mukecuru said when Emma told her what had happened. “Take care with him, Emma,” she warned.

Emma didn't understand. She thought the old woman was being unkind to Ndoli, just like the whole world was against him, she told herself bitterly. It wasn't fair. He was a victim himself. He was doing the best he could.

But Mukecuru's words would come back to her a few months later. She would understand what she meant then.

Emma and Ndoli met each other often after the gacaca. She told him about the gossip at the market, and he reported on what was happening at school — both passing on news about what was going on in their separate worlds. She would put down the women who had made fun of them. He told her about the funny, cruel and often disappointing things that went on at school.

Emma liked one of his stories in particular. It was about a girl at school who had fought to join the boys' soccer game at recess, even though they didn't want her to, and she ended up playing so well that she caught the attention of the coach of a girls' team.

Emma often asked Ndoli about this girl. She became sort of an imaginary friend, the kind you secretly admire and who makes you want to do better yourself.

“I would like to be like her,” she confessed one day. “But I could never do that.”

“How do you know? You've never set foot in a school,” Ndoli replied, a little annoyed. He had exaggerated the accomplishments of this girl to a certain degree, and Emma's huge interest in her was starting to irritate him.

That evening, Emma thought about what Ndoli had said. She hadn't paid much attention at the time, in spite of his unusually gruff tone. But now, stretched out under the big tree, she dared to dream.

How did she really know what she could or could not do? She began to imagine a life for herself as a daring schoolgirl caught up in a thousand and one activities, in a recess without end.

Ndoli lay on his stomach beside Emma, in the grass behind the low wall that surrounded the schoolyard. He didn't hesitate for a second when she asked him to take her to watch the recess break. He had run out of true or even almost true stories, and his imagination was seriously beginning to fail him when he tried to think up new ones.

“When are they going to come out?” asked Emma without taking her eyes off the empty yard on the other side of the wall. She was trembling with excitement, her forehead glued to the dry stones, her hands on either side of the gap in the wall that allowed her to see without being seen.

The students burst onto the playground before Ndoli could answer. He watched Emma. He was only interested in recess because she was. She drew back when she saw the sea of children pouring out the doors of the big yellow building, but quickly went back to her observation post.

The students swarmed into the yard, the striking contrast of their blue and beige uniforms making it easy to tell the girls from the boys, even from a distance.

Ndoli chose a hole of his own — the old wall was full of them — and pointed out the students he had told her about. She was surprised at how ordinary the girl soccer player looked. She was walking with another girl that Ndoli had never mentioned, and she didn't look like the heroine Emma had imagined.

She was just about to tell Ndoli how disappointed she was when she noticed a student walking toward them. Small and dirty, he snuffled and dragged his feet. One leg of his shorts was torn and spotted with blood. Standing near the wall, he passed his sleeve under his nose. Then he found a clean tissue and wiped the traces of snot from his cheek.

His finger to his lips, Ndoli grabbed Emma's wrist and pulled her away. They lay on their backs, their heads leaning against a solid section of the wall. The boy was right on the other side. He sniffed loudly and spat on the ground. Then he began to kick the stone wall violently. Emma and Ndoli could hear him taking out his frustration.

Suddenly, a whistle rang out, making Emma jump. Ndoli burst out laughing and the boy stopped, his foot suspended in midair. Then, either because he realized someone was spying on him or because he was afraid of being late, he took off, getting his legs tangled up and tripping in mid stride.

Ndoli was sorry to see Emma leave him to take up her observation post again in time to watch the students rush back into their classes. Behind them the dust fell in slow motion, cloaking the yard in silence.

“Who was that?” Emma asked, sitting down in the grass facing the wall.

“Kanuma,” Ndoli answered, sitting down beside her.

“The one who's always being blamed for everything?”

“Yes.”

Ndoli started to get up, but Emma continued. “Why don't the others like him?”

“I don't know.”

“And you?”

“What about me?” Ndoli said hesitantly.

“Do you like him well enough?”

“No.”

“Why?”

Ndoli hugged his knees and briefly touched the scar on his forehead.

“He's weak,” he said abruptly, without looking at Emma. “He doesn't stand up for himself. That makes the others meaner. Whatever happens to him is his own fault.”

“Why would you…” Emma started to say weakly.

Why would you say such a thing, she finished to herself.

Flustered, Ndoli got up. Emma stayed sitting.

“And me, how would I be if I was in the schoolyard?” she asked suddenly, while Ndoli, not knowing whether he wanted to leave or stay, wandered aimlessly around her.

He stopped, taken aback. Then he sat down again with his back to her. She leaned against him.

“Tell me!” she demanded.

“I don't know,” he answered slowly. Then, surprised by his own meanness, he added, “I don't see you at school.”

“Oh, I see…” Emma murmured unhappily. She straightened up so that she was no longer touching him. “So I don't belong at school?”

He panicked, not knowing what to say. Finally he leaned back timidly until he felt her back again. She stiffened at first and he froze. Then she leaned against him. He remained rigid, afraid that she would move away again.

She began to rock her shoulders lightly from side to side. He rolled his muscles against hers, raised his head and silently thanked the trees.

Emma turned around suddenly, put her arms around Ndoli's shoulders and kissed him noisily on the cheek. Then she got up and left him sitting in front of the low wall.

Emma came around the side of the building that housed the clinic and headed toward the reception area. The door was always open.

A little girl was sitting sideways on an oversized chair, swinging her legs back and forth, her eyes locked on a map of Rwanda that was tacked to the opposite wall. The other walls were covered with posters. One showed a mother nursing, another a baby sleeping beneath a mosquito net, and a third portrayed a smiling couple beside a couple sick with AIDS.

Two women were having a lively discussion across a small desk. One of them was holding a paper that she kept trying to show the other woman.

Rooted to the spot in the doorway, Emma was reminding herself why she had come, when the old man appeared.

“Hello, Emma. I'm glad you came.”

He looked impressive in his light-colored suit. For some reason she thought that he must be very strong.

He was beside her in two strides, placed his hands on her shoulders and whispered, “Everything is going to be all right, I promise you.”

The old man led her into his office. She sat down on a metal chair, gray like almost everything else in the room. He sat facing her, their knees almost touching. When she stiffened, he smiled, shifted his chair back and leaned toward her.

That's when she noticed the hollow and the funny bump at the base of his skull. She quickly lowered her eyes, clasped her hands together and wondered once again why she had come.

But the old man was right. Everything was okay. He talked a lot. As for Emma, she didn't say another word after she asked him where he was and what he had done in 1994.

Ndoli had told her that the old man had suffered as much as ten men. He convinced her that she could talk to him because he was one of the survivors of the genocide.

Then Emma talked to Mukecuru, and that had finally made up her mind.

“I believe he's a good man,” the old woman said. “Listen to him at first. Watch him closely. See whether he deserves your trust. You're the only one who can decide.”

On the way back from the clinic, Emma thought about the old man's story. His life had been unbelievable. He had survived the many massacres that the Tutsis had suffered. In 1963 they hunted him down; in 1973 they cut his throat, treated him, then hunted him down again; in 1990 they put him in prison and tortured him; in 1991 he was beaten before he managed to get away and hide; in 1994 he was captured and left for dead. All because he was a Tutsi. Now he was scarred but still standing, his dignity intact.

Unlike Ndoli, he was able to hold his head high…

Emma was shocked that she would even think this. She had no right to compare the actions of a man with those of a seven-year-old child in the hands of cold-blooded killers. She was torn as she thought about how Ndoli's life was at a standstill. She felt tenderness, then pity, then guilt for having come out of it better than he had. And in the end she felt ashamed of the feelings that Ndoli had stirred up in her.

For the rest of the day she tried not to think about her own past. Then at dusk she took her place beneath the big tree and tried to remember the face of her mother. But she couldn't. Mostly she just heard a muffled noise, murmured cries. The bark at her back became as smooth as a wall and she could feel her body shutting down.

To pull herself out of it, she raised her head and fixed her eyes on the front of the house, the windows lit up like bright stains on a heavy black curtain. She squinted to make sense of this strange sight, noticed the door, then the little window where she used to spy on Ndoli.

Only then did she manage to struggle to her feet and run into the shelter of the house.

Out of breath, she slammed the door and threw herself against it. Her heart was beating so hard she could hear the ground and the walls quiver.

In the room, Mukecuru startled. Outside the night was black and haunted.

Emma went back to see the old man many times. She became used to his gray office. She noticed new little things each time she visited, as if her eyes were just learning how to see. She especially liked the drawings hanging on the wall in a cluttered corner behind a stack of files that seemed to be waiting to be put away. Every time she looked at the drawings, she had an urge to tug on one of the deeply buried files, just to watch the old papers fly apart and scatter on the floor.

Ever since their second meeting, the old man had been trying to make her tell him her story. But the words wouldn't come. Emma retraced her life with Mukecuru, but she couldn't go back any farther.

So he asked her to draw her past instead.

“Happy or sad events, Emma. Whatever you want,” he said reassuringly.

“I don't know how to draw.”

He insisted, showed her the clumsy drawings that other children had hung on the wall to prove that anyone could pick up a pencil and express themselves. She could see houses and smiling people.

Then Emma remembered a drawing that she had noticed on her way into the office that day. It was not on display but was waiting to be filed in a drawer.

It showed a man with two pointy boots hanging from a square body. He had a rifle instead of an arm and it was aimed at a child with huge eyes in a blank face with no mouth on top of a vertical line without arms or feet. A fountain of red spurted from the head of the child and dripped down to the bottom of the page.

Emma could just see the blood running off the page and over the edge of the desk to form a bright red pool on the floor.

That's when she grabbed a fistful of pencils.

It was her turn to try to tell her story.

She tried to draw her mother, fought to show her eyes and her smile, but she could only make crude curves and stupid circles. Her mind refused to remember this face, and trying to draw it changed nothing.

She ended up pushing away the papers and pencils as she settled back in her chair, trembling and hating herself.

Then the old man calmly asked her if she wanted to try once more to tell him about her life before the genocide.

She managed to murmur only a few sentences from the far side of the desk, but she stopped trembling.

During the sessions that followed, Emma made progress. She remembered her grandfather and his mean wife, then took the pencils and drew her father the way she imagined him.

She smiled the whole time she drew him, and her drawing joined the others on the wall above the stack of old files.