Displaced (25 page)

The Judge didn’t believe her story, didn’t
believe she was telling the truth, and didn’t believe it was
plausible that Nicole could have escaped death and made it to
Kampala under the circumstances she described. And even if she
believed Nicole’s story, the Judge concluded, the gang rape didn’t
constitute persecution, but was a criminal act, the result of being
in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Judge denied Nicole’s
application for asylum.

It hadn’t helped that Nicole’s lawyer didn’t
return her calls until the day before the hearing. After she turned
down Mr. Onwenge’s advances at their first meeting, he had shown
little interest in her case and calls to his office were answered
by an assistant. She had met with him only that morning to prepare
the testimony that she would provide later that day. After the
Judge issued her decision denying Nicole’s claim, Mr. Onwenge was
assuring her of good chances on appeal. Vumilia had already decided
to hire a different attorney.

This was a new kind of limbo between
acceptance and return. Her application for asylum denied, Nicole
would have to wait for the appeals process and in the meantime had
no work authorization and spent much of her day in the house
helping Vumilia with chores. And although she wasn’t supposed to,
she pursued informal job opportunities, babysitting and working for
a catering company in Washington, DC recommended by the local
Congolese diaspora.

On Vumilia’s advice, she queued at the Silver
Spring health clinic, sitting in a plastic chair in a room with a
tiled floor and large foggy window, waiting for her blood to be
taken and tested. When her results came back, her name was called
and she was taken to a room where she was told that she tested
positive for HIV. The nurse spoke with her and gave her literature
for treatment plans with the local health agency and a clinic
called Whitman-Walker. She recommended that Nicole see a clinical
psychologist over concerns of post traumatic stress and depression.
Nicole assured her that she would, but felt overwhelmed, and the
pamphlet remained unopened in her coat pocket. The medical
vocabulary of antiretrovirals, protease inhibitors and viral loads
entered her lexicon and became part of her daily life as she
undertook a regimen to ward off the infection that invaded her
body. The disease, a remnant of past trauma, was to her the
physiological manifestation of an emotional harm.

Nicole sat on a granite bench on the elevated
platform of the Silver Spring Metro station in her black and white
tuxedo uniform waiting for the train to take her into the city and
a catering job at the German embassy. The platform was mostly empty
on weekend evenings and the air was still warm but turning cool as
the sun began to set. A breeze full of moisture picked up and sent
dry leaves chasing after a plastic bag that blew down the track,
and reminded her of Africa. She closed her eyes and tried to inhale
the smell of it, the faint smell of water in the wind and charcoal,
and of mud and diesel, but it passed quickly and she was unable to
capture the memory of her home. She missed her house with the yard
and her parents and her Uncle Mukadi and her Aunt Philomene. She
surveyed the cityscape of asphalt and automobiles in front of her,
and longed for her family.

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