Thirty Girls (3 page)

The Ugandan army patrolled the area. Sister Giulia thought, They’re coming for the girls! But nearly immediately the helicopter swooped off and its blades hummed into the distance. They could not have known, it was just a routine strike. No one moved right away, waiting to be sure they were gone. After a pause heads lifted from the ground, their cheeks lightened by the dust. Sister Giulia saw Esther Akello with her arms over her friend Agnes Ochiti. The girl who had covered her, Judith, was wiping
blood from her neck. A rebel handed Judith a bandage. She hesitated taking it. They were hitting them and then they were giving them bandages. There was no sense anywhere.

Orders were given now to move, quickly. The girls were tied to one another with a rope and walked in single file behind Sister Giulia. At least I am with my girls, she thought. She wondered if they would kill her. She wondered it distantly, not really believing it, but thinking it would happen whether she believed it or not. And if so, it was God’s will. They walked for a couple of hours. She worried that the girls were hungry and exhausted. She saw no sign they’d been given food.

At one point she was positioned to walk along beside Mariano. She had not dared ask him many of the questions she had. But since they had prayed together she felt she could ask him one. She said, Mariano Lagira, why do you take the children?

He looked down at her, with a bland face which said this was an irritating but acceptable question. To increase our family, he said, as if this were obvious. Kony wants a big family. Then he walked ahead, away from her.

After several hours they came to a wooded place with huts and round burnt areas with pots hanging from rods. It looked as if farther along there were other children, and other rebels. She saw where the girls were led and allowed to sit down.

Captain Lagira brought Sister Giulia to a hut and sat there on a stool. There was one guard with a gun who kept himself a few feet away from Lagira. This rebel wore a shirt with the sleeves cut off and a gold chain and never looked straight at Lagira, but always faced his direction. He stood behind now. During the walk they had talked about prayer and about God and she learned that Lagira’s God has some things not in common with her God, but Sister Giulia did not point this out. She thought it best to try to continue this strange friendship. Would Sister Giulia join him for tea and biscuits? Captain Lagira wanted to know.

She would not refuse. A young woman in a wrapped skirt came out from the hut, carrying a small stump for Sister Giulia to sit on. It was possible
this was one of his wives, though he did not greet her. At the edge of the doorway she saw a hand and half of a face looking out. Tea, he said.

The woman went back into the hut and after some time returned with a tray and mugs and a box of English biscuits. They drank their tea. Sister Giulia was hungry but she did not eat a biscuit.

I ask you again, she said. Will you give me my girls. She didn’t phrase it as a question.

He smiled. Do not worry, I am Mariano Lagira. He put down his mug. Now you go wash. Another girl appeared, this one a little younger, about twenty, with bare feet and small pearl earrings. She silently led Sister Giulia behind the hut to a basin of water and a plastic shower bag hanging from a tree. She must have been another wife. Sister Giulia washed her hands and face. She washed her feet and cleaned the blisters she’d gotten from her wet sneakers.

She returned to Mariano. This rebel commander was now Mariano to her, as if a friend. He still sat on his stool, holding a stick and scratching in the dirt by his feet. She glanced toward the girls and saw that some of them had moved to a separate place to the side.

Mariano didn’t look up when he spoke.

There are one hundred and thirty-nine girls, he said and traced the number in the dirt.

That many, she thought, saying nothing. More than half the school.

I give you—he wrote the number by his boot as he said, one oh nine. And I—he scratched another number—keep thirty.

Sister Giulia looked toward the girls with alarm. There was a large group on the left and a smaller group on the right. While she was washing they had been divided. She knelt down in front of Mariano.

No, she said. They are my girls. Let them go and keep me instead.

Only Kony decides these things.

Then let me speak with Kony.

No one ever saw Kony. He was hidden over the border in Sudan. Maybe the government troops couldn’t reach him there. Maybe, as some thought, President Museveni did not try so hard to find him. The north was not such a priority for Museveni, and neither was the LRA. There were government troops, yes, but the LRA was not so important.

Let the girls go and take me to Kony.

You can ask him, he said and shrugged.

Did he mean it?

You can write him a note. Captain Lagira called, and a woman with a white shirt and ragged pink belt was sent to another hut, to return eventually with a pencil and piece of paper. Sister Giulia leaned the paper on her knee and wrote:

As she wrote each letter she felt her heart sink down. Kony would never see this note.

You go write the names of the girls there, he said.

She looked at the smaller group of girls sitting in feathery shadows.

Please, Mariano, she said softly.

You do like this or you will have none of the girls, said Captain Mariano Lagira.

She left the captain and went over to the girls sitting on the hard ground in feathery shadows. She held the pencil and paper limply in her hand. The girls looked at her, each with meaning in her eyes.

She bent down to speak, Girls, be good … but she couldn’t finish her sentence.

The girls started to cry. They understood everything. An order was shouted and suddenly some rebels standing nearby were grabbing branches and hitting at the girls. One jumped on the back of Louise. She saw them slap Janet. Then the girls became quiet.

Sister Giulia didn’t know what to do. Then it seemed as if they were all talking to her at once, in low voices, whispering. No, not all. Some were just looking at her.

Please, they were saying, Sister. Take me. Jessica said, I have been hurt. Another: My two sisters died in a car accident and my mother is sick. Charlotte said, Sister, I have asthma.

Sister, I am in my period.

Sister Giulia looked back at the captain standing with his arms crossed. He was shaking his head. She said she was supposed to write their names but she was unable. Louise, the captain of the football team, took the pencil from her, and the paper, and started to write.

Akello Esther

Ochiti Agnes …

Judith … Helen … Janet, Lily, Jessica, Charlotte … Louise … Jackline …

Did I mistreat you, Sister?

No, sir.

Did I mistreat the girls?

No, sir.

So, next time I come to the school, do not run away. The captain laughed. Would the sister like more tea and biscuits? No, thank you. They bade each other goodbye. It was as if they might have been old friends.

You may go greet them before you leave, Mariano Lagira said.

Sister Giulia once again went over to the thirty girls, her thirty girls who would not be coming with her. She gave her rosary to Judith and said, Look after them. She handed Jessica her own sweater out of the backpack.

When we go you must not look at us, she said.

No, Sister, we won’t.

Then a terrible thing happened.

Catherine whispered, Sister. It’s Agnes. She has gone, just over there.

Sister Giulia saw Agnes standing back with the larger group of girls gathered to leave.

You must get her, Sister Giulia said. She couldn’t believe she was having to do this. If they see one is missing …

So Agnes was brought back. She was holding a pair of sneakers. She was told she might be endangering the others.

Okay, Agnes said. I will not try to run away again.

Sister Giulia had to make herself turn to leave.

Helen called after, Sister, you are coming back for us?

Sister Giulia left with the large group of girls. They walked away into the new freedom of the same low trees and scruffy grasses, which now
had a new appearance, and left the thirty others behind. Bosco led the way and Sister Giulia walked in the middle. Some girls walked beside her and held her hand for a while. They bowed their heads when she passed near them. Arriving at a road they turned onto it. The rebels stayed off the roads. It grew dark and they kept walking. They came to a village that was familiar to some of them and stopped at two houses to spend the night. There were more than fifty girls to each house, so many lay outside, sleeping close in one another’s arms. Sister Giulia felt she was awake all night, but then somehow her eyes were opening and it was dawn.

At 5 a.m. they fetched water and continued footing it home. As the birds started up they saw they were closer to the school and found that word had been sent ahead and in little areas passed people who clapped as they went by. Sister Giulia felt some happiness in the welcome, but inside there was distress. They came finally to their own road and at last to the school drive.

Across the field Sister Giulia caught sight of the crowd of people near the gate. The parents were all there waiting. She saw the chapel blackened behind the purple bougainvillea, but the tower above still standing.

Many girls ran out to embrace their mothers who were hurrying to them. As she got close, Sister Giulia saw the parents’ faces watching, the parents still looking for their daughters. They searched the crowd. There was Jessica’s mother with her hand holding her throat. She saw Louise’s mother, Grace, ducking side to side, studying the faces of the girls. The closer they got to the gate, the more the girls were engulfed by their families and the more separated became the adults whose children were not there. These families held each other and kept their attention away from the parents whose girls had been left behind. They would not meet their gaze. In this way those parents learned their children had not made it back. When they came near Sister Giulia in all the commotion, she turned away from them. She was answering other questions. Some mothers were kneeling in front of her, some kissed her hand. She was thinking though only of the other parents and she would talk to them eventually but just now it seemed impossible to face them. Then she wondered if she’d be able to face anyone again, ever.

II

Launch

You have no idea where you are
.

You sit among the girls. They’re in the shade, talking. It might be birdsong for all you understand or care. You think, I will never be close to anyone again
.

S
HE STEPPED OUT
of the plane and over the accordion hinge of the walkway to continue up the tunneled ramp. One always felt altered after a flight. There was the pleasant fatigue of no sleep and one’s nerves closer to the surface as if a layer of self had peeled off and gotten lost in transit. The change was only on the surface, but the surface was where one encountered the world. Her surface was ready for the new things that would happen in this new place, ready for anything different from what she’d known.

There was a soggy tobacco smell at the gate and loose rugs with long rolls no one had bothered to smooth out. She stood in a line of crumpled people holding their carry-ons and inching forward to wooden tables where clerks slowly stamped passport books after a sliding look from the picture to the face.

She was finally away. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt the expansion, the air humid, the door opening, dawn light reflected off a hammered linoleum floor as she descended an old-fashioned staircase
to the black carousel empty of baggage. There was a long row of bureaux de change with one short counter after another empty and behind them a large plate-glass window with palm trees being eaten by a white sky. Lackadaisical drivers were leaning on the hoods of their cars, half glancing around for a fare. Dark-haired men strolled in short sleeve shirts, women in thin dresses moved slowly. Everything mercifully said, This is not home.

The first time she saw him he flew.

They were in Lana’s driveway, unloading alabaster lamps she’d had copied on Biashara Street when a white Toyota truck pulled up and a young man with shoulder length hair opened the door. He leapt over the roof of the truck and landed in a bowl of dust.

Lana gave him a big greeting, embracing him as an old friend, as she embraced everyone. She stepped back to study him, hands on his shoulders. He had on a dirty white hat with a zebra band around the crown. Nice, she said, flicking the brim. Jane, come meet Harry.

Jane set down her crate. Harry, Jane, said Lana. Jane, Harry.

Cheers, Harry said in a flat tone. His chin drew in and he regarded Jane with a strange stoniness, as if she were an intruder who ought to explain herself. The impulse to explain herself was an urge Jane Wood struggled to ignore, so getting a look like that unnerved her. At least that was how she explained the unnerved feeling.