Three Weeks in December (9781609459024) (24 page)

Two steps onto the pavement she spotted a parked jeep with a three-foot-long gun mounted where its back seats should be. She backed up quickly into the jungle. Only once she was behind a bush did she stop and examine the jeep as well as search the surroundings for its owners. The rifle gleamed, large and metal, some sort of submachine gun.

There were no soldiers in sight, only two Rwandan women and their children squatting on their heels on the far side of the parking lot, bags of food and clothing stacked up all around. The women and children stared straight at her. From the fact that they didn't call out any greeting, it was clear even the children recognized her as a foreigner. Her lighter skin, her fancy knapsack, her gray athletic clothing.

Dubois and Mutara stepped off the trail onto the tarmac beside her to stop dead at the sight of the jeep. Dubois muttered, “
Pourquoi êtes-vous ici
?”

Mutara called over in Kinyarwanda to the women squatting on the embankment. They responded, their language filled with consonants in unexpected places. Meanwhile Dubois walked around the jeep, keeping a few feet back as though it might jump at her if she got too close.

Glancing again at the Rwandan women, Max wondered why it was she'd never understood her dad's genetics were not purely African. In Maine, his skin had always appeared so very dark.

After a few minutes of talking with Mutara, one of the women eased her hand into a baby-sling wrapped around her chest. She adjusted the baby inside, then she and the others began to get to their feet, gathering the bags.

Mutara turned back to Dubois and Max. “These are women from up the road. They think it is good we move our van. The soldiers who were here before say the army will take over the parking lot later today.”

“Because of the Kutu?” Dubois asked.

“This is what they say.”

With the women standing now, it was possible to see that both of them had several chickens hanging down their backs. The chickens were alive and surprisingly calm, dangling by their feet from a rope, wings slack. They snaked their heads from side to the side, their lizard eyes blinking.

Mutara called goodbye to the women, then said, “They leave the area. One of their sisters lives fifteen kilometers from here. They think with God's will, after things quiet down, they get their home back.”

“Aren't they overreacting?” Max asked.

Dubois shrugged. “Radio Sidewalk. Who knows what they hear?”

Silently, they watched the family walk away, down the road, away from the border, all of them barefoot. The chickens swayed back and forth, limp and clucking. A three-year-old lagged after the rest of her family, dragging a rope bag full of potatoes. Her wails were heard long after they rounded the corner in the road.

Driving in the van down into town, Dubois, Mutara, and Max were silent. Twice they saw an army jeep rush by, filled with men and weapons. Both times, they turned to watch the other vehicle as it drove up the road.

On the outskirts of town, Dubois pulled the van over in front of a large white church. “OK, both of you get out. I drive to the town hall to talk to the officials. I use the phone. Try to hear the news.” She paused while another army jeep roared by. “Here is some cash. You and Mutara find food that is fresh, candles and lots of fuel. Buy all you can. Do not approach the soldiers, no? Meet me in front of this church at noon.”

She drove off in the van, the rattle of its broken muffler audible for a long time.

Max looked around at the buildings, the sharp angles and flat surfaces so alien from the jungle. The part of her mind that constantly monitored proximity began to tighten up again, even now, with no humans visible other than Mutara. Following him down the street, she noticed the town seemed strangely deserted, of both people and vehicles. After a few minutes, two cars drove past them and squealed off around the corner, both full of soldiers. The first car was an aging Volkswagen with its front bumper held on with rope and the second was a Citroën hand-painted a Day-Glo orange. The Citroën's missing headlight had been replaced by a lamp glued onto the hood (a porcelain woman proudly thrusting her bare light bulb aloft). The soldiers inside were packed together. They sat on each other's laps, rifles up, faces set, looking even more dangerous somehow in this undignified condition.

She repeatedly flash-glanced at Mutara for how to respond to all of this. At first, he seemed bewildered. He kept searching up and down the street as though expecting hidden townfolk to come running out at any moment, laughing at their elaborate joke. After a few minutes his reaction began to shift. He started walking faster. When a goat bolted out of an alley next to them, he jerked back. Max felt increasingly uneasy.

After fifteen minutes of searching, Mutara and Max found only one person, an old man carrying something small in a bag that squirmed and cried—it didn't sound like a chicken. Mutara questioned him. The old man's replies were terse and he never stopped walking. From the tone of Mutara's voice as he asked follow-up questions, Max didn't think he liked the information he was getting. She eyed the wiggling bag. The old man disappeared around the corner, calling some answer over his shoulder. Mutara scanned the street for more people. Then he announced he and Max should split up.

“You search for food,” he said. “You find a market, you point at what you want and pull out money. People understand. I find friends, learn what is happening and get fuel. We need to go fast-fast. We meet at the church. OK?”

She didn't like this, but figured he knew how to manage this situation better than she did. He handed her some of Dubois's money and jogged away around a corner. Wandering on alone, she continued to find street after street deserted. She looked behind her frequently. Finally she turned down a wider boulevard and found a small crowd bargaining over a few fruits and cans displayed on blankets on the ground. She walked over, for once happy to be among humans. They glanced at her, but seemed too intent on their own business to be very curious. She pointed to some mangos and pulled out a single bill. The money was a bright red color and said 1000. It caught the eye of the woman selling the fruit. Max made a scooping motion as though to take all the mangos, then held out the bill. The woman snorted through her nose. She pointed to the money, held up three fingers, then pointed to a single mango. Max didn't know the exchange rate or how much the day's emergency might have driven up the prices. She didn't know if the woman might be trying to hoodwink a foreigner. She remembered that moment with Rafiki, holding the
benutis
plant against her chin. She trusted that communication more.

In the end, Max managed to buy five pounds of mangoes and twenty cans of something she hoped was edible because on the label was a picture of what looked like soup steaming in a bowl. Even though this wasn't half as much food as the station needed, it was most of the food in the market and she was inordinately proud at having completed the transaction. She packed the cans awkwardly away in her knapsack and the seller handed her the mangoes in two tired-looking plastic Home Depot bags. How, Max wondered, had these bags ended up in Rwanda?

After this, she headed back toward the church. Everywhere, the streets were empty. Turning a corner she came upon a pack of wild dogs quartering the ground, sniffing for scraps. Their hides were laced with old scars, their stride effortless and feral. They came to a halt at the sight of her, heads cocked, considering the possibilities. Her right hand holding the bags, she eased her left arm out of its sling to pick up a nearby stick. She hadn't tried to use her arm since Titus had caught her in the tree. Her shoulder still looked all wrong—pudgy and reddened—no longer clearly identifiable as a shoulder. She felt pity for it as though for some broken machinery.

In forcing her fingers to tighten around the stick, the pain didn't bother her as much as the fact that her mouth began to salivate. There was a chance she would vomit. Her throat worked up and down, fighting the need. Slowly she eased forward, moving past the dogs. Their heads turned to track her. The only sound was the rustling of her plastic bags and their panting. She held the stick up in a way she hoped looked determined. Some decision passed through them. They turned as one, like a school of fish, and arced away down an alley.

After they were gone, she put the stick and the bags down and, using her other hand, eased her arm gently back into its sling.

Everywhere were signs that people had recently been here. Clothes flapped on laundry lines above the street. A bucket lay tipped over, the earth beneath it damp. By this point, she glanced down each street before crossing it—searching for townspeople, dogs, or Kutu, she wasn't sure. In a doorway, she noticed a child's toy, a foot-long racing car ingeniously modeled from a single long piece of copper wire, the number 52 traced on the hood, the metal tires made from beer cans. Clearly a labor of love, it lay on its side, abandoned.

Staring at this toy, she understood how far she'd traveled from any situation she had experience with. Glancing all around, she began to stride fast in the direction of the meeting spot.

As she turned a corner, she came upon Mutara stepping out of a door.

He flinched at her arrival, his motions stiff. He didn't say a word. It seemed likely he'd heard some news about why most of the townspeople were gone. Standing alone on this empty street, his hands limp at his side, he looked younger than before, perhaps only early twenties. Maybe he normally seemed older because of his serious voice and the confidence he showed in the jungle. During the genocide he must have been just a child.

Searching for some way to break the stillness, she held out her Home Depot bags. Worried he might bolt at any loud noise, she whispered. “Hey, look what I got.”

She could feel his eyes on her. He stared for a long moment at this American holding up mangoes for appreciation on a dirt street from which all the residents had fled.

“Christ,” he murmured. He looked up and down the street. “Maybe the
féticheuse
helps you.” He jerked into action, leading the way, his steps a little uneven. Perhaps his awkward walk came from the shock of whatever he'd learned or maybe he'd taken a drink to bolster his nerve.

He turned down an alleyway no wider than his shoulders. Following, Max had to twist sideways to squeeze past some stacked jerricans.

She asked, “What's a
féticheuse
?”

Mutara struggled for a translation. “She has much power, might help keep you safe. Come, fast fast. We don't meet Dubois for twenty minutes. It is better you are off the street.”

The door consisted of a gray plastic tarp hung across an entrance. It crinkled noisily as Mutara pushed it out of the way. Inside, the room was dark, no windows, no lights. Blinking, she halted. Something dripped; there was the smell of rotting meat and, behind that, the musk of drying plants. By scent she recognized tobacco leaves, mint, datura, and what she thought might be belladonna. She sucked in these smells. At least here was something she understood.

In the muted light of the tarp, a yellow ruffled dress rustled toward them, the only thing gleaming in the room. For one terrifying moment she thought “Kutu,” then saw instead this was an old woman, canted to one side by age.

The
féticheuse
stepped in nearer to Max than any American would. Unnerved by the proximity, Max glanced at her while starting to back up. The woman's eyes were smoky blue with cataracts. In the light through the tarp, they gleamed like cloudy marbles. Max could stare right into them, her nerves jangling no more than when she looked at an elbow. She stopped, fascinated.

“Ask her where the townspeople went,” Max whispered, glancing over her shoulder for Mutara.

It took her a moment to spot him, standing motionless in a dark corner by the door. “Shh,” he said.

The woman's eyes were pointed off to the side, looking nowhere, her head cocked. She seemed to be listening to Max even though Max wasn't speaking. She seemed to be listening to something quite complex. Her concentration was somehow familiar, the depth of her stillness.

The woman inhaled and placed her hand on Max's face, covering her eyes. Waiting. The feel of a calloused palm.

And Max stayed still for this. The
féticheuse
didn't move her hand—the touch as calm as her dad's.

Or maybe the gorillas were changing Max.

When Max opened her eyes, the woman had moved away. She asked Mutara a question and he answered, the
click-clack
of those consonants. Nodding, the woman took a rolled-up leather mat from a plastic bag and knelt painfully down to unwind it.

Whatever was inside the mat, the old woman scooped into her hands to shake like dice and then drop. White toothpicks scattered across the leather. Max leaned closer, saw these were some type of bones. Behind her, the kerosene fridge grumbled.

A fortune-teller, she understood. Her eyes were adjusting to the light. The hacked-off leg of an animal hung from the wall dripping blood into a bucket. Clusters of drying leaves and roots dangled from nails in the ceiling. A basin of laundry sat on the beaten earth floor. Several bags lay scattered around, half packed with food and clothes.

The
féticheuse
patted the bones with her fingertips, so gently not one of them moved. She spoke and Mutara translated. Her eyes pointed off toward the wall, as emotive as knees. “No husband. No father. No children.”

Her concentration was complete, her body motionless except for her fingertips, listening to the universe spin. If she wasn't an aspie, she'd somehow earned this stillness.

“Trouble. Death. A body on the ground.”

“A human body?” asked Max.

The woman made no response.

Max found herself staring at the
féticheuse
's dress, ruffled and frivolous as a Barbie's. Because of her tilted body, the low V-neck hung slightly off center, revealing the crease of one withered dug.