Thirty Girls. Susan Minot

Akello. I was preceded by a brother, Neil, then followed by sisters Sarah and Judy, and another brother, Matthew. I am told I came out very quickly and my mother who is a nurse said it was the fastest delivery she had seen or heard of. I was anxious to get into the world and to the business of being alive. My eyes opened just then, trying to look at everything even though a baby sees nothing but blurry figures. I was looking to discover things right away. I like to think I came out quickly also to spare my mother pain. From what I have seen giving birth is a terrible thing and I do not know why women must suffer this agony to produce a child. But that is only one of the many things I do not understand. There are many many more things I do not understand than ones I do. Sometimes it seems discovery is the learning of all I do not know. For this reason I am not happy for all the time I have missed school. I want to go back as soon as this is possible.

      When we return we first visit the nurse at the clinic. She examines our scars and the sores on our feet. Our soles have become very hard. She checks our bones to see where they might have been broken and looks at our bleeding teeth and chalky tongues. We take medicine for worms and our heads are shaved of lice. The nurse will maybe take a blood test, but she will only do this if you make the request. Most girls do not know to request it because no one has told them. No one wants to frighten them about the HIV virus. They may know a little but choose not to know more. The nurses are advised not to disturb the girls further by informing them to have the blood test.

      I ask for a blood test, because my mother is a nurse so I know it is important.

      Was. Was a nurse.

      The counselors do not like to mention other things. They respect that girls are too embarrassed to talk about the rudeness to which we were subjected. Some things are too private. They do not use the word rape. They believe they are relieving us. We may talk about killing someone with a machete, but rape is too private to speak of.

      I have decided not to remember, but pictures appear to me no matter. A girl kicked in the face falls to the ground and immediately gets up, because we are marching. If you do not get up they will kill you. I try instead to think of other things: a river in the morning. I think of my best friend, Agnes, beside me, knocking me with her knee, and of the way her face changed when I said something she had thought of, too. I think of the first time I saw my boyfriend Philip on the street in Lira town and the effect it had on my body. I think about sleeping in my tree. But still come the things I do not choose to think of. The boy whom we were made to watch, for an example of what will happen if you try to escape. The rebels surrounded that boy and started jabbing at him with bayonet blades and pangas. Blood spurted where he was hit and black gobs landed on the dust. They kept cutting that boy, who was crying out. I watched with hard eyes. Chunks of skin came off and fell on the ground. I keep remembering his skin in the dirt.

      You must not want to hear such things. Who would?

      After my escape I was brought to the government building. The first person I was surprised to see was my aunt, not my mother. Aunt Karen smelling of pomade held me in her arms and cried. She was crying hard.

      Your mother cannot come, she said, wiping at the tears. Then I received the shock I was not expecting.

      She got very sick, Esther. She had the cancer.

      What could I say to that? So I said, When?

      Aunt Karen sobbed. It was very bad.

      And now? I somehow knew the answer.

      She could not get better. Aunt Karen squeezed her eyes and shook her head. Esther, your mother has died.

      I thought I had gone beyond what I could imagine with the rebels, but it turned out there was more for me to go. Can it be true? I said.

      It is funny, the things we say. Of course it was true. I am afraid it is so.

      But for me, death was not so surprising, even when it was your mother.

      When?

      Aunt Karen kept crying, crying. Three weeks it has been.

      I have come too late, I said.

      I am not permitted to go home. When you are abducted you are required to stay in the rehabilitation center for some weeks after you return. So it was at Kiryandongo that my family came to see me. Lira is an hour away by car and they would find a ride. They sent word when they were coming so I waited for that day.

      When they arrived at the bare yard of the entrance area, I had the feeling of being in a movie when aliens take over a person’s body so their eye sockets are yellow, a sign that the people inside are gone. My family looked that way to me. I thought, My mother dying has changed everyone and they are no longer the same inside.

      When they were closer they looked as they were before. Neil my big brother lay his loose hand on my shoulder and greeted me by name, but he looked to his fingers not to my face. I greeted my father.

      Yes, it is you, he said. I think there were tears in his eyes. I think we all had my mother in mind and were not thinking perhaps of what had happened to me. I am, after all, still here.

      We went to sit in the shade of the dorm. They brought me flatbread they knew I liked. My sister Sarah sat on one side. I saw that Judy had changed the most and appeared older—she was now eight—and Matthew was not as plump as before and his front teeth were gone. Aunt Karen sat on my other side and patted my arm. She was dressed up, wearing her wedge sandals. She was not crying this time, just talking. She asked how was it here and was I getting enough to eat. She said our grandmother Nonni could not come, but I would see her when I was able to visit home. Nothing was interesting to me. I saw she was acting like the mother of this family. My mother did not think her sister was a very good mother. Aunt Karen was more interested in painting her nails and straightening her hair. This day she even looked excited to be in her sister’s place.

      My father stayed still and quiet after they parked his wheelchair. He sat, faced to the side not looking in my direction. When he did glance at me his eyes closed as if it hurt. Was he thinking of what I had been through? Was he thinking of his wife who was now dead? I do not know.

      In the family we liked to hear the story of their meeting. On a Christmas holiday my mother came home to Lira and went with Aunt Karen to the army dance. My mother saw my father there. She knew who he was. His brother Robert went around with Aunt Karen, but my mother had become a Kampala girl, working in the hospital there, and wasn’t interested in a soldier from Kitgum.

      Then, in 1981, with Milton Obote as president, the Acholi and Langi were permitted in the army. Since Idi Amin, the Acholi were not. Idi Amin was against the Acholi. His men had even killed my father’s parents, who both died at the massacre in Bucoro.

      With Museveni, our president now, if you are Acholi you are not so welcome in the army either. Many presidents do not look after the Acholi and Langi, because we are in the north, and some people believe it is our history to be persecuted.

      I asked my mother what my father said to her that night, even knowing the story. She would shrug. My father asked my mother to dance and she said no, and he said, good, he did not want to dance either. My mother wondered if he was nice or mean. He told her he remembered seeing her when she was young but she did not remember that time and he asked her where she lived and what her work at the hospital was like. Most men she knew talked about themselves only. He said he liked the way she was holding her hands. You can tell a lot about a person by looking at the hands, he said. My mother has long hands. What can you tell about me? she said. It is private, he said. She thought he was being rude. Maybe he would tell her when he knew her better. Maybe you will never know me better, she says. I think I will, he says. Because I’m going to marry you.

      My mother laughed and said they had better dance if they were going to get married. So they did, and after they got married he told her what he saw in her hands. They belonged to the mother of his children.

      My mother moved back to Lira. They married in June, and my brother Neil arrived six months later. I arrived next. When his army term was up, my father did not re-enlist and instead opened an auto repair shop with his friend Jameson. He’d learned mechanics in the army and liked motors and was good at solving