Running the Rift (13 page)

M
ARKET GOERS CREATED
a congestion through which the truck barely moved. In the dying afternoon, hawkers called out bargains, packed up unsold tools and clothing, used appliances held together with hope
and string. Flies swarmed around carcasses of meat. The aromas of overripe fruit and gamy animal flesh made Jean Patrick queasy. A bicycle taxi swerved into their path, and Uwimana braked to avoid it. The woman on the back loosed a stream of insults in their direction.

The radio droned; the truck engine whined and coughed. Their bodies jostled together from the potholed road. Every now and then, Mama made a comment meant to cheer them up, pointing out a man who stumbled drunkenly, a woman scolding her husband on the street, but the day's events had left Jean Patrick numb. He could not shake the fear that the checkpoint's delay had tipped the balance against Mathilde's survival.

“I
MUST REPAY
you,” Jean Patrick said. “I was so stupid to forget my card.” They sat in the truck at the trailhead. The sun had plunged into the lake, drawing with it the last of the day's heat.

Mama reached into her purse. “I have some money here. Maybe enough.”

“It was a small sum. You had more important things to think about.”

“How much did it cost to make me Hutu for one minute?” Jean Patrick rubbed his arms against the chill; his legs prickled with cold. What would it cost to make him Hutu forever?

“I didn't count.” Uwimana sighed. “Before the Belgians measured our noses and sealed our ethnicity forever, we didn't need our indangamuntu to tell us who we were.” He pronounced the word as if he could barely stand it on his tongue.

Mama shook her head. “We can't go on blaming the Belgians forever,” she said. “Now it is the Hutu themselves who brand us. You saw the disgust on those soldiers' faces.”

Uwimana's gaze followed a bug on the windshield. “Can they prove we are two different tribes as they say, as we are taught in school? Isn't it possible that differences of feature came about as a function of livelihood and geography? After all, we have a common language and share the same original myths.” He took out his card. Turning to his photo, he tapped the place where it said
UBWOKO/ETHNIE
. “This word here, the Kinyarwanda one, what does it mean?”

Jean Patrick puzzled over the question. “
Ubwoko
? It means ethnicity.”

“Ah, Jean Patrick, you are mistaken. It was the Belgians who gave it this meaning. Before colonial days, the Kinyarwanda word
ubwoko
meant only clan. We had no word in our language for ethnicity.” Turning the key in the ignition, he shook his head. “Enough lecturing. Stay with your family. School can wait until Mathilde comes home.”

Reaching over Jean Patrick, Mama clasped Uwimana's hands. “Nothing we can say will be enough to thank you,” she said.

Jean Patrick gathered the blankets and stepped into the evening. “You saved us this afternoon,” he said. He helped his mother from the truck, and together they climbed the path.

No matter what Jean Patrick decided about the Hutu card—if it was even his decision to make—he wanted his family to be safe. Could Coach promise him that? He took his mother's arm and felt the strong, steady rhythm of her body.

Above them, a noisy troop of colobus monkeys leapt one after another through the high umuyove branches as if following a well-marked road, each flared mane a white flash against the purple dusk. Jean Patrick wondered if he could read the future from their path as the umupfumu divined events from animal grease. The meaning of the monkeys' flight eluded him, as did his future. As did the words that would come from his mouth when Coach asked him to choose between Hutu and Tutsi.

J
EAN
P
ATRICK TOOK
his radio from the shelf and began his nightly search, moving the antenna, wiggling the dial, pressing his ear to the speaker. Zachary sat cross-legged beside him. The lantern swooped their shadows onto the wall.

“I miss Mathilde,” Zachary said.

“I miss her, too. So much.”

“Will she really come home tomorrow?”

“Of course.” Jean Patrick moved the antenna left, right. He was ready to give up when he heard a faint signal through the static.

“Eh! I think I found it!” He tapped the dial, and the static became a song. Although the station was not clear enough to catch all the words, Jean Patrick recognized the old praise song for the ancient Inkotanyi, the soldiers who had defended the first Tutsi kings.

That was…,
a voice said, fading out again. Then Jean Patrick heard,
Muhabura, station of RPF-Inkotanyi, broadcasting from free Rwanda.

“It's them!” Jean Patrick felt Roger's breath in his ear, his fingertips on his shoulder.

The broadcaster launched into a story about the meaning of the RPF struggle. His voice was calm and steady, not like Radio Rwanda, always shouting, shouting. His Kinyarwanda sounded softer, his accents in slightly different places, and Jean Patrick realized he must have grown up in Uganda.

Hutu and Tutsi, hear us: we are all Rwandans. Inkotanyi are fighting to bring peace for everyone.
Jean Patrick wondered how fighting a war could bring peace.

“This is what you're always looking for? RPF?” Zachary put his fingers in his ears. “Turn it off. I don't want to die.”

“What nonsense is this? How can a radio station kill you?”

“Our teacher told us RPF will all be pushed into the Nyabarongo River, and so will anyone who loves them.”

“She said that? Did you tell Uncle?”

“I didn't want him to know I was afraid.”

“Don't worry. No one's going to push us into the river.”

Zachary pulled his sweater close. Radio Muhabura faded into static.

“There. It's gone. Now go to sleep,” Jean Patrick picked a stalk of grass from Zachary's sweater and tucked the blanket around him. “Don't ever forget—I'm here to protect you. I promise.”

Zachary curled up again inside the blanket. Soon his breathing slowed and deepened. Jean Patrick remained awake. How could he keep such an oath? He was afraid if he let his watchfulness fade, the Hand of God would steal Mathilde and his brothers, too.

F
ULGENCE AND THE
rest of Uncle's night crew had already come ashore when Jean Patrick and Uncle reached the lake. “Any news of Mathilde?” Fulgence asked.

Uncle shook his head, worry lined deep in his face. “How was the night?”

Fulgence sucked his teeth. The Saint Christopher medal he wore around
his neck twirled as he moved, casting off tiny spears of light. “We could have stayed home.”

Jean Patrick and Uncle went to check their lines. “Hardly worth a morning's work,” Uncle said when the last one came up empty. “But yesterday, diving, I found an old propeller. Maybe it's enough to pay for the hospital.” A brown kite sliced the lake surface and emerged with a small tilapia in its claws. Uncle laughed. “He's doing better than we are. Let's troll where it's deep and see if our luck improves.”

While Jean Patrick paddled, Uncle beat the water with a long pole to bring the fish to the surface. Jean Patrick waited for the right moment to speak about the Olympics, the Hutu card.

“I've been thinking,” Uncle said, speaking in sync to the pole's
slap-slap.
“Maybe it's time to cross to Burundi. My sister Spéciose would help us.” Diamonds of water sparkled on his back. “Your mama told me about the checkpoint. Things can only get worse.”

Jean Patrick baited a hook and cast his line. Just to their south, Lake Kivu funneled into a narrow channel to feed the Rusizi River. They need only paddle until the current caught them. Uncle's muscles flexed with each strike of the pole. There would be no right time to speak.

“With everything that happened, I never got to tell you,” Jean Patrick began. “On Saturday I ran fast enough to be in the Olympics.”

Uncle Emmanuel dropped the pole into the boat. “The Olympics?”

“Yego.” It sounded like a story in a book, not something that had happened to him.

Uncle whooped. “You're going to the Olympics, and until now you say nothing?”

“It's not quite certain. What if I told you I needed a Hutu card to make the team, and the burgomaster could get me one? That would make it easier for me to get into university and to travel as well. What would you tell me to do?”

“Look. You've caught a fish, and you don't even see.” Emmanuel jerked Jean Patrick's line. “You must take the card, of course.”

These were not the words Jean Patrick had expected. Hearing them, he understood that he had wanted Uncle to forbid him, to take the burden
of decision from his shoulders. “How can I? I'd be betraying my ethnie. Turning my back on you.”

“We all know who you are; a piece of paper changes nothing. If a Hutu card means you can compete in the Olympics, then seize the chance with our blessings. You are taking all Tutsi with you, not leaving your family behind.” He picked up his paddle. “Let's go back, eh? We can't sell these tiny fish at the market, and I want to be there when Mathilde comes home.”

Jean Patrick threw himself into each stroke. He felt the resistance of the paddle, watched the rainbow arc flung from its surface. The forward motion calmed his mind. It was only when he looked up, sensing the change as the bottom shoaled, that he noticed the truck parked beside the dock. Uwimana stood by the shore in his rumpled suit, eyes shaded against the sun. Jean Patrick knew instantly what he had come to say. Sometimes all the prayers, all the bargains offered up to Imana, escaped His outstretched arms. Sometimes love was not enough to cradle a sister safely inside the sphere of life. Uwimana had come to tell them Mathilde was dead.

T
HEY BURIED
M
ATHILDE
beside her grandparents in the family cemetery at the border of the compound, her grandparents on one side, her baby sister and her uncle—Jean Patrick's namesake—on the other. Mama and Esther surrounded her grave with flowers. Jean Patrick tossed purple blossoms of jacaranda onto the coffin. Emmanuel fell to his knees and wept. It was the first time Jean Patrick had seen him cry, and it unsettled him, as if human weakness had only now turned his uncle into flesh and blood. He remembered then how his father's body had terrified him, and he remembered who had given him the strength to say good-bye. He touched Uncle gently on the shoulder.

“When Papa died, Mathilde made me tell him I loved him, so he could find peace.” He blinked to stop the tears. “I'm glad now, because those were the last words I said to Mathilde.”

Uncle Emmanuel gave a little laugh. “Mathilde was always clever. I can't remember the last time I told her I loved her, but I know she understood.” He rose and bent over the grave, and Jean Patrick saw the same delicate arch of spine he had watched so often in Mathilde, like a crane
bending to water. “She made me so proud,” Emmanuel said. “I always knew she would go to university—just as I know it for you.”

A shiver of wind passed through the trees, and suddenly, Jean Patrick felt Mathilde's fingers on his shoulders. He knew she was whispering to him that she was all right. She was pushing him forward, telling him to go on with the business of living.

T
HE FOLLOWING WEEK
, for no reason any of them could explain, Zachary found Papa's inyambo steer dead among the grasses on the edge of the cemetery. They buried him close by, his beads around his neck. Jean Patrick did not say aloud what he believed, that there was more grief in the world than the tired old steer could withstand. In his thinking mind, he understood this carried no substance, but in his heart, his soul, he knew it to be so. A stream of sunlight fell across Mathilde's grave, and he thought of Ukubo kw'Imana, the Arm of God, coming to lift her to paradise. Watching the dance of light, his skin prickled. He fell to his knees and begged Imana's forgiveness for the thought that came into his head. Since his bargain had not been accepted, he was free to take the Hutu card.

T
HE DAY BEFORE
the term ended, Uwimana called Jean Patrick into his office. There on the desk was an identity card, open to the photo Coach had taken the day before Nationals. It was stamped over with the official seal. He recognized his mother's high forehead, his father's narrow nose, his own upthrust, confident chin. In the space marked
UBWOKO/ETHNIE,
all groups but Hutu were crossed out.

Jean Patrick picked up the card. The lie burned his fingers. “How can I take this?” He waited for Uwimana to respond, but he seemed distracted by something outside, so Jean Patrick continued. “How can I be suddenly Hutu when every part of my face says Tutsi?”

Uwimana turned his gaze from the window. “If the burgomaster says it, then it is so.”

“What about my registration with the commune?”

Uwimana pantomimed crumpling a piece of paper and throwing it away. “Disappeared. You've been reborn.” Hands pressed together, he leaned forward. “One more thing. Tell no one but your mother and your
uncle about the card. Present it at checkpoints as if you've had it all your life, even if it's a soldier or policeman who has known you since you were small, but no one else must know. And keep your old card. We plan, but only Imana decides.”

“Umuhutu cyangwa umutusi?” Jean Patrick said. “Hutu or Tutsi—which am I now?”

“Think of it this way. Your identity is the key that opens a lock. At this moment in Rwanda, all locks open with a Hutu key.”

A raucous highlife tune came from the yard, and Jean Patrick saw what had stolen Uwimana's attention. It was a group of students sporting Hutu Power caps. A radio perched on a student's shoulder.

“Today you are Tutsi. When you go to Butare to train with your coach this weekend, you will be Hutu. What a marvelous power you have now,” Uwimana said, his focus on the boys. “One day Hutu, the next Tutsi. All according to your needs.” Uwimana took off his glasses and rubbed them vigorously with his handkerchief as if they were impossibly stained.