Thirty Girls (19 page)

Don immediately pulled Lana toward the car, having respect for authority. Pierre and Jane stepped back from the railing, hesitating. Harry, however, did not move, and continued to gaze at the frothy water, hands deep in his pockets, pretending he didn’t hear. Having kayaked, he was probably assessing the white water.

The soldier with the gun frowned at Pierre. No pictures, he said. Pierre held his hands away from the camera hanging from around his neck, as if he’d never had any intention of using it.

Away from there, the soldier called to Harry, who turned with a blank look.

For God’s sakes, Don called. Come on.

Everyone, including the soldiers, regarded Don with surprise.

Harry turned slowly and sauntered back to the truck. Jane watched the way he walked. Don’t like being told what to do, he said, starting the truck.

Don said, When a guy has a gun—

Haya. Twende, Lana said, shutting him up. Pierre rested his camera on the window and started clicking pictures as they drove away.

They crossed the bridge into the north.

Immediately the road deteriorated. The land got hilly. The bush seemed to lose its green density and become pale. An occasional acacia tree appeared, umbrellalike, out of the ruffled trees.

Slowly was not how Harry was driving. The truck slammed deep in the potholes, the passengers flew up and landed. Don asked him to cool it and Harry mildly responded that they’d make shit-time if he did. Techno music pulsed from the dusty dashboard.

The side of the road crumbled like pie crust, and on either side on the smooth red paths people traveled, women with huge bushels of sticks on their heads and babies on their backs. Only men, it seemed, rode bicycles, sometimes with a passenger side saddle on the bar in front of the seat or balancing a mattress across the handlebars. Faces turned in slow motion to watch the truck go by. Goats pulled at leashes or ran free. Small children held the hands of even smaller ones. A screen of haze infused the air with a silver light. No other cars appeared.

Can you turn this the fuck down? Don said in the front seat. My eardrums are being destroyed. He reached for the dial and Harry stopped him, grinning.

Don’t you want the driver to be happy? he said.

I’ll drive, Don said, if we can listen to something decent.

The light is strange, Pierre said, head tipped at the window. No shadows.

It’s the smoke, Jane said. Puffs rose out of the trees like dialogue bubbles from villages hidden from sight.

They’re burning down the forest so they can cook their food, Harry said.

Please, Don said, and reached for the dial.

But this is the good part. Harry shifted gears climbing a hill. He turned up the volume.

It’s all exactly the same, Don shouted, covering his eyes.

Poor Don. Lana ruffled his hair. Missing so much, she said. He looked at her; they held a gaze.

Jane watched out the window. A woman in a fancy green dress with bare feet looked to be in a sort of trance, walking with empty hands. For a moment Jane felt the aura of her world then they were gone, leaving her behind.

They drove on; the streams of people thinned. Lana fell asleep, unfazed by bumps or noise. Her head was flung back, chin raised, against Pierre’s shoulder. Her dark hair swirled around her face like an anemone. Don kept looking back at her, uncertain. The music changed, becoming slow and melodic. Jane recognized the music, but couldn’t have named whether it was Beethoven or Mozart.

Don appeared relieved, then found something else to worry about. Should we still be here on this road? he said.

The paths were empty of people.

We’re where we should be, Harry said.

Jane looked at the back of his head in front of her, driving. He had on his hat with the zebra band, his dark hair blowing around at the brim. She could see his hand on the steering wheel and past it the road in front, red-rimmed, making a triangle up the hill ahead.

His head turned to the side, and she saw his profile from behind, his dark sunglasses hiding his eyes and his flat cheek below and the swell of his mouth and something leapt up inside, startling her.

She stared. The humid wind blew, the red path blurred by. A shocked feeling moved liquidly through her arms. Harry, she thought, Harry. Silver leaves flickered in the bush, the world out there seemed to go on forever.

She felt she was floating. The music added to the pleasant feeling of disturbance. Then, as if sensing something in the shadows, she felt a fear. Harry was not the right person for this feeling.

She stared out the window, spellbound. The truck shifted into low gear, revving up another hill toward the white sky.

She must prepare herself. There would be an end and pain coming. Everyone always said that: Prepare yourself. They also said, Protect yourself. How one protected oneself she hadn’t a clue.

She thought of seeing Harry standing on the lawn outside his parents’ house, legs apart with his pants rolled up, arms crossed, looking intently at the sky. She felt the hit of him and at the same minute saw the end. They had hardly started.

Maybe she was wrong, maybe it would be okay. Something might happen about which she had no idea, something good. It was possible. The music stopped when the tape clicked off, and it was quiet. One could hope.

They arrived in Lira at dusk. Flower beds filled the circle of a small rotary at the bottom of Main Street. They pulled over and asked a man wrapped in a blanket if he could tell them where Chain Market was.

He stared with wonder at the passengers inside. Just there, he said, pointing vaguely up the road, possibly at a blue building. Main Street sloped up a hill between low buildings with dark trees encroaching at the end. They drove up and turned onto an unpaved alley alongside the blue building. In back was a long concrete porch where a group of people sat together, making one dark shape in the dusk.

This is it, Jane said.

A woman’s silhouette detached itself and came forward down the concrete steps. She wore a long dress and had loose curls to her shoulders. She stood waiting as everyone unpiled from the truck.

Jane approached the woman who held out her hands. So you have come, the woman said. She said it as if she had not been sure.

Jane grasped her hands.

We have been waiting for you, the woman said.

I hope not too long, Jane said.

No. Just five hours. She said this with no irony whatsoever.

A few months earlier Jane had gone to a dinner party in New York. She easily might not have gone. She was in and out of the city. In fact, she tried to be out of town as much as possible, en route somewhere. She preferred not to be in the familiar life.

The dinner was in a downtown loft of a couple she knew, a journalist and a filmmaker. Large windows looked out on the cold autumn night where steam rose from grates in the street. Inside the candlelight pooled in the glasses of red wine. The dinner was being given for a woman from Uganda. Her name was Grace Dollo. Her trip had been sponsored by a human rights organization, some members of which also were sitting at the table. The next night she was being honored at their annual fund-raising benefit. She’d come to advertise her cause. Grace Dollo was in her early forties. She had a handsome face with deep dimples. She wore a brown and yellow flowered sundress reaching to her ankles and looked more relaxed than everyone else there.

At the end of the dinner everyone’s attention turned to the woman. Forks were put down. People sat back in their chairs. Some looked at her. Others stared into their laps, perhaps finding it hard to face her as they heard the story she told.

Grace spoke with a calm self-possession, not trying to convince these strangers of anything, but instructive and bright, telling them in a matter-of-fact tone about children being abducted from their boarding school in the north of Uganda. Her daughter was one of these children. Jane was mesmerized. There was a silence when Grace finished.

Finally someone said, Do we know about this?

Grace Dollo regarded the person with a blank face, unable to answer the question. The thought took hold of Jane: Something must done about this, maybe I can do something.

That night as she walked home she had moved on from
Maybe I can do something
to
I will do something
. She pictured the girls being led away from their dormitory in the night and imagined the thirty girls the nun
was forced to leave behind.… The image did not leave her. She crosssed Canal to the empty region of lower Sixth Avenue, walking up to the busier stretch in the West Village where people filled the sidewalks in Saturday night clusters. Grace’s story stayed before her like a great bonfire making small shadows of everything, including her small troubles.

It had been a long time since she had been penetrated by something like this.
I will do something
, she told herself,
I will help
. She could feel the wine she’d drunk, both thickening her mind and also focusing her. She knew how easily these resolutions slipped away. One made promises to oneself; then in the morning, off they slid to that place where good intentions went. She was determined not to let that happen and to hold onto this one, to someone else’s dilemma, not her old tiresome ones. The impulse registered deep within her and seemed to become solid. Her usual habit of undercutting a new thought—really, what difference does it make?—did not break it.
I will
, she told herself.
I will
.

She walked home in a kind of hypnotic state, feeling more calm and directed than she had in a long time.

I am so sorry you’ve been waiting, Jane said. It took longer than we thought. She followed Grace up the steps, turning back to the others to show a mortified face. That’s terrible you were waiting so long. Really I’m so sorry.

Come meet the parents, Grace said.

Yes.

They are here.

There were about ten women and one man. Jane shook each person’s hand. They offered her a crate and she sat. She saw Don’s figure wander off toward Main Street; he was either not interested or unsure if he was being invited. Lana, Pierre and Harry sat on the edge of the porch and listened.

A silhouette said, First you are wondering if your daughter is alive or dead, then you worry, if she is alive, does she have enough food? Is she being beaten?

It is hard to enjoy your food when your daughter is starving, said another voice.

Imagine not seeing your daughter for months, another woman said. It causes sickness in you. I am the mother of Helen.

My daughter is Agnes, said another. It was her birthday just now. Each year I would make the same cake. I made it this year, but she could not eat it.

There was a murmur of understanding.

Only last year, the woman beside her said, my Lily was unwrapping dolls under the Christmas tree.

Now our children have children themselves, Agnes’s mother said. Rebel children.

Louise is expecting, Grace said. Jane was surprised to hear this; she had not mentioned this in New York. I know that if she brings this child home I must not hate this child. This is hard for me.

Jane and Lana exchanged a look of alarm.

The man, sitting upright as a schoolboy, had gray spots at his temples. This is Pere Ben, Grace said. His daughter is Charlotte.

The week before, I lost my mother, he said. Then I lost my daughter, and five months later I lost my job.

He and Grace laughed.

We made a trip to Sudan to find them, he said. Grace nodded, eyes closed. He would tell this story.

Arrangements had been made for the parents to meet the rebels. A doctor who had treated Kony—for a urinary tract infection—organized the meeting and received payment, though he assured the parents he was not on the rebels’ side. He would have done such things for free, he said, but these matters took time …

The only reason Kony agreed to the meeting, he said, was because St. Mary’s had gotten the attention of the world and Kony might defend himself and say, You see? We are not the monsters they say we are.

Two of the sisters, Giulia and Rosario, went in the group with Pere Ben and Grace. They flew by airplane to the border of Sudan. The first time, they waited there, but the rebels did not come. Another time later, they made the trip again, and this time the rebels arrived to meet them.

Jane was struck once more by how mildly people accepted when plans were thwarted.

The parents were brought to a deserted compound. See? the rebels
said. No children here. This camp is abandoned for a long time. Fires, however, were still smoking, and wash hung on lines and bushes.

When the parents asked to see Kony they were told the next day. But Kony never met with anyone and he was not to meet with them now. The next day, returning to the same camp, they found it swarming with people. There were hundreds of children. They were sure the girls of St. Mary’s must be among them. When the parents came near, the children would run. Each parent was also trying to slip away from the guides. Pere Ben followed some children hurrying down a path.

Jane was writing in her notebook, unable to see the words on the dark paper. Don reappeared and sat leaning against Lana. Pere Ben’s voice came out of the dark now, unattached to a person, the voice of the group.

One girl about nine kept looking back at him. She stopped with a few other children and he squatted down to her. She put her hand over her eyes, the others turned their faces. A rebel came up and started kicking the children. Stop, Pere Ben said. Let me speak to these girls. The rebel glanced to the doctor who had arranged the meeting. He was saying to allow it. The rebel stepped back, angry.

The children stood before me, Pere Ben said. Do you know the girls of Aboke? I asked. Each refused to talk. Their eyes said they had been told to remain quiet. If you tell me what we are asking you I promise we will take you away with us, I said. It was because I felt Charlotte was nearby that I said this. The children glanced to the commander standing with the sisters. Other rebels were around but not near. Another face showed some interest in me, a girl maybe eleven. I focused on these two. The youngest still would not speak, but she looked as if she might try. She stared at my shoes. The older one looked straight at me. The boldness in her face made me think she had not been in captivity for so long. Her eyes say, Are you sure? Before God, I tell her. I commit myself to freeing you if you tell me this thing.