Thirty Girls (33 page)

Jane stood up.

T
HE LADY CAME
and sat beside me. You were surviving, she said. Her arm moved around me.

I hoped to let this comfort me.

Sometimes when you worry about other people it doesn’t help you survive. It sounds to me as if you have been very brave, Esther.

A spear came into me. I did not see I was brave. Maybe I had lived, but I knew I was bad. The thought I was brave was a new thought. I looked at her blue dress beside me. She comforted me with her arm. I had never touched against a white person this way. We remained there. Soon we were talking to one another.

J
ANE KNEW
she was crossing a line. The journalistic code barred involvement. The foreign element of yourself altered the scene and the integrity of truth.

Too bad, she thought, I won’t only listen. She no longer was the neutral recorder. Listening to Esther had taken her past that. She wasn’t a
journalist anyway and they could have her integrity. When she put her arm around her, Esther did not jump away as she had the first time. She smelled sweetly of sweat.

Esther was looking down at her hands, still shaking. I have done terrible things, she said.

Yes, Jane said. She was breathing in a deliberate way to keep from crying. She remembered in reading about trauma how it was important not to contradict a person in recovery. You cannot take away what has happened, you cannot take away the bad feelings about it. Reassuring a person it wasn’t their fault does not help. The last thing she, or anyone else for that matter, needs is to be told how you ought not to feel something, or that what had happened was not as bad as it felt.

Esther’s head was tipped frozenly forward. Jane kept her arm around her. Her head was close and soon resting on Jane’s shoulder. Jane felt the faint trembling.

But you’re not doing terrible things now, Jane said. You are yourself again. No one is controlling you now. She did not use a cheering-up tone. She was just stating facts.

I am hoping this, Esther said. She spoke from the back of her throat so weakly it sounded like the squeaks of a small animal. Then she started to mumble. Jane couldn’t make out the words. Whatever she was saying needed to come out. She moved her hand on Esther’s shoulder now and then, encouraging her. Maybe the camera would pick up her words, maybe not. They were beyond words now. Esther’s head leaned more heavily and Jane felt the close-cropped hair against her chin.

Yes, Jane said. Yes. And Esther muttered on.

T
HE MAN REACHED UP
and turned the camera off and the lady stayed sitting with me. We stayed there for some time. I was being cleared out, not in a hollow way, but a filled-up way. That ache in my throat had dropped and now spread across my chest. The feeling of her arms was like sleeping in a safe place without needing to know where you are.

She said she had met Sister Giulia. Had she told me that? No. Sister Giulia was well. She had been to St. Mary’s and spoke with Teresa and
Beatrice and Sharon. Up close the lady’s hair in places was the color of corn silk. I looked at her necklace. She saw me looking and touched it.

It’s a dragonfly, she said. My sister and I give them to each other. We used to swim in a pond that had hundreds of dragonflies where we grew up and so we like them.

Yes, I said. I like to see them also.

It was a coincidence, but I said so because I really do like them.

She touched the charm, trying to see it. Dragonflies barely walk, she said, but flying they are one of the fastest insects in the world. Which is funny.

I looked at her white fingers. Yes.

And other funny things. Their eyes touch each other.

My own eyes felt there were stones on them; I was feeling a change happening.

They can propel themselves in different directions, she said. Up, down, forward, back, side to side. Unlike other flies.

I have watched them do this, I said.

In some places dragonflies stand for strength and courage. Like you have, Esther, she said. She was looking at my mouth. I looked at hers. There was a crooked tooth. I looked in front of us to her blue skirt.

I would like to give it to you, she said. You will take it?

I stayed still, waiting. Was this allowed? She took her arm away from me and reached to the back of her neck and unhitched it and brought it out like a hammock between us. Her gray eyes had the question for me. Yes?

I was surprised. It is okay, I said.

Here, let me put it.

Fastening it, her fingers touched the back of my neck like an insect herself. She let go and the silver chain and the charm now lay on my T-shirt. I looked down, but the charm was high under my chin, so I could see only a part. I felt where it was and felt the sharp silver wings. Thank you, I said.

You are very welcome. Thank you.

I thought, I wonder how long I will keep this necklace before it is lost. They also stand for happiness, she said. Her voice caught. The word
happiness
made us both look away.

We saw Christine and Emily approaching from across the yard. Emily
would speak next, and the lady pushed herself up with her hands and stood to greet her.

T
HE VISITORS WERE INVITED
to sit on benches under a feathery acacia at the edge of a circle of packed dirt. At one side girls stood in a cluster of long royal-blue skirts with pleated yellow peplums and halters crisscrossing strong backs. Each ankle had a yellow fringe wrapped around it. A few boys in T-shirts were poised beside drums stretched with animal skin, or holding hollow gourds the color of army helmets.

The drumming began and the gourds started clacking. The girls shuffled forward in lines—their feet going heel-toe, heel-toe. They took short steps, then hammered their heels double-time. Shoulders rippled like cloth. In the front of a line, a girl biting a whistle blew a sharp note and everyone turned, shuffling in a different direction. Another whistle and their torsos tipped forward, heads to the side, extended and hovering, seemingly disconnected from the body wavering behind. An elbow jutted up and pumped up and down birdlike, all in sync. The dancers’ faces were placid. They appeared hypnotized, gyrating their hips in minute circles and stamping madly, sending off puffs of dust. Jane watched, transfixed by the beauty and overtaken by the beat. She thought, everyone should always be dancing. She spotted Esther. She was moving in a solid way, head level, shoulders twitching, in perfect time with the other girls, and like them with a faraway look.

One girl broke from the line and sashayed to where a group of boys stood bobbing. She danced near and stopped in front of a boy, selecting him to step forward. She shuffled in a circle around him, keeping a chin affixed to her shoulder, not meeting his eye. When he reached out to touch her sash she immediately turned and danced back to her line.

Another girl danced over to the visitors and took Lana’s hand. Another reached for Harry, but he shook his head, keeping his elbows on his knees. Lana kicked off her sandals and moved into the circle, stamping her feet, her fringed skirt shaking. She rolled her hips, not as rapidly as the girls, but in the same motion. Her long arms stretched out. The
dancers watched her, clapping, and for the first time Jane saw the faces of all the girls smiling.

T
HE LADY CAME
to bid me goodbye. I know you will be fine, Esther Akello, she said. She thanked me and we shook hands.

I touched my dragonfly and she nodded. I watched her leather sandals walking away. They were white from being covered with our dust.

Holly and I stood as Mr. Charles accompanied them to the truck. I watched them but kept seeing Mary’s head in the river appearing then disappearing. Since dancing the blood under my skin was moving like a big chain twisting through my body. I felt my own head as if it would explode.

T
HE VISITORS DRIFTED
toward the parking area.

Lana held the hand of one of the dancers. You leave Lana here with me, said the girl.

Jane was the last to say goodbye to Charles Oringu. You tell them how it is in Africa, he said.

Yes I will. Thank you for having us.

Thank you. We will be very grateful to Mr. Don for his contribution, he said.

His what?