Running the Rift (27 page)

“She really is your Christmas present.”

“I couldn't ask for a better one.” Jonathan sorted through a pile of letters, slitting the flaps with a wooden letter opener tipped with a carving of a giraffe. The kettle whistled, and he poured water into the teapot.

“Should you really let her come?”

Jonathan stared at Jean Patrick. “
Let
her come? J. P., in America, women make up their own minds.” He removed a newspaper from a manila envelope and snapped it open. “Sorry. That was rude; I shouldn't have said it. Anyway, I've been missing her like crazy, and the CIA or the embassy or whoever her NGO consulted assured us the situation in Rwanda is stable.”

Stable? Jean Patrick watched the changing clouds out the window. Wedges of slate-colored sky sliced their bellies. As stable as the weather in rainy season, he thought.

Of course U.S. agencies didn't understand. Even Jonathan, after what he had witnessed in Kigali, could not begin to understand. Rwanda's reality remained carefully hidden from foreigners so they could continue to float on the calm waters, conjured up for their benefit, above the turbulent sea Rwandans swam.

Jonathan poured tea. He no longer had to ask, spooning three sugars into Jean Patrick's cup. “Sorry, all I have is chemical milk.”

Jean Patrick wrinkled his nose. “That's OK. I can drink it black.”

“I am not quite man enough,” Jonathan said, adding white powder from a plastic tub to his tea. He flattened the newspaper on top of the letters and paperwork. “I hate to divide my attention like this, but it's a newsletter from a French friend in Kigali. I just want to skim it before my next class.”

“About Susanne, I only meant…” Jean Patrick searched his mind for words to complete the sentence.

“Dear God.” Jonathan suddenly sat upright. His neck and face flushed, and he looked dumbly into Jean Patrick's eyes. For an instant, Jean Patrick thought he must have said or done something terribly wrong, but then he saw the tears. “Do you know anything about this?” Jonathan handed him the paper.

Stunned by the words, Jean Patrick dropped it into his lap.

“Did I get this right?” Jonathan asked. “Did someone bury a mine on a path where children walk to school? And the children
stepped
on it?”

Too numbed to speak, Jean Patrick nodded.

“How can one human being do this to another? To
children,
for God's sake: six- and seven-year old
children,
” Jonathan said. He cradled his head in his hands. “The cold, calculated brutality—to camouflage the damned thing with leaves.”

Jean Patrick wished he could tell Jonathan that he was mistaken, that his translation was faulty, that twenty-one innocent children had not died. But he could not. Words unraveled; belief came unhinged. It had happened in Kigali, but it could have been anywhere. It could have been his sisters, his cousins.
“Iyo nyamunsi yaciye ishumi, nta mubyeyi uyihisha ikibando,”
he quoted.

“Which means?”

“Something like, ‘When destiny cuts the link in the fence, no mother can hide her child.'”

Jonathan nodded slowly. Tears brimmed in his eyes, but he did not wipe them away. Instead his hands fluttered in a random fashion across the scatter on his desktop.

The clamor of students came to Jean Patrick slowly. He looked at his watch. “Sorry. I have a physics class.”

“One second, before you go.” Jonathan looked like a little boy pleading with his mother. “Do you think I should write Susanne and tell her not to come?”

“I'm sure it's OK. It's nothing against white people.” As if his reassurance could hold the fence against death's machete. “I really have to go. If you want, we can talk about this later.”

“Yes,” Jonathan said. “I'd appreciate that very much.” The words fell one at a time from his lips. “But who could have done this? Interahamwe? RPF?” He sighed. “I can't keep them straight, who stands for what.”

Jean Patrick stood by the door. “These guys—they don't know themselves what they stand for, but I don't think it could be RPF. What you hear on the news about them—it's not like that. I'll come back after class, if you have time.”

Jonathan stared out the window. “Hey—come for dinner,” he said to the glass.

Jean Patrick's limbs ached. All he wanted was to retreat to his bed and fall into a dreamless sleep. “That would be great,” he said, and he closed the door behind him.

The stairs swayed, and Jean Patrick grabbed the railing for support. What sense could he make of a child one minute chattering on a leaf-covered path, the next blown apart in the trees? What sense from a hand
digging a hole, readying a mine, brushing the leaf litter back? Did the man wait to see his result? Did he smile or laugh? Did he feel anything at all? If Jean Patrick followed the hand to an arm, a shoulder, a face, whose face would he find, and what would he see inside those eyes? Would it, in the end, be better never to have seen at all? Yet here were Jonathan and Susanne believing in the world's order. Inviting love in. The last bell rang, and Jean Patrick took the stairs two at a time.

“I
THOUGHT YOU
drowned,” Daniel whispered when Jean Patrick squeezed into the seat Daniel had saved for him. “I waited and waited, but you never came back from your workout.”

The professor was already busy writing equations.
RESONANCE
, he wrote in bold letters across the board. He sketched a vibrating string fixed at one end with a weight and pulley and driven by a motor at the other end. He drew arrows of force.

Still sick?
Daniel scrawled in his notepad.

Jean Patrick nodded. He opened his notebook to a fresh page and copied the professor's equations. Discordant frequencies jangled his nerves, and he needed to replace them with the steady, predictable vibrations of science.

The professor asked for examples of resonance. Jean Patrick raised his hand. “The waves on Lake Kivu, driven by wind.”

“A tuning fork struck by a rod fastened to a turning wheel,” a student in the front said.

And then, from the back row: “Rwanda driven crazy by Inkotanyi.” Laughter rippled through the hall. Jean Patrick's cheeks burned hotter.

He tried to shout out a response, but only a cough came out. Daniel elbowed him and put a candy in his palm.
Good for the throat,
he scribbled in Jean Patrick's notebook.
From a muzungu girl in English class. She likes me.

An explosion of mint filled Jean Patrick's sinuses and resonated in his throat. The professor wrote an equation on the board concerning the force, frequency, and density required to produce resonance. Jean Patrick's attention faded. The only equation in his head was a shock wave from a mine, resonant in the morning air, that traveled out across a school yard filled with children.

W
HEN
J
EAN
P
ATRICK
jogged onto the field for afternoon practice, Coach struck his hand to his forehead. “Are you completely without sense? Go back to your dorm. And I do not want to see you in the morning.” Behind Coach's back, Daniel wagged a finger and smiled.

In his heart, Jean Patrick was relieved. As hard as he tried to deny it, he had no will to run. Every muscle in his body ached, and like a bad migraine, the headlines in Jonathan's paper kept flashing behind his eyes. Bea's art history class should just be ending, and if he hurried, he could catch her and walk her home. He needed to talk about the children. Only Bea could calm the angry spirits in his mind. Standing outside the building in the almost rain, he searched the swell of students for a flash of gold blouse, a blue shawl, but he saw no trace of her. He waited five minutes after the final bell rang and then set out for Cyarwa Sumo to find her.

Dusk brushed the arboretum fields. At the top of the ridge, someone had cleared the rubble of the guard's hut and piled freshly made bricks on the ground. Jean Patrick hoped it was the work of the old guard and his family. In this country, hope always chased close on the heels of despair. It was in the people's blood to try and try again.

For weeks after the killings, Jean Patrick had avoided the fields. Each time he set out for them, the smell of death overpowered him. It was an impossible situation; these were his favorite trails, the steepest for interval workouts, with plenty of action to distract him from pain. Bea had cured him. One morning, she met him after his workout, and without thinking about their destination, he set off with her. He was lost in conversation, and when he looked up, the fields surrounded him. The banter of the women in the plots filled his ears as before. He inhaled the morning, clear and fresh. Not one scrap of memory remained in his nostrils. Since that time, it had not returned. Now, at the church on the far side of the fields, evening mass had ended, and the worshippers poured out onto the road. A young woman picking her way down the trail caught his eye. With her broad shoulders, her considered and graceful step, it could only be Bea. He quickened his pace to meet her.

“It's good to see you,” she said, kissing the air by his cheek. She could have been greeting a distant cousin, a friend of a friend at school.

Jean Patrick fell into step beside her, let her radiant heat temper his
chills. She kept her eyes on the ground and marched forward. This gesture of displeasure he had also come to recognize. “I'm on my way to Jonathan's,” he said. “He's invited me for dinner.” He hoped she would ask if she could join him.

“Amos is a good cook.”

“I've never been honored with a dinner invitation before.” He searched her face for reaction, a spark of her usual fire; none was there. “I waited for you after class,” he said. “I wanted—”

Bea cut him off. “You should not have bothered. I went straightaway to my father's office when the bell rang.”

“Stop a minute.” He stepped in front of her and held up his hands. “I don't understand you tonight. Did I do something to make you angry?”

A boy on a bicycle passed them. He stood as he reached the steepest part of the trail and pedaled with a rhythmic side-to-side sway. A woman sat sidesaddle behind him, steadying a basket on her head. A serene smile graced her features. “Good afternoon,” they called together.

Bea watched them, a look of pain on her face. “It's nothing to do with you,” she said.

“Then what? Tell me.” He wished he could hook a finger beneath her chin, raise her face to his, and kiss her. Good customs would not allow it.

“Something horrible has happened in Kigali.”

“I know. I read it in Jonathan's paper. It has been haunting me since. That's why I came to find you.”

“One of Dadi's friends lost his daughter in the blast. That's why you found me at church.” She took a step forward. “Let's walk; I feel this cold too much.”

Maybe her mood had only to do with Kigali and not with him. He chided himself for putting his own selfish wishes above respectful grief for the children, but he allowed the thought to gather shape and substance in his mind. He walked stubbornly beside Bea, ready to pounce on any scrap of affection. He felt as if he were grabbing her little finger as she was swept downstream by a swift current. Although his mind told him to stop, his heart made him go forward. “You shouldn't let events we can't control stand in our way. It doesn't mean
we
have no chance for a future.”

“Mon pauvre,” Bea said, as if Jean Patrick were a little boy to slip inside
the blue wing of a shawl. “If this crazy country made sense, we would stand a chance. But after what happened today, I can't believe in futures anymore. Not even with you. It is too painful.”

They reached the Cyarwa checkpoint. Bea moved away from him. The soldiers patted him on the back and wished him good night. Even in darkness, he saw the way their eyes slid over Bea's body, the slight twist of their mouths into a sneer.

Jean Patrick had a list of arguments against Bea's worries, but none came out. He walked on in dumb silence, his head on fire with fever. It was clear she was determined to run away, and his mind wavered in doubt over every point he thought to bring up. Only when they came to Jonathan's gate did she catch his gaze and hold it.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “You don't look well at all. I should have held my tongue.”

“Is there something else? Did your father tell you to keep away from me?” The only explanation that came to him.

“You are
not
the center of the universe,” she said. But then she touched her cheek to his, and her damp warmth remained on his skin. “How stupid. I didn't mean that.” Her eyes glistened, and she wiped them with her sleeve. “Nkuba Jean Patrick.” She released the syllables of his name like pebbles tossed into water. “How can you think of a future in a world where nothing is left of twenty-one children but bits and pieces in the leaves? Not even a body for a mother to bury.”

“But Bea—”

“I'll be busy for a while, so I can't see you,” she said. Jean Patrick opened his mouth to continue his protest, but she touched a finger to his lips. “Not a word. You can't change my mind.”

She reached up on her toes and gently kissed his cheek. He thought to kiss her quickly on the mouth, but she stepped away. “You will catch my cold now,” he said. Just to say something.

As he watched her hurry off toward her house, he had to believe he was still in her heart. He didn't know why she had done this. He almost wished her his cold, some small part of him to linger in her presence.

Jonathan's gate was unlocked, and Jean Patrick stepped into the yard. Coach had instructed him to be patient, to hang back and wait for the
right moment to strike. The strategy hadn't worked on the track, but it might with Bea. If he bided his time, he thought he could reel her in again.

Before he could knock, Jonathan opened the door, his face nearly as red as the glass of wine he put into Jean Patrick's hand. “Come drink with me, J. P. I've finished half a bottle, but so far it hasn't helped. I can't even drown the day in alcohol.”