Susan Minot - Thirty Girls

In the work shed is a shop for making instruments and building chairs and repairing bicycles. Behind in the trees is a large white tent that came from Norway where the boys sleep. The ventilation is not so good and, having sixty boys inside, the air is unmoving and hot. The girls sleep in dormitories with bunk beds so close you can reach over and touch the girl next to you.

Holly is in the upper bunk beside me. She has decorated her area. From the ceiling strings dangle empty boxes of Close-Up toothpaste or fortified protein, an eye-drop bottle, a box of Band-Aids. I have no decoration. Underneath Holly is May, who is very pregnant, due in a month. Her parents do not accept the child coming and have not visited May.

At Kiryandongo we are all united by a thing that also divides us from others. We look at each other and know what we have been through. We also look away for the same reason.

Since my return I meet new challenges of the mind. I have decided to forget everything that happened to me there and so look forward to the remainder of my life. I am not so old, nearly sixteen. My life could still be long.

Before, my life was nothing to speak of. You would not have heard of it. Now, they tell us it is important to tell our story. They have us draw to tell it, but I am not so good at drawing.

We studied the Greeks in school and they had people called rhapsodes who memorized long stories and recited them the way you would a song. The long poems were epics. At banquets or by pools people would sit eating grapes and drinking from goblets and listen to the rhapsodes sing. It was not a song with music, but the rhapsodes still sang. They sang of heroes and of journeys.

When they ask us to speak, I cannot find the words. What I have inside is for me to look at alone. Who else can know it? Not anyone. I cannot say it out loud. How can one tell a story so full of shame?

I listen to the others talk and understand how they struggle. We knew the same things. I stay apart to make peace with it inside myself, if I am able. With the rebels I learned that inside is where it most matters in any case.

I am one of the abducted children. Did I tell you my name? I am Esther Akello.

I have been back about two weeks. The days are strange, I am not used to the peace. I am not used to waking without someone hitting my feet. The first week I slept a great deal and woke with swollen eyes, which in the mirror had dark hoops under them. There is a heaviness in me where gladness does not reach. I know there should be gladness that I have returned. I am free, but gladness does not come to me.

The boys finish their drawings then get up and kick around a ball on the dusty field. Boys forever like to play with balls. This is better than hitting each other. Simon is running with his bad leg. Charles claps his hands, getting them to go faster.

Here at Kiryandongo they always want you to join in. They say, Come on, Esther, I know you can run. Come on. Get up off your seat.

I prefer to sit. When the ants come I brush them away. If they keep coming back to me I pinch them between my fingers. Maybe I will get up when I am ready. Maybe I will not. I hate everyone.

As I said, my town is Lira. At night Lira is quiet and in the day it is not so loud either. We have a pink brick bank and a yellow brick post office and many churches, some with steeples, though most with simply a roof. Goats walk about. The main street is paved from the turnaround at one end and tilts upward past groceries and other shops selling batteries and Walkmans and clothes and stationery to the other end of town where the road becomes dirt and paths squiggle into the countryside. During the dry season the dirt is red and dusty, in the wet season it grows darker and stains our feet like rust.

I was born during the rainy season in April 1982, arriving by way of my parents, John and Edith 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.