By the time Emily entered with her breakfast, Lynn was already awake and sitting up in bed with the telephone and a notepad on her lap. Immediately Emily was suspicious. She carried the tray of tea and toast and the vanilla yoghurt Lynn favoured carefully to the bed, laying it gently on top of the covers before shaking Lynn’s medication from the six different bottles arranged in height order on her nightstand, and handing it to her with a glass of water that was already standing waiting.
“I have something for you,” Lynn announced, taking the pills into her cupped hand and breaking the silence that had engulfed them over the past day.
Emily raised her eyes and the older woman triumphantly tore a page from her notepad and held it towards Emily. In beautiful, artistic script a name had been scrawled across the top of the page and underneath it was an address and a phone number. “Gensur?” Emily read tentatively. “Who is he?”
“It,” Lynn corrected, with difficulty dropping the pills into her mouth one at a time, concentrating hard on swallowing. “Not a person, a charity. GENSUR, Genocide Survivors.” She paused, but the explanation meant nothing to Emily. “For people like you Emily, for survivors of the genocide in Rwanda. I have a friend who used to work for the government, we were at university together, I’ve been on the phone all morning tracking her down and… anyway, she gave me the number. She said they’re wonderful. That they’ll help.”
“Help with what?” Emily ventured, holding the piece of paper at arm’s length from her body.
“Help you to work through what happened. Help you move on.”
“I don’t need help,” Emily retorted, her hands shaking. “I’m fine. You are the one who is sick. Is there something you need?”
Lynn however no longer seemed willing to trade provocations. “You are too proud,” she said earnestly.
“I’m not. I have no pride left at all.”
Lynn exhaled and laid her head back onto her pillow. She looked small, frail, beaten, her pale skin and soft hair lost in the vast folds of the pillow.
“Please go,” she said, more gently now and without lifting her head. “To GENSUR. For me. As a favour to me.” She closed her eyes. The jubilation of moments before was gone. “Please. Let me do this one thing.”
“Are you feeling ill Mrs Hunter?” Emily asked, this time meaning the question. She moved closer to the bed and felt her forehead. “You’re cold, and clammy.”
“Will you go?”
“Not - It’s just - ”
“Please.”
Suddenly, Lynn’s insistence irritated Emily. Why should the old woman care what she did? Why did it matter? Emily wasn’t used to mattering anymore to anyone. Nor did she want to.
“Leave me alone,” she muttered.
“Please,” Lynn urged again, this time opening her eyes and casting them at Emily. Her will shone through them, unassailable, despite age, despite infirmity.
And despite her exasperation, Emily heard herself agreeing.
This time, Lynn exhaled with relief. “Good,” she breathed now in short, strained bursts. “Go this afternoon. Straight after lunch. Luke will be back today.” Emily opened her mouth to protest but as usual Lynn’s directions were not up for debate. “You’ll spend Christmas with us,” she continued. “You’ll stay here. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Emily couldn’t help but smile at the woman’s audacity. Even in her illness she was in complete command of herself and of everyone before her. She was so calm, so assured, so wise it seemed. She possessed such poise.
“Pass me those papers. From that top drawer. Before you go,” Lynn added, waving her pen like a wand towards a chest of drawers, as though she could conjure what she wanted.
Emily found them wrapped within a silk yellow headscarf. For a protracted moment she fingered the sunshine silk between her fingers, a memory of heat rattling somewhere deep inside her, then she brought the papers to Lynn. As she carried the thin stack she couldn’t help but notice the heading on the first page. ‘The last will and testament of Lynn Rebecca Hunter,’ it read. Without meaning to, Emily frowned, then felt Lynn’s eyes upon her.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere yet,” Lynn scolded as Emily hesitated with the papers. “I’ll see you tomorrow. You’ll tell me about GENSUR. Oh - ” she stopped and nodded back towards the chest of drawers. “And quite plainly, that headscarf must be yours.”
On the bus, Emily stared at the piece of paper in her hand for a long time. It had been many months since she’d heard a Rwandan voice, and even then it had been the Anglicised tones of Auntie and Uncle, who hadn’t been there. She didn’t know if she was ready to look into the eyes of another survivor, who would understand without words what her history entailed.
When Auntie had appeared in the refugee camp a year after the worst of the killings were over, and explained that she’d seen Emily’s face on BBC coverage of the camps, her greatest gift hadn’t been the promise to take her back to London; it had been the innocence in her eyes. She was a generation older than Emily and had seen things that Emily couldn’t then imagine, but she had not seen her mother being bludgeoned to death, nor Cassien’s severed head buzzing with flies. Unlike the people in the camp, Auntie’s eyes didn’t remind Emily of piles of dismembered limbs, or burning spires, or the smell of death.
By then, it seemed a lifetime ago that she’d given up hope: of Gahiji still being alive, of him finding her, of ever returning to her village where in any case if her house was still standing and if Hutus were not occupying it, she would have to live next to Ernest who might come one night to finish the job he had started. She lived day-by-day, pressed forward only by need: to feed herself, to avoid the still-roaming Interahamwe gangs who sporadically terrified the camps, to satisfy the anger that kept her alive. The future was behind her, and there was nothing to live for beyond the defiance of living itself.
Until suddenly, through the tents and pain and starvation, Auntie appeared. And all at once, there was an alternative. Not to be happy, that was a feeling long abandoned, but perhaps in another country, it might be possible to forget. She did not hesitate in agreeing to leave Rwanda.
Emily fingered the corner of the piece of paper and recalled Lynn’s jubilant face on handing it to her. She folded it, then unfolded it, and folded it again.
On the steps to the GENSUR office leant a middle-aged woman, unmistakably Rwandan. She’d spotted Emily on the other side of the road where she’d been standing frozen and staring at the building for the past half an hour. But the denim-clad woman did not wave or usher her over, instead she lit a cigarette and waited for Emily to take her own time. Another 10 full minutes later, Emily finally crossed the busy divide.
The woman welcomed her as though they’d made a pre-arranged appointment and led Emily inside. “You’ll be wanting to see Alice,” she informed her. They walked in step through the corridor and Emily allowed herself to be guided into a small office where another, younger woman was sitting behind a desk. On the walls, Emily noticed photographs of other Rwandans, some wearing traditional dress and standing within Rwandan villages, others clothed in suits and ties in front of London buildings, proudly shaking somebody’s hand or holding a document in front of them. The woman who had led her inside waited while Emily examined the images, then smiled broadly.
“This is Alice,” she informed her, signalling to the desk-seated woman. “I’m Gloria. We are both here full-time. Alice moved to London just three years ago. I’ve been here since Before. My family though, they were in Rwanda.” Gloria extended her hand and not knowing why, Emily took it. “You can come here as often as you like.”
Gloria left and Emily hovered unanchored in front of the desk until Alice signalled for her to sit down. She did so slowly.
“Can I take some details?” Alice asked gently, sensing Emily’s unease. Her voice was soft and melodic, and she posed the question as a genuine inquiry, possessed with understanding of how great a request this was.
Emily nodded.
“Your name?”
“Emily. Emilienne.”
At this correction, Alice switched to Kinyarwanda.
“What is your address?” Even in another language Alice’s voice held its soothing tone, but the transition shook Emily. She lifted her hand to her fringe and patted it carefully down.
“Hendon,” was the most she was able to volunteer.
“What street?”
With trepidation Emily provided the name of it, then her building, her flat number, the name of the village where she had lived in Rwanda, and the names of her parents and each of her brothers, and the number of years she had lived in London, and confirmation that she was Tutsi. The words fell from her like teardrops, the first few slowly and one at a time, the rest in a fast flood. Names and numbers. Her head felt light and a little dizzy. A lot dizzy.
Alice looked up from the notes she was diligently taking. “Gahiji, I know a Gahiji,” she mused quietly. “He was with the rebel army during the genocide.”
“Oh,” said Emily. Her head was throbbing and she was finding it hard to concentrate. More and more often these headaches were coming. She rubbed her fingers across her temple.
“Are you alright?” asked Alice.
“It’s just a headache. They make me woozy.”
Alice made a note on her pad.
“Do you experience this a lot Emilienne? These headaches? This dizziness?”
Emily narrowed her eyes but didn’t answer. She didn’t like such intrusive questions, and Alice’s understanding of this seemed to have disappeared.
“Emilienne,” Alice pressed on. “Were you raped in Rwanda?”
Emily stood up. “What?” Her chair shot a few feet backwards. “How dare you? How dare you ask me that?” she attempted to shout, though her head was pounding so intensely now that she could barely manage a whisper. “How dare you?” She backed away from the desk and felt the door against her back. She found the handle.
“Emilienne, I didn’t mean to upset you,” soothed Alice. “It’s only, you see sometimes headaches like these are an indication of… But we don’t have to talk about it now. Please, sit back down.”
But Emily could not sit back down. Her head hurt. She smelled her mother’s cooking, and her head hurt. She heard the words of the rosary, and her head hurt. She felt her face hitting hard, evening soil. Lynn had been wrong. Laying it out did not rid her of the memories, or neutralise them. Her head hurt. And her heart hurt. And everything span. She felt nauseous. Forgive, Lynn had said, but how could she?
“How dare you?” she asked again, louder.
“Emilienne,” Alice urged.
But now Emily had turned, and was running again.
Outside her block of flats, a gang of young boys kicked a football to each other and showed off their various tricks. One of them, a lanky lad who stood head and shoulders over the rest, could throw the ball into the air and catch it on the back of his neck. Another could bounce it between his knees and feet seemingly indefinitely. A girl about their age with blonde hair scraped into a ponytail was standing just to the side, and it was for her that they jibed each other and let out ever louder and bawdy shouts. Not far behind them, Omar leant against a wall. He was conducting a deep conversation with someone at the other end of his mobile phone.
Emily swallowed hard. Lately, she and her neighbour had meandered well past hello into musings about the cold weather, crazed Christmas shoppers, and about her job and his family who seemed to call him on his mobile incessantly, breaking their increasingly comfortable flow. They never talked about his job or her family, but there was an obvious absence of both and so she supposed, no need. When, on occasion, there was the kind of pause in which one of these subjects was required, Emily scurried away on the tail of some excuse. But every time, she hoped this wouldn’t happen, that their conversations might stretch a little longer, a little deeper than they did.
Sometimes, as she listened to him proudly describe how his brother would soon be returning from university – his brother who was studying law he always added – and how he himself was thinking about going away, Emily imagined Omar’s arms around her. She had never thought this way about a man. Deliberately, she wondered if she could kiss him, and forced herself to envisage it, but always this was a step too far. The thought of skin on skin triggered, still, a physical reaction and shot pain and sickness throughout her body. But when their fingers brushed on the handles of doors, she felt a shiver of unfamiliar excitement rush through her. When he called her sister, her heart pounded a little bit faster. And for some reason, she hadn’t thrown away the piece of paper with a list of books he had suggested she read. Although she had no intention of reading anything about the concept of god, even a foreign one called Allah, whose followers, it was said, were the only ones in Rwanda not to join in with the madness when it overtook other holy men.
Emily crossed the street and walked with her head down towards the stairwell. Omar called out to her, but she didn’t turn. The past bubbled beneath her skin. Tears and rage and desolation pumped dangerously in her veins and she knew that faced with his kindness, she would not be able to stifle the hot flood of images. She reached for the stairwell door, but too quickly, he was in front of it.
“You’re crying,” Omar remarked immediately. Emily wiped her face roughly with her sleeve. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she rushed, mortified.
“What’s wrong?”
Emily shook her head but words refused to come. Her veins throbbed. Frustration gripped her. She’d been feeling so much better lately, so much more of this world, but now all at once she was stuck again, cut up and made un-whole.
“What’s wrong sister?” Omar repeated with urgency.
“Nothing.” She paused. “Nothing. Leave me alone.” She said it firmly, but could not move from in front of him, and Omar hesitated for only a second. Then he opened his arms and brought her close.
The unexpected warmth of his body enveloped her and she sank into his chest. Her legs were heavy and useless, but Omar effortlessly held her up. It had been so many years since she’d been hugged, since she’d been touched, it was so soothing, so tempting to let herself be comforted by him. But then her mind clouded with visions of other male arms and bodies, and evening soil, and suddenly she had to get away. She couldn’t breathe. With force, she wriggled free.
“What’s wrong?” Omar asked again.
“I can’t - ” Emily whispered.
“Can’t what? Sister, you don’t have to be afraid of me.” Omar lifted his hand to stroke her face. “You can trust me.”
“I can’t trust anyone.”
Bewildered, Omar stared at her and said nothing, then abruptly, the spinning in her head grew faster, her legs buckled, and he caught her again.
Drinking sugary tea, they sat in his small flat, which she discovered was an exact replica of her own, save for the fact that his was piled high with boxes it seemed he had still not unpacked. Emily shook. Omar placed a blanket over her but the frostiness was not in her bones. Her heart felt frozen. Iced over she supposed, to keep hotter things out.
Taking another sip of her tea, Emily inspected this new, curious state. She was not on the verge of tears, she did not feel sad, or fearful, or angry. Instead, quite abruptly, she felt no emotion at all. She liked this. It was a useful transition. An English barrier of ice. Omar put his arm around her, but it felt dead and too hot.
“Don’t touch me,” Emily said.
“I’m only trying to help.”
Omar pulled back. Letting his arm fall his eyes betrayed a concern that days earlier would have quickened Emily’s step and consumed her. But suddenly everything about Omar’s presence frustrated her. It lit a flame and drew her back towards feeling.
“Don’t touch me,” she repeated. “I don’t need help.”
Omar shifted so that their sides no longer touched. They didn’t look at each other.
“Your brother will be arriving soon?” Emily asked in a conciliatory tone, though even she could hear the coldness in it.
“No, not anymore. He’s going to New York,” Omar replied, unable to hide the disappointment from his face, nor the pride that followed it. “On a scholarship.”
“Oh?” said Emily, but by now Omar had refocused.
“Allah can help you,” he offered carefully.
Emily spun towards him.
“Allah?” She was calm, but her eyes were severe. “Who the fuck is Allah to me?”
Now it was Omar who pulled back. “You’re not a sister?”
“God is a fairytale for children,” she answered coolly. “You are naïve Omar. There is no god. There is only humanity, and the devil, which is the same thing. We destroy ourselves in the name of some greater order.”
“You’re not a sister?” Omar repeated, stunned.
“I am nobody’s sister. Not anymore.” Her voice was flat and listless. “I am nothing.” She stood up. The blanket fell from her. “And I want nothing, except to be left alone.”
His door slammed twice: once when she left the flat and then again moments later. She heard it from her bed where she had fallen on entering her own dark cave. She heard his footsteps on the stairs, moving away. She heard him and the hope of him disappearing from her grasp. But it didn’t stir her. Nothing did.
For two days, Emily slept.