OLIVIER DIDN’T COME BACK the next day as Kayembe promised, or the day after that. When finally he returned late in the afternoon of the third day, he was angry that Sylvie had been to see his boss.
“How does it make me look, to have my sister checking up on me?”
His offended pride filled the small hut up to bursting. He seemed to have grown suddenly taller, and broader through the shoulders. From his body odor, he obviously hadn’t washed in the few days he’d been away.
“It makes you look like you have a family where you belong,” snapped Sylvie, refusing to be bullied.
“Stop arguing with him, Sylvie, and give him some food,” commanded Mama.
But Sylvie noticed that, as relieved as Mama was that Olivier had returned, she had not gotten up from the sleeping mat to greet him. She was keeping her distance, almost as though she was afraid of him. Sylvie knew what she was thinking, because she was thinking it, too. He’s beginning to look like a soldier.
Pascal and Lucie came in, lugging the plastic jerry can full of water between them.
“Olivier!” shouted Pascal with excitement. “Where have you been? Is it true you learned how to drive a truck?”
Sylvie turned a sharp look on Olivier. “You’re driving for Kayembe? Where to?”
“None of your business!” He took a tin of meat from the sack he was carrying over his shoulder and tossed it to her. “Mr. Kayembe sent this for you,” he said, and headed outside.
“Where are you going now?” Sylvie called, but he didn’t bother to reply. In a way, Sylvie was relieved that he was gone. Pascal started after him. “Pascal!”
He stopped, turned—frowning with annoyance. “What?”
“You stay here.”
“No! I want to go with Olivier!”
“Stay here, and I’ll make fufu. Real fufu,” she cajoled.
“How,” asked Mama, suddenly interested, “without cassava?”
Sylvie took out the small bag of flour that Kayembe had given her from where she’d hidden it, under the dried beans.
“I bought some,” she lied. “I got paid at the hospital.”
Mama struggled to her feet and came over to help Sylvie mix the flour with the water that Pascal and Lucie had brought.
“But we don’t have a fire to cook it on!” Lucie pointed out.
“From now on,” said Sylvie. “Making the fire is Pascal’s job.”
Sylvie met Pascal’s eyes. For a moment, he looked as though he was going to complain. But then his expression became thoughtful, and he seemed to understand that he’d been promoted within the family. Without arguing, he fished the matches out from the battered cooking pot and went outside to start the fire. Sylvie was grateful that he, at least, had listened to her.
ON SATURDAY MORNING, Mama felt well enough to go with Sylvie the short distance to the communal laundry tubs, located in an open area at the center of their block of huts. Sylvie filled a bucket with water from a pump and poured it into a tub, while Mama sat under the sparse shade of a eucalyptus tree and supervised. Sylvie lathered a bar of soap she’d bought with her clinic money, then swished the few pieces of clothing the family owned through the sudsy water. She was careful to keep the school uniforms clean, especially after one girl in her class had left school because she couldn’t afford soap to wash her uniform, and the teacher told her she was dirty. Sylvie heard she was selling herself now, as so many girls in the camp were forced to do to bring in a little money for extras that the food center didn’t supply.
“You’re not scrubbing hard enough,” complained Mama.
Sylvie managed to hold her tongue. Getting no reaction from Sylvie, Mama began chatting with the other women who had brought their family’s laundry to the tubs, comparing notes about what part of the Kivus they had come from. But nobody talked about what tragedies they had endured there. It was taken for granted that everyone in the camp had lost someone they loved—a child, a spouse, sometimes a whole family. Talking about it was too painful. It seemed to Sylvie that everyone here was waiting for pain to end and for life to begin again.
As she wrung out Lucie’s spare dress against the concrete tub, Sylvie listened to her mother boasting to the other women about how clever Sylvie was, how she regularly stood first at the high school. Sylvie was at once thrilled and mortified—thrilled because her mother so rarely praised her; mortified because she hated to have attention drawn to her.
“What are you staring at?” Mama said sharply to a little girl who had become fixated with Sylvie’s scar. The little girl hid behind her mother’s ample skirt.
“There’s no need to scare her,” replied the woman indignantly. “She’s just curious.”
“Where I come from, we teach children to have manners,” Mama stated bluntly.
For a moment, Sylvie was reminded that her mother hadn’t always been this thin shadow of herself. Once she’d been a proper lady who took pride in her house and her family, the wife of an educated man who, while never wealthy, knew how to behave in the world.
“You should have seen how pretty my girl was, before,” Mama told the frightened child in a warmer tone. “Pretty like you, and smart,” she added, trying to make amends but at the same time managing to imply that while the girl might be pretty, she was probably a dimwit compared to Sylvie.
Without commenting, the other mother packed her damp laundry into a woven basket and, lifting it onto her head, herded her little daughter away. The remaining women scrubbed their families’ clothing in silence. Mama went silent, too, seeming to understand that she was the source of an unpleasant shift in the mood around the tubs. Sylvie was sad for her—feeble and lost, and barely thirty-five.
“I’m finished,” Sylvie announced, packing the last of their sodden garments into their basket.
Mama got to her feet and gave an uncertain half-nod to the other women, who kept their gazes averted, pretending not to see her farewell glance. They walked side by side back to their shanty in silence, Sylvie balancing the laundry on her head. All the while, Sylvie was thinking of how to tell Mama about her plans. However she put it, she knew Mama would call her selfish for thinking of leaving the family behind.
“Mama,” Sylvie said as they drew near to the hut, “something’s happened.”
“What is it?”
“I may have a chance to leave Nyarugusu. To go to Canada.”
Mama stopped walking and turned on Sylvie, speechless at first—then furious. “What about going home?” she said.
It was exactly the reaction that Sylvie had feared.
“We don’t know if we’ll ever be able to go home,” she replied. “And even if the fighting stops, there’s nothing to go back to.”
“Of course there will be nothing if everyone leaves! You think you are so much better than us that you would leave us here, and save yourself? Move to a rich country so you can live in a big house and buy fancy cars, while we starve?”
“I’m trying to save all of us!” she protested, setting the laundry basket down on the ground. “Once I’m there and I get an education, then I can bring all of you to join me.”
“And how many years will that be? Who’s going to help me with the children, unh? How am I supposed to manage, with you and Olivier both gone?” Tears of rage and helplessness rolled down her cheeks. Then, abruptly, she struck Sylvie hard against her cheek.
It took every ounce of Sylvie’s self-control not to slap her back. “Listen to me!” she said fiercely. “What is there for us if I stay here, stuck like this? Nyarugusu is bad enough, but what happens when the Tanzanians send us back?” Mama covered her face with her hands and wept openly, but Sylvie wouldn’t stop. “Mama, how long before Kayembe turns Pascal into one of his soldiers, the way he’s doing with Olivier?”
At this, Mama dropped her hands. Her eyes were wide with terror, her gaze blank and far away. Sylvie knew where she was. She was back in their village, in their house, the day the soldiers came—the day they never talked about. But today, Mama surprised her.
“He looks just like them,” she said.
“I know,” whispered Sylvie. She watched as Mama inhaled a deep breath and let it out, her thin frame rattling. “Mama, it may be too late for Olivier, but it’s the only way to save Pascal.”
Mama’s eyes met Sylvie’s without spirit, used up. She gave Sylvie a short nod, then resumed walking, as though putting one foot in front of the other took all the energy she had. Sylvie lifted the basket of laundry onto her head and followed, asking herself for the hundredth time, How can I leave her? And, for the hundredth time, How can I stay?