to the girls sitting on the hard ground in feathery shadows. She held the pencil and paper limply in her hand. The girls looked at her, each with meaning in her eyes.
She bent down to speak, Girls, be good … but she couldn’t finish her sentence.
The girls started to cry. They understood everything. An order was shouted and suddenly some rebels standing nearby were grabbing branches and hitting at the girls. One jumped on the back of Louise. She saw them slap Janet. Then the girls became quiet.
Sister Giulia didn’t know what to do. Then it seemed as if they were all talking to her at once, in low voices, whispering. No, not all. Some were just looking at her.
Please, they were saying, Sister. Take me. Jessica said, I have been hurt. Another: My two sisters died in a car accident and my mother is sick. Charlotte said, Sister, I have asthma.
Sister, I am in my period.
Sister Giulia looked back at the captain standing with his arms crossed. He was shaking his head. She said she was supposed to write their names but she was unable. Louise, the captain of the football team, took the pencil from her, and the paper, and started to write.
Akello Esther
Ochiti Agnes …
Judith … Helen … Janet, Lily, Jessica, Charlotte … Louise … Jackline …
Did I mistreat you, Sister?
No, sir.
Did I mistreat the girls?
No, sir.
So, next time I come to the school, do not run away. The captain laughed. Would the sister like more tea and biscuits? No, thank you. They bade each other goodbye. It was as if they might have been old friends.
You may go greet them before you leave, Mariano Lagira said.
Sister Giulia once again went over to the thirty girls, her thirty girls who would not be coming with her. She gave her rosary to Judith and said, Look after them. She handed Jessica her own sweater out of the backpack.
When we go you must not look at us, she said.
No, Sister, we won’t.
Then a terrible thing happened.
Catherine whispered, Sister. It’s Agnes. She has gone, just over there.
Sister Giulia saw Agnes standing back with the larger group of girls gathered to leave.
You must get her, Sister Giulia said. She couldn’t believe she was having to do this. If they see one is missing …
So Agnes was brought back. She was holding a pair of sneakers. She was told she might be endangering the others.
Okay, Agnes said. I will not try to run away again.
Sister Giulia had to make herself turn to leave.
Helen called after, Sister, you are coming back for us?
Sister Giulia left with the large group of girls. They walked away into the new freedom of the same low trees and scruffy grasses, which now had a new appearance, and left the thirty others behind. Bosco led the way and Sister Giulia walked in the middle. Some girls walked beside her and held her hand for a while. They bowed their heads when she passed near them. Arriving at a road they turned onto it. The rebels stayed off the roads. It grew dark and they kept walking. They came to a village that was familiar to some of them and stopped at two houses to spend the night. There were more than fifty girls to each house, so many lay outside, sleeping close in one another’s arms. Sister Giulia felt she was awake all night, but then somehow her eyes were opening and it was dawn.
At 5 a.m. they fetched water and continued footing it home. As the birds started up they saw they were closer to the school and found that word had been sent ahead and in little areas passed people who clapped as they went by. Sister Giulia felt some happiness in the welcome, but inside there was distress. They came finally to their own road and at last to the school drive.
Across the field Sister Giulia caught sight of the crowd of people near the gate. The parents were all there waiting. She saw the chapel blackened behind the purple bougainvillea, but the tower above still standing.
Many girls ran out to embrace their mothers who were hurrying to them. As she got close, Sister Giulia saw the parents’ faces watching, the parents still looking for their daughters. They searched the crowd. There was Jessica’s mother with her hand holding her throat. She saw Louise’s mother, Grace, ducking side to side, studying the faces of the girls. The closer they got to the gate, the more the girls were engulfed by their families and the more separated became the adults whose children were not there. These families held each other and kept their attention away from the parents whose girls had been left behind. They would not meet their gaze. In this way those parents learned their children had not made it back. When they came near Sister Giulia in all the commotion, she turned away from them. She was answering other questions. Some mothers were kneeling in front of her, some kissed her hand. She was thinking though only of the other parents and she would talk to them eventually but just now it seemed impossible to face them. Then she wondered if she’d be able to face anyone again, ever.
You have no idea where you are.
You sit among the girls. They’re in the shade, talking. It might be birdsong for all you understand or care. You think, I will never be close to anyone again.
SHE STEPPED OUT of the plane and over the accordion hinge of the walkway to continue up the tunneled ramp. One always felt altered after a flight. There was the pleasant fatigue of no sleep and one’s nerves closer to the surface as if a layer of self had peeled off and gotten lost in transit. The change was only on the surface, but the surface was where one encountered the world. Her surface was ready for the new things that would happen in this new place, ready for anything different from what she’d known.
There was a soggy tobacco smell at the gate and loose rugs with long rolls no one had bothered to smooth out. She stood in a line of crumpled people holding their carry-ons and inching forward to wooden tables where clerks slowly stamped passports after a sliding look from the picture to the face.
She was finally away. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt the expansion, the air humid, the door opening, dawn light reflected off a hammered linoleum floor as she descended an old-fashioned staircase to the black carousel empty of baggage. There was a long row of bureaux de change with one short counter after another empty and behind them a large plate-glass window with palm trees being eaten by a white sky. Lackadaisical drivers were leaning on the hoods of their cars, half glancing around for a fare. Dark-haired men strolled in short sleeve shirts, women in thin dresses moved slowly. Everything mercifully said, This is not home.
The
