“Of course she is! Same dad, remember? Just because you took her and ran off doesn’t mean she’s not.”
As much as I want to argue, I know he’s at least technically right. But she’ll never be his sister like she is mine. I finally let out a long breath. “She’s in a convent school. Here in Sangui. She’s safe.” I pause. “Smartest kid in her class. She’s on scholarship.”
“Why don’t you go there?”
Because I’m too busy working out how to get back at your father, I think, but instead say, “Because it’s one scholarship per family.”
“We would have paid for you,” Michael says.
I stand up quickly. I’m starting to feel like a trapped animal. “Look, can we get back to why we’re here? You and Kiki may share a father, but where she goes to school doesn’t have anything to do with Mama’s murder.”
“Fine,” he says coolly. He pulls a thick sheaf of papers out of the folder and hands it to me.
I grab it greedily and sink back onto the floor. I flip quickly through the pages, trying to take it all in at once. I pause when I get to the photos. There’s one of Mama, and one of me as a six-year-old, both of us with messy hair and hollows in our cheeks. I go slower. There’s a close-up photo of the burns and slashes on Mama’s arms, then a page titled “Persecution History.”
Michael settles down beside me, reading over my shoulder as I scan the first lines:
Principal applicant (PA) is a single female of Nyanga ethnicity from North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). PA meets the definition of a refugee, having demonstrated that she fled her country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of nationality and membership in a particular social group (victim of ethnic-based violence and Congolese woman at risk) and is unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to return to DRC. (1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Article 1(A)(2) and its 1967 Protocol.) Her fear is grounded in current objective conditions as demonstrated by recent country of origin information contained herein concerning the political and human rights situation in DRC.
I skip past more legal mumbo jumbo and read,
She is widowed. Her husband was killed in an attack on her village—
Widowed? That’s not right. I look at Michael. “This is a little personal. Do you mind?”
He squirms. “I’ve already read it all anyway.” He shifts back to sitting on his bed and picks up his laptop.
I look back at the file. My mother never married. The only thing she ever said about my dear old papa was that I should be glad not to know him. I don’t think she married, anyway. She definitely never said anything about a husband in front of me, and she hadn’t called herself a widow.
I go on reading. Other details are off. “We’re from Kasisi, not Walikale,” I say under my breath. Are these mistakes or did she lie to the UN? Why would she do that? Confused, I plunge on, reading feverishly.
Her village was attacked many times throughout her youth, both by various ethnically based groups of antigovernment militia including Mayi-Mayi and the M23 group, as well as by government soldiers. Rebels and government soldiers alike would raid her village for food and livestock to feed their troops. Often they would hurt or kill villagers in the process. Villagers were abducted and forced to join the militias or act as slaves for them . . .
So far, so normal. That’s a story everybody from there knows. The unpaid government soldiers are bad, and the militia groups are just a little bit worse.
On the material day, the applicant’s village came under severe attack, whereby she was forced to flee with her small daughter. Her husband was killed in the attack. Together with her daughter, she fled the same day to Bukavu—
I stop, reread the paragraph, trying to see if I’ve missed something. “That’s not right,” I mutter. “They left out the whole thing about . . . Or did she not tell them . . . ?”
“What?” Michael asks.
I start when he speaks. I’ve almost forgotten he’s here, I’m concentrating so hard on trying to match what’s on the page with my few memories. I glance up at him, then go back to reading.
“You’re driving me crazy, here, Tina. What are you mumbling about? Spill.”
Do I tell him or not? Finally I just say, “They got our village name wrong.”
“That’s it?”
I look back down. “Yeah.”
Why explain that what I remember and what’s here are two different things? I can’t trust Michael, and besides, this probably has nothing to do with Mama’s murder.
Michael isn’t buying it. “Tina, if you see something that might help us figure out—”
“You got kicked out of school, didn’t you?”
The abrupt question surprises him, like I hoped it would. “That’s why you’re in Sangui, not in Switzerland, isn’t it? This isn’t a holiday. I checked to make sure you wouldn’t be here.”
“I-I didn’t get kicked out. It’s just a suspension.”
“For what?”