“What do you mean?”
She speaks slowly, carefully. “If a girl is taken by the militias, and then found again, it is a joyous thing. It is as if she has come back from the dead. However, the joy eventually fades, and then everyone wants the girl to forget. But it isn’t possible. Some of the women have medical problems. They are in pain, or can’t bear children. They are a constant reminder of how the family and the village were not strong enough to keep this sort of thing from happening. Sometimes people blame the women, or say that they have joined the rebels and have been sent back as spies. If they have children, some people say they are ghosts, or witches—that they carry evil inside them.”
I go cold. That’s me.
“Some of the women go someplace new to try and start over. And some, when they are not able to work or marry, turn to other means of survival.” She hesitates. “Catherine . . . sells herself.”
I blink. “She’s a prostitute?” Sister Dorothy’s face confirms the answer. “People blame her? It’s not as if she asked to be taken!”
The sister suddenly looks very old. “People are complicated creatures, my dear. The ways they find of explaining the bad things that happen in the world are not always the right ones. Sometimes they are simply the easy ones. They are the ones that give them enough comfort to sleep at night, the ones that let them take the blame off themselves.”
I twist my glass on the table. “That’s shitty.”
“Yes. I suppose it is . . . shitty.”
“I need to talk to Catherine,” I say again.
And Sister Dorothy repeats, “I don’t think that is a good idea.”
I look around the room as if seeing it for the first time. Windowless. Dark. Secret. “It’s not that she’s a prostitute, is it? You just don’t want me talking to her. Why did you bring me here to this room? Why did you not want the other nuns to see us together?”
She takes a drink. “It’s not the nuns. It’s everyone. Talking is dangerous. The last time I saw your mother she was here, talking to a white man who was staying at the guesthouse. We later found out he was a reporter.”
Donatien, I think.
“I surprised her. She didn’t say anything about what they were discussing, but she seemed nervous. It was a busy time at the clinic, so I didn’t give it much thought, until that man was nearly killed the next day. And then we heard that your house had been burned down, and you and your mother were missing. Days went by, and then the men came back here, looking for her. They thought we were hiding her.”
“What men?”
She shakes her head. “The bad kind of men. The same kind as before. Militias. They came to the gates and started shooting in the air, asking for her by her name. The patients were all terrified. And when we told them we didn’t know where she was, they started beating people and breaking things, like before.”
I wait for her to take a shuddering breath before going on. “After that, people started whispering about your mother and what had happened to the reporter who was stabbed. They were afraid. The reverend mother sent the reporter back to Sangui City and forbade us from talking about Anju anymore, lest the militias come back.”
“She just wanted you to forget? Act like Mama never existed?”
Sister Dorothy sighs. “These are good people who work at this clinic, Christina. We wouldn’t stay here and see what horrors we do every day if we didn’t care, if we didn’t feel compelled by God. The nuns, the men and women who work here, they are good.”
She looks past me again at the gray concrete wall. “But the awful truth of this place is that anyone who stays must choose to not ask too many questions. We cannot call the devil by his human names. You never know who is listening, who is saving up information for that moment when they need it to trade with the militias to keep their husband or children from being taken.”
She looks back at me. She can see my mother in me, I can tell. “You should leave here. Take your friends and go back to Sangui City. Forget about revenge.”
“I can’t.”
She seems to know that’s what I would say. “Then I will pray for God to find you and stay with you.” She drains her glass. “But sometimes I worry He gave up on this place long ago.”
TWENTY-NINE
Rule 13: The good thing about bad news is that at least it’s true.
And if you’ve spent most of your life wading around in half-truths and guesses, something real is like finding dry land in the middle of the ocean.
Not that knowing the truth helped me sleep last night.
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