Running the Rift (39 page)

For luck, Jean Patrick touched the gold cross. “It is most certainly my wish.”

They said good-bye at the bus stop, where Uwimana had parked. Jean Patrick held Bea's hand and watched the car bump and rattle toward the main road. If Roger was right, who among them would be safe? Would Uwimana, who had more than once been called icyitso? Would Bea's own mother, who could easily be taken for Tutsi? He pulled Bea close. “Are you glad you came?”

“Yes.” She leaned her head against his chest. “So much.”

“You're not angry with me anymore?”

“Eh? For what?”

“For kidnapping you against your will.” Bea shook her head. Jean Patrick took her hand and placed his gift inside it. “Open it.” He wished
for a sudden splash of sun to glint from the gold, as it had done in the shop, but that did not happen.

Bea held the necklace, the delicate chain turning. “You are always buying me gifts.”

“Not always: only twice.”

She held it out to him, and he fastened it around her throat.

“I saw the necklace when I was home at Christmas, and I knew instantly how well it would fit right here.” He touched the shadow where her collarbones came together. Such a miracle, this thing we call life, he thought, feeling the rise and fall of her breath against his finger.

Quickly he kissed her. She kissed him back, and he savored the salt and spice of her mouth, the sweetness of tea on her tongue. He took her hand and led her back toward the house.

Their lives were only starting. How could they be wrenched apart? How could any of them be picked up suddenly, cast down somewhere else, over mere politics that should not concern them? For his part, no matter what happened, he would be safe. He had bartered a future with his legs and his sweat and his pain.

I
N THE MORNING
, Jean Patrick took Bea to the bus stop in a slanting rain. He held Mama's parasol above their heads. Bea held her sandals in her hand. Jean Patrick also walked barefoot, and with every step he sank to his ankles. The earth released his feet with a loud sucking sound.

“Are you tired?” Bea said. “You're not talking—it's not the Nkuba I know.”

“You also are not talking.”

“Did you run this morning?”

“Aye! In such a storm?” But he had, setting out in darkness, seeking the grass, the drier paths in the forest, pulling his feet high in the places where mud nibbled at his legs with swampy lips. Only when he ran, when every fiber in his body strained to propel him forward, could he sort out these problems that went round and round in his head. “Even for one day I will miss you,” he said.

“Me, also—I will miss you.”

Jean Patrick was about to kiss her, hidden by the umbrella, when a loud horn stopped him. A truck idled beside them, and Uwimana's head poked out from the window. “I was hoping to find you,” he shouted. “In this rain I thought you could wait in the truck.”

Jean Patrick and Bea climbed in, raindrops pooling on the seat. They squeezed together in the cab. Uwimana kept the engine idling, and steamy warmth surrounded them. Bea's internal heat spread across Jean Patrick's thigh. He had barely slept, and now he couldn't keep his eyes from closing. Indirimbo za buracyeye, Rwanda's soothing morning music, hummed softly on the radio. A river flowed on the road. Tails of water arced from tires of passing cars. The bus lumbered up the grade like a great beast, two round eyes of headlights glaring through the deluge.

Jean Patrick took Mama's parasol, and he and Bea ran across the road. “I'll meet you at the stop tomorrow when you come in,” she said. Her fingers touched the cross at her neck, and Jean Patrick smiled.

Jean Patrick ran back to Uwimana's truck and climbed in. “I would offer you a ride home,” Uwimana said, “but soon I would be stuck, and we would both be pushing.” He turned up the radio. “I love this music more than any other. It always reminds me of my childhood.” He hummed along.

“Me, too. We had a plug-in radio, and when I was small, I thought the singers were somehow inside it. I thought they had slipped in through the wire.” Jean Patrick smiled at the memory. “I kept that radio forever, even though we had no electricity in Gashirabwoba.”

Uwimana chuckled. “I remember.”

“Aye!” Jean Patrick slapped his knee. “Now that I think of it, that radio still sits on a shelf in Zachary's room. Maybe someday electricity will come and they can use it again.”

Neither of them moved. A fresh onslaught of rain hit the windshield. Uwimana turned the wipers on, turned them off again. “You can stay here,” he said, “until this storm eases.”

“Thank you. I'm happy for your company.” Jean Patrick looked over at Uwimana, and Uwimana looked back, a faint, dreamy smile on his lips. An invisible thread bound them together inside the safe island of the cab. Jean Patrick did not want to be the one to break it.

The next morning, it was Jean Patrick's turn to say good-bye. He pushed open the bus window and waved to his family one last time. “I'll see you Thursday,” he shouted. Roger had not returned, and so their plan held; he would not have to choose between Bea and his flesh and blood. It was nearly ten o'clock, and although he had eaten some bread and fruit, he had run hard intervals first thing, and already his stomach grumbled. A woman squeezed sideways into the seat beside him, her swollen belly nearly in the aisle. She placed a basket of fruit between them, and a ripe sweetness came through the skins of mangoes and guavas to stir up Jean Patrick's hunger even more.

By the time the bus stopped in Gikongoro, he couldn't stand it. Although it was against Rwandan custom to eat in such a public place, he whistled to a hawker and bought an ear of roasted corn. Turning toward the window, he took a bite and chewed slowly.

“Eh-eh,” the pregnant woman chided. “Have you no respect for our ways? You—a grown man—how can you eat so, in front of all of us?”

Jean Patrick slumped in his seat. “I'm very hungry, Mama. I am feeling weak.”

From across the aisle a grandmother called out. “He's a boy still. And so skinny! Ko Mana—leave him be.”

“We are all hungry,” a toothless old farmer said. “And yet only he is eating.”

The pregnant woman rested her hand on her belly and smiled. “Maybe he is eating for his children.” She turned to him, her face radiant. “Is that what you are doing?”

Jean Patrick had hidden the corn beside him on the seat. “I have no children yet, Mama, but I am hoping to.”

A young woman with a head full of plaits turned toward him. “Do you have umukunzi?” In the crowded bus, everyone's eyes were on Jean Patrick.

“Yes, I have a sweetheart,” he said. “A very beautiful one.”

“Well, then it is settled,” the grandmother said. She addressed her comments to the passengers. “He is eating for the children that are still inside him.” She showed a row of small white teeth.

“Yes, it's settled,” the pregnant woman said. “He has children inside
him that need his food, and also, he is little more than a boy himself.” She prodded Jean Patrick. “Eat well. We won't scold you anymore.”

She returned her hand to her belly and cocked her head as if listening to her child, hearing its steady, beating heart. Jean Patrick took another bite of his corn. A kernel fell onto his jacket, and he brushed it away. Such a blessing to have life swimming and turning inside you, he thought, readying itself to push out into the world.

A
T THE STATION
, Jean Patrick didn't see Bea, and his stomach twisted. He pushed through the crowd, scanning the sea of bright headscarves crowned with basins filled to the brim. There was a small market at the bus stop on Tuesdays, and a row of blankets and stalls had sprouted up beneath the ocher brick walls. The sharp smells of raw meat and fermented fruit greeted his nostrils. One after another, scenarios of disaster went through his mind: Bea was angry again; she had found someone else, a good Hutu boy; she was involved in some politics and had forgotten he was coming. Then he spotted her. She was merely haggling with a woman over a bunch of green bananas. Catastrophe vanished from his mind.

Bea's back was to him. She wore a purple and red pagne with a design of birds in flight, a yellow shawl tied about her shoulders. Beside her were Ineza's two market baskets, already full. Bea and the woman's voices rose and fell in an ancient song that seemed to please them both. Bea won the bananas. The hawker, also victorious, pocketed her coins.

Jean Patrick could have stood and watched in secret for a long time, but as she stooped to pick up her baskets, her gaze fell on him. “Just in time. I couldn't imagine how I was going to carry all my things without putting these dirty bananas on my head.” Jean Patrick laughed at the thought. He took the heavy stalk from her. “For tomorrow night,” she said. “Mama and Claire have already started cooking. You would think an entire RPF garrison was coming for dinner.” She jangled a set of keys. “I borrowed a car from Dadi's friend, but first we have to feed Kweli. She's very cute but also very spoiled, a muzungu dog.”

Jean Patrick stretched out his legs. His hamstrings had started to cramp in the bus, his muscles sore from the morning workout. A pleasant burn told him he had worked as hard as he could. They walked toward a row of
parked vehicles where bicycle-taxi boys called out and rang their bells. The air had been swept clean by rain. It tingled his cheeks, cold and vibrant. He felt truly alive, and for this moment at least, hope won out over the night's long moments of despair.

B
EA UNLOCKED
J
ONATHAN'S
gate and then the front door. Kweli's plaintive yowl greeted them. They took off their shoes and entered the darkened house. It smelled of absence, unaired and dank. Jean Patrick slid along the floor in his socks. “Someday, I will have a house like this,” he said. “It's as big as my dorm—the entire building, I mean.”

Bea pulled back the curtains and threw open the windows. Sunlight poured in, falling in stripes across the floor. From behind a closed door, the puppy yelped again.

“She's demanding her dinner,” Bea said. “She eats and eats and eats, that one.” She headed toward the room.

“Do you know when they're coming back?” Jean Patrick's skin buzzed with Bea's nearness.

“They told Mama not to expect them until after dark.”

“And Amos is still gone?”

Bea spun around. “Why do you ask, huh?”

“I am concerned for the dog is all. Me, I like dogs too well.”

Kweli whined and scratched at the door. “Ko Mana, stop!” Bea opened the door, and Kweli bounded out. Laughing, Bea chased after her, and Jean Patrick followed. Before they could catch her, she squatted and peed. “You!” Bea said, but she was still laughing.

She picked her up, dripping, and carried her outside while Jean Patrick found a cloth to clean up the mess. When he was done, he went inside the room where Kweli had been confined. It was a bedroom, a small bed pushed against the wall, but Jonathan had turned it into an office, books and rocks spilling into every available space. Jean Patrick adjusted the shutters at the window to let in the sun and peeked between the slats. Bea was on her knees in the grass, calling the puppy. The dog ignored her and continued to run in circles around the yard. Bea cooed and wiggled her fingers as if showing a special treat. The puppy trotted to her then, her whole body an enormous wiggle, and Bea scooped her into her arms.

“Success,” she said, putting Kweli down on her blanket. “She's finished her business for a while.” She bolted for the door, and Bea closed it just in time. “I'll have to feed her now.”

“Come here by the window,” Jean Patrick said. “I want to look at you.” He grabbed the edges of her shawl and pulled her over. The sun through the shutters drew lines of light and dark across her blouse. He pulled off the shawl. The puppy chewed on a leg of the bed, and Bea took a pen from the desk and threw it. “Aye-yay. Stop!”

With his arm around her waist, Jean Patrick reeled her in. “Her or me?”

Bea laughed. “Both.”

Jean Patrick began beneath her chin, planting small kisses until he reached the base of her throat. He lifted the necklace and took the muscle beneath it in his teeth. His slow-burning hunger became a hard-edged flame.

“It's not a good time,” Bea said. “I can't.”

“What do you mean?” His voice was hoarse, as if need scalded his larynx.

“I could get pregnant,” she said.

“Even better.” He undid a button of her blouse and then another. “If your belly grows, you'll have to marry me.”

“I mean it. We can't do this.”

But when he kissed her, she kissed him back. He unfastened the rest of her blouse and slid it down her shoulders. She wriggled her arms, and it fell to the floor with a whispered
shush
. Zigzags of light streaked her breasts, her dark, encircled nipples. Kneeling in front of her, he unwound her pagne, pulled down her lacy leggings. She stepped free of them. He traced the angled patterns on her skin, first with a finger and then with his tongue.