A long time ago, the question of whether life was worth living crossed a woman’s mind. This is how her brain began weaving thoughts of death.
Betty was running in an attempt to save her own life. She escaped from the house whose floor was stained with her blood, and whose walls numbly listened to her sobbing but denied her screams from being heard by the world outside. Reaching the green gate, she found it bolted. She turned her head to check what was behind her; it was as dangerous as fire. She knew if its yellow flames got a little closer, she would be burnt to the ground.
In her early years, Betty had been a girl who climbed the highest trees, so climbing the brick wall by the gate was easy, though she sprained her ankle when she hit the ground.
It was the last Saturday of the month, Umuganda day. Betty limped towards the main road barefoot. Middle-aged men and women who held hoes, machetes and shovels all stopped to stare. Betty slowed her pace to stare back. She was still in her nightgown. It was torn in places and stained in others. She was wide-eyed and a couple of her braids had been ripped out of her head. Women put their hands on their mouths in sadness, and whispers went through the small crowd. One word reached her ears. Umusazi. A mad woman. The word rang and echoed in the halls of her head.
Suddenly, the moment Betty had been yearning for – the moment to walk and not run, the moment to breathe and not choke, the moment to be quiet and not scream – weighed on her shoulders. She felt blood from between her legs slide down as she reached the main road. She lifted her eyes up to the sky, inviting the sun to burn her skin with a hope that her pain would be burnt away. It was not.
She looked ahead of her and saw the bridge that linked Kimihurura to the City Centre. It stood five minutes away. The main road was empty. She crossed the road and headed to the bridge. Upon arrival, she leaned her arms on the top bar of the bridge fence and cast her eyes down to watch a few cars, motor taxis and a single bus pass under.
A red Mercedes whose music blared in Betty’s ears flashed under the bridge. The driver left the impression that she didn’t have a care in the world. Like she was on top of the world. If Betty herself had been on top of the world, the hammering in her head wouldn’t have hurt so much, and the beating of her heart wouldn’t have been so thorny. She wanted to be in the red car so badly. The yearning grew until she understood that being under the car would actually serve her better. The weaving had been quiet throughout the whole thing, but in that moment it whispered. No more heartache. No more weeping. No more screaming. No more nightmares. No more pain. No more shame. She believed Death. All she needed to do then was take a step, do a little climb on the rails and then let go. You won’t feel a thing. It will be like flying and then falling asleep, Death assured her.
Betty smiled at the bittersweet solution. She started laughing until tears fell. More blood flowed down her legs. She thought she deserved to laugh for the very last time. Death told her she deserved to laugh for the very last time.
Betty tried to remember the last time she had laughed so hard but she couldn’t get hold of that memory. She hadn’t smiled once since the words had been spoken to her. If you ever tell anyone, I will not just kill you, she recalled one of them whispering to her. She also remembered the smirking of the second guy – Trust me, it will be very painful – and the warning of the third one, who had red eyes – If you don’t keep your mouth shut, you will pay for the rest of your miserable life.
***
It had all started one evening in March 2014. Betty was trembling from the cold as she ran to Kalisa’s front door. He had promised to drive her to her weekly yoga class for the whole month. He owed her a lot, having lost her one-terabyte hard drive with her work files on. The air inside the living room was warm, to Betty’s relief. Kalisa was not in the living room but she heard voices coming from the master bedroom. The raised voices became louder as she neared the door. She shook slightly when her left hand touched the door knob, turned it and pushed.
She stood frozen in the doorway. They were doing the last of their beating. One of the guys held Kalisa’s arms behind him while the other punched him, shouting all the while. He then plunged the knife into him while the third man cut his throat. Betty found her voice and screamed. The guys realized she had been standing there all along.
They pointed a gun at her to silence her. They forced her to look at Kalisa’s body. Fungura amaso umurebe. Kicking her, they instructed that she look at his wounds. We killed him. They warned her. If you ever tell anyone, I will not just kill you. I will fuck you. Uranyumva neza? She answered, ‘Yes, I hear you.’ We will all fuck you,the next one threatened. And trust me, it will be very painful for you. But it will be a lot of fun to hear you scream for mercy. To hear you beg for your life. Like he did. The red-eyed one added: If you don’t keep your mouth shut, you will pay for the rest of your miserable life. I will hurt you until you draw your very last breath. So keep your mouth shut. And remember: I am the Police.
Later that night, Betty lay in bed, crying quietly. Betty lived on earth but her soul lived in many worlds. There was the actual world where she lived and talked to people. The world of her thoughts that lived in her conscious mind. The world she saw when her eyes were closed before she slept. And the world that gradually appeared in her sleep.
The words that were spoken to her became an immersive invasion not just of her home, but of her worlds as well. When she finally dozed off, the red eyes watched her from a blue sky. She sat under a rock in the wilderness but the eyes peeked at her. She cried for help but her voice stuck in her throat. A moment came when she cried to an old woman who told her that she could relieve her of her burden. Betty did not disclose that she had seen a man die. Instead, she said that her burden was one nobody could take off her back because it could not be carved off the muscles of her memory. Betty rested her head on the old woman’s lap as she wept, but then saw a thousand people come towards the woman’s little hut. They surrounded the pair of them and stabbed the old woman. As the red-eyed man thrust his knife into Betty’s stomach, she forced herself awake and sat upright.
A week after the murder, she read the story whose headline ran, ‘Kalisa Eric Disappears after a Trip to Gisenyi to Meet an Authority.’ In March 2014, a number of individuals disappeared. The incidents were connected to the political situation in DRC and the M23 rebels. The article indicated the witnesses to be three of Kalisa’s friends. They claimed to have spoken to him right before he left. That was the alleged time he was last seen. Betty wept at their cruel cleverness.
She kept their cruelty a secret until one day she opened her mouth and spilt out fragments of what had happened. She said the words as if confessing her sins, hoping that the heaviness would lighten. It was later that day that she found herself at the bridge, ready to take her own life. There, Betty looked down the road and saw a large blue truck. It was coming from Nyabugogo and was probably going to Gikondo. She slowly climbed the rails of the bridge. She sat on top first and left her legs suspended in the air as she eyed the truck. Then, she let go of the rails and fell; something I did not think was actually going to happen.
***
Most of the things that happened to Betty, I did not see. Some things, though, I witnessed. I was there before she ran and headed to the bridge. I was there before she decided to fling herself down and be crushed by the blue truck.
That Saturday morning, Betty was crying in her room. She held her hand over her mouth to drown out the noise but every now and then she would think of Kalisa. The memory caused her such physical pain that she howled like a woman giving birth. She appeared to be trembling, or the pain in her senses caused her to repeatedly tap her foot. She paced her room until she lost the strength to stand. She sat down and pounded the floor as she wept. I realized then that the decision to give her space was the wrong one. I stepped into the room. Her crying stopped when she saw me. Her attempt to hide her sorrow was useless and she knew it.
She thought I had gone to the Community Service and I had. But I had returned immediately to exchange a shovel for a machete.
‘Is this about your boyfriend’s death?’ I asked her as I moved towards her bed.
She stood up, clearly surprised, ‘What? Where did you get that from? He could be in Congo.’
‘We both know that’s not true.’
‘Do we?’ she chuckled bitterly. ‘Look, Mbabazi, this isn’t a good time. I need to be alone. Nothing is going on.’
‘Then why are you crying?’
‘There’s nothing to worry about. I promise.’
I sighed. ‘Fine. But, just so you know, you can talk to me.’ I sat on the bed and put my arm around her shoulder. She leaned on me. We sat in silence for a few minutes. I waited for her to give it up and tell. She waited for me to give it up and leave.
‘Mbaba?’ she asked after a while.
‘Karame, chérie,’
‘What makes you think that Kalisa is dead?’
‘Well, I thought that maybe he contacted you when he reached Congo, and that he told you someone was after him, and then died, and somehow you found out. Sometimes I hear you in your sleep saying, “Please don’t kill him”. Many times you say his name out loud. And you’ve been screaming a lot at night. And you’ve been so withdrawn.’
‘Kalisa is long dead; his spirit is long gone from this world.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘I’m so sorry, sweet. I know how much he meant to you.’
‘I wish I’d been able to do something, you know?’ she said, more to herself than to me. ‘As soon as I heard raised voices I should have called someone, maybe they would have arrived in time.’
‘So, you did actually see a man die? Like in that dream you told me about?’
She appeared to not have heard me. She continued, ‘I just stood there and watched Red Eyes cut his throat.’
‘Wait, Red Eyes, the policeman?’
She was startled, ‘Who said that? He’s not the only person with red eyes.’ She quickly added, ‘That we know of.’
‘OH MY GOD! He killed him and lied about his whereabouts! But they were friends!?’ I said, more to myself than to her.
‘Exactly. They were friends. Mbabazi, you are crazy. PLEASE STOP BEING CRAZY!’
I realized how scared she was from the fear in her eyes. She took up her phone and typed a long text. She did not send it. She gave it to me so that I could read. I read and understood and hugged her.
‘Everything will be okay.’
She didn’t believe me and neither did I.
***
It all happened so quickly: the three men just came out of nowhere. They defiled her and made me watch. They tied me up and one of them held me still to ensure that I watched. They whispered words of torture to her. Words like, ‘Your brother is right there, he can see your nakedness,’ and ‘You refused to keep your hole shut. Now, we are going to fill your other holes.’
When Red Eyes smiled for the first time and said to his buddies, ‘Imagine how much fun it would be if we made her brother fuck her as well,’ Betty was furious. She turned her head, looked towards the doorway and said, ‘Father, help me pleeease!’ in tears. The distraction worked really well – the one who held her loosened his grip. Betty stood up and used her hand to crush the balls of one guy, and I tried to distract the one closest to me. Red Eyes was the only one left to run after her. She threw a chair in his way to delay him and ran outside. When her escape plan worked, the guys decided to kill me. That’s how I got the scar on my left shoulder. I shot one of them dead in self-defence.
People who were still hanging around after Umuganda heard the gunshots and some of them came to look. Betty had run past them earlier and they had taken her for a mad woman on her period. They came in and captured the guys. Some kid had seen Betty head towards the bridge, so I ran after her.
***
When I saw her look down from the bridge, I was relieved she was still there. But then she started climbing the rails. As I ran towards her, I didn’t think she was actually going to jump. I prayed hard that she wouldn’t. But she did. She was weak, therefore slow. She had let herself go by the time I was there but I managed to catch her hand.
She looked up at me and I saw her frown.
‘Betty, pleeease! Don’t do this to yourself!’ I called.
‘Mbabazi, let me go. You saw what they did to me!’ she said. Her next words came with tears. ‘You heard what they said! YOUR BLOOD IS DRIPPING ON ME!’
I looked her in the eye and once again said, ‘Everything is going to be okay!’ – this time with a lot more conviction. She saw the sorrow in my eyes and noticed my trembling hand.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I can’t hear you. Come up and say that again.’
‘Your name is right. You are very merciful.’
‘And I love you. Always.’
I continued: ‘I don’t see you changing your mind, but get this. You left me in there with the three of them, but I am right here. Out of my breath. To save you, Betty. What does that tell you?’
***
My sister and I had been close since childhood. Our sister Samantha died at two; I was six and Betty was four. Our parents did not tell us about her death. Three days after Samantha’s death, on Betty’s birthday, one of the kids at the birthday party told us the baby was dead. Betty was very upset, not only because the baby had died, but also because our parents had kept it a secret. She refused to eat for days.
To convince her to eat, I promised that I would never lie to her. With that promise, she vowed to never lie to me either, no matter how bad or embarrassing the issue was. We were both committed to keeping our word. She came to me when she got her first period. I went to her when I had my first crush. She came to me when she got dumped for the first time. I went to her when I had sex. She told me about the worlds in her head. I told her my friends’ secrets. She came to me when she smoked her first cigarette. I went to her when I got your mother pregnant.
She did not tell me when she saw her boyfriend die. She did not come to me when she was threatened. She did not come to me when she decided to kill herself.
When your brain starts to weave the thoughts of death, it convinces you not to tell. Even to the person to whom you tell all your secrets. Sometimes, as with my sister, it does not give you time to consider telling them. It begins with keeping secrets. Your family can see the sadness in your eyes. But they give you space because they do not know how serious it is.
Isimbi, my daughter, I know there is sorrow in your heart. I don’t know why you are depressed. Your brain may convince you not to tell, but the tears you cry when you think no one is watching will never dry. You’ve seen your Aunt Betty these days. She doesn’t look like someone who once tried to kill herself, does she? It took a long time. More than a year, actually. She did not lock herself in her room like you do. She went outside, with me, with Mama, with Father, with her friends, with her therapist. Slowly, we helped her untangle the thoughts of death until the weaving stopped.
This short story formerly appeared in Redemption Song and other stories, the 2018 Caine Prize anthology.