In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills Read online

  Rachel chips away at the crumbly wooden frame that holds the Life magazine cover, her eyes flitting to the silver-framed wedding photo of her parents. It occurs to her, not for the first time, that becoming pregnant has been another kind of game during the past three years, a challenge that bonded her and Mick. Finally, she can offer him a real prize. Their baby is what makes them not merely a couple, but a real family.

  “Her name is Serena,” Rachel confided to her mom during their last visit at the Seaview Nursing Home. “It’s a secret, not even Mick knows.” It was nice to see a flush rise to Merilee’s pale face, cheeks that had held a young girl’s blush until recently. Her eyes, blue tinged with violet, like a rare gem, sparkled with the news.

  “I won’t tell,” she promised between labored breaths, tapping a conspirator’s finger against coral-pink lips. It was the last secret they shared. She died two days later.

  Now, Rachel looks out the pocket window between her desk and the crib. A fog of light emanates from the streetlamp. She cradles her stomach with both hands and makes a wish, aiming it toward where the North Star should be. Serena. It’s superstitious but she’s still afraid to say her daughter’s name aloud, afraid to somehow jinx her existence. Still. It’s been over a month since the end of the first trimester, when the doctor announced they were officially out of the danger zone. That night, after toasting their future astronaut or rock star with bubbly cider, she and Mick made love on the living room rug for the first time since finding out she was pregnant. She imagined they were being transported back two years, before the pressure of thermometers, calendars, and positioning their bodies for optimum baby-making. Before the miscarriage at ten weeks last year. She bends over, a hand on her lower back, to pluck a paint chip from the floor. Bumblebee Yellow or Golden Wheat. They couldn’t decide, went back and forth on what shade to paint the nursery like they had all the time in the world.

  One side of the frame snaps in her hand, a sharp edge of glass slicing her palm. Rachel sucks at her wound and stares at the girl in the church window, shattered but still in one piece, on the floor. She picks icy slivers off the photo taped to cardboard, and then examines it more closely. On the back are several crossed-out phone numbers and an address in Atlanta. Why the hell did her father keep track of this woman? Maybe her mom had good reason to suspect he was having an affair. Did he leave them for her?

  The laptop computer sputters as if it has been awakened from the deepest sleep when Rachel taps the “on” button. The dial-up connection groans. She drums her fingers on the desktop. What if Henry Shepherd is in Atlanta? Fucking Atlanta, not Timbuktu, only two hours by plane from Jacksonville. Serena stirs; Rachel’s hand softens and floats onto her stomach. The other hand reaches for a snow globe from a shelf above her desk containing a tiny snow-capped mountain, above it bright green cursive script: Merry Christmas from Mt. Kenya. It’s the one and only gift her father has sent to her in the past twenty-six years, the Christmas after he left. The computer screen flickers from black to blue, and she shakes the orb like a Magic 8-Ball. As a girl, before she stopped hoping, she watched these papery flakes and glitter drift to the ground and imagined her father’s footprints in the snow. Now, she sees two sets of footprints, one very small.

  Alta Vista pops up on the screen and she types the address in Atlanta into the search engine box. The computer springs to life, awhirl with ticking sounds. Rachel leans in closer toward the screen. Maybe the photo her father took, an impression frozen in time, might lead her to him. Bring him back home. A name materializes on the screen along with the address: Lillian Carlson. She hasn’t lived at that address since the late sixties. A small flare of hope lights up within Rachel as she scans a short list of website links, one with an email address that’s definitely not in Atlanta.

  TWO

  { September 15, 2000 - Mubaro, Rwanda }

  NEARLY THIRTY YEARS, AND IT NEVER gets any easier when a child shows up on the front porch of Lillian Carlson’s modest farm in the shadow of the Virunga Mountains. “How about some lunch, sugar?” she coaxes, offering the plate of plantain, rice and beans to the boy with dull-brown eyes, who is probably in his early teens, judging from his height. She resists the urge to reach out and hold him close, assure him everything’s going to be okay. That’s not true and she won’t lie to these kids, not after all they’ve been through by the time they land here. The boy is so thin, practically swallowed up by her wicker rocker, as he considers his bare feet, toes digging into the bamboo mat.

  “Well, I’ll leave your lunch right here on the table while I check on those cookies you smell baking.” Her new ward cuts a glance toward her and she grabs the opening, leans a bit closer. “Personally, I’m torn between cocoa, peanut butter and cardamom,” she confides, “so I mix up all three in my secret recipe.” Lillian takes a minute to arrange a full set of silverware on a cloth napkin in front of the boy, pulls a few droopy petals off the vase of rainbow-colored wildflowers, and then wipes a powdery veneer of pollen off the mahogany tabletop and rubs a thumb across her fingers. Spring has finally come to the Rift Valley after a long, dry winter. This is her favorite time of year; filled with tiny miracles.

  A knot of black-masked vervet monkeys perched in a nearby acacia tree chatter heartily as Lillian opens the screen door. “Don’t you worry about them, all talk and no action,” she says, waving a hand toward the little bandits who are too shy to come down and swipe the boy’s food. They’re more likely to give up in a few minutes and go raid the pea patch at the side of the house. She keeps watching the boy—nobody at the hospital could get him to reveal his name—from the front hallway, out of his sight. He keeps an eye on the monkeys, slides his chair closer to the plate and grabs handfuls of food, ignoring the silverware. Lillian smiles triumphantly. Sometimes that’s what it takes, her up and leaving, before a child trusts the bounty is actually for him, accepts that there are no strings attached.

  Out of the corner of her eye, in the mirror above the coatrack, Lillian spies a flash of pink barrettes. She pretends to startle and then reaches behind to catch nimble fingers latching onto the back pocket of her dungarees. “Rosie, I swear,” she chides, “you’re quiet as a leopard cub. I’m going to hang bells around your neck so you won’t be able to slink up on me.” The culprit falls into her, a curtain of shoulder-length black braids cascading across her wren-like face, snorting laughter through her nose. Lillian pulls her gently into her arms. How can this child who spent the last week in bed, so listless she couldn’t lift a spoon to her mouth, now be so strong? Another miracle.

  Rose cranes her neck over Lillian’s shoulder and wriggles out of her arms. “Who is he?” she asks. Lillian wipes a dab of honey from a shiny, cocoa-colored cheek. Rose has sprouted up during the past year, but she still looks closer to age six than eight. Some days, all she’ll eat is Mama Lilly’s special super-power cookies, packed with protein, baked especially for her. She’s always been a finicky eater, ever since she was an infant. Lillian suspects it’s because she never had the opportunity to nurse at her mama’s breast.

  “What’s his name?” Rose persists. “Did Tucker find him in the mountains?”

  “Tucker brought him from the hospital in Kigali,” Lillian says crisply, to short-circuit a surge of sadness. “His mama can’t take care of him anymore.” She doesn’t like keeping the truth from the children, especially when it’s her own emotions getting tangled up.

  Daniel Tucker first appeared on her front porch with Rose seven years ago, dressed in filthy jeans and a bright yellow UCLA T-shirt, a red bandana slashing across his light brown forehead. African-American, but there was no mistaking that he was more of the latter. He could have been a young backpacker in need of a shower, stopping in Mubaro to get water before heading into the Virunga Mountains to track gorillas. But there was that squirming bundle he held to his chest, wrapped in a dirty pink blanket. And then, there were his meticulously squared nails rimmed with dirt-encrusted cuticles: the hands of a surgeon in a war zone
.

  Lillian held out her arms instead of asking questions. The first time she holds a child, the feel of their body, if they settle or squirm, look up into her eyes or away, it’s all-telling. The baby girl nestled into the crook of her elbow and sucked mightily on her pinky finger. Even with a film of dust on her brown fuzzy head, she still had a honey-and-milk baby smell. “You’re a beauty,” Lillian cooed, and then asked Tucker, “What’s her name, son?” He shook his head as if confused, sadness pooling in his eyes. “We’ll call her Rose for now,” she said, guiding him inside her home. He’s been staying here off and on ever since, providing medical care for the orphans as well as families who live in the mountain villages between Mubaro and the Uganda border, about fifty kilometers north as the crow flies, much longer by Jeep winding up and down dirt roads.

  Lillian reaches out for Rose but the slip of a girl is too darned fast. “Sugar, wait!” The new boy doesn’t need her asking his name, pestering him. Let him settle in for a bit first. But Rose is already on the front porch, introducing herself, talking to—no, wait, with—this child who Lillian hasn’t been able to drag a blessed syllable out of during the past two hours. Within minutes, they’re pointing at the monkeys still in the tree and giggling like old pals. Well, that’s how it is with the kids she takes in, only three or four at a time now. They have an unspoken bond. They can reach each other when adults have done too much damage to be trusted.

  A faint ding-bleep-bleep-ding becomes louder as Lillian heads toward the kitchen. Two brothers, Thomas and Zeke, are still in their school uniforms of khaki shorts and blue polo shirts, huddled at the table with Tucker. All three are mesmerized by the portable computer that was a birthday gift from Tucker a few months back. Lillian still can’t get comfortable using it. She’s gotten by with her Smith Corona for nearly forty years, a high school graduation present from her folks. They worked hard to make sure their daughter was the first family member on either side to attend college. The look on their faces when she announced her intention to teach at an orphanage in Africa was nearly unbearable. To Mama’s mind, Kenya may as well have been Jupiter. It wasn’t the first time she had disappointed them. But it was the first time she didn’t allow them to talk her out of a terrible mistake, Daddy’s reference to most of the decisions she made on her own.

  Lillian stands behind Tucker, who’s hunched over the keyboard. “See?” he says to the brothers, tapping away. “This game’s a cinch. Just keep your little dudes cruising through the maze, gobbling up dots to get points. The cherries are the real mother lode.”

  “Ten more minutes, then it’s back to homework for a while,” Lillian reminds all three of them, running her hand over the tightly cropped curls on Tucker’s head. She sighs. Only thirty-two and already a smattering of gray.

  It’s this place, so beautiful and full of promise. Rwanda, the people and the land, draw you in, take everything you have and make you dig deep within your soul, willingly, to keep searching for more. Lillian squeezes Tucker’s shoulder; it gives her such joy to see him cheering along with the boys as the blinking smiley-faces gobble up musical dots. The children nourish him. She could see that on the first day he arrived, his voice a monotone tenor as he reported that the Hutus had attacked the main hospital in Kigali, where he worked. The Hutu militia had been raiding Tutsi towns, burning homes and murdering entire communities since the Belgians left Rwanda in the late fifties. Nothing new there. But this was different: organized and premeditated. The terror spreading throughout the country was palpable, like the pulsing dots of color multiplying on the computer screen. Aid workers and foreign diplomats began trickling out of the country. Lillian canned corn and peas, and stockpiled potatoes in the cellar. Tucker hitchhiked from Kigali to find what he thought was a safe home for an infant whose mother was murdered before she could hold her baby to her breast even one time. There was no stopping what was being put into motion and would come to a head six months later.

  The slaughter. That’s what Lillian calls it. Genocide is far too polite.

  “Lillian, you’ve got email,” Tucker says. “Probably from Nadine. Check it out.”

  “Ten minutes,” she repeats, giving him her best stern librarian look. He knows full well she’s not keen on conversing through a machine. Computerized letters are too light and breezy: Dearest Maman, dashing off to classes so just a quick note with all my love. And, way too easy. Maman, a bit of bad news. I’m afraid I failed my first college algebra quiz despite best efforts.

  Lillian hums the chorus of an obscure Nat King Cole tune that’s been stuck in her head for days as she peers into the oven. Something colored sky… It’s no use; she can’t get rid of the itchy urge to check that blasted screen. She grimaces, the squeaky oven door setting her teeth on edge.

  “Sorry, was gonna oil that…” Tucker jumps up from the table, shifting the laptop toward Thomas. “Now, don’t let the ghost dudes catch up with your guy or it’s all over. And make sure to let your bro co-pilot after a while.”

  “The oven can wait.” Lillian motions for Tucker to sit and keep playing with the kids. It’s good for all of them to have some fun. A few minutes later, she places a plate of warm cookies on the table, a sense of accomplishment washing over her. Tucker’s hand is over Thomas’ fingers, Zeke pointing at the screen. All three of them cheer as the bleep-ding-bleep gets louder. “Mama Lilly, we got another cherry!” Thomas shouts.

  “We won, we won!” his little brother chirps.

  “So I see,” Lillian lies. The screen is a mish-mash of blinking lights and nonsense. “Go ahead and shut that thing off, now. Time to get back to homework.”

  Tucker hovers the pointer over the glowing mailbox icon and Lillian’s pulse ticks a bit faster. “I’ll be in the gathering room in a few minutes,” she says, corralling the boys away from the table and toward the door. “Thomas, you help the young ones with their addition and subtraction if they need it.”

  “It’s from Nadine.” Tucker gets up and offers his chair.

  “If that child’s smart enough to get a scholarship to the university in Nairobi, she can surely figure out how to dial a telephone,” Lillian says.

  “See that envelope? Click on it, and then hit the reply button.”

  “I’ll try later.”

  Tucker rummages through the cabinet above the stove for a canister of grease. “The other email too,” he says quietly. “It’s been a month. She deserves an explanation.”

  “Believe me, that gal doesn’t want to hear what I have to say.”

  “Which is?”

  Lillian shrugs, a brief reminder of their agreement not to discuss certain topics. Henry Shepherd is at the top of the list. She hears the clunk and clang of tools that Tucker most likely doesn’t need.

  “Something,” he grumbles. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  Lillian fills up the deep metal sink with soapy water, though there’s only a spatula and cookie tin to wash. She watches iridescent bubbles rise over her wrists and plunges her arms in past her elbows. A small luxury, a sinkful of warm bubbles popping on her earth-worn hands and quenching her skin, but one she can afford occasionally if she lets the dishes pile up the next day. Her mind wanders into deeper waters, places that are murky with desire and longing, places she can’t afford to go.

  Thirty-seven years…seems like yesterday that she first laid eyes on the tall, skinny white boy at the back of Ebenezer Baptist Church. She shakes her head; at seventeen, it had seemed like the bravest thing in the world to turn in her seat, look right past Daddy’s stern stare from the pew behind, and hazard a slight wave on a dare from her girlfriend Deirdre, sitting beside her. Such a small gesture, but it had felt dangerous. Not as adventurous as Deirdre’s plans to get on the bus to Selma, but certainly risky. She wanted her parents to see that she wasn’t a little girl anymore but a woman with a mind of her own. Follow the rules, mind your own business, and tend to your family, Daddy was fond of saying. That’s the recipe for a good life. But she wanted so much mo
re. Things were going to be different now that she was accepted at Spelman. No more sitting in her room stuffing flyers into envelopes instead of attending rallies. She and Deirdre had already signed up for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

  Lillian dries her arms with a dish towel, the bubbles all settled into a dull sheen on the water. She sniffs once and refocuses her mind. She hears Rose across the hall, introducing the new boy as Robert, explaining to Thomas and Zeke that he likes soccer and monkeys. He’ll fit in just fine. That’s what matters, the children. She can’t afford to let her mind wander back to the rooftop of Henry’s cheaply furnished studio apartment, not far from Spelman, where they spent many nights making plans to raise a family of their own. They would use the money they were saving to move to Kenya, where it wouldn’t matter that the color of their skin didn’t match.

  “I’d tell that poor gal to forget him,” she says, so softly that Tucker might not hear her over the squeaky oven door he’s busy plying with grease. Surely, Rachel Shepherd doesn’t want to know the story of how Henry showed up here nearly a decade after they stopped pretending they were immune to the small-mindedness and violence; they were in love. Surely, she doesn’t want to know her father was quietly dying inside while he took photos of pretty women oohing and ahhing over household appliances for advertisements. And the last thing Lillian wants to tell that gal is how her father deserted his family here, just as he had done to her and her mother. That wouldn’t do anyone any good.

  The computer beeps menacingly. Lillian aims the dish towel toward the sink. That seals it, the unwieldy gadget is going back onto the top shelf of her bedroom closet—or, better still, Tucker’s closet. But first, she can’t resist clicking on the bright mailbox and opening the note from Nadine. Even though she’s practically grown, Lillian still thinks of her as a child sitting on the back patio and playing her wooden flute, or feeding crusts of peanut butter sandwich to the monkeys while her parents helped out running this place.