by Dee. D. StewartWe pant, pray and run toward another restless sleep. But tonight the air smells different to me. Not its usual burnt trash and trees stench. Tonight...tonight it smells of guava. A perfect fruit balanced in taste and scent, both sweet and sour, both firm and soft. Until you bite one you will not know how it will taste. Until nightfall we will not know what we'll face. Uganda is not balanced. We tread through the dark in an unbalanced manner, but we are quite rational. We know this road. And tonight our footsteps sound less like stomps, but gallops. Tonight...tonight is different.
My bigger brother, Apolo, grips my hand and glides me through the bush like a plum angel with black wings. "Let's go."
Apolo is fifteen and knows the quiet way to Noah's Ark . Some say he is the oldest child commuter. The same say he is the most protected.
But our dying mother prays that I am the one who is the most blessed. For no one else knows my name except the geckos in the brush. They see me clearly, but do not speak. Nor can I speak back to them, since no words have fallen from my lips since I shouted at God three years ago. I was seven years old then.
But Apolo talks to me as if one day I will just speak again and tell jokes about how the gecko's bright eyes mirror Wilson, our family ghost. Now wouldn't that miracle be more than a blessing?
He stops and jerks my hand to make me stop. He looks around us; then whispers. "I hear something."
My heart runs, but won't leave my chest. It bubbles up my throat, then paces from jaw to jaw. If I only I could speak then this nausea wouldn't taunt me like this. What have I done? What will be done? My nostrils reek of guava.
Apolo says to others who walk with us. "Hide."
My knees turn to mush like matoke. I can't move.
"Pearl?" Apolo calls me. "Get down."
We squat near a series of compost piles. Yet the night still smells like guava to me. We hear brush folding and crumpling. I smell dirt, red sand, salt and fear. The Lord's Resistance Army stands footsteps away from our future.
The Lord is my shepherd...
I close my eyes so I can camouflage into the night. God made me this dark for my protection from the sun and from his army. Apolo lays prostrate against the swishy ground. His hands clutch my ankles. He holds me up. Now we are statues.
He made me lie down in green pastures...
I can feel my nostrils widen as they walk closer, smell the banana tree bark that comprises the barrel of their guns. My stomach growls loud like a rumbling thunder along the Earth.
Feet stop. A soldier yells, "Who's there?"
I can't breathe.
A large slab of invisible wood pushes my chest and connects with the fear pacing at the tip of my throat. My head begins to quake, my jaws quiver and my heart begins to pray:
Yea thou I walk through the valley of death...
"I will fear no evil."
Apolo's hands fall away from my ankles; then slaps across my mouth. My eyes pop open. We hold each other. Tears drizzle down our eyes, our hands, and our legs. We both wish that I never spoke again. We both rejoice that I speak. Guava.
The soldier comes closer, searches through the brush until his gun's barrel tip touches my elbow. He leans down. Eyes whiter and colder than coconut milk. They grow large like gecko.
Wilson.
My heart leaps and falls.
Another soldier shouts at him. "What do you see?"
Wilson looks at me, then at Apolo. He looks at me again. This time his eyes twinkle like they did three years ago before he hid Apolo and I under compost and was carried off by his new family.
He sighs. "I see a miracle."
"What?" the soldier's voice comes closer.
He tilts his chin slightly toward a safer direction in the brush; then he cuts the air with his free hand. "I said. I see colobus. That's all."
Apolo and I hold our breath and each other until the woods are quiet again.
We are minutes from Noah's Ark, but further from whom we once were. We will not go back to our village or to Mama. We will go to Dure in the morning, instead. And we will pray for another miracle: Wilson's freedom.
Copyright 2006 Dee D. Stewart.
Note: Every night more than 25,000 children leave their villages or camps throughout the district and walk to Gulu town to escape being killed or abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army, which is waging war against the Ugandan government. These 'night commuters' head for shelters such as Noah's Ark, as well as the grounds of the town's hospital and schools.
Dee Stewart is a mother,writer and editor. She's written for Spirit Led Woman, Gospel Today, and Precious Times magazines. Her short story, "Straddling the Fence," is featured in Infuze Magazine's Best of 2005 Christian Shorts Anthology. She can be found at her blog, Christian Fiction Blog
Photo: IDP Girl in Riyadh Camp Smiles by Doug Mercado
