Broken Memory Read Online Free Page B

but that day he was too furious. So she turned her anger on Emma’s mother.
    It was the first time Emma had ever felt injustice, and the feelings were even stronger when she remembered them now.
    There were other men in the family — uncles, cousins — but Emma couldn’t remember them. She was told all her relatives were killed during the genocide.
    And since then she had only lived with Mukecuru. Neither of them ever complained about it. The old woman stayed deeply tied to her dead husband. As for Emma, Mukecuru was the only person she had been able to feel at all close to since her mother died.
    Now that fragile balance had been upset. A strange boy who went mad at the same time every year had come into her life. And a strange old man was about to do the same.
    One day Emma saw him walking outside the school with Ndoli. One detail troubled her deeply. They both had dented heads and obvious scars.
    Emma thought about the place these two men seemed to be taking in her life. It was reassuring to have Ndoli there, lurking in the background. He’d shown her that someone could be interested in her, even watch over her for an entire night. And even if his past made her shudder, she knew that they shared the same pain.
    As for the old man, he was the same age her grandfather would have been. He seemed strong, like the way her mother had described her father, and she liked the way he had reached out to Ndoli under the tree that day. She was curious to know so many things about him.
    Emma remembered the way he had raised his hand to her that day on the road.
    She must have looked so stunned, clutching her laundry that way.

14.
    The truck came around the bend in a cloud of brown dust. It was carrying a dozen prisoners, their hazy pink silhouettes jolting together perfectly each time the vehicle hit a bump or a pothole.
    Emma had heard that they would be coming back. The first time they had just been presented to the community. Now they came to be tried at the gacaca court, where the survivors of the genocide would come and testify.
    Some people had shown up on their own. Others had been approached by the local authorities who knew everyone who lived in town and in the surrounding area. They knew who had survived and who would have something to say.
    Before the truck drew alongside, Emma hid by the side of the road and blocked her ears so that she couldn’t hear their voices. Then she watched the prisoners closely after they passed by her hiding place.
    None of the faces was familiar. She found out later that the man whose voice she had recognized was one of the leaders, one of the ones who had given the orders during the massacres. So he would be judged by a tribunal in Kigali. He would not be returning to this area.
    In the middle of the group, some prisoners were laughing. Others sat on the edge of the truck, their heads bowed.
    Emma didn’t know what to think. She had been prepared to see monsters, men with faces full of cruelty. Instead she saw simple peasants.
    â€œTell me, Mukecuru,” Emma said when she returned home that day.
    The old woman looked up, puzzled.
    â€œWhy did they kill us? Who were they?” Emma continued, her face stubborn.
    The old woman hesitated, let out a light sigh.
    â€œTonight,” she replied. “Let’s finish the day’s work first.”
    Almost relieved, Emma grabbed the basket that the old woman held out to her and obediently went to the chicken coop to gather eggs.
    That night, Mukecuru kept her word. She sat Emma down beside her and told her what she knew. She spoke softly and took long pauses between each sentence.
    The old woman told Emma that the president had been assassinated, his plane shot down. She told her how the radio had called on people to murder the Tutsis, who were nothing more than cockroaches, and how the whites had left the country. About the roadblocks where the military and the militias checked people’s