Truth, by Omission Read online

  Trying to summon the resolution I had come to in my cell I take a deep breath. “There’s no mistake, Anna. I have been arrested, I will be tried, and I am guilty.” I want this to sink in so that’s all I say.

  “No,” she says, dismissing my statement firmly. She is defiant and stares me in the eye.

  “Anna, I have done terrible things, things you know nothing about. Perhaps I should have told you before. No, that’s wrong—I definitely should have told you before. I accept all the blame for hiding these things from you. I won’t hide anything anymore. But I don’t want you involved in it. I don’t want your life ruined any more than it already has been. I’ve fucked things up for you already. I will go back to Africa and face this like I need to. But you need to understand, I—”

  Spontaneously, out of the blue, she slaps me hard across the side of my face. “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” she screams, stunning me to speechlessness. I’m stunned that she has screamed at me; she almost never does that. Shocked that she swore; I’ve seldom heard that from her. And dumbfounded that she has hit me; she has never done that before—ever.

  “Quit being so fucking pitiful,” she says. “Whatever these things are that you might have done, you were a child—a minor. You’re not guilty. You’re not going anywhere. And I am involved in it. I’m your wife. We’re in it together and we’ll get through it together.”

  Tears run down my cheeks. I am humiliated and small, even as I stand over her, looking down to her. I’m not sure what to say. “I’m sorry, Anna. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the way I am. Sorry for the things I’ve done. I never wanted to hurt you, Anna. I’m sorry.”

  Leaning into my chest, she begins to sob and reaches around me, holding on to me tightly.

  “I know you’d never hurt me, Freddie. You never have. Whoever you were as Azikiwe, I don’t care. I married Alfred. Alfred is all I know. You’re not Azikiwe. You’re the kindest person I’ve ever known. You’re a doctor. You heal people. You save people. That’s the only truth I’ve ever needed.” She steps back from me and reaches up with her hand, wiping the tears from my cheek, and then very tenderly traces the line of my scar down across my forehead. “We’ll get through this, Alfred. We’ll get through it together.”

  There’s a knock and Steve May steps in, closing the door behind him. Seeing us, distraught as we are, he asks if we’d like him to come back.

  Anna wipes her eyes with her sleeve. “No, it’s fine, Steve.”

  He suggests we sit, and Anna and I each take a chair close beside one another, holding hands. Steve sits across the table. “Okay, State Department says they’re expecting to have everything formalized by this afternoon. We’ll know exactly what we’re up against then. We’ve got a judge at three-thirty today. I’ve talked to the US Attorney’s Office and one way or another we’ll get you out of here today. Depending on what State sends over we can argue for improper confinement. If that doesn’t work, Laura Abroud has agreed to electronic monitoring. We’ll ask the judge to authorize that, and you can be at home for Christmas.

  “Is there anything you need to know, Alfred? Any questions?”

  I’m only half paying attention to Steve. I just want to get this whole thing over. “No. I can’t think of anything. Thanks, Steve.”

  “Anything I should know?” he asks. “Anything you might have thought of since last night?”

  “Steve, I’ve made a decision. I don’t want to fight. I’ve decided to own up to things and face my consequences.”

  Steve looks at Anna, and I can see out of the corner of my eye that she is shaking her head, “no.”

  “What do you mean?” he asks. “Go to the Congo or Tanzania to face some kangaroo court? Bullshit. Of course you’re going to fight.”

  I sit silently, but Anna responds. “Thanks, Steve. Let us know if you hear anything, and we’ll see you this afternoon.”

  As soon as Steve leaves Anna turns to me. “He’s right, Freddie. You can’t let yourself be crucified in some place where we have no idea what their laws even are—or how fair their courts are.” She knows that she hasn’t convinced me, and I can see she is trying another tack when she adds, “Some of this is my fault.”

  “Don’t be silly, Anna. None of this is your fault. This is me. It’s all my doing.”

  “No,” she says. “I shouldn’t have let it go this far. I knew you were suffering. We should’ve gotten you help long ago. I let this go on too long.”

  “That wouldn’t have made a bit of difference, Anna. The things I did twenty-five years ago, I did. I did them. No one else. It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d gone to a shrink or a thousand shrinks. It wouldn’t have mattered if they waved a magic wand and cured me. I still did those things. I’d still have a warrant for my arrest, and I’d still be going back to Africa for my accounting.”

  This makes Anna pause. “All right. I’m sorry, Freddie. We’ll do whatever you think is right. But we will do it together. I’m going with you wherever you go.”

  “Thank you, Anna. Truly. But I’ve caused you enough trouble, enough pain already.”

  “Would you fucking stop that!” she erupts again. “Quit pitying yourself. We’re in this together. We. Do you understand? We! You and me. You’re my husband, and I’m your wife. Without Stephanie, what else do we have? Nothing. And nothing is going to come between us.”

  How can I not weep at this undeserved love that Anna just keeps giving me? I do, I weep without tears, from every pore of my soul.

  We’re silent for a long time, when Anna finally asks if there’s anything I want to talk about.

  “Yes, Anna. I want to talk about it all. If you’ll listen, I want you to know it all. Please.”

  I close my eyes, thinking how I should begin, trying to conjure up the memories that I have spent most of my life trying to erase. I’ve done everything I could for more than twenty years to hide these memories, bury them, pretend they didn’t happen, ignore them, and deny them. And, as a testament to how utterly unsuccessful I have been at this, they come flooding back in an instant, all as vivid as I see them in the nightmares that have awakened me many times over the years, leaving me sweating profusely and crying like a baby in Anna’s arms.

  I had, of course, told Anna over the years that I was an orphan, but as was typical I didn’t tell her the entire truth. She knew that my parents died when I was young and that I was largely schooled by missionaries in Kigali, but I never told her that I was twice orphaned, that Uncle Dzigbote and Auntie Nyaka were my adopted parents. So, I begin by telling her of my life in the village with them, how in my childhood innocence I had no concept of poverty and felt that I lived as well as any other human on the planet. And because I knew no differently, I was perfectly happy and secure.

  At first it is difficult to verbalize the scene, to explain to Anna what I felt as my aunt and uncle were murdered while I was helplessly restrained nearby. The sight has played out countless times in my mind, but I’ve never put it into words before. Still, the initial challenge quickly dissolves, and I become caught up in unloading the burden that I have been carrying.

  I spew out the story of Uncle Dzigbote’s killing and then how all four of my captors first raped Auntie Nyaka before also killing her and sending her lifeless body away in the current. I try to explain to Anna how I think that I was too young at the time to process much of what was happening around me, telling her I am not sure if I was at fault at that young age for not having resisted my captors more. As I look back, I realize that from the moment I witnessed those first two deaths I had begun to succumb to the depravity of humanity’s lowest common denominators: slavery, poverty, hopelessness, and despair. I had been plucked from the comfort and innocence of a happy childhood and dumped into a cesspool.

  As much as I may wish now that I had fought harder to escape the situation, as a young boy I somehow resigned myself to it. I wish I could explain why, but th
e best I’ve come up with over the years is that I was reacting to some innate instinct to simply survive—and doing it by the path of least resistance.

  Africa

  After they rolled Auntie Nyaka’s lifeless, naked body into the river and made sure that it caught in the current, the four men stepped onto their flat-deck boat. They shoved it back into the stream, and with two hands the boat driver pulled on a cord, bringing the motor to life. He steered it upstream, pud, pud, pud. My wrists were bound in front of me, and the other end of the ten-foot rope was tied to the boat deck. They had stuffed my mouth with a section of Auntie Nyaka’s bolt, which prevented me from making more than a whimper, but I cried—as any other child would, having just witnessed the deaths of his parents.

  The man with the gun, the fat one, said in Swahili, “Let’s kill the boy. Dump him now.”

  One of the others responded, “We’ll take him with us. We can sell him at the mine.”

  “No, Idi. He’ll be nothing but trouble,” the fat man said.

  The one called Idi turned to me and asked in Swahili, “Do you understand me? Shake your head yes or no.” The cloth in my mouth stopped me from speaking but I refused to even shake my head for him. I glared at him through my tears. “These other men want to kill you,” he said. “Answer me, or we will have to.” I really didn’t care if they killed me, I was too young and too shocked to be deciding between life and death. Idi pulled the cloth out of my mouth. “What language do you speak? Do you speak Swahili?”

  I looked at them but said nothing. The fat one with the gun took four long steps in the boat, back toward me. I expected him to shoot me, but he grabbed me by one arm and one leg and lifted me up as he shouted at me, “You little fucker. If the crocodiles don’t eat you, we’ll give you one more chance to speak. One more, and then I’ll kill you.”

  And with a single swing he tossed me off the back of the boat. The rope sprung taut as soon as I hit the water, my arms jerked forward, and I instinctively stuck my head high searching for air. But my face was plowing the surface, and I couldn’t breathe. I rolled onto my back and was able to suck a gasp of air in through my mouth. With my arms extended over my head and the rope tied to my wrists, they towed me through the water. Until I was able to find the right position, water kept rolling over my face not allowing me to breathe without also sucking water into my lungs. Eventually I settled with my head above water and the backs of my shoulders breaking the water, acting as a prow, and the boat pudded along. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was preferable to being in the boat with those men—until I noticed the yellow eyes and brown snouts of the crocodiles floating by the river’s edge. This brought a terror to me. I had seen what the crocodiles could do to animals much bigger than me.

  Death by gunshot suddenly seemed the better option, and I tried to wriggle the rope to signal the men in the boat. But the more I struggled with the rope to attract their attention the more I was also attracting the crocodiles. One large beast basking on the shore took note of me and with surprising speed sprang into the water. I watched its powerful tail whip side to side as it propelled itself toward me. I thrashed harder and shouted, “Swahili, I speak Swahili! And Kinyarwanda.”

  Just as I was about to be taken by the crocodile I was jerked straight up in the air and hoisted onto the back of the boat. I gasped for air while Idi pushed his face within inches of mine and laughed hard.

  “So, you speak Swahili and Kinyarwanda? That’s good.” He turned to the others and said, “See? He might be useful to us.”

  “You should have left him in the water, and we wouldn’t have had to waste a bullet on him,” said the first man with the gun. He was the one who had shot Uncle Dzigbote and Auntie Nyaka.

  “You see how easily Kakengo will kill you?” Idi asked me. “You be a good boy, or I’ll have to let him. What’s your name?”

  I just stared at him, determined to show defiance.

  Kakengo didn’t waste any time. He kicked me hard, and I tumbled back into the water. In a second the rope was stretched back out and I was gasping for breath again.

  “Azikiwe. I am Azikiwe.”

  “Azikiwe?” Idi fished me out again. “They call you Azikiwe?”

  Once I had caught my breath I said, “I am Azikiwe. But they call me Azi.”

  “That’s a good boy. I am Idi. You can speak Swahili and Kinyarwanda, Azi?”

  I nodded.

  “Good,” he replied and left me sitting there while he stood to talk to the others.

  The boat continued to pud along for the rest of the afternoon. I sat naked on the flat deck with the men paying little attention to me. Three of them, Idi, Kakengo, and the other one, lay on the deck, dozing frequently. Only the boat driver stayed awake. Four large chests were welded to the metal deck of the boat, two on each side. These doubled as seats, and every once in a while the men would wake, stretch out, and then take a seat. From a tin canister they would pull out wads of tobacco, rolling themselves cigarettes by wrapping the tobacco in banana leaves.

  I’d never been this far upstream on our river. The waterway didn’t seem to get much wider or much narrower; it just meandered along for miles and miles. When the sun started to dip below the treetops the driver found a shallow shore where he steered the boat up until it was grounded. The men opened one of the large chests and took out some cooking gear and food and built a small fire on the shore. They continued to ignore or forget me while I watched them eat. I was hungry but wasn’t about to grovel to them for anything. In fact, when they finished and Idi finally came to me with a small bowl of millet meal I pushed it away, intent on demonstrating defiance. It didn’t seem to bother him, he simply shrugged and took away the bowl.

  They cinched my rope shorter and left me tied on the deck like that all night, totally naked with no bedding. I watched them lay out their bedrolls on the flat deck and then fall asleep. I was afraid in the open like this. I’d never slept outside of our mud house. Uncle Dzigbote had often warned me of the creatures that came out in the night in the jungle. Shivering and afraid, I searched the shoreline, picking out eyes that reflected in different colors in the moonlight. I wasn’t sure to which animals they belonged, as they appeared only intermittently and for short periods of time from behind the bushes or rising above the water’s surface. Eventually even the cold and the fear couldn’t keep me awake, and my eyes closed until a light kick in my ribs got my attention.

  It took me a few moments to get my bearings, woken in the damp darkness like that. The despair that I had fallen asleep with returned in a wave.

  “Eat this,” Idi said as he handed me plantain, cooked and mashed and served on a banana leaf. But the same defiance from yesterday was back with me and I just shook my head.

  “Fine,” was all he said.

  By the time dawn started to show the camp had been cleaned up and the boat driver steered the craft back upriver, pud, pud, pud. I was glad to see the sun break the treetops an hour later because I shivered in the cool dew that had settled on me during the night. We continued upriver for hours while the men trawled lines from the boat. They managed to catch enough fish by midday for us to stop and make a fire to cook them. As much as I wanted to be strong, my sunken belly out-willed my stubbornness and I accepted the food at this meal.

  “That’s good,” said Idi. “No sense in being stupid. You’re a smart boy. You know that you need to eat, and you know that we’ll not hurt you if you do as you’re told.”

  The nourishment did bring some sense back to me, and I began to think a little more clearly. I set my mind to devising my escape. A short while later it seemed I was about to get some help with my scheming when Idi came to address me. “Azi, I’m going to cut your hands free. You’ll do as we say?”

  I nodded and then said, “My shorts are gone.”

  “Yes,” said Idi. “You won’t want to run away too far. If you do try to run, I’ll tie you by yo
ur pecker next time.” He let out a big laugh like he had just made a funny joke.

  Late that afternoon we came to a place where a bridge crossed the river and the boat driver pulled us into shore directly beneath it. I heard Kakengo say to Idi, “We should kill that kid. He’s just going to be trouble for us.”

  Idi came back to me. “You heard what Kakengo says, he wants to kill you. If you do what I say we won’t kill you. But if you cause us any trouble, we will. Do you understand?”

  I nodded.

  “We’re going to meet some people here. If they don’t speak Swahili you’re going to speak to them in Kinyarwanda for me. Do you know what I mean?”

  I nodded again.

  “Good.” He took a shirt from one of the boxes and tore it for me so that I could wrap it around my waist like a loincloth.

  And then we waited. No one showed by sundown, so the men made a small camp under the bridge, but they made no fire that night. Taking no chances, they retied me to the boat. I slept better that second night with food in my stomach and the bridge above to keep the dew off. Having learned I was better off staying quiet and obedient, I did just that and was rewarded by them untying me again during the daytime. We waited in the shade under the bridge all the next day and it was late in the afternoon before we heard a convoy of trucks coming along the roadway.

  The three men, Idi, Kakengo, and the third, opened one of the chests and pulled out holsters with pistols in them and then they sent the boat driver up top on the bridge. Idi came over to me, knelt down, and looked me straight in the eye.

  “Azi,” he said. “We’re going to meet some men. If I need you to, you will speak for me to the other men. But you’re not to say a word unless I tell you to. Do you understand?”

  Kakengo was standing over us and pulled his gun from its holster. Holding it out straight-armed, he firmly ground the muzzle into my skull.

  “Do you understand?” Idi repeated.