The big-bellied man asks me to hug him and looks at the younger man mischievously. Before I can say anything, he wriggles out of his yellow trousers and reaches for me. But I avoid his hands and slip under the bed with Jean. He pulls me out by my ankles. Pressing me down on the floor, the naked man grabs my two wrists with his left hand. He pushes up my nightie with the right and tears my underpants. I shout at the top of my voice. I call out to Tonton André, who is pacing in the corridor. He doesn’t come. I keep screaming. I’m twisting and holding my knees together. Then I snap at the naked man with my teeth. He hits my face, this way and that, until my saliva is salted with blood. I spit in his face. Twice. He bangs my head on the floor, pinning down my neck, punching my left thigh.
“Oya! No! Shenge is one of us!” the Wizard tells him, rushing into the room.
“Ah . . . leave this little thing . . . to me,” the naked man says slowly. His short pee is pouring on my thighs and my nightie, warm and thick like baby food. I can’t breathe, because he has collapsed on me with his whole weight, like a dead man. When he finally gets up, hiding his nakedness with his trousers, the Wizard bends down, peering at me, and breathes a sigh of relief.
“Shenge, can you hear me?” the Wizard says.
“Ummh.”
“I say, you’re all right!”
“All right.”
“Bad days, girl, bad days. Be strong.” He turns to my attacker and growls, “You’re lucky you didn’t open her womb. I would’ve strangled you myself!”
“Jean,” I whisper. “Where’s my brother?”
The overalls man finds him under the bed, curled up like a python, and drags him out. Jean lays his big head on my chest. An ache beats in my head as if the man were still banging it on the floor. My eyes show me many men in yellow trousers and overalls, many Wizards. The floor is rising and falling. I try to keep my eyes open but can’t. Jean keeps feeling my busted mouth.
Someone lifts me and Jean up and takes us back to the parlor. Tonton André is sitting between two men, who are consoling him. He’s got his head in his hands, and the Wizard is standing behind him, patting his shoulder gently.
As soon as Tonton André sees us, he springs to his feet. But they pull him down and scold him and tell him to get ahold of himself. He’s not listening, though.
“My bastard brother and his wife are not home?” he says very slowly, as if he were coming out of a deep sleep. “He owes me this one. And I’m killing these children if I don’t see him.”
“My nephew,” the Wizard says, thudding his stick once on the floor, “don’t worry. He must pay too. Nobody can escape our wrath this time. Nobody.”
“Koko, ni impamo tuzabigira,” people start murmuring in agreement.
I don’t know what Papa could owe his younger brother. Papa is richer than he is. Whatever it is, I’m sure that he’ll repay him tomorrow.
The crowd calms down. People stand in groups and carry on conversations, like women at the market. I get the impression that there are more people outside. Only Monsieur François is impatient, telling the others to hurry up so that they can go elsewhere, that the government didn’t buy them machetes and guns to be idle.
After a while, the Wizard leaves Tonton André and comes over to us. “Young girl,” he says, “you say you don’t know where your parents are?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“When they return, tell them all the roads are blocked. No escape. And you, clever girl,” the old man says, tapping me on the chest, “if you want to live, don’t leave this house for anything. Ghosts are all over our land. Bad ghosts.” He whisks his cane and tosses his head as if he were commanding the ghosts into existence. And then he goes out, into the flow of the crowd.
I lock up as soon as everyone has left. The flowers are crushed, the altar cloth trampled. Pieces of glass are everywhere. The drawers from the writing desk are hanging out, and the bookshelf has fallen over. The TV is now facing the wall, and a cold wind ruffles the window blinds. I find the cross and put it back on the altar.
I want to sleep, but fear follows me into my room. My fingers are shaking. My head feels heavy and swollen. There’s a pebble in my left thigh where the naked man hit me. My mouth is still bleeding, staining the front of my nightie. I shouldn’t have tricked the Wizard. What are the ghosts he summoned going to do to us? He has put his spell on Tonton André also. Jean is covered in goose bumps. I’m too afraid to tidy up our room. We huddle in one corner, on the mattress, which has been tossed onto the floor. I start to pray.
I wake to the sound of my parents and other people arguing in the parlor. There’s a lot of noise. It’s not yet dawn, and my whole body is sore. One side of my upper lip is swollen, as if I have a toffee between it and my gum. I don’t see Jean.
I limp into the parlor but see only my parents and Jean. Maybe I was dreaming the other voices. My parents stop talking as soon as they see me. Maman is seated on the sofa like a statue of Marie, Mère des Douleurs, looking down. Papa stands near the altar, holding Jean and scooping hot spoonfuls of oatmeal into his mouth. Jean’s eyes are dull and watery, as though he hasn’t slept for days. Shaking his head, he shrieks and pushes the food away. “Eat up, kid, eat up,” Papa says impatiently. “You’ll need the energy.”
My family isn’t preparing for Mass this Sunday morning. The parlor lights are off, the furniture still scattered from last night. The doors and windows are closed, as they have been since Friday, and the dinner table is now pushed up against the front door. Our home feels haunted, as if the ghosts from the Wizard’s stick were still inside.
I hurry toward my father. “Good morning, Papa!”
“Shhh . . . yeah, good morning,” he whispers. He puts Jean down on the floor and squats and holds my hands. “No noise. Don’t be afraid. I won’t let anyone touch you again, OK?”
“Yego, Papa.”
I want to hug him, but he blocks me with his hands. “Don’t turn on any lights, and don’t bother Maman now.”
“The Wizard said that ghosts are—”
“No ghosts here. . . . Listen, no Mass today. Le Père Mertens went home on leave last week.” He’s not looking at me but peering out of the window.
I hear a sneeze from the kitchen, stifled like a sick cat’s. I search my parents’ faces, but they’re blank. A sudden fear enters my body. Maybe I’m still dreaming, maybe not. I push closer to Papa and ask him, “Tonton André is now friends with the Wizard?”
“Don’t mention André in my house anymore.”
“He brought a man to tear my underpants.”
“I say leave me alone!”
He goes to the window and holds on to the iron bars so that his hands are steady, but his body is trembling. His eyes are blinking fast and his face is tight. When Papa gets quiet like this, he’s ready to pounce on anyone.
I go to the sofa and sit down silently. When I slide over to Maman, she pushes me away with one hand. I resist, bending like a tree in the wind, then returning to my position. Nothing interests Maman today, not even Jean, her favorite child. She doesn’t say any sweet thing to him or even touch him today. She acts dumb, bewitched, like a goat that the neighborhood children have fed sorghum beer.
From the window, Papa turns and looks at me as if I’m no longer his sweet Shenge. When he sees Jean sleeping on the carpet by Maman’s feet, he puts the blame on me: “Stubborn girl, have you no eyes to see that your brother needs a bed? Put him in the bedroom and stop disturbing my life.”
But I circle the parlor, like an ant whose hole has been blocked. I am scared to go to my room, because of the ghosts. Papa grabs my wrist and drags me into my room. He turns on the light. Our toys litter the floor. He puts the mattress back on the bed and rearranges the room. But it’s still messy. Papa is cursing the toys, destroying the special treats that he and Maman bought for us when they visited America. He kicks the teddy bear against the wall and stamps on Tweety and Mickey Mouse. Papa’s hands are very dirty, the gutters around his nails swollen with black mud. When he sees me looking at him, he says, “What are you staring at?”