Blue Gold by Elizabeth Stewart Page A

“I’ll try to find him.”
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    PASCAL WAS GLOOMY as he and Sylvie walked to school.
    â€œOlivier is never coming back,” he said. “Why should he, when he can make money working for Mr. Kayembe?”
    â€œBecause family comes first,” Sylvie replied.
    Pascal brooded over this as they walked. Then he asked, almost in a whisper, “Sylvie, how did your face get cut?”
    If anyone else had asked the question, she would have snapped that it was none of their business. But this was Pascal. He was there. He saw.
    â€œYou don’t remember?” she asked.
    He shook his head. He was watching her with frightened eyes, as though the memory was lurking somewhere in his mind, waiting to jump out.
    â€œA bad man did it,” she told him.
    â€œThe same man who killed Papa?”
    â€œNo.” Then she revised, “Maybe. I don’t know.”
    It was possible it was the same soldier, she supposed. He could have gone to the school after riding away from the house with the other soldiers—after they’d finished with her and Mama. She wasn’t sure she would recognize the man, except by his greasy smell of sweat and diesel fuel. And by the weight of his body. Pascal pulled her back to him by slipping his hand into hers, something he hadn’t done in forever.
    â€œSylvie, why did he cut you?”
    Why? She had tried to accept that there would never be an answer to that question. But she thought she understood what he really wanted to hear.
    â€œI don’t know if Olivier is coming back, Pascal,” she told him, squeezing his hand. “I promise you this, though. I will never leave you.”
    They continued walking in silence, hand in hand. When they got to the school, she told Pascal to go in by himself, and she’d be back soon.
    â€œWhere are you going?”
    â€œTo find him.”
    With that Sylvie veered off toward the old marketplace. She glanced back to see Pascal standing in the dust, watching her.
    â€œGo to school!” she called to him sternly, and he obeyed her. But would he for much longer?
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    MOST OF THE TIME , Sylvie tried not to think about what had happened in their village, but as she walked past the abandoned stalls of the market, the ghosts of the past seemed to walk with her. When the Mai-Mai came five years ago looking for her father, they went first to the house. Mama was in her bedroom, resting with the new baby, while Sylvie played with Pascal in the sitting room. She remembered the rumble of the truck pulling up outside. When she looked out the window and saw the soldiers climbing out of it, she rushed to the door and locked it, but the soldiers burst through it. It was good that Pascal couldn’t remember, but she would never forget—how Pascal screamed in fear, and how she held him tight, trying to comfort him, until one of the soldiers tore her away and pushed her down on the floor, pulling her skirt up, her underwear down.
    She could hear the baby crying and her mother’s shouts from the bedroom, “We have done nothing wrong! Take what you want! Let us be!” And then her silence—more frightening than her screams.
    The whole time the soldier was on top of her, Sylvie listened for her mother—even through the searing pain of being split open, the smell of diesel, his crushing weight. When it was over, Sylvie saw the blood on her dress. Pascal was sitting against the wall, knees pulled up to make himself small, eyes wide and unseeing. Then she heard Mama sobbing in the other room, and felt a wave of relief that she was still alive. Soldiers came out from the bedroom, swaggering, laughing. One of them saw the crucifix on a silver chain around Sylvie’s neck—a gift from Papa for standing first in her grade.
    â€œTake it from her,” he told the man who had raped her.
    â€œNo!” Sylvie had cried, still on the floor, her legs sticky with blood. Hadn’t they taken