The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya

Author:Clemantine Wamariya
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Africa, Biography & Autobiography, Civil Wars, Genocide & War Crimes, History, Women
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2018-04-24T03:00:00+00:00

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Then one day, when I was in Target with Mrs. Thomas, Claire called to tell me Pudi was very sick. They thought he had meningitis.

I went straight to Western Union to wire all my babysitting money to my parents to buy him medicine.

The next day, Friday, after school, I took the train to Claire’s apartment, where the two of us spent the weekend waiting for the phone to ring. Claire had recently left Rob. His abuse had become intolerable. She had no furniture. It didn’t matter. We sat on a mattress on the floor.

The plan was that my mother would call if it was not fine. We waited and waited. My mother called. Claude—Pudi—had died.

Pudi was then twenty-two years old. I never knew him as a young man. I never talked to him on the phone—I was so scared. Talking to Pudi would have been talking to a ghost. I never told him that I always thought of him. I didn’t say, I missed you. Or, You tried to help me understand a world I would never understand. Or, I saved all these things to give you. I had so much to share with Pudi and nothing at all to share. We all lived lives my parents never dreamed of us having.

I lay back on the mattress and cried an ocean of tears. So many people had been lost, so many people killed. Pudi was the first person that we mourned.

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