Pio! Are you ready?’
We both shout out that we are as we gather our books, staring at each other – I think we are both trying to work out if we understood more than the other about what we just heard. But I think we are both still unsure of it all, except for the fact that Auntie Rose has not gone to England with Uncle Leonard.
We do not talk about it on the way to school much – I am not sure what there is to talk about. I do not feel so sad that Uncle Leonard has gone. For the last few months he always made it feel awkward or a bit frightening at home when he was there.
‘What is your Auntie Rose like?’ says Jeanette.
‘Haven’t you ever met her?’ says Pio.
‘Never.’
‘I am surprised, with the amount of time you spend at our house!’
‘Shut up!’
‘You shut up!’
‘Auntie Rose is lovely,’ I say before they start fighting in the road, ‘isn’t she, Pio?’ but he is marching off ahead.
‘Good!’ Jeanette says to his back. ‘I do not want to walk the next five miles with him. Is she as pretty as your mum though?’
‘Rose? No way. Mum is the most beautiful in our family. She is the tallest, the thinnest. It is because she is Tutsi.’
‘What is that?’
I was hoping she would not ask that.
‘I don’t know – beautiful, I suppose.’
Although Jeanette and I both speak Kinyarwanda and French, we do not know what the word ‘Tutsi’ means. Perhaps it is an English word. Or just a word in French or our own language that we have not learnt yet.
‘I’m nervous.’
I am surprised to hear Jeanette say this as we take our places in our new classroom. But I have not really thought about it, even on the long walk, a much longer walk to this school – the school for older children. All I have been thinking about is this new word. And Mum’s sternness this morning. And her conversation with Dad about Auntie Rose. I had almost forgotten my own nerves about starting at the big school today.
‘Hutus, stand up!’
The teacher’s voice makes me jump as he marches into the classroom. He looks as if he has no neck, as though his wide face is just stuck on the top of his enormous shoulders and, as three quarters of the class stand up, I can see that he is not really that tall either.
Jeanette is standing. I suppose I should too then. So I do. She gives me a quick, frightened look as my eyes rise to find hers – I am trying to find out why we are standing, searching for the answer in her face. ‘Hutu,’ he said, I think. He is taking each child’s name now and checking it against his list, and then he tells each of us to sit down afterwards. They say Dad’s Hutu blood makes him a great farmer. If he is Hutu, whatever that means, then I must be too.
‘Jeanette Mizinge.’
‘Sit!’
‘Clementine Habimana.’
The teacher takes a pause – he said ‘sit’ so quickly after everyone else said their names, but he does not do so after I speak. He looks hard at me, narrowing his eyes – I think he might need glasses.
‘Sit!’
I do quickly and search for Jeanette’s hand under the table. Her hand is damp, but I squeeze it anyway and she squeezes mine in return. This makes me feel better.
‘Twas, stand up!’
Only two boys stand – they look the same, perhaps they are brothers, but they look different from the rest of us. They are very short. I have never seen anyone else that looks like them before. Their names are unusual too – they sound almost as if they are speaking a different language when they answer the teacher. I feel nervous and strong all at once. Strong because I am glad it is not me standing up with just one other in front of everyone like that. Stronger because nearly everyone else is like me, a Hutu. But I feel nervous for the Twa boys – I have the feeling that they are in trouble with the teacher, in trouble for being…only two. Then my heart almost leaps into my mouth when the teacher shouts his next word as if it tastes horrible on his tongue.
‘Tutsis, stand up!’
There is that word again. Tutsi. I cannot believe it – we were only talking about it this morning on our way here. Tutsi – that is what they say my mum is. So I must be too. Nine or ten children in front of me start to rise from their seats, and some behind me too (I could feel them, hear them, I am not sure which because it all happened quickly in real life, only slowly when I remember it). I am not sure whether I even turn to look. But I feel myself untangle my hand from Jeanette’s, because she is not getting up with me, although I thought she would. She is my mum’s shadow. She thinks Mum is the most beautiful too. And if to be Tutsi is to be like Mum, then I must be Tutsi as well as Hutu. I look down at Jeanette as I stand as straight and as tall as I can. She looks confused and scared.
The teacher starts to take the names of all the Tutsis standing up – there are a lot less of us than the Hutus – but he stops suddenly. The sudden silence makes me look up from Jeanette and into the angry eyes of the teacher again.
‘Clementine –’ he is checking his list – ‘Habimana, what do you think you are doing?’
The children in front all turn to stare at me too and I know how the Twa boys felt now. What do I think I am doing? What…
‘Well?’ His wide head looks like it is swelling up, getting wider, perhaps going to explode. ‘You are either a Hutu or a Tutsi! Now, which is it?’
Which is it? You mean I can only be one or the other – not both? I am not sure what to do. It feels like an age before I decide. Most of the class are Hutu – it felt powerful to be the same as everyone else. Jeanette is Hutu. And we must be the same. But perhaps she does not realize if she is Tutsi too. So she cannot know how nice it is to feel special, not the same as everyone else, one of the beautiful ones. But it does not feel that good right now. I feel Jeanette’s hand on the back of my knee – she only touches me lightly, but I tell myself that she has almost beaten her fist there so I have no choice but to sit down, otherwise I might have been standing there all day! I want to tell the teacher that I think my mother is Tutsi and my father a Hutu, but he does not seem in the mood for any more words from me. He just stares through the standing Tutsis at me – I feel like an antelope hiding in the forest and he is the hunter peering through the tall trees trying to find me. He keeps looking, even as he starts checking the next name on his list. Then his eyes finally leave me and I start to breathe again – it is only when I start that I realize I had stopped!
‘Tell me a story. And remember to breathe!’
‘What do you mean?’
I pressed ‘stop’ on the tape deck before the song kicked in again. Sometimes when I’m teaching I feel a right fraud, I tell you. I mean, when there’s someone in front of me with a great voice already, I just want to say, ‘Go away, save your twenty quid: there’s nothing I can teach you!’ But then I think about my own bank balance and I ask myself, why are they here? If they’re such good singers, if they think they’re such good singers, what are they doing coming to a teacher? So I start to look for faults, scribbling frantically in my important-teacher-looking file (99p WH Smith) as they sing Mariah better than Mariah again. That ‘all’ was a bit shorter than Mariah’s = she has a problem with her breathing. Hits every bloody high note without fail = needs lower range developing. Looks a bit nervous standing in a scummy room in the middle of the scariest council estate in London singing to a stranger with a receding hairline = has a confidence problem.
Bingo!