I was seventeen and a half when I took part in my first and only orgy.

It was 1991. My family and I, originally from Belgium, lived in Rwanda, where my father worked as an epidemiologist mapping the HIV-AIDS pandemic. In November that year, Magic Johnson announced he was HIV-positive; a few weeks later, Freddie Mercury died. Those events were huge, because AIDS was still a taboo subject. In Rwanda, no one ever died of it, but of a “long illness” instead. Most people had no clue how the disease was transmitted. Handshakes were avoided, toilet seats disinfected.

This ignorance wasn’t confined to Africa. In the US, three young kids—the Ray brothers—had contracted HIV through blood transfusions and were not allowed to attend school for fear they would spread the disease. The ban was overturned in court, but one week after they were allowed to go back to school, their home was burned down. Even after the family moved from Arcadia to Sarasota, they had to cope with protests from groups like Citizens Against AIDS. In 1992, one of the Ray brothers died, just 15 years of age.

In my family, I would say we were better informed about AIDS—thanks to Dad’s job, but also because Mom would not stop talking about it. With two teenage sons, she had taken it upon herself to educate us about the dangers of sex––and she did a pretty good job. For my brother and I, sex was no longer about freedom and experimentation, like it had been for my parents in the 1970s. It wasn’t just about reproduction anymore. Instead, sex had become something you should fear because, quite simply, it could kill you. There were times I worried that losing my virginity would be an act of suicide.

As a reminder of the threat my budding sexuality posed to me, as well as to her—Mom kept repeating there was nothing worse than losing a child—she provided me with an endless supply of condoms. I am not sure what kind of person Mom thought I was, but to my embarrassment and frustration, the condoms never got used and piled up in my bedside drawer—apart from maybe one or two I had tried on while masturbating. Watching my sperm collect in the tip of the condom had excited me. It was also reassuring. Presumably, if nothing could come out, nothing could enter, and so condoms seemed to offer pretty good protection. To get rid of the evidence, I had wrapped each used condom in endless layers of toilet paper—like a shriveled, little mummy—and flushed it down the toilet. I’d been lucky not to block it.

Another tactic Mom used to freak us out about sex, was to talk about what was happening to Immaculée, our maid. Her full name was Immaculée Conception, but that was too long to pronounce, so we just called her Immaculée. Despite being only seven or eight years older than I, she was married and had two children. I remember her husband coming to our gate once, asking to see her. His eyes were bloodshot and he reeked of banana beer. As soon as Immaculée appeared, he pounced upon her and knocked her to the ground. Our guards had to restrain him. I finally understood the source of the bruises Immaculée sometimes had on her body when she came to work.

Mom didn’t talk to us about Immaculée to warn us against the perils of marriage, or to moralize about domestic violence. “Did you see that?” she would whisper when Immaculée had left the room. “She has a sore on her leg.” On other occasions, Mom pointed out her blotched skin or weight loss. While we couldn’t be sure, we were pretty confident that Immaculée had AIDS, and that it had been passed on to her by her whoring husband. We’d often spot him at a kiosk on Friday night, spending his weekly wages on drink and women. “I just hope her poor children don’t have it,” Mom would say.

One day, when I was playing video games, Mom asked me to fetch Immaculée from the outhouse at the back of our garden, where our staff went to rest. There was a camp bed and a hole-in-the-ground toilet combined with shower, that always reeked of detergent and moldy mopping cloths. Outside, under the banana trees, corn roasted on an open fire.

Since no one answered when I knocked on the door, I let myself in and barged into Immaculée standing naked in the shower. In the split second before she had a chance to cover herself  and I had the decency to look away, the picture of her body, ravaged by disease, was printed on my retina: her thin arms and large joints; the protruding hip bones; and her flattened breasts that bore no resemblance to the fleshy curves of the women in the porn magazines I kept under my mattress. I mumbled apologies as I pulled the door partway shut and remembered to add that Mom was looking for her.

Back in my room, I took a while to compose myself. I had just seen a naked woman, but there had been nothing sexy about it. I drew the curtains and reached for one of my magazines to erase the image from my mind and disassociate it from my idea of sex. The women on the page stared at me, offering their breasts, pouting their lips, spreading their legs and everything in between. But all I could see were nature’s snares, poisonous tricks to ambush the innocent. Their vulvae looked like venus flytraps, their mouths like leeches. I couldn’t get it up and closed the magazine again. I slept badly for weeks.

A few months after the shower incident, there was a knock at our gate. We didn’t have a bell, so people hit the metal with pebbles to announce their presence. It was early morning and I’d had another nightmare. The rest of my family were still asleep, so I got up to check who it was. When I came down, the guard had already opened the gate and let in a young girl—she must have been eight or so—carrying a baby on her back in a kanga. By her cowrie eyes and teardrop-shaped head, I concluded she must be Immaculée’s daughter.

“Maman is ill,” the girl said. “She can’t come to work today, so I’ve come to clean.”

I didn’t know what to do, so I woke Mom. When she saw the girl, who had probably walked several miles carrying a baby on her back, she hurried her into the kitchen and prepared hot chocolate and eggs on toast. Meanwhile, I was tasked with holding the baby. I had no idea whether I was doing this right—the child kept fidgeting and drooling on my shoulder. Even though Dad had said HIV did not transmit that way, I couldn’t help worrying about the saliva on my skin. I decided to change my shirt and take a shower afterwards. Immaculée’s daughter was the size of a shrew, but she had the appetite of a starved elephant. While she ate, Mom took the baby from me, changed her, and fed her some mashed banana. When the children had regained energy, Mom said she would drive them home. She took a bag of groceries, as well as some painkillers and money. “Tell Dad I will be back for lunch,” she said.

Later that day, after Mom had done some of the household work, she drove me to the tennis club. She said Immaculée would probably be alright and back at work within a week. “What an awful disease,” Mom said as she parked the car and pulled the hand break. I grabbed my tennis bag and stepped out of the car, when Mom added, “Benjamin, please be careful with these things. One mistake and you see what can happen.”

I rolled my eyes. “Mom, I’m only going to play tennis.”

“I know,” she said, “I know. I’m just saying. This disease…”

“Alright,” I cut her off. “Can you come pick me up at six?”

Down by the courts, I spotted my best friend, Eros. We were playing a doubles semi-final that day and he was hopping from leg to leg as part of his warm-up routine. “Ah, there you are!” he shouted, while hitting the side of his shoes with his racket to remove the clay from his soles. They were nice shoes—the kind that Agassi wore. Eros’ parents worked for the European Commission, where they made a killing managing projects for AIDS orphans. They drove a Mercedes-Benz in Kigali and owned three flats back in Rome.

“So, are you ready?” he grinned with the Italian kind of confidence that wins you games and breaks girls’ hearts. I was better than Eros at tennis. But he still beat me every time through psychological warfare. He’d use dirty tricks, like pumping his fist when he won a point or shouting the score out loud when he was in the lead. While those may have seemed insignificant in and of themselves, cumulatively, they threw me off balance. My wrist would tense up and I’d hit double faults or net backhands that against any other opponent would have been easy winners.

When it came to sex, Mom and Eros were, respectively, the angel and devil on my shoulder. While Mom did everything within her powers to freak me out, Eros made sure to pile on the pressure to lose my virginity. He pricked my curiosity and fueled my insecurity with stories about his sexual exploits. In practice, these were hard to fact-check since, allegedly, they had all taken place during his summer holidays in Italy, when I was not around. The acts he claimed to have carried out with these girls also bore a striking resemblance to some of the scenes in the porn movies he stole from his father, and which we sometimes watched together when his parents were out, in lieu of doing homework. Still, Eros spoke about his conquests with such confidence that I had little choice but to believe him.

Regardless of whether Eros was still a virgin or not, he used to tease me for being one. Once, when he was over at my house playing video games, Immaculée had come into the room to clean. As she bent over, we both caught a glimpse of her breasts down her blouse. Eros elbowed me and said, “She offers it to you on a plate, and you’re still a virgin!” Then he laughed so loud that, even though Immaculée may not have understood what he said, she must have sensed the joke was at her expense.

The other thing that bothered me was that Eros had a girlfriend, and I didn’t. She was a petite, round-faced girl from Québec, called Marie-Lys, who was as crazy about horse-riding as I was about her. No one knew I had a crush on her, least of all Eros. He and I would sometimes go to the stables and watch her ride. “I’m telling you,” he’d say, “She really knows how to control a thousand-pound animal between her legs.” I told him to stop, but he’d go on, “Seriously, man, she loves being on top, riding like a cowgirl. Oh, and when she gets out that whip…”

I convinced myself these things couldn’t be true. Eros and I spent nearly all of our time together, so when would he have had a chance to sleep with her? Besides, Marie-Lys was too pure, too innocent for anything like that. In my mind, she was the kind of girl who would keep her virginity for someone special. Still, the images Eros conjured hurt, especially because I sometimes had the impression my feelings for Marie-Lys were reciprocated. There were occasions when I caught her eye and we would look at each other for longer than was comfortable between two teenagers of the opposite sex. But Eros was my best friend, so I considered her off limits.

“Are you ready to get your ass whipped?”

Eros and I turned to see our doubles opponents walk onto the court. The tall one was Augustin Duquesne Wathelet de Wynendale, who looked like he had stepped out of a Lacoste Summer catalogue: waxed hair, pastel green polo shirt, shades parked on top of his head. Augustin wasn’t the brightest kid in school and we suspected he scraped through only because he was the son of the Belgian ambassador. His family was Flemish, but they spoke French at home—that is what posh families in Belgium do––so we called him “the Baron.”

The other kid was the Baron’s best friend, Dimitrios Voulgaropoulos. I doubted that Augustin’s parents approved of this friendship. Dimitrios’ father owned the only supermarket in Kigali and he was rumored to catch stray cats and dogs and grind them to sell as beef to unsuspecting expats and Rwandan nouveaux-riches. It wouldn’t have surprised me if that story were true; Dimitrios himself was a dirty little cheater—calling balls out that were in, questioning line calls, miscounting the score. Still, his drop shots were magic and his lobs were the finest that the Cercle Sportif of Kigali had ever seen, so we admired him nonetheless. He also had a way with girls, which is probably the main reason the Baron chose to hang out with him.

The four of us hit a few balls from the baseline to warm up, but just as we started practicing our serves, the sky turned dark. “Don’t worry,” Dimitrios said when thunder rumbled in the distance, “We’ll double-bagel you before it starts to rain.” Sure enough, Dimitrios and the Baron soon led by four games to love. Then the heavens opened. We ran for shelter under the giant strangler fig by the entrance to the club. It was a proper, tropical storm. The courts turned into an orange mud bath. There was no way we would be able to finish the game that day, so the Baron suggested we all go to his house to play table football for the rest of the afternoon.

The Baron’s invitation came as a surprise. None of us had ever been to his house—not even Dimitrios. The ambassador always had important guests or urgent matters to deal with and his children were never allowed anyone over. But, that week, Augustin’s family was away on safari and he had the house to himself. Dimitrios—who lived in a small flat above his dad’s supermarket, together with his four siblings and his ninety-nine-year old grandmother—nearly had to collect his jaw from the floor when he saw the ambassador’s residence. But he wasn’t jealous or resentful about the tennis court and Jacuzzi, the games room with snooker, ping pong, and table football. He just kept oohing and aahing, and when he saw the swimming pool with the view over Kigali in the valley, he could no longer contain himself.

“Man, man, man,” he said, shaking his head and raising an eyebrow. “You know what this place would be perfect for?”

The Baron looked the way he did when Mr. Dubois, our maths teacher, asked him a question—his mouth half-open, eyes glazed over.

“A party!” Dimitrios said when he realized the Baron had reached the limits of his imagination.

The Baron was still puzzled, “A party?”

“Yes, dumbass, a party! Just imagine…” Dimitrios said, turning towards the pool with his arms spread, “Music, food, dancing—with this pool and that view. And, of course…” He turned back to face us, his eyes sparkling like disco balls.

“What?” the Baron asked, a little uncomfortable at Dimitrios’ excitement.

“And girls!” Dimitrios said.

An idiotic smile spread across the Baron’s face. “Yes,” he whispered, “And girls…”

“And some of us,” Eros added, slapping my back, “might finally lose their virginity!”

***

              We agreed to hold the party the coming Saturday, while Augustin’s parents were still away. Dimitrios orchestrated everything, commanding the ambassador’s army of staff—three guards, two cleaners, a gardener and a cook. The Baron volunteered to do the music; Eros and I were left in charge of the invitations. We designed flyers on my dad’s Macintosh, with pixilated images of balloons, champagne bottles and confetti, as well as a wild mixture of fonts that should have come with an epilepsy warning.

Before we knew it, Saturday had arrived. Around 5 p.m., I started getting ready—Guns N’ Roses t-shirt, button fly jeans, Nike Airs. So much gel in my hair I looked like a troll doll and a toxic amount of Davidoff aftershave stolen from my Dad. I was packing my sleepover bag when a car hooted outside—Mom’s signal that she was ready to take me.

“The party doesn’t start for another hour?” I said.

“I know,” she said. “But I need to take Immaculée to the hospital. She’s unwell. So I will pick her up on the way. I don’t want to have to do the journey twice.”

Reluctantly, I grabbed my bag and jumped into the passenger seat.

We took the tarmacked road out of the Kacyiru district towards the center of town. Halfway, we turned into a dirt road towards Gisozi. The stone houses gradually made way for mud huts marked off by bamboo fences. The streets narrowed and the potholes multiplied as we approached Immaculée’s place. Mom drove slowly to avoid hitting the chickens and children crisscrossing in front of our car, and then she pulled over. Immaculée’s daughter stood outside, holding her baby sister on her hip. “Maman is inside,” she said.

We pushed through the plastic fly curtain and found Immaculée lying on a straw mat. Mom knelt down and I stood behind her, gazing at the sparsely decorated room. An old, stained mattress, with a couple of soft toys that used to belong to me, was where the children slept. On the opposite side were a few plastic chairs, dented aluminum pots and other kitchen utensils—the wall blackened by the cooking fire. In the corner, a doorless doorway that led to the parental bedroom. The only item on the walls was a photograph of John Paul II, taken during his visit to Rwanda in 1990. I remembered being there, in the stands of the Amahoro stadium, watching thousands of young people hang on every word the Pope said. Mom was horrified when he started blaming the pandemic on homosexuality and championed faithfulness, not condoms, in the fight against AIDS.

“Can you give me a hand?” Mom said. “Let’s take her to the car.” We each slipped one of Immaculée’s arms around our neck and then helped her stand up. She smelled of cassava and sweat, and I became painfully aware of my Davidoff aftershave. Her bones poked me through her dress. Immaculée shuffled along with great difficulty, wheezing and grimacing. When we lowered her into the back of the car, she suppressed a shriek. Her daughter, still standing by the door, observed the whole scene. Although she kept a brave face, I could see her eyes watering.

We drove towards town, up the hill and past the colorful kiosks selling beer and soft drinks, the petrol stations and garages overflowing with rusty spare parts rescued from crashed and abandoned cars, and hardware shops trading a random selection of imported goods. Pedestrians fled from the reckless maneuvers of the twegerane—mini-van taxis—which were trying to pick up as many passengers as possible. Then all would make way for the hulky menace of a green bus, huffing and puffing up the hill, bloated with people and packages, sometimes even chickens and goats, leaving a cloud of pestilent smoke in its wake. Motorcycles zigzagged through the mayhem with the speed and unpredictability of water striders.

We stopped at the traffic light and small children swarmed the car, peddling chewing gum and cigarettes from cardboard boxes. A beggar lay on the ground, his arms and torso muscled from dragging around his weak, stumpy legs. The light turned green and we drove past the French cultural centre, the Hotel Mille Collines, and then down the hill again until we arrived at the ambassador’s residence. Mom blew the horn, the guards opened the gate, and I jumped out.

“Have a good time,” she said, and then, half-jokingly, “Don’t forget about safe sex!”

I could have sunk in the ground. “Mom…”

As she drove off, I caught one last glimpse of Immaculée’s ghostlike figure in the back of the car. She had fallen asleep, like a child on a long journey. When the car had disappeared out of sight, I put my hand in my pocket, to make sure I hadn’t forgotten the pack of Durex condoms.

“Mwirime,” one of the guards greeted me.

“Mwirime,” I replied and I asked him how he was, “Amakuru?”

“Ni meza,” he said, but I could see that he, too, was as thin as Immaculée—sunken cheeks, hollow temples, deep smile lines on the side of his mouth. His uniform looked smart, but the soles of his shoes were coming loose. I returned a pitying, and likely condescending, smile.

The gates clanged shut behind me and I found myself in the driveway, lit by a row of floodlights. It was 8 p.m. and pitch dark. I could hear music coming from the front of the house and the buzz of people talking. The party was well underway. I took the small path by the side of the house that led through a tunnel of bougainvillea, brimming with cicadas—their clicking so loud it almost drowned out the music.

I emerged on the other side, into what seemed like another world. Paper lanterns, like breadcrumbs in a fairy tale, guided me towards the crystal-blue pool which looked enchanting in the dark. Two candelabra trees, wrapped in string lights, rose high into the sky, like giant, tropical Christmas trees, and Kigali twinkled in the valley below.

A hundred or so people were gathered around the pool, chattering and dancing. My body shook with each vibration of the bass as I squeezed between groups of laughing guests, their sweat rubbing off on me. A symphony of aftershaves and perfumes hung in the air. Through the crowd, I spotted the Baron behind his DJ equipment, bobbing his head to the rhythm of the music. With his height and slimness, and his hair gelled into spikes, he reminded me of a crowned crane. I tried to wave, but he didn’t see me. Not far from him, behind another table, Dimitrios shook glitzy cocktails and poured them ostentatiously into the glasses of half a dozen girls who were giggling at his jokes. When he saw me, he beckoned me over.

“Here, take that,” he said, pushing a deep red drink into my hands.

“What is it?” I shouted over the music.

“Trust me,” he smiled and set me to work cutting lemons, passion fruit and mint. Each time I passed him a batch, he replenished my glass in appreciation. I soon felt warm inside and everything became even more beautiful—the fairy lights, the pool, the lanterns, the stars: it all dazzled and sparked. I turned jovial and chatty. I even talked to some of the girls queuing up for drinks.

Dimitrios elbowed me. “Check her out!” he said, and nodded to his left. I followed his line of sight to the middle of the crowd, where a girl with short blonde hair and a tight-fitting dress was dancing, surrounded by a few twelfth-graders trying to impress her with their moves. Her name was Aude and she was known as the school nymphomaniac. She reveled in the attention of the boys around her and teased them one at a time, making them feel special and raising their hopes of getting lucky that night. She rubbed her back seductively against one of them, leaning her head on his shoulder. Then she lifted her glass high in the air and spilled champagne all around, like a human fountain. Despite the loud music and party noise, her sensuous laughter travelled all the way to where Dimitrios and I were standing.

Everyone knew about Aude and her behavior—even my parents. “What do you expect,” Dad would say, “with a mother like hers?” Her mom worked for Doctors Without Borders, so Dad sometimes interacted with her on a professional basis. He told us she was an alcoholic. “To be fair,” he said, “I would drink like a fish too if I had her job.” Every day, streams of patients would come to her—emaciated, with hollow eyes.  But there was nothing she could do. All she could offer, was hope based on lies—the only medicine she had. So she drank at night, to forget the horrors of her day.

“Can you take over for a second?” Dimitrios said, as he headed over to dance with Aude. I hadn’t the faintest clue how to make cocktails, so I cracked open a beer, put another in my pocket, and deserted the bar as well. I hadn’t seen Eros all night and decided to go look for him. It was approaching midnight. The party was beginning to degenerate. Slurred singing, people falling over, some ending up in the pool. A couple of girls were taking part in a wet t-shirt competition, cheered on loudly by the guys from the school football team. Empty bottles and broken glass littered the floor. A tenth-grader was vomiting behind a flower pot.

The ambassador’s cleaners, turned waitresses for the occasion, navigated this chaos, careful not to knock over their silver trays stacked with hors d’oeuvres—imported salmon, caviar and foie gras––that Dimitrios had stolen from the ambassador’s pantry. One of those trays probably held the equivalent of three months of their wages.

I climbed the stairs to the patio where it was quieter and I had a good view over the party. I rested my arms on the balustrade, downed my beer in one go and opened the second can. My head was spinning, my senses clouded with a thick layer of mist—like the hills of Kigali in the early morning. In the middle of the dancing crowd, Dimitrios was kissing Aude, one hand squeezing her bum.

“Enjoying the party?”

I spat out the beer I had in my mouth and nearly dropped my can. I hadn’t heard Marie-Lys sneak up behind me.

“I was getting a little bored down there,” she said, leaning over the balustrade next to me. “Mind if I have a sip?” She reached over to grab my beer and, as she did so, the strap of her dress slipped off her shoulder.

“Have you seen Eros anywhere?” I asked, my heart still pounding from the shock, but also from nervousness at talking to Marie-Lys. Her perfume was like an orange grove in spring. She seemed to be standing very close, so I moved a little to the side.

“No idea where he is,” she said, as she handed the beer back to me and readjusted her strap. When I brought the can to my lips, I could smell and taste her mouth on the metal.

“Looks like he’s abandoned me,” Marie-Lys said, staring straight at me. When she reached for the beer again, her hand brushed against mine.

“I think I’d better go look for him,”  I blurted out. “I worry that something might have happened to him.” I rushed off towards the house, abandoning Marie-Lys on the patio.

I stumbled into the dining room and found half a dozen people playing beer pong, cheering each time their adversaries had to drink up. One of the maids was on her knees, collecting pieces of broken glass. In the living room, the lights were low and the music filtered through in muted tones. There was no one there, apart from one of the Baron’s dogs, scoffing down canapés from a silver tray left on the coffee table. I walked through the kitchen where the cook, in his white uniform, was doing dishes and tidying up. Heading upstairs, I opened each door I came across, like an advent calendar. There were people making out, arguing, passed out on beds, or on the floor. Everything seemed like a dream. I felt like I was wading through thick, invisible treacle. The sounds came to me as though they’d travelled underwater. In one of the rooms, a group of kids were smoking dope and the smell made me so sick I rushed to the nearest toilet. I have no idea how long I was in there for, but it was half past one when I checked my watch, so I figured I must have lost consciousness for a while. I remembered that I was looking for Eros, so I got up and staggered towards the only room I hadn’t checked so far—the ambassador’s suite.

This was the largest room of all, with windows wall-to-wall offering a spectacular view over Kigali. Moonlight lacquered the furniture and everything was still, apart from the white voile curtains swaying in the breeze. There seemed to be nobody here and I was about to turn round, when I heard a noise at the far end of the room. Through the mosquito canopy hanging over the giant wooden bed, I thought I could make out the silhouette of someone and I wondered: was it Eros who had fallen asleep?

I crept closer, careful not to wake whoever was lying there. Then the shape stirred and it looked like there might not be one, but two persons on the bed. I hastened my step, parted the material of the mosquito net, and found Dimitrios lying starfish, grinning back at me, his trousers down on his ankles and Aude bent over him. Then Eros’ head popped up from behind Aude. “There you are!” he shouted. “I’ve been looking for you all night!”

“You’ve been looking for me?” I said. “Seriously, I thought I’d lost you!”

“Come here,” Eros said as he grabbed my arm and pulled me onto the bed. “Let’s see if we can make you lose something else!”

I fell on top of Aude and Dimitrios, who both burst into giggles.

Eros said, “Come on, help me!” as he tried to pin me down. Dimitrios grabbed my feet and Aude climbed on top of me, bringing her face so close I could smell the alcohol on her breath.

“Please, guys, let me go!” I tried, but Aude bit my bottom lip to silence me. Dimitrios found this excruciatingly funny and started playing percussion on Aude’s bum.

Unperturbed, Aude slid her hand down my chest, over my stomach, and towards the buttons of my jeans, which she proceeded to undo, one by one. Despite the state I was in, I could feel myself getting hard. Aude let go of my lip and I whispered, “Please …” But, by then, my resistance was disingenuous. A heat spread through my body as Aude kissed her way down. Eros and Dimitrios cheered. Then Aude took me into her mouth. I closed my eyes and everything turned like a spinning top. The last thing I remembered before passing out, was Eros and Dimitrios jumping on the bed, belting out Handel’s Hallelujah.

***

              I woke next morning from the breeze blowing the mosquito net across my face, tickling my nose. My head was pounding and, outside, I could hear the gardener sweep up dust and leaves with his corn broom. Wood pigeons mocked me with their coo. Someone snored loudly behind me—it was Dimitrios—and the events of the previous night suddenly came back to me. I sat up and saw Eros was also there. Quietly, I slipped out of bed and collected my clothes. As I put on my trousers, I noticed the pack of condoms lying on the floor, unused.

Downstairs, the staff were up—or had been up all night—tidying. They said breakfast was served outside, but I wasn’t hungry and I asked them where the telephone was. I called Mom to pick me up. As I waited for her, I reflected on what had happened the previous night. Technically, I had taken part in an orgy, but did it count as losing my virginity? I wasn’t even sure I had come. Either way, I felt a little smug about it all, glowing almost. Finally, I had become a man. Finally, Eros would stop teasing me. I spent the rest of the day lightheaded from lack of sleep and dreamy with disbelief.

By evening, however, my excitement gradually made way for worry and I couldn’t sleep that night. I replayed the events of the party frame by frame and started to freak out as I realized that, despite Mom’s warnings, I had engaged in unprotected sex. I twisted and turned in my bed. By 3:00 a.m., my doubts had taken on monstrous proportions and I had managed to convince myself that Aude had AIDS and that she probably had been bleeding from ulcers in her mouth when she gave me that blowjob. Shining a torch under my sheet, I inspected my penis over and over again; the more I looked, the more I imagined red spots and lesions through which the virus could have entered my body.

Next day at school, Eros looked equally disheveled and nervous, not his usual, confident self. It made me feel better, to think that I wasn’t alone in this.

“Didn’t sleep well?” I asked.

“No…” he said.

“Same here. It’s awful, isn’t it?”

“Terrible. I really wish this hadn’t happened.”

“I know…”

“I’m so worried…” Eros said.

“So am I!”

He looked puzzled at me for a while, then finished his sentence, “… that Marie-Lys will find out about this.”

“Oh…” I said, realizing we weren’t talking about the same thing.

“Promise me you won’t mention it to her?”

“No, of course not,” I said. And he walked off, seemingly relieved.

That week, I didn’t sleep through a single night. By the end of it, I was a wreck. The more I worried, the less I slept, and the less I slept, the more I worried. My thoughts went in circles, my anxiety snowballed. I started having palpitations and lost my appetite. By Saturday morning, I felt like the Nyiragongo volcano—ready to erupt. I was so desperate, I could only see one solution: I had to tell Mom. She might get angry, but it would be short-lived. More likely, she’d offer me the comfort that I needed so much. Maybe we could see van den Broeck, the embassy doctor, and he could do a blood test to take away the uncertainty—because it was the uncertainty, more than anything else, that was the source of my distress.

“There you are!” Mom said when I walked into the dining room. A bag lay open on the table, which she packed while speaking. “I was about to wake you. Immaculée’s daughter is here. Her mom has taken a turn for the worse and she’s been in A&E for about six hours, but nobody has attended to her. I’m going to head over and see what I can do. I’d like you to come with me, if you don’t mind, so there’s someone to look after her while I try and find a doctor or nurse.” Mom pressed some sheets and towels into the bag, closed the zip, and then looked at me.

“Benjamin?” she said.

“Yes?”

“Are you OK? You look pale…”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You don’t look fine to me…”

“I’m fine, Mom… It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. Let me help you with that bag.” And I accompanied Mom and Immaculée’s daughter to the car.

When we arrived at the hospital, we parked outside and walked across the gardens towards the A&E unit. There was a light drizzle and the wet plants looked miserable in the gray morning light. Under the porous umbrella of an acacia tree, two men in green overalls cut grass with machetes, the chopping of their blades rhythmic like the ticking of a clock.

A stench hit us when we entered the block where Immaculée lay—a sickening mixture of unhealed wounds and pus, of bodily fluids and decay. Nobody checked who we were; we walked in, no questions asked. Immaculée’s daughter guided us down a long, dark corridor, lit only by an occasional, flickering light. Paint was peeling off the walls in sheets. Big, meaty flies buzzed around our heads.

At the end of the hallway, we turned into a ward that felt more like Kigali Central Market than a hospital. It was packed with people—women carrying children on their backs, men sitting on the ground with their head in their hands, cleaners mopping up unidentified liquids. I struggled to breathe the thick, moist air. There was such a din that I didn’t hear, but could only see Immaculée’s daughter say, “There she is,” as she pointed to a thin, emaciated body lying in the far right corner of the room. For a moment, we thought we had come too late. Immaculée’s eyes were wide open, unblinking, staring at the ceiling. Then a gentle heaving of her chest betrayed the obstinate presence of life.

Mom ran off to seek help, leaving me with Immaculée and her daughter. “Would you like something to drink?” I tried, but Immaculée didn’t respond. I stood awkwardly holding the bottle of water, until her daughter took it from me, wetted a handkerchief, and dabbed her mother’s paper-dry lips. Immaculée turned her head, but looked straight through us. She was far away already. I began to feel agitated about what to do if she died while Mom was away, and my anxiety from the previous week flared up, about everything that had happened and the awful consequences I’d imagined.

“Mom!” I called, but she was on the opposite side of the ward and couldn’t hear. She was gesticulating, trying to get the attention of medical staff. At long last, a nurse stopped and nodded with sympathy when Mom pointed in our direction. But the nurse disappeared again, and never returned. Then Mom ran back to me and said, out of breath, “Can you stay here for a while? I’m going to see whether Doctor van den Broeck can come—I’ll drive to his house.” She headed for the exit.

“Mom!” I shouted after her. “I need to tell you something!”

She turned around and said, “Not now, Benjamin, not now. There’s no time.” And she disappeared out of sight.

Left on my own, the horror of this place hit me. There were people ill like Immaculée everywhere: on beds and stretchers, on straw mats, even on the bare floor—people whose lives were slowly ebbing way, slipping into darkness. I saw their thin bodies, their eyes sunk deep into their sockets. I heard people wailing, praying. Small children standing by their dying parents, not knowing that, soon, they would be orphans. Women holding their husbands’ hands, worrying about who would provide for the family once they were gone. Men bidding farewell to their beloved wives, their only solace being that they would soon join them in death. Elderly people wondering why their sons and daughters had to go before them.

The worst thing was that nothing could be done to help them. There was no cure for AIDS, and even if there had been a drug, there wouldn’t have been enough for the deluge of patients that arrived here every day. As cruel as it sounds, the medical staff knew this, and with just one look, they triaged those whose lives could still be extended, from those for whom all hope was lost. Sadly, Immaculée was no longer a patient worth spending scarce time and resources on.

When I turned back to look at Immaculée and her daughter, they were holding hands and the little girl kept repeating, “Maman… Maman…” But Immaculée was too weak to respond. Her eyes were still open—big hollows of fear—but the movement of her chest had become less noticeable, less frequent.

Around twenty minutes after she had left, Mom came back—without Doctor van den Broeck. He was the embassy doctor and his job was to look after Belgian expats, not locals. In any case, it was too late. Immaculée had left this world. Nothing remained but a thin, half-naked body, ravaged by an invisible enemy. I was terrified. I wanted to hug Mom. But she went straight past me, knelt, and took Immaculée’s daughter in her arms. They sobbed until the girl had no tears left in her. Eventually, a nurse came and covered Immaculée’s body with a sheet. She handed us some paperwork, and then we left the hospital.

Back home, we ate dinner in silence. The chirping of crickets outside did not have its usual, soothing effect. It was unnerving. We took a meal out of the freezer—it was one that Immaculée had prepared. I barely managed a few mouthfuls. The images of the hospital kept going round my head. When my brother had gone to bed, I broke down and told my mom what had happened at the party.

“Oh, Benjamin…” Mom said as she hugged me. She assured me everything would be alright. She made an appointment with Doctor van den Broeck, who would see us first thing Monday morning. When we arrived, there was no queue, and van den Broeck welcomed us in his bright, modern consulting room with all the latest equipment, shelves full of medicine, classical music playing in the background, and a photograph of the Belgian King hanging on the wall. I gave him a watered-down version of what had happened, and van den Broeck confirmed I had nothing to worry about. But, if it would make me feel better, he would do all the necessary tests and check-ups. That night, I slept a full fourteen hours without waking up.

***

              Immaculée’s funeral took place on top of a hill, early the following Sunday. The mists filled the valley and the sun’s rays dragged over the hilltops, tired and hesitant. The priest mumbled the scriptures and the extended family wailed around a hole in the red earth. There was a small window in the coffin through which Immaculée’s face could be seen. All those years I had known Immaculée, I had seen her as our maid or the person who had AIDS. She had occupied a small space in the background of my life. Now, in death, I finally came to see her as a person, an equal, someone for whom life had been a lot less kind. I remembered that time when Eros had mocked her in her presence, and how I had done nothing about it. I wished I had acted differently.

As the coffin was lowered into the ground, her husband sobbed, his eyes twisted by alcohol. Immaculée’s daughter stood next to him, expressionless. At only eight years old, she would now have to take responsibility for the household work. She held her little sister on her hip and I could see she was exhausted, so I walked over and took the baby into my arms. The small child, dried snot on her lip, was chewing on her fists. Copious amounts of drool dripped onto my shirt. She must have been teething. I stroked her flushed cheek and she grabbed my finger, putting it into her mouth. Then she lay her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes to sleep. The poor thing had no idea how different life would be from then on.

Immaculée was laid to rest in the more affluent part of the cemetery, where the graves were cemented and tiled, because Mom and Dad had offered to pay for it. The poor lay further down the hill, in neatly lined graves marked by simple wooden crosses. As we walked back to the car, I looked at the inscriptions on the markers and subtracted the years of death from the years of birth. Most had died in their twenties or thirties, and the majority of graves were recent. A tsunami of illness was hitting the country. The hospitals were at breaking point. Immaculée was a drop in the ocean, her children two orphans amongst many. People were dying by the thousands, even before the genocide hit Rwanda.

But that is another story.