“All right,” Michael says carefully, like if he gets too excited I’ll bolt. “Now, don’t go crazy, but I have a suggestion. While I’m working on Mwika, we can still do our own investigating. If we’ve only got a week, then maybe we should do this properly and lay everything out logically. Maybe the video shows the murderer; maybe it doesn’t. We can still go ahead and figure out who the suspects would be. Then if the video doesn’t show us what we need, we might have other leads to follow.”
I make a face. “You want to play detective?”
“Don’t you want to know why your mom was murdered, not just who did it?”
I bite my tongue before I can snap that I know pretty well who did it and why. It’s too late in the evening to start down that road again.
Michael picks up a folder from his bed and begins leafing through it. Despite myself, I edge closer, trying to see what he’s doing. “What is that?”
He pulls out a single document and holds it to his chest so I can’t see. “After I talked to the guards last night, before I came back to you, I went to make sure Dad’s office was in order. His computer had frozen and I found this still up on his screen. I printed a copy before I shut it off.” He finally hands it to me. “I, um, I thought you might want it.”
My mouth goes dry.
It’s the photo I had found just before Michael caught me. I stare at it hungrily.
“It’s your mom, right?” He drops his eyes. He knows it is.
See? Can you blame me for getting distracted? My mother and another girl smile back at me radiantly. They are young, in school uniforms, with their arms twined around each other’s waists. Flowers bloom behind them. I have no memory of my mother ever smiling like that. The other girl looks mischievous, like she’s flirting with whoever is taking the photo. An ache wells in my throat. Other than her old refugee ID, I have no photos of Mama.
“I tried to see what else was on the hard drive, but everything was password protected.” Michael waits. “Who’s the girl with her?”
I finally look up. “Everything on the hard drive is encrypted,” I say briskly. “My business partner is working on it.” I carefully fold the paper in half and then quarters and tuck it inside my bra.
“Hey, that was for the case!”
“I’m not throwing it away, Michael. And don’t call it the case.”
“You don’t know who the other girl is?”
“No.”
“But—”
“I said I don’t know.” I feel the paper burning against my chest. It sounds like I’m lying, but I really don’t know. A friend? A relative? “What else do you have in that folder?” I ask.
Michael hesitates, but eventually picks the papers back up. “Not enough. I was trying to find someone to bribe so I can get your mom’s police file, but it sounds like you’ve already got it.”
“Nothing useful in there.”
“I still want to see it.” He flips through the folder, stopping on a thick bundle. “Do you have your immigration file?”
It takes me a second to figure out what he means. “Our refugee file? You have it? How did you get that so fast?”
He avoids my eye. “I’ve had it.”
I frown. “Why?”
“A year ago I tried looking for you and Kiki,” Michael says. “I tried to find your family, where you might have gone . . .”
“How did you get our file?”
“Being a spoiled rich kid has its perks. You can buy things.” He glances at me from the corner of his eye. “Couldn’t find anything other than this, though. No one here, no one in your village in Congo, nothing.”
“You know what village I come from?”
“It’s in the file.”
“What else is in there?” I demand, reaching for it.
He keeps it above his head. “Dates of birth, photos, stuff like that. And all the notes from your mother’s hearing to get legal status. She had to tell them why she left Congo to prove she was a refugee.”
“It’s all there? Why she left?” I try not to look surprised. I don’t know why, but it never occurred to me that my file at the United Nations’ refugee office might have useful information. Mainly because they always seem so useless there. I’ve had to go and get Kiki’s and my refugee documents renewed a couple of times since Mom died, but they just ask me questions about where we live and if we’re in school. When we go, I comb my hair and wear clothes that cover my tattoos, and tell them Kiki goes to private boarding school on scholarship, and that I stay with a nice family and go to a public school because I’m not as clever as my little sis, but otherwise I am just fantastic. And I smile and they smile, and when they ask, I tell them no, I’m sure I’m not “engaging in survival sex” or “resorting to negative coping strategies” or doing whatever else they call prostitution and selling drugs to make them sound nicer.
Since they never have to actually do any work on my case, they like me. We get our papers stamped, and we’re on our way. I wouldn’t even bother with the whole thing if Kiki didn’t need the documents for school. My Goonda tattoos are usually good enough ID for anyone who matters.
But I had no idea that Mama told them what happened to her. No one at the UN has ever asked me why we left Congo.
“You have the whole file?” I lean over, trying to pluck it from his hands. His arm is longer, though. I reach higher, coming closer to his chest than I’d really prefer. He is warm and smells spicy and boyish. Good boyish, not bad boyish.
Pull yourself together, Tina.
“The schools it says you go to—they’re wrong, aren’t they?” Michael asks. Our faces are very close.
I give up on the folder and pull back. “So? How do you know they’re wrong?”
Anger finally sparks in Michael’s green eyes. “Look, you’re the one who left without saying anything to any of us, Tina. I’ve been wondering about you guys for five years.”
We glare at each other. He suddenly doesn’t seem cute at all.
“Where is Kiki?”
“She’s fine,” I say stiffly.
“But where is she?”
“It’s not important.”
“Come on, Tina, she’s my sister as much as she is yours.”
“She is not!” I say.
“Of course she is! Same dad, remember? Just because you took her and ran off doesn’t mean she’s not.”
As much as I want to argue, I know he’s at least technically right. But she’ll never be his sister like she is mine. I finally let out a long breath. “She’s in a convent school. Here in Sangui. She’s safe.” I pause. “Smartest kid in her class. She’s on scholarship.”
“Why don’t you go there?”
Because I’m too busy working out how to get back at your father, I think, but instead say, “Because it’s one scholarship per family.”
“We would have paid for you,” Michael says.
I stand up quickly. I’m starting to feel like a trapped animal. “Look, can we get back to why we’re here? You and Kiki may share a father, but where she goes to school doesn’t have anything to do with Mama’s murder.”
“Fine,” he says coolly. He pulls a thick sheaf of papers out of the folder and hands it to me.
I grab it greedily and sink back onto the floor. I flip quickly through the pages, trying to take it all in at once. I pause when I get to the photos. There’s one of Mama, and one of me as a six-year-old, both of us with messy hair and hollows in our cheeks. I go slower. There’s a close-up photo of the burns and slashes on Mama’s arms, then a page titled “Persecution History.”
Michael settles down beside me, reading over my shoulder as I scan the first lines:
Principal applicant (PA) is a single female of Nyanga ethnicity from North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). PA meets the definition of a refugee, having demonstrated that she fled her country of
origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of nationality and membership in a particular social group (victim of ethnic-based violence and Congolese woman at risk) and is unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to return to DRC. (1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Article 1(A)(2) and its 1967 Protocol.) Her fear is grounded in current objective conditions as demonstrated by recent country of origin information contained herein concerning the political and human rights situation in DRC.
I skip past more legal mumbo jumbo and read,
She is widowed. Her husband was killed in an attack on her village—
Widowed? That’s not right. I look at Michael. “This is a little personal. Do you mind?”
He squirms. “I’ve already read it all anyway.” He shifts back to sitting on his bed and picks up his laptop.
I look back at the file. My mother never married. The only thing she ever said about my dear old papa was that I should be glad not to know him. I don’t think she married, anyway. She definitely never said anything about a husband in front of me, and she hadn’t called herself a widow.
I go on reading. Other details are off. “We’re from Kasisi, not Walikale,” I say under my breath. Are these mistakes or did she lie to the UN? Why would she do that? Confused, I plunge on, reading feverishly.
Her village was attacked many times throughout her youth, both by various ethnically based groups of antigovernment militia including Mayi-Mayi and the M23 group, as well as by government soldiers. Rebels and government soldiers alike would raid her village for food and livestock to feed their troops. Often they would hurt or kill villagers in the process. Villagers were abducted and forced to join the militias or act as slaves for them . . .
So far, so normal. That’s a story everybody from there knows. The unpaid government soldiers are bad, and the militia groups are just a little bit worse.
On the material day, the applicant’s village came under severe attack, whereby she was forced to flee with her small daughter. Her husband was killed in the attack. Together with her daughter, she fled the same day to Bukavu—
I stop, reread the paragraph, trying to see if I’ve missed something. “That’s not right,” I mutter. “They left out the whole thing about . . . Or did she not tell them . . . ?”
“What?” Michael asks.
I start when he speaks. I’ve almost forgotten he’s here, I’m concentrating so hard on trying to match what’s on the page with my few memories. I glance up at him, then go back to reading.
“You’re driving me crazy, here, Tina. What are you mumbling about? Spill.”
Do I tell him or not? Finally I just say, “They got our village name wrong.”
“That’s it?”
I look back down. “Yeah.”
Why explain that what I remember and what’s here are two different things? I can’t trust Michael, and besides, this probably has nothing to do with Mama’s murder.
Michael isn’t buying it. “Tina, if you see something that might help us figure out—”
“You got kicked out of school, didn’t you?”
The abrupt question surprises him, like I hoped it would. “That’s why you’re in Sangui, not in Switzerland, isn’t it? This isn’t a holiday. I checked to make sure you wouldn’t be here.”
“I-I didn’t get kicked out. It’s just a suspension.”
“For what?”
He pauses, his jaw working. “Fighting.” Then, “You’re changing the subject.”
“Beating people up, huh? Like father, like son,” I say, scanning the rest of the page. There’s not much more in our persecution history. Details about us coming to Sangui, but no mention of Mama finding work with Mr. G. The notes just say she was supporting herself on handouts from a church and sometimes earning money by watching other people’s children and washing clothes. The interview must have been before she went to work for him. Or maybe she left that part out too.
“The other guy called me a mulatto.”
I look up. The mask is off. It’s obvious what Michael is thinking: He’s pissed. For some reason I blush and look away, like it was me who called him a name. “Fair enough,” I say.
Michael sighs and shuts the lid of his laptop. “Let’s call it a night, okay? It’s almost three in the morning, and my parents are supposed to be back early. They’ll be here for breakfast before church.”
A chill runs down my neck. I’d almost forgotten that in a few short hours I’m going to have to come face-to-face with Mr. Greyhill. Before I can suggest that I just hide in the closet and hope the maids don’t come cleaning, Michael says, “Here’s your story. I’ve got it all worked out: I’ll tell my parents I ran into you at the airport on my way back.”
“The airport? Why? I’ve never even been to the airport.”
“You were on your way back from boarding school.”
Now I have to laugh. “Boarding school? Michael, I didn’t make it past primary. I only know how to read because I steal books from rich people.”
“You’d rather explain what you’ve been doing hanging around Sangui all this time?”
“I’ll say I’ve been, I dunno, living with cousins or something?”
“This will all be easier if you’re cleaned up and respectable. Nothing like a European boarding school to impress Mom.” Michael looks me over. “You’ll have to cover up those tattoos, though. And we’re going to have to tell Dad first. He’ll want you to stay, and he’ll make Mom agree.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Why would he want me to stay?”
Michael gives me an exasperated sigh. “Because he was worried when you left too. He cares about you and Kiki.”
“Right.”
Michael ignores this. “Like I was saying, we’ll get Dad on our side first. Otherwise Mom’ll figure out some way to get rid of you. You know how she is. She acts whiter than Dad.”
I do remember. How could I forget all those looks she used to give my mother, or especially me when Michael and I were caught playing together? Mrs. Greyhill is essentially Sangui royalty. Real estate mostly, but they dabble in politics, media, shipping. She doesn’t take kindly to refugee trash like me.
Not to mention that whole her-husband-having-a-kid-with-my-mother thing.
Oh yeah, this is going to be real fun.
“I’m thinking you should say you go to school in Paris,” Michael muses. “They never go to Paris. You can make up whatever you want. You can say you’re on scholarship, like Kiki. You speak French, right?”
“No, I was five when I left Congo.”
“Well . . . it doesn’t matter; my parents don’t speak French either.”
I slump. “But I don’t know anything about boarding school. Or Paris. And I don’t have any clothes or anything.”
Michael waves my protests away. “Just stick to the basics. Parisians are rude. You’re on the prelaw track. Your classes are interesting, but World History is too Eurocentric.”
I stare at him. “Euro-what?”
“And Jenny’s got loads of clothes. The closet in your room is full of her stuff. Just take something; she has so much, no one will notice.”
I put my hands on my hips. “I’ll just go home, and you can come out and meet me in secret somewhere.”
The idea of pretending to be a boarding-school kid sounds bad enough, but being around Mr. G for days, maybe as long as a week? I won’t be able to live under the same roof that long without murdering him.
But Michael shakes his head. “Mom’s already made it clear I’m grounded because of the suspension thing. I can get away for a few hours at a time maybe, but otherwise I’m stuck here.”
“I don’t know . . .”
Think about the first step in your plan, Tiny. You don’t know whether you got all the dirt off his hard drive. You told Bug Eye you would stay here in case you have to
break back into Mr. G’s office. This is your chance to get in under their noses.
“Come on,” Michael says. “It’s only for a few days. Until we figure this whole thing out with your mom, and then I promise you can go back to looking and smelling like a Goonda.”
“Hey!” I glower at him.
He gives me a half smile. “You do kind of smell.”
I bite back a retort. A proper boarding-school girl wouldn’t punch someone, even if he deserved it. I just have to stay until I get the data. Then I’ll reevaluate. And if I’m being honest, maybe there’s even a teeny tiny part of me that finds the idea of pulling a con on the Greyhills a little thrilling. “I’ll think about it,” I say, standing up and walking to the door. “If I’m still here in the morning, you’ll know my answer.”
“Deal’s a deal, Tina,” Michael says. His tone is light, but I can hear the edge in his voice. “You can’t leave. You want to get to Mwika and that video, you have to stay here and see this thing through with me.”
I look past him at his room and think about how I’m going to take all of this away: his nice house, his toys, his fancy boarding school, his ability to make deals and promises . . . even his father. I can’t tell if it’s nerves churning my belly or something else. Guilt? No. I push the thought away.
“All right,” I say. “Prelaw and Euro-thingy it is.”
THIRTEEN
After Mama and I settled in at the Greyhills’, one of the other maids explained about the strangler fig. There was one that shaded our staff cottages, and Michael and I were playing in it, climbing the twisting basket of the tree’s limbs, while Mama and the other maid shelled beans.
“When it is young and slender,” the maid said, “the strangler fig creeps up on a proud, strong tree that has its nose in the air and sings to it, caresses it, feeds it sweet figs, and wraps its arms around it. Over time the fig’s embrace grows tighter and tighter, as it slinks up the other tree and spreads out into the light. Eventually the proud tree inside realizes it’s being choked, but by then it’s too late. That’s why you sometimes see the hollow stranglers. The tree inside has rotted away. The strangler fig is clever, but evil,” the maid concluded.
City of Saints & Thieves Page 8
