City of Saints & Thieves

by Natalie C. Anderson

  I hear myself say, “I’m going there.”

  Boyboy blinks. He knows I’m not talking about the tikka joint. “Where?”

  The idea shocks me nearly as much as it does Boyboy, but out of my mouth, it’s real. There is no other way to find out what happened to my mother, who she was, and what secrets she brought out of that dark forest with her. There is nothing else here in Sangui for me to uncover. There is no one here who will tell me. Before I can keep going forward, I have to go back.

  Michael is right. I have to know for sure that Mr. Greyhill killed her. If David Mwika and his video are still there, I’ll find them. And if I don’t, maybe whatever chased Mama out of our home and sent her to Mr. Greyhill is still there, hidden under the leaves. I’ll dig it up.

  I realize that I’ve been turning in this direction from the moment I saw my mother’s face in the photo, that first night in Mr. G’s office. The idea of going to the place my mother and I ran from is terrifying, but every bone in my body tells me it’s what I have to do. I have to look again with new eyes. I have to know. I have to know everything.

  All one hundred percent.

  For myself. For her.

  I jut my chin out at the map. “There. Congo. Back home.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Boyboy takes it pretty well.

  “No way. No way. Are you crazy? You cannot go there.” He literally stamps his foot. “I forbid it!”

  “Boyboy, don’t be a queen. I’m going.” I stand up, start looking around to see what I should pack.

  “But we just got all this dirt! Don’t you want to expose him? What about your plan? What about dirt, money, and blood?”

  “I’m not asking you to go with me.”

  “That’s not the point! You think being a cat burglar in Sangui is dangerous? That place is no game! It’s Mordor you’d be heading into!”

  “Mordor? I’m going to Kasisi.”

  “No,” Boyboy says, throwing up his hands, “I mean Mordor, like Lord of the Rings, Eye of Sauron. You know, definition of evil?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Is that a nerd thing?”

  “Yes, it’s a . . . Never mind. Listen to me. You don’t just waltz back into Congo. Why do you think our parents took us out of that hellhole in the first place?”

  “Come on, you’re being dramatic. I mean, lots of people still live there, right?”

  “Yeah, warlords! Militias!”

  I put my second-best knife in my backpack. My sweater. A plastic bottle that I fill from my rain barrel. “Not just them,” I say. “Normal people too. Farmers and stuff.” I look around, trying to keep my face composed, calm. No sense in letting Boyboy see that the idea of going there terrifies me too. What does one take on a trip into the eye of evil? I pick up a can of beans and add it to the pile.

  Boyboy swallows, and I can tell he’s trying for a rational voice. “Tina, we were the normal people. And bad stuff happened to us. Please don’t do this.”

  I busy myself with arranging the stuff in my pack. “I have to, Boyboy,” I say, unable to face him. “That’s where Mwika is. Mr. Greyhill is going there too. Mama’s murder and home—it’s all tied up like a big knot. Keep working on the decryption, okay?”

  Boyboy’s still looking at me like I’m giving him the stomachache of his life. “What are you going to tell Bug Eye?”

  I hesitate. Bug Eye told Boyboy my time was up at the Greyhills. “I’ll figure something out. Maybe I can tell him I can’t leave the Ring without Michael getting suspicious. I’ll be back in a few days, before you’re even done decrypting. He never has to know I’m gone.”

  Boyboy just hugs himself and shakes his head.

  What I don’t say is that as scary as Bug Eye is, I am sort of beyond caring what he’ll do if he finds out I’m skipping town. Some things are more important than ass kickings.

  • • •

  It feels good to sleep in my own bed. Even the guilt I feel when the driver, and then Michael, call and text repeatedly until I turn off my phone isn’t enough to bring me down. I’m just relieved to be in my own place, with my own smells, my own things, the lights of my own city stretched out like stolen diamonds on velvet.

  I think about going to see Kiki, but she won’t be expecting me and I’d have to knock on the dorm window. I don’t want to get her in trouble. It’s only Monday. I’ll be back by Friday, I tell myself.

  I wake up before it’s even light, jittery and nervous, but excited too. I’m finally doing something.

  It doesn’t take long to get ready. I brush my teeth and tuck new bobby pins into my hair. I stuff as much of my emergency cash as I think I’ll need for the trip into the seams I’ve ripped open in my jacket. Then I pull the concrete block up to the eastern corner of the main room and stand on it. I reach with two fingers into a crack between the bricks in the wall and pinch out a plastic bag. After I blow off the dust, I look at the prayer card, at Saint Catherine’s face, her breaking wheel at her side, sword under her feet, palm branch in her hand.

  Sometimes I feel like I split Saint Catherine in half. Kiki kept her name and her goodness. I kept the things that killed her.

  I fold the plastic bag around the card and put it in my backpack with the photo of my mother. Maybe one day I’ll add a triumphant palm branch to the tattoos of the sword and the wheel on my arms. But not yet.

  • • •

  The bus terminal is orchestrated chaos, as usual. Hawkers, touts, pickpockets, and travelers press past one another in the early sun. Wide-eyed men and women from up-country clutch their bags to their armpits and furtively count out bills stashed in bosoms and underwear. Steely-eyed men and women who work the buses and market stalls watch them with predatory disdain.

  I nod greetings at a few of the other light-fingered crowd workers I know and give them the signal that I’m not working today. They look relieved.

  And that’s when I spot them.

  One in a very lime-green hat and plaid capris, scanning the crowd; one trying to look like he hangs out at bus depots all the time and failing miserably because any fool can see he’s a sonko rich boy and doesn’t take the bus. It’s in the way he’s avoiding touching things. Also because he’s half a shade whiter than anyone except the blind albino guy rattling his tin cup for coins.

  “What are you doing here?” I demand, marching over.

  Michael has the nerve to look relieved to see me.

  “Waiting for you, of course,” Boyboy says, puffing up his chest. He’s going for bluster, but he shrinks under my scowl.

  “How did you even find me?”

  “Tapped into your phone’s GPS,” Boyboy says. He shoulders a travel bag.

  “Why?” I ask, giving the bag a suspicious once-over. “And what is Michael doing here?”

  Boyboy and Michael look at each other.

  I narrow my eyes at Boyboy. “You called him? You told him?”

  Boyboy puts an indignant fist to his hip. “Somebody’s gotta look out for you, and I am simply not made of that sort of manly stuff.”

  “I can take care of myself! I don’t need manly men.”

  “That’s what you think. You’re a minnow getting ready to swim with sharks. Man, woman, whoever, you need the safety of numbers.”

  Michael still hasn’t said anything. I round on him. “And I suppose you agreed to come to make sure I keep my end of our bargain?”

  His eyes glitter. “You’re the one running off. Don’t act all high and mighty.”

  I fold my arms over my chest and try to look down at him, but it’s less intimidating than I’d like, seeing as I’m a head shorter. “You seriously think you’re going to tag along?”

  “I don’t want to just tag along. I want to go,” Michael says. “I made a bargain and I’m sticking to it. I’m going to figure out who killed your mom. If that mean
s going to Congo to find Mwika, then let’s go. But yes, I also want to make sure you don’t bail.”

  I grind my teeth. “I wasn’t going to release the dirt on your dad. Yet. I haven’t gone back on my word.”

  “The deal was to do this together.”

  “Aren’t you grounded?”

  “Don’t you want to keep on not giving a shit?”

  We stand glaring at each other until Boyboy rolls his eyes and says, “Ngai, you’re like two roosters fighting over a hen. Are we done with the chest beating? Because time’s wasting and we have a long way to go.”

  “I just don’t want to be around when his father sends out a small private army to track him down!”

  “You don’t need to worry about my father.”

  “Oh really? Bet that’s what my mother thought too.”

  Boyboy puts his sunglasses on and steps between us. “Okay! Time to go! Which bus is it?”

  I take a deep breath. “So that’s it, then. You’re both coming?”

  Michael nods.

  “I’m not out here for my health, habibi,” Boyboy says, waving off minibus fumes.

  “Fine. I guess I can’t stop you. But I’m not taking the bus.”

  “Private car?” Boyboy asks hopefully.

  “No.”

  “All right, miss expert travel agent, what mode of transportation do you suggest, then?”

  I tug the straps on my bag, cinching them down tight over my shoulders. “We’ll take what all the refugees take.”

  Boyboy’s mouth drops open when he follows my gaze. “You’re kidding, right? A banana lorry?”

  I smirk. “Unless you’ve got a private plane I don’t know about.”

  “Michael does,” Boyboy says. “His dad has an arms-smuggling helicopter.”

  Michael crosses his arms. “It’s one thing to take my dad’s motorcycle out for a ride. It’s another to steal his chopper. Besides, he’s using it.”

  He gives me a pointed look. Does he know that I know his dad is traveling?

  Boyboy groans. “I detest banana lorries. I vowed never again.”

  “So take the bus and get stopped by border guards and bribe your way across three countries,” I say. “I’m taking the lorry.”

  Boyboy removes his hat, gives it an apologetic look, and stows it in his bag. “I’m just putting this out there—this is the most unglamorous thing I will ever do for you, Tiny.”

  “I’m not forcing you!” I say, exasperated. “You’re the one who wants to come. You could always stay here.”

  Boyboy gives me a funny look. “It’s not that I want to come.”

  “Then I don’t understand.”

  He starts to answer, then just shakes his head and walks off toward the lorry. Even Michael gives me a weird grimace, like he’s embarrassed for me for some reason.

  As he turns to follow Boyboy, Michael says, “For someone so smart, you sure can be an idiot.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Rule 12: Always be ready to bolt.

  At some point in your life, you will have to escape from something. Don’t be caught unprepared. Maybe you have a fancy tunnel guarded by monsters, and cars and helicopters waiting outside to whoosh you away. Maybe you have passports and bank accounts in Europe. Maybe you have a motorcycle.

  Maybe you’ve just got your feet. And if you’re thusly unprepared, I hope for your sake a big woman with a truck takes pity on you.

  But that sort of thing doesn’t usually happen twice.

  • • •

  Mama and I got out of Congo on a banana lorry.

  After we left the forest we made for Goma, on the tip of Lake Kivu. I don’t remember much of that part. In Goma, though, there were too many soldiers prowling the streets and pops of gunfire at odd hours, and after sleeping a few nights on the floor at a pastor’s home with a dozen other dazed and bruised bodies, the pastor told us the fighting was getting worse and we needed to leave. He managed to get us a lift with a lorry driver who had a lazy eye and a paunchy belly. He looked Mama up and down with his good eye, smiled and said he’d take us wherever we wanted. We thanked the pastor, and once he was gone, Mama found us another ride. Still a banana lorry, but driven by a huge, fierce woman named Paula Kubwa: “Big Paula.”

  Apparently lots of would-be refugees wanted to hitch a ride out of the country with Paula Kubwa. She was said to be the daughter of one of the militia leaders, and she took no guff from militia or police. She paid her bribes at the checkpoints like everyone else and got on her way, and if any man said boo he’d be laid out cold in the dirt, his friends just pissing themselves with laughter.

  It wasn’t easy to get a ride with the lady driver. Mama later told me that we included Paula Kubwa in our prayers every night because she had found us. She had rescued us. She had picked us out of the crowd of jostling refugees to act as our lady Moses, parting the sea for our escape into the promised land. I don’t know if I remember her face, or if I’ve conjured it out of what Mama told me. In my mind she was a mountain, something marvelous and terrifying like an angel with a sword.

  I’m pretty sure she didn’t need my prayers.

  • • •

  I guess Boyboy, Michael, and I could have taken a bus and found some way to sneak across the borders, but just the idea of sitting in a cramped space for eight hours with all those bodies and all their bags and no one rolling down the windows makes me ill. Everyone eating and farting and talking too loud, little kids peeing in their pants because the bus won’t stop, people sitting practically on top of you. A pirated kung fu movie on a too-small screen blasting too-loud static in the front. Contraband chickens that get loose and run squawking up and down the aisle until some poor guy grabs them and stuffs them back under his sport coat.

  I like a crowd—it’s great for pickpocketing—but I need to be able to escape. I’d rather pay a few shillings to sit in the back of a truck full of goods headed for the interior. It might be less comfortable, but at least you can feel the breeze.

  Once, because I’m an orphan kid and no one could tell me not to, I went as far as the border checkpoint between Kenya and Uganda. My plan was to go all the way around the north side of Lake Victoria to Congo. I just jumped on a bus because I felt like it, pretending to be one of a family of ten, melting into the pack of loud, wiggly children who were being ushered on board by their overwhelmed father. I slipped under the driver’s eye and slouched into a seat in the back. I didn’t want to return for good, I just . . . wanted to go. To see.

  But I chickened out before crossing that invisible line that turned Kenya into another country. One foot over and suddenly I’m illegal again, my refugee documents meaningless. Or so the smugglers in the lorries told me.

  They call them banana lorries because the big flatbed trucks take stuff bought in Sangui—cooking oil, pots and pans, medical supplies, stuff made in China—into Congo. Then they bring produce (lots of bananas, hence the name) and timber and charcoal and people back out. Sometimes a little smuggled gold if the drivers think they can manage to get through all the checkpoints without getting caught. More often than gold, though, it’s refugees, because they’re easier to come by than gold, and no one wants to steal them.

  The lorries go out and back, single file down the disintegrating highway. Like cows heading to pasture in the morning, returning to the barn at night. On that trip I decided to skip the bus and take a lorry back to Sangui. The man I found said I could, but if I had papers to get me across Kenya, why did I want to sit in the open? Why not sit in the nice bus? I just did. He shrugged and told me the fare—nearly as much as the bus after all—but assured me there were other ways if I didn’t have the money. He gazed in unvarnished disappointment at my thighs when I pulled out my cash.

  • • •

  I look for a big woman among the drivers, but there are only men. We’ll go a differen
t way from my trip before, through Tanzania and Rwanda, around the south end of Lake Victoria. There are more borders to cross this way, but it’s the fastest route to Goma. We want a driver with a good truck that won’t break down, and one who has a wheel boy, who will switch out and drive through the night so we don’t lose precious hours. First we have to talk to the touts, though, the guys who arrange the rides and take a cut. They jostle for our fare, waving and shouting and tugging our arms.

  Once we’ve made the arrangements, we’re presented to our driver. He takes one look at us, rounds on the tout, and lets him have it. Their argument is quick and loud and ends with the tout throwing up his hands and stalking off.

  “How old are you?” the driver asks me.

  “Eighteen.”

  “Kwani? Eighteen, my ass; come back when you’re twelve.” He starts to turn away.

  “Fine, I’m sixteen.”

  He looks from me to Boyboy in his fancy trousers, to pale-faced Michael, and I can see him weighing it all out. We look like runaways. If I were him, I wouldn’t want to take us either and risk getting in trouble at a police checkpoint.

  “We’ll pay extra,” Michael says.

  The driver’s eyes scan around and he comes in closer. He tells Michael softly how much more he wants, a ridiculous sum.

  “We’ll pay half that,” I interject when I can see Michael is ready to agree. I do have my pride.

  The driver knows it’s fair. “Be ready in twenty minutes.”

  • • •

  The wheel boy loads up cooking oil in five-gallon jugs while the driver supervises. They’re a good investment because the jugs will later be used for carrying water and the driver can get extra for them. Big aluminum cooking pots, straight from China, go in next to boxes full of long bars of laundry soap. These will be sliced up like sticks of butter and sold off in squares. Rubber sandals, ladies’ used dress shoes, football jerseys. Gum, cigarettes, plastic kazoos. It all goes in the back, the driver watching with a frown of concentration to see how badly the bottom of the truck sags. He’s still got to put us back there too, after all.