City of Saints & Thieves

by Natalie C. Anderson

  And there he is.

  He has followed her out of the tunnel.

  Her murderer.

  My face is inches from the laptop. Michael’s shoulder presses up to mine, trying to see too. All that’s visible of the man is his back. I barely have time to register that his hair and skin are dark—black skin, not Mr. Greyhill—before a gun floats up in his hand.

  My mother turns to him.

  “No,” I whisper. “No. Get out . . .”

  The look on her face when she sees the gun is strange, like she’s not even surprised. Like she’d been waiting for this. She stares at him for a long moment, before her expression hardens into something else. Something almost . . . defiant.

  “No,” I moan, shaking my head.

  “Turn it off! Don’t watch, Tina,” Michael says, like he’s suddenly understanding what’s about to happen, but I furiously slap his hands away from the keypad.

  “Tina,” he pleads.

  Wordlessly, Mama starts forward toward her killer, and just like that . . .

  Bam.

  She stumbles back.

  I feel an animal noise rip from my throat, and my hands fly to my face. Beside me I hear Boyboy choke. But I can’t look away. A glossy sheen hovers near her heart. Blood on her black uniform. She keeps stepping back. Her knees buckle; the sofa catches her.

  She lets her head sink into the cushions, like she’s just going to rest for a second.

  And for a while nothing happens. For nearly a minute it’s just her, sitting there, and you can see her chest heaving, like she’s exhausted, like she’s run a race. The killer places the gun in the exact middle of Mr. Greyhill’s desk. He continues to watch Mama, never turning to show his face to the camera.

  I’m making some noise, over and over again.

  Then the screen whips away again and back.

  “He just left through the tunnel,” Michael rasps. “I didn’t see his face. Did you see his face? Was it Mwika?”

  I can’t answer. I’m starting to tilt sideways. I feel Boyboy holding me up.

  My mother is dying as I watch. Someone help her. Please. And just then, behind her, the door to the office flies open and there’s a blur and the next thing I see is Mr. Greyhill on his knees before her, pressing at her chest.

  “What’s he doing?” I gasp. Black flows between his fingers.

  It’s too much. My vision is going. I can’t breathe anymore. Water is running down my face and neck. My heart feels like it’s being pressed through a sieve. For one moment an impossible hope flutters in my chest. He’ll save her. He’ll get her to a hospital and she’ll be okay.

  And that’s when I see her head rise and her eyes open. She’s still conscious. For a moment I think she’s going to try to push Mr. Greyhill away. But she just looks at him, reaches her hand to the side of his face. He presses into it, his whole body shaking. Then her hand falls. Her head rolls back.

  And my mother dies.

  Her spirit peels away from her body and she is gone.

  And I cannot breathe.

  I hear something. My name. I feel hands on my arms, on my back. I can’t move.

  The world is spiraling into one bright and terrible point, sparking at the edges.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I don’t remember standing up, or walking out of the room. I find myself in the grass outside, taking in gulps of wet air. The world pulses and blurs. I see the reflection of the lamp catching beads of falling rain in the dark like a million little needles. I can’t keep myself upright, and I fold, holding on to my knees, rain on my back.

  Bent over double, I hear footsteps behind me. They stop. I know without turning around that it’s Michael. He stands there for so long, watching my hunched shoulders without speaking, that I can’t stand it anymore and finally round on him, my fists curled. “What?” I gasp. “What do you want me to say? You were right! Your dad didn’t do it! He didn’t kill her!”

  “Tina.” He reaches out.

  I reel back, for a second thinking I’m going to fall. “Don’t touch me!”

  He doesn’t. He steps forward slowly. I stand there, rain pounding all over me. My whole body is shaking and hot like I have a fever.

  “I’m so sorry, Tina,” he says. “You shouldn’t have had to see—”

  “Stop! Just stop!”

  “This doesn’t change anything,” he tries, moving toward me again. “Maybe that was Mwika. We’ll still find out who killed her. I’ll help you.”

  “I don’t want your help! I don’t care about you, or your dad, or Mwika or Omoko!”

  Michael looks confused, and I realize he doesn’t know who Mr. Omoko is. I’m screaming like a crazy person. I don’t care.

  “Come back inside, Tina. The rain . . .” He takes my wrist.

  “Don’t.” I try to yank my hand away, but he holds it tight. “Don’t,” I repeat. I can’t look at his face. I am drowning. I need to sit. If I don’t sit I’m going to fall.

  “Tina.” He moves closer. “Look at me. I’m so sorry . . .”

  “No,” I whisper, but I’m stuck, unable to go forward or back. The light and the dark are swirling in and out. The rain feels like blisters on my skin. I still can’t breathe.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he says so quietly that I almost don’t hear him. His face swims in front of me. I feel his arms under my palms like the branches of a tree, sturdy and hard. “We’re not going to stop. We’ll figure out who killed her.”

  He is so close that I can feel the heat coming off him through the rain. His eyes are luminous. I can’t see anything but his face, soft and familiar. I am so dizzy. My body stops fighting. My lids start to droop. There’s a strange, chalky taste in my mouth.

  Wait, a small voice in my mind says. Something’s not right.

  My eyes snap open. “No,” I choke out, and push clumsily out of Michael’s embrace. “No.”

  “Tina, wait . . .”

  But I just stagger backward, turn, and run into the night.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Rule 15: A rule from my mother: run.

  “Don’t come back. Don’t you dare even look back. Run like you do when you’re racing and you beat all the boys. Go in the forest and wait for me at our place. You remember? You will find it? Good. Go now. Run.”

  And then she shoved me out the window.

  • • •

  Sprinting through the forest at night isn’t easy like they make it look in the movies. There are holes in the ground and trees fallen over and vines with thorns and invisible things that sting and claw. And if it’s dark and you’re just a little kid, it’s almost impossible. Unless there is the smell of gasoline and smoke behind you, and the only light is a faint glimmer of flame on the underbellies of leaves in the limbs above, coming from the direction of your home. Then light does not comfort you, and you run farther. You search out the dark and the thorns and the crevices in the earth, because they are better than what you’ve left burning.

  • • •

  I’m standing in the stupid rain, like a stupid stray dog.

  I am dully aware of the stitch in my side and a stinging in my foot. The only reason I’ve stopped is because I am at the edge of a gully. I can’t see below the shine of the black water’s surface, but it moves in an angry boil, like eels. My toes curl in the soft mud at the edge, my legs toying with the idea of leaping in, not wanting to be stilled.

  I’m in the forest, but I don’t remember getting here. I have been running. My lungs burn. There is nothing but this creek and dripping leaves and the shrill of insects. There is supposed to be a bridge here. My thoughts come slowly, like the mud that is breaking below my weight and splashing into the creek. How long have I been standing here? I step back. I am hot, dripping sweat, and now my feet are singing with pain and I remember a stony path. My head feels like a melon on a
stick, pulling me sideways. There’s a clearing ahead, beyond the creek. A sweep of pale grass. The dark hut, barely visible. Nothing to see by other than a distant pulse of lightning.

  There is movement in the bush behind me. Probably the mokele-mbembe, come out of the water on his scaly legs, swinging his dragon tail, licking his dragon teeth and ready to slurp me up. Let him.

  At the same time my knees hit the ground, I feel a strong hand gripping my elbow. There is a too-bright light in my face.

  “Mama,” I say.

  • • •

  Stumbling through short grass. It tickles my ankles.

  A face in a window, surrounded by orange light. The mokele-mbembe? It has horns. No. Not horns, ears. A dog.

  Water, very cold, splashing my legs and arms.

  My mother says my name—“Christina”—like I’m in trouble, and I want to answer her—Yes, I’m here—but my mouth won’t move.

  A smell I haven’t known in years: blankets dried in the sun on lantana bushes.

  And then nothing.

  • • •

  I wake up alone in a sagging bed that creaks when I move. When I try to sit up, my head pounds, and for a few seconds my vision fades. I’m able to turn my head and blink, and when my sight comes back, I see walls made of saplings, covered in mud. The ground is laid with a tightly woven grass mat. There is the smell of wood smoke and dry earth.

  The signs of a woman and a girl are in the things I can see around me—dresses hung on pegs and Sunday shoes arranged neatly beside the door. School books and a Bible, a calendar from four years ago showing white children ice-skating that hangs next to a photograph of a serious-looking elderly couple. An AK-47 sits above the couple’s heads, out of the reach of a child, on the ledge between the wall and the roof.

  Sunlight comes in under the shutters and the door in crisp lines. Close by are birds, and farther away the sound of goats bleating and shaking their bells. I get up slowly. I’m still in my slightly damp clothes. Other than my aching head and very tender feet I seem to be okay. It takes me a while, but I stagger to the door. My mouth is bone-dry. I feel like a human balloon that’s been filled with sand.

  I push the door open a crack and blink into the brightness. A red dirt yard, hatch marks showing it’s been freshly swept with a twig broom, and grass and the forest beyond. I step outside and the sun is immediate and hot on my skin.

  I know where I am.

  “Catherine?” I croak. I clear my throat and try again. Running up the path to her home last night comes back to me suddenly, like a fever dream. She picked me up off the ground, not my mother. My memory is hazy, full of gaps. I feel a sudden and intense wave of hot and cold, and rush to the edge of the yard, where I throw up.

  “You were drinking last night?”

  I finish heaving, wipe my mouth with my sleeve, then turn toward the voice.

  Catherine has come around the side of the house. She’s drying a metal pot. “Or are you pregnant?”

  “No,” I say quickly. “Neither.”

  She snorts. “You came here sick. Talking crazy about your mama.”

  I try to think. What had happened? Had I been drugged? The only thing I’d eaten yesterday had been food from the nuns. “I wasn’t drinking. Maybe something bit me.”

  “Spider, maybe,” she says, but not like she believes it.

  “Where did you find me?”

  She jerks her chin, motioning up the hill. I see a dark place on the edge of the forest where it looks like the path turns in, toward the creek.

  “You were trying to get to your farm?”

  “My farm . . .” Slowly it dawns on me, why her home looked familiar before. I look from her to the path. “We lived there.”

  I start to walk, struggling against the heat and my stiff limbs and the hill. Behind me Catherine says nothing. She’s probably laughing at me, and I resolve not to look back. Once I reach the path I’m in the shade again, but I have to pause to catch my breath and let my heart stop pounding in my ears. “Spiders,” I pant. “Or a snake.”

  “Or somebody poison you,” a small high voice says. I look up to see the long-limbed girl. Either she is very quiet, or I am still groggy, because both she and her yellow dog have come up on me without my hearing. She walks forward and hands me a stick to lean on, and waits for me to go first. It isn’t far to where the path dips into the creek, which has gone down in the night. I see well-placed stepping stones now, leading across.

  I look to the other bank and try to find memories that match this place. The mud plaster is crumbling off the walls of the hut, and what is left of the roof is caved in and black from fire. The shed is gone, burned to nothing. Weeds reach the windowsills. Where is my climbing tree? Where was the garden? We had rabbits once, and chickens. They are long gone now, but maybe I’ll see a wild descendant in the field. I step across the creek. The dog splashes through the water and races past me as I climb the bank.

  “You are coming to claim this place?”

  I turn to see Catherine stepping nimbly over the rocks behind her daughter.

  “No.” I reach out a hand to help her, but she ignores it.

  “I told you not to come back here.”

  “I know.”

  She breathes out her nose, walks past me toward the hut. At the edge of the yard, she stands with her hands on her hips. Her daughter goes on, down an invisible path through the weeds. There is an avocado tree back there, I remember now.

  “Why are you here, then?” Catherine asks.

  It’s not an answer, but it’s all I can say: “My mother is dead.”

  Catherine doesn’t move.

  “Someone killed her. Five years ago.” Still nothing, and I find myself relieved at the silence, the utter lack of sympathy. I keep talking. “I thought I knew who killed her, but last night I found out for sure I was wrong. Maybe I went a little crazy.” I try to smile, but it doesn’t quite stick.

  Five years I’ve lost hating Mr. G. Hating him. Plotting my revenge. Letting that hate drive me. Dirt. Money. Blood. It was so easy. And now . . . it’s like suddenly losing a limb. I keep trying to walk, forgetting I’ve lost my leg.

  “You know the weird thing?” I say, talking basically to myself now. “I think I already knew he didn’t do it.” I swallow and nod. Catherine is still quiet, and I’m grateful.

  Can’t I just keep on hating Mr. Greyhill? That would be so much easier. Turning my anger at David Mwika feels like asking the earth to start spinning in the opposite direction. David Mwika? He’s dead. I can never ask him why he did it. Was it even him in the video? I have nothing to go on now.

  “Who killed her?” Catherine finally asks. Her face is still hard, but the softness of her voice, unexpected, pierces through me, and I sink to the ground. The world seems too bright; there’s too much of it.

  “I don’t know. I think maybe a security guard she worked with? But I-I don’t know why.”

  I should go home. Coming back here to Congo was a stupid idea. I don’t know what I’m doing. I should go home to Kiki and . . . and what? Beg forgiveness from Bug Eye? Give Mr. Omoko Mr. Greyhill’s money like I promised? I’ve opened this door and now I don’t know how to shut it. If I keep going, his whole family will be ruined. Michael, his sister, mother, everyone. That was the whole point. But I can’t do that now. Can I? No. Yes. I have to. Mr. Omoko is waiting. Goondas who disobey orders get chained to cinder blocks and tossed off piers. I may get killed anyway, just for running off like an idiot.

  I push my fingers into my temples, trying to press my thoughts and the pounding away.

  With a grunt Catherine lowers herself to the ground beside me. She tucks her legs in under her and watches the yard, where the dog pounces on something in the grass and the girl runs over to investigate. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t.
But you knew my mother. Probably better than me.”

  Catherine shifts and pulls a piece of paper from her apron. Her hands are dark and rough, used to work. She unfolds the paper and I realize she’s taken the photo of her and my mother out of my pocket while I slept. She looks at it for a long time, then slowly hands it back to me. “She was my best friend,” she says. Her mouth pinches.

  I look at Catherine’s younger face. Plumper, eyes brighter. The Catherine sitting next to me is still attractive, but her eyes are a thousand years older.

  “Anju was my cousin, but just like a sister to me. We grew up together. When she had you, I helped her.”

  I stare at Catherine. She and her daughter are family. The only family I know, other than Kiki. And suddenly, sitting here with the smell of grass and the coolness rising from the creek, a memory comes to me: the sound of my mother and another woman laughing at something I had said. It was her, Catherine. My voice breaks as I ask, “So why do you hate her now?”

  Catherine sighs. “I don’t think I hate her anymore.”

  “But yesterday . . .”

  “I hated her yesterday. I loved her and she left me and I’ve hated her for it. But now that I see you . . .” She looks from me to her daughter. “Now I think I understand.”

  “Please, Catherine, understand what? I don’t understand anything.”

  She smiles a little. “Nobody calls me Catherine anymore, just the nuns. It’s Cathi.”

  I look down. “Catherine’s my sister’s name. No one calls her that either. She’s Kiki.”

  “Sister?” Cathi looks surprised. Her voice falters. “Named Catherine? Your mother got married?”

  I hesitate. “No.”

  She looks at her daughter again, who has found a long stick and is poking at the avocados. Cathi puts two fingers to her mouth, but doesn’t say anything. An avocado falls from the tree and the girl retrieves it, adds it to the others she’s carrying in her skirt. She looks to be about the same age as Kiki, maybe a bit older.

  “They took you too, didn’t they?” I blurt. “When they took my mother? When she got pregnant with me?”