The Bitter Side of Sweet

by Tara Sullivan

  With that, he tosses two machetes at us and then turns on his heel and walks away. I scramble forward, expecting to race the girl for the weapons, but she doesn’t move and I get there first. Now I’m left with bad options. I can keep both machetes and have her tell Moussa that I didn’t let her work, or I can give her one and have to watch myself all day so that I don’t stumble close enough for her to stab me. I’ve already hesitated too long for it to be friendly when I hand one to her. I chew my lip, then consider the two blades. I pick the better one and toss the other so that it lands with a smack in the dust beside her.

  “That one’s for you,” I say, and turn away. Moussa disappears across the clearing into the trees, following Seydou and our crew from yesterday.

  When I hear the soft shush of the blade leaving the ground, I turn to face her. She’s standing, holding the machete tightly in her left hand. I balance forward, ready to fight if it comes to that. The moment lengthens. The only sound filling the silence of the empty camp as we stare at each other is the whirring of the bugs.

  “Well?” I finally ask, breaking the silence. “Are you going to stand there all day like a wildcat waiting to pounce?”

  “You’re the one pointing a machete at me.” Her face is swollen from the beating yesterday, one eye nearly shut, and her words come out thick and garbled through her puffy lips.

  “I’m not going to attack you. I want to get going on these pods.”

  “Oh, right, because you’re such a good boy,” she sneers. I want to punch that tone out of her voice, but don’t. There’s not much space to fight, and we’re both armed.

  “And why are you so bad?” I ask. “Do you really think this is the right way to start off here? They’re just going to beat you until you work. Why did you even agree to come across the border if you’re going to be so awful about it?”

  She looks at me stonily.

  “I’m going to escape,” she finally says, not answering my question. “I suggest you keep out of my way. I’ll do what I have to.”

  I scowl at her again.

  “Well, I have to fill that bucket,” I say, making up a quota to keep myself on track, pointing with my machete to the impossibly large plastic barrel, “by the time Moussa gets here. I don’t care about you. I don’t even really care about myself. But the sooner I do what he wants me to, the sooner I can get back to taking care of Seydou, that little boy you tricked and hurt and abandoned yesterday. And I need to know whether you’re going to try and stop me because if I’m always looking over my shoulder at you, it’s going to slow me down and I can’t afford that.”

  At the mention of Seydou, her eyes flick from me to the edge of the clearing, where the path twists into the trees. Then they flick to me again, hard and flat as roof metal.

  “If you really wanted to do what’s best for him, you’d get him out of here.”

  My anger flares.

  “You think it’s so easy? To get away from here?”

  “At least I tried!”

  “I’ve tried too! But all you have to do is think about yourself. I have to find a way that’s safe for two.” I count off reasons on my fingers. “Seydou can’t run very fast. Seydou can’t climb very high. Seydou isn’t good at keeping secrets. Seydou is afraid of the dark, afraid of snakes, afraid of the bosses . . .” I throw up my hands. “We didn’t make it ten meters before they caught us.”

  She stares at me, unreadable.

  “Besides,” I continue, “as soon as we earn out the money the bosses have spent on us, we can leave.”

  “Says who?” asks Khadija.

  “Say the bosses. All I have to do is work hard and make sure Seydou doesn’t get hurt and then we can walk out of here, free.”

  I think I’ve hidden the quaver of uncertainty in my voice, but I’m not sure. It’s true, that’s what the bosses said, but in the two years I’ve been here I’ve never seen a boy earn out the money that the bosses paid the middlemen from Sikasso. Plus, I don’t even know what they paid for us, how much I earn a day, or how much I’m being charged for food and shelter. All of these numbers matter and I don’t know any of them, which means I have to trust that Moussa is keeping track of all of them. I don’t like trusting.

  “Believe what you want, just stay away from me,” says Khadija. “I’m going to take care of myself.”

  With that, she turns. A moment later I hear the high screech-screech of her working at the chain links with the blade. I roll my eyes. Good luck to her. She can get beaten and starved until she learns her lesson. I’ve already learned mine and I need to not waste any more time.

  I drag the chest-high barrel closer, then grab the first bag out of the towering pile beside me and settle into the pattern of the day, working as quickly as I can.

  The sun climbs the sky and sweat is running down my face and back but I keep working. The pod is shiny purple-red in my hand. Thwack-thwack-crack, I split it open. I tuck my machete under my arm and scoop the cacao seeds out with my fingers, throwing them into the big blue barrel. I have no idea why we grow these seeds, no idea who wants them. Why have so many trees growing the same thing? The bosses never talk about it; they only say that the seeds leave our farm and go to the coast, where someone else buys them. For what? I asked once, but they all shrugged. No one here knows. All we know is that people in the city want these seeds, so we grow them.

  The seeds make a depressingly hollow splat as they hit the bottom, but I try not to notice. Once they’re in the barrel, I throw the empty half husks into the bush as hard as I can. By the time they clatter to the ground in the distance, I’ve reached into the sack beside me and taken out another pod. I do all this in silence. Except for the sound of my machete against the pods and the sound of her machete against the chains, we make no noise.

  Over an hour later, I finally get to the bottom of the first sack. The storage area is too full for me to take advantage of its roof’s shade. I shake the sack inside out to clear the twigs and bits of leaves and dust, and then I drape the burlap over the top of my head and shoulders, like a giant floppy hat. The smell of dirt and pods sifts onto me, but the shade is so welcome I don’t care. I put my machete point into the ground in front of me and close my eyes for a moment. Black spots dance behind my eyelids.

  The scritch-scritch in the background never wavers.

  “Hakéto,” I call to her.

  “What?” She doesn’t pause.

  “Are you going to be gone by the time they come back?”

  “What do you care?” she mutters. “Are you going to come catch me? Again?”

  “If you’re not going to be gone by the time they get here,” I say, “you should start working. You can explain away some of the lack of work based on how new you are, but if they check tonight and you haven’t done anything, then you’re going to be beaten again. And they’ll probably figure out what you were doing instead and make it impossible for you to keep doing it.”

  I don’t mention that if she’s done nothing other than try to escape again all day, it will probably somehow turn out to be my fault and I can’t afford many more nights on Moussa’s bad side.

  The girl stares at the chain link she’s been working on and the machete in her hand. I see her squint at the sky, judging the passing of time, estimating how long it will take her to finish.

  “Do they always stop at dusk?” she asks.

  “Awó.”

  She sighs, then digs a little hole in the ground and buries the few metal shavings she managed to work off the chain and turns to me. She looks at me silently, her head cocked. She reminds me of a bird, considering whether the object in the grass in front of it is a worm or a snake. “Show me what to do.”

  I look at her like she’s no smarter than Modibo. It’s pretty clear what we have to do. I wave vaguely at the sacks.

  “You shell them.” It really doesn’t get any more basic
than that. Plus, I’ve been doing it all morning. It’s not like it’s a secret.

  She scowls.

  “And just how am I supposed to do that? I’m not an expert on all this like you are.”

  Somehow she makes that sound like the worst of insults.

  I grind my teeth and remind myself that we need to work together at this if we’re to have a good showing by the end of the day.

  “Take a pod in the hand you don’t hold your machete in and hit it hard, like this.” I demonstrate, thwacking the blade into the thick rind and pausing to show how I’m holding it.

  She picks up a pod in her right hand and swings the machete at it. I don’t know whether her blade wasn’t entirely straight or if she simply didn’t put enough force behind the swing to cut it, but the blade skims off the curved ridges of the pod and bites into her hand.

  “Dammit!” With a curse, she drops both the pod and the knife and scowls as she sucks on the fat part under her thumb where the knife cut her.

  “You have to hit it harder,” I say.

  “And have it cut off my whole hand when I miss? No thank you!”

  “All right, all right! Try doing it this way.” I hold the pod by the stem stump, bracing it on the ground. I swing the machete over my head and land it, thwack, in the middle of the pod. I pause again, letting her get a good look at how I’ve done it, before I lean away and signal with the tip of my machete that she give it a try.

  Awkwardly, Khadija copies me. But again, her swing is off and her blade angles sharply to the left. Luckily, this is away from the hand that was holding the pod, so she doesn’t get cut again, but her machete clangs into the dirt and the scratched pod goes flying, hitting off a sack and then rolling around a little before coming to rest near me.

  “Any other great ideas?” she snaps.

  “It’s not my fault you’re a weakling and can’t do it!”

  “I am not a weakling!” She throws the machete down. “I just don’t know how to do it right and you’re not helping!”

  “Well, I can hardly tell you how to do it right when you don’t have enough muscles to even use a machete! Useless girl; didn’t you do any work at home?”

  “No! Of course not! I went to school! How nice for you that you’re so good at this! I’m sure it comes from years of staying here, letting them tell you what to do.” She gets to her feet and takes a step toward me.

  “What’s that supposed to mean, rich girl?” I’m on my feet too, shouting in her face. I don’t know where she’s from or how on earth a creature like her ended up here, but she’s clearly rich if her parents were throwing money away sending a girl to school. I still have my machete in my right hand and my knuckles are aching from how tightly I’m gripping it.

  “It means that I’m not the weak one here! I may not know how to cut pods like you do, but I don’t plan to learn! I’ll be out of here so soon that I’ll never have to learn, and you know what? I’m okay with that. I’m okay with not being an expert on cracking some horrible fruit open!”

  I tighten and loosen my grip on the machete in my hand. This girl, this stupid girl, is making me so mad. I want to lash out, shut her up forever. I wonder briefly what it would feel like to cut another person, then I turn away, sick with my own thoughts.

  I stand with my back to her and look across the clearing, up, over the tops of the trees and into the sky. I pretend that I am pouring my anger into the sky and, slowly, it drains out of me. This is a trick I learned when I was little, from my grandfather.

  Oh, Amadou, he had said, you get angry so easily. Just like I did at your age.

  Really, Moke?

  Awó. But you must learn to let it go.

  What do you mean? I had asked him, and that’s when he told me the secret of pouring my troubles into the sky.

  There is no problem so big, no anger so great that it can fill the sky.

  I try to remember Moke’s words when I feel like my anger is about to make me do something dumb.

  “We’re wasting time,” I say, and sit.

  “What?”

  It’s funny how confused and frustrated she sounds, ready for a fight and not getting one. But I have left myself floating in the clouds, and I can turn to her with nothing but air in my eyes.

  “Fighting won’t help us get this done.” Then, as usually happens when I let go of my feelings, I find an answer. “You’re not going to be able to learn to go fast enough today without hurting yourself.” She takes a breath in, ready to shout again, but I just keep talking. “So I’ll crack the pods and give them to you, and you’ll open them and take out the seeds and put the seeds in the barrel and throw away the husks. This way we’ll work as fast as possible.”

  For a moment she stands there, then she sighs and sits next to me.

  “Fine,” she says.

  “Also, if you chew the seeds you can get some energy, and the pulp around them has some water in it. Moussa didn’t leave us any food. I can bring us water from the pump, but we’ll have to eat some of these to be able to work all day. As long as we don’t eat too many, Moussa won’t notice they’re missing.” I see her eyes sparkle a little with interest when I tell her this, and she looks at the sacks of pods in a new way.

  “Not too many,” I repeat. I reach over, pick up the pod she had been butchering, and split it in one clean swing. I toss it to her.

  “You are a strange boy, Amadou,” she says. She pulls the two halves apart and scoops out the seeds.

  I shrug.

  “Eat the first handful, then put the rest in the barrel,” I say. Then I find my empty place and get to work.

  We go on like that for hours, both sunk in a silent routine. It’s easier to work with her than with Seydou, and this surprises me. I find that I don’t have to heckle the girl to stay on track. Nor do I have to keep a close eye on her so that she won’t eat too much. Instead, she seems to be taking her cues from me, eating when I do, stretching when I do. This keeps us in almost perfect time. She even put a bag over her head like I did to get some shade.

  I dart a look at our garbage area. The pile of husks is growing steadily into a small mountain. The smell of them is strong in the sun, and the sap has attracted all kinds of bugs. The flies and mosquitoes buzz around my sticky hands but I try to ignore them. Swatting them all away would be a full-time job, and we don’t have time for that. When I look, Khadija is doing the same. She’s letting flies crawl on her arms and face and she only flicks her head to the side to dislodge them when they get near her eyes. My right arm burns with fatigue from the nonstop cutting, but there are seven folded sacks at our feet and I have to admit I’m pleased by our progress. I squint at the sun, just a little past straight overhead.

  “It’s midday,” I say. “Do you want to take a break?”

  “Do you usually take a break?”

  “Only if I’m sure the bosses won’t catch me at it but, yeah, usually Seydou needs a rest in the middle of the day and we take a break.”

  “I’m not some little ten-year-old.”

  “Eight,” I correct her without thinking, then kick myself.

  “What?” She pounces on the error.

  “Eight,” I mumble, picking slivers of pod off my wrists and flicking them away. “Seydou is only eight.”

  “He told me he was ten.”

  “I told him to tell everyone that. He’s tall for his age, so he can get away with it. Some of the other boys can be rough. I don’t want people taking advantage of him because he’s so young.”

  “That makes sense, I suppose,” she muses. “He doesn’t really act ten, does he?”

  I’m thrown off balance by this.

  “No, he acts very young. He is very young. He was only six when we first got here. That’s why I have to take care of him. He’s far too young to be doing this kind of work. And he’s sloppy.”

 
I scowl off at the tree line. I should be out there with Seydou. Instead, I’m stuck here, wishing away the hours until I can see him return to camp all in one piece to set my mind to rest.

  “I don’t need a break.”

  I turn around, surprised to hear Khadija speak, I was so deep in my wishing. Her eyes jump from my face when I turn and she too stares out at the tree line. She stretches her wrists and cracks her knuckles.

  “I’m thirteen, not eight. Let’s keep working.”

  I can see the tremor in her hands from the unfamiliar work. But she’s managed to keep up so far and, even though I don’t say it out loud, I’m grateful to this strange girl for helping me meet an invisible quota for Seydou’s sake. I reach for my machete.

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s get back to work.”

  5

  The hours pass. The shadows of the trees lengthen and reach for the fire pit on the far side of the clearing. Slowly, oh, so slowly, the blue plastic rain barrel fills with harvested seeds.

  By dusk, the fingers on my left hand are cramped so completely from clutching the pods that I can no longer straighten them fully. My right arm has gone beyond burning, beyond pain, and is now just weak. My swings are wobbling like Khadija’s did in the morning, but I don’t know how much I need to do to get Moussa to allow me on crew again, so I force myself to keep going. Any minute now the bosses will be here and will judge the worthiness of our entire day’s work. I raise my arm to take one more swing and then, as though my thoughts have called them, they are here.

  The boys dribble into camp in twos and fives, carrying sacks heavy with pods on their heads and backs. I scan the incoming teams anxiously for Seydou, but I don’t see him yet.

  “There he is,” comes a soft voice from beside me, and I follow Khadija’s pointing finger. Sure enough, I see the tall form of Moussa and a familiar little shadow, bent double under the weight of the sack he’s carrying. My heart soars: he’s all right! I try to see whether he has any injuries but, from here, the dusky light hides his features. I let the machete slip out of my hands and I stand up.