It’s not a comfortable ride. With every rut in the washed-out road we lurch from side to side. I can see why Moussa always told us to lash the sacks really tightly onto the pisteur’s truck and I silently send my thanks to the boys who did just that. If they hadn’t, we’d be crushed. As it is, I still feel like all my teeth are slowly being shaken loose. Yet somehow, when I stretch out on the dirty truck bed, I fall into a deep, exhausted sleep.
I jolt awake to the feeling of not being able to breathe and open my eyes to see that Seydou is sitting on my chest. I laugh huskily with whatever air my lungs have left.
“Get off!” I roll sideways, gently, so that he falls away but doesn’t get hurt. It’s only been two days since he lost his arm, after all. “Crazy boy. Why were you sitting on me?”
“To wake you up.” Seydou smiles like it’s the most natural thing in the world to sit on someone to wake them up.
“And why,” I ask, rolling out from under him, “did you want to do that?”
“To show you something.” Seydou points to Khadija. It looks like they’ve been talking together for a while and I’m glad that Seydou’s getting over his hard feelings for her. We need to not be fighting if we’re going to get anywhere.
Seydou picks up the medical kit with his right hand. My stomach clenches to see him struggle with something so simple, but he fumbles the box into his lap. “Watch,” he commands. Wedging the box between his knees, he uses his only hand to open the lid. Reaching inside, he lifts out the bottle with the chipped bottom and rattles it.
“Hmm,” I say.
“I’m learning,” he says, but I can see the deep hollows under his eyes showing that his illness and the stress of the last few days have worn him out. He leans against a sack, cradling his arm against his chest, staring off into space as he murmurs, “Khadija and I worked on it together. I can do this by myself now. So that if you guys aren’t around I’ll still be able to take my medicine and keep getting better, right, Khadija?” He looks at her.
“That’s right, Seydou,” she says encouragingly.
I give Seydou a tight smile.
“Good work, cricket,” I say, but inside I don’t feel good at all. The image of us not being there to help Seydou with his medicine is a horrible one. I squint at the bottle he’s holding and try to count how many pills are left in it.
As Seydou continues to stare vacantly out of the truck, I scoot to sit by Khadija.
“Why on earth would you tell him that?” I ask her in a low voice.
“Because anything could happen,” she says. “Anyway, he’s really upset about losing his arm. I figured learning how to do something for himself would make him feel better.” She points her chin at him. “He’s not crying anymore. It worked.”
I frown. Maybe Khadija is right and it’s good for him to be able to do things by himself if he needs to. But when I look carefully at Seydou, I can see that the hollowness goes deep. The bouncing cricket that was my brother is gone. Now when I look into his eyes, an old man stares back at me.
I shake my head. Khadija is wrong. He may not be crying anymore, but Seydou doesn’t feel better.
The day passes in flashes of dense green, cleared fields, and small villages. Khadija and Seydou seem to have become friends while I was sleeping. Khadija tucks one of her arms behind her and she tries to make a game of figuring out all the things she can do one-handed. Seydou plays along with her, soaking up the motherly attention, but when she’s not looking he sinks into himself, and now and then, I catch him fingering the air where his arm should be. Every few hours we give him more pills from the two bottles and, for all Khadija complains about them, they seem to be helping. He’s no longer hot to the touch and overall he doesn’t look any worse than he did yesterday.
Darkness is beginning to bruise the sky when Oumar pulls into the dusty outskirts of a town. Seydou, Khadija, and I look out the tailgate, taking it all in. There are broad streets and many cars and trucks. People are everywhere. So many people that, unlike in a village, no one looks too long at us for being strangers. Concrete buildings stretch higher than one level off the ground and wires running between poles reach even higher than that. Khadija tells us Daloa is small compared to Abidjan, but it’s so much bigger than anywhere I’ve ever been that Seydou and I stare and stare.
A few dozen meters off the main road, down a dusty side street, Oumar stops in front of a walled compound. We hear the sound of the driver’s-side door opening, but he doesn’t turn the truck off. Over the purr of the idling engine we hear a disembodied voice.
“Well, here we are in Daloa, and this is where I’m going to spend the night. Before I go in, though, I think I’ll just take a moment to appreciate this view of the street while I face away from my truck.” His voice is loud and clear. I can’t help but smile as Khadija and I collect our bundle of food, our refilled water bottle, and the med kit. “Yup,” Oumar goes on, “here I am looking off in the distance. Of course there’s nothing in my truck but dried cacao seeds, but if there were anyone in there, this sure would be a perfect time for them to hop out. Yes, indeedy.”
For a moment I feel like I’m living in a universe where all the rules I’ve learned so far in my life don’t really apply. Oumar, a pisteur working with the bosses, has let us go. We trusted him and it didn’t blow up in our faces. I shake my head in wonder, then drop the tailgate and help Seydou and Khadija to the ground. Khadija lands lightly, but Seydou swings down clumsily, waving his elbow stump, shirtsleeve flapping. He lands off balance, still expecting help from an arm that’s no longer there.
Once they’re out, I jump after them and shut the tailgate again. It makes a clanging noise and, as the three of us turn and jog up the street, we hear Oumar stop talking to himself and break into a low laugh. A moment later we hear the sound of the door being opened and closed and the engine revving into gear. As he pulls forward, Oumar blasts the horn a few times.
“That’s so they’ll open the gate for him,” says Khadija as she settles our small burlap bundle on her head and takes Seydou’s right hand. I shrug, since she’s the one who knows everything about cities and is probably right.
But I think it was Oumar saying goodbye.
“We need to find a place to sleep,” says Khadija. “It’s not safe to be walking around at night, and I have no idea where the good and bad sections are in Daloa.”
I don’t know what she’s talking about, but I don’t argue. It’s dangerous to walk around in la brosse at night, so it may well be dangerous to walk around here too. After a brief search I find some scraggly bushes in a dip off the side of the road. We crawl under them and try to ignore the rocks and the thorns and the bugs.
“We never had to sleep outside at home,” Seydou whines.
“What?” I ask, not really paying attention.
“We had a nice hut to sleep in . . . and there was hay and stuff and no ants . . .” He stops because both Khadija and I are staring at him.
Without thinking I reach out and shake him, hard.
“I don’t ever want to hear you call that place home again, are we clear?” I shout.
He stares at me with frightened eyes and then sniffs, yes, we’re clear, and I leave it at that. But later that night as he and Khadija sleep, I sit there stroking his head and feel my heart breaking. Had we really left when he was so young? Have we really been gone so long? Could Seydou possibly see the farm as home? Would he even recognize his real home when I finally got him there? The questions hurt more than a beating, and even though I know he needs his sleep, I shake his shoulder softly to wake him.
“Seydou.”
“Hmm?”
“I’m sorry I yelled and shook you.”
“Mmm,” he mumbles, and rolls away from me.
I stare at his back in the moonlight, curled around the empty space of his missing arm. I wait a long time, to make sure he’s asleep agai
n, and then I go on.
“And I’m sorry about your arm,” I whisper. “I’m sorry I got mad that day and left you alone. If I hadn’t done that, Khadija wouldn’t have been able to run away, and I wouldn’t have gotten beaten for it.” Tears are tracing their way down my face, and my chest is getting tight. “Then I would have been strong enough to work with you that day. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to keep you safe. I’m so . . .” The words come out in soft gasps. “So sorry.”
I cover my face with my hands to muffle my ragged-edged breathing and wipe at the tracks of my tears so that there won’t be any way for anyone to know, come morning, that I wasn’t able to stay strong.
When I look up from my hands, Seydou is facing me.
The shock of seeing his open eyes makes me stop crying. My chest is still lurching in and out without my permission, but I don’t make any noise. I open my mouth to say something to cover my embarrassment but Seydou pulls himself up so that he’s sitting facing me.
“This isn’t your fault, Amadou,” he whispers.
I shake my head, hard, not trusting my voice yet. Seydou reaches out.
“Don’t cry,” he says.
Which just makes it worse.
I shake his hand off and glower.
“It is . . . my fault,” I growl out. My voice is low and harsh, but that’s better than being a sobbing wreck. “You can’t say it’s not.”
Now it’s Seydou’s turn to shake his head. But I’m not finished. Now that I’ve started, I’ve got to say it all. “Even if— Even if it’s not my fault for that one day, every other day still is my fault. If I hadn’t talked Moke into letting you look for work with me, you’d never have been there at all. None of the past two years would have happened to you. You would still be safe, and at home and . . . whole.”
And there, it’s said. The crushing weight that I’ve been living under all these years is out in the shadowy, moonlit space between us. I look away. He may have been too small and stupid to have blamed me for this before, but I can’t stand to watch his face as he learns to hate me.
For a brief moment, there’s silence. Then he shakes me roughly, and I’m startled into looking at him.
“A lot of bad things happened to us,” Seydou says, his eyebrows so low and angry they’re hooding his eyes. “The drought at home. The fact that none of us could eat. The bosses beating us when we didn’t work hard enough.”
I blink, not quite understanding the anger in his voice.
“Just because you were there when they happened doesn’t mean they’re your fault.” Seydou sits on his heels and looks at me earnestly. His haunted face wears a serious expression and he suddenly looks much older than eight. “I wanted to leave with you,” he reminds me. “I chose to come. If you hadn’t convinced Moke, I would have snuck out after you.
“Anyway, I was hungry.” He shrugs. “We thought there would be more food in the Ivory Coast. Remember?” he asks, and the ghost of a smile touches his features. “And remember Hawa telling us that in Ivory Coast you could just reach up and pick gold off the trees?”
I remember our cousin’s old story as he says it. We used to lie awake at night when we were little, Seydou and I, staring at the breaks in the thatch above us and whispering about how, when we were big enough, we’d go and pick gold off the Ivory Coast trees ourselves. Seydou smiles grimly.
“I believed it,” he says. “And there was no way anyone was going to keep me away from that.” He glares again. “It is not your fault I came to the farm, Amadou. Don’t you ever say that.”
I shake my head, but without conviction. The tears are threatening again and I blink hard to stop them. This time, when Seydou touches me, it’s gentle.
“And once we were there, Amadou, you took care of me.” His voice is a soft pressure and I feel something hard inside me breaking under it. “You were always watching me to make sure I didn’t get hurt. You came between me and the boys who were rough. Between me and the bosses. You took my beatings for me again and again.” His voice trembles a little bit. “And I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I was so useless and couldn’t keep up better.”
“You’re not useless,” I croak, finally finding my voice. “You’re the only reason I didn’t give up.”
“Me too,” he says.
I can’t help it anymore, I pull my knees to my chest and sob. Seydou scoots beside me and wraps me in a one-armed hug.
I don’t know how long we sit there, but I cry until I feel empty inside and Seydou has fallen asleep leaning against me. Finally, I raise my wet face to the clear night sky and let the breeze dry my cheeks.
And though we still have no plan and no guarantee of safety, I feel just a little bit better.
18
Next day, each of us is exhausted.
It takes all our energy to drag ourselves to our feet and move around Daloa. For a while we wander aimlessly along the main road Oumar was taking yesterday. When Seydou declares he’s hungry, I can’t think of anything else we should be doing, so I lead them to a spot out of the way of traffic and sit down. Khadija takes the hard-boiled eggs and fruit we saved from dinner and splits them between us.
“We need to get some more food.” She sighs around a mouthful of egg.
I agree, but I’m not sure how we’re going to get it. I still have the handful of money we stole from the bosses’ house in my pocket, but it’s not much and I’m no good at haggling. At home, it was always the girls who went to market to haggle, but I’m not sure Khadija knows how to do that.
“Have you ever been to a market?” I ask.
“Of course I’ve been to a market,” she answers huffily.
“No, no, I mean, did you do the shopping at home?” I correct myself.
Khadija looks away.
“Well, no, not really,” she admits. “I usually only went to the market if I needed school supplies or clothes or shoes or gifts or something.”
“Wait, you went to school?” Seydou asks.
There’s an awkward pause. I remember that Seydou was asleep last night when Khadija told me her story.
“Khadija isn’t Malian,” I tell him. “She’s Ivorian and grew up in the city. We’re helping her get home so her mama can get a good doctor for you and help us get home to Mali.”
“You’re like the bosses?” he gasps. That had been my first thought too.
“Ayi, Seydou,” she says earnestly. “I just grew up in the same country as them, but that doesn’t make me like them.”
Seydou’s eyes are stormy as he processes all this.
“And you went to school,” he says flatly.
“Awó,” she says. “Don’t be mad, Seydou, school’s not that bad. I think you’d like it, actually. You’re a smart little boy.”
Seydou gets distracted considering his possible smartness, but I haven’t forgotten our real problem.
“Did your mother do the shopping then?” I ask, trying to picture what Khadija’s mother looks like.
“No,” she says, and from the way she’s not meeting my eyes I can tell she’s embarrassed by something.
“Well, then, who?” I’m baffled. She said she didn’t live with her father. Does she have sisters she never mentioned? An aunt?
“The maid.” Khadija’s answer is so quiet I can barely hear her. I stare at her blankly, not having any image to go with the world she lived in.
“You had a maid?” Seydou bursts out. “How rich are you?”
Khadija looks down at her hands and the silence stretches.
Finally, she whispers, “Please don’t hate me.”
And I just shake my head because I don’t know how I feel about her life and her world and her school and her reading and her maid, for crying out loud. But still, I don’t hate her.
“Anything else?” asks Seydou dryly.
She looks up at him, a question
on her face.
“Is there anything else you want to tell us? Can you fly? Are you a princess?”
Khadija bursts out laughing.
“No, Seydou. That’s it. My mama’s a journalist and I grew up in Abidjan. That’s all of my secrets.”
“Well, okay then,” he says.
“So.” I sigh, looking at Khadija. “You’re not really going to be much help in a market, are you?”
“I can do it!” says Seydou, surprising us.
We both turn to look at him.
“What?”
“I can go to the market and get us some food. I used to tag along with Auntie when she would go shopping for us at home.”
I don’t miss the emphasis, but I also think it’s a terrible idea. My blank stare must have been answer enough.
“I can help! You never let me help!”
“What?” Some women walking on the other side of the street with plastic jugs on their heads turn and stare at us, eyes lingering on Seydou’s missing arm and the machete at my waist. I lower my voice a bit. “There’s no way I’m letting you wander off without us. You’re still sick.”
“You always think I shouldn’t help,” he argues. “But I can! When you were chained, I kept up with the other boys and brought you food. I can help, you just never let me!”
“Yeah, and look what happened to you when I wasn’t there!”
The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. I never meant to throw his injury in his face like that, but at the same time, it’s the truth.
“I can do this, Amadou,” Seydou whispers miserably. “Let me help.”
I stare at him. His ribs stand out like fingers against the thin fabric of the bosses’ shirt when he breathes. His right hand trembles slightly by his side and his face is covered with a fine sweat, showing how much energy this fight is costing him. His other arm ends in a dirty bandage that I know we need to change soon. He is small and breakable. I want to hug him and make everything go away.
The Bitter Side of Sweet Page 16
