The Bite of the Mango

by Mariatu Kamara

  It was dark by now, and on the far shore I could see lights going up the sides of buildings taller than palm trees. Lights appeared to be hanging everywhere! In Magborou, we lived our nights in darkness except for the light from the fire or the few kerosene lamps we owned.

  “May I stay with you?” Fatmata asked in a low voice. She was a little taller than me, I could see as we stood side by side, and a bit heavier. I guessed she was about 20.

  Fatmata led me to the pam-pam, a boat similar to the long wooden canoe men used in Magborou to fish. I spied a few other pam-pams in the water, sunk down with only their helms sticking out.

  “No,” I cried. “I can’t go. It will sink. I’m sure it will!”

  I had never been in a boat before, and I knew there was no way I could swim without my hands.

  Fatmata assured me that everything would be all right. “I’ll hold you the entire time,” she said. “We will get to the other side safely.”

  We were the last people to board. The boat moved smoothly, and my apprehension lifted as I watched the lights of the city dance over the water. I had always wanted to visit Freetown, because the adults in the village talked about how big and exciting it was.

  Once we landed, ECOMOG soldiers led us to another truck. The vehicle made a singing noise as we moved through the streets of Freetown; I know now it was a siren. In the West, ambulances blare to tell drivers to get out of the way. But in Freetown, the people crowded onto the streets didn’t seem to notice. They walked right in front of that truck, not bothering to step aside. If I had been healthy, I could have reached the hospital more quickly on foot.

  When we arrived at the front gate of the hospital, a woman in a nurse’s uniform directed us to a building at the end of the big complex of hospital wards.

  “She’s telling us to go there for the night,” Fatmata said. “Don’t you worry, little one, I will stay with you tonight.”

  The stench from the building reached me before I even walked inside—blood, vomit, and sweat. The auditorium was crowded with people lying on the bare cement floor. Blood was everywhere. As I passed through the door with Fatmata by my side, I felt like one of Mohamed’s ghosts on the lookout for a healthy body to possess. But this building held no one healthy; everyone was sick. When I sat down, I immediately threw up.

  I was among the first to be treated the next morning. Some nurses took me to a bright white room with a huge light hanging from the ceiling. One of the nurses explained it was an operating room.

  The doctor, a man with a gruff voice, wore a long white coat and glasses. He spoke Krio, but one of the nurses translated his words into Temne for me. Did I know anyone in Freetown? he asked.

  “Yes, my uncle Sulaiman,” I replied.

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  Sulaiman was Marie and my father’s youngest brother. I had never visited him, but I knew he was a businessman in Dovecut, a shopping area in Freetown.

  The doctor stuck what looked like a long sewing needle into my arm which he said would put me to sleep. When I awoke, it was nightfall, and Fatmata was by my bedside. I was in a big room lined with beds. It was the girls’ ward, Fatmata told me, filled with patients my age and younger. I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t; whatever the doctor had given me made me woozy. My arms had been bandaged in bright white material. Not a speck of blood showed through the fabric.

  Fatmata held a spoonful of plain white rice up to my mouth. Before I could swallow it, I threw up.

  “You need to eat,” she said gently. “You need food to give you energy, so we will try again later.”

  I fell asleep before I could answer.

  The next day, when Fatmata came to visit, she told me her uncle had died from his wounds. She had been crying, and I could see she was very sad. When she asked if I’d like to try walking, I nodded yes.

  “Then let’s go see those boys you know from the truck,” she suggested. “They’ve been asking for you.”

  As soon as we entered the boys’ ward, I spotted Ibrahim. He was lying on one of the many metal cots that filled the room. “Hi, Mariatu,” he said, a smile crossing his face. He didn’t sit up. Like me, it would take him some time to learn how to do things without hands. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I nodded, blinking back tears.

  “Don’t you be crying there, Mariatu,” I heard Mohamed call. He sat on the edge of the bed directly behind Ibrahim’s, his legs dangling, his arms bandaged like mine.

  Mohamed had the big fat grin he always wore. Despite the ordeal he had been through, his eyes sparkled.

  “I guess we’re equal now,” he said as I sat down beside him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, how are we going to wrestle? No one will win.”

  I don’t know where it came from but I laughed and laughed. I felt like that little weaver bird again, but this time I had the feeling I could learn to fly.

  CHAPTER 7

  “You’re pregnant.”

  I didn’t understand what the female doctor in the white coat was saying, though she was speaking Temne. My eyes moved from the doctor’s round face to her hands tucked into the pockets of her coat. Abibatu, Marie’s younger sister, was standing beside the doctor. She had arrived in Freetown from Port Loko about a week earlier.

  “You’re pregnant,” the doctor said to me again. “You are going to have a baby. Do you understand?”

  Abibatu, a large woman with Marie’s warm smile, had tears in her eyes. “How did this happen to you?” she asked me.

  “I don’t know,” I muttered. “I don’t know.” It didn’t make any sense.

  Since her arrival, Abibatu had taken on many of Fatmata’s responsibilities, including helping me bathe. One evening, as she was dipping a cloth into the soapy cold water, she had exclaimed, “Mariatu, your breasts are swollen. When did you last have your time?” Abibatu was referring to my period. Marie had said that I’d eventually get it once every full moon or so, but it wasn’t regular yet, and I couldn’t remember when it had last come.

  “Have you been eating since you came to the hospital?” Abibatu had asked me next.

  I shook my head. Anything I tried to eat, including plain white rice or cornmeal, I would immediately throw up. I’d feel sick to my stomach the moment I smelled food coming down the hallway. Sometimes I could swallow a few spoonfuls of the food I carefully took myself, holding the metal spoon in between my bandaged arms. But more often than not I’d motion for Fatmata or Abibatu to bring me a bucket before the spoon even hit my lips.

  “I want the doctor to run some tests on you, Mariatu,” Abibatu had said worriedly. “I think you might be pregnant.”

  I wasn’t quite sure what pregnant meant. But before I could ask her, another woman and another girl with no hands had entered the bathing room. Abibatu helped me out of the tub and dried me off.

  When Abibatu and I got back to the girls’ ward after learning I was pregnant, Sulaiman and his second wife, yet another Mariatu, were there to greet us. The hospital had tracked him down, and since then he had visited me at least once a day.

  Sulaiman was crying, big sobs that seemed to come from deep within his belly. It was shocking. I’d never seen a man cry before. He was also agitated, and as soon as he saw me, he started waving his arms.

  “Who did this to you, Mariatu?” he demanded angrily. “I will kill him with my own hands.”

  I had always liked Sulaiman. Whenever he visited Magborou, he’d bring all the kids candy from Freetown. Sulaiman didn’t talk down to us like many adults did, and he often joined in our games. Now he was scowling and furious. He launched into a tirade, first blaming Marie for what had happened to me, and then starting in on Sierra Leone’s president for not stopping the war and on foreigners for not coming to our country’s aid. I wasn’t always sure what he was talking about. Finally he calmed down, saying he wanted me to come and live with him and his wife. Mariatu stepped forward with a smile to agree.

  “You need to g
et better first,” Sulaiman continued. “Your wounds are not quite healed, and you are still on medication to fight infection. I’ve spoken to the doctors, so I know they expect the outcome to be good. You will be fine—as fine as you can be without hands. And we will help you look after the baby.”

  When Sulaiman and Mariatu had left, I sat on my bed with Abibatu. “Who did this to you?” she asked, gently rubbing her hands up and down my arms. “Did the rebels give you a baby?”

  I was really confused. All I had heard was that babies came from a woman’s belly button. When a woman in Magborou had a child inside her, her tummy would swell and then, when she began to waddle like the white-chested ducks from the ponds, the woman would enter the house of the medicine woman. A few other village women would go inside too. Screams soon followed, sometimes lasting for a day and a night. A day or two later, the woman would emerge smiling, holding in her arms a tiny baby.

  “No, the rebels did not do this to me,” I told Abibatu. “But there must be a mistake. Only women have babies, not girls.” My eyes searched her face for some answers.

  Abibatu swung her legs around and climbed up beside me. We lay close together as she explained to me how babies were made.

  After her explanation, Abibatu left me alone to sleep. I lay very still, thinking over what she had told me about sex and men. And then I knew. I knew what had happened to me.

  About a month before we fled to Manarma, we were all in the bush, having heard yet another rumor that the rebels were approaching. It was near the end of Ramadan, and Marie and Alie went back to Magborou ahead of us, to pray and to check that things were safe.

  One night after dinner, Ibrahim and Mohamed went to bed early, leaving Adamsay and me by the fire alone. We were sitting quietly under the stars, watching the fire fade, when Salieu approached us.

  “Ya Marie and Pa Alie asked me to watch over you girls,” he said with a crooked smile. My back stiffened. My body tingled, as if in warning, from head to toe. I didn’t like this man, not one bit. There was something about him I feared.

  I sat alert and still as the fire turned to glowing coals. I felt too frightened even to move. I said nothing as Adamsay and Salieu talked about Magborou and the village people. Eventually I found the strength to stand up and say good night.

  We had made beds for ourselves out of twigs and leaves, and I burrowed into mine. But I couldn’t sleep, and for good reason. Not long after, I heard heavy footsteps coming near. I closed my eyes, pretending to be asleep. I hoped it was Adamsay, whose bed was beside mine. But I knew it wasn’t.

  Salieu lay down beside me. I didn’t believe he would do anything to me if I appeared to be sleeping, but he started touching me all over, fondling my breasts and my hair, making his way in between my legs. That’s when I sat up.

  “What are you doing here? Where is Adamsay?” I shouted.

  Salieu just smiled his sinister smile and began touching me some more. I could smell his stale breath and sweat.

  “Stop, stop, stop,” I yelled. Finally I screamed at the top of my lungs.

  A few seconds later, I heard footsteps and then Ibrahim’s voice: “What is it? What is it?”

  Salieu jumped up, smoothing his cotton shirt and pants. I pulled down my skirt, which was now high above my waist.

  “Mariatu is having a nightmare,” Salieu, acting like he had just arrived, told Mohamed and Ibrahim when they appeared. He knelt down and gave me a kiss on the forehead. “It’s nothing, child,” he said. “Go back to sleep. I’ll find Adamsay and you two can be together and feel safe.”

  The next day, we four kids went back to Magborou. Salieu returned to his village to be with his first wife and two young children. I felt a sense of relief, hoping I would never have to see this man again. I was embarrassed and confused about what he had done to me. I told no one.

  But soon Salieu started visiting Magborou on a regular basis. He’d come right into our house and ask Alie for a hammer, or Marie for some peppers or a needle and some thread, saying his family was short on supplies because of the war. The whole time he was there, he’d look at me through the slits in the corners of his eyes. My body broke out in goosebumps whenever he was around. I could smell him even after he had left.

  “Marie, I need to tell you something,” I piped up one afternoon as we were washing some pots by the river. “Salieu is not a good man. Out in the bush, he touched me. He scares me. I don’t want to marry him. I never want to be around him again.”

  I will never forget what happened next. Marie turned, pulled a whipping stick from the ground, and smacked me across the face so hard I was sure I was bleeding. I didn’t move. I was in shock.

  “Don’t you disrespect Salieu,” Marie said to me in a hard voice. “He is a good man. He would never want to hurt you. He wants to protect you. Don’t speak badly of your elders again.”

  Marie and I went back to washing. I choked back my tears.

  A few days later, Salieu came to our house when I was the only one there. The others were all out at the farm.

  “Where’s Ya Marie?” he asked when he saw me.

  “Coming,” I lied. I wanted him to think she’d be right back.

  “I will wait,” he said, sitting down on one of the benches in the parlor.

  As I turned to leave, he jumped up and grabbed me by the waist. I started hitting and kicking him.

  “If you make any noise,” he said coldly, “I will make sure you are punished.”

  Salieu dragged me down the hall and threw me onto the floor in the room at the back of the hut. He stuffed a piece of fabric into my mouth, tore off my top, and pulled up my skirt so high it covered my face. I could feel him on top of me, then inside of me. Pounding, hurting.

  I tried to get loose, to kick, to scratch, but he was too strong. I was a small 12-year-old. He was a big muscleman like Alie.

  When Salieu was finished, he pulled my skirt down, smoothed out my hair, and stroked my cheek. He bent down so low that his nose was touching mine. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said in a harsh, low voice. He pulled the fabric from my mouth and kissed me softly on the lips.

  I didn’t tell anyone what had happened. I wasn’t sure, for one thing, exactly what it was Salieu had done.

  Now I knew, and I was going to have a baby.

  I sat up in my bed in the girls’ ward and looked around. My eyes landed on the blue pills that Abibatu had said were painkillers. They were sitting in a small container on top of the table beside my bed. The other girls in the ward were sound asleep.

  I pushed back the sheet, now drenched in sweat, and swung my legs around until I was standing on the bare cement floor. I grabbed the pill bottle between my arms and sat back down on the bed. With my bandages, I tried to pry open the lid. My arms hurt from the pressure, but I didn’t give up.

  After some concerted effort, the lid opened.

  I stopped for a moment to pray.

  “Take me, Allah. Take my baby and me. I want to die.”

  CHAPTER 8

  There are times when silence is louder than any voice.

  Even though I’d been convinced that the other girls were asleep and that my relatives were gone for the night, staying in Sulaiman’s house somewhere in Freetown, I was wrong. Abibatu was still there in the hospital. She had been sleeping on the floor beside another bed, and just as I lifted the bottle to my mouth, she came from out of nowhere and smacked it from my grasp. The tiny blue pills scattered across the floor, making a noise like scurrying mice.

  Silence fell again as the last pill stopped spinning. A feeling inside of me, like nothing I had ever felt before, raged forth. An energy bubbled and swirled; I could not control it. I swung around in a fury and lashed out at Abibatu. I shouted at her. I spat at her. I hit her. I kicked her when she tried to grab me.

  Everyone in the room was awake by now and gaping at me.

  Abibatu stepped back as I threw myself on my bed and then onto the floor. For a moment, I had wanted to kill her. Then there woul
d be no one to stop me from killing myself, and the baby inside of me, too.

  I sat on the floor for a long time, my legs pulled up to my chest, my head perched on my bandaged arms. As my anger subsided, I knew that if I killed Abibatu, there would be one less person in the world who cared about me.

  Abibatu rocked me in her arms while I cried and cried.

  “I don’t want you to kill your baby,” she said softly, assuming it was the child I wanted to harm.

  But I wanted to die too.

  “I have no future,” I said to Abibatu. “I have no future,” I repeated over and over again.

  “Don’t talk this way,” Abibatu said firmly, spinning me around to face her. “You have many things to live for. Your mother. Your father. Your cousins, grandmother, aunties. They all love you, and you love them.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to listen.

  The room grew quiet as the other girls returned to sleep. I watched a fly circling one of the kerosene lamps. Like a wave hitting the shore, something washed over me, and I came back to my senses. “You’re right,” I told Abibatu. “You’re right.”

  Abibatu helped me back into bed and lay down beside me. When I woke up the next day, she was still there, snoring gently.

  As the weeks passed, the reality of my situation was never far from my mind. Sometimes all I could think about was Salieu. I hated the baby growing inside me since it reminded me of him. I felt I could almost deal with the horror of what the rebels had done to me. After all, Ibrahim and Mohamed, as well as hundreds of other young people, had also lost their hands. There was some comfort in knowing that we shared the common fate of learning to survive and care for ourselves after such a devastating ordeal. We were all beginning to feed and wash ourselves, even with our injuries. Using the stumps of my arms covered in bandages, I could even brush my teeth and comb my hair. But the baby made me different from them.