The Bite of the Mango (13 page)

“It isn’t for another two days,” I said.

“Comfort says to come. You have to come now.”

I sat down in front of Adamsay and put my forehead against hers. “I love you,” I whispered. “I always will. And soon it will be your turn.”

I actually watched as the airplane descended into Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. “I can’t see anything except white,” I exclaimed as I peered out. “Are we dead?”

“No,” Comfort laughed. “We’re just going through the clouds.”

We’d been traveling for about 19 hours. The best outfit I owned, an Africana red, yellow, and green docket-and-lappa, was now well wrinkled. I felt dirty, even though I had washed my face and brushed my teeth three times since boarding the flight from London to Toronto.

The plane dipped. “Whoa,” I yelped, grabbing Comfort’s arm and burying my head in her neck.

She didn’t push me away this time. “It’s just turbulence,” she said. “Look now.” She pointed out the window.

I gasped at the sprawling city below. It was so big! My eyes caught a large patch of green, followed by brown cement houses and then more green. “I’m going to like Canada better than England,” I thought. “Already I can see color.”

Inside the terminal, a customs official fingered through my passport, pausing to look at the visa. “Welcome to Canada,”
she said with a smile.

As we walked out into the Arrivals area, I braced myself for the first sights and smells of this new land. What I got instead were voices: voices calling my name, then blinding camera flashes and people thrusting their arms out to touch me.

“What’s going on?” I asked Comfort.

“They are journalists,” she replied.

“But what do they want with me?” I asked.

“I guess they are fascinated by your story.”

I shrank behind Comfort as she smiled for the cameras. But it wasn’t her picture the journalists wanted, it was mine. The cameras stopped flashing.

“Come on, Mariatu,” she turned to whisper in my ear. “We’ll find Bill and be rid of all this.”

Two men in uniforms walked up to me and said hello in English. I was scared at first. Police in Freetown are usually rough, and these two men, with their serious expressions and their stiff, strong walks, looked like police officers too. When they told Comfort and me to follow them, I thought I was in trouble. Maybe they knew I didn’t belong in Canada. After all, I was a poor Sierra Leone village girl who used to beg for food.

But these police seemed nice. They walked on either side of us, protecting Comfort and me from the journalists. They directed us to the very back of the waiting area, to a tall blond man. Beside him were a blonde woman and a boy about the same age as me. “Hello,” the man said, shaking Comfort’s hand. “I’m Bill.”

Bill’s wife, Shelley, and son, Richard, each gave me a hug. Bill slipped a gold chain with a charm on it around my neck. As
he and Shelley talked to the journalists, I ran my right arm over the smooth gold. No one had ever given me jewelry before. A few minutes later, we all posed for a photograph. I smiled, following Comfort’s lead.

It was the heat that struck me first when we got outside. Toronto was warm, like Sierra Leone. Toronto was humid too, just like home. The air smelled fresh, as if there had been a shower.

“Where is the snow?” I asked Comfort when we were tucked beside each other in the back seat of Bill’s minivan. I’d never known anyone who owned their own poda-poda, but here many people seemed to be driving them.

Comfort laughed. The snow came in the winter, she said, which was still a few months away. “Don’t worry, Mariatu. It will get very cold.”

I wasn’t sure how much Comfort really knew about Canada. The only place she’d ever been outside of Sierra Leone was Guinea, when she’d accompanied me to get my visa. But I didn’t argue. I had to trust her wisdom as I didn’t speak English very well and couldn’t ask Bill directly.

Comfort rolled down my window, and as we drove I gazed out at the green fields of grasses and funny dark green trees with leaves that looked like needles. “Where’s all the garbage?” I asked Comfort at one point. Freetown’s garbage trucks had stopped running during the war, and the streets were filled with litter, everything from empty cigarette packages to broken plastic bottles.

“They throw everything away in plastic bags here,” Comfort replied in Krio. “People buy whatever they want in
North America, and when they don’t want it anymore, the garbage trucks take it away.”

Her words made me scared. “What if I am not what this Canadian family expects?” I asked myself. “Will they get rid of
me
?”

On the street where Bill and his family lived, it was so quiet at night that I could hear crickets, just like back in Magborou. As in England, I had my own bedroom, with a single bed and a fluffy patchwork quilt that Comfort said was a bedspread for when the nights got chilly. A big window framed with frilly white curtains faced out into a forest.

The sun seemed to shine all the time in Canada, and we went for long walks in the hills. Shelley made us Western-style lunches and dinners of grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza, spaghetti, and salads.

After a few days of getting settled, Bill told me we’d been invited to a party. On the way there, he and Shelley took me to get my hair braided. The woman who did my hair was black-skinned, though she didn’t speak Temne. I understood little of what was being said, but I liked getting the colorful ceramic beads woven into my hair.

When we were finished, we drove to another part of the city. Bill pulled up in front of a two-story house and a Sierra Leonean woman with a wide smile opened the front door.

“Welcome!” she said in Temne, her eyes sparkling.

Behind her stood a tall older man with short hair. “Come in, come in,” he beamed, opening his arms.

A grin crossed my face as I stepped inside. I was back home, or so it seemed. Kadi and Abou Nabe’s house was full of
Sierra Leonean wood carvings and paintings, and photographs of people wearing traditional Africana outfits and headpieces. As they led me through their kitchen, I smelled the rich, spicy aromas of simmering Sierra Leonean dishes. In the backyard, I could hear children laughing.

I had one of the best times of my life that afternoon. I kicked a soccer ball around with some of Kadi and Abou’s nieces and nephews. I met and talked about Sierra Leone and Magborou with some girls my own age, who had grown up not that far from where I did, in a town called Makeni.

One of the girls told me that Kadi and Abou had been living in Canada since before the war. When the fighting started, they had brought many of their family members to Toronto to escape the violence. The girl explained to me that a summer backyard party in North America is usually called a barbecue, and that people cook hot dogs, hamburgers, and steaks on coal- and gas-burning outdoor stoves. She laughed. “In Sierra Leone we cook all our food that way. Every day is a barbecue!” she kidded.

“Don’t worry,” Kadi jumped in, sitting down across from me. “We have chicken and hot dogs for those who want to eat Western-style, and Sierra Leonean food for you! I bet you miss home.”

By the time we left, it was close to midnight. Kadi and Abou hugged me goodbye and invited me to come back soon.

When I fell asleep that night, my head was filled with happy thoughts. I really loved being around Kadi, Abou, and their family and eating Sierra Leonean food again. My mind soon flooded with so many thoughts of home.

It felt as if I had just drifted off to sleep when I felt someone shaking my shoulder. It was Bill. He had turned the light on in my room and was sitting on the corner of the bed, his index finger to his lips to say: “Shush.”

Bill pointed silently at my clothes, then at a small backpack. He smiled and said, “I’m taking you to see Kadi and Abou again.”

Although my English was poor, I understood. It was still dark outside, but I didn’t care what time it was. Bill left the room as I changed. He then thrust a carton of juice and a banana into my arms before we got into the car and left.

When we arrived at Kadi and Abou’s house about an hour later, Kadi was waiting in the driveway. She explained in Temne that Bill wanted me to spend the day with her. “You are more than welcome,” she said. “Some of the girls from yesterday will be home for the day, too.”

Bill handed Kadi my backpack, which I had tossed in the back seat of the car. He gave me a hug goodbye and hopped back into his automobile. I had an eerie feeling as he drove away that I might never see him again.

Kadi paced the kitchen. “Check to see if there is a message on the telephone,” she said to Abou.

Abou lifted the receiver. “Nothing,” came his gruff reply.

I was seated on a chair, my back up against the wall, heart pounding. It was well past dinnertime, and Bill was supposed to have picked me up by now. He’d called once during the day to say he would be a little late, but that was the last we’d heard of him.

I watched Kadi’s daughter Ameenatu stroke her bulging stomach. She was due to give birth any day. She was sitting on the couch in the television room beside the kitchen, her feet up on a stool, fanning herself with a magazine. “Maybe he’s run into traffic,” she called out.

“But rush hour is finished,” Kadi said, scratching her forehead. “Where could he be? Check if there is a message on the telephone,” she asked Abou again.

This went on for another hour, until the telephone rang.

“Hello? Hello?” Kadi said, first in Krio and then in English. Her expression became grave as she listened, saying only a few words. “Yes. Okay. Yes.” She hung up the receiver slowly.
“Mariatu, Bill wants you to stay with us a little longer,” she said, getting down on her knees and rubbing my legs.

“Because he doesn’t like me,” I said with a sigh, thinking back to my initial worries that Bill might not like me.

“No, Mariatu,” Kadi reassured me. Then she gave me the whole story: Bill had called her very early that morning, saying Comfort seemed determined to take me back to Sierra Leone for some reason, and that was why Bill had woken me when it was still dark outside and brought me to Kadi’s house. “Bill wants you to stay in Canada and go to school,” Kadi said. “He hoped he could convince Comfort if he had a few hours to talk with her alone.”

“But that didn’t happen?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Kadi replied. “We have room, so you can sleep in the basement tonight with the other girls.”

A smile crept onto my face at this suggestion. Suad, Haja, and Fanta were the girls I had met at the barbecue. We’d watched music videos during the day and we all prepared a Sierra Leonean rice dish together for dinner.

“Besides,” Kadi continued, “right now you need some family and some Sierra Leonean cooking to help you get used to this strange country.”

One week stretched into two, then three, then four. Bill called a few times to check up on me, but he never suggested I return. During one of their conversations, he told Kadi that Comfort had gone back to Sierra Leone. I don’t know if she tried to find me first. I just don’t know! This part of my story is confusing even for me.

Suad, Haja, and Fanta were only a few years older than me.
Each of them was related to Abou and Kadi, but I couldn’t keep track of exactly how. I just called them all “the nieces.”

The war in Sierra Leone had forced the nieces to move to Freetown. All of them had met up with the rebels in some way or another, but none of them had been attacked. Another big difference between us was that they had all been in school in Sierra Leone, and would be going to school here when summer turned to autumn. Everyone encouraged me to join them.

“School is fun,” Suad said breezily. “I liked learning to read and hanging out with my friends.”

I asked the three girls about school in Sierra Leone.

“All the kids around the same age met every morning in the schoolhouse,” Fanta explained.

“I wore a green uniform that my mom sewed,” said Suad. “The teacher taught us everything from how to read and talk in English to which water was safe to drink.”

Unlike in Canada, where school is free, families in Sierra Leone have to pay for their children’s school tuition fees and uniforms. Almost all of the lessons were taught in English, Haja told me, even though Krio, Mende, and Temne are Sierra Leone’s languages. Haja said that was because English is the universal language. “Sierra Leoneans need to know how to communicate in business,” she said. “Don’t you want to have a job one day?”

Of course I did. I just didn’t know what I would be good at, if anything.

One night I confided in Abou, who worked for the Canadian government, that my family was depending on me to support them. “I need to get an education, and then a job right away,” I told him.

“Ahh, slow down, Mariatu.” He winked. “I support most of my family back home, too. That’s what everyone in Sierra Leone expects when one of their own moves to the West. But school will take years; it’s better if you do it right, graduating from high school and then university or college. If you go out and get a job too soon, it won’t be a high-paying position. Only your education will get you that.”

“How did you get your job?” I asked.

“I went to university in Canada to study political science and economics.”

“Do you think I’ll ever be able to do that?” I asked.

“Mariatu, you can do whatever you put your mind to,” he said, taking off his glasses and looking me straight in the eyes. “In North America, a lot of kids take getting an education for granted. But when you’re from a poor country, you know what an education can do. It can open doors. You may not have hands, but you still have your mind. And I think you have a very sharp mind. Make the most of what you have and you will make your way in the world.”

Despite Abou’s words of encouragement, when Suad, Fanta, and Haja started getting up in the mornings to go to school, I rolled over and went back to sleep. As autumn stretched into winter, a great heaviness filled my heart. I spent many days staring out Kadi’s living room window, watching as the leaves turned yellow and then red, and eventually fell to the ground. When the snow began to fall, it was nothing like I had imagined. The snowflakes were not heavy, like grains of salt, but light, like feathers that glittered in the sun. Occasionally my eyes would trace the path of an individual flake. I imagined
I was that snowflake in the big sky of so many others, and I tried to guess where I would land.

I was scared to go to school. Since Haja, Suad, and Fanta already had some education, they’d been placed in a higher grade. I would be alone, in a class with strangers. I dreamt of being able to read books and write, but I wondered how I would do it with no hands. With no one by my side to help me, I was afraid I’d make a fool of myself.

At night, I’d listen to the nieces recount their days and bemoan the homework they had to do. I’d shake my head when they asked if I wanted to go to school too. “Not yet,” I’d reply. “Soon, I promise.”

I enjoyed living with Kadi and Abou, whose home was always full of Temne-speaking Sierra Leoneans. Some, like the nieces, stayed for a long time. Others stayed just for a few days or weeks, until they found their own apartments. Our evening meals were always big plates of Sierra Leonean food. We’d eat together, before Kadi and Abou ran off to look at an apartment or to fill out some immigration papers for a new Sierra Leonean arrival. After the nieces had done their homework, we’d flop ourselves down on Abou and Kadi’s comfortable couches and watch music videos. Some of them featured female hip-hop artists. Now, hip-hop I liked. All the women in the videos were black. Their music had a rhythm I could move to.

My mind often floated back to Sierra Leone. I missed Mohamed’s jokes. I wished it was Marie cooking in the kitchen and not Kadi. I longed to feel Adamsay’s warm body snuggled up beside me at night. I knew I had to get going, if not for me then for Adamsay, who was still in Sierra Leone. But she
seemed so far away. I wondered if she wouldn’t be happier if I just came back to be with her.

One Saturday morning, I was jolted awake by five girls jumping on me. “Get up! Get up, lazybones!” Haja, Suad, and Fanta had been joined by two other female relatives, Umu and Kadiatu, or KK, who had just arrived from Sierra Leone.

Usually, the girls were quiet in the mornings, showering in the downstairs bathroom before heading upstairs for breakfast and then the bus to school. But this was the weekend. They had me surrounded on all sides and were poking me, playing with my hair, tickling my neck and stomach.

“Get up, sleepyhead!” Umu said, blowing into my ear.

“Not yet,” I growled. I pulled a pillow over my head, but Suad grabbed it and started hitting Haja with it.

“Time to get up,” Fanta sang, hip-hop-style.

Next they broke into a Temne song, one I remembered well from my childhood. “I was born a virgin and I am still a virgin,” Umu sang.

“If that’s what you say you are, prove it,” the others chorused.

It wasn’t a song you would hear in the West, but it was one of our village staples. The five girls sang another Sierra Leonean classic next.

“My boat is somewhere in Makeni,” they chanted in unison, clapping their hands and slapping their knees to make the beat. “Oh, how I wish I could be with my boat.”

I couldn’t help but smile as I watched these young women, so bright-eyed and perky so early in the morning.

“It’s not early,” Umu laughed when they were done singing. “You sleep all the time, so you don’t even know what time of day it is anymore.”

All the girls together pulled and pushed me into a standing position. “Brush your teeth and get ready,” Fanta ordered. “We’re going to braid your hair, and then we’re going to the library.”

Several hours later, I sat wedged between Suad and Haja in the back seat of Kadi’s blue minivan. I wasn’t sure what a library was, so I asked them. “When you finally go to school, you’ll have to use the library,” Umu said, wagging a finger at me. “The library is where you borrow books to help you study and learn.”

“But don’t be late returning the books,” Kadi called over her shoulder from the driver’s seat. “Haja, the last time you took a book out, you were a month late. I had to pay a big fine. I can’t wait until all of you start working,” she said, making a clicking sound with her tongue. “I’m planning on retiring on what you girls owe me.”

“Of course, Auntie Kadi,” said Fanta, who was sitting in the front seat. “Weeee love you,” she sang.

Haja started playing with my hair, neatly braided with chestnut-colored hairpieces. “You know, Mariatu, you are actually very pretty.”

“When we can see you,” Suad teased. “Most of the time, you’re buried underneath the blankets. You don’t like us?”

“Of course I do.” I smiled. No one had ever said I was pretty before. I never thought of myself that way.

“Good,” said Fanta, turning around and grinning at me. “Because on Monday we all want you to go to school!”

Kadi continued in a serious tone. “I’ve enrolled you in an English as a Second Language course. When you graduate, you’ll go on to high school with the others next September.”

“But Auntie Kadi—” I started to say.

“No,” she interrupted. I could see her dark brown eyes in the rearview mirror. Her face was solemn, her expression no-nonsense. “It’s time to get moving, girl!”

I knew by now that Kadi was like the mother of all the Sierra Leoneans in Toronto. Many people credited Kadi and her family with saving their lives.

“If Kadi says you have to do something,” muttered Haja, “you better do it, or else she will send you back to Sierra Leone. She’ll drop you off at the bus stop and say: ‘Go. Find your way to the airport on your own.’ Not something to look forward to.”

I shivered at the thought. It was February, cold and gray and snowing outside.

As we made our way from the parking lot into the library, I ducked my face inside the collar of my bulky purple ski jacket, one of the items of clothing the imam at the local mosque had collected for Sierra Leonean refugees. When we got inside the front doors, Kadi took my arm and led me into the section of the library that she said was for children. It was a sunny room with fictional characters painted on the walls, including Mickey Mouse, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and a turtle Kadi told me was named Franklin.

Kadi started pulling books off the shelves and piling them into my arms. “The best way to learn a new language is to start at the beginning,” she said. “Read what the children are reading.”

I must have been holding about 15 books by the time she
said, “That’s enough for now.” At a small table, we sat down on some children’s-sized chairs.

“Okay,” she said, picking up the top book. “This is a good one. It’s called
Baby Sister Says No
!” She flipped it open. “Can you read any of these words?”

I shook my head.

“Mariatu,” Kadi said sharply, “you can do better than that!”

I focused on the page. “This is an S, and here’s a T,” I said, pointing my arm at the letters.

“Very good,” Kadi said. She turned the pages of the book, explaining that the story was about a funny porcupine-like creature whose baby sister won’t let him do anything he wants. “Kind of like you girls living in my house,” she joked.

“Now,” she continued, picking up another book, “this book is about a monkey named George. And here’s
The Sneetches
, by Dr. Seuss! I used to read this to my children when they were little.”

Kadi was lost in thought for a moment. “The Sneetches don’t want to associate with their own kind, because their own kind look different. Kind of like how the world works. Sometimes all we see are our differences. I can only dream of a time when that’s not so.” She sighed as she piled the books into a stack, then smiled. “When you can read these books to my granddaughter, you’ll have made it. Let’s go check these out.” Ameenatu had given birth shortly after I arrived to a baby girl named Kadijah. If I didn’t hurry up, the baby would catch up to my reading level. “Umu’s right,” I thought. “I need to get going!”