The Bite of the Mango (8 page)

“He’s sick, Mariatu,” Marie said. “He’s very sick. The doctor says Abdul needs a blood transfusion or he might die.”

Abdul was now about 10 months old. Over the past few weeks, his stomach had become swollen, so swollen he looked as if he was carrying a small baby inside. At first I thought he was getting fat from my milk. But he really wasn’t taking in as much milk as he had when he was younger. He’d also started crying more and more.

A nurse at the camp clinic gave Abdul a needle with some vitamins that were supposed to make him healthy. We went to see her every day, but the needle wasn’t helping. Abdul’s stomach got bigger and his face grew puffy. His legs had lost their baby fat. He was so skinny in some places and so fat in others that he looked distorted.

When the nurse first told me that Abdul was suffering from malnutrition, I started eating as much as I could, hoping I could make my milk more nourishing. I ate so many spoonfuls of rice that I felt I’d throw up. I stopped going out to beg with Adamsay and Mabinty, and spent all my time with Abdul at the camp. I’d cradle him in my arms until he fell asleep. I even
sang to him—very softly, since I didn’t want anyone else to hear my bad singing voice.

But nothing I did seemed to make a difference. One day, the nurse said we needed to take Abdul to the hospital.

Abibatu, Marie, and Fatmata came with me. We were back at Connaught, but in a different ward—this one was for babies—than where I stayed when I first arrived in Freetown.

“If Abdul dies, it will be all my fault,” I thought. “I should have loved him more.” In between being angry at myself, I tried to figure out how I could get enough money for the blood transfusion he needed. “I could go out and beg,” I said to myself, “pleading with anyone who walks my way. I could get my cousins to do the same. We could steal the money from the fabric salesman.”

Then a rational thought poked its way in. Father Maurizio, the Italian priest who had given me all of Abdul’s clothes: I would go to see him. Fatmata, Abibatu, and Marie approved of my plan. I kissed Abdul on the forehead and then I was off.

I ran faster than I ever had, out of the hospital, through the packed, market-lined streets of Freetown, down toward the ferry, and straight to the compound where Father Maurizio lived.

“I need your help,” I gasped when I saw him. Father Maurizio looked at me wide-eyed as I blurted out my reason for coming.

“Okay, Mariatu,” the priest said. “Let me see what I can do.”

Father Maurizio provided shelter at his mission for boys and girls who were separated from their families. He had access to wealthy people back in Italy who shipped him clothes and other necessities and wired him money for various programs.

The priest offered me a cup of water, then asked one of his staff to drive me back to the hospital.

“This is all my fault,” I cried out to Father Maurizio just before we pulled away. “If I had loved Abdul more, he would want to live. If he dies, it’s because my lack of love killed him.”

Father Maurizio showed up at the hospital several hours later. He had found the money through an Italian donor. The doctors did the transfusion immediately, but afterwards Abdul was worse than before. He lay weakly in my arms, his big brown eyes gazing off into the air. He didn’t even cry to tell me he was hungry.

Three days later, Abdul’s almost-weightless body fell completely still. His breathing grew shallow. Every so often his eyes would blink as if in slow motion. I sat clutching him tightly.

“I think it’s time,” Marie said gently, taking Abdul from my arms. She motioned for me to go outside and shut the door behind me.

As I walked down the hall, I kept my eyes focused directly forward, blocking out the other babies on the ward. Every time I looked at them, all I could see was Abdul’s face.

Later that day, back at the camp, I went straight to my room. I lay down on the mat I slept on. Whenever anyone tried to talk to me, I’d respond with a gruff “Leave me alone.” For the first few days, I got up only to use one of the urinals in the camp. On my way back, I’d grab a few bites of rice, then return to my room and my mat.

My family held a funeral ceremony for Abdul in the camp’s mosque. The imam recited a prayer, and one by one my family asked for blessings. I sat motionless, listening but not
really hearing. Whenever we were supposed to recite a passage from the Quran, I did so under my breath.

“Allah,” I said in my head. “Help make me a better person.”

In the weeks that followed, I spent all my time sleeping. Abibatu, Fatmata, and Marie tried to console me many, many times, bringing me plates of rice and vegetables that I’d push away. Marie told me stories about Magborou. “We’ll go back one day,” she said. “You wait and see. We’ll be back in Magborou very soon.”

Abibatu often scolded me. “You have to pick yourself up, or else what’s the point of living? Those rebels should have killed you right then and there.”

Fatmata, who, along with Abdul, was living part of the time at the camp now, took a different approach. “There are still lots of things to be hopeful for, Mariatu.”

“Like what?” I grumbled. All I could see before me was a life of begging and depending on others for my survival. The best thing I could do for my family would be to move away. But where?

My sleep was haunted by images of Abdul. I’d have conversations with myself in my dreams: “Abdul was a person. He understood I did not love him. He knew I did not want him, so he left the world.”

I’d hear Abdul crying and I’d wake with a start. Relief swept through me, until I realized I’d been dreaming. A frequent dream was feeling Abdul lying on my stomach. I’d awake hugging him, only to find he was not there.

Abibatu and Marie collected all of Abdul’s clothes and toys and gave them back to Father Maurizio. Soon all that was left to remind me of him was the long scar on my stomach. When this
knowledge hit me, I cried for nearly half a day. I cried until I had nothing left in me, then fell into one of my fitful sleeps.

In the dream that followed, Salieu came to me a second time. He sat down beside me, as he had in the dream after I first learned I was pregnant.

“Are you mad at me?” I asked him
.

“Of course not,” he answered
.

“But I killed Abdul.”

“No, you didn’t,” he replied. “You were too young, Mariatu. What I did to you was selfish. I am sorry for the pain I have caused you. Abdul is with me.”

Abdul suddenly appeared, sitting on Salieu’s lap. He was wearing such a big smile, I could see his two bottom teeth; they had come in just before he got sick. Abdul looked like he had before the illness, with his fat legs and arms, normal-sized stomach, and round, happy eyes
.

“Everything will be fine from now on,” Salieu said, standing up with Abdul in his arms. “Don’t blame yourself again for Abdul’s death.”

It was the last time I ever saw Salieu.

I wish I could have taken comfort from Salieu’s words. But I couldn’t. I hated him for what he had done to me, and I missed Abdul. Nonetheless, the morning after my dream, I did feel a lightness I hadn’t experienced in a while. I woke early, washed my face, changed into a clean T-shirt and wrap skirt, brushed my teeth with a chewing stick, and went down to the clock tower with Adamsay. I didn’t say much to her, though she tried to talk to me. When a businessman dropped some leones into her bag, she ran off immediately to the market to buy me
a mango. She held it up, but I shook my head. “You eat it,” I sighed. I didn’t feel I deserved her kindness.

I trudged along the streets, my black plastic shopping bag held low by my side. I didn’t make any money that day. But the next day I lifted my bag a little higher. And by the day after that, I was talking to Adamsay again.

“I got accepted into a program,” she confided as we walked home one afternoon. “I might be going to Germany.”

I was excited for her. I was happy for all the children at the camp who were taking part in programs with foreign nonprofit groups. The camp official had been right when he said that people in the West were becoming interested in Sierra Leone.

“It isn’t an adoption program,” Adamsay continued, sighing a little. “I’ll only be going to Germany for a little while, to go to school.”

“Where is Germany?” I asked her.

“Germany is in Europe,” she replied, pointing north, as if this place called Germany was just beyond Freetown’s mountains. “It’s supposed to be green.”

“Oh,” I said, looking down. I’d suddenly realized what her leaving would mean to me.

“Don’t worry,” Adamsay said. She stopped and wrapped her big arms around me. She was about to let go when I found myself pulling her in tight. I held on to her for a long time, burrowing my face into her soft, fleshy shoulder. She smelled like grass, and that reminded me of Magborou. I wanted to go back there, back to the time when Adamsay, Mariatu, and I would play with stilts and make mud pies that we’d try to get Marie to eat.

The following Saturday, another girl named Mariatu who lived at the camp popped by to see me. Mariatu was the same age as me. She looked like me, too, and she had no hands. Rebels had attacked her when they invaded Freetown.

We didn’t go begging on the weekends, since the businesspeople didn’t work then. The people who filled Freetown’s bustling streets on Saturdays and Sundays were mostly poor villagers from the countryside escaping the war. They would ask
us
for money, so it was pointless to go to the city. Weekends were spent hanging around the camp, cleaning the few clothes we owned, grinding cassava, and hearing about the war from others.

I knew this other Mariatu quite well, because she often joined Adamsay and me for begging. Now she sat down beside me as I finished breakfast.

“Victor thinks it would lift your spirits if you came out to the theater troupe,” she announced.

Mariatu had tried to get me to join the camp’s theater troupe before I gave birth to Abdul. She’d even taken me to one of their rehearsals when I was about eight months pregnant.

The troupe had about 25 members, all of them war amputees. They met every Saturday and Sunday in the center of the camp. Some of the members had lost a foot, others had no hands. Most of the members were around my age, but there were some older men and women too. When I saw them rehearse that first time, they were doing a play about the war. Mariatu played herself, a young girl from a small village in northwestern Sierra Leone who’d come to Freetown with her mother in the hope of avoiding the rebels. Two boys played the parts of the child soldiers who maimed her. Their lines were all too familiar.

“Go to the president,” one boy said.

“Ask him for new hands,” said the other boy.

After the rehearsal, Mariatu had introduced me to Victor, who’d organized the troupe. Victor knew far too well the experiences many of us had endured. While the rebels had not harmed him, many of his friends and some of his family had been killed in the attack that destroyed his village.

The script brought back too many bad memories for me, so I’d politely told Mariatu and Victor that I couldn’t join the troupe. “I will need to look after my baby,” I had said. “But thank you for asking me. Maybe some other time.”

Some other time was now, and Mariatu was not taking no for an answer.

“It will be good for you to think about things other than Abdul,” she coaxed.

“But I’m no good at acting,” I complained.

“Then you can sing!” Mariatu retorted.

“I’m no good at singing either,” I said, shaking my head.

“I know you can dance,” she persisted. “Just show me a Sierra Leonean girl who can’t dance!”

Now I really couldn’t argue. Every village girl in Sierra Leone learns to dance as soon as she can walk. It was what we did almost every night by the fire. My friends and I would don grass skirts and some Africana beads and take turns dancing in twos and threes, while some of the boys from Magborou drummed and the rest of the village sang and clapped.

“Okay,” I said to Mariatu. “I’ll come and watch you today. I have nothing else to do anyway. But I’m not joining!”

After I had finished my breakfast and washed up, Mariatu and I wove our way through the tents. When we reached the center of the camp, the theater troupe was just about to perform a skit on HIV/AIDS.

I’d heard mention of the virus that was killing people in Sierra Leone, but no one in my family had it, so we had never talked about it. I had no idea how you acquired HIV/AIDS until I watched the skit that afternoon. The plot involved a funeral ceremony for a woman who had just died from AIDS. While the mourners stood motionless, two older members of the troupe, a man and a woman, explained that HIV/AIDS is acquired through sexual intercourse. When they were done speaking, the play resumed.

Mariatu’s role was that of the bereaved daughter. Mariatu was good at acting. Her tears seemed real.

“She was a good woman who cared about her family,” her character wailed.

When the funeral ceremony ended, the whole cast came out and sang a song about HIV/AIDS.

It’s killing all of Africa. How do we stop it? Only we can stop it!
Be faithful to your wife, husband, or partner
.

When the skit was over, Mariatu and Victor approached me.

“So you finally came out,” Victor said with a smile, punching me gently on the shoulder.

“I just wanted to watch,” I said.

“But we’d love to have you in the troupe,” he said. Victor was a tall, handsome man with an oval face and very short hair. When he smiled, his eyes drooped downwards slightly, giving
him an innocent look. Even though I had only met him once or twice before, I’d liked him right away.

“I’ve been through a few things recently,” I confessed. “I don’t know if I am up to acting, singing, and dancing yet.”

“I know about the baby and his death,” he said kindly. “I wanted you to join the troupe a long time ago, but I realized it was too soon. Having a baby at twelve years of age is very hard.”

I wanted to tell Victor that I had killed Abdul, that I was a mean person and he shouldn’t be talking to me. But instead I replied: “Yes, it was very hard. His death really hurt me.”