The Bite of the Mango (9 page)

“Why don’t you join the troupe and express your pain through theater?” Victor said. “We’re all good people.” His hand swooped in a circle to encompass the actors, who sat on the ground talking to each other in hushed tones.

“I’ll try,” I said, not knowing where my answer came from. “I’ll try.”

Victor created a role for me in the HIV/AIDS play as a villager mourning the woman who had died. All I had to do was cry. It was a small part, but I found I liked it. We ran through the skit a couple more times before Victor called it quits.

I thanked Mariatu, waved goodbye to Victor, and went back to my tent. I didn’t feel happy, but some of the heaviness inside of me had started to lift. Victor was right: pretending to cry onstage did offer some relief from my pain.

The next Sunday, I returned to the theater troupe. I didn’t tell anyone in my family where I was going, just that I would be back later. “Don’t worry about me,” I yelled.

The following weekend, I went out to the theater troupe again. After we’d run through the skit a few times, we danced
and sang. Some of the boys brought out drums. Even though they had no hands, they could still drum like nothing had happened to them. I found myself swaying to the music and singing the chorus of some popular Temne songs.

By the time we were done, it was dinnertime. Victor walked with me back through the camp. On the way, we passed by his tent. His wife had prepared a plate of rice and vegetables, and Victor invited me to eat with him.

“I was raped,” I whispered halfway through the meal.

“I know,” was his reply.

“Should I get tested for HIV/AIDS?”

“Yes, Mariatu,” he said. “Yes.”

I was shaking as the nurse at the camp pinched me with a needle and then filled a vial with my blood. It seemed anything good that happened to me was immediately followed by something bad, so I worried that maybe I was HIV-positive. I was cursed, and part of me felt it was for a good reason: I had killed Abdul by not loving him, so I deserved my fate.

My thoughts drifted to a woman in the camp who Victor said was suffering from AIDS. Her once-robust body had shrunk to half its size. Her eyes were sunken, and her face and arms were covered in open sores. Initially the woman had gone for walks around the camp using a stick for a cane. Now she spent most of her days lying on a straw mat outside her tent, covered in a thin blanket, moaning. I passed by her on my way to the theater troupe.

I closed my eyes and prayed, just as I had done the night of the rebel attack: “Allah, I know I was a bad mother. I know I didn’t deserve sweet little Abdul, and that’s why you took him from me. But please don’t let me have this virus. Please! I don’t want to die slowly like this woman at the camp. You kept me alive after Manarma for some reason. I promise, from now on for the rest of my life, I will try to think positively and be a good person if you spare me from this virus.”

For the next few weeks, I was on pins and needles waiting for the test results. I tried to be a good person, as I had promised. Whenever Adamsay, Fatmata, Abibatu, or Marie talked to me, I made every effort to be attentive. I’d help the women cook dinner, fetching rice from the market, stirring the cassava leaves. I even ground some rice and cassava, though my arms kept slipping as I heaved the pole up and down into the gourd. At dinnertime, I would give my stone to Adamsay or one of my other cousins to sit on, while I crossed my legs and sat on the ground. We’d always eaten from one big plate, but now I waited for Adamsay and the others to finish before I ate. I used a big silver spoon that attached to my arms with velcro.

“What’s going on with you?” Mohamed asked one night.

“Usually you’re the first one gobbling up all the food!” Ibrahim added with his crooked smile.

“Ah, Mariatu,” Mohamed continued. “You must want something from us. Perhaps to meet Sorie.” Ibrahim and Mohamed had befriended Sorie, a boy from the camp, shortly after his arrival a few months earlier. Sorie was lean and fit, with a big wide smile, much like Mohamed’s.

“No,” I replied calmly. “I don’t want to be with a boy ever again. I’ve had enough of them. But you were all so kind to me when Abdul was here that I want to help out as much as I can from now on.”

Mohamed and Ibrahim got up, helped each other wash the bottoms of their arms with water from a plastic kettle, and then pounced on me, knocking me to the ground. Mohamed tousled my hair while Ibrahim tickled my stomach.

“I love these boys so much,” I thought when they had pulled me back up into a sitting position. I watched as they ran together down the aisle of sky blue tents, punching each other playfully in the stomach and shoulders. They were off to kick a soccer ball around with some other boys at an empty housing lot not far from the camp.

After they had disappeared from view, I lay down on my back and looked up at the big fluffy clouds. “When I die, I want it to be quick,” I thought, “not drawn-out and painful.

“Salieu,” I pledged, “if you are listening and watching like you said you would, I want you to know that I plan on having a long life. A long and very good life, in which I start doing good things to help people.”

When I went back to see the nurse, I had to wait outside in a long line. After about two hours, I made it inside the building, where I sat down on an examination table. The nurse was reading from a clipboard as she approached me.

“Mariatu,” she said with a smile. “You tested negative. You do not have HIV/AIDS.”

“Maybe,” I thought as I walked back to my tent, “my luck is finally changing.”

Every Saturday and Sunday from then on, I joined the theater troupe in the center of the camp. In addition to the play on HIV/AIDS, we worked on a new skit about forgiveness and reconciliation. We re-enacted a scene from the war in which some of the youth played victims while others played the boy soldiers. As in the play I had seen when Mariatu introduced me to the troupe, the boy rebels pretended to cut off their victims’ hands and then to burn down the village. But the last part of this play was different.

In one scene, a man played the head commando of the rebels, ordering the boy rebels around. “You need to be fighters! You need to kill!” he yelled. “Take this to make you strong men,” he said, handing the boys drugs.

One boy rebel said no, so the commando beat him.

In the second-to-last scene, the boy rebels huddled together, crying. They admitted their crimes to one another and wished they could return to their own villages and their old lives—much like all of us at Aberdeen were wishing we could do.

The final scene had the boy rebels and the victims walking out onstage, arm in arm, and singing about peace.

As I sat on the ground and watched, I realized that the boy rebels who had hurt me must have families somewhere. I thought back to the rebel who’d said he wanted me to join them in the bush. “Would he have asked me to kill?” I wondered.

Mariatu broke into my thoughts. Linking her arm through mine, she pulled me to my feet and then dragged me up onstage. “It’s time to dance,” she sang out.

The boys started drumming, just like boys did back in Magborou. Two girls at a time came forward and did a dance duet. The rest of us sang and swayed to the rhythm and beat.

When it was my turn to be in the center, I closed my eyes. My knees bent. My torso moved down toward the ground and up again, then side to side. I repeated the pattern, immersing myself in the music. I felt really alive for the first time in ages.

One Sunday, just as we ended our practice for the day, Victor motioned for us to be quiet.

“I have something to tell you,” he said. He paused, keeping us in suspense.

“Come on, Victor. Spit it out,” Mariatu implored.

“We’re going to perform in public,” he announced, his eyes bright.

“Oh, that’s all,” Mariatu said, rolling her eyes. “Who’s visiting the camp this time?” Whenever aid agency officials or a politician came to the camp, the theater troupe performed—just as I had been asked to perform for the media when Abdul was alive. When I told my story, journalists furiously wrote down my answers in tiny books. The theater troupe also told stories, through skits, dances, and songs.

“No,” Victor replied, winking at Mariatu. “We’ve been asked to perform at Brookfields Stadium in a couple of weeks’ time for a whole bunch of people, including some government ministers.”

My chest constricted. “I can’t perform in front of other people,” I declared. Brookfields was the largest place for people to meet in all of Freetown.

“Yes, you can,” Victor admonished. “You all can, and you all will. We will do such a good job that the war will end and peace will come again to Sierra Leone!”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Mariatu moaned.

I moaned too, for a different reason. I was trying to think of the best excuse I could offer to get out of performing. But something else in me was just as strong, and I decided to join the theater troupe onstage after all. We had an important purpose: to help raise awareness of my country’s problems.

“Mariatu! Mariatu!” Mohamed called out.

I was walking back from the clock tower, tired and dusty after a day of begging. All I wanted was some rice and sauce, some vegetables if Abibatu and Marie had prepared any, and then bed. I went to sleep early now most nights, in preparation for our performance at the soccer stadium. I was still worried I would make a fool of myself, but Mariatu was so thrilled about the event that I didn’t want to rain on her parade. Sometimes she got so excited she started jumping up and down, squealing in delight. Her enthusiasm was catching, and we’d jump facing each other, going faster and faster. Our hysteria turned into a game in which we’d see who could jump the highest.

“Some fancy lady wants to see you,” Mohamed gasped, running up to me. Mohamed’s baby fat had disappeared since we’d moved to the camp, and he was growing into a handsome man, with a big white smile that could charm anyone. “Hurry,” he urged, hopping from foot to foot. “She’s at the tent. She’s at the tent. I think it’s your time.”

Adamsay was leaving for Germany in less than a month. About six young people from the camp had moved to the United States, and several others were on a relocation list. But
so far no one had shown any interest in me.

“Mohamed, you’re such a jokester,” I called as we wove in and out of the market stalls, jumping over plastic laundry tubs, boxes, dogs, and cats. “Don’t get my hopes up!”

“Mariatu, I’m not lying. She’s real. The woman is real. She’s there at the camp, talking to Marie and Abibatu and asking for you.”

My heart leapt. What if Mohamed was right? What if I could leave this place full of so much sadness, end my days of feeling worthless because I had to beg richer Sierra Leoneans for handouts? Abdul still entered my dreams at night. When I passed other babies at the camp, slung on their mothers’ backs, I’d look away and quicken my pace. Moving to a foreign place might be a remedy for the guilt that still plagued me.

Mohamed and I took as many shortcuts as we knew, down alleyways, behind and around other people’s tents. En route, someone shouted: “What’s your hurry? It’s not like you’re going anywhere.”

I wanted to shout back at him, “Yes I am! I’m going to the United States!”

When we got to our tent, Marie was lighting the fire. Standing beside her was a woman wearing a straight brown skirt and a white blouse. She was the same height as Marie but wider, with short curly hair.

“Hello,” the woman said when I stopped in front of her. “I’m Comfort. Are you Mariatu?”

“Yes,” I panted, still breathless from our run.

“Well, then. If you are Mariatu Kamara, I have a message for you.”

“What is it?”

“If you come to my office tomorrow morning, I will give you the message, and we can talk more about things then.” She gave me directions to her office, then went on her way.

I stood pondering the possibilities. Would I really be going to this place called the United States, which people said was the best place in the world to live?

I could have slept in the next morning, but I got up with Adamsay. After my cousins left, I changed into my best clothes, a red Africana docket-and-lappa. I washed my only shoes, a pair of orange flip-flops, and then set off.

Comfort’s office wasn’t far from the camp. I had never been in an office building before. The closest I’d ever got to those official-looking places was standing at their gates with Adamsay, asking business people for money on their way home from work. Usually one of the security guards would order us to get lost.

As I walked toward the front door that morning, I half-expected the security guard to shoo me away. But he didn’t. He smiled and opened the door for me instead.

I found the staircase at the end of the hall, right where Comfort had told me it would be, and counted out the four flights to her floor. When I reached the landing, she was there to meet me. “Perfect timing,” she said with approval.

Today Comfort was wearing a blue Africana docket-and-lappa, with some big brown beads. “You look very nice,” I complimented her.

“Thank you,” she said. “I like to wear both Western clothes and Africana outfits.”

Comfort’s office was a big room full of bookshelves. Posters of flowers and framed certificates and diplomas hung on the walls. When Comfort saw me looking at them, she explained that she was a social worker. She helped people at the amputee camp with non-medical problems, such as reuniting with their families. “Some families are very ashamed of their members who have lost limbs from the war,” she said. “At first they don’t want anything to do with these people who are disabled. I help the families accept their loved ones.”

I wondered a little at what she said. Until the day before, I had never seen Comfort at the camp, and my family got along just fine. They didn’t view me any differently than they had before the attack. They still bossed me around: “Go get some water, Mariatu! Go buy some peppers! Go brush your teeth!” I wasn’t exactly sure whom Comfort was helping. But I didn’t ask.

Comfort motioned me to a chair beside her desk.

“A man phoned from Canada,” she said, sitting down across from me. “His name is Bill, and he wants to find the girl he read about in a newspaper article.” Comfort reached over and handed me a newspaper clipping. To my surprise, it showed a photograph of me, holding Abdul. “Is this you?”

“Yes,” I said quietly, staring into the face of my little son. “That’s me.” I had to blink back my tears.

Comfort didn’t seem to notice my distress. “If you are the person in the photograph, this man Bill wants to help you. His family read your story, and they would like to give you money for food and clothes.”

“What is Canada?” I asked.

Comfort pulled a big book she called an atlas out from
behind her desk. “This is North America,” she said, running her hand over one of the pages. “Canada is a country that sits above the United States.”

“Oh,” I said. “Is Canada safe?”

“Yes, it’s safe there. And it’s a rich country. It’s also very cold. For half the year, it snows.”

I had never heard this word
snow
. Comfort explained that it was like white salt that falls from the sky when it is very chilly. I pictured in my head a cool Sierra Leone night in spring, with white salt falling all around me.

“It’s colder than the coldest night here!” Comfort said, as if she could read my mind. “Don’t compare it to any day or night you’ve felt in Sierra Leone.”

“So, this man Bill, is he taking me to Canada?” I asked.

“No. But if you pray for it, maybe he will.”

I told Marie and Alie about Bill when I got back to the camp. They were happy for me, and also for themselves. They talked about all the food they would buy when this man’s money started coming in.

“But I want to go to Canada,” I said. “I want him to bring me to this place.”

“We’ll get some fruit, pineapple and coconut,” Alie continued, ignoring me. “We haven’t tasted such sweetness in a long time!”

Marie and Alie also mentioned the new houses a nonprofit group from Norway was building for amputees. Alie said we would qualify for the program, because four of us in the family were amputees and we didn’t have a home. The rebels had destroyed most of Magborou, including Marie and Alie’s hut.

“Money from Bill,” Alie continued, “will help us in the move to the new house.”

“You’ve done really well,” Marie exclaimed, patting me on the back.

I left Marie and Alie still talking about Bill, and headed straight to the camp mosque. A few men were praying in the men’s section at the front of the large blue tent. I was the only female in our section at the back. I knelt. I put my head on the floor, and I whispered over and over again: “Thank you, Allah.”

A week later, I was back in Comfort’s office. I sat nervously on the other side of her desk, waiting for Bill to call on the telephone. I was scared that maybe he wouldn’t like me. I didn’t speak English, and I worried he would move on to another girl who could communicate with him better. A few girls at the camp had been to school and learned some words of English there.

I knew what a telephone was from the medical clinic in Port Loko. There was only one doctor on staff at the clinic, treating more than a hundred patients a day, so the nurses often used a telephone to call Freetown, seeking advice from the doctors there. But I’d never seen a telephone. We didn’t have them in our village. We didn’t have electricity in our village either, or even a generator. Many people in Freetown used generators when the electricity was out, which happened frequently because of the war.

After a few minutes we heard a ringing sound. “Here he is,” Comfort said, picking up the top part of the telephone.

Comfort talked to Bill for a while. Then she cupped the telephone receiver in her hands and spoke to me. “Bill doesn’t
speak Temne or Krio, so you won’t understand each other, but at least you can hear what he sounds like.” She held the phone up to my ear.

“Hello,” I said in Krio.

“CHA CHA … CHOO CHOO CHOOO,” Bill replied. At least, that’s what his English sounded like to me.

“My name is Mariatu. Thank you for helping me. I am very grateful,” I said in Temne.

Comfort took the phone back. While she continued her conversation with Bill in English, I looked around the room at the diplomas and certificates. I had seen similar framed papers in the hospital in Freetown. The diplomas said that so-and-so had completed her training, the nurses told me. I had asked one nurse what school was like. “Sometimes it’s very difficult,” she said. “But going to school opens new worlds for girls. When you go to school, you can do important things and help other people. You don’t have to stay in your village and have baby after baby.”

I’d thought at the time: “I’d like to go to school one day.”

Comfort hung up the telephone and gazed over at me. “Bill says he’s putting a box of clothes in the mail for you, and some money. It should be here in a month. I’ll come and get you when the package arrives.”

The next few weeks were a whirlwind. I eagerly awaited my package from Bill.

At the same time, we were practicing for our performance at the soccer stadium. The theater troupe now met not only on the weekends but also a few nights each week. Often we ended our rehearsal early to make posters announcing the event.
Those who knew how to write and draw designed the posters. The rest of us helped distribute them throughout Freetown.

Victor had given me a line in the HIV/AIDS skit. “Yes, she was such a good woman,” I was to say about the lady who had died from the virus. I was scheduled to be onstage several other times to dance and sing.

The morning of our performance, Victor handed out costumes that his wife and some of the other women at the camp had sewn for us. For the HIV/AIDS scene, I would put on an orange Africana outfit. I’d wear a skirt made from rice bags cut into strips when I danced and sang.

I was more nervous that day than I had ever been. Victor had hired some minibuses to take us to the stadium, and we gathered in the main section of the camp about an hour before.

“Are you scared?” Mariatu asked me. We’d folded our costumes into the same black plastic bags we used while begging.

“Yes,” I replied. “What if I trip and fall off the stage?”

“If you don’t fall on your own,” Mariatu teased, “I’ll push you off.”

“You be careful,” I teased back, “because I plan on pushing you off before you get to me.”

We laughed at the picture of the two of us brawling onstage. “That’s exactly what the government will want to show the foreign nonprofit people,” Mariatu chuckled. “Two girls wrestling each other!”

Victor interrupted our giggles. Posters had been tacked on bulletin boards, the sides of buildings, and gates all over town, and he’d heard that about a thousand people were expected to
attend our performance, including the heads of the charities that helped us at the camp.

My fear that I would humiliate myself crept in again.

“Victor,” I said, pulling him aside. “You should go ahead without me. I am not of the same caliber as the others, who know how to act, sing, and dance.”

I could hear the minibuses approaching, and I was hoping he’d say there wasn’t room for me after all. Instead, he reassured me. “I’m very proud of you, Mariatu. You’ve come a long way with your healing. You’ve suffered so much, and look at what you’re doing now—about to go onstage and perform.”

“But aren’t you afraid I’ll make the theater troupe look silly?”

“No,” Victor responded. “Quite the opposite. We are doing really good work here, through theater, to help the amputees. Having you onstage will help the charities see how important theater is and get them to support theater programs in other parts of the country. Besides,” he said, tenderly rubbing my shoulder, “we can’t go on unless you are with us. We are a group, a family, and we won’t be separated because you’re nervous. It’s natural to be nervous. If you weren’t, I’d think there was something still wrong with you.”

I peeked out from behind the curtains once we’d arrived. Nearly every chair assembled around the stage that had been set up in the stadium was occupied. I peered at all the faces, recognizing no one, although Sulaiman and his wife, Mariatu, had promised to be somewhere in the crowd. Many of the men wore suits, and some were white-skinned, like the journalists. The day was hot, so the ladies in their crisp Africana dresses
were fanning themselves with the posters we had made.

Some of the boys in our group assembled themselves onstage and, with the curtain still drawn, began to drum. That was the sign that we were about to begin. The first part of the performance involved us all being onstage, singing a song about the war that Victor and the troupe had written. Because I was short, I’d be in the front row.

Victor pulled the curtains back. Just as it was my turn to go onstage, I hesitated. But Mariatu, right behind me, gave me a shove. The bright spotlights startled me for a moment. I must have looked like a wide-eyed deer. Somehow I managed to find my spot, though, and I began singing along with the rest of the group. I soon forgot I was up in front of all those strangers. We sang and danced just like we had done in practice back at the camp.