The Girl in the Road Page 16

  I turned my head. I could hear the sand grinding beneath my skull. A short distance away, there was another child, lying in the sand just as I was lying, in an identical position, like a gawky bird gone to sleep. But she was much too skinny and her mouth was too wide open. She was amazed at me. She couldn’t close her mouth. Her teeth were wiggling. She sprouted a black wing, even though her body remained completely still. Then I was amazed at her. How did she come by wings? I wanted wings!

  I got up and, at the same time, she got up. She took a step toward me. Her black wings were fierce and shiny. Her dress was rumpled, once pink, now mottled mustard, and it whipped around her chicken-bone legs.

  Saha, I said to calm myself, Saha.

  What are you saying? she asked. Her eyes didn’t open and her mouth didn’t move, but her head tilted at an angle, which was how I knew she’d spoken.

  It’s my favorite word, I said.

  Who are you?

  My name is Mariama.

  My name is Mariama, she said, and took another step toward me.

  Where did you get your wings? I said.

  She didn’t answer. Instead she asked, Where are you from?

  I’m going home, I said. To Ethiopia.

  I am from Ethiopia, she said.

  She took another step toward me. As she came closer, her flesh swelled into a round and pleasant face with a button nose.

  I don’t think the wings are mine, she said, answering my question late. I think they belong to the buzzards.

  Oh, I said.

  I want to be with you, she said.

  Maybe, I said. What are you doing in the desert?

  I ran away from the horsemen.

  Why?

  My mother told me to. She said it was better to die than be taken by a man.

  Was it the right thing to do?

  Oh yes. It was better just to end the story here. It feels good to rest.

  I’d like to rest too.

  You always can, she said. And you don’t even have to run away. You can just lie down in the road, anytime.

  I opened my mouth to answer her, but I had to spit out a warm liquid, thick like coffee. It got in my throat and I choked on it. I lifted my head to cough it out. That’s when I started to feel pain.

  Static resolved into sound. I saw your face above me, Yemaya. You were hysterical, but I couldn’t make out your words. I wanted to tell you I was all right. But I could only mouth the words, because blood filled my throat.

  Dressing

  I woke up in a small concrete room. Again, immediately, I tried to say I was all right, but I couldn’t speak. I tried to gesture, but I couldn’t control my hands. They made broad chopping motions that didn’t convey what I meant to convey. I wonder what you thought I meant—that I wanted to chop wood, or shake your hand!

  One of my palms was caught and a pressure was applied. Thumbs pressed into my palm harder and harder, and cotton filled my mouth. So I slipped back into sleep.

  Voices were trying to get my attention. They were located in the upper-right corner of my brown field. I wanted to ask them if they were concerned with helping me plant, and if not, to please wait until I had finished the planting myself. A mongrel dog came shyly and sat between the beds and kept me company while I hoed. She said, Saha, saha, saha.

  Mariama? said a voice.

  I opened my eyes and sat up and said, Yes.

  Palms pushed me gently back down to the bed. Easy, child, they were saying. Easy.

  It was you and Muhammed. Your faces were overhead, on either side of me, sun and moon.

  Your eyes were red.

  Do you remember what happened? you said.

  At first I thought you meant the brown field, but I sensed that that was not it. So I said no.

  We had an accident, you said. The truck swerved to avoid something in the road. You fell off but you’re alive. We’re so lucky, Mariama.

  I asked, Where’s the girl with the black wings?

  You and Muhammed exchanged looks.

  What girl?

  There was a girl, I said, and struggled to remember what she looked like. She was wearing a pink dress and she got up and talked to me, and said—

  There was no girl, you said.

  It’s no use lying to her, said Muhammed. There was a dead body in the road, Mariama. That’s why the truck swerved.

  But she talked to me, I said. She said she was from Ethiopia.

  Muhammed covered his mouth with his hand and walked away.

  I turned to you.

  She said her name was Mariama, the same as mine! I said.

  You looked down and asked in a low voice, What else did she say?

  That she’d run away from the horsemen and was happy she did.

  You nodded to the floor. You took deep breaths. You left the room for five minutes.

  You came back and said, Are you hungry? You should eat something.

  And then even though your hands were trembling, you tore open a pack of glucose biscuits and opened a carton of milk and dipped the biscuit in the milk and fed it to me. The grains melted in my mouth. The sugar made me forget the girl in the road.

  I hadn’t died, but Francis had. He’d been tossed from the truck too, and because he was a grown man, he hit the ground harder, and bled to death on the inside. When you told me, you were very casual. So stupid, you said. He wasn’t careful. He should have known better. He didn’t value his life. He always just walked up and down the truck not holding on to anything.

  I felt happy about your attitude, since I was still jealous about all the time he’d been spending around you, and mad that he scolded me for saying the word “whore.” So I considered the matter settled. We didn’t need him. I only needed you. And, after both terrible scares—the horsemen, and now the accident—you stayed close to me, which I loved.

  My body was badly bruised by the accident, and for a while, it was difficult to move without pain. You had a torn muscle and some bruised ribs but were otherwise all right. But Muhammed had been in the front cab when the truck swerved and his leg was broken. Because it was his convoy, the entire operation was stalled.

  You told me this would be a healing time before we crossed over into Ethiopia. We were in an Indian clinic in a large town, Al Qadarif, ringed by hills on three sides. They seemed vast to me, like we were at the bottom of a bowl where all the rains of the world collected. The city was rich with green fields and singing birds, which seemed to me a promise of things to come across the border.

  After the first few days in the little concrete room, I was moved to the large common area, where there were many cots lining each wall. You came to sit by me and sometimes to share my bed. One day I asked you to tell me about the name Yemaya, that lovely rhythmic name. You leaned back against the foot of the hospital bed, crossing your feet up by my head. One of the Indian nurses passed us and smiled into her sirius. She probably thought we were mother and daughter.

  Her African name was Yemoja, you said, but you’d picked the Cuban form because it was the most beautiful. Yemaya was the goddess of the ocean, the patroness of sailors and shipwreck survivors, the eternal and unending mother of all living things, whose children were as fish. You told me how Yemaya was a great lover, seducing beautiful young women and men alike, but her greatest seduction was that of a monstrous sea snake who lived in the Arabian Sea, to whom she swam in the middle of the night, and mounted, and tamed, and had a great many strange adventures and met a great many strange characters. That was my very favorite story of all. I made you tell me what people she met, and your tales never ceased to amaze me. The sea scholars. The wave surfers. The lotus eaters.

  Can I go ride the snake too? I asked.

  Of course, you said. I’ll meet you there.

  For years afterward I would recall these stories and think, How sly of you to tell me this! All the time, you were speaking of things you had done, people you had loved, lives you had lived. I see now that I was not ready to receive the truth, at that ag
e; if you’d revealed yourself right there and then, I might not have believed you.

  As it was, I was simply happy to hear the stories. The truth is revealed to us when we are ready for it.

  A week later, we were sitting in the garden next to the clinic. The vegetation was carefully planted—desert flowers from Gujarat, you told me, in the north of India. There was even a little sign saying GIFT FROM THE PEOPLE OF GANDHINAGAR TO OUR SUDANESE BROTHERS AND SISTERS.

  You had asked the nurse to bring us tea, and he did, on a silver platter. We were both surprised at how nice their tea set was; though it wasn’t real silver, you told me, it still shone. You knelt and poured while I sat, slumped to the side because my body still ached. I could see Muhammed at the other end of the garden, now in a wheelchair, conversing with the head doctor.

  You handed me a cup and you said, How would you like to live with me in Addis Ababa?

  I nearly threw the cup into the air.

  Really? I asked.

  Really, you said. I can send you to school, and feed you and clothe you. You don’t have to do any work for me, besides what a normal little sister would do, helping around the house.

  What can I do? I said. I was breathless.

  You can go to school and do your homework and compose kinae with golden meanings, to recite for your schoolmates, you said.

  I said, But in exchange for what? I’ll do any work you want me to.

  Child, you said. You must stop thinking you are owned. You only belong to yourself. Can you promise me that?

  I said yes because I would promise you anything.

  Muhammed wheeled over to us. He said, You look well, Mariama.

  I’m going to live with Yemaya, I blurted out.

  Muhammed looked at you in surprise. Is she? he said.

  It’s something I was thinking about, you said.

  You’ve come to love her, said Muhammed.

  Yes.

  I understand. But God entrusted her to Francis and me.

  You said to me, Mariama, can you go play?

  I got up, my tea not even tasted, and went back into the clinic. The big room was full of rows of beds with bright-patterned cloth, most empty, and each with a metal staff at the bedside. Through the doorway I looked back at you talking to Muhammed with great passion and animation. I wished I could eavesdrop, but there was no clear way to do it.

  Eventually the two of you stopped talking and Muhammed wheeled up the ramp into the clinic. He saw me standing there.

  I’ve agreed to let Yemaya take you, he said, on the condition that she provides me proof of your schooling. She’s very young, this woman. And she’s much aggrieved by Francis’s death even though she doesn’t show it. She may have good intentions, but with the young, intentions count for little.

  I nodded right away. I didn’t comprehend anything he said, really, because I was so happy he’d agreed to let me go.

  I regret you won’t meet my daughters, he said. Fatima and Rahel. You would have gotten along like old friends.

  Then he wheeled past me, looking sad.

  I rejoined you on the bench and said, I think Muhammed has come to love me, too.

  He’ll be all right, you said.

  I know, I said. I just want to be with you, anyway. Can we take a truck by ourselves and Muhammed can give out the oil by himself?

  Ah, oil, you said.

  You sat forward with your elbows on your knees and looked back at me, as if considering. I sat forward to join you in your seriousness. That made you laugh.

  I have something to tell you, you said. You may not understand all of it, but it’s important for you to know. I don’t believe in hiding things from children. Besides, you’ve reached the age of reason.

  Okay, I said.

  Mariama, what are we carrying on the truck?

  Oil, I said immediately.

  That’s what I would have said. And Muhammed. But when the truck overturned, the barrels came loose, and five of them broke open.

  I nodded, remembering now the explosion sounds and the silver mist.

  We weren’t carrying oil, you said. Muhammed was deceived. His superiors may have been deceived too. We were carrying metallic hydrogen.

  What’s that?

  It’s a material used for conducting energy, you said. You see how the lights in the clinic turn on? And the ceiling fans run? All of that uses energy that comes through wires. But this material can make a wire that works so well, no energy is wasted. It just travels straight through. It gives exactly what it receives.

  It all sounded very inconsequential to me. I must have looked unimpressed.

  I can’t make it sound exciting, you said. But it’s important. This material is illegal in most of the world because it’s dangerous.

  Then I remembered. I said, When the horsemen stopped us and I got in the barrel, I felt cold.

  Because it was refrigerated. Metallic hydrogen is refrigerated during shipment.

  Won’t people be mad when they see they’ve been getting the wrong thing all this time?

  None of the handlers knew what they were handling, you said. Only the end users knew. The whole plan was to pretend it was crude oil so they could get it across borders easily.

  Is Muhammed mad?

  As mad as Muhammed gets, you said. He’s still trying to get straight answers from people. But he can’t do much when he’s stuck in bed all day.

  But we’re still going to Ethiopia, right?

  Yes. Muhammed still has to make his deliveries, no matter what those deliveries are.

  You picked up a pebble from the ground, fingered it, and dropped it again.

  He’s not in a position to refuse to.

  The Great Rift Valley

  We were approaching our final days of recovery and I was more eager than ever for our long-promised home. In the garden, after a rain, I asked you to tell me stories about Ethiopia even though you’d never been there. They didn’t have to be stories, I said. Just things you knew.

  You pointed at the hills. You see those? you said. They’re the beginning of the Great Rift Valley.

  I didn’t know what those words meant, Yemaya, but the hushed way you said them gave me chills.

  The Great Rift Valley is splitting Africa apart, you said. It runs from Djibouti all the way down to Mozambique. Millions of years from now, the whole valley will be filled with water again and all the cities will be drowned. But in the time that it’s been dry land, the human race rose out of the earth and spread all over the world. It’s important for you to know about Dinkenesh, since we’ll be living in Ethiopia. It means “You are wonderful.”

  What’s Dinkenesh? I asked.

  She’s our ancestor. That means your mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother, all the way back, as far back as you want to go.

  (I thought to myself: How far back do I want to go?)

  Dinkenesh is revered in Ethiopia, you said. When we go to Addis, I’ll take you to see her.

  Should we bring her ladoos?

  No, Mariama, you misunderstand. She’s a skeleton.

  What’s a skeleton?

  It’s a person’s bones. Dinkenesh is only bones. She’s not alive like you and I are alive, but she lives, nevertheless. Do you understand?

  To be alive, but not alive—I did understand. In fact I think I knew exactly what you were talking about—what you’d told me on the bench in Ouagadougou, and then what the girl in the road had told me!

  Was Dinkenesh running away? I asked.

  I don’t know. Maybe she was.

  Did she run into horsemen, and then ran into the desert?

  You didn’t answer.

  Did she know it was better to die than be taken by a man?

  You didn’t answer.

  Because that’s what the girl in the road said to me.

  You hit me so hard I saw the black fizzy soda in my eyes. I’d only seen that once before, when I fell off the tru
ck.

  I stayed in the pose the slap had sent me to, cast like clay. I tried to draw breath but could only get little sips of it. I knew I had done something very, very wrong, but I wasn’t yet old or wise enough to understand what.

  Of course, now I do, Yemaya. I was greedy and arrogant and trying to learn all your mysteries at once! I wasn’t ready to love you the way you deserved. And even though you apologized to me at once, crying, which I’d never seen you do, just a few seconds after you hit me, saying you didn’t mean it, that it was because of your father, I knew you wouldn’t have done it without just cause. I didn’t cry. I fed the tears to the kreen, who was very much awake, and simply a part of my body now.

  Meena

  Field Station

  Shortly after sunset, when my pozit reads 227 kilometers, I see what looks like the end of an old-fashioned telephone receiver sticking up out of the waves and hung over the Trail. As I get closer, it gets bigger. It might be four meters tall.

  I assume the worst and approach with my hands up. At least I have my dignity this time. I see a young man drop down out of a hatch in the receiver, then an older man. The young man stalks forward while signaling to the older man to stay back. They’re both wearing khaki vests and sun hats.

  The young man calls out,

  FARSI: Hello

  Great, more Persians. Maybe I’ll ask them what dear bitch I am fifty percent means.

  “Hello,” I say. “I come in peace.” I feel dumb saying it, but it seems necessary out here.

  “Where are you from?”

  “India.”

  “You’re traveling?”

  “Yep.”

  “What are you doing it for?”

  The older man intervenes. “Navid,” he says. “She’s harmless.”

  Navid transforms at the older man’s voice, becomes placative. “We shouldn’t trust anyone,” he says.

  The older man addresses me. “Forgive my son,” he says. “He’s just protective of me. You’re the first traveler we’ve seen on the Trail.”

  “How do you know I’m harmless?” I say.

  It’s not a question either of them was expecting. Navid tenses up. Maybe I shouldn’t have said it but I fucking hate it when anyone assumes I’m harmless because I’m a woman.