City of Saints & Thieves(12)

Mama thought we were safe, that we were away from men in the night. Except then this boy’s father showed us how not safe we really were. He showed us that there are men in the night everywhere. I can’t stand here and listen to this spoiled Big Man’s son ask me why. If he doesn’t know, he’s going to. I bite off and spit every brittle word:

“Because your father killed my mother.”





SEVEN


After Mama’s funeral, I took Kiki and walked away from the Greyhills. We were still in our Sunday clothes. I brought her to Mama’s church and asked the nuns to take care of her. They tried to make me stay too, but I ran. I went to the docks and spent two weeks living in a busted-up shipping container, trying to decide whether or not to die. I would wake up with rats crawling over my legs in the middle of the night and not even care. I was so far gone that I wasn’t even a person anymore. My mother had been killed. I had heard what Greyhill said to her in the garden. I couldn’t stay in his home anymore. I couldn’t leave Kiki there. But I couldn’t take care of my sister either. I’m not proud of abandoning her. But I did it.

When Bug Eye found me, I had just stolen a mango from a street vendor. I was too weak to run away, and the vendor had caught me by the wrist. He was about to beat me silly. His fist was in the air when Bug Eye stepped in and put a bill down that would have bought fifty mangoes. Then he turned and walked away, saying over his shoulder to the man, “My little sister’s a pain. Sorry, bwana. Come on, tiny girl.”

And I followed. For no other reason than he still had my stolen mango in his hand. He called me something that sounded like my name, or close enough to it. And there was not one single scrap of feeling in my body telling me to do anything else.

I slept in the Goondas’ warehouse that night. In the middle of a snoring pack of street kids, I lay down with no hope of anything better the next day. And maybe things would have stayed the same. I would have gone on being a useless bag of bones.

Except, early the next morning I woke to a hand creeping into my pocket.

I jerked awake like I’d been electrified, clawing at the intruder. But the weasel-faced boy slipped out of my reach, dancing backward.

“Give it back,” I said, my voice rusty from disuse.

“No,” he sneered. “What is it?” He squinted at the prayer card he’d pulled out of my pocket, twisting it left and right.

“Give it to me!” I rushed him, my voice growing louder. I snatched at the card, catching nothing. “It’s mine!”

I was vaguely aware of the bodies stirring around us. They sniffed the air, eager for blood.

The thief was bigger than me, older. He held the card over his head, his rag of a shirt flapping as he jumped to evade me. He could tell the card had no real value, but also that I was desperate for it.

It was currency he was interested in.

“You want it? Come and get it,” he said. He waved Saint Catherine’s paper face at me. I watched his fingers bend a crease across the card.

For the first time in weeks, I was alive. I was heat and fury. I threw myself at him, using my fingernails, my teeth, my toes, every ounce of raw pain I had at my disposal.

And I could hear the boys laughing, Hey, look at the wildcat, and then Bug Eye was pushing me away, saying, Give it back, Ketchup, and I saw the boy leering through the lines of blood I’d scratched down his face.

His eyes never left mine, even as he crumpled up the card and threw it at my feet.

Later, as I smoothed it, after I’d finally shed and dried my tears, I looked at Saint Catherine. Really looked at her. I looked at the wheel she rested her hand on. At the sword under her feet. At the palm branch she carried.

The prayer card had been in Mama’s pocket when she died.

It was all I had left of her.

I’d heard the story a hundred times from Mama—she was kind of obsessed. Saint Catherine of Alexandria was smart and beautiful, and didn’t want to give it up to some king, so he put her on the breaking wheel, which is this torture device. You’re laid out spread-eagle on a big wheel and people hit you with sticks until you’re good and broken. Except Catherine was holy, and the wheel broke when she touched it. So instead, the king took a sword and chopped off her head. Saint stuff is crazy violent like that. The palm branch she carries is supposed to be a symbol of triumph.

Mama would pray, Help us to break the wheel, Catherine, as we knelt by the bed at night. And I never got it because Catherine still got killed in the end, so what’s the point? Why the palm branch? But Mama would just shush me and say, Saint Catherine may have died, but she wasn’t ever broken. Mama would tap the palm branch with her finger like, See?

And for the first time maybe ever, I did see.

I saw that while part of me was certainly dead and gone, the whole of me wasn’t going to die. I had let myself be broken, but maybe I could be remade. I could become something stronger. If I was strong, I could keep my promise to Mama. I could make sure my little sister stayed safe. Maybe she should go on living with the nuns. With them, she could have the life Mama wanted for us. She’d go to school. She’d learn about God. But not me. I would stay in the shadows and watch over her from a distance. I would never let anything hurt her.

I slept that next night with a shard of glass in my hand, and no one touched me. In the morning, when Bug Eye yelled at us all to wake the hell up, I was ready.