City of Saints & Thieves(57)

I jump down and join the skeleton men in stretching out the kinks nearly two days on the road has worked into us. The trip took longer than I thought it would. It’s late in the afternoon on Wednesday, and now I’m worried we’re not going to be back in time for my Friday date with Kiki after all. But maybe we’ll luck out and find Mwika quickly?

Michael goes to ask the driver about a hotel, while Boyboy hugs his designer bag to his chest and looks miserable.

“Oh, cheer up, habibi,” I say, looking around. “Isn’t it nice to be in the homeland? Maybe they’ve got a Prada since you’ve been gone.”

“Don’t talk to me. Hey! Shoo!”

A goat is experimentally nibbling at Boyboy’s trouser cuff.

I wonder if Mr. G is here yet. Will he go straight to the mine or come through town first? Somehow I can’t imagine him down here slumming it.

I hear Michael thanking the driver. When he returns he seems almost perky. “He says the best place to stay is at the guesthouse attached to the mission hospital. It’s where the UN people stay when they pass through. It has electricity and everything. All the piki-piki know where it is. They can take us.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. A hospital? Is that where Mama worked as a nurse? Maybe the guesthouse is the same place Donatien stayed.

“We just need to change some money,” Michael says, looking around. “The guesthouse only takes francs.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I’ve got cash.”

“You already changed money? That was fast.”

Boyboy gives me a look.

“Yeah,” I say, patting the wad of cash that I’ve snuggled into my waistband.

I’d got Michael’s money plus interest back when the tout groped me getting into the lorry. Most of it is in wilted Congolese francs.

“And I even found out something about your mother,” Michael says quietly as we walk toward the piki-piki, obviously pleased with himself. “A guy the driver was talking to knew your mom’s name. He said that he could show us your cousin’s shop in the market.”

I nearly stumble. “You asked a stranger about my mother?”

Michael’s smile slips. “What? I thought you’d be happy. That’s part of why we’re here, right? To find people who knew her and talk to them?”

“But we don’t need to go announcing ourselves,” I hiss. I glance around. We’ve already attracted stares: Boyboy in his finery, waving at us to come get on the death traps he’s secured; me in my city clothes—I’m going to have to wear a skirt if I want to fit in here, and that is not happening—and pale, green-eyed Michael, still looking way too clean.

I slide onto the back of a motorcycle that looks like it is made of tinfoil held together with baling wire. “You are the worst detective on earth. Let’s go. It’s getting dark.”

? ? ?

The caretaker for the guesthouse has to be hunted down before we can get rooms. I guess they haven’t had many UN staff come through lately, because the nun we talk to wrings her hands and says something about needing to find furniture. Boyboy, Michael, and I exchange a look, but at this point anything with a roof and walls will do. We ask hopefully for blankets, which she says the caretaker can probably manage to find, and then excuses herself back to the hospital. As she hurries away, I notice a dark spot of blood on the hem of her dress.

Leaving the boys to wait, I walk off to look around the compound. It’s past dusk, but there are no lights on. The shrieking of frogs and insects is nearly deafening. I thought Michael said they had electricity here, but maybe it’s only for the hospital. I pass a swimming pool that is now filled in and planted with vegetables. The guest rooms curve around the pool and lawn, and what was maybe once a restaurant, though it’s abandoned now, with broken tables and chairs propped up against the wall and a thatched roof that looks like it has mange. I stand looking at the tomatoes and corn that elbow for space in the kidney-shaped plot and wonder if I’ve seen this place before.

From somewhere beyond the garden I hear a woman cry out. I crane my neck toward the sound and see a glimmer of fluorescent light filtering through the hedge. I walk toward it and find a concrete path running between two long, low buildings, each with barred windows. The lights are coming from inside, and I walk to the open door of one. There are fifty or so hospital beds crammed in together, and there are even more bodies on pallets on the floor. No wonder the nun was worried about having extra beds. I see her across the room, flicking a needle, getting ready to give someone an injection. I hover at the edge of the darkness and hear the woman cry out again. She’s somewhere out of sight off to my right, down another pathway lined with more rooms.

“Habari ya jioni,” a voice behind me says, and I turn. An older nun with thick glasses is watching me from the doorway of a cluttered little office.

I return the formal good evening and stand awkwardly, not sure whether to stay or go. The woman cries out again.

“Don’t worry,” the nun says, seeing my face. “She is just in labor. She will be all right. She is young and strong.”

I nod, drinking in her accented Swahili. She sounds like my mother. I’ve all but lost my accent living in Sangui. Of course other refugees speak Congolese Swahili, but there is something very specifically familiar about the way the nun talks, her words sliding into each other. I swallow painfully. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother anybody. I can go.”