City of Saints & Thieves(72)

I push the door open a crack and blink into the brightness. A red dirt yard, hatch marks showing it’s been freshly swept with a twig broom, and grass and the forest beyond. I step outside and the sun is immediate and hot on my skin.

I know where I am.

“Catherine?” I croak. I clear my throat and try again. Running up the path to her home last night comes back to me suddenly, like a fever dream. She picked me up off the ground, not my mother. My memory is hazy, full of gaps. I feel a sudden and intense wave of hot and cold, and rush to the edge of the yard, where I throw up.

“You were drinking last night?”

I finish heaving, wipe my mouth with my sleeve, then turn toward the voice.

Catherine has come around the side of the house. She’s drying a metal pot. “Or are you pregnant?”

“No,” I say quickly. “Neither.”

She snorts. “You came here sick. Talking crazy about your mama.”

I try to think. What had happened? Had I been drugged? The only thing I’d eaten yesterday had been food from the nuns. “I wasn’t drinking. Maybe something bit me.”

“Spider, maybe,” she says, but not like she believes it.

“Where did you find me?”

She jerks her chin, motioning up the hill. I see a dark place on the edge of the forest where it looks like the path turns in, toward the creek.

“You were trying to get to your farm?”

“My farm . . .” Slowly it dawns on me, why her home looked familiar before. I look from her to the path. “We lived there.”

I start to walk, struggling against the heat and my stiff limbs and the hill. Behind me Catherine says nothing. She’s probably laughing at me, and I resolve not to look back. Once I reach the path I’m in the shade again, but I have to pause to catch my breath and let my heart stop pounding in my ears. “Spiders,” I pant. “Or a snake.”

“Or somebody poison you,” a small high voice says. I look up to see the long-limbed girl. Either she is very quiet, or I am still groggy, because both she and her yellow dog have come up on me without my hearing. She walks forward and hands me a stick to lean on, and waits for me to go first. It isn’t far to where the path dips into the creek, which has gone down in the night. I see well-placed stepping stones now, leading across.

I look to the other bank and try to find memories that match this place. The mud plaster is crumbling off the walls of the hut, and what is left of the roof is caved in and black from fire. The shed is gone, burned to nothing. Weeds reach the windowsills. Where is my climbing tree? Where was the garden? We had rabbits once, and chickens. They are long gone now, but maybe I’ll see a wild descendant in the field. I step across the creek. The dog splashes through the water and races past me as I climb the bank.

“You are coming to claim this place?”

I turn to see Catherine stepping nimbly over the rocks behind her daughter.

“No.” I reach out a hand to help her, but she ignores it.

“I told you not to come back here.”

“I know.”

She breathes out her nose, walks past me toward the hut. At the edge of the yard, she stands with her hands on her hips. Her daughter goes on, down an invisible path through the weeds. There is an avocado tree back there, I remember now.

“Why are you here, then?” Catherine asks.

It’s not an answer, but it’s all I can say: “My mother is dead.”

Catherine doesn’t move.

“Someone killed her. Five years ago.” Still nothing, and I find myself relieved at the silence, the utter lack of sympathy. I keep talking. “I thought I knew who killed her, but last night I found out for sure I was wrong. Maybe I went a little crazy.” I try to smile, but it doesn’t quite stick.

Five years I’ve lost hating Mr. G. Hating him. Plotting my revenge. Letting that hate drive me. Dirt. Money. Blood. It was so easy. And now . . . it’s like suddenly losing a limb. I keep trying to walk, forgetting I’ve lost my leg.

“You know the weird thing?” I say, talking basically to myself now. “I think I already knew he didn’t do it.” I swallow and nod. Catherine is still quiet, and I’m grateful.

Can’t I just keep on hating Mr. Greyhill? That would be so much easier. Turning my anger at David Mwika feels like asking the earth to start spinning in the opposite direction. David Mwika? He’s dead. I can never ask him why he did it. Was it even him in the video? I have nothing to go on now.

“Who killed her?” Catherine finally asks. Her face is still hard, but the softness of her voice, unexpected, pierces through me, and I sink to the ground. The world seems too bright; there’s too much of it.

“I don’t know. I think maybe a security guard she worked with? But I-I don’t know why.”

I should go home. Coming back here to Congo was a stupid idea. I don’t know what I’m doing. I should go home to Kiki and . . . and what? Beg forgiveness from Bug Eye? Give Mr. Omoko Mr. Greyhill’s money like I promised? I’ve opened this door and now I don’t know how to shut it. If I keep going, his whole family will be ruined. Michael, his sister, mother, everyone. That was the whole point. But I can’t do that now. Can I? No. Yes. I have to. Mr. Omoko is waiting. Goondas who disobey orders get chained to cinder blocks and tossed off piers. I may get killed anyway, just for running off like an idiot.