The Bite of the Mango (5 page)

“You’re pregnant.”

I didn’t understand what the female doctor in the white coat was saying, though she was speaking Temne. My eyes moved from the doctor’s round face to her hands tucked into the pockets of her coat. Abibatu, Marie’s younger sister, was standing beside the doctor. She had arrived in Freetown from Port Loko about a week earlier.

“You’re pregnant,” the doctor said to me again. “You are going to have a baby. Do you understand?”

Abibatu, a large woman with Marie’s warm smile, had tears in her eyes. “How did this happen to you?” she asked me.

“I don’t know,” I muttered. “I don’t know.” It didn’t make any sense.

Since her arrival, Abibatu had taken on many of Fatmata’s responsibilities, including helping me bathe. One evening, as she was dipping a cloth into the soapy cold water, she had exclaimed, “Mariatu, your breasts are swollen. When did you last have your time?” Abibatu was referring to my period. Marie had said that I’d eventually get it once every full moon or so, but it wasn’t regular yet, and I couldn’t remember when it had last come.

“Have you been eating since you came to the hospital?” Abibatu had asked me next.

I shook my head. Anything I tried to eat, including plain white rice or cornmeal, I would immediately throw up. I’d feel sick to my stomach the moment I smelled food coming down the hallway. Sometimes I could swallow a few spoonfuls of the food I carefully took myself, holding the metal spoon in between my bandaged arms. But more often than not I’d motion for Fatmata or Abibatu to bring me a bucket before the spoon even hit my lips.

“I want the doctor to run some tests on you, Mariatu,” Abibatu had said worriedly. “I think you might be pregnant.”

I wasn’t quite sure what
pregnant
meant. But before I could ask her, another woman and another girl with no hands had entered the bathing room. Abibatu helped me out of the tub and dried me off.

When Abibatu and I got back to the girls’ ward after learning I was pregnant, Sulaiman and his second wife, yet another Mariatu, were there to greet us. The hospital had tracked him down, and since then he had visited me at least once a day.

Sulaiman was crying, big sobs that seemed to come from deep within his belly. It was shocking. I’d never seen a man cry before. He was also agitated, and as soon as he saw me, he started waving his arms.

“Who did this to you, Mariatu?” he demanded angrily. “I will kill him with my own hands.”

I had always liked Sulaiman. Whenever he visited Magborou, he’d bring all the kids candy from Freetown.
Sulaiman didn’t talk down to us like many adults did, and he often joined in our games. Now he was scowling and furious. He launched into a tirade, first blaming Marie for what had happened to me, and then starting in on Sierra Leone’s president for not stopping the war and on foreigners for not coming to our country’s aid. I wasn’t always sure what he was talking about. Finally he calmed down, saying he wanted me to come and live with him and his wife. Mariatu stepped forward with a smile to agree.

“You need to get better first,” Sulaiman continued. “Your wounds are not quite healed, and you are still on medication to fight infection. I’ve spoken to the doctors, so I know they expect the outcome to be good. You will be fine—as fine as you can be without hands. And we will help you look after the baby.”

When Sulaiman and Mariatu had left, I sat on my bed with Abibatu. “Who did this to you?” she asked, gently rubbing her hands up and down my arms. “Did the rebels give you a baby?”

I was really confused. All I had heard was that babies came from a woman’s belly button. When a woman in Magborou had a child inside her, her tummy would swell and then, when she began to waddle like the white-chested ducks from the ponds, the woman would enter the house of the medicine woman. A few other village women would go inside too. Screams soon followed, sometimes lasting for a day and a night. A day or two later, the woman would emerge smiling, holding in her arms a tiny baby.

“No, the rebels did not do this to me,” I told Abibatu. “But there must be a mistake. Only women have babies, not girls.” My eyes searched her face for some answers.

Abibatu swung her legs around and climbed up beside me. We lay close together as she explained to me how babies were made.

After her explanation, Abibatu left me alone to sleep. I lay very still, thinking over what she had told me about sex and men. And then I knew. I knew what had happened to me.

About a month before we fled to Manarma, we were all in the bush, having heard yet another rumor that the rebels were approaching. It was near the end of Ramadan, and Marie and Alie went back to Magborou ahead of us, to pray and to check that things were safe.

One night after dinner, Ibrahim and Mohamed went to bed early, leaving Adamsay and me by the fire alone. We were sitting quietly under the stars, watching the fire fade, when Salieu approached us.

“Ya Marie and Pa Alie asked me to watch over you girls,” he said with a crooked smile. My back stiffened. My body tingled, as if in warning, from head to toe. I didn’t like this man, not one bit. There was something about him I feared.

I sat alert and still as the fire turned to glowing coals. I felt too frightened even to move. I said nothing as Adamsay and Salieu talked about Magborou and the village people. Eventually I found the strength to stand up and say good night.

We had made beds for ourselves out of twigs and leaves, and I burrowed into mine. But I couldn’t sleep, and for good reason. Not long after, I heard heavy footsteps coming near. I closed my eyes, pretending to be asleep. I hoped it was Adamsay, whose bed was beside mine. But I knew it wasn’t.

Salieu lay down beside me. I didn’t believe he would do anything to me if I appeared to be sleeping, but he started touching me all over, fondling my breasts and my hair, making his way in between my legs. That’s when I sat up.

“What are you doing here? Where is Adamsay?” I shouted.

Salieu just smiled his sinister smile and began touching me some more. I could smell his stale breath and sweat.

“Stop, stop, stop,” I yelled. Finally I screamed at the top of my lungs.

A few seconds later, I heard footsteps and then Ibrahim’s voice: “What is it? What is it?”

Salieu jumped up, smoothing his cotton shirt and pants. I pulled down my skirt, which was now high above my waist.

“Mariatu is having a nightmare,” Salieu, acting like he had just arrived, told Mohamed and Ibrahim when they appeared. He knelt down and gave me a kiss on the forehead. “It’s nothing, child,” he said. “Go back to sleep. I’ll find Adamsay and you two can be together and feel safe.”

The next day, we four kids went back to Magborou. Salieu returned to his village to be with his first wife and two young children. I felt a sense of relief, hoping I would never have to see this man again. I was embarrassed and confused about what he had done to me. I told no one.

But soon Salieu started visiting Magborou on a regular basis. He’d come right into our house and ask Alie for a hammer, or Marie for some peppers or a needle and some thread, saying his family was short on supplies because of the war. The whole time he was there, he’d look at me through the slits in the corners of his eyes. My body broke out in goosebumps whenever
he was around. I could smell him even after he had left.

“Marie, I need to tell you something,” I piped up one afternoon as we were washing some pots by the river. “Salieu is not a good man. Out in the bush, he touched me. He scares me. I don’t want to marry him. I never want to be around him again.”

I will never forget what happened next. Marie turned, pulled a whipping stick from the ground, and smacked me across the face so hard I was sure I was bleeding. I didn’t move. I was in shock.

“Don’t you disrespect Salieu,” Marie said to me in a hard voice. “He
is
a good man. He would never want to hurt you. He wants to protect you. Don’t speak badly of your elders again.”

Marie and I went back to washing. I choked back my tears.

A few days later, Salieu came to our house when I was the only one there. The others were all out at the farm.

“Where’s Ya Marie?” he asked when he saw me.

“Coming,” I lied. I wanted him to think she’d be right back.

“I will wait,” he said, sitting down on one of the benches in the parlor.

As I turned to leave, he jumped up and grabbed me by the waist. I started hitting and kicking him.

“If you make any noise,” he said coldly, “I will make sure you are punished.”

Salieu dragged me down the hall and threw me onto the floor in the room at the back of the hut. He stuffed a piece of fabric into my mouth, tore off my top, and pulled up my skirt so high it covered my face. I could feel him on top of me, then inside of me. Pounding, hurting.

I tried to get loose, to kick, to scratch, but he was too strong. I was a small 12-year-old. He was a big muscleman like Alie.

When Salieu was finished, he pulled my skirt down, smoothed out my hair, and stroked my cheek. He bent down so low that his nose was touching mine. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said in a harsh, low voice. He pulled the fabric from my mouth and kissed me softly on the lips.

I didn’t tell anyone what had happened. I wasn’t sure, for one thing, exactly what it was Salieu had done.

Now I knew, and I was going to have a baby.

I sat up in my bed in the girls’ ward and looked around. My eyes landed on the blue pills that Abibatu had said were painkillers. They were sitting in a small container on top of the table beside my bed. The other girls in the ward were sound asleep.

I pushed back the sheet, now drenched in sweat, and swung my legs around until I was standing on the bare cement floor. I grabbed the pill bottle between my arms and sat back down on the bed. With my bandages, I tried to pry open the lid. My arms hurt from the pressure, but I didn’t give up.

After some concerted effort, the lid opened.

I stopped for a moment to pray.

“Take me, Allah. Take my baby and me. I want to die.”

There are times when silence is louder than any voice.

Even though I’d been convinced that the other girls were asleep and that my relatives were gone for the night, staying in Sulaiman’s house somewhere in Freetown, I was wrong. Abibatu was still there in the hospital. She had been sleeping on the floor beside another bed, and just as I lifted the bottle to my mouth, she came from out of nowhere and smacked it from my grasp. The tiny blue pills scattered across the floor, making a noise like scurrying mice.

Silence fell again as the last pill stopped spinning. A feeling inside of me, like nothing I had ever felt before, raged forth. An energy bubbled and swirled; I could not control it. I swung around in a fury and lashed out at Abibatu. I shouted at her. I spat at her. I hit her. I kicked her when she tried to grab me.

Everyone in the room was awake by now and gaping at me.

Abibatu stepped back as I threw myself on my bed and then onto the floor. For a moment, I had wanted to kill her. Then there would be no one to stop me from killing myself, and the baby inside of me, too.

I sat on the floor for a long time, my legs pulled up to my
chest, my head perched on my bandaged arms. As my anger subsided, I knew that if I killed Abibatu, there would be one less person in the world who cared about me.

Abibatu rocked me in her arms while I cried and cried.

“I don’t want you to kill your baby,” she said softly, assuming it was the child I wanted to harm.

But I wanted to die too.

“I have no future,” I said to Abibatu. “I have no future,” I repeated over and over again.

“Don’t talk this way,” Abibatu said firmly, spinning me around to face her. “You have many things to live for. Your mother. Your father. Your cousins, grandmother, aunties. They all love you, and you love them.”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to listen.

The room grew quiet as the other girls returned to sleep. I watched a fly circling one of the kerosene lamps. Like a wave hitting the shore, something washed over me, and I came back to my senses. “You’re right,” I told Abibatu. “You’re right.”

Abibatu helped me back into bed and lay down beside me. When I woke up the next day, she was still there, snoring gently.

As the weeks passed, the reality of my situation was never far from my mind. Sometimes all I could think about was Salieu. I hated the baby growing inside me since it reminded me of him. I felt I could almost deal with the horror of what the rebels had done to me. After all, Ibrahim and Mohamed, as well as hundreds of other young people, had also lost their hands. There was some comfort in knowing that we shared the common fate of learning to survive and care for ourselves after
such a devastating ordeal. We were all beginning to feed and wash ourselves, even with our injuries. Using the stumps of my arms covered in bandages, I could even brush my teeth and comb my hair. But the baby made me different from them.

One night I had a dream that Salieu came into the girls’ ward and sat down beside me on a metal chair.

“Why do you want to kill yourself?” he asked. “Why do you want to kill the baby?”

I said nothing
.

“I know you didn’t like what I did to you,” he said. “And you weren’t ready for this. But I love you. And I want you to have this baby for me, because my wife and I only had girls. All I ever wanted was a son.”

I turned to him with a tear-stained face. “I hate you,” I spat. “I don’t want to see you anymore. Go!”

“I’m dead,” he said. “But I will always see you, and I will guide you. I also won’t let you kill this baby. I know you’re going to have a boy. And even though I won’t be with that boy, my family will take the baby and look after my son for you.”

“How are you going to stop me from killing myself?” I shouted
.

“I know what you are trying to do,” he responded. “I come here every day to make sure you’re okay.”

“Why did you do this to me?” I asked then
.

“I’m sorry,” he replied. “It was a mistake.”

“NO! NO! NO!” I yelled. “It was not a mistake. A mistake is putting too much salt on the rice. If what you did to me was a mistake, it was the stupidest mistake you ever made in your life. You should have known better. I will never have a happy life now. I have no hands, and I have a baby growing inside of me that I will never be able to care for
.
It might as well die now, because it will die later. I won’t be able to look after it. I don’t want to see you anymore. I told you to go. Now go!”

I woke with a start. The dream had felt so real that it took a while for me to calm down and realize where I was.

When Abibatu arrived that morning, I described my dream, finally telling her what Salieu had done.

“Ahhh, so you’re having a boy,” she said. “That will make Salieu very happy.”

“
Him
happy!” I responded indignantly. “What about me? What about my happiness?” Back in my old world, I said to her, before the rebels, I had wanted to marry Musa, have four children—two girls and two boys—and wear a beautiful long Africana dress for my wedding. This had been my plan for happiness, I told her. Now it made me sad to remember it.

Until recently, I had thought my cousin Adamsay was dead. I had even told the doctors, nurses, Mohamed, and Ibrahim that the rebels had murdered her. So many people were killed in that attack on Manarma, maybe as many as a hundred, I learned in Freetown. But Adamsay wasn’t one of them. The rebels had cut off her hands too. After, she made her way alone through the bush to Port Loko. She was wandering the streets, a dirty and bloodied figure in the crowded markets, when Abibatu’s husband stumbled upon her. Abibatu had brought her to Freetown.

When Adamsay and I were reunited on the girls’ ward at the hospital, we cried and cried. We held each other for what seemed like hours, until she was taken to the operating room to have her wounds attended to. Since then, we’d spent most of
our time together.

By now, we had recovered enough from our injuries to spend our days outside. At first, Adamsay, Mohamed, Ibrahim, and I would wander the hospital grounds, peering into the street over the tall fence.

From what I could see of Freetown, it was a hectic place, with lots of cars and people walking to and from work and the market. It was also hot, hotter than Magborou, probably because of all the buildings and the people crowded together. Air couldn’t circulate very well through the dirty city.

Some of the women we saw were dressed in sleek skirts and blouses with buttons and strange collars. While I had never seen clothes like this before, I was even more intrigued by the way the younger women dressed. They wore pants, sometimes so short that their buttocks spilled out. In Sierra Leone, women are prized for having round, full bottoms. We hide our bottoms underneath our long skirts and dresses, because we’re brought up to believe we should show no one except our husband this very special part of our body. Our breasts, on the other hand, are what we use to feed our babies. So it’s quite normal for a woman to walk around with no shirt on, especially when there is a nursing child nearby. But to show off your bottom! My mouth hung open as I watched these girls over the fence.

“Freetown sure is different from Magborou,” I exclaimed once to Mohamed as we observed such a scene.

Mohamed didn’t reply. His eyes were trained on the women, and a strange smile transfixed his face. Men, boys, can be funny sometimes!

Another odd sight greeted us when we stepped outside: the
patients themselves. Some of the men, women, and children, bandaged, bruised, and cut, would walk right out of the front gate of the hospital, carrying plastic shopping bags that they thrust toward passersby on the street. Sometimes the Freetown men and women would drop a few leones in a bag. Mostly, though, they would shake their heads and walk right on past.

I soon understood that these patients were begging for money. Almost everyone in the hospital was poor and from the villages. They had ended up in Freetown after the rebels attacked them.

I would soon learn too that kids like me, with no hands, made the best beggars of all. The people of Freetown felt sorry for us, so they gave us more money than they did older people.

The citizens of Freetown all knew about the war. When it had started years before in eastern Sierra Leone, many villagers from the northeast of the country had fled to Freetown, and hundreds of them were now living there, at the hospitals, at places called refugee camps, and right on the streets, sleeping wherever they laid their heads. Later, the fighting had actually reached the city, in January 1999. When they hit Magborou, the rebels were retreating from Freetown.

Ibrahim, Mohamed, Adamsay, and I decided one day to see what begging was like. Soon we were begging every day, though I hated every moment of it.

My hatred toward the world began anew each morning. As the sun lifted, streaming through the windows on my ward, I’d wake with a sinking feeling. My first thoughts were always of my life before Salieu, before the baby, before the rebels came. Mornings reminded me of everything I no longer had.

The day almost always started with Adamsay shaking me before most of the other girls were awake, and whispering: “It’s time to go.”

As I headed toward the bathroom, I tiptoed around all the sleeping bodies, girls who hadn’t discovered yet that they could make a living by begging. I’d wipe a damp cloth over my face and hair. After, I’d straighten out my skirt and top.

Adamsay, Ibrahim, Mohamed, and I would meet at the hospital’s front entranceway. We nodded hello but rarely talked as we walked off the hospital grounds. Even at that early hour, the streets were full of people.

On a good day, we could make as much as 10,000 leones, or about three dollars, by pooling our money. The best days were usually Fridays, when we would stand outside the mosque and catch the men on their way out. They had been praying, so they were in a generous mood when they saw us.

Most of the people in the street didn’t look at me; they looked down or around me. Sometimes they’d glance at my bandaged arms, where my hands used to be, and shake their heads. Sadness might cross their faces; other times I sensed relief that they themselves had been spared these terrible injuries. The only consistent thing in begging was that very few people dared to look me in the eyes. I learned to fix my gaze on the ground until someone dropped some leones in my black plastic bag. Then I’d raise my eyes to say thank you before quickly lowering them again.

Ibrahim, Mohamed, Adamsay, and I used whatever money we collected to buy a bottle of water from the market to share. Mohamed, being Mohamed, always looked at the bright side
of our lives.

“You remember that woman in front of the bus station who talked to you, Mariatu?” he said one day.

I nodded. A tall, skinny woman wearing a navy blue skirt and white blouse had asked me, “Where’s your family? Where do you live now? Why did they cut off your hands?”

Like I always did when someone posed these questions, I had thought to myself, “Why do you want to know? It’s not as if my story is any different from that of all the other girls in Freetown with no hands because of the war.” But I still answered the woman.

“My mom is back in our village,” I said. “I live at the hospital now, with my cousins. I don’t know why the rebels cut off my hands.”

The woman put 25,000 leones into my black bag. It was a fortune, the most money I had ever made in one day by begging.

“I think she wanted to adopt you,” Mohamed said now, winking at me. “I know you will be the one, Mariatu,” he added. “I know it will be you.”

Mohamed meant that I’d be the one among the four of us to be taken in by a rich family. We’d been in the hospital for about a month, and rumors circulated everywhere that there were wealthy people, both in Freetown and in far-off countries, who adopted children who had been injured in the war.

At first, I hadn’t known what this word
adoption
meant. But Mohamed explained that it was no different from the way my mother and father had sent me to live with Marie. I allowed myself to daydream a tiny bit about what life would be like as a daughter in another family, a wealthy family: nice clothes, food
whenever I wanted it, safety, and sleep-filled nights—all the things we had in Magborou.

Then the horrible words I was greeted with at least once a day broke into my thoughts.

“WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU, BEGGAR GIRL?”

A minibus called a poda-poda was speeding by. A couple of teenage boys leaned out the window, taunting me.

“Can you even feed yourself?” one called out.

“Guess you were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the other yelled. “Now someone will have to look after you for the rest of your life.”

I kept my head down, pretending I couldn’t hear. But the words were like a knife stabbing into my heart. A thick knot filled my throat. I wanted to kill myself again.

“Why did this have to happen to me?” I raged inside.