The Girl in the Road (19 page)

In another two days, after crossing the border into Sudan, we came to the Sun Traps.

Our convoy passed through their ranks. We knelt by the side of the truck and watched them stretch to the northern horizon. They'd been built by the Chinese, you told me, but I must have missed the sign saying
we the people of china do gift these sun traps to you sudanese
. It was the first large-scale solar array built in the Sahara. Apparently it powered four nearby towns, and soon, with the investment of the Sudanese government, they would expand operations to power most of Khartoum.

To me, the Sun Traps looked like a forest of yawning black metal butterflies, their wings opening and closing in concert. So I said so.

Francis said, Or like women, their legs opening.

You slapped Francis on the head and said, Watch your mouth around the little girl.

But I said, Yes, just like women opening their legs! I've seen it—

You both stared at me.

You said, You've seen what?

A woman with her legs open, I said. My mother! What a whore!

You and Francis looked at each other over my head. I had expected you to laugh. But you didn't.

Francis crouched down and looked me in the eyes. You must not speak of your mother that way, he said.

She's not my mother anymore, I said. And anyway, you can't tell me what to say.

I hated Francis then.

I walked away.

I didn't speak of my mother again for thirteen years.

After the chaos of Chad, Sudan was quiet. We continued through a land of black rivers twisting on brown plains and buzzards hopping to and fro in their morning parties. We passed the days quietly too, as if talking too much would defile the desert silence. I sat against a crate, watching the road vomit itself from beneath our wheels. I wondered why the oil barrel I'd hid in had been so cold. I started counting shepherd boys and girls, much taller than me, strong and skinny.

And then there were no boys or girls for a long time. The dust blew across the road like curtains closing behind us.

I saw the crates shift before I felt it. The truck swerved. Then the world turned upside down: I saw sky where sand should have been, and sand where sky should have been. The crate hit the ground and my head hit the crate. My mind turned to static, a popping black fizzy soda, and my body tumbled over and over before finally coming to rest.

I heard explosions, like the sounds of guns. I saw silver mist stream overhead. I thought, We're all in a Nollywood film, a Bollywood film, a blue and silver adventure.

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.

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 age; 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
.