The Bitter Side of Sweet

by Tara Sullivan

  My knees shush against the dirt floor and her crying cuts off. Her breathing is jagged.

  “Shh,” I say. “It’s okay. It’s just me, Amadou. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “I . . . A . . .” She can’t get any farther.

  I scoot over and put my hand on her back. She stiffens instantly when I touch her, and I take my hand away, not wanting to make her feel worse. Instead, I pull my knees to my chest again and stay beside her.

  We’re like that for a long time, two people wrapped up like coils of rope sitting next to each other. Then, after nearly an hour of me not moving, she leans into me. I wrap my right arm around her and let her cry into my shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, rubbing her back in small circles like you would a crying baby or a frightened child. “I’m sorry.” I don’t say anything else because there’s nothing else I can think of to say.

  We sit like that until the sun bleeds into the night sky and the cracks in the wooden shed door glow pink. When this happens I know we’ve made it through the worst of it. Pain is like sadness; both are easier to bear in daylight.

  “Look,” I whisper to her, “it’s morning.”

  When the shed grows bright enough that I can easily see the jumble of objects around us, I stand up, breaking the contact we’ve had all night, to do some gentle stretches. I have no idea what the morning is going to bring: whether I’m about to get another beating or another test to be put on a crew. I decide to try to be as ready as possible. Khadija doesn’t move.

  The silence is starting to feel uncomfortable, but we haven’t said anything to each other for hours, so I let it stand.

  Finally, I hear the rattle of the bosses’ old pickup coming over the hill from their house. I bounce a little on the balls of my feet, trying to loosen up, trying to ignore the worry building inside of me.

  I hear the snick of the padlock on the sleeping hut, the normal tired grumble of thirteen boys asked to get up, the clatter and splash of morning chores. I hear Ismail calling my name. Finally, the toolshed door opens.

  “He’s in here.” Ismail’s tone is surprised, his eyebrows high on his forehead.

  “Oh, that’s right.” Behind Ismail I hear Moussa’s low rumble. “That’s where I put him last night.”

  I look at Ismail, wondering whether it makes a difference to him that I was here last night. Whether, in some way, this will make things worse for me, or for her. But I don’t see any shame in his face. Instead, he turns and gapes at Moussa.

  “You didn’t count last night?”

  Moussa barks a laugh.

  “Ayi,” he admits. “With all the excitement I forgot to count.”

  I can see Ismail puff up, ready to shout, but Moussa goes on.

  “I was tired. I went to bed. He’s here and nothing happened. Let’s get on with it. Oumar is going to be here any day now.”

  Ismail grumbles.

  “Seydou was in the hut,” Moussa says soothingly, putting a hand on Ismail and steering him out of the doorway. “Even if Amadou had been outside and holding the keys to my truck, he wouldn’t have gone anywhere.” The way he says it makes it sound like a weakness. I scowl since they’re not facing me.

  Ismail grunts in response and closes the door behind him, leaving Khadija and me inside. That throws me a little off balance. I turn around to see what Khadija thinks of all this, but she’s curled with her head on her knees again and doesn’t look up. I shuffle from foot to foot, not sure what to do with my body and unable to settle my mind. The sounds of breakfast swell and fade and then the door is opened again. This time Moussa fills the doorway.

  “Come on,” he says.

  Grateful to have a reason to move, I walk out of the toolshed and stand off to the side, waiting to be told what to do. Moussa follows me out, dragging Khadija with him. I pull in a breath. Though I just spent a night next to her, I haven’t really looked at her since yesterday. The change is brutal. Her dress is filthy and bloodstained; her face is swollen from blows. But the most terrifying change is the deadness in her eyes. Moussa shoves the two of us at the lean-to where we were shelling yesterday and chains her to the ring again. As soon as he lets go of her arm, she collapses.

  I feel a stab of loss. I helped Moussa catch her the day she had her best chance of getting away. Then last night I hid in a corner and didn’t even try to stop what they did to her.

  I fiddle with the machete in my hands and try not to look at the hunched form of the thirteen-year-old girl at my feet.

  Khadija is still here.

  The wildcat is gone.

  Both of those things are my fault.

  The rest of the boys are split into crews as always and head off into the groves. Like yesterday, the girl and I are left with two machetes and a wall of sacks full of pods. Today she’s supposed to shell and I’m supposed to pile the shelled seeds in shallow pits to ferment them.

  For a while after the camp empties out, I just sit there, not sure if I have the strength to make quota today. Not that I even know what quota is. I pick at the crusted blood and dirt on my arms, glancing from time to time at Khadija. Other than the slight rise and fall of her rib cage, there’s no indication she’s even alive.

  Working alone, I’ll never get as much done today as we did yesterday. But even that realization isn’t enough to make me ask her to come back to this world. I sigh and flex my aching muscles. Maybe if I work as hard as I can, I’ll get enough done to cover for her.

  I pull the nearest sack forward and spill the pods on the ground before me, ready to do my best to cut and scoop them myself. And that’s when I find the present. As soon as the top layer of pods rolls out of the sack, underneath I find four wild mangoes. I touch the gifts with my finger, not really ready to believe they’re real. They are. I marvel at them. There’s only one way these items found their way into this sack. It means that yesterday, not only did Seydou keep up with the bigger boys on a regular crew, but he took time from meeting quota to cut me some mangoes. Small, tired, and scared, even on his first day out alone, my little brother was taking care of me too.

  I get myself a big drink of water from the pump and eat two of the mangoes, saving the rest to give to Khadija when she feels up to it. Then I get to work.

  Today I am going to make quota.

  I will do it for Seydou.

  I will do it for Khadija.

  I slip into my empty place and start to cut pods.

  The day stretches on and the heat builds. I’m working as fast as I can, though the pain from my two-day-old beating still makes it hard to move smoothly. Sweat is running down the sides of my face and neck, making the welts on my back sting, but I don’t stop. After the first few hours of not moving, Khadija has slowly relaxed, but she still won’t make eye contact with me and we still haven’t said anything to each other.

  Finally, I’ve gone through all the sacks I can easily reach. All the rest are behind her and I’m not sure how she’ll react to me getting that close.

  “Khadija?”

  After half a day of not talking, my voice sounds loud and grating even to my own ears. Khadija stiffens immediately. Then, after a moment, when I don’t say anything more, she slowly lifts her head.

  I wince. Her face is filthy, her lips are split, and her right eye is swollen shut, disfiguring her prettiness. Without her expression declaring war on the world, she looks younger, more fragile. When she turns, she moves stiffly, like the rest of her is hurting too.

  “Here,” I say, and I hold out a bowl of water. My voice is soft, like you use to approach an animal that might bolt at any second. “Have some water.”

  She looks at me blankly. I’m reminded again that this beaten thing is not the same girl I worked with yesterday. I’m surprised to find that I want her back.

  I put down the bowl and pull my shirt off. I turn it inside out so there’
s not so much dirt showing and pour a little bit of the water onto the sleeve. I squat in front of her and reach for her face. She flinches when the wet cloth touches her, but she doesn’t move away. Slowly, I wipe the dirt from her cuts and eyes and mouth. I pour a little more water on my shirt and wipe at the dried snot and tears and blood until her face is clean. While I do this, I hold her hand and talk to her softly, like I used to do for Seydou when we first got here and he was hurt and afraid. Stupid things, just to fill the silence and keep her from moving.

  “You’re going to be all right,” I murmur. “Look, here you go, you’re nearly clean now. No more dirt. Doesn’t that feel better?”

  When I’ve finished with her face, I wipe off her hands and arms, then I trace under the chafed ring of the manacle on her ankle. I squeeze her hands and look into her one unswollen eye, but she still isn’t there. I’m starting to get worried: I know the place she’s wandering. The dry, gray place inside where your spirit goes when you decide you’d rather die than continue to face the world. I’ve sunk there many times. But I always crawled my way back out, because I knew Seydou needed me.

  “I need your help,” I say softly. “Can you pass me the bags behind you? I can’t reach them.”

  Still nothing.

  I lift the bowl of water to her mouth and tip a little in. She swallows automatically and I tip it a little more. After a few swallows, her eyes clear a bit and she looks at me, really seeing me for the first time all morning. I slip my damp, dirt-streaked shirt over my head, pick up a mango, and slice it for her with my machete.

  “Eat,” I say, holding it out.

  After a few seconds, she takes it from me. I could sing. Her spirit might not yet want to be with the living, but if she’ll eat, at least her body doesn’t want to die.

  When I take her hand again, I can feel the grip of her fingers and I smile.

  “Hello, wildcat,” I say.

  She eats the mango all the way to the peel and I slice the rest of the fruit for her, then hand her the pit to suck the juice from. Wordlessly, she pulls a sack around for me.

  “I ni cé,” I say, and I get back to work.

  For the rest of the day, I become a machine for shelling. When my muscles cramp, I get up and pile the seeds for fermenting, covering them with banana leaves and stirring the piles that have already sat in the sun for a few days. The stench is powerful, but we don’t dry them on the racks until they’re well and truly soured.

  Though she still won’t talk, Khadija watches me work, and whenever I get to the bottom of the sack I’m working on, she pushes another one to me. By the time Moussa walks into the clearing and comes to check on us that evening, everything is done.

  “You’ve finished?” Moussa looks over my work, sounding faintly surprised.

  “Awó,” I say. “I’m ready to go on a work team now.” Moussa looks at me sharply, but I’ve been practicing what to say in my head for the last hour and I race on. “We’re caught up. It would be a waste for you to keep me here when I could get so much more done on a harvest crew.”

  All day my worry has bounced between the girl beside me and my invisible brother, working far away without any help. The mangoes kept me going, but every time I tasted their lingering sweetness in my mouth, I wondered about Seydou. Even if he can keep up now, I don’t want him going any more days alone. I need Moussa to not keep me here for a third day. There’s a pause where Moussa looks at me, his face as hard as a tree trunk. I play my last card.

  “When we get enough for you to need me to do this again, you can put me back here. But for now, you should put me on a crew.”

  “Now, you listen carefully, Amadou,” Moussa says, leaning his face close to mine. His usually flat eyes are glittering and the muscles of his jaw are bunched into visible knots. I feel my hope trickle out of me. Moussa is still furious. “You helped that girl escape. Twice. I don’t want to let you off so easily. But I have no choice but to put you on crew because we only have a few days left to meet quota and we lost a boy today.” Lost, I think. That one word could mean so many things. Lost could mean the boy ran away, or died, or got injured so severely that the bosses don’t think he can work anymore. I look at Moussa unflinchingly. He goes on. “So I’m letting you go. But I’m going to be keeping an extra-special eye on you, so don’t try anything funny.”

  “Awó.” I gasp with relief. “You’ll see, I’ll work hard and you won’t have to worry about a thing!”

  The first of the teams are appearing on the edges of the forest. Moussa goes to the center of the camp to light the fire. I stay sitting beside Khadija because, as evening has fallen and the sky has gotten darker, she has pulled back into her little ball and I feel bad leaving her alone like that.

  “Moussa?” I call over to him, my curiosity getting the better of me.

  “Hmm?”

  “The boy you lost today. Who was he?”

  Moussa turns. The firelight behind him makes his face a mask.

  “It was your brother,” he says.

  7

  Your brother.

  The words echo hollowly in my head and, for a moment, I don’t process them. They are nothing but sounds, without any meaning. Then it hits me. Seydou. He’s talking about Seydou.

  Beside me, Khadija’s head snaps up and she makes a small noise.

  At any other time today, this would have made me happy, but my problems have suddenly gotten so much bigger that I don’t even look at her. I jump to my feet and scan the faces of the boys who have already arrived. He’s nowhere to be seen. Moussa is still looking at me. I take a step closer to him, not sure my voice will carry.

  “Seydou?” I choke out.

  “Awó,” says Moussa flatly. “He got hurt today and isn’t going to be able to work until he gets better.”

  Hurt! My heart starts beating again when he says that word and it’s only then that I can admit to myself that I thought Seydou might be dead. My stomach twists painfully and I want to throw up, but don’t. Moussa gives me a thin-lipped smile.

  “I guess he just wasn’t able to manage without the help of his big brother. Shame you weren’t there to protect him.”

  “Where is he?” I ask. My voice is tight and shaky.

  Moussa waves toward the edge of the clearing.

  “His team should be back soon. They’re moving slowly since they have to carry him.” And with that, he turns away from me and busies himself feeding the fire.

  I run to the other boys.

  “Did you see Seydou today?” I ask them, but the ones who answer say no.

  I pace the clearing by the fire in tight circles, shaking out my hands in nervousness, waiting for Seydou’s crew. Every time I look, I see Moussa staring at me. His eyes are mirrors; I can’t see anything behind them. Unsure what he’s thinking, I don’t take a chance on any more questions. I turn away from him and continue pacing.

  How much longer will they be? Where are they?

  And then suddenly, there they are. The shadowy greenery off to one side of the camp shivers and then Salif and the other five boys who went with him that morning pop into the clearing. Except one of them isn’t walking. For a moment I stand there, then I’m sprinting across the clearing to see the limp body that is stretched on a pod sack being carried by a boy at each corner. They leave a dark trail behind them. The cloth is dripping blood.

  I run so hard I have trouble stopping and I nearly smash into Modibo. I grab his arm to steady myself and look into the hammock he’s straining to carry. But then I’m frozen again, hand still on his arm, because I don’t know what to do next.

  Seydou is sprawled in the dip of the sack, his long skinny legs hanging off, his heels covered in dust from where they’ve been dragging. His head lolls to the side and I can tell he’s not really conscious right now, but that’s probably a good thing because there’s blood everywhere. So much blood! It’s
very wet and very red, so he must have been injured not long ago.

  “Get off!” Modibo pulls away from me. “You can look when we get to the fire. He’s heavy.”

  I trail along after them, watching miserably as Seydou’s heels bump across the ground.

  When they get to the edge of the fire, the boys set down the sack and leave, stretching their arms and cracking their necks, as if they’d carried a large sack of cacao, not my brother.

  The sack with Seydou on it is now spread in front of the fire. The firelight plays across his face, highlighting his slightly sunken temples and eyes. I try not to think about how skinny he is most of the time, but right now, I can’t avoid how little of him there is in this world.

  I sink beside him on my knees and rest my hand softly on his forehead. His face looks peaceful, smoothed out in the light like he’s asleep. I know it’s only because he’s unconscious that he looks like that, but it makes my heart twist anyway.

  “Oh, Seydou,” I manage. Tears are choking my voice, but I don’t even care. Seydou’s not awake to hear me, and the rest of them can all go to hell as far as I’m concerned. They didn’t keep him safe.

  No, you didn’t keep him safe.

  I shudder and force myself to look at my brother more carefully. There. That’s why he won’t be able to work anymore. I see a dirty rag wrapped tightly around Seydou’s arm, soaked in blood. His chest is bare and I realize that the rag must be his shirt. I look over the rest of him, all blessedly in once piece. But there’s so much blood I wonder how bad the cut is. A heavy hand on my shoulder makes me jump. I whirl around. Moussa is standing behind me, a small bag in his hand.

  “Let’s have a look,” he says.

  I scoot over and Moussa kneels beside me to unwrap the shirt tied around Seydou’s arm. I don’t know what to do, so I just stay put. The bandage is dripping, soaked through, so it comes off Seydou’s arm easily. The wet shirt hits the ground with a soft slap and Moussa looks at me sharply. It’s the only way I know that I’ve made a noise.