The Bitter Side of Sweet

by Tara Sullivan

  When Moussa finally looks at the orange-striped clouds and says it’s time to go, I shove my machete into a loop of rope around my waist, heft a sack, and break into a jog. Moussa lets me run. I guess he knows I’m running back, not away.

  I skid into the clearing and dump my sack of pods by the lean-to. I toss my terrible machete into the toolshed and race to the sleeping hut.

  “Seydou, Khadija, I’m here!” I call through the door.

  When Moussa catches up to me and unlocks the padlock, I charge across the dusty floor and drop to my knees beside Seydou. He’s lying very still, but I can see the soft rise and fall of his chest and I slow my breathing to match it. When I reach out, he gasps as if it hurts for me to touch him. He’s burning with fever. The makeshift bandage I put on him this morning is crusted solid. When I left, it was loose, but now it’s so tight his fingers bulge out of the top like cassava tubers. I turn and look at Khadija, not knowing what to say. She leans forward and puts her free hand on Seydou’s face. He whimpers again at being touched.

  “He’s been like this for a while,” she says.

  “Was he awake at all?” I ask.

  “A few times. But he was raving, so I think it was just the fever talking.”

  “Did you give him more water?”

  “How was I supposed to do that?”

  I remember, too late, that they were locked in.

  “I’ll go get some now.” I reach for the empty bucket and the bowl.

  “Bring me some too?” I can hear how hard it is for her to ask.

  “Of course,” I say.

  As I jog to the pump, I see the rest of my group file into the clearing. I fill the bucket with water and head back into the hut. Though it kills me to do it, I hand it to Khadija first, since she’s awake. Her eyebrows go up in surprise but she doesn’t say anything. She takes a few long, slow swallows and then tips the rest of the bucket over her head and hands. She gives it to me empty and I retrace my steps. This time, as I head into the sleeping hut, a few of the other boys follow me. I ignore them and kneel by Seydou. I hold his head in one hand and try to pour the water into his mouth with the other. He moans and turns away. The water dribbles down his neck. Frustrated, I consider my options. Unless he’s awake, I can’t make him drink. As long as his fever is this high, he won’t be awake. The thin remains of daylight coming through the open door glint off the water I failed to pour into his mouth. That’s all the thought I give it before I pour the entire bucket of water over his face.

  All I was trying to do was bring down his fever but when the cold water hits his skin, Seydou jerks awake, screaming.

  He lurches into a sitting position, then, gripping his arm, falls back again. He’s awake now and I try to reach for him, but he hasn’t stopped screaming and his writhing is turning the water puddle under his head into a thick mud that coats his face and shoulders. I hear the other boys murmur behind me and shuffle away.

  “Seydou!” I say, leaning over him. “Seydou!”

  His shouts are formless. I don’t even know if he knows I’m here. I want to follow the others out of the hut, but this impulse shames me deeply and I stay put. I look at Khadija.

  “He was like this?” I ask.

  She nods.

  I don’t know how she stood it. I crouch there, frozen by my own powerlessness until I hear a grunt of distaste. I turn and see Moussa silhouetted behind me. I hate how small and miserable I must look, but there’s no way I can think to move that would be helpful.

  Moussa takes one look at Seydou and hoists him into a semi-standing position, braced against his body. I stare dumbly as Moussa wrestles Seydou out of the sleeping hut.

  “Wait!” I say, scrambling to my feet and running after them. “You’re hurting him!”

  Moussa throws me an annoyed glance over Seydou’s head.

  “With a fever this high, everything will hurt.”

  “But . . .” I stumble along beside them, waving my hands uselessly. “But this is hurting him more than leaving him where he was. Stop!”

  Moussa ignores me and drags Seydou to the water pump, laying him in the mud. Seydou struggles to get away.

  “Get his head up,” Moussa says to me. I scramble behind Seydou and hold him against me. He thrashes weakly from side to side. “Hold him still,” says Moussa, and then he stands behind the pump and works the handle with powerful thrusts of his arm. Water gushes out. I’m about to tell Moussa that getting Seydou wet was what made him start screaming in the first place, when Moussa reaches around and cups the spout, redirecting the water so that it drenches us both. Seydou lurches in my arms as the water hits his fevered skin.

  “Stop it!” I shout.

  Moussa stops, but his scowl could rip the sky.

  “The water’s hurting him,” I mumble miserably.

  “Would you rather hurt him now, or have him die?” Moussa’s quiet question stabs me like a machete. Neither! I don’t want him hurt, now or ever, and of course I don’t want him to die.

  “What?”

  “We have to bring his fever down. If we don’t, he may die. I would prefer to hurt him now and have him live, than let him be comfortable now and have him die. Which would you prefer?”

  I stare dumbly, unable to answer. After a moment of silence, Moussa starts pumping the water again. This time when Seydou bucks and shrieks, I hold him still. After a while, he goes limp in my arms, resigning himself to the pain, crying. I let the hard, cold water hit my face and take my tears away with Seydou’s fever.

  When Moussa stops, both Seydou and I are soaked and shivering in the early-evening breeze.

  “Let’s get you by the fire,” says Moussa, and he hauls us both up by the arms. He slings Seydou’s dead weight between us and we shuffle to the fire, where Moussa lets go of his side. Seydou and I crumple in a heap inside the orange circle of light. I pull Seydou’s head into my lap and carefully place his hurt arm on top before I look around the fire. It’s oddly quiet as the boys consider us. A soft clanking of chains draws my eyes to where Khadija settles.

  I’m still shivering and wet, but Seydou’s fever has already dried the water off his skin. I tell myself that the swelling will go down along with his fever, but when I look into Seydou’s eyes, he doesn’t look out at me. He’s awake, but has gone somewhere far, far away inside where I can’t reach him. I stroke his forehead, willing him to get better.

  Yussuf offers me a bowl of stew. When I take it, he leaves without another word. I try to think of a way to get some food into Seydou, but I’m afraid that if I force the chunky soup into his mouth I’ll end up choking him, so I just eat my portion and spend the rest of the quiet evening wetting Seydou’s head and trying to sneak little dribbles of water into his mouth.

  When they call us for bed I’m not sure how much I’ve succeeded, but I go and refill the bucket with water for the night and carry it into the sleeping hut. Then I half carry, half drag Seydou in after me.

  I don’t know how much later it is when I hear the whisper.

  “Amadou? Are you awake?”

  I sigh and answer quietly.

  “Awó. What is it?”

  “How’s he doing?”

  Khadija must not have been able to sleep either, though whether this is because of the discomfort of the chains or the discomfort of sleeping in a house surrounded by fourteen boys, I’m not sure. I flush a little in the darkness, wondering if she’s been listening to the stupid nonsense I’ve been whispering to Seydou for the past hour or so. I guess she has. I push the thought away.

  “Still hot.” There’s not much more to say than that.

  “Have you gotten him to drink anything?”

  “Ayi.” The frustration of it roughens my voice. “It just dribbles off his face.”

  A pause.

  “I can take over swabbing him with water if you want to sleep.�
�

  “No. We’re fine.”

  Another pause.

  “You should try to sleep.”

  “What does it matter to you?” I ask dismissively. She doesn’t answer my question, but goes on as if I hadn’t spoken.

  “I was able to rest yesterday, and they’ll probably keep me here tomorrow too, so I can sleep during the day. You were in the fields all day and they’ll probably make you go out again tomorrow. You should sleep if you can.”

  “I can take care of my own brother,” I bite out, but the words are sour in my mouth and I can taste the lie in them.

  “You’ll be no good to him if you get hurt because you’re overtired,” she says.

  “Why do you care?” I ask again, this time truly curious.

  At first she doesn’t answer. But then she mumbles, “You can’t help me either if you’re hurt.”

  “What?”

  “The boys leave you alone. Right now they’re leaving me alone too. If you and Seydou were both hurt . . .”

  For a few minutes there’s only the irregular sloshing sound of me dipping my hand into the bucket. I’ve done it for so long that my fingers have puckered and my ridged fingertips drag across Seydou’s eyebrows when I rub the water on his forehead.

  “Maybe Moussa will let me stay with him tomorrow.” I don’t even realize I’ve said it out loud until I hear a snort from over by the wall.

  “You trust him too much.” There is a hard flatness to her voice when she says it. I remember how, that first day, she criticized me for not getting Seydou away from here. I feel a deep need to prove her wrong.

  “He cares about Seydou,” I say, scrambling to find facts to make what I said true. “He had him carried to camp, stitched him up, tried to bring his fever down this evening with the water. He left you here with him all day today instead of leaving him alone.”

  She snorts again. “You can’t really believe that.”

  I stay quiet, angry now. The wildcat goes on in the silence.

  “He doesn’t care about Seydou, or any of you!” I want her to shut up, but she keeps talking. “He doesn’t want Seydou to die because he’s still hoping to get more work out of him. But you can do the work of a man in a day. There’s no way he’s going to lose that by letting you stay here.”

  I’m so angry now that I’m clenching my fists. I won’t listen to what she’s saying. I won’t. It’s not true.

  “He’ll take care of Seydou all right, but only if it doesn’t cause him too much trouble and only because he cares about the money.” There’s a pause. Then, “Amadou?”

  But I refuse to answer and although she calls my name a few more times, I don’t talk to her again for the rest of the night.

  And I don’t let her help Seydou.

  And I don’t sleep.

  By the next morning, I’ve passed beyond tiredness to a place where it takes me a few seconds to process sound into words and grainy colors into shapes. I move to the water pump to refill the bucket, which I’ve emptied overnight. But I haven’t made it there when Moussa appears behind me, carrying Seydou, who is hanging limply in his arms, still hiding in that place where I can’t find him.

  Moussa sets him by the pump. I splash a little water onto Seydou’s face. The water spatters over his eyes and dribbles off the curve of his cheeks onto the ground beside him. He doesn’t even flinch. Moussa frowns. He lifts Seydou’s shirt-bandaged arm under the pump and runs water on it until it soaks through. Then he unties the knot and unwraps it.

  The stench is overpowering. Blood, sickness, and rot merge with the smells of sweat and dirt as Moussa peels the shirt off Seydou’s arm. The last part sticks, pulling an infected crust off the wound, causing it to seep freely into the dust. I have to force myself to look at it. Swollen, oozing pus and blood, with angry streaks stretching from the tight stitches toward his elbow, Seydou’s arm is so horrific I turn away and vomit.

  He’s not getting better. It’s worse, so much worse than I could ever have imagined. I turn to Moussa, ashamed of myself. He’s still frowning at the arm, pushing at the edge of the swollen stitches with one finger. I don’t know how he can stand to do that. The smell of my vomit mixing with the smell of the infection makes me wish I was anywhere but here.

  Moussa looks at me then and his face seems to soften.

  “Your brother’s arm is very bad,” he says. “Go to your crew. I’ll stay and take care of him today.”

  My body sags with relief. A part of me is ashamed at how glad I am to leave my brother, but I can’t fight my feelings of helplessness when I look at that awful wound. Moussa knew how to stitch Seydou up. He’ll know how to make his arm better today. I look at the corner of the sleeping hut where Khadija is leaning in the shadows and send a glare her way. Moussa will take care of everything, I think. She turns and hobbles to the breakfast fire. Perhaps she heard me.

  I walk to the other side of the fire, away from Khadija, and bolt my breakfast of cooked green bananas. No stew this morning; Moussa was too busy with Seydou and me to organize it. As I pull off the hot, starchy peel and eat the insides, I see Moussa talking to the other bosses. A few minutes later when the call goes up to form crews, Ismail and Salif divide Moussa’s usual crew between them.

  I’m assigned to Ismail’s team and I grab a machete from the shed and run to get in line. Ismail is not known for his patience. Even so, I don’t end up with the worst machete. I almost smile. Tired as I am, today is looking up.

  My mood is ruined when I see Moussa walking toward me, dragging a chained Khadija with him. I look behind me, sure they must be heading somewhere else, because, really, why on earth would he be putting us together when she’s escaped twice when I’ve been around?

  Moussa stops in front of me. He changed Khadija’s chain. It’s now almost a meter long, connecting two cuffs. One of them is around her wrist. Moussa holds the other out to me.

  “Put this on,” he says.

  “W—what?” I stammer. “Why?”

  Moussa gives me a look that says he has all the patience in the world and I am slowly using it up, one drop at a time.

  “The pisteurs will be here soon. I have to have all the hands working in the field that I can. If I’m staying here to take care of your brother, she has to go and work.”

  I stare at him blankly. How does he expect me to be able to make her work? It’s not like I’m a boss, or her brother, or anything.

  “How . . .”

  Moussa reaches out, grabs my left wrist, and slaps the heavy metal cuff onto it.

  “Figure it out,” he says to me softly. I gaze blankly from his receding back to the shackle on my hand and the girl at the end of the chain. A few steps away Moussa pauses as if he’s just thought of something. “Oh, and Amadou?” He half turns.

  “Awó?”

  “If you let her escape today, I’ll kill him.”

  With that, he walks away.

  9

  I stand there for a moment, frozen by Moussa’s words.

  They’re not sinking in. I can’t process them.

  At the far end of the chain, Khadija moves. Reflexively, I grab the chain, causing her to take a stumbling step forward.

  Scowling, she takes a second, very deliberate step toward me. She leans in until her thunder and lightning eyes are all I can see.

  “You trust him too much.” She says it quietly, fiercely, her eyes slicing into my carefully crafted shell. She holds my gaze for a moment, and no words, no thoughts spring to my defense, only a terrible dread.

  I close my mouth and break away from her stare. I yank at the chain to make sure it will hold, bile churning in my stomach at the feel of metal against my skin. When I’m sure it’s locked and won’t come off, I let the length of chain slip through my fingers like water.

  Neither of us says anything.

  Why would we? There i
s nothing to say.

  I walk to where Ismail’s team has vanished into the bush and follow their trail. As I jog to catch up with the crew, I try to ignore the irregular tug that pulls my left arm behind me every time I take a step.

  We still haven’t spoken a word when I reach the last boy in line. He turns his head when he hears our jangling approach and I see his eyebrows shoot up as he takes us in. I want to say something to show that this is not what I wanted. I want him to say something that shows that he understands how unfair this whole thing is. If he had done that, I would have told him what Moussa said about Seydou. That awful thing he said that is still lying like a venomous snake at the bottom of my memory. I want someone to tell me that I couldn’t possibly have heard right, or that Moussa didn’t mean it. The wildcat heard it too, but I know she thinks Moussa would happily kill Seydou in a heartbeat. I look at the boy and try to remember how to smile.

  Instead of smiling, he gives a low whistle.

  “Well, I knew you two were close, but I didn’t realize you wouldn’t let yourself be separated more than a meter.” He waggles his eyebrows when he says it, and laughs. Ahead of him, I see another boy repeat the joke. Anger hardens into a tight knot in my chest and I scowl at the row of boys. Why did I believe even for a second that any of them would be any help at all?

  “I ka da tugu,” I snap.

  The boy laughs again, softly, careful not to let Ismail hear. I’m furious with him, and my uncertainty over Seydou and my lack of sleep make me stupid. I take the flat of my machete and smack it into his chest, pushing him against a tree, pinning his arms flat by his sides. Khadija is pulled after me by my sudden movement, but I push forward anyway.

  The boy’s eyes dart to my face and his mouth drops open. His machete is on the ground a few arm’s lengths away, knocked there when I hit him. I push my body weight against the machete so that the edge presses into him. It’s not hurting him yet, but if he moves or struggles he’ll be cut badly. I see his pupils expand in fear as he realizes this. I lean forward so that my face is barely centimeters from his.