“It’s healing well.” She picked up the metal bowl filled with used rags. “Demba should be back soon.” Then she turned to Cheikh. “When you leave here, the only path you know is to our door. You hear me?” She stared at her son, her hennaed finger pointing at him. “Our door,” she said again, as if he might not have understood the first time. Then she bid Mor good-bye and walked away, the sheet and the bowl of bloody, rung-out rags in her hand.
“So are you going to tell me what happened?” Mor asked after she left. The skin around his jaw was still swollen and sore.
“I did.” Cheikh looked up. “I found it tossed aside in the sand.”
Mor just stared at his friend. At his busted lip.
Cheikh smiled but flinched. The cut in his lip was in charge. “It’s nothing, really.” He pressed his hand to it. “It seems we met the same fist, that’s all. I think we both knew it would happen.”
“What else happened?”
“Not much. Diallo had the pleasure of shoving me out. He’s always wanted to be at Papis’s side.”
“Are they going to leave you alone?” Mor was frustrated by how calm Cheikh was.
“Who knows.”
Mor wasn’t sure what else to say. His friend sounded almost sad that he would no longer be a Danka Boy.
“You and my yaay can never understand the hell we were mixed in together. We will always be brothers, even when we disagree. He just needs to find a better way. He hasn’t yet. And I realize I cannot find that way for him. He has to want to find it himself. He has so much anger, and I see it now. I was just so grateful. I guess all this time I ignored it.” He took a new piece of wood and his knife from his pocket. “Shouldn’t you be resting anyway?”
“I have been.” Mor studied the bruises on Cheikh’s face. “So will your yaay tell your baay you’re here?”
Cheikh stared straight ahead. “She has to. But she says she’ll give me time.”
“Maybe she will think of some way you can stay. Or we can.” Hope rose in Mor’s voice. Even though he wasn’t certain of his own future, he was hopeful for his friend. “How are you with bigger ones?” Mor nodded to the wood Cheikh carved. It was another little gaal.
“What do you mean?” Cheikh stopped pushing his knife against the stick.
“Demba needs the rotted boards taken out of his boat before it sinks. It’s holding up, but it could use work.” Mor ignored the urge to blame Cheikh and the Danka Boys for the fire. “He would pay.”
“I don’t need your charity.”
“It’s not,” Mor said. “You’d be repairing his boat.”
Cheikh didn’t say anything.
“Souleymane also needs help. His boat is the one that caught fire. He might give you a chance.”
“Why would you do this?” Cheikh asked.
“Why would you let me remain hidden under that netting on the beach?” Mor kicked at the dirt. He and Cheikh watched each other.
A small smile crept across Cheikh’s mouth, reaching his eyes. “So you did know it was me.”
“Not at first.”
The two friends were silent. An unspoken understanding passed between them.
“This might be how you get your baay to let you stay.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Mor wanted Cheikh to be as excited as he was about the idea. If Cheikh brought money into the family, his father could no longer say he just took up space. He might actually look forward to the coins coming through his door. “If that doesn’t work, we will find another way. I promise.” For Mor, this promise was as weighty as the one he’d made to his baay and his sisters.
“Incha’Allah,” was all Cheikh whispered.
FIVE hundred francs, five hundred, five hundred, two hundred francs, two hundred, five hundred, and five hundred more,” Mor said as he and Amina sat on the dirt floor of their barak, a stack of coins and notes between them.
Fatima sat at the door as lookout, though none of the Danka Boys had been seen since Mor scared them away.
“Don’t forget the trick can.” Mor wiggled under the bed and pulled out the tomato can wrapped in cloth. Inside a handful of coins jingled. They clinked and tumbled on one another as he poured them onto the floor.
“Five, five, five, ten, ten, ten, twenty, twenty, twenty-five, twenty-five, twenty-five, fifty, one hundred, one hundred, one hundred, two hundred, two hundred, two hundred, two hundred, five hundred, five hundred francs.” He added the coins with the others. “So how much do we have?” he asked Amina, who wrote down the numbers on a torn piece of cardboard.
“Um.” Amina pointed her pencil at each number, mumbling to herself as she added. “That makes five thousand two hundred ten francs.”
“That’s all?” Mor asked, sounding deflated. He was sure he had made more. “But that is not enough. I only got you halfway. I checked the paper.” He shook his head, crestfallen. He had tried all he could try, but it wasn’t enough.
“Don’t be sad yet, brother. We still must add this.” Amina pulled her own pouch out of a secret hiding place under a pile of rocks not yet turned into dolls. She opened it and let coins and a few folded notes fall on the floor.
Mor’s eyes bulged as he leaned forward. “How much is here?”
“Enough,” Amina said, smiling.
Mor poked through the bills with his finger. “Is this all from your dolls?”
“There was more. But Naza did a lot of work too. She sewed most of the dresses.”
Mor couldn’t believe how much she had made off her rock dolls. Then he thought of all the toubabs, who he knew would always pay more than the villagers.
“It’s exactly two thousand nine hundred ninety francs,” she said. “So that makes—”
“Eight thousand two hundred francs,” Mor cut in. “I can do that math.”
She looked down at her paper. Her face fell a little. “But it is still not enough.”
“It isn’t?” Mor tried to add again quickly in his head. She was right.
Amina placed the cardboard on the floor by her feet and stared at the coins. With each passing second she seemed to shrink in front of Mor’s eyes, collapsing in on herself.
He wished there were something he could do, but they had run out of time. He thought of the tàngal he hadn’t had the chance to sell because of the Danka Boys. Then he thought of his soccer ball and wondered if he could sell it. As much as he wanted one, he did not want anything from the Danka Boys.
Then he remembered.
He jumped up and ran outside. Amina barely looked up when he raced off. He went around the back of their barak, tossing aside the soccer ball, and dug deep. Right where he’d left them sat the two five-hundred-franc coins like seeds in the dirt. They had been his reward for helping Papis win the soccer match when he was a Danka Boy. He hadn’t wanted the money then, but now, after all they had put him through, finally some good could come out of crossing paths with the Danka Boys. A money tree hadn’t bloomed, but these would do.
Mor squeezed the coins in his palm and sprinted back to Amina. “Mina, Mina, we did it.”
He placed the two coins on the ground in front of her. At first she stared past them, almost gazing through the dirt. “Look, Amina. Look.” Mor shook her. “We did it. We did it! We have enough. You are going to school.”
“What?” Amina said, her head bobbing back and forth as he shook her. “What did you say?”
“I said you have enough for school.”
“But how?” She stared at the coins.
“It doesn’t matter, just know we did it. We really did it, Mina.”
Amina reached over and hugged her brother, knocking over all the coins. Fatima bolted back inside, colliding with both of them.
“Mina’s going to get the green uniform?” Fatima asked.
“And the cream blouse,” Amina said, wiping her eyes. “We did it.”
“We did it!” Fatima echoed. “Now we can stay.”
Amina pried her sister’s arm from around he
r neck and gathered the money together to put back into the pouches. “Maybe,” she said. “We still have to convince Auntie.”
“She has to say yes,” Mor said, not letting the thought of their bàjjan dampen his spirit even a little bit. “She can never say we’re a bother to anyone now. We have done it on our own.”
“We have done it, Baay. We have made it through the summer together. That is what you wanted. Auntie will have to let us stay now, won’t she?” Mor craned his head back, searching the brilliant blue sky. Light, airy clouds rushed across it, as if in a race with the finches and buntings flying by.
“Who are you talking to?”
Mor jerked his head down. He stumbled, missing a step.
Right in front of him, Papis leaned against a mud wall, picking something from his teeth with his finger. No one else was around. At first Mor was ready to run, but even his healing bruises weren’t reason enough to make him scatter. He wouldn’t roll back down a hill he’d spent so much time climbing when he was so close to reaching the top.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“What do you think?” Papis got off the wall and flicked away whatever he had found wedged in between his teeth.
He watched Mor closely but stayed off the path, as if wanting to keep distance between them.
It was the first time Mor had seen him without any other Danka Boys. Papis didn’t look as intimidating without his herd.
Then, in the distance, the faintest of whistles boomeranged off an alley wall.
Papis looked toward the sound, and Mor stepped toward him. When Papis turned back, Mor saw a faint flicker of unease in his eyes. He remembered that same look during their fight. His closeness unnerved Papis. But Papis was too proud to show it.
Mor studied Papis’s face and his beady black eyes, which stared back at him. The gash over his eye reminded Mor he was human. Mor found he was no longer scared of him. “I know your fear,” Mor said suddenly.
“Fear?” scoffed Papis. “I have no fear.”
“You are afraid of me,” Mor said. “Afraid of what I can do. Afraid of what Demba has taught me.” Mor’s voice was as calm as the ocean on a breezeless dawn. He spoke as if he and Papis were relaxing on a beach wall, sharing an engorged plastic bag of bissap juice. “Afraid that I am not afraid of you anymore. That is your fear.” Mor went silent and let his words settle on Papis. “Because if I, a boy no taller than your elbow, am not afraid . . . why should anyone else be?”
Mor felt the heat rising off Papis’s skin. A thin vein pulsed in his neck. Papis did not blink or speak. Neither did Mor.
“You are a tough little khale, I will give you that.” Papis wiped at his mouth. “You could have been a fierce Danka Boy behind me.”
“My baay taught me to stand behind no one.” Mor took another step forward.
Papis stepped back before he could stop himself.
The corner of Mor’s lip pushed up. “If I wanted to hurt you, I could, but that is not my—”
“Tah, you could never hurt me,” Papis jeered.
“Are you so sure?” Mor crossed his arms, finding confidence and strength. He didn’t have any tainted fish or scary words, but he didn’t need them. He just needed Papis to believe.
After a silence that stretched like an eternity, Papis smiled a crooked smile and widened the distance between himself and Mor. “You are an interesting one, like that coward you believe to be your brother, seeing good where there is only filth.” He jutted out his chin. “But one day both of you will see the world is no better than the sludge I was born in.”
“We’ll never see that,” Mor said.
Papis hawked up phlegm in his throat and let it launch across the dirt. “You know nothing.” His voice grew bitter. “And neither does that traitor Cheikh. You will both see!”
The set of Papis’s jaw, the narrowing of his eyes, and the return of the boy Mor had first seen on the beach came upon him like a sandstorm.
“Do not get comfortable. Neither of you are completely out of my netting.” Papis leaned forward. “I will still squash you if you cross me.”
“And I will still come at you with fire,” Mor warned, surprised by his own force. “Remember, I am not scared of you, and neither is Cheikh.”
Papis bared his teeth like Lokho often did.
But Mor didn’t back down. “Come for me.” He poked at the air. “And you will see all I can do.” He slapped his hand against his chest.
Papis’s foot hovered behind him, ready to move back again. “You aren’t worth the trouble,” he said, puffing out his own chest. “I have more important things to take my time. You are nothing and you have nothing I want.” He hopped back, picking up his pace with each step until he was almost running.
“Stay out of my way, khale.”
“No,” Mor warned. “You stay out of mine.”
Papis batted the air with his hand, and from a safe distance away he cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted, “You better run when you see me.”
But Mor was the one who watched him run away instead.
SO much has happened since I left on that bus bound for Dakar,” Mor heard his aunt say two days later on a bench outside Amadou’s shack with Tanta Coumba. “I hardly recognize these children. How the summer sun has changed them.”
“That is what happens when children are left to blossom,” Tanta Coumba told her. “They grow.”
“Yes, though sometimes they can twist and be ensnared by weeds,” Mor’s bàjjan cautioned.
“They can indeed . . . ,” Tanta Coumba whispered. She glanced her son’s way. It was only a quick shift of her eyes, but Mor had seen it. “But we can only pray that with Allah’s guidance and the warmth of the sun they will turn back to light if they find themselves in darkness. But that worry has not been so with yours.” Her voice grew light again.
Mor eyed Cheikh beside him on an old, overturned gaal. He noticed his friend’s head dipped a bit as the women talked. But Mor shared Tanta Coumba’s hope and wished for it to be true. He and Cheikh sat quietly, staring out to the surf as Fatima and Oumy giggled. Demba held tight to pieces of cloth wrapped around their middles while they splashed in the water, learning to swim.
“I remember when I tried to teach you.” Cheikh raised his elbow toward their sisters. “You bucked and screamed and cried each time I threw you in, and it only rose to your chest. I couldn’t make sense of it.” He chuckled.
Mor remembered those times. “I was scared if I went under, you would leave me there alone.”
“I would never leave. . . .” Cheikh’s words could barely be heard over the lapping of the water against the shore. But Mor had heard them.
The smell of Amadou’s grilling fish met Mor’s nose, and he smiled. Even though his bàjjan hadn’t made up her mind yet, for Mor it was a beautiful day surrounded by family in a place he loved. He, Amina, and Fatima had done all they could do. At that moment Amina looked up from her reading. Her lips creased in a slight smile as she admired the tiny sër Naza sewed for a rock doll, while baby Zal played in the fabric strips on her lap.
Music heavy with sabar drumbeats pinged off the air around them, coming from a small radio hanging at the front of Amadou’s shack. Jeeg lay under one of the tables, nibbling anything she could find.
“Well, well, well.” Mor heard Tanta Basmah’s full, cheery voice behind him. “Am I finally to meet the wonderful and brilliant bàjjan Mor and the girls have told me so much about?”
Mor turned just as Basmah reached out her henna-tipped fingers, clasping both of his aunt’s hands, and kissed each of her cheeks. She winked at Mor as she straightened.
“I hear you are doing fabulous things in the city, and these children are doing fabulous things here. Aren’t they, Tanta Coumba Gueye?” Tanta Basmah greeted Tanta Coumba with two kisses as well.
“Yes, they are,” Tanta Coumba joined in, not missing a step. “Their names are on many tongues, and it is always followed by a smile. They have become an example
of what a strong family can do. And you are a part of all that.” Tanta Coumba patted the thigh of Mor’s aunt. “People applaud your courage to give them the opportunity to grow. Your name is in their hearts as well.”
Dieynaba beamed. It was clear she enjoyed the praise.
“Yes,” Tanta Coumba said. “By allowing them to sprout, their roots have become strong. They are making a respectable life. One I am sure Allah will reward, Dieynaba.”
“If Allah wills.” Mor’s aunt slowly swayed back and forth. He saw her mind working behind her hooded eyes.
“Amina, kai fii. Tell your bàjjan of your wonderful painted rocks. And Mor, come tell her of your success in the mechanic shop and out at sea. Come, children, come,” Tanta Coumba encouraged.
“I have heard. Mamadou told me all in our brief phone calls,” their aunt admitted. “I’m sure he was informed by you. Yes, I am proud. As soon as my sandals touched the dusty earth of Lat Mata, I’ve heard praise. Yalla Bakh na.”
“Yes, Allah is good.” Basmah nodded as Mor and Amina made their way over to their bàjjan.
“Come and feast,” Amadou called out to Demba and the girls kicking in the waves. He lifted the grilling fish from the flames and slid them onto trays, head to tail. Basmah cut one of the lemons she had brought and squeezed it over the fish.
As Demba and the girls reached the table, salt water running down their faces, Tanta Coumba picked up a cloth to pat down both Oumy and Fatima. Tanta Coumba dried Fatima’s arms as Fatima asked, “So can we stay?”
Everyone went silent. It seemed as if they all held their breath.
“We shall see, Fatima. There is a lot still to decide,” their bàjjan said as sweetly as she could, but her smile was tight. She did not appear to like being on a stage, all eyes on her.
“Like what?” Fatima pressed. No one stopped her.
“Many things, child. They will be discussed at home, tonight,” their aunt cautioned, staring Fatima down.
“But Mina wants to go to school. She has the money. And she says maybe she’ll even be able to pay for me to go one day. Mor brings us fish with Demba. And he learns to fix engines like Baay.” She rattled off everything so fast, it was hard to keep up. “And Oumy and Naza and Tanta Coumba and Tanta Basmah are always here if we need help. They give us hugs and kisses, and sidèmes, too,” she went on.
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