Endangered (19 page)

I was discovered almost immediately. A shout came from my left. Not risking the time to find who'd seen me, I dashed right,
turning the first corner I could and then another, hoping to lose whomever it was as quickly as possible.

In a dark corner I caught my breath and listened for sounds of pursuit. When there was nothing, I wiped the sweat from my face and walked out toward the marketplace.

It was terrifying and energizing to be among the soldiers, after watching them from hiding for so long. I forced my head high and my eyes wide open, tried to look like I belonged even as I yearned to cringe away.

I very quickly discovered that blending in wouldn't work, I guess because a girl on her own had no reason to be alive and intact. Very soon there were whistles, then soldiers with red eyes and prominent guns jostling my shoulders, grabbing their crotches and shouting at me in languages I didn't understand. The crowd was clotting around me, and I knew the only way this could all end. Men would turn to mobs, words would turn to actions, someone would grab at me, and then another, and the end would begin.

Fear pushed so hard on me that I was beyond thinking of anything else, could do nothing but fight to get out from under it. Words were impossible so I said nothing, only pointing at the restaurant door where I'd seen the boy disappear. Getting to Otto was the only goal in my mind, and pointing toward him was all I could think to do.

As swiftly as I could, I pressed through the corridor of groping arms to the restaurant door. I avoided the leering eyes, ignored the spit that struck my cheek, tried not to see the man who momentarily stood in my path, coolly tossing a grenade like a juggler's sack before his comrades pulled him back.

My mind raced as I pushed forward. Why was no one touching me yet? Apparently the boy who'd taken Otto was something of a figure among the soldiers. And since I'd indicated I was his, no one was stepping forward to interfere.

After an eternity I was at the door, soldiers hooting at my back. Someone snatched at the seat of my pants, and I felt the plastic bag with its few crude treasures rip away. I wasn't about to risk trying to retrieve it. I pushed the door and stepped through confidently, like I was returning to a home I'd known for years, like there was no place I'd rather be than trapped inside with the armed militant who'd taken Otto captive.

Almost before I was inside, the boy had sprung to his feet, knocking back a plastic chair. He shouted words I couldn't understand, and in the face of it I bowed my head and shut the door. When I turned back to him, he'd calmed somewhat.

Otto was alive. He murped when he saw me, staggering up from the soil floor and lifting his arms to be held. He fell down as soon as he got to his feet, knocking over empty beer bottles. They made hollow pinging sounds when they rolled against one another. Otto tried to get back up but didn't make it to me; again he staggered, heaping on the floor and staring at me in dull confusion, wondering at his body's betrayal.

The boy again shouted at me, but I couldn't understand his language. “Excuse me,” I responded in French.

He surprised me by switching to rough French; he must have gone to school at some point. “This is my room.”

I looked at him as much as I could with my head bowed. I avoided the eyes, which were bloodshot and angry. His frame was delicate, his wrists as narrow as mine, with knobs of bone that looked like they could be broken off like hard candy. The nails were brown with tobacco. Slowly I let my gaze rise, immediately realizing again the horror of his eyes, drugged and cloudy. But his face was unlined, his chin weak like a boy's. He couldn't have been much older than I. Not that that meant anything as far as my safety.

“I'm sorry,” I said, hands out in a stand-down gesture. “I'm really sorry.”

“Did Lukila send you in here?” he barked.

At the sound of his raised voice, many fists banged on the door. I was terrified to see Otto's captor go over to it. “Please, no, I —” But it was too late. He threw the door open.

Noise and flashing light streamed in. A crowd of men and boys was pressed against the entrance, grinning and leering, arms so entangled that no one of them could fall inside. While they ogled me, they spoke incomprehensible words. The feeling behind them wasn't hard to interpret: Something like “Are you going to share?”

The boy looked for someone that he obviously couldn't find, then barked back at the crowd and swung the door closed, whirling on me. “Who gave you to me?”

I couldn't give an answer. Partly because I didn't have one, and partly because I was transfixed by his necklace. At first I'd thought it was strung shells with shriveled black seaweed, but it wasn't — it was a chain of mummified fingernails, a black and curled strip of flesh dangling from the base of each.

Seeing my focus, he plucked his necklace between thumb and forefinger and flicked it into the air. It fell silently to his neck, one of the nails falling free and fluttering to the ground. Where the necklace had lain, his skin was powdery red and white.

I inched my way over to Otto. My plan was to go along with whatever the boy believed. I was safer if he thought someone had sent me — otherwise, he might call in the others.

“You're ugly,” he said, looking me up and down, “but at least you're too young to give me AIDS.”

He thought I was younger than my actual fourteen. The light was dim in the room; maybe it was too dark for him to mistake me for a
mundele
. I wasn't sure whether that helped me or hurt me.

Once I'd moved closer, I could get a better look at Otto. He was staring at the ground, beer matting his hair. One palm was curled in the other, and he occasionally gave it a mournful lick. There was a blister the size of a pencil eraser on it; someone must have burned him with a cigarette. As I crept nearer, he leaned into my shin for comfort. It was for the best that he was in too much of a stupor to reach up; if Otto had been sober, this boy might have seen that we were close, and that would raise all sorts of questions.

I snuck glances around the room while the boy stood there appraising me. In the feeble light cast by a lantern on a table, I could see a couple of chairs; some weathered plastic bags in the corner; a couple of guns in another, looking rusty beyond use; and a charred spot near the door where someone had started a fire, on purpose or accidentally. If this boy decided to assault me, it would have to be against the walls or on the floor.

As far as I could tell, my best hope of getting out of this room intact lay in the boy's unlined face. He was clearly respected here, and had probably killed many people judging by the number of fingertips on his necklace, but he also looked too young to have been doing this for long. Maybe I could get him to see me as another human being?

“My name is Sophie,” I said, finally looking at him fully.

“I didn't ask you for your name. You bitch. Take your shirt off.”

I stood still for a moment, but when he reached for a gun my hands instinctively went to the bottom of my shirt. Before I knew it, the shirt was up and over my head. It was the first time I'd stood in front of a boy this way. I was wearing a bra, but it was nearly tattered away. I reached my arms around my chest, my palms fear-slick against my ribs.

The shirt fell on Otto, and the familiarity of it stoked something in him. He rolled in it, then looked up and really saw me for
the first time. He got up on wobbly legs and lifted his arms. I leaned down and picked him up, wearing him like a shirt. “I like your ape,” I risked saying.

The boy looked ticked off for a moment, then a smile grew. “He is my new friend.”

I rubbed Otto's bottom, and we did our blowing-on-pursed-lips move. The boy looked impressed by our connection — I decided to roll with it. “He's a bonobo, you know,” I dared continue. “Not a chimpanzee.”

“I know that. You can teach me nothing,” the boy said. “My captain is from Bolobo. The name
bonobo
comes from his village. Years ago someone spelled it bad on a crate, and the stupid
mundele
didn't realize. The bonobos are warlocks, like me — in the wild they don't need to drink because the air is always raining in the forest. They know that everything is raining. That is what gives them their power.”

Otto pressed himself hard against my bare skin, his soft little cheek rubbing against my shoulder. I stroked the back of his head. The boy started to look less proud and more jealous. “He likes you,” he said.

I nodded. “I like him. He will be a good friend for you. You were smart to choose him.”

Some of the tension went out of the room. The boy sat in his chair and, hesitantly, I lowered myself to a squat on the floor. I kept Otto wrapped around my chest; having him there made me feel less naked.

“My name is Bouain,” the boy said.

“My name is Sophie,” I repeated.

“You are from Mbandaka?”

“No.” I took a deep breath. I didn't know enough about anywhere else to lie convincingly, so I told the truth. “Kinshasa.”

“Kinshasa,” he said, lips pulling back in a smile to reveal perfectly straight and yellow teeth. “That is the capital. My brothers have taken Kinshasa. That is far away.”

“Yes,” I said. “I ran away and came here.”

“Then you are an idiot and deserve what you get. Mbandaka is no safer for you than Kinshasa.” He waved Otto near, but though Otto stared at him, he wasn't about to leave me.
Please, Otto
, I willed,
help me keep this boy happy.

It was such consolation to have Otto's body against mine. Everything he covered was sacred and safe. I saw the exposed parts of me through the boy's eyes: the scrawny waist, loose pants moldy and spotted, bug bites up and down my arms, bruises from Anastasia's bite still healing. I was not a pretty girl these days. Thank God.

“Come, dirty monkey,” the boy said. “You want another beer?”

I bit down the hatred that swelled. “Ha, ha,” I said. “Yeah, do you want a beer, monkey?”
I will get you out of here.

Otto definitely did not want another beer. All he seemed to want to do was fall asleep. He sighed, and his breathing slowed against my neck.

By now the sounds of the men pressing against the door had died down. All was quiet, and our only illumination was from the lantern. The room felt curiously intimate. “Come over here,” Bouain said.

Though my heart clenched, I obeyed, inching a little closer along the floor.

He took my hand in his. That was all he did. We sat like that for a few moments, I doing my best not to shudder. He wanted my sympathy, I guess. He took Otto's injured foot into his other hand. Otto kicked, but he was too sleepy for it to amount to much. I doubted Bouain even realized Otto had tried to be hostile, until he gave Otto a retaliatory pinch.

“That is the way of the world, no? To fight. For us it is like the animals,” he said.

I hoped his affection for Otto could save me, that my knowledge could make me useful. “You know the chimpanzees?” I said.

Bouain nodded.

I swallowed against the foul taste of fear. “They war with one another. They rape and kill when they meet chimpanzees they don't know. For a long time, everyone thought they were our closest relative. And so everyone thought this was our nature, that we came from chimps and so we fight like chimps.”

“You see?” he said.

“I'm sure you know more about this than me. But I like that the bonobo is as related to us as the chimpanzee. And they squabble, but they don't kill and they don't rape. The women are weaker but they come together and help one another and become stronger than the men.”

“I do not like this idea,” Bouain said, frowning hugely, almost comically.

I laughed, and was heartened to see him smile a little in response. I knew I'd taken a risk, but I had to try to shock him into seeing me. “So,” I started, “it's another way to think —”

“No person has protected me,” Bouain interrupted.

“No,” I said. “They didn't.” He was probably right, but I refused my heart its loosening, kept it tight and impervious to him.

“It is cold outside tonight,” he said. “If you want to put your shirt on, you can. You will stay with me tonight, keep us warm as two, yes?”

I was baffled by this turn in his behavior and didn't get what he meant — put my shirt on and also sleep with him? But I immediately took advantage of the chance to cover myself. Maybe Bouain was tired by all the months of posturing to his men and
wanted an actual companion. Whatever the reason, something had made me human in his eyes.

I pulled Otto's arms from around my neck, he making quiet complaints, and set him on the soil floor. I picked up my shirt. I had it half on, one of my shoulders still exposed out of my stretched neck hole, when I realized that in my nervousness I was putting both arms through one opening. Bouain laughed, and in the few moments it took me to rearrange, I found myself unexpectedly thinking of my mother. I got why she'd spent so many years charming boring men. To survive. The position I was in, playing some disgusting politics with this boy, was awful. But it wasn't the end of the world. The end of the world was that crowd of men on the far side of the door.

He made no move to take my hand back in his. “You speak good French,” he said. “Maybe you could teach me some more words.” He was eager to learn, and suddenly I could see the small boy who had once sat in a classroom. He reached down and stroked Otto.

“Yes,” I said. “I could. Or English. I go to school in America.”

He cocked his head. “Do not lie to me.”

“I'm not.”

“If you left Congo, why did you come back?” he asked.

“To be with my family.”

“You are not a normal Congo girl.”

I nodded. That was certainly true.

“The war started when my teacher dropped the chalk,” he said out of nowhere. “They killed my teacher and my friends and tied me to a tree for hours.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, and didn't feel it.

“I thought they left me as dead, but they really went into the forest to hunt. We had many bonobos in our forest before the combatants came. The bonobos, they ran away as soon as the attack
happened. Except one. She was in a tree. I wanted her to run, but she did not. And then I knew the reason, the reason was she gave birth, in front of me as I was tied to the tree. The baby fell out of her … it hit the end of the cord and —
pop!
— bounced back. The attack must have made her give birth. You see? She bit the cord and disappeared into the woods. But the combatants were everywhere by then. I did not have many hopes for her. That little bonobo baby was stuck, and probably was captured by the rebels. Like me, you see? I wonder what happened to him.”

I did the math in my head: how long Bouain had probably been a soldier if he now wore those fingernails so coolly around his neck; Otto's age; the unlikelihood a newborn would survive any time apart from its mother, much less a trip downriver from the east to Kinshasa. But still, I could see the passion spring up in Bouain's eyes as he lifted Otto and laid him on his lap. This wasn't the actual infant he'd once seen, but it felt that way to him. “I take you from my comrades because you are to be with me. You and I … are two halves of the same soul,” he said to Otto.

No
, I thought,
you're not.
“He looks three years old, do you agree?” I said. “That's still very young to be separated from his mother. We have to keep him healthy for you. Has he eaten?”

Bouain shook his head.

“I could try,” I continued. “I bet I could make him eat. Otherwise you will lose your friend.”

Bouain shook Otto by the shoulders to wake him up. “No. He will eat when I tell him to eat. He respects my power.”

The lantern flickered and dimmed. Bouain tsked in irritation and shook it. “You can go back out and tell them that they made a mistake to give you to me,” he said.

My face burned. Relief was the overwhelming feeling, but also combined with worry over how to get Otto out and fear at what waited for me on the other side of the door.

I couldn't leave now, not without Otto. Before Bouain could stop me, I pulled Otto into my lap and pinched him hard. He shrieked and opened his eyes, almost as soon half closing them again. Bouain grinned — the hard pinch had earned me points. Setting Otto on the ground, I put my foot in his lap.