Endangered (21 page)

A crowd had gathered around us by then, and I asked again in multiple languages if anyone had heard of a release site. They
shook their heads in incomprehension, even the boy who spoke French. I pointed at Otto, who was dangling in the little girl's arms, and asked if they knew where any more bonobos were.

Their only response was still the shaking of heads, but an old man said something in their local language, and the boy with polio nodded and gestured for me to follow him.

I pulled Otto from the protesting little girl and wrapped my arms around his sweaty skinny body —
Sorry, but the bonobo comes with me.
Once I stood the world went back to being hot and unsteady, and it was all I could do to stagger after the smiling boy. We finally approached a hut on the far side of the village. He pulled back a dangling grass curtain and ushered me in.

It was cramped inside, the air a stale haze, the char of many fires scarring the dirt center. Otto struggled down from my arms and crawled to the pile of old straw on the far side. There was a body turned away from us on top of the makeshift bed, and without a moment's pause he reached up his little arms and pulled himself right on top of it. “Otto!” I scolded. But then the body turned toward me, and it became a person, more than a person, and all words that were going to follow stopped.

The fever. The pain. I had to have lost my senses. I had to be imagining this. I had to be wrong.

She shook her head and sat up, wrapping her arms around Otto and giving him a big kiss on the top of his head.

Then she looked up at me. Saw me.

It couldn't be happening.

It couldn't be her.

It couldn't be.

She cried out my name.

For long moments I lay in the bed, Otto wrapped around me and me wrapped around my mom, her heart beating its familiar rhythm against my ear. I thought I could pick up traces of her usual rose-water scent deep in the fabric of her shirt. With the smell came memories of what we'd once had, of cool mornings sitting in the garden of our Kinshasa house. Her hair, once an even curve from part to shoulder, was now unkempt and frizzled at the roots and tips, smooth only in the middle. She was thinner; Florence Biyoya would never be a skinny woman, mind you, but I did feel the suggestion of a collarbone under my chin.

I must have looked worse for wear, too. She cried when she saw me in the light. Shocked by her shock, I tried to see myself through her eyes: shoes that were little more than oozy soles rattily laced to the bottoms of my feet; gray and wilted socks; pants stained with blood and mud; T-shirt a fungal petri dish; hair a frazzled mess. The smell coming off my flesh had gone from simple stinkiness to something weird and almost appetizing, close to sour-cream-and-onion potato chips.

But none of that changed that we were back to mom and daughter. Well, mom and daughter and ape.

“Mom,” I said, “why are you here?”

We sat up and faced each other. Her arms never left me. “Let me look at you again. Oh, my Sophie. I can't say a thing.” Her voice cracked, and tears rolled down her red and peeling cheeks. Finally, she got words out. “Why are you here?”

Since she clearly wasn't ready to tell me her story, I told her mine, from the first weeks with Otto to the evacuation van to the attack. I paused there, seeing my mom's face fall, and we hugged for a while. Then I barreled forward and answered her unspoken question by telling her that at least some, and maybe all, of the workers at the sanctuary were dead. She went into a scary, turned-inside place, asking me gray-lipped questions: Who had I witnessed killed? Whose bodies had I seen? Any sign that anyone escaped? I didn't have much information to give, and what I did have wasn't promising.

“I should have been there,” she said, blood rushing back into her face. “I'm so sorry I wasn't there to protect you.”

It wasn't to me that she was apologizing, I knew; it was to everyone who worked at the sanctuary. But since I was the only one there to accept her regret, it was up to me to bear its weight. “It's okay, Mom. How could you have known?”

“I left you there,
chérie
. I thought you were the safe one, that I was the one in danger, while all this time … What did you do, Sophie? How did you survive?”

So I continued. I told her about entering the enclosure, rescuing Songololo from the nursery, meeting the bonobos for the first time. Mom was awestruck. “Eventually you need to tell me everything,” she said. “Every last detail. It's lucky that you're a girl. They trust women.”

I told her about the weeks I spent in the enclosure, what Otto and I ate and drank, and then about the electricity going off. She cried when I told her about Banalia, then her mouth dropped open again when I told her about Pweto saving us from the hunter and being chased off by Anastasia, about the short time we spent in the countryside as a group, about drugging the bonobos and getting away. I told her about the school for boys, my time at the UN camp, receiving her letter, the two little dead bonobos, the slog to
the river, catching a boat up, our capture in Mbandaka, and finally our arrival here.

Long moments went by in the hut, her hands hot against mine. Finally she spoke. “It's a miracle the two of you are alive. I haven't stopped praying for you. When news trickled in here of what was happening in the south, and then Mbandaka was taken, I realized how dangerous everything had gotten. I'd been foolish to assume you were okay because you were near Kinshasa. But by then the rebels were swarming on the river and it got too dangerous to police the island with my bonobos, much less travel downriver. On top of it all I got malaria —”

“Mom!”

She held up a hand. “I'm better now — you've caught me on the mend. I got my men to bring me to this village before they went off to find their families. I had money with me, and someone here is hooked into the black market and was able to get me Malarone. I'm a lot luckier than the villagers themselves.”

“I'm so glad you're alive.”

“The village chief was willing to take me on as a pensioner,” she continued. “I've been stuck in this hut for weeks. For two dollars a day, they've fed me and kept me alive.”

“And the bonobos at the release site?”

“As far as I know, fine. There's been no one there to examine them for over a month, but one of the village fishermen passed by a few days ago and heard them calling in the forest.”

“When do you think you'll be well enough to move?”

“It's not really a question of how well I am,
chérie
. It's more about when it will be safe enough to head out. The chief of Ikwa has made a truce with one of the warlords, giving him a portion of their crops in return for protection from attack or having to work the mine. We'll be stuck here until help comes, I'm afraid, until the
situation gets better enough that your father can work his magic and get us out.”

“I'm fine staying here as long as it takes. So long as the three of us are safe and okay,” I said.

“And how's our little bonobo?” Mom said, lifting Otto into a standing position. He picked up a handful of straw and threw it at her head, hoping to start a game.

“He was wonderful, Mom. I couldn't have made it here without him, that's for sure.”

“Otto!” she said. “Do you hear that? You're my daughter's savior!”

 

We spent a month recuperating in Ikwa. Even if it had been safe enough to travel, we wouldn't have been able to, since I had pretty bad stomach problems. It was like I'd been staving it all off for survival's sake, and now that things looked better, I allowed myself to be sick.

My mother kept all of us on a diet of rice and guava leaves in the form of hourly cups of steamy tea, with sugarcane swizzle sticks. Otto was particularly fond of those.

Even once I was well enough to walk around, I didn't go far. Like Otto weeks ago, I'd feel an almost constant need to check on my mother and confirm that she was still there. She always was.

It was hardly a chore, our quiet village life, but I was still relieved when a break came. One afternoon a local farmer raced into town providing breathless word that almost all the rebels had left Mbandaka. The rumors were even more promising: International forces had supposedly come through and taken back Kinshasa. The army general was serving as interim president until the UN could organize elections. In ordinary circumstances, having
the military in control would hardly be good news, but it felt like the best thing I'd ever heard. Around that same time my mom's hand-cranked field telephone found a signal.

Even better than a recognized government: phone reception.

The first call that reached us through the jammed circuits was from Dad, just minutes after the phone came to life. He must have been dialing my mom's number nonstop since August. I'd been off foraging in the forest with Otto and heard a whooping cry of joy from the distant hut. I ran back, and the sight of my mom's tears and the way she stared straight at me was enough to tell me who had called.

I kneeled beside her, both of our ears against the phone, me pinning Otto down so he didn't try to chew on the receiver. It was astonishing to hear Dad's voice. Even better, he told us he was in Kinshasa; he'd flown in as soon as aid flights had opened up and was calling from Mom's living room. Our home was in bad shape, but the basic structure was still there. He'd already contracted some day laborers to get to work repairing it.

“And the sanctuary?” Mom asked.

We took a bumpy prop-plane flight from Mbandaka to Kinshasa, Otto buckled onto my lap by special permission — he thought that was really cool and spent the whole time pressed against the window. When we arrived, I fell into Dad's arms on the freshly paved tarmac. He and my mom shared a quick, complicated hug, parted, and looked away. We didn't go home, but went straight to the sanctuary, lurching up the road in a borrowed Jeep. It was a stunningly sunny day; Congo had entered its rainy season, with its dramatic showers followed by clean and invigorating sunshine.

We rolled down the windows and waved at the local villagers. Familiar women were back to their stalls selling fruits and vegetables; I even recognized the families of goats crossing our path. We could have been entering our prewar lives. When we rounded the final bend, the old wooden sign announcing the sanctuary's visitation policies was still standing there, untouched.

Behind it we could see the sanctuary buildings, soaked in sunlight.

Silent.

For a while after the Jeep rumbled to a stop, none of us got out. I sat in the back, grappling with Otto as he tried to get the door handle open so he could explore. My parents remained in their seats, steeling themselves.

Clément came down the walk. My dad rolled out of the Jeep, followed by my mom. I lay in the backseat with Otto, toying with
his ears. We'd have to get out soon, but I couldn't face it yet. There would be bonobo corpses. Many bonobo corpses.

When Otto and I finally got out, I was surprised to see not only Clément, Mom, and Dad, but ancient Mama Marie-France — apparently she'd been away negotiating for extra milk when the rebels had attacked. We stood there for a while, Dad speaking to Clément in a hushed voice and Mom hugging Mama Marie-France. I stood there with Otto, staring at the enclosure fence. It had been violently bent back, and the combatants had been in and out so many times, they'd beaten a muddy trail.

Marie-France confirmed to Mom and me what Dad had already warned us to be true: Many of the sanctuary workers were dead. Mama Brunelle. Emile. Patrice. Others had escaped but hadn't surfaced after the war's end, including Mama Evangeline. After long hugs and sad greetings, Clément took Dad for an appraisal of the buildings, while Marie-France led us to the enclosure.

The first place we passed was the nursery. It was eerie and distancing, like we'd fished an old movie of the nursery out of a vault and played it back without volume. The bright-colored mural was still streaked in blackened mashed banana, but the painted figures stared at us in reproachful stillness. I spotted where Mama Brunelle had died, the mussed dirt and clawed tracks grown over with weeds, but didn't point it out to my mother. When we stopped at various points to discuss the state of the sanctuary, Otto would quickly lose interest, pressing his face against me and play-biting my shirt.

We approached the enclosure fence. Beyond the trampled chain-link we could hear bird songs and the hum of crickets, but no bonobo calls. It was quiet and awful.

My mom put her head in her hands. “It's true. They're all gone.”

Marie-France's wizened old eyes crinkled in sympathy as she
explained in Lingala that no one had thoroughly searched the enclosure yet, that maybe some were deep in hiding. But Mom shook her head.

“I'd know it if they were there. I can feel it. It's over.”

We trudged on. “We'll put it back together,” I said. “Now that the war's done, orphans will start streaming in. I can help you. It'll be hard at first, but with a little —”

My mom gasped and stopped in her tracks.

We'd arrived at Pweto's tiny enclosure. There he was, lying by the water in the classic bonobo relaxation pose, an ankle against the opposite knee. Somewhere during the ruckus of the last few months, he'd found a muddy pair of women's pants and spread them out to lie on, like a beach blanket. He was staring at the sky, broke off for a moment to look at us, and then went back to his meditation.

“Okay, there is one,” Marie-France said, beaming. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Pweto!” my mom said, grinning. “You devil.”

Of all the bonobos
… I thought, amazed. But I guess it made sense. Being antisocial and aggressive was a flaw in peace and an advantage in war. And because he'd tried to follow us, he hadn't been stuck in his enclosure when the soldiers went in.

“We'll keep everyone else away until we can get his enclosure re-electrified,” Marie-France said.

My mom had a little more spring in her step after seeing one of her bonobos alive, and even within my sadness I bubbled on with her about how amazing it was that Pweto would return to his tiny enclosure even though it wasn't electrified anymore. Our voices soon trailed off, though — our tour had come full circle, back to the nursery and its accusatory silence.

After setting a time to reunite with Clément and Marie-France, we slumped back to our car and to our hollowed-out home
in Kinshasa. Every belonging that could be carried or unscrewed had been stolen long ago, so for the first few nights we camped on the floor. Over the following days, the living room became our base for dealing with the aftermath, Mom and Dad constantly on their cell phones, recharging them at the American embassy's generator while we waited for the capital's power grid to light back up. It would be an ordeal, putting our home back together, but we were far better off than most: We had international connections and the wad of hundred-dollar bills my father had brought with him.

Mom spent the first few days tracking down the families of her dead employees — though Dad and I kept telling her that their deaths weren't her fault, she vowed to pay for the upkeep of parentless children and partnerless spouses. It made the cost of getting the sanctuary back and running higher and higher, but if she debated whether it was all worth it, she didn't let on. “Our sanctuary was the most functional part of the Kinshasa economy,” she kept saying. “Investors know that. I'll find enough funders to get us going again.”

My mother chose a picture of Pweto sunbathing as her cell phone wallpaper. For the first time in years, the sanctuary's problem bonobo was an asset. If it hadn't been for him and Otto, I don't know if she would have tried to rebuild. But there were still bonobos to take care of, even if only two, and so the decision was made: Florence Biyoya was officially back at work.

I, too, had things I needed to do. We tripled the payment I had promised Wello. I sealed the money into a pouch with a note and my e-mail address, not that it was likely he'd ever have access to the Internet, and sent it off with the first of my mom's friends to venture north along the river. He wouldn't be back for a few months, so I'd have to wait a while to hear about Wello. Chances were we
wouldn't be able to track him down; at least he had the silver necklace.

But that wasn't the most important thing.

The most important thing would require me to go back to the difficult days of August and September.

I had to see for myself if the other bonobos were alive.