Mamba Point (10 page)

Mom asked what grade they were in and they got kind of quiet.

“I was in fifth grade,” Gambeh said at last. “Now we’re not in school.”

“Of course not,” she said. “It’s summer.”

“Our schools have the dry season off,” he explained. “We’re just not in school anymore.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Well, we’re sure glad you could join us for supper,” Mom said before they could answer, and I realized I shouldn’t have asked. School probably wasn’t free here. Kids had to pay, and that meant a lot of them couldn’t go. Mom went back to check on the rice.

“I was in fifth grade,” Gambeh told me. “I can read and write.” I was glad Mom missed that, or she would have given me this big you-don’t-know-how-lucky-you-are look.

She came back with little bowls of rice for everyone. Tokie took one bite and broke into a huge smile. Gambeh did the same. Both of them dug in, their forks going like lightning.

I took a bite. No wonder the kids loved it: Mom had mixed in sweetened condensed milk and vanilla and some spices I couldn’t name. Nutmeg, maybe? It tasted more like dessert than dinner. I didn’t know if she had a recipe for it or just made it up on the spot, but it was delicious. I took some more.

“My mama makes good rice, but your rice is good, too, missy!” Tokie said. He still hadn’t touched his chili, but he sure liked that rice.

I was supposed to clear the table and wash the dishes, but Mom stood up when we were done eating and started collecting the bowls.

“Why don’t you show your friends the game?” she suggested. I didn’t like her saying “your friends” so much. They were nice kids, but they were way younger than me and more like a charity case than buddies.

“Sure,” I said. “You guys want to play Pac-Man?” I thought maybe they’d be impressed we had Pac-Man at home, but they looked puzzled. We went into the family room, and I showed them how to navigate the yellow hero through the maze.

“Why do those monsters eat the lemon?” Tokie asked.

I started to explain that we were only on the cherry level until I realized he thought Pac-Man was a lemon. Actually, Pac-Man did look like a lemon.

“Those monsters love to eat lemons,” I told him.

“But how come the lemon eats the monsters sometimes?”

“When he eats the power pill, he can eat the monsters.” I showed him how it worked, waiting for the ghosts to get lined up before I steered through the power pill and got all four of them. After that Tokie was obsessed with eating the ghosts but couldn’t seem to time it right and kept getting chomped.

“Just eat the dots,” Gambeh told him. “The goal is to eat all the dots.” He was right. It was a rookie mistake, obsessing on the ghosts. Gambeh was better at the game, even clearing the maze once or twice. He loved the teleport chamber where Pac-Man goes off one side of the screen and comes back on the other. “Where am I?” he would ask in the split second when Pac-Man was invisible, then roll him back onto the screen. “Here I am!”

“Does the lemon never get full?” Tokie asked.

“I guess not.” It was some life, wasn’t it? Always on the run and hungry. I felt sorry for the lemon.

After a while Mom popped in with Oreos, a surprise from the embassy store that she’d been saving. Gambeh and Tokie took big handfuls.

“What time will your parents expect you home?” Mom asked Gambeh.

He looked outside, and panicked when he realized it was completely dark. We’d lost track of time during the game.

“We can’t go out there in the dark. The heartman will get us.”

“Who?” I asked.

“The heartman. He steals your heart and eats it,” he explained hoarsely.

“He
eats
your heart?”

“He’s bad bad.”

“So he’s like an African bogeyman?”

“No,” Gambeh insisted. “The
boogoo
man is a story. The heartman is real.”

“We would give you a ride, but we don’t have a car,” Mom apologized. “We can give you cab fare.”

“No!” Gambeh shook his head. “The cars, they sometimes have the heartman inside.”

“I’ll walk with you,” I offered. “You said it wasn’t far.”

“It’s not far,” Gambeh agreed.

We walked up to Fairground Road and down the hill where I’d skated that morning. There were a few streetlights, but they were spaced far apart. We ran in spurts, from light to light. I wasn’t sure if the boys were really afraid or just playing, but it was probably a bit of both. I didn’t mind running from light to light.

Cars occasionally rumbled by, their headlights swooping down on us. One car made the boys scream and start hollering and running even faster. I followed, wondering what the big deal was.

“The one-eyed car,” Gambeh said breathlessly after the car passed. “It’s the heartman. He will put on one headlight, then chase you for miles until he can catch you.”

It didn’t make a lot of sense for a guy to warn his victims.
For that matter, can you even turn on one headlight at a time? I didn’t think so.

We took a side street off of Fairground and walked a few blocks to a white cement building. “We live upstairs,” Tokie explained, pointing. They ran up the outside stairs and banged on the door until someone let them in. A woman scolded them, then noticed me and came out to the top of the stairs. “You don’t let those boys bother you, oh?”

“No bother!” I called back. She disappeared again, and I realized I was all alone on a dark street in a strange country.

I walked quickly back to Fairground Road, which at least had streetlights, then hurried toward UN Drive, looking back as I heard a car approach. I saw a single headlight, and whether the heartman was a myth or not, I thought it would be a good time to start running. The car seemed to slow down, keeping me in its single beam. Two blocks ahead there was a busy bar with music blaring and people milling around. I sprinted for it, my heart pounding. Just as I reached the bar, the headlight swooped past and I turned to see a man roaring by on a Vespa.

I laughed in relief, but nearly had another heart attack when somebody grabbed my shoulder.

“Hey, Linus!”

I turned around and saw Law. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “This is a
bar.”

“Me? What are
you
doing here?”

“I’m here with my friends, but that’s different. I’m older than you.”

“Still not old enough to be in a bar.”

“There’s no drinking age in Liberia.”

“Then leave me alone.” I pushed past him, noticing Michelle and Ann from the pool and some teenagers watching us. I cut a wide angle to avoid them.

“I don’t want to see you here again!” Law shouted after me.

I was fuming and didn’t notice right away that my snake was waiting for me in a circle of lamplight. It poked its head up, looking at me with baleful gray eyes. I was glad to see it.

There wasn’t a doubt in my mind anymore about the
kaseng
. The snake was connected to me—I could feel it in my bones. I was different, too. I’d asked a girl on a date, sort of, skated down the biggest hill in Mamba Point, rescued a kid, and plunged into the city at night without thinking twice about it—all in one day. Maybe I’d acted like an idiot, but I was no ’fraidy-cat anymore. And all of that happened after I accepted the snake in my life, as Charlie put it.

“Come on,” I told it. “Go ahead, it’s okay.”

I let it approach, standing perfectly still as it
climbed me
, wending its way around my legs and waist. The snake stopped halfway up my chest, becoming a dead weight on my body. It was nice that it wanted to hug me, but after a couple of minutes my leg muscles were about to give, and my shoulders and arms were achy. I needed to move.

I remembered a time back in Dayton when Law made me stretch out my arm and bet me a quarter I couldn’t hold
a dictionary for five whole minutes. It seemed easy enough at first, but even a minute later my arm ached. Two minutes later beads of sweat were streaming down my forehead, getting in my eyes, and I knew I wouldn’t make it. I flung the dictionary to the ground and gave him his quarter. This was a lot like that, only this time the dictionary had fangs and was known for its short temper.

“Psst,” I whispered. “Maybe you’d better go now.” The snake tightened its grip, and I knew it wasn’t going anywhere.

So I took it home.

Once I started walking, the snake drew up its tail and settled around my waist like a bizarre cummerbund. I pulled out my shirt and draped it over the snake. It just looked like I’d put on about twelve pounds in the last half hour. The sleepy guard didn’t notice, and Mom didn’t get a good look at me.

“Is that you?” Mom hollered from the family room. I could hear people talking on TV.

I poked my head in the door on the way down the hall. “If you mean Linus, yep, it’s me.”

“I was about to go looking for you,” she said. “What took you so long?”

“I ran into Law.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re okay.”

I glanced at the TV and saw J. R. Ewing was on the phone, yelling at someone.

“They have
Dallas
here?” If Liberians watched that show, they must think Americans were all millionaires in cowboy hats.

“It’s the closed-circuit American thing,” she explained. “Now shush, I want to hear this.”

After I crept back to my room and closed the door, the snake pulled itself forward. I felt the scales scraping against my skin, tickling a little.

It spooled down to the floor in sloppy figure eights, and became so still it almost looked dead. I crouched down to see if it was sleeping, but its eyes were open, its black tongue poking out to sense the air. I touched the crown of its head.

“Hello,” I whispered. “You’re actually kind of neat-looking.” Not cute, exactly. Handsome, maybe. Striking, so to speak. I liked the way the shapes came together around its head—all rhombuses and trapezoids. It reminded me of Matt’s dice, the ones with weird numbers of sides.

The snake didn’t move. Maybe it was dozing. I’d read in the book that snakes can’t close their eyes. I traced all the loops and tangles with my finger, guessing that it was eleven or twelve feet from its head to the tip of its tail. It was not a bad snake, I thought. Not a bad snake at all. I took off my sandals and stretched out on the bed, falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Dad woke me up, pushing the door open and flipping the lights on. “Wake up and smell the pancakes!”

I opened my eyes halfway. “Are there pancakes?”

“There will be.” He wandered off down the hall.

I remembered a second later that there was a mamba in the room. I jerked up, looking to the floor where I’d last seen it. No mamba.

I got up in a hurry and looked under the bed, in the closet, behind the bureau. No snake.

Uh-oh.

I flipped through the blinds, pulled back the bookshelf, and opened all the dresser drawers, with no luck. The snake must have slipped out into the apartment. Had I closed the door all the way? I couldn’t remember.

I went to the bathroom, glancing down the hall in both directions. After using the toilet, I checked the tub, the trash can, the linen closet. On the way back I did a quick survey of the family room, and didn’t see a single serpent.

Law’s door was shut. I knocked, and he didn’t answer. Either he was still asleep or he was lying paralyzed by a snakebite. I opened the door, quickly, and scanned the
room. No Law, no snake. The snake couldn’t have gone in there, I reasoned. Law always kept his door closed.

My parents’ bedroom door was open. I heard them both in the kitchen, making breakfast. I went into their bedroom, looking behind the furniture and under the bed and in the closet. I felt creepy poking through their things. I checked their bathroom, quickly, and slipped back out.

Unless the snake had crossed my path, it was in the front half of the apartment, where my family was. I went to the pantry first, a walk-in room where we kept all of our canned and dry goods. I didn’t see anything but Cheerios and Van Camp’s beans.

I went into the kitchen. Dad was flipping pancakes, and Mom was juicing oranges. The oranges in Liberia weren’t big and perfectly round and bright orange like American oranges, but they tasted way more orangey.

“I can’t find my Reds T-shirt,” I said theatrically, going through the kitchen to the laundry room. I didn’t find any snakes in there, either.

“I still can’t find it,” I announced as I went back to the kitchen. Neither of them was paying much attention, anyway. I went through the dining room to the living room and dropped to look under the couch and chairs.

Law was at the dining room table, reading a guitar magazine. He loved guitar mags, even though he didn’t play guitar.

“Do you think you left your shirt under the couch?” he asked.

“I also lost my favorite pencil.”

“You have a favorite pencil?”

“It’s got Spider-Man on it,” I told him. I did have a pencil like that, so he nodded and went back to his magazine.

“Pancakes are on!” Dad said, bringing the platter into the dining room.

“I still have to wash up,” I said. I walked back to the bathroom, doing another quick search of the apartment on my way. Where did it go?

“Come on, Linus!” Mom called.

I washed my hands so quickly they probably didn’t get wet, and returned to the dining room.

There was no bacon or sausage or anything, but Mom had sliced up some bananas. I took three pancakes and spooned on the sliced bananas, then added Hershey’s chocolate syrup.

“No whipped cream?” That was how I usually ate them back home: bananas, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream.

“It’s hard to find it here,” Mom explained.

The pancakes were still good. I ate quickly, washing everything down with orange juice. I’d never been a fan of OJ until we moved to Africa, but when it was squeezed out of fresh oranges, it was completely different. I started to get up when I was done.

“Sit down,” my dad said. “Spend some time with your family.”

“Sorry.” I waited. It seemed like everyone was fussing over their pancakes and nibbling.

“Your mother said you made some new friends,” Dad said. I figured he was talking about Gambeh and Tokie.