Mamba Point (3 page)

“We’re going to a nice restaurant, so try to look decent,” Mom said.

“Is it at the embassy?” I wondered if the nice restaurant was like the officers’ club on the air force base in Dayton.

“No, it’s at a hotel. Darryl says it’s the best restaurant in Liberia.”

Law and I didn’t have nice clothes in our suitcases. We had some coming with our air freight, but wouldn’t get that for a day or two. The best we could do was clean shorts and new polo shirts with little jumping tigers on the left—presents from Grandma before we left.

“It’s supposed to be an alligator,” Law mused, looking at himself in the mirror. “Izod shirts have an alligator.”

“I’d rather have a cat than a reptile,” I told him.

“It makes it look like we’re trying to be cool, and failing,” he said. “It would be better to look like we weren’t even trying.”

“Maybe if we wear them, we’ll look like we’re
not trying
to look like we’re not trying to look like we’re trying,” I said helpfully.

He looked at me for a minute, and shook his head. “It’s supposed to be an alligator.” He scratched at the tiny tiger patch like it might come off if he scraped at it enough.

“It’s a nice shirt,” said our mother, “and anyway, it’s supposed to be a
crocodile
.”

The doorbell rang, and we heard my dad talking to Darryl.

“The driver must be here,” Mom said. The
driver?
Suddenly we were the sort of people who had a
driver
show up. Back in Ohio we had a station wagon with a dented bumper.

“Oh, Linus.” Darryl was excited to see me coming into the living room. “This is Matt, my boy. You two are in the same grade.”

A gloomy fat kid barely nodded at me. He looked like he’d rather be doing anything than going out to dinner with us. It was just the two of them—no momlike person in the picture, but neither of them explained why not.

Matt muttered something to me. I didn’t quite make it out, but I thought I heard the word “blanket.”

It wasn’t quite dark when we went outside, and I was able to get a better sense of the neighborhood while everyone else piled into the embassy van. I glanced down the street at trees I didn’t know the names of but knew we didn’t have in Dayton. Something shadowy and slinky dropped out of one and disappeared in a jumble of tall grass. It was pretty far away, but I hurried up and got in the van, cutting in front of Dad.

“What are you doing?” he asked, following me in.

“Nothing.” I worked my way around everyone else to the backmost seat with Matt. “I think I just saw a snake, that’s all.”

“Another one?” Dad asked.

Darryl turned and looked at me curiously—or maybe suspiciously.

“Maybe it was a snake,” I said. “Maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know.” I couldn’t think of anything else long and ropey that climbed trees, but I didn’t like the way everyone was looking at me.

We drove along the coast, with the noises and smells of the city coming at us on one side and a fresh ocean breeze blowing through on the other. The sun was setting out over the ocean, scattering rusty rays across the water. I wanted to get a better look and enjoy the breeze, but Matt crammed himself up against the window.

“Just wait until you see this place,” Darryl said. “You’ll love it.” We turned onto a wide road. There were a couple of guards, but they waved us in the second they saw the American Embassy logo on our van. We went slowly, past clean white beach houses and a much nicer beach than the one at Mamba Point.

A big, bright building rose majestically above the beach. There were rows of terraces going up to the roof, seven or eight stories high, and a bunch of flags hanging over the entrance. The driver let us off, right in front, and drove away.

“Hotel Africa,” Darryl said. “The last president built it to impress all the other African head honchos. There was a big conference here about three years ago. Before Tolbert was assassinated, obviously.”

“The last president was
assassinated?”
I’d read the encyclopedia article on Liberia, but that fact wasn’t in there. Our encyclopedias were about ten years old.

“Duh,” Matt muttered. “There was a coup two years ago. A bunch of guys threw out the old government and took over. The guy who killed the last president is president now.” I didn’t know if I should believe him. Would that guy who shot Ronald Reagan be president if he’d had better aim? No way. He’d be given the electric chair.

Darryl started to elaborate, but Dad nudged him and whispered something. Darryl nodded.

“It’s a five-star hotel,” he said. “Only place in Liberia where you can get a fancy meal.” We followed him into the lobby while he told us more about the hotel. I tuned him out, wondering about this assassination and why Dad hadn’t told us about it. He
had
to know. He’d spent weeks learning all about his new post.

“This isn’t bad,” Law said, wheeling around to watch a couple of women in bathing suits striding over to the elevators.

“Oh, you have to see the best part,” Darryl said excitedly. He herded us all through the lobby and down the hallway to a set of doors on the far side. Outside there was a huge swimming pool in the shape of Africa. People were standing in the shallow end by a bar where you could get a drink in a coconut without even getting out of the pool.

“Nice, huh?” Darryl said. “Tolbert was sure proud of this place.”

“It’s lovely,” my mother agreed.

“It might have gotten him killed,” Darryl added. “Well, it sure didn’t help. People starving in the streets while their
president builds a fancy hotel so he can show off to other world leaders.”

My mother murmured something to Darryl, who stopped talking a moment, then turned around and rubbed his hands eagerly.

“Let’s eat.”

The menu was mostly fancy stuff, with a few “West African Favorites” listed on the back page. I ordered from the main menu: crepes filled with chicken and spinach. They came with a whole boat of mayonnaise to spread on them. They were delicious.

“That’s gross,” Law said as I slathered the mayo on the crepes. He hated mayonnaise almost as much as he hated spinach. He’d ordered something from the African part of the menu: a big shank of meat that came with a kind of rice pilaf with onions and peppers.

“Now, that’s a proper Liberian supper.” Darryl nodded in approval at Law’s plate. “Goat meat and
jollof
rice. Yum.”

“It’s good,” said Law. He gloated because he was being authentic and I wasn’t.

“So it’s not baa-a-a-a-a-a-d?” I bleated.

“Don’t be a dork.”

“Sorry to baa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-other you.”

He snickered, and gave me a little head butt to the shoulder. “You are what you eat,” he reminded me, and butted me again.

“You guys are dumb,” Matt said. He went back to
gobbling up his chicken stuffed with ham and cheese, barely looking at us.

“So, you’ve lived here seven years?” I asked him, remembering Darryl saying that on the drive from the airport.

“Yep.”

“Wow.” We only lived in Dayton for five years, and it felt like home to me. I wondered if Liberia would ever feel like home.

“Do you like it here?” I asked.

“Nope,” he answered, but didn’t bother to explain. Yep, this kid was a joy.

Law barged into my room later, even though the lights were out and I was trying to sleep.

“Mom wanted Darryl to shut up because she didn’t want to exacerbate your condition,” he said.

“I know, but thanks for dropping by to tell me.”

When my parents took me to see that shrink after my panic attack at school, he talked to me for a while by myself. Then he let Mom and Dad come back in, and he told them I was stressed about moving. He said it was pretty common for kids facing a big change, especially “sensitive kids like Linus,” which was his way of saying big ’fraidy-cats like Linus. He also told Mom and Dad to make sure I didn’t become preoccupied with things that exacerbated my condition. Those were his words.
Become preoccupied
meant “think too much,” and
exacerbate
meant “make something worse than it was already.”

So I knew Mom was trying to stop me from hearing about things like poisonous snakes, and rogues, and the fact that there’d been a coup. She was going to be happy when she found out that the new Linus didn’t care about stuff like that.

“I guess it messed up everything, seeing the snake right off the plane, then Darryl talking about all the coup stuff. I bet you’re pretty freaked out.”

“Well, not really, but thanks for reminding me just before I go to sleep.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Just kidding. I’m not going to have nightmares.”

“Are you sure?”

“Come on. I’m not a little kid anymore.”

“Well, I brought you this.” He tossed something on the bed and left, shutting the door behind him. I hadn’t even noticed he was holding anything. I felt around on the bed until I found a familiar shape.

It was my stuffed monkey, Moogoo. I’d had him since I was three. I’d put him in the Goodwill box when were packing up to move, but my brother must have grabbed him back and hidden him in his own suitcase.

Moogoo was kind of scratchy and woolly except for his face, which was a circle of soft felt sewn on the head. When I was a toddler, I would carry Moogoo everywhere and make him give people Moogoo kisses, mashing his felt face to their lips. Moogoo also had big googly eyes that used to spin when you pressed his belly. The eyes didn’t work anymore,
but the pupils would kind of roll around when you shook him.

I was too old to sleep with a stuffed toy, so I set Moogoo on the nightstand. I slept well, knowing he would meet any intruders head-on with his manic eyes and give them slobbery monkey kisses until they fled in terror.

We went to the embassy the next day to get processed. It was just up the road, not even a half mile, so we walked. Despite what Darryl said about it raining every day, that morning was sunny and warm. We passed shanties, shacks made of tacked-together sheets of corrugated metal, with raggedy clothes spread out on the roofs to dry. A really little girl appeared in the doorway of one of the shacks, looking like one of the kids in those commercials that ask you for money. She watched us with round eyes as we passed. Mom reached into her purse, but the girl disappeared.

This was Africa, I thought. I knew that, but now it really sank in. This was Africa. A monkey skittered up a tree and chattered at us, in case I had any lingering doubts.

We passed a clump of wild grass and a few trees, where snakes might have been wriggling around and waiting to poke their creepy triangular heads at us, but none did. Past that, about halfway to the embassy, there was a car wash. It wasn’t the kind back home where you drive through a tunnel and machines spray water and soap all over your car. It was just a parking lot where guys had buckets of soapy water and sponges. They were washing a taxi, and a couple more cabs waited in line.

A street vendor stood on either side of the driveway leading up to the car wash. One had a tray hanging by a strap around his neck. The tray had cigarettes, candy, plastic combs, matches, packets with aspirin and cold medicine—like the counter at a 7-Eleven. The other guy had unrolled a rug and spread out a lot of masks and carvings.

“It’s a charlie,” Dad said, pausing to look at his wares. “These guys are called charlies.”

“Good morning, sir,” the man greeted him. “Are you buying something today?”

“No, just looking,” Dad said, lightly touching a couple of carvings before moving on.

“Are those like voodoo masks?” I whispered to Law. I was thinking of my Tarzan comics, with the evil witch doctor who wore a mask like that.

“Don’t be dumb,” he said. “They’re just masks.”

“They must mean something. They don’t just make them to sell to tourists, do they?” I decided not to ask Mom and Dad, though. It might sound prejudiced.

We got embassy ID cards, then went to the clinic for shots. We’d had a few rounds of shots before leaving the States but weren’t finished. It was a good chance to show everyone the new Linus. I just rolled up my sleeve and let them poke me full of holes. When they were done, I had a red spot on my arm the size of a quarter, which meant I
didn’t
have typhus or tuberculosis, and another half-dozen pinpricks all over my body, but I didn’t complain once. On top of all that, we had to start taking nasty-tasting pills that were supposed to keep us from catching malaria—one pill a
week for as long as we lived in Africa. That was over a hundred pills, I realized with dread.

For lunch we went to the rec hall, which was right there on the embassy compound. It reminded me of having lunch with Joe and a couple of other kids back at the school in Dayton. I wondered if the same bunch of kids would sit together when they started junior high at Wilbur Wright next fall, and I wondered if anyone would ask about me.
Hey, what happened to Linus?
some kid would wonder, and some other kid would say,
Oh, I heard he went to go live in a library
. I heard a lot of that before I left. “You’re going to live in a
library?”
It didn’t make any sense, but neither did moving to Africa.

I had a funny-tasting hamburger and extra-greasy, extra-salty potato chips. It helped me get the bitter taste of the malaria pill out of my mouth.

“We haven’t seen any snakes today,” I realized while we ate. I’d seen plenty of places where a snake might be hiding.

“You don’t have to worry about snakes,” Dad said.

“I know. That’s what I was saying. We didn’t see any today.”

“We didn’t
see
any,” Law said. “They hide really good.”

“Larry,” Mom cautioned. “Don’t scare your brother.”

“I’m Law now,” he reminded her.

“Whatever your name is. Don’t scare your brother.”

“I’m not scared,” I insisted.

“I wasn’t trying to scare anybody,” Law said. “I was just saying—”

“Drop it,” Dad said.

“Sorry.”

“I’m not scared, anyway,” I said again.

“Well, it doesn’t matter because you probably won’t see another snake the whole time you’re here,” Dad said.