Blue Gold (2 page)

Wait,
she told herself,
I erased it.
At least, she remembered
thinking
she should erase it. But had she? Yes, she was certain of it.

Fiona glanced over at her dad as he drove, so cheerful and clueless in his tidy white team shirt, tucked in, and wire-rimmed glasses. He'd flip if he found out Fiona had lost the phone—he was big on being responsible—but if he found out she'd sexted Ryan? He'd bust a vein.

When they pulled up in front of Fiona's mom's place, her dad gave her a funny look and asked, “Everything okay? I mean, apart from the flu?”

“Fine,” she said.

It was only half a lie. Everything would be fine—
if
she got the phone back. As she watched her dad drive away, Fiona's head was suddenly crystal clear. She had to find that phone, before anybody else found it.

SYLVIE WALKED STEADILY AND CAREFULLY
, balancing a heavy sack of ground maize upright on her head as she made the long trek back from the food distribution center. Her arms ached from the heavy bags of beans and rice she carried in each hand, and her flip-flops kicked up red dust from the bone-dry track, dust that parched her throat and coated her skirt and blouse.

Nyarugusu Refugee Camp was huge—over sixty thousand people in seven zones and more than fifty villages. Every two weeks, Sylvie had to make the half-hour walk to the food distribution center from Zone 3, where her family had lived since fleeing to Tanzania five years ago, to stand in a long line for their rations—maize, dried beans, cooking oil, and a little salt. Some said they were lucky to be here, away from the fighting back home in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But it was hard to feel lucky when every day was filled with work and worry.

As she got closer to the cluster of mud huts where she lived with her mother, brothers, and little sister, Sylvie could hear the shouts of young boys playing football. She listened for her brother Olivier's voice—easy to pick out because he was the loudest of the boys in their village—but his was not among them. So he had not returned from wherever it was he'd disappeared to this time. Mama would somehow find a way to blame Sylvie for his absence.

When she came into the common space that served as a playing field, she saw that her younger brother, Pascal, had the ball. His bare feet controlled it effortlessly as he dodged the other boys, making steady progress toward the opposing goal, marked by two tin cans. Soon he'd be as good at the game as Olivier, although he was only nine. Olivier would be fourteen next month, old enough to come and go as he pleased, as he never tired of reminding Sylvie. But Sylvie was fifteen and still the eldest, even if she was only a girl. For now, at least, the boys minded her, their second mother.

Why do the boys get to play, when I must do all the work?
Sylvie let the bag of maize slip to the ground. “Pascal!” she called. “Bring this inside.”

With a swift kick, Pascal landed the ball between the rusted cans and scored. His teammates slapped his back and shouted his name. Sylvie's heart softened when she saw his broad smile. For a moment, she was back in their home village, watching their father playing ball with Olivier and Pascal in the yard of their house. It was a real house made of cement blocks, with two bedrooms, a sitting room with proper furniture, and a kitchen with a cook stove—nothing like the one-room mud and thatch hut they lived in here.

“You can't boss me, Sylvie,” replied Pascal.

“I'll spit in your
fufu
,” she threatened, referring to the sticky dough she'd make from the maize she was carrying.

“Then I'll eat yours instead of mine!” he said, laughing.

“Help me,” she coaxed, “and I'll give you Olivier's share.”

Pascal came over and struggled to lift the heavy sack, his thin arms barely reaching around it. “What if Olivier comes home?” he asked.

“I'll make sure you get more than him,” she promised.

Sylvie carried the other rations into their hut, dipping down to clear the doorway. Inside it was dark, like always, the only light coming from the open door. They'd had to construct it quickly when they first arrived. There was no time to make windows, and since then, no will. Pascal followed her in with the sack of maize, dropped it onto the dirt floor, then ran back outside to join his friends.

Sylvie's mother, tiny and frail, propped herself on an elbow where she lay on a sleeping mat against the curved wall. “Did they have cassava?”

“You ask that every time, Mama,” Sylvie replied, placing the beans and rice inside the metal bucket they used to discourage rats. “They never have cassava. Only maize.”

“
Ph!
” she replied. “They expect us to eat that.”

Today was a bad day for Sylvie's mother. Her mind was only half with them in the present, and she had barely stirred from the mat. Lucie, who was six, looked up from where she was playing on the dirt floor with the doll Olivier had carved for her out of a piece of wood.

“I'm hungry, Sylvie,” she said.

“You think I'm not hungry?” she chided. “I just walked for an hour, and had to line up for another!” She picked up the yellow plastic can that they used to carry water from the communal tap and swished the contents around. “You and Pascal must go and get more water later.” Kneeling down she took their battered pot and began mixing maize and water. She could hear the boys' shouts from outside. They were playing again. “Pascal!” she called through the open door.

“What?” he said a moment later, popping his head through the doorway.

“Start the fire.”

“That's Olivier's job!”

“Do you see Olivier here?” replied Sylvie sharply, and immediately regretted giving her mother the opening.

“It's because of your bad temper, Sylvie,” she pronounced from the woven mat. “That's why he stays away.” Sylvie wanted to bite back that it was misery, not her, that kept Olivier away. “When Patrice arrives,” Mama continued, “he will beat sweetness into you.”

Sylvie and Pascal shared a look. So it was one of
those
days—a day when Mama refused to believe that Papa was dead, insisting instead that he was only delayed in joining them.

“Please make the fire so we can eat,” Sylvie told Pascal evenly.

Mama gave a short nod of approval. With a shrug, Pascal gave in. He took the matches from the bucket where the beans and rice were kept and headed back outside.

Sylvie poured water into a second pot they had rescued from another family's castoffs and added some beans to let them soak. As she worked, she made a silent vow that she would never become like her mother—depressed, defeated, even crazy some days. Sylvie was determined that she would have a different life, a better life.

“Men like women who are sweet-tempered,” her mother lectured. “Just ask your father. But maybe it doesn't matter,” she added. “Maybe you'll never have a husband anyway.”

“Why will Sylvie never have a husband?” asked Lucie.

“Because of this,” replied Mama, dragging her finger in a diagonal across her face.

At the mention of it, Sylvie could feel the long scar on her face—from above her right eyebrow, across the bridge of her nose to her left cheek. Was she actually feeling it, or only imagining she did, the way other people imagined limbs that were no longer there? The way Mama imagined Papa. Either way, Sylvie told herself she didn't care about how she looked. She was glad she'd never have a husband. Instead, she'd stay in school. Her father had been educated at a university, and she would be, too. Maybe she'd even become a doctor, just like Doctor Marie in the camp hospital. She would make Papa's spirit proud of her—as proud as her mother was ashamed.

“Olivier's here!” called Pascal from outside.

A figure filled the doorway, blocking the light so that for a moment the hut was in darkness. Then Olivier stepped inside, lit from behind like a god descending from heaven—and just as pleased with himself.

“Olivier!” squealed Lucie, jumping for joy.

“You think I'd been gone a week!” he said.

“A whole night and a whole day is enough!” complained Mama, sitting up from the mat. “Where have you been this time?” Her words were angry, but her pleasure was undisguised.

“That's my business,” declared Olivier. He was already taller than his father had been, with a broad face and handsome features.

“He's been hunting!” announced Pascal, who had followed him inside.

Olivier made a face at Pascal for giving away his surprise. “Here,” he said triumphantly, tossing a sticky lump wrapped in a large leaf to Sylvie. “There's more where that came from.”

The package gave off the sweet, tangy odor of fresh red meat. She unwrapped the leaf to find enough to feed them for two days. It made her mouth water, but she frowned.

“Where did you get this?”

“It's bushpig,” Olivier told her proudly. “I caught it.”

Lucie blurted in awe, “How?”

“I dug a hole and laid a trap. Then I chased it into the pit.”

“How could you be so stupid?” admonished Sylvie, getting to her feet. The Tanzanian police shot people for poaching animals from the bush around Nyarugusu. The Congolese weren't even allowed to go outside of the camp.

Olivier threw her an angry look. “All the men do it. We'll have meat every night for a week, and I'll sell the rest for lots of money.”

“You think the police won't find out?”

“I was careful. No one saw me.”

“The camp guards will find out when you sell it. And people will smell it cooking.”

“They won't find out,” Olivier insisted, wounded that his gift was unappreciated. “You can watch us eat it, Two Face.”

At the nickname, Sylvie turned away to hide her scar—a stupid habit she'd developed, because she knew there was no way to hide it.

Mama struggled up from the mat and took Olivier's prize from Sylvie, weighing it in her hands. She held it up to her nose and sniffed it as though she was shopping at the market, just like in the old days.

“Cut the meat into small pieces and cook it with the beans,” she instructed Sylvie. “No one will smell it, and for once we'll eat well.” Olivier looked triumphant. “But be careful who you sell the rest to,” she told him, wagging her finger. “We can trust no one here but ourselves.”

Anger clouded Olivier's face. “You should trust
me
!” he said, and strode out of the hut—gone again for who knew how long, this time.

“Your temper has done it again, Sylvie!”

Something else to blame on me!
thought Sylvie. Without answering, she knelt back down and began sharpening the one knife they owned against a stone.
Where does Olivier disappear to?
she fretted.
Who is he with?
There were many bad people in the camp, people who would rob and even murder. With Mama the way she was, it had been up to Sylvie to keep Olivier safe from people like that, but she couldn't do it anymore, not when he wouldn't listen to her. How much longer could she keep Pascal safe, or Lucie?
Worry and work, work and worry
, she chanted to herself in rhythm with the knife strokes.

Then another chant bubbled up, catching her off guard.
Someday we will be free
. Every refugee knew how dangerous it was to hope, but there hope was, anyway, keeping time with the knife, demanding equal attention with worry.
Someday we will be gone from here. Someday we will be free
. She chanted it over and over, until the knife was sharp enough to cut the meat. Until she almost believed it.

FROM THE CROWDED RAILWAY CAR,
Laiping craned her neck to get a first glimpse of the city of Shenzhen through the window. Older Cousin Min said that fourteen million people lived here. Back in her village, Laiping had tried to imagine what a city of that size would look like. Min, who went out from their village two years ago, told her when she came home at the New Year that Shenzhen was like Hong Kong or Shanghai—shiny and new, lit up by skyscrapers and the neon glow of the shops. That was in February, just four months ago. Laiping could barely believe that she was already on her way to the city.