Mamba Point (25 page)

“I threw it from a third-floor balcony.”

“Hmm. Mambas are arboreal snakes and they’re made to withstand falls,” he said. “That’s still a pretty big fall.”

“I think it landed on some rocks.”

“That’s not so good,” he acknowledged. “So, do you mind if I ask you why you tried to kill it then, and why you’re trying to save it now, and how you did either one without getting yourself killed first?”

“It’s hard to explain,” I said, my voice cracking. I told him a sketchy version of everything that had happened up to Law being bitten.

“I knew there was an incident at the American Embassy,” he said. “I never would have guessed it was your brother, or, um, your fault.” He looked serious for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, who am I to criticize? I kept a mulga
in my backyard for a while. I only let it go because it kept trying to eat my other snakes.” He continued inspecting the snake, shining a light in its eyes and even prodding open its mouth and looking down its throat. I expected him to get a tongue depressor and ask the snake to say “ah.”

“It’s dehydrated and hungry, but snakes can go a long time without food and water,” he said. “I think it’ll pull through.”

I nodded. A lump was growing in my throat and I couldn’t speak.

“So, do you want me to probe its cloaca while it’s clamped down?” Rog asked.

“Huh?”

“So I can find out what sex it is,” he explained. “I usually don’t do it to poisonous snakes, but this one’s docile right now.”

I shook my head. Having your cloaca probed didn’t sound like much fun to me.

“I thought you’d like to know in case you want to give it a name,” he said. “You need to know if it’s a Jack or a Jill, right?”

I’d never thought about naming my snake.

I loosened the clamps and crouched down to touch the crown of the snake’s head. I had to swallow a couple of times to find my voice.

“What’s your name?” I asked, looking into its eyes. Do you even have a name? I wondered. Even if you’re solitary, like Rog’s book says, and you never talk to other snakes, did your mother call you something when you were a baby? Did she whisper hisses to you when you were a little noodle writhing
and crying for—well, not milk, but whatever mama snakes feed baby snakes?

No, I never had a name, the mamba replied. I don’t call myself anything. My mother never called me anything, either. Snakes don’t need names.

It didn’t say all that, at least not with words, but I knew it was true.

So you can be whoever you want, I thought.

It poked its head up, as if it wanted me to pay close attention to its next point: So can you, it said.

I tried to take being grounded seriously, I really did. I fell short again on Thursday, when Matt called me up and said he had some big news, but he was stuck doing something at home and I should come down. So I did.

Matt was packing. That’s what he was stuck doing, and that was his big news.

“I’m moving back to Philadelphia,” he told me. “I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m going to a private school there.”

“Your dad’s sending you to military school?” I’d read where kids who got into a lot of trouble got sent to military school, but I never saw it happen in real life.

“It’s not a military school,” he assured me. “It’s not even a boarding school.”

“Do you have to wear a uniform?”

“Yeah, but it’s a school uniform, not a soldier uniform, and I get to go home at night. I mean to Uncle Greg and Aunt Beth’s.”

“For how long?”

“From now on,” he said. “I’ll go to all of junior high and high school there.”

“That’s a weird punishment,” I said. It was like grounding didn’t mean anything to Matt, so his dad sent him into permanent exile instead.

“It’s not a punishment,” he said. “We just had a long talk about stuff. Dad didn’t know how much I didn’t like it here, and he decided … we both agreed I would be better off in the States.”

I knew Matt didn’t like it in Liberia, but I didn’t know it was that bad.

“What are Uncle Greg and Aunt Beth like?”

“They’re nice,” he said with a little shrug. “They have a bunch of cats, and they’re really into baseball. They’re taking me to a game when I get there. Who’s Steve Carlton?”

“A pitcher. A really good one.”

“On the phone Aunt Beth said I’d get to see Steve Carlton, like I should be really excited.”

“You should be,” I agreed. “You’ll have fun. Just don’t be scared of the mascot.”

He snorted. He must have never seen the crazy green Phanatic.

“Are you coming back at Christmas?” I asked. “Or maybe next summer?”

“Dad’s going to Philly at Christmas. I guess I don’t know about next summer.”

“Wow.” I felt like Matt was the second-best friend I’d ever had, and he was already packing up and moving. It wasn’t fair. Also, he didn’t seem to mind that much. I knew he didn’t like Africa, but I wanted him to be a little bit sad about it.

“What’s going to happen to Zartan and Bob?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It was fun, though, wasn’t it?” He handed me the game. “You can keep this, as a little goodbye present. Maybe you and Law can play.”

“Thanks. Um, I don’t have a present for you, because I didn’t know until just now that you were leaving.”

“It’s all right. Send me a drawing or something.”

We shook hands the normal American way before I went back upstairs.

Artie was there when I got home.

“Linus, your friend was here.”

“You mean Gambeh?” I guessed. I’d been with Matt, and there weren’t a lot of other possibilities.

“Mr. Sekou?”

“Oh!” I wished I’d gotten back sooner. “Did he just come and get his bag?”

“Yes, and gave this to you. It’s a
zoe.”
He handed me a small statue of an African guy dancing. He had wild hair and wore a mask, and in each hand he held a snake. There was something familiar about it. The face looked like the face of an old friend, but somebody who’s changed so much since the last time you saw him you can’t think of who it is.

“Hey!” I stopped looking at the little statue and looked at Artie. “You just called me Linus. Not sir or little boss man.”

“Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“There’s no reason to be sorry,” I told him. “It is my name.”

My snake got better. I almost never got to see it, because of school and because I was grounded, but sometimes I’d get off the bus early and drop in on Rog and the snake, and then take a taxi so I could get home before Mom and Dad.

“I’ve got a chum going to Nimba County tomorrow,” Rog told me one of those times. “Lots of jungle between here and there, good places for a snake, nowhere near people.”

I looked at him for a minute, trying to figure out what he was talking about.

“We can’t release that snake in the city,” he told me. “This is better for the snake, and better for everyone else. You understand, right?”

“Sure.” I was the only one it wasn’t better for. I didn’t know what would happen to me if the snake was gone forever. Would the
kaseng
fade? Would I go back to being the old Linus? No, I thought. I would miss my snake, though.

“I understand,” I said. “Tell your friend thanks.”

“I’m going to go do some work on the computer,” Rog told me. “I can’t leave a kid all alone with the snakes, so … um, I never did this.” He left me alone with the snakes.

I let mine out of its cage, picked it up for the last time,
and let it stretch out on the table. It scooted across the metal and looked off the edge but didn’t drop to the floor. The table was cold, and that made it lazy.

I took a big sheet of white paper from a cabinet and spent over an hour drawing the snake one last time. I labored over each twist and coil, and used cross-hatching to shade it the way they showed in the drawing book. I drew the head last—tilted slightly forward, the eyes warm and intelligent. Deep in the eye, I drew the upside-down reflection of a boy. It was the closest thing I’d ever done to a self-portrait. There. I had my picture to send Matt.

When I was done, the snake climbed up my arm and rested its head on my wrist. I think it was studying the picture. Satisfied that I’d done a good job, it settled down with its eyes glassy in sleep. I felt the quietest rhythms against my arm. I may be the only person in the world who believes that snakes can purr.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

When I was thirteen years old, my family moved from Grand Forks, North Dakota, to Monrovia, Liberia, because my dad had just joined the foreign service. We lived in the part of the city known as Mamba Point, not far from the American Embassy on United Nations Drive. For the most part, Monrovia is presented here the way I remember it, including the embassy and the surrounding area, Hotel Africa with the swimming pool in the shape of the continent, the JFK Hospital, the police station, and the airport. The only feature of Monrovia I made up for the book is the World Health Organization offices and the antivenin lab behind them, though similar facilities exist elsewhere in West Africa.

A lot of what Linus sees and does in this book is similar to my life that summer. Our family lived in the same apartment building, which was called Ocean View. I walked to the embassy compound every day, past dilapidated shanties and a big field of wild grass and trees, past a car wash, and past a couple of street vendors, one who sold cigarettes and candy and combs and reggae tapes and other sundries, and another who sold African artifacts like masks and statues. I sometimes haggled with the charlie over miniature elephants, which I collected. I swam in the same pool as Linus, ate greasy hamburgers at the same rec hall, and borrowed books from the same embassy library. I played table tennis in the carport at the teen club and went for walks along the rocky outcrop behind the embassy. I got shots at the clinic that left my arm bruised for days, and I braced myself every week for the foul-tasting pills that
protected me from malaria. I even holed up and played games for days at a time. I never skated down Fairground Road, but I did ride my bike down that road into downtown Mamba Point, and it was a harrowing experience.

Like Linus, I was warned of rogues who broke into people’s homes, and heard whispered stories of the heartman, who would steal and eat your heart. I also heard dire warnings about the deadliness of mambas, and even spotted a couple. I saw one get butchered by a gardener just outside the teen club, and a second slithered right past me and a friend of mine on the rocky shore behind the embassy. I never got any closer than that.

Kasengs
are a genuine belief of native Liberians. I learned about these and a lot more about Liberian folklore in a thick book entitled
Tribes of the Liberian Hinterland
, by George Schwab, published by the Peabody Museum at Harvard University in 1947. Of all superstitious beliefs, I find
kasengs
to be among the most believable: I think people can, and often do, have profound connections to animals that transform them in remarkable ways. (However, if you encounter a mamba or any other wild animal, assume you
don’t
have a
kaseng
and stay far away.)

This book also depicts some small character traits that are borrowed from real people. For example, our houseboy sometimes jokingly called me “little boss man,” and he once released lizards in our apartment to catch the cockroaches. We also had a Liberian cook who made Liberian chicken, with pea-sized peppers that would take the skin off your tongue if you ate them whole. A Liberian kid, much older than Gambeh, was a friend of my brother’s and came to dinner sometimes; we learned from him
that to the average Liberian, a meal without rice feels like no meal at all. I don’t remember any guards by name, but several of them played loud reggae songs that boomed up the stairwells—Linus hears some of my favorites. Despite these similarities, Linus is not based on me or anyone else, and none of the other characters are based on real people.

I set this story in 1982 because that’s the Liberia I know enough to write about. Since I left, Liberia has gone through much change and hardship, violence and anarchy. The population of both Liberia and the city of Monrovia has doubled, but the people have fewer resources, jobs, and habitable places to sustain themselves. In early drafts of
Mamba Point
, I tried to foreshadow this fate, but in the end I just wrote about Liberia as I knew it: a country in the midst of much change and with many challenges, but mostly peaceful and not without happiness or hope. As I write this, I believe that hope has returned, and that happiness will follow.