The Illegal (4 page)

“Mom!” Keita shouted.

Charity tipped her mother’s chin back and breathed into her mouth. Keita opened the door, checked to make sure that the thugs had disappeared, and ran from house to house until he found a neighbour who was willing to bring a car around. Keita and Charity helped lift their motionless mother into the vehicle, but there was no pulse, no breath. They inched through the littered streets, holding Lena’s hands as they approached the hospital. But they knew she was already dead. Keita took his sister’s hand, but he could not cry.

B
USINESS PEOPLE FLED THE COUNTRY, TAKING THEIR MONEY
with them, until General Randall temporarily blocked Internet access, closed the banks and shut down the airport. Randall brought out his troops, put a halt to the attacks and the looting, and promised
to enforce peace and civility, as long as the Faloo people were prepared to respect him as Zantoroland’s President for Life.

Yoyo missed the funeral. Two weeks later, he was finally able to fly back home. Shuffling with tiny steps and barely able to lift his head, Yoyo looked as if he had aged twenty years. He was unable to grieve in front of the children. He became silent and thoughtful. He moved as little as possible, like a reptile that has eaten too much. In the household, Yoyo remained formal and almost wordless. He would not laugh, smile or cry, but he told Charity and Keita to be strong.

Keita did not feel strong. When he walked, his veins seemed filled with sludge. His breathing was as shallow as a barely dug grave. He should have attacked the leader with a cricket bat or hurled a vase at his head and spared his mother the confrontation. But he had done nothing.

When Keita opened his mouth, his words sounded like they came from a stranger. He didn’t speak with Charity about his sadness or hers, but he often sat beside her on the couch when neighbours and friends brought roasted chickens and plantains and fresh mangoes to the house. On the couch, Keita absorbed the warmth from his sister’s shoulders, listened to her breath and parroted her inhalations and exhalations. She sat rigid and perfectly straight, just as her mother had done, and she had nothing to say either, but Keita felt he knew her thoughts and her sadness as they breathed together, in and out, in and out, on the same waves of isolation and shock.

Keita longed to sit beside his father on the couch, but Yoyo spent hours a day at his desk on the other side of the living room, pounding furiously as he rolled page after page into the typewriter.

“What are you writing?” Keita asked one day.

“He’s writing about the coup,” Charity said. “It could be his last income for a while.”

Yoyo tried for days to get a telephone line. He kept writing and revising, and when he finally got a phone line, he called the
New York Times
and dictated his story, word by word.

Y
OYO CALLED
C
HARITY AND
K
EITA INTO HIS STUDY.
“Children, forgive me. I’ve been distant. It is only because I miss your mother so much.”

Yoyo hugged Keita against his left side and Charity to his right. “Let’s sing together.”

In Keita’s household, tears were never allowed with conversation. Only in song could they hug each other fiercely and let their grief flow.

They stood close and sang “I Stood on the River of Jordan,” the way Keita had learned it in church, years earlier, from Deacon Andrews. Finally, Yoyo’s tears cascaded. Charity started bawling. Singing made Keita finally feel the real meaning of his loss. Singing made his mother’s death seem both inconceivable and insurmountable, and for the first time, Keita felt a thousand shards of sadness massing under his skin and threatening to cut their way free.

I stood on da ribber ob Jerdon

To see dat ship come sailin’ ober.

I stood on da ribber ob Jerdon

To see dat ship sail by.

O don’t you weep

When you see dat ship come sailin’ ober.

Shout! Glory Hallelujah!

When you see dat ship sail by.

That night, Keita worried that the troops might come for his father. Who would care for them? Would Keita and Charity be raised by sympathetic neighbours? Faloos, but not people who knew them intimately?

Keita fell asleep to the clacking of typewriter keys. It sounded like rain. It sounded like voices merging. Was it true what they said
in church, about his mother’s soul ascending to the heavens, where she would be forever peaceful and joyous among the angels? Keita could not stop thinking about his mother’s body, inert on the living room floor, and he found himself not believing in the heavens.

When his father did not know where to put his pain, he wrote. Charity studied. Keita went running. Up the path that rose for two kilometres, ascending mercilessly up the mountainside. The climb was so difficult that the locals had given it a name: the Struggle. On days when he could not stop thinking about his mother, Keita would run up the hill, and at the top he would jog back down. Up and down he would run, three, four or even five times, gasping and bawling and gasping and bawling, until he felt dry and empty and ready to lie down and sleep again.

Y
OYO OFTEN LEFT THE HOUSE AT NIGHT AND DID
his interviews away from home, but Keita could not remember a time when his father was not grinding coffee beans in the mornings. He would talk to his espresso maker, spooning coffee into it and patting it down with the back of his spoon until he was ready to screw on the lid and heat the contraption. He had a name for his espresso maker: Wolverton.
Come on, Wolverton, tell me a story today. What you got in there for me?
Yoyo used a battery-powered grinder so as not to be hampered by blackouts. He took his coffee black, which Keita—who needed milk and sugar to make his palatable—could not fathom.

Yoyo would sip his coffee on the porch while reading one of the dozen newspapers and magazines to which he subscribed. They arrived two weeks late in Zantoroland, but never mind—Yoyo devoured them anyway. Yoyo was frugal beyond belief—he would rejuvenate stale peanuts by re-salting them, sliding them onto a greased cookie sheet and broiling them in the oven—but newspaper and magazine subscriptions were his only indulgence.

Yoyo sat in his rocking chair on the porch and greeted the schoolchildren passing in their uniforms and backpacks. The children were all barefoot, with shoes zipped into their bags. For greater longevity, shoes were worn only in the schoolyard.

One day in April of 2009, however, Keita smelled no coffee. Yoyo was not in the kitchen or on the porch. Charity had already
left the house, but that was typical. She clung to her routines. Each night before she went to bed, she assembled her lunch (one Granny Smith apple, a handful of almonds and ham-and-cheese on rye with mayonnaise, but never mustard), folded her school clothes and piled them on a chair, cleaned her shoes and put them at the door (Keita knew that the surest way to drive her crazy was to hide her shoes), and reviewed her schedule of classes, violin lessons and school newspaper meetings. She met a tutor early most mornings to keep her marks as close as possible to 100 percent. But on this day, she had left for an overnight field trip to a museum on the far side of Zantoroland.

Keita, at fifteen, trained daily with a track club but barely kept any study schedule. What was the point of hitting the books when he had no possibility of matching his sister’s success? When his father or his sister inquired about his marks, Keita said that he would happily skip being an overanxious, overachieving A-plus student and opt instead to be a cool B student, a runner dreaming of the glory—and cars—that would accompany his Olympic victory.

Keita slipped on his knapsack and tied his shoelaces. At an easy clip, it would only take him eight minutes to run to school. But it was 8:45 a.m. now and time to get going.

“Papa,” he called.

No answer.

Keita was writing a note to his father, teasingly scolding him for being absent at breakfast, when someone knocked on his door. Three times. Politely, but firmly. In Zantoroland, three knocks meant official business. Keita opened the door. He looked down. It was a young boy, around ten years old. Years ago, when his homeland had been different, it might have been a neighbour child come to visit his father. But in recent years, the president had been known to use young messengers. Keita stepped back in alarm.

“Sir,” the boy said. “Message about your father. You must report to the Ministry of Citizenship immediately.”

“What has happened to him?”

The boy shifted from his left foot to his right. “Don’t know, sir.”

“Who is detaining him?”

“Don’t know, sir, but you must bring a flatbed wagon.” The boy turned and ran.

Keita did not have a flatbed wagon. In Yagwa, wagons were pulled by the labourers who hauled oranges, chickens and okra to market. How important could a wagon be? Better that he go straight to help his father. Keita flew out the door and began running.

The Ministry of Citizenship was housed with other government offices in a three-storey pink building on the bay at the south end of the President’s Promenade. After the coup d’état three years earlier, Keita had been warned to not approach the building—which was also known as the Pink Palace—or to walk within a block of it. Faloos and dissidents were sometimes snatched off the street near there, never to be seen again. No sane person approached the building unless they had good reason to do so.

A
RMED SOLDIERS STOOD GUARD AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE
building. Keita informed them that he had been summoned to meet his father.

One of the soldiers nodded.

Keita ran up six steps and into the building. Ahead of him was an office. Not a soul was inside.

“Dad!” he shouted.

No answer. No one was visible in the building. Keita heard nothing but his own voice echoing off the marble floors and the walls adorned with portraits of President Randall.

Keita tried to open doors on the first floor. The first three were locked. It was cold in the building, and he shivered as he remembered his father’s words:
It’s not truly a Ministry of Citizenship. It’s a Ministry of Detention, Abuse and Worse
. The fourth office door that Keita tried was unlocked, so he opened it and entered a square, windowless room with an unoccupied desk and seats all along the walls,
like an empty medical clinic. On the walls were more portraits of the president. Keita walked slowly around the room and noticed another door. He was reaching for the handle when the door opened and a man came through. Keita jumped back.

The man was short and thin with a military brush cut, inscrutable black eyes, a nose the size of a plum and what appeared to be a permanent sneer on his face. He wore a black suit and a black tie.

“Hello,” Keita said, “I am—”

“We know who you are. Where is the wagon?”

“I came for my father.”

“Not ready to leave,” the man said.

“May I see him?”

“You were instructed to bring a wagon. Are you deaf, or are you dense?”

“I don’t have a wagon, but I wish to see my father.” Keita wondered if it was safe to argue. What would Charity do? His sister, he knew, would not take no for an answer.

“Wait here,” the man said.

“May I ask—?” Keita began, but the man raised his palm, turned and passed through the door, which closed behind him.

Keita waited a moment. He tried the door. Locked. He pounded on it, but there was no answer.

Keita had no book to read, no material to study. He waited. And waited. And waited. In his hurry to leave the house, he had forgotten to put on his watch. There was a clock on the wall, but the hour and minute hands were fixed at noon. It seemed to Keita that an hour or two passed, but nobody came to see him.

Then, from the other side of the locked door, he heard a voice. “Nooo,” it wailed. It sounded at first like a child, loud and insistent, but then it didn’t sound like a child at all. Keita waited for the sound again, listening carefully. When it came again, he knew.

Keita stood up and pounded on the door. No answer.

“I don’t know!” his father cried out, just beyond the locked door.

“Dad!” Keita pounded on the door.

Now his father’s voice came from farther away. Keita shouted again. “Dad!”

The door swung open and the short man stood before him. Keita tried to see into the room, but the man blocked the way.

“You are a poor listener,” he said. “No wagon, and not patiently waiting either. Well, if you must, come in. Be quiet, or you will make matters worse.”

“I want to see my father.”

“That will have to wait.”

The man stood to the side and Keita stepped into the room. Then he felt a blunt, hard blow that left him dizzy. The man had punched him. Keita raised his hand to stop the blood from his nose.

“It will get worse than that if you show any more insolence,” the man said.

“What is happening to my father?” Keita said.

“You are how old?”

“Fifteen. What is going on?”

“Fifteen is too young for questions. But let me tell you something.” The man looked straight into Keita’s eyes.

Keita thought of his sister, strong and bossy, and all the passion that his father had channelled into a thousand newspaper articles. He stood firmly and stared right into the man’s eyes.

“Your father is not a good man. He is neither law-abiding nor respectful.”

Keita was quite sure that the only lawbreakers in this building were the short man and his cronies, and he wanted to say so. He did not want to cause his father more pain, but he could imagine his sister pushing harder.

“There is no need to hurt my father. Tomorrow, you will have to live with the things you have done to him. Let him go. I will take him now.”

“You could have seen him two hours ago, if you had done what I said.”

“What is it with the wagon?”

“Disrespectful question!”

“I don’t have a wagon!”

“You can find a wagon if you put your mind to it. Bring it to the front door, where the soldiers wait, and then come back here and knock on the door.”

His father’s voice again: “I work alone, and I don’t know!”

“Dad!” Keita shouted.

All that came back was a long, slow moan.

Keita wondered if he could overpower the man, or run past him to find his father. But there would be other men, and he would not succeed.

“I will be back with a wagon,” he said.

He left the building and ran to the market, where he found the woman who had sold mangoes and bananas to Charity and him a hundred times.

“Please, I need to borrow your wagon.”

She pointed to the oranges and lemons stacked high on it.

“I promise to bring it back,” Keita said.

“I cannot do that, son.”

Keita fished a five-dollar bill out of his pocket. It was all he had.

“Son, a wagon costs more than that.”

“It’s for my father. They are holding him in the Pink Palace.”

“Oh my Lord. Why did you not say?”

The woman spread out a tarp on the ground. Keita helped her unload the wagon and set the fruit in a pile.

“Here,” the woman said. “Take it and hurry.”

It was laborious and frustrating to haul the wagon through the crowded market, and to ask people to step out of the way to let him pass. They took their time, assuming a boy couldn’t be in a real hurry.

“Please,” Keita said over and over, “it’s an emergency. Please let me by.”

He made better time once he got on the President’s Promenade; then he could run and pull the wagon behind him.

At the Pink Palace, Keita left the wagon at the foot of the steps to the entrance. He ran up past the armed guards and inside, into the office where he had last seen the short man. The door was locked again. He pounded on it. This time, it opened right away.

“Stand aside.”

Keita moved to the left. Two large soldiers stepped out of the room, carrying Keita’s father. One held Yoyo by the legs and the other under the armpits. His eyes were closed. He didn’t turn his head to look at his son.

“Dad!”

“Move out of the way,” the short man said.

They lugged Keita’s father through the building to the exit. They pushed through the door and down the six steps, then they placed Yoyo on the wagon.

Keita ran to his father’s side and felt for a pulse. Yoyo’s heart was beating. He was breathing. But his face was bruised. His feet were bare and swollen.

As he pulled the heavy wagon, Keita looked back every few moments to be sure that his father was safe and not falling off. His arms soon ached. His back ached. But his father was alive, and Keita could take him home. This time, people saw the load Keita was carrying and got out of his way. Cars swerved around them. Pedestrians avoided him. But it wasn’t until he was back in his own neighbourhood that people offered assistance. Three men helped pull the wagon over the last kilometre, relieving Keita and his exhausted arms. They pulled Yoyo on the creaky flatbed wagon all the way to the Alis’ front door and lifted him into the house and to his bed. Then they came back with a car and drove Yoyo to the Yagwa Hospital.

The doctors did not believe the story that Zantoroland’s best-known journalist had fallen down the stairs. But they did not ask any questions that might require Keita to say something that might attract trouble, and they did not issue a bill for treating the two broken fingers on each hand, the broken ankle, the other badly bruised ankle, the split lips or the concussed head.

The nurses told Keita to go home, but he would not leave his father’s side. Finally, they wheeled in a cot so Keita could sleep there.

Charity returned home the next day and went straight to the hospital. Yoyo had by then regained consciousness, and she put her hand on his shoulder and wept.

“It’s all right, children,” Yoyo told them. “I’m still here.”

The nurses knew he had no wife at home. They fed and bathed him and gave him time to learn to use crutches. After four days, Yoyo could get to the bathroom unassisted. On the fifth day, a neighbour drove him home.

For the next two months, the women on the street took care of Yoyo when Keita and Charity were at school. Hardly a night went by without someone bringing fruit, eggs, a chicken or fried plantain. Yoyo tried typing again, but hardly wrote a thing. He could not use either pinkie, and he said his hands throbbed. After three months, he graduated from wheelchair to walker, and in another two months he was able to walk unassisted with an oak cane that he said had come from his own father. He needed help with household chores, especially those involving bending the knees, so while he napped, Keita cleaned. Cleaning was more than a chore; it was a chance to show his father how much he loved him. The house had never been cleaner.

One Saturday morning, while his father snored, Keita removed all the items stored inside the bungalow’s only closet. He hauled out the vacuum cleaner, six boxes of books and two suitcases. And then Keita found a red cane. He jerked his hand back as if he had touched a venomous snake. It was the same government-issue used by crippled men in the streets of Yagwa.

Keita showed the cane to his sister. The two of them sat by their father’s bed and waited. Yoyo opened his eyes and said, “Is this a news conference or a palace coup?”