Kiki’s doing that thing where her brow pinches, and she looks like Mama. I see more and more of our mother in Kiki every time I come here, which hurts sometimes, but still, better Mama than him. He’s most obvious in her lighter skin and eyes, in her loose curls. You can still see that we’re sisters; I just wish it wasn’t so obvious that we’re half sisters. Not that I would ever call her that. I hate how it sounds. Half sister. Like half a person.
But there’s no hiding that Kiki’s dad, unlike mine, is white. Once she let it slip that the other girls call her “Point-Five,” as in, point-five black, point-five white. I told her to tell me their names, but she just said, They don’t mean anything by it, Tina. It doesn’t bother me, and besides, you can’t go around beating up little kids. But sometimes I see her looking at my dark skin, comparing it against her own, and I can tell she wonders what it would be like to fit in for once, to not be the “Point-Five” orphan.
Kiki squeezes the bars separating us, as if she could pull them apart. She’s not finished. “You can come stay here with me. You know you can. Sister Eunice would let you. You’re not too old. She let that other sixteen-year-old in. They’ve got lots of books and a piano and—”
“Shh.” I put a finger to my lips. “Too loud.”
She glances over her shoulder into the dark washroom. From somewhere I hear one of the other girls cough.
“Seriously, Tina,” she whispers, turning back. “They could put you on scholarship, like me.”
“Come on, Kiki, you know they won’t. It’s one per family.”
“But—”
“Enough,” I say sharply. Too sharply. Her shoulders sag. “Hey,” I say, and reach my hand through the bars again to smooth down the curls that have escaped her braids. “Thanks for dinner. I’ve got to go. I have to meet Boyboy.”
“Tina, don’t leave yet,” she starts, her face pressed up close against the metal.
“Be good, okay? Do your homework. Don’t let the penguins catch you out of bed.”
“You’ll be back next Friday?” she asks.
“Like always.”
I gently push Dirty off my leg and make sure my pack is tight on my back. Scaling the wall to get out is always harder than climbing the tree to get in, and I don’t want to get caught on the barbed wire and broken shards of glass embedded in the concrete.
Kiki is still watching me. I force a grin. For a moment her face is still, and then it softens and she smiles.
For half a second, I exist.
And then I disappear in the dark.
TWO
Rule 2: Trust no one. Or if you must, trust them like you’d trust a street dog around fresh meat.
Take the Goondas, for example. Just because I am one doesn’t mean I trust them. Bug Eye is okay. I probably wouldn’t be alive without him. But guys like his brother, Ketchup?
No way. I learned that a long time ago.
The Goondas are everywhere in Sangui City, and they pick up refugee kids like that street dog picks up fleas. It might make my life easier if I lived at the warehouse with them, but then someone would probably wriggle in beside me in the middle of the night and next thing you know I’m like Sheika on the sidewalk with her toddlers, begging for change. Most girls don’t last long with the Goondas.
I’m not most girls.
? ? ?
I hurry through the dark alleys, the route from Kiki’s school to the Goonda warehouse so familiar that I hardly have to keep my eyes open. But I do. A girl on the streets alone after dark is prey. Generally, I try not to stand out too much. My face is usually hidden under my hoodie and my clothes are purposefully shapeless. I keep my hair cropped short. Being scrawny and flat chested helps.
I skirt mud and concrete and garbage rotting in gray pools. The pink glow of the sky over the city lights my way well enough. When I reach Biashara Avenue, I see the hawkers have gone home for the night. The only people left are night crawlers: drunks and restless prostitutes bathed in neon from the bars. The twilight girls watch me suspiciously from their side of the street. I ignore them and walk fast, until I’m at the bridge that separates Old Sangui Town, where Kiki’s school is, from the industrial Go-Downs, the Goondas’ home turf. The lights of the warehouses and factories shimmer in the river like a sort of magic dividing new and old.
Once I saw a body float by as I crossed over this bridge. It was the middle of the night and nobody noticed but me. I guess it floated until a crocodile got interested, or maybe it got all the way out to the mangroves and then the ocean if there was anything left. But there are no bodies tonight, just a handful of wooden dhows anchored in the current, fishermen asleep in their hulls.
By the time I reach the other side, I’m practically running. The Go-Downs are still; no bars on this side. I hear only a few far-off alarms and the growls of dogs fighting over garbage. They don’t even look up when I scurry by. I don’t need my phone to tell me I’m late. I curse Sister Gladys and her TV shows. I shouldn’t have gone to see Kiki. There wasn’t enough time. But if I hadn’t shown up like I always do on Friday nights, she would worry.
Plus, I didn’t want to do what I’m about to do without seeing her first.
When I finally reach the salt-rusted warehouse door, I’m breathing hard and hungry again. I rap three times. Pause. Rap two times. Pause. Once.