“Fine,” I say, pulling my helmet off too. He takes his helmet off and turns around in the seat. “ Turn left up here.” Instead Michael pulls the bike over to a quiet spot overlooking the harbor and stops.
Neither the man nor the donkey seems in much hurry to get anywhere. Michael nudges the bike around an ancient man with a donkey cart piled with charcoal.
“ So are you going to tell me who it is we’re meeting?” We pass the big green mosque at the center of Old Town, and the hawkers who ply their wares to tourists outside the Swahili Museum: cheap Rasta necklaces and sarongs wooden elephants and impala that stand in military lines on Masai blankets. We’re almost to the fish market when Michael clears his throat. There is clear blue sky above, and below, electric blue water. There are serious-faced men in long white kanzus and women wrapped in rainbow kanga prints or head-to-toe buibuis that billow like black sails. You’re not going to do anything to get us out of here.” “I don’t know what you want me to do! I don’t know who you think I am!” “I think you’re the same girl you’ve always been! You’re Tiny Girl! You’re a thief and a survivor! Somebody who doesn’tįrom the back of the bike, Old Town’s grit fades away into the vignettes I imagine the tourists see: rambling warrens of pale limestone buildings and waving palm trees market stalls with perfect pyramids of yellow and red mangoes, frilly bunches of greens, bananas, and peppers hung like garlands.
Some part of me registers the surprise and hurt in his eyes, but the rest of me curls inward. Work with me here.” “ There’s nothing we can do.” “Maybe if-” “I said there’s nothing we can do!” I snarl. He tortured my mother and controlled me like a puppet, and I let him. One that will give me some direction, some purpose. I go through my rules in my head, searching for one that will make sense of all of this. What can I do? I can’t rescue Michael-Mr. I can watch until I don’t want to see any more and then I can just jump into the sky and be gone.
0 kommentar(er)
