Free Bingo's Run by James A. Levine Page A

‘
Husban’, you tell no one, ya, or dey kill you, too!
’ Tha trouble was, tha family in tha next hut heard Fatha. They told tha gang boys.”
    I coughed and stopped. I stared at my feet. They were clean, but my toenails were long.
    Mrs. Steele leaned forward. “Bingo, go on,” she said. Father Matthew looked down, maybe at his watch, or maybe at the sheet from his yellow notebook. I was not in a hurry.
    â€œWell, tha’ night, in tha middle of tha night, tha gang boys drove their truck straight up to our house.” I made sure my voice cracked here. “Two of dem gang boys jump out and run into our hut and start firin’.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
” I screamed. I showed Mrs. Steele with my hands how the gang boys fired.
    She held her face in her hands. Her nails were red like her lips. Father Matthew looked interested, but I wasn’t sure if he was interested in my story or in how I got a piece of his yellow notebook. I had taken it that first day I was at St. Michael’s, nine weeks before. He must have wondered what happened to it. Perhaps he was now interested in what I knew about the total value of his holiness.
    I went on, “Dey shot at everything. Dey kill Mama and Fatha and all mize bruddas and sistas. All them iz dead an’ tha blood iz everywhere, ya.”
    I was better than any of the actors who performed at the bus station. I began to cry real tears. The truth was that my mamahad been knifed in a Kibera riot. My father was a drinker and a gambler who had disappeared when I was little with Senior Mother’s iron cook pot.
    The green of Mrs. Steele’s eyes stared into the brown of mine. Tears dripped off my face. But I hadn’t finished my performance. “I shouted at tha gang boys, ‘Kill me, kill me! You kill my whole family, kill me, too,’ I begged dem. The gang boyz, they jus’ laugh. One of tha gang boys said, ‘Meejit, you tell them in tha village what we do to squealas.’ Then tha gang boys drive away in tha truck. It was a blue truck—Ford F-150.” I added that detail to make my story sound more real. I looked straight at Mrs. Steele. “That night, ma’am, I’z run away. I’z get to Nairobi and tha Holy Fatha told me to stay at St. Michael’s.” I stopped speaking. My face was wet with tears. But then, to my surprise, I started to sob. I couldn’t stop myself. I did not sob about the made-up story, or for Mrs. Steele. I did not know why I cried.
    Mrs. Steele started to cry, too. Small tears ran over her white makeup, like raindrops down dust. Father Matthew painted sadness onto his long yellow face and placed his hand on hers. “Bingo’s story is like that of so many here,” he began. “So very, very tragic. Mrs. Steele, we are so desperately in need of your help. There are hundreds more just like him. I wish we could help them all.”
    Mrs. Steele opened her black handbag, took out a packet of paper tissues, and removed two. She offered a tissue to me and took the other for herself. She slid her hand out from under Father Matthew’s. Her red lips whispered in Father Matthew’s ear, “He is perfect.”
    I was going to America!
    On my classroom wall at the School of Benevolent Innocence hung a map of the world. There was a red pin through whereNkubu was, even though Nkubu was not on the map. Nairobi was below the pin, in Kenya. Kenya was at the center of the map, the center of the world. But on the far edge of the map, near the classroom door, was America; Canada sat on top of it, like a hat, and South America was below it, like bad-fitting trousers. Everyone knew that America had the biggest of everything: high-rises, trucks, tourists. American tourists wore the biggest belts, and had the biggest breasts and wallets. To be the greatest runner in Nairobi and Kenya was one thing, but to be the greatest in the world, I needed America—and Mrs. Steele could