I will climb my mother to Heaven, he said to himself, tittering, mumbling, unafraid to walk the dusty streets of Gbarnga day or night even during the riots because his mother, the woman who loved him, the woman he found years ago after coming home from the market with no chicken but the head of a cassava fish a merchant had thrown to the dogs and found boys no older than himself, six or seven, Charles Taylor’s boys singing, dirty, ransacking their house for food and clothing, chanting He Kill My Ma, He Kill My Pa, I Vote For Him.

The kisses have become the extent of Marcela and Arturo’s intimacy, and her signal to begin her daily routine. She lets out the breath she has been holding in, the remnants of Arturo’s morning scent, and walks down the hall to the girls’ room where her five daughters toss and turn and slobber and smack their lips to their dreams about boys and flowers and dances. She flicks the light switch and clears her throat. It is all she needs to do to wake the oldest two girls, who will then wake the remaining girls with their fighting over the bathroom and the brush and the costume jewelry that they sneak to school in their book bags and put on while riding the bus to the Santa Rita school compound which houses grades K through 12.