“I have dealt with killahs before."
I study her face. She is not speaking figuratively.
Her dark eyes hold mine. "I told you where I came from."
I do some quick math. In the 90's, around the time my world was shattered by my father's death, Sierra Leone was brutalized by civil war. Mariama would have been a young adult, watching everything around her being blown to pieces. I learned it as a fact in a college classroom. Mariama lived it. How little thought I've given to the life of this woman I've come to depend on.”