by Wayétu Moore
“I do this plenty. No worry,” Satta said. “I help your family. Me, my family gone. I go bring your family, trust me, Ol’ Ma.” She looked at me. I became more hopeful.
“I don’t want to offend you, but how do I know you will not harm them? That you will not leave them somewhere?”
“How I know you na spy?” Satta asked. “Somebody working for my boss in pretty dress so I confess and you tell them to kill me.”
Her smile tiptoed onto her face but it arrived. And it was the smile and the childhood I saw underneath, stolen but still emerging at moments I least expected it, that made up my mind.
“How long will it take?” I asked. “How long will it take to get to Lai?”
“One day.”
“One day?! You know where that is?”
“Yes, we will walk, then take bus at Junde. No worry,” Satta said.
“That is so soon,” I said and could not hold in the tears. I wiped them quickly, afraid to seem weak before the rebel. “One day?”
“Aye, sister, no worry,” Jallah said, clapping his hands together. “Satta do this plenty.”
At Columbia my concentration was history. I examined Satta and remembered all those women I had read about—Helen of Troy, Cleopatra—and thought of all the times I had wondered which woman would be that for Liberia. This once nameless woman—Satta—Liberia’s unlikely heroine and her sisters, existed. I wiped my eyes again.
“How much?” I asked.
“How many people?”
“My husband and my daughters. Three daughters. Four of them in total.”
“How old your daughters?” Satta asked.
“They are babies. Four, five, and the oldest just turned seven in November.”
“Okay,” Satta said. “Six hundred American. Three hundred for the man and one hundred each for children.”
The price was higher than I expected, and what I knew was a risky choice. But. It was my only choice. Satta and Jallah waited in the silence as I deliberated to myself.
“I will go for you. I will bring them back to you. You will see,” Satta said.
“When … when would you leave?”
“I leave later today. I travel in the night and get there tomorrow morning. They will be here by tomorrow evening time.”
“Yes, she will bring them to my house,” Jallah said. “You can leave here and come wait there with me until they come. I spoke to my wives about them. Then you all take the bus the next morning back to Freetown.”
I did not need any more convincing. I grew more and more excited as they plotted. I imagined kissing my daughters’ faces again.
“Okay. I will do it,” I said. “Please leave soon.”
I asked Jallah and Satta to wait outside in the foyer while I put the money into a sheet of newspaper. I gathered my things to leave with Jallah, to wait at his home while Satta went to Lai. I gave Satta the package of money and Satta placed it into her deep pockets. She held out her hand and I shook it, then hugged her. Satta flitted uncomfortably in the embrace.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
“You go now?” the boarder yelled down the hallway and hurried into the foyer. “You come back then!” She shook my hand and patted Jallah on his shoulder.
Outside, the sun, heat, and border sounds charged toward us. Satta headed in a different direction than Jallah and I did. Those who were on the road avoided eye contact with her, some quickening their pace when they noticed the young rebel.
“Where are you going?” I yelled.
“You want to see them, yeh?” Satta replied, before pressing on. I nodded and continued on with Jallah.
“No worry,” Jallah said. “She come with your family.”
“Wait!” I said, turning around, calling after Satta. I reached into my purse and retrieved a five-by-seven photograph.
“What?” Satta asked when I reached her.
“Take this. Show it to him,” I said. “He will not go unless you show him that picture.”
“Okay, okay,” Satta said and folded the photograph, stuffing it into her pocket.
“Tomorrow evening,” Satta said, leaving us again.
“Tomorrow evening,” I said. I could hear the birds again. The smell of frying food awakened me, and amid those passing by, I heard music, and hummed along to it as Satta disappeared.
DRY
SEASON
TWENTY-EIGHT
“I come for you,” Satta said, spitting on the ground in front of Papa. “You and your daughters.”
“What do you mean you come for me?” he asked, raising his voice. “Who sent you?” Her gun was the same as those carried by the rebels on the road.
“Mam. Your wife,” she answered and watched Papa’s face transform into muddled disbelief and confusion. He stood noiselessly. “Your wife come for you.”
“Nonsense. Leave from here. We have no money for you.”
“I did not come for money,” she said. “Here, look. I buy food for you.” Satta pushed forward the jug of palm oil and laid the bag of rice over her shoulder on the ground. She opened up the large bag and pulled out a bag of rice, greens, and other meat she had purchased from the market. Papa was wide-eyed when he saw the food. He shook his head at the bag, not fully trusting Satta. He had seen too many in her uniform killing.
“She say to bring you food. She here now,” Satta said.
“Leave here. These people don’t want trouble.”
Papa looked down at us.
“I said go in the house! Go to Ol’ Ma and close the door!” he yelled at us.
Too stunned to leave him, we instead hid behind his legs. Several villagers came to Papa’s aid as he argued with the woman. He tried to convince her to leave and she became frustrated trying to convince him that it was Mam who sent her.
It had been one year since we saw her, and the more the woman spoke, the more I wanted to just go with her to see what was on the other side of those words.
“What’s wrong?” Ol’ Ma said, reaching us in the middle of the village circle. She looked down at the food.
“Ma, please take the girls,” Papa said.
“What she want?” Ma asked.
“Ol’ Ma, if this man is Augustus, his wife say I come get him and take him and his daughters to meet her.”
“Where?!” Ma shouted.
“Ma, don’t listen,” Papa said. “Please leave.”
“She is in Bo Waterside. She say to come get her husband and three daughters,” Satta said.
Ol’ Ma glanced at Papa.
“Of course, they standing right here,” Papa said skeptically. I saw sweat on his head and I felt it against his clothes. “Listen, I don’t know how you know my name or how you knew we were here but I don’t want trouble.”
“Wait, wait,” Satta said. “She said show you this. This picture.”
She took the photograph out of her pants pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to Papa.
His body shook in my grasp and he shouted. He could have fallen to the ground in the circle if we were not surrounding him. He shouted again and laughed, in that yawning, beautiful way that laughter comes after it has been resting for too long.
“What’s there?” Ol’ Ma asked.
He held out the photograph to Ma. It was Mam sitting on a couch beside a baby that she had propped up with a pillow. On the back she had written: Gus, my love. Here is your son. Augustus Moore Jr. Born October 7, 1990.
“I have a son,” Papa said, barely audible. “I have a son!” he yelled, waving the photo. My sisters and I jumped and reached for his hand to view the picture, screaming and clapping at the little human, and our Mam, who sat smiling beside him. Ol’ Ma placed her hand over her mouth and started dancing.
The villagers ran out to the commotion. They passed around the picture, pointing at it and patting Papa on the back. I knew that it all meant that I would see Mam again. Maybe I would even see her America and find out why she had been away for so long, why she had not bee
n in Caldwell to shield our heads when the bullets fell.
The clapping and the stomping of their feet made a rhythm we all danced to. She said that Mam was here. She said that I had a brother.
“When will we see Mam?” I asked, looking up at Papa, jumping.
“Yes, please,” Satta said. “I tell her I take you back this evening. We must leave now.”
“Now?” Papa asked.
“The only way we go back by sundown,” Satta said.
“Not much time.”
“Yes, we go through Junde walking and take bus some of the way. Long way so we leave after you eat,” she said.
“Where is she?” Papa asked.
“Bo Waterside. She stay there and wait for you,” Satta said.
“How long she been here?” my aunty asked among the crowd.
“I don’t know. I only come to take her people to her,” Satta said. “But we go today. She take you to Freetown.”
“So you going to America!” a villager shouted and they continued to rejoice, given hope by our salvation.
When Papa finally agreed, food was prepared on the smoke pot in the cookhouse and we were fed rice with gravy and chicken. We were then taken back to Ol’ Ma’s house, where she gathered the few dresses we still had and put them in a plastic bag.
“Ol’ Ma, you come too?” I asked her.
She sat on her bed and extended her hands for us to come to her. Her tears washed our faces, her kiss so familiar.
“No, I stay here,” she said finally. “But you be a good girl for your father.”
Our excitement was now corrupted by the news that we were leaving Ol’ Ma behind, and we cried.
“But you come too?” we asked again.
“No, but we see each other again soon. You go to America and become big girl and come back to see me. When all of this over. You send for me.”
Anger triumphed over my other emotions, then sadness and regret. Who would be my listener now? And who would lie beside her on the nights she cried for Ol’ Pa, wishing I was big enough to protect her, as she had so graciously protected me.
“I see you soon,” she said, wiping her face with the colors of her lappa. “Look, you must smile when you see Mam. She want see you happy. She’n see you for long, and you must smile for her,” she said in Vai. “Show me the smile you will show her.”
Ol’ Ma stood up from the bed and held my shoulders.
“Show me,” she said again.
I thought of Mam, and of the baby in the picture, and of America. It was hard to do, but I wanted to make Ol’ Ma happy. So I smiled.
“There it is!” she said.
I was relieved by the sound of her voice, her haunting face. I crashed into her, hands squeezing her waist. She hugged my sisters and me, fighting her tears, and pulled us away.
“You must go to Mam. Go and you all make Ol’ Ma proud-yeh?” she said.
A neighbor stood in the doorway.
“They waiting, Ol’ Ma,” he said.
“Okay, we come,” Ol’ Ma said.
Papa waited in the village circle with Satta. We took turns hugging friends and family, each goodbye making me heavier and heavier, so that when we turned around to leave, K on Papa’s shoulders and Wi and me each holding a hand, my steps were painful. My footprints were deep and the sand crept through the holes of my slippers. I turned around at the waving collective as we approached the canoe. There had been so many goodbyes, but none had felt like this. That waving crowd of protectors, watchers of my childhood. Papa squeezed my hand. He lifted each of us from the sandy shore, placing us carefully in the teetering canoe.
“We going to see Mam?” I asked Papa again through the stuttering tears. Satta sat across from us in the canoe, her gun tall behind her back.
“Yes,” Papa said, this time without hesitation.
I leaned against him, looking back once more at those on the shore, my Ol’ Ma in front of the crowd. I wanted to touch the lake. I wanted to put some of Lake Piso’s water in my mouth and rinse out the bitter taste.
TWENTY-NINE
We walked with Satta until the sun almost left the sky, toward a town called Vonzuan, north of Junde. I was finally full from the food Satta had brought, after seven months of surviving off the baby fish that the fishers were able to catch, but I was tired from crying for Ol’ Ma and kept tugging at Papa’s shirt to get him to hold me. Those walking on the road scurried away when they saw Satta, her gun hitting her leg with every step. Papa followed close behind her.
I looked up at Satta’s bare, dark neck below her stunted braids. She was not like Mam or my aunties or the other women in the village. She did not walk like them, but she did not walk like Papa either. She did not walk like the rebels on the road. She was different. When other big people moved in the war, they were not certain about their next steps. They did not know if they would remain on the road or have to run into a swamp to dodge rockets or tanks. But Satta knew the steps she would take. She was smaller than other big people, shorter though her shoulders were wide, but she walked in a bigger way than them, godlike with the certainty of her steps. When we crossed the paths of other rebels, I felt Papa’s reluctance. He walked slower as he followed Satta, pulling us close to his leg. She would nod at the rebels or stop and talk, though only for a short while, and we waited with Papa close by. Some of them yelled at Satta and looked at us for a moment before letting her pass. But most looked at her for a long time, up and down and up and down, like Papa looked at Mam. I wondered if Satta had met Hawa Undu and if she had tried to talk him out of this war. If he had looked at her this way too. The farther we walked, the more crowded the road became.
“We going to see Mam?” I asked.
“Yes. We see her soon,” Papa said.
Sometimes while we were walking I felt his leg shake. He was sweating and his breathing was faster than the times we were walking after leaving Caldwell. I was so tired that I eventually stopped.
“Come. Come, we have to keep going,” Papa said.
“No, I tired.”
“What wrong with the girl?” Satta asked, turning around. “Let’s keep going-oh,” she said standing close to Papa.
“Tutu, we have to go. Let’s go see Mam,” he said, tugging at my hand. With each step, my feet were reacquainted with a merciless pang. Papa leaned forward, still holding K, and kissed my head.
“We will be home soon, yeh? Tell me … say to me the memory verse you just learned. You remember, yeh?”
“I remember,” Wi said behind him.
“Good. Good girl, Wi,” Papa said and leaned down and kissed her head. “Say it for me. Say it with your sister.”
“The Lord … the Lord is my strength and my refuge; whom shall I fear?” she said.
“Say it again, yeh?” Papa said.
“The Lord is my strength and my refuge; whom shall I fear?”
After several repetitions my crying ceased. I joined my sister’s litany until my legs became numb, until those walking on the road became gray as the sun hid its face behind dormant clouds.
We made it to Vonzuan in the afternoon. We had stopped only once, to share an orange, before we were told we had to continue. There were few civilians like us in sight, and there was a junction where two mammoth tanks and other rebel cars had gathered. The tanks were deliberate in their pointing, and the boys who crowded around them were saying what I knew were bad words while they yelled and laughed together. Some were dressed like Satta. Others were not wearing T-shirts—only pants.
“Stay close,” Papa said.
Satta talked to the boys, and while we waited I remembered that I would see Mam soon. I wondered if she smelled the same and if her hair would feel just as soft and cold through my fingers. Mothers do not forget their daughters, Korkor had once told me, so I knew she would recognize me, even though it had been so long since she had seen me. I wondered if she was wearing one of her colorful dresses or the lipstick that made her lips the color of plums.
Satta fin
ally returned to where we stood. As she walked away from the boys, they whistled at her.
“They say the bus going in ten minutes. Ten minutes it will be here,” she said.
“What bus?”
“To the border.”
“Rebel bus we taking?” Papa asked, alarmed.
“That the only way. They letting women and children who make it to the border cross, but they hold men. They think men carry information outside.”
“What?”
“That the border. No man go out. So we go with rebel transport and I get you to the other side.”
The terror was clear on Papa’s face. He held K’s legs against his chest, her hands firm on his head as she sat on his shoulders. He looked down at me and Wi, then out toward the group of rebels several times.
“And my girls. They will be safe?”
“Yes, trust me. You with me. All will be well. They will not talk to you. They think you family,” she said in a low tone.
“Okay,” Papa said, finally.
Ten minutes later, a vandalized bus with writing on its body, muddy tires, and no windows pulled up to the intersection. An arm hung out of a back window and was beating the bus like a drum in a foreign, bluffing rhythm. There were a few women on the bus, and they all looked like they were around Satta’s age. When the bus stopped, some of the rebel boys got out to pee in the nearby field. Ol’ Ma had taught us how to close our eyes when this happened, making us promise to count to ten before opening them again. Several of the rebels at the junction gathered at the bus door to board. The ones who held weapons took them off their shoulders by the handles before boarding.
Satta waited until there were no others left to board and she tapped Papa’s arm.
“Stay close,” he said again, and we followed as he drew near the bus door, his pace snaillike. When we entered the bus, Satta pointed to a row in the front and Papa quickly pushed us into the seat before sitting next to the aisle. It smelled like a bathroom inside and the smoke from lit cigarettes throughout the bus filled the air around our seat. I tried turning around to see who was on the bus but Papa pinched me. He leaned down and whispered, “Look forward. Never look back. We will be there soon.”