by Wayétu Moore
I obeyed him and kept my eyes on the road. The bus began its route and while we drove, the boys were loud behind us, using those words their Ol’ Mas would have popped their mouths for saying. Satta sat across the aisle in a seat with another girl, both of their guns laid across their laps and jutting out of the bus window. Some boys in the back of the bus kept looking at Papa, and Satta went to the back to talk to them. I heard them ask her about Papa, and I think he heard it, too, because he sat with his back straight, as if he was not afraid, as if his leg was not shaking beside us.
Outside the front windows, those who were walking scattered into the fields when they noticed the bus. Papa’s leg shook every time he saw this. Our rainy season escape was not so long ago that he had forgotten when we were the ones running. Papa periodically looked across the aisle at Satta and avoided turning around for fear of engaging the young rebels. There were other rebels on the road, stopping pedestrians, interrogating pedestrians, even those with children. I looked ahead until I became sleepy, and I leaned my head against Papa’s shoulder to rest.
“We see Mam soon,” he whispered again, though I was not sure if he was saying it for us or for himself.
The boys in the back of the bus were loud and their words, rough and mannish, bounced around the bus. There were clicking sounds as if they were playing with their guns; there was laughter, too dry to believe; and every time it became a little quiet, unrestrained laughter or more unconvincing laughter ensued.
Wi sat beside me near the window, and K was between Papa and me. He looked down at us frequently. And when he was not looking at us, eyes overcome with a worry I was not used to seeing in him, he was looking out at the road, his lips slightly moving with words too low to hear. His feet tapped the bus floor, swathed with large irremovable stains of spit.
When the bus slowed down, Papa looked across the seat at Satta, and I knew that we were even closer to seeing Mam. Almost immediately after it stopped, Papa instructed us to stand, grabbing each of our arms to exit the bus behind Satta. Outside, the rebels piled out of the bus. Some went to the road to pee while others loitered around it. Satta said goodbye to her friend and led us away from the bus. A small group of mostly women, children, and elders formed a slow-moving line that inched its way toward a massive checkpoint some fifty yards away. Their frayed lappas hung from their hips, their eyes darkened. Children were tied on some of their backs and the women periodically stepped out of the queue to catch a view, however distant and blurry, to Sierra Leone. There were many Liberian flags ahead, unmoving as they hung on poles in the stiff wind, and defaced on the sides of parked cars. Some in the line were crying, and there was chatter throughout that they were now keeping all men in holding centers, for fear that they were carrying news to opposition on the other side.
Taylor’s men were manning the checkpoint and Satta scanned the faces ahead for whom she would approach with Papa. They were dressed like her and also carrying guns. Members of the rebel army stood behind tables interviewing all those who passed into Sierra Leone. It was rumored to be the most dangerous checkpoint. None were turned away. They were either allowed to pass, apprehended and held for days in rebel centers for questioning, or killed. So rather than risking the latter, many remained in hiding.
As we approached the checkpoint, Satta turned around and faced Papa.
“I will walk you close to front of line,” she said. “Then I will go talk to them and tell them you with me. You must show them your identification and they will write laissez passer to Sierra Leone.”
“Wait, I still have to go through checkpoint?” Papa asked.
“Yes, but no worry,” Satta said. “No worry. It’s for your travel pass. I talk to them. You don’t have trouble.”
“But my girls,” he said. “If anything … just in case. You will—”
“—yes I take them to your wife,” Satta interrupted him. “But no worry, nothing happen. We must hurry. I talk to them.”
Papa nodded and Satta led us to a place in the line as promised. We strolled with the others while ahead the rebels interrogated those escaping, asking the same questions we had heard during our rainy season escape. Before we arrived at the front of the line, Papa stood us side by side and kissed each of us. He looked into our faces, his pupils widened, and beads of sweat straddled the hairs on his face.
“Papa loves you,” he said. “You know that, yeh?”
“Yeh,” we answered together.
Papa met the rebels at the front of the line with grace. He was calm and quiet, and we hid behind him.
“Your children?” one of them asked.
“Yeh,” Papa answered.
“Tell them come from behind you.”
Papa pulled our arms and we stood side by side, facing the men on the other side. They were bigger than Papa and smelled like the boys on the bus. Not too far away from them, other rebels lingered.
“Where your ID?” the rebel demanded. Papa took out his university identification from his wallet and handed it to the man.
“Let me see your bag,” another said. Papa handed him the backpack he was carrying and the man opened it, sifting through our change of clothes, the documents, and Bible therein.
“Birth certificate for the girls them?” the rebel asked.
“In the bag,” Papa said pointing to the bag. The man searching it threw it back at him and he rummaged through the contents for our papers.
The rebel looked at us closely and endlessly. Papa studied the bodies of those beyond the checkpoint for Satta. His hands trembled along the ragged handles of his bag. The watchfulness of the rebels burdened him, I could tell, but Papa had never let me down before. The months had withered his spirit, but he was still a giant, our giant, with hands strong enough to armor my ears when the drums echoed loudly in the night.
The man behind the table waved toward a group standing nearby on his right and another rebel approached, holding a clipboard. The man handed Papa his bag and the rebel gestured to us to follow him. Papa took our hands and we shuffled behind him. The rebel turned to Papa, his eyes cutting and frigid.
“What you do here?” the official asked.
“I am meeting my wife here,” Papa replied.
“Where she?”
“She here,” Papa said. “In Bo Waterside.”
“Yeh, what you do here?”
“I am professor. Teacher,” Papa said.
“You teacher?”
“Yeh.”
He looked as though he did not believe Papa.
“Let me see your ID.”
Papa again revealed his identification.
“Give me the girl papers,” the official said.
Papa gave him our birth certificates from the bag. The man reviewed the documents and wrote something on his clipboard, each written word sounding like knives slicing stone. He then took a circular wooden knob out of his pocket and pressed it against the clipboard. When he was finished, he handed the papers to Papa, along with what he had written.
“Here,” the official said. “Your stamp laissez passer.”
He handed Papa the flimsy sheet of paper and nodded toward Satta, who stood on the side of the road, not too far from the checkpoint, waiting.
“Thank you,” Papa said and we rushed to Satta.
“Come, follow me,” she said as soon as we reached her, declining to show any emotion toward us in that company.
“Thank you,” Papa said to Satta, under his breath as we hurried past the checkpoint. She did not turn to face him, but she nodded, her eyes fastened on the road.
And there, alongside Satta, we passed the Sierra Leonean border. Papa exhaled after we crossed that invisible line, and I felt his relief as the grip on my hand loosened, little by little with each step. For twenty minutes after passing the checkpoint and border, Satta led us to the outskirts of Bo Waterside’s bustling market, where a wooden house sat on the crown of a hill. The sun was almost gone, yet the sky remained blue into the early evening. Untended fiel
ds with overgrown grass were on either side of the narrow road to the house. There was a water well in the front yard, not far from the porch. Its bucket sat on the rim and a sturdy rope was tied to the handle, suspending into the abyss below.
“She is inside there,” Satta said. “My job is done.”
“Wait, you are not coming?” Papa asked.
“No, this what I was paid to do. I must go now. I been gone long and other things to do tonight.”
“But what if they’n there?”
“They there, no worry.”
“It’s just up the hill,” Papa protested.
“So you go alone then. I finish,” Satta said. “Go now. She wait for you.”
Papa looked toward the house. He knew that he would not be able to convince Satta to continue with us.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Yeh,” Satta answered and turned toward the way we had come, her certainty unwavering, her life again, if just for a moment, redeemed.
“We go see Mam?” Wi asked.
“Yes,” Papa said.
He lifted K to his shoulders and she sat, her hands resting on his head. Wi and I held his hands.
“Come,” he said.
We had left everything and run from Caldwell, the pockets of Papa’s trousers now emptied, the copper from his change gleaming in the sun. Like the zokenge crab that had fought each other to the top of his bucket during those months he fished for food in Lake Piso, now so were his thoughts, it seemed, all climbing. Maybe we were safe and Mam was actually inside that house on the hill; Satta had no reason to lie, and if her plan was to kill us, she would have thrown us into the lake as soon as the canoe left Lai. Papa could have been ambushed in that bus and the rebels could have stolen us. There were the facts—what we had personally experienced and the photograph Satta gave Papa from Mam. But what if Mam was not there? There was so much Papa said he had wanted to tell her while we were hiding, while we were running, but as we walked toward her now he seemed weak. There was love, then there was what he had with Mam; his wildflower, his siren, Orpheus now in the depths, the hell of war, returned for her true loves.
He grunted as we carried on that narrow road up the hill, the breeze and sunset steadfast in their wonder. I would have run if I were not holding Papa’s hand. Mam was so close and I was anxious to touch her and tell her of the things she missed.
Papa says he did not know what to expect when the front door of that house creaked its way open. He was hopeful, but he was not certain what we would see.
But there she was.
Mam.
Mam and her beauty, her glorious neck and cheeks, sitting in a chair against the wall, across the front room. She yelled when she saw us. Jallah approached Papa from the couch, but we went straight to Mam. I ran in to her waiting there, touched her skin as I buried my face in her neck.
“You came back,” I said.
She nodded, unable to speak, the familiarity of her eyes jaded by the tears.
After our embrace she went to Papa. They touched each other’s faces and backs, they wiped each other’s eyes and hugged for a long time, like those days in Caldwell when they stood so close that his arms swallowed her whole. And there was no knowing where she began. And there was no telling where he ended. Then she told us everything. How she prayed for us. Everything that had happened in her America and in the days before we saw her again.
My Ol’ Ma says the best stories do not always end happily, but happiness will find its way in there somehow. She says that some will bend many times like the fisher’s wire. Some make the children laugh. Some make even the Ol’ Pas cry. Some the griots will take a long time to tell, but like plums left in the sun for too long, they too are sweet to taste.
Suffering is a part of everyone’s story. As long as my Ol’ Ma is here, and I am here, as long as I become an Ol’ Ma myself and my children’s children become Ol’ Mas and Ol’ Pas, there will be rainy seasons and dry seasons too long to bear, where troubles pile up like coal to burn you to dust. But just like suffering makes its bed in these seasons, so does happiness, however brief, however fleeting.
There are many stories of war to tell. You will hear them all. But remember among those who were lost, some made it through. Among the dragons there will always be heroes. Even there. Even then. And of those tales ending in defeat, tales of death and orphans wandering among the ruined, some ended the other way too.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank the Moore and Freeman families for your examples of love, compassion, leadership, and integrity. I am grateful, especially, to Gus and Mam Moore who continue to amaze me with their love for each other and for their children. Special thank you to my husband, Eric. Thank you to Agnes Fallah Kamara-Umunna for being an invaluable resource, and to the University of Liberia. To the former child combatants who entrusted me with your stories—thank you for your lesson in forgiveness. Huge thank you to the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, to Graywolf Press, and to my agent, Susan Golomb. Thank you for Zoe Zolbrod and Martha Bayne for selecting “love/woman/thirty” for publication in the Sunday Rumpus. I am grateful to Wiande Everett and Kula Moore-Junge, Susan Henderson, Mary Drummond, Sharon Kim, Eda Henries, and Prentice Onayemi for reading various versions of this book and providing feedback. Thank you to that table of angel girls in the sixth grade who became my sisters and teachers—your magic stays. To the Liberians who read this story as their own: I feel you pushing me along. I thank you. And finally, to Satta. Wherever you are in time—wandering our vast world, in paradise or interstellar—thank you.
WAYÉTU MOORE, author of She Would Be King, was born in Liberia and raised in Spring, Texas. She holds a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Southern California and a master’s degree in anthropology and education from Columbia University, where she held a Margaret Mead Fellowship. She is a graduate of Howard University and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. Her writing can be found in the Atlantic, Guernica, and the Rumpus, among other publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
The text of The Dragons, the Giant, the Women is set in Adobe Jenson Pro.
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