How Beautiful We Were

by Imbolo Mbue

  * * *

  —

  Papa wanted many children, but all he got was Juba and me.

  I never asked him or Mama why Juba and I are six years apart, but I remember the womb doctor coming to visit Mama several times when I was four, and also when I was five, and Mama sobbing after the womb doctor left. I remember Papa coming to sit with me on the veranda at such times, while Yaya stayed in our bedroom to console Mama.

  Papa would look in the distance and ask me if I wanted to tell him a story. I would say yes and tell him the only story I knew, the one every child in Kosawa knows, about how three brothers once went to check on their traps in the forest and found a leopard caught in one of them.

  Please, free me, the leopard cried to the brothers; I need to return home to my children, I’ve been in this trap for days and they have no one to protect them.

  The brothers debated at length what to do—leopards were rare, and taking one back to their village would have brought them great fortune, but the leopard’s pain was evident in her tears. Ultimately, the brothers decided to let her go home to her children. In gratitude, the leopard made a cut on her paw and asked the brothers to use their spears and make cuts on their fingers too. On this day, the leopard said as she forged a blood pact with each brother, I give you my blood: it will flow in your veins and the veins of your descendants until the sun ceases to rise. All who seek to destroy you will fail, for my power in you will cause you to prevail. Go forth now, and live as indomitable men.

  When the brothers returned to their village, they packed their belongings and left to create a new village, one in which every child would grow up to be as fearsome and dignified as a leopard. They founded Kosawa and anointed the eldest of the brothers to be their woja, for the blood of the leopard was most apparent in the strength that allowed him to tread upon snakes and scorpions. Through these brothers, we came to the world.

  After finishing the story, I’d sit in silence, waiting for Papa’s praise, which always came in the form of a semi-smile.

  Sometimes he asked me to sing the song our ancestors sang as they laid the foundation for Kosawa, the song that would later become our village anthem. My singing voice is as pretty as a rooster’s crow, and I took no pride in using it, but I knew Papa’s heart needed a balm, so I would sing for him: Sons of the leopard, daughters of the leopard, beware all who dare wrong us, never will our roar be silenced.

  Other times, at the end of the story, Papa would say nothing, and I would have nothing to add, because I knew I couldn’t give him what he longed for. All I could do was wait alongside him and Mama for the day the womb doctor would come to our hut and leave with a smile on her face—which she did, the day Mama’s belly finally got big enough for all of Kosawa to see that Papa’s dream of a son was about to come true.

  The evening Juba was born, Papa lifted me and spun me around as we both laughed, his eyes so full of gladness they glistened. The entire village sang and danced in our hut until there was no food or palm wine left, at which point everyone said their good nights. But I couldn’t sleep. I woke up whenever Juba cried so I could help burp him when Mama was done nursing. When he urinated in my face while I was changing his napkins, I giggled; he was too perfect. Sometimes I worried Papa would stop being my best friend when Juba got older, they’d form a father-son duo and I’d be left out. But I also knew that Papa’s love for me was boundless—the likely thing to happen was that Papa and Juba and I would become a best-friends trio. I’d learn how to wield a spear and go hunting with them and return home with the biggest kill Kosawa had ever seen.

  * * *

  I toss to my right. I toss to my left. My mind can find no rest. Beside me, Juba and Yaya sleep soundly. I think about calling out for Mama, asking her if I can come lie next to her, but I don’t want to wake her up if she’s sleeping too. I lie on my back and stare into the darkness. I think about how the air and water of Kosawa progressed from dirty to deadly.

  Though Pexton has been here since Papa was a little boy, they didn’t start becoming the cause of many deaths until three years ago, after they decided to add a new oil well at Gardens. It was then, with the increased wastes dumped into it, that whatever life was left in the big river disappeared. Within a year, fishermen broke down their canoes and found new uses for the wood. Children began to forget the taste of fish. The smell of Kosawa became the smell of crude. The noise from the oil field multiplied; day and night we heard it in our bedrooms, in our classroom, in the forest. Our air turned heavy.

  At the end of that first dry season, a pipeline burst and oil flooded the farm of the mother of one of my friends—her family barely had any harvest that year; some days, I had to share my food with her during recess. Weeks later, a new spill turned into a fire that ravaged the farms of six families, forcing mothers to go searching for new land deep in the forest, a trek that left many with little strength for toiling. In the midst of all this, the gas flares got worse, the smoke blacker. For reasons we couldn’t understand, the smoke always blew in our direction, never in the direction of Gardens and the hilltop mansion of the American overseer. With every new oil spill or day of gas flares so savage our skin shriveled and we needed to shout to hear each other over the screaming flames, Woja Beki sent someone to Gardens to talk to the supervisors, who, in turn, sent laborers to inspect the damage, patch up what they could of the old, rusty pipelines, and assure us that the spills were of no harm, the air was fine, Pexton was abiding by the law.

  Not long before I turned eight, two children died in one month, both of them having suffered high fevers but otherwise different symptoms.

  Papa and the other men of Kosawa made the coffins and dug the graves, and Mama and the women cooked for the bereaved families and wept alongside the brokenhearted mothers. We children did what we could to make the brothers and sisters of the departed feel less alone—we sat next to them in silence when they needed to cry, and let them decide what games we should play when they needed a break from their sadness. Nobody thought much about the fact that two children had died in one month—in a village of dozens of children, it was not uncommon for such a thing to happen. Only after my classmate Wambi began coughing while the rest of us laughed, and then began vomiting blood; only after we’d buried Wambi and coughs like his began echoing across the school compound and bouncing from hut to hut, some children urinating blood, others burning with fevers no amount of cold baths could bring down, several dying; only a few months before my brother, Juba, died and came back to life in Papa’s arms, did parents start wondering if it was possible their children were dying from the same cause.

  We did not initially suspect the oil field—it had been there for decades and, despite our hatred of it, we’d never before looked at one of our departed and linked their death to Pexton. We’d long ago convinced ourselves that our bodies had evolved to weather the poisons we daily breathed and that, by the mercy of the Spirit, the poisons by themselves were not enough to inflict us with diseases that herbs and potions couldn’t cure.

  Many parents thought it might be a curse, a jealous relative from another village targeting their children—a relative whose wrath was directed at a particular Kosawa family, but who was nonetheless going after all the children in the village to create the sense of a random act, render it untraceable. Or perhaps Kosawa had wronged the Spirit? Perhaps our parents needed to atone for one thing or another so their children might be spared? Our medium, Jakani, spoke to the ancestors and assured our parents that there was no need for atonement—the children’s suffering was of this world, not from the spirit world; it was from something poisonous in our village which was entering their stomachs. But the dead children had eaten different meals, some of the ingredients bought from the big market in Lokunja now that few families could wholly depend on their farms for sustenance. The dead children had slept in different huts—what could they all have touched in common except for the ground upon which th
ey walked, the fruits they ate from the same trees, or the water they drank from the village’s well?

  Papa’s best friend, Bissau, was the first to suggest to Papa and our cousin Sonni that he believed it was the water. Before long, the theory began spreading through the village, parents wondering what was in the water their children were drinking—how could poison have found its way into a covered well? Woja Beki called for a meeting and invited the top supervisors at Gardens. Our parents begged the supervisors to take some water from the well, examine it, and tell them if it was the cause of the deaths. The supervisors, offering few words, took the water with them. When they returned, weeks later—the water had to be sent to Bézam for testing—they told our parents that the water was fine, but for the sake of caution it would be best if they boiled it for thirty minutes before giving it to their children. Mama boiled water for two hours every night so that Juba and I would be spared sickness and death. Her efforts were not enough.

  * * *

  —

  Anyone could tell Juba’s illness was no ordinary illness, this disease which started with him moaning from body aches before progressing to a fever so high his body gyrated like a fish on dry land. Sakani came over in the morning and gave him a potion to drink, but by nightfall his body had only grown hotter, no amount of wiping with a cold cloth sufficient to cool him down. When he began convulsing in Papa’s arms, Mama and Yaya pinned his limbs to his body. I turned my face away, looking again only at the moment when his body turned motionless and Mama and Yaya began screeching, beseeching him: Wake up, Juba, please, open your eyes. Papa slapped Juba’s cheeks and ordered him to open his eyes. Open your eyes right now, he cried. Open them. I’m commanding you.

  Papa was still slapping Juba’s cheeks when Bongo ran in with Jakani, both of them panting from the sprint they’d made from the twins’ hut at the far end of the village. Without a word, Jakani took a package of grains from his raffia bag and threw them into his mouth, smacking his lips as he pulled out a knife and started making cuts on the soles of Juba’s feet. He spat out the chewed grains all over Juba, roaring, barking, and hissing in one breath, and in the next, with his eyes closed, he began gesturing with force as he shouted at Juba, ordering him to start running back home immediately, return home before it was too late: Turn right, go over the bridge, take another right, watch out for the animal trap, jump over that puddle, don’t worry about the wild pigs, keep running, take a left, keep going straight, run faster, Juba needed to run faster than that, good job, home was right around the corner, Juba shouldn’t worry about his bleeding feet, once he got home Mama would take care of him, for now he had to hurry, the lion and the dog and the python were getting closer, they would get Juba if Juba did not run fast enough, stop looking behind, just keep running, ignore the mangoes, yes, the mangoes looked juicy, if he were Juba he’d want to taste them too, but as soon as Juba got home Mama would have better mangoes for him, the juiciest ever, so Juba needed to drop the mango in his hand and keep running, get out of the forest before the river rose too high, if that happened, Juba would no longer be able to cross it and return home, if the river got too high Juba would have to spend the rest of his life in that forest, alone, for eternity, he’d never see Mama and Papa again, was that what he wanted, good boy, now Juba was at the river, he didn’t need to swim across, he only needed to take a big jump and he’d be home, yes, jump, of course he could do it, he had to do it now, the lion and the dog and the python were getting closer, they’d get him if he didn’t jump, he had to jump now, jump…And Mama and Papa and Bongo and Yaya and I were all crying now, begging Juba to jump across the river, jump, please Juba, jump, please come back home, you can do it Juba, you have to jump right now, if you don’t jump…Juba’s eyes opened.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning Papa is out of bed before the oldest rooster, having not slept all night. He throws a blanket over his shoulders, flies out of the hut, and storms into Woja Beki’s house. Papa gives Woja Beki no chance to rinse out the night’s taste from his mouth, or flick off any of sleep’s crumbs from the sides of his eyes. There’s only an abbreviated greeting between them—I hope you slept well, is all Papa says, according to Woja Beki’s third wife, Jofi, who later gossips about the visit with half of the women of Kosawa.

  Woja Beki is sitting in his parlor, still in his sleeping clothes, waiting for one of his wives to boil his bathing water, when Papa starts speaking, his voice louder than proper for a morning conversation, which is why, Jofi will later explain, she was able to hear the entire conversation even though she was far from the living room, in her kitchen, lighting her fire for the day, because that’s just the kind of woman she is, minding her own business and staying far away from useless gossip.

  Papa tells Woja Beki he wants to leave for Bézam as soon as possible to seek an audience with high-level government officials. He wants to have forthright conversations with as many of them as he can find. They need to look right at his mouth as he tells them how it feels for a man to watch his only son die because of this abomination they’ve brought upon our land. Maybe they know the number of children Kosawa has buried, but have they heard the stories of any of the parents of the departed children? Have they heard about how the days and months and years of these parents’ labor and hope vanished in a single breath? Have any of these officials ever looked down helplessly upon their helpless child? He isn’t going to sit back and keep waiting for Woja Beki—someone has to save his children, and whatever Woja Beki is doing is clearly not working.

  Woja Beki listens in silence.

  He knows—because the entire village knew less than an hour after it happened—about how Juba stopped breathing and Jakani brought him back to life. Woja Beki does not need to ask Papa where this heedless idea is coming from; he simply nods and shakes his head and nods some more as Papa swears by his ancestors that nothing will stop him from doing what he needs to do for his family. When Papa is done speaking, Woja Beki calmly responds that, indeed, everything Papa says is true: it is time for the village to start thinking of new ways to solve this problem.

  His tone still tinged with the freshness of morning, Woja Beki agrees that none of the pleas he has sent to Bézam, asking the government to use its power to stop and punish Pexton, have worked, and nothing is getting better—he doesn’t know what else to do. How can people not care about children? How can they not see that they’re doing to our children what other people could one day do to their children? He ponders these questions often, he adds; he’s found no answers. He was at the district office in Lokunja days ago and heard that Pexton was thinking about drilling another well. Another well? All those wells breathing poison on us every day, are they not enough?

  After the last funeral, he says, he was unable to sleep. He went to Lokunja the next day to beg the district officer to speak to Pexton again on our behalf, ask them to find a way to, please, for our sake, replace their pipelines, because it wouldn’t be long before the spills entered our homes and killed us in our sleep—but would they listen to him? The district officer told him that the pipelines were fine, that occasional leaks and spills meant nothing, pipelines the world over spilled. What was he supposed to say to such a statement? Should he have kept on arguing while they looked at him as if he were a madman? Say nothing and watch his people die on? He just didn’t know what to do.

  That night, from my mat, I listen as Papa gives Mama more details about his visit, whispering in the darkness. Mama is silent—she became tongue-tied the moment Papa returned from Woja Beki’s house and told her of his plan to go to Bézam. I picture Papa lying on his back, his hands clasped on his chest, as he tells Mama about Woja Beki’s theory that Pexton has been paying off people in the district office to shut their eyes, or turn them to the ground, or to the sky, to anywhere but the children dying in front of them. They all deserve the punishment that would inevitably be theirs someday, Woja Beki had said. How co
uld people show such contempt for the laws of the Spirit? Was money so important that they would sell children to strangers seeking oil? “Look at me,” he said to Papa. Look at how he always made sure to put some of his own money in the hands of bereaved families. Look at how he spoke to even the least in the village as if they were the most significant, because isn’t that how it should be? Wasn’t man’s ability to recognize his fellow human what made him better than dogs? It was sad how the love of money was corrupting many; truly sad, he’d added with a sigh. But Papa was right, he went on, it was time for the village to take its complaints directly to Bézam.

  Unfortunately, his back had been very stiff lately, so he couldn’t manage the trip, and his counselors couldn’t go either, old as they were—wasn’t it a miracle they could still get out of their huts and walk around, one of them barely seeing, the other two half-deaf? But Papa could go on behalf of the village; Woja Beki’s son Gono lived in the capital, and he would take care of Papa as if Papa were his own brother.

  Mama must have fallen asleep somewhere in the middle of the retelling, because when he’s done talking Papa says, “Sahel, Sahel, are you up?,” and Mama says nothing, and I thank her in silence for not listening to the lies of that deceitful, dirty-teeth buffoon.

  * * *

  —

  Two evenings later, Woja Beki calls a meeting of the village’s able men and his three counselors. In his parlor, seated on the only sofa in Kosawa, his white-socked feet stroking the only rug in Kosawa, his head below a clock that sings whenever its long finger touches twelve, the rest of the men sitting on their wooden stools or on the bare cemented floor, Woja Beki asks his counselors if they think it a good idea for Papa to go to Bézam on behalf of Kosawa. The counselors either nod or shrug, and Woja Beki thanks them for their wisdom. Papa stands up and asks if he can get three men to go with him. No one puts up a hand. A man rises to say that leading a delegation to Bézam should be Woja Beki’s duty, not Papa’s. And besides, the man adds, Papa is not an elder, he’s not even in the generation directly below the elders; he has no right to be the one to speak on behalf of the village. Many grunt in agreement, but Papa is not dissuaded—after giving the assembly the same speech he’d given Woja Beki, he prevents a protracted argument by announcing that he’s not looking for anyone’s understanding or blessings, even though he’s doing this for their children too; he doesn’t even want their gratitude, he only needs three men to accompany him. Bissau, Papa’s best friend since childhood, is on his feet before Papa is done speaking. Four more men stand up. These are more men than Papa asked for, but he turns no one down—he knows that, like him, the men do not wish to travel to Bézam, but the salvation of their children compels them to.