A group of men stood together by one of the other huts, talking animatedly about something. Like the women, they wore nothing on their torsos and covered their private parts with a cloth.
One man, spitting kola nut pieces, approached the three of them and laid one wide hand on Kuo’s shoulder and the other on Little George’s. The man’s tone was amiable, and he laughed a few times while a flurry of strange words tumbled out of his mouth, mostly directed at Kuo. Kuo interrupted the man a few times and gestured at Little George. Then the man awkwardly patted each of them on the back, saluted to Little George, and walked away.
Again, Kuo took Little George’s right hand and Lani’s left and led them to a circle of about five women and two children squatting around a bowl.
Kuo squatted beside the others and gestured for him and Lani to do so, as well. A greenish-yellow glob sat in the center of the bowl, and the women and children reached in and took handfuls to eat.
Little George groaned. But he allowed himself to be pulled down anyway. Lani, already so close to the ground, squatted easily next to him.
Kuo reached her hand in and scooped up a glob of whatever it was. She seemed to be showing them how to eat it.
Yasmine could see Little George’s reluctance in his expression, but Lani dug in immediately and without reservation, grabbing a clump of the mixture in her small palm. Then she brought it to her open mouth and shoved in as much as she could reasonably fit, the rest falling down the front of the worn little dress. George shook his head, but after a moment he too reached his hand in the bowl and took a very small amount of the goo in his hand. He put the strange food in his mouth and began to chew.
Little George nodded at Kuo, who by this time had reached for another mouthful of the soup. “It’s not bad,” he said. “Not bad at all, really.”
It was like they understood him, because the women smiled and gestured for him and Lani to take more.
Lani grinned and grabbed another handful in her other fist.
Little George reached his hand into the bowl and collected a bigger scoop this time. All unease was gone from his face, and Yasmine watched as her children ate their fill.
After they finished, Kuo walked them away from the others, toward a spot in a clearing where they were alone. The whole village’s eyes were still on them, of course, but they could sit down for a moment, a few feet apart. It was the hottest part of the day, and, with his full stomach, Little George began to feel drowsy in the sunlight. His baby sister staggered up from the now-empty pot, and came and curled up in his lap.
Kuo gestured to his neck and turned up her hand questioningly. Little George felt his face flush. He touched the space where the magical pouch she gave him had hung from twine around his neck. The place from which Yasmine had ripped it. He looked down apologetically.
Kuo pulled out something shiny from behind her skirt. It was a pouch—but finer than the first one—made of what looked like leopard skin and fashioned with a metal clasp at the top.
He gasped.
Kuo laughed. She made a series of gestures with her hands that he didn’t understand and then placed the extraordinary object in his hand. When she looked back up at him, her eyes were shining that same bright way. Yasmine knew what her son was feeling better than he did. He would kiss the black-black girl if he knew how.
In his lap, Lani had begun to snore contentedly.
“Yours,” Kuo said, the word not fitting in her mouth quite right, but discernible to Yasmine as a thunderclap.
Little George closed the pouch in his hand. “Mine.”
* * *
—
“I’m so tired,” she called out to James, who was still not there. “And so fearful.”
She could see him, seated on a small stool he had carved for himself, just out of her reach. He looked older, lines on his face deepening. He shook his head at her, smiling.
“Well, what that mean?” she demanded. “You never say anything that help me find my way anymore. You never there for me to lean on.”
He was hazy, but he was still there with her, looking her steady in the eyes, unblinking. “Just relax, Ma. You gonna feel better soon, I promise,” he said.
Her brow furrowed. Why was he calling her that? “What? I’m your wife, James, not your damn mama! After all we been through, you don’t know who I is?”
Small, rough hands placing a cold cloth on her forehead. “It’s gonna be okay, Ma. We here.”
Yasmine breathed in deeply, and then realized she was awake. She’d thought that her eyes were open before, but now, as she pried them open with much effort, she realized that had only been a dream. Little George leaned over her, worry weighing his otherwise youthful face. Lani was beside him like always, holding fast to his pant leg. In the corner, Big George and Nolan were hunched over a Bible, Nolan scribbling words in the dust as his oldest brother pointed them out.
“My babies,” she whispered. Then she smiled at Little George, though she found it exhausting.
“Mama,” Little George said excitedly, worry evaporating from his face. “You’re back!” He turned to his brothers and said, “She’s back! I think she’s okay now.”
The heat of the afternoon wafted through the small window her pallet was pushed up against, and made Yasmine sigh. It had also created small beads of sweat on her forehead and above her lips. She vaguely wondered what day it was and how long she had been so out of it. Little George handed her a cup of water and she leaned up to take a sip. She was surprised by how good it tasted and kept drinking until it was gone. Nolan and Big George had come over by this point, examining her anxiously.
“She look good. She look good,” Big George said.
Nolan took hold of her clammy hand for a moment and then set it down. She tried to squeeze his hand back but found she was still too weak.
Yasmine lay back down and gingerly touched a breast under her blanket. With a start she realized that they were no longer filled with too much milk, that they no longer ached. It appeared that her children were right, she was well on her way to healing. She frowned, however. “Where is she?” Yasmine scanned the room, looking for any trace of the black-black girl.
“Who?” Big George asked. “Where is who?” He looked to his siblings in confusion.
Yasmine sat up once more, this time pulling her legs up in an effort to begin standing up. “The village girl. The heathen one that you love,” she told Little George, who looked more confused than ever. “The one what gave you the charm.” She tried to push herself up with her palms, but it was futile. She was still too weak and fell back down again.
“No one here but us, Ma,” Big George said, gesturing around the tiny room they called their house. “Has been the whole time you was ill.”
Yasmine blinked in confusion, remembering the strange food they had eaten together in the dusk of the village, and the elusive smile that had so enchanted her second child. How could she just have disappeared? “I know she’s here,” she said. “Even if she still hiding.”
“You still tired, Ma,” Little George told her. There was no mistaking the tenderness in his voice. “You need to rest.”
She wanted to tell him she knew all about it, that the charm was still there, exerting its power on all of them. Its black magic sucking all the light out of the room. But she found she could no longer keep her eyes open. The exertions of consciousness and wakefulness had taken their toll. No matter what her mind and heart wanted, her body would not comply. She retreated, grudgingly, to the haven of sleep once again.
“Just let her rest,” was the last thing she heard. “She be well soon enough.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
1829, Monrovia, Liberia
IN THE FOURTEENTH MONTH after their arrival, Little George, who had waited what seemed like hours for his mother’s breathing to become deep and even, roused his older brother from sleep.
“What?” Big George hissed, brushing off his brother’s prodding hand.
Little George glared at his brother and pointed over the pallet Lani and Nolan shared toward the mound curled up on the floor that was their mother. The last thing they needed was Mama listening in. Ever since that fever that nearly took her, Little George felt like she watched him even more than before. A moment like this, where her eyes weren’t on him, was too precious to waste.
“They’s fixing to fight, then?” he whispered.
Big George hurrumphed. “Who you talking ’bout now?”
Little George sucked his teeth. It was one thing to be forbidden to go to the meeting. To be denied the details of it by his own brother was too much. “You know who!” he hissed. “The menfolk, of course.”
Big George sighed deeply, then sat up. “Man can’t get no good sleep even in his own house,” he lamented.
Little George punched his brother’s arm.
Big George recoiled, holding his bicep. “Why you do that now?” he demanded.
Little George shushed him again, more forcefully this time. “You tryna get us both in trouble?”
Big George rubbed his eyes. “Actually, I just trying to sleep. Strange thing to do in the dead of night, ain’t it?”
Little George shook off his brother’s sarcasm and continued to press. “What you know about the attacks? By the savages? I heard they getting ready for something big.”
Big George frowned. “I ain’t about to—”
“Jo Jo?” a small voice said beside them. Lani sat straight up, blinking slowly at each of them. She smiled. “Jo Jo.” Her baby name for both of them.
Little George scowled at his brother. “Now see what you done.”
“What I did? Now look here—”
But Big George was cut short by the sturdy palm of a toddler caressing his face. Lani had plunked herself down in Little George’s lap, but had reached over to touch the short beard Big George was growing. It fascinated her. “Jo Jo bird,” she said, in that angelic little voice that never failed to disarm him.
“Jo Jo beard,” he said, moving her hand around his cheeks.
Little George grew impatient. It seemed that ever since Big George had become old enough to attend meetings with the other men, he’d grown distant from his younger brother. “I know the governor tried talking reason into them dark, dark brains.” He crossed his arms. “And I know some a them brutes dead set on raiding villages and stealing their enemies to sell into slavery—say we got no rights here. Say this their land we on, even though Governor and them negotiated fair and square for it. Jack Banks tell me so.”
Big George hurrumphed again. “Well, if Jack Banks tell you so much, what you need me for?”
Lani sat quietly, turning her head to face whoever was talking. She pulled Little George’s arms around her tightly. Little George looked at his brother pleadingly.
Big George sighed and finally relented. “Jack Banks ain’t wrong. They sure is fixing for something. But so is we. We ready for whatever may come to pass.”
“What that mean?”
Big George met his gaze, unblinking. “It mean we got extra men and weapons ready.” He pulled at the ends of Lani’s short ringlets. She giggled in delight. “We killed two savages in skirmishes, and wounded two. They wounded two of ours. When the governor try to talk to the village chief about it, he just do one of these,” Big George sat up regally and waved his hand. Then, mocking the accent and demeanor of the chief’s translator, he said, “‘They are a rebel faction. They do not speak for us, or any Bassa on these lands. The white man gave them guns, taught them how to use them, and paid them handsomely for bringing enemies to take across the water.’” Big George shook his head in disgust. “That village chief’s even more scared than we are. Like Mama always say, we the only men in this jungle.”
When Big George looked over at his brother again, Little George was leaning forward in anticipation. “Do Mama know all this?”
Big George laughed. “Of course she know. Mama know everything go on in this sad little outpost. She the one burst into the meeting all uninvited, righteous with anger ’cause ‘who are they to think they run things ’cause they just men,’ and all other kinda nonsense.”
“What?” Little George blurted out, incredulous.
Big George laughed again, getting caught up in the energy of the story. “Yep. Useless old Sam Longsten tried to stop her from coming in and you know what she do? Put a knife to his chest.”
“What?” Little George hissed.
Big George nodded. “Oh yes. She your mama now, Brother. Longsten tell her no women allowed, and you know what she tell him?”
Little George shook his head, completely mesmerized by the story. He stole a glance at Mama, to make sure she was still sleeping. Her eyes were pressed shut, her breathing still deep and regular.
“‘I think you need to see what a woman can do. I don’t see no kind of proper ’preciation in you,’ she say, all cold-blooded and dark-like. Sound like she got some kind of devil in her.”
“No, she did not,” Little George said, eyes as big as saucers.
“Oh, she sure did, Brother. It was like she been practicing those words for some time, just waiting to say ’em.” Big George shook his head. “Forget about them savages; I’m sure she got at least one Christian man plotting to kill all of us right about now.”
Little George could feel the steady up and down of Lani’s rib cage in his arms, hear the small staccato of her snoring. “So . . . ?”
Big George just blinked.
“So what you do?” Little George demanded.
“What I do? What you think I do, Brother? I took the knife from her, gentle-like, the best way I could before somebody see what she done. On the way out, I tell Longsten ‘I sorry, but my mama ain’t well these days. This life done turned her on herself.’”
“He believe you?”
Big George shrugged. “Didn’t have much choice. Either that or admit a woman got the best of him. No man likely to do that.”
Little George cocked his head, contemplating all Big George had told him. It was too much. It was all too much.
“We gotta get to sleep now,” Big George told him, pulling his blanket around his shoulders. “Dawn be here before you know it, and Mama be at our backs, yelling why we moving so slow in that damn field.”
Little George nodded. He carefully lifted up his sleeping sister, and set her down on her quilt. Only a few minutes later, his older brother was unconscious too, but despite his own overwhelming exhaustion, it was a long time before Little George could let go of wondering if there were any men at all in this jungle.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
NOT EVEN TWO MONTHS later, Little George was dead.
In the middle of a scorching, humid afternoon, his gangly and feverish twelve-year-old body let out its final breath. The rest of the family was in the field, frantically trying to harvest the cassava and corn crop, when Little George breathed his last. But for the rest of his life, Nolan couldn’t help but link the moment of his older brother’s death with the moment that same afternoon when Lani inexplicably dropped the harvest basket her brother had made for her from palm fronds and sat down, crying inconsolably.
* * *
—
Little George was the child who was to be the compensation for the death of Yasmine and James’s first George, who as a baby seemed to be forever ill and perpetually on the brink of death. Little George was born when this five-year-old brother was locked in a four-month-long coma, expected to die at any minute, and his auspicious birth, it was believed in family lore, had magically “cured” his brother of his ailments forever and brought him out of his coma a week later. Little George, who had never been ill a day in his life, had in the end expired before his elder, succumbing to the African fever, which had by that poi
nt killed over a third of the settlers and which many said was carried in the bodies of mosquitoes, “insects born of Satan.”
But Yasmine did not believe it. Her whole body shuddered, and she grabbed Little George desperately, rocking his too warm, sticky body in her arms. “No!” she screamed, but it was the sound of a feral animal more than a word. A guttural protest to what had to be. What already was, but which a mother could never bear. “No,” she said more softly this time. “No . . . no . . .” She continued rocking him back and forth, back and forth. He was the strongest of them all, her George, so how had he succumbed to something as commonplace as African fever? Oh, she knew.
“Where is it? Where’s that godforsaken pouch!” she screamed at her three remaining children.
There was no comprehension in their silent faces, only shock, fear, and exhaustion.
“The black-black bitch. She did this,” Yasmine continued. “You brought her into this house!”
She raved like this for some time before Big George managed to get her settled on her pallet so that inevitable bone-crushing weariness could find her. Even then, she choked out a final sob. “You have forsaken us, dear Lord,” she whispered.
* * *
—
Five days later, as they were lowering Little George into the ground in a small wooden casket, Yasmine promised him, wherever he was, that now no more harm could come to him. That the savages could no longer ply their dark magic on their vulnerable, unsuspecting bodies. That, thanks to the Lord, she could now see the spells they had destroyed him with, but that on her life, she would make sure that no harm came to the rest of his siblings. I am sorry I let you down, Son. You gave your life to birth a new black civilization. But they so cursed, all they could think to do was kill. She broke down in sobs so heavy that they caused many at the service to look away in embarrassment. Big George held his mother tight, praying all the while that his brother’s eternal soul could rise up in this blighted ground.
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