The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 15
Ma went toward the house. She searched the yard and picked up a large stick from the trash on the front lawn.
“Shh,” Torma said as our whimpers formed, although I felt her arms shudder as she hugged us.
Ma prayed out loud as she tiptoed toward the door with the stick in her hand.
“Oh God come be with us-oh,” she said. “God come help us-oh, God come give me strength-oh.”
As Ma staggered to the porch, Papa finally appeared. Taken aback, he laughed when he saw her with the stick. She angrily threw it back into the grass and squeezed her lappa.
“What you take so long for?” she yelled at him.
We ran to them and Papa put his arm around Ma.
“Sorry,” he said, “but look.”
From the darkness, a family of four emerged onto the porch.
“They were hiding here and thought we were rebels,” Papa said.
“Ay-yah,” Ma said, shaking the woman’s hand. She touched her palm to the woman’s face, as if she had known her for a very long time.
“Hello, Ol’ Ma,” the woman said.
“Come, let’s go inside,” Papa said.
The woman looked Torma’s age and wore a dress with short sleeves that revealed her arms, which looked like two long sticks. They had two sons, boys the same height who looked older than my sisters and me and looked as if they had been punished for a crime only the worst people would commit.
“What happened to your eye?” I asked one of the boys when I noticed that one of his eyes was swollen shut.
“Apollo,” his mother said.
“Apollo?” I asked.
“Something you get from being in the sun for long,” Papa said tapping my shoulder to be quiet. “The people call it apollo.”
“How long you all been here?” Ol’ Ma asked them.
“Two days. I want his eye to get well before we leave again,” the man said.
“Where you people from?” the father asked.
“Caldwell,” Papa answered. “And you?”
“Bong County,” he said.
This house did not have a smell. It did not feel abandoned, either; it felt as though the family was welcoming us in as guests to a place that had been theirs for a long time.
“Where you all going?” the man asked Papa.
“We trying reach the north border. I hear the rebels them not there much yet. We want to go to Sierra Leone,” he answered. “And you?”
“That’s where we were headed but we turned around. We will try to make it to Guinea instead,” the father said. “I heard on the road they’re not letting men cross into Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone government doesn’t want to risk letting rebels or spies in and spreading the war.”
It was dark but I could almost see Papa’s disappointment.
“Not letting people in?” Brother James asked.
“No,” the man said, certainly. “It’s risky for them, so only women and children for now.”
“We will turn around? To go where?” Torma asked.
“Nah-mah,” Ol’ Ma said. “Gus, we can go to Lai then.”
Papa turned to her.
“Lai?” he asked.
Ol’ Ma nodded and pulled me close, hugging my shoulder. Lai was a village hidden by the forests. It was Ol’ Ma’s village—where she lived before meeting Ol’ Pa, before moving into the city so they could find work and educate Mam and her sisters. Mam says they took us all to Lai as babies, to show Ol’ Ma’s family, but we had not visited since, though Mam and her sisters, my aunts, talked about it often.
In order to get to Lai, Mam once said, we would have to travel on a canoe. She told me that I would enjoy this canoe, because the canoe traveled along a lake so clear that we would see our reflections, and every hair on our head could be counted on the face of the water.
“That’s where the Ol’ Pa and the others in Logan Town probably hiding. And the rebels won’t find it,” Ol’ Ma added. “We will have to find somebody to take us in the canoe.”
“Yes, we can go to Lai then,” Papa nodded, as if the idea were his, and I could tell he was still thinking. “We will wait for a few weeks for the boys to get out of Monrovia.”
“And you will go back? Liberia won’t be same for long time-oh!” the man said.
“We will see,” Papa said. “But Lai is good choice. Rebels will not find it easily.”
Papa continued his conversation with the man and Brother James, and we moved to the back of the room and sat down on a floor near the window.
“I have apple,” the woman said, rushing to a corner where a dim glare from an old lantern provided us light.
“We found some here. You all want?” she asked.
We looked at Ol’ Ma and waited for her. When she nodded her head, we grabbed the apples and devoured them. They were so sweet. So delicious. The woman smiled at Torma.
“How old are they?” she asked.
“This one just turned four, and these two are five and six,” Ol’ Ma answered. “Their mother is in America.”
“Oh,” the woman said, examining our clothes, as if she gathered that we were from the city. She pulled the son with the swollen eye close to her and stroked his head. The boy’s eye watered and he sniffed. They were all dry with hunger and exhaustion, beaten by the war outside. I wondered if we looked the same way.
“How old?” Ol’ Ma asked her.
“Nine and seven,” the woman answered, then without warning began to cry.
“Ay-yah. Nah-mah,” Ol’ Ma said softly. “This thing, like all bad things. It will end soon.”
Her sons just stared at her helplessly, as if they were used to her crying and knew that nothing could be done but to wait.
“I know, I pray for it,” the woman said. “I had another. But …”
Ol’ Ma pressed her hand against her heart. She waited for the woman to continue.
The mother said that her other son was thirteen years old and she was