The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 24

“She asked what we were doing,” she said to him, out of breath from the trouble she had gone through to find him. “She asked what we were doing in Vai.”

In August, in our third month in Lai during the rainy season, Wi and I woke up one day to go attend our lessons with Papa. K did not. On either side of her, Wi and I shook her tiny arms and pulled our hands back from her skin as our palms dripped with her sweat. I wiped the fluid on the mattress and looked at her as she lay still, only slightly moving her head and moaning. Her hair was soaked and her dress clung to her skin, showing her gaunt legs and waist. Something was wrong. Water trailed down her face and arms, her legs, and through the thin dress she was wearing. Her lips shivered. She shouted, even though her eyes were closed. Some English words. Some Vai words. For Mam. Things that did not make sense. The shouts widened and her sentences rambled on.

“Ma!” Wi yelled out.

“Ma!” she said, running to the door as Ma rushed in.

“What’s wrong?” Ma asked, kneeling down beside the mattress when she noticed K trembling on the wet sheet.

“She won’t wake up,” Wi answered.

Ol’ Ma unfolded her head tie and used the cloth to wipe K’s body. In days past, K had become whiny, constantly vomiting the rice and seafood that she was fed (all that we ever ate), and she wanted to sit in Papa’s or Ma’s lap instead of playing. We were used to her shadow behind us, or pressing her ear against a whisper that was only intended for Wi and me and getting pushed away—but she had no desire to mimic us that rainy season, she had no need of our secrets.

“Go get your papa,” Ma said, still wiping K’s body and patting her face.

“Papa!” Wi yelled. “Papa!”

We heard movement in some of the other houses as villagers came to their doors and windows to see who and what was causing the commotion. Some looked scared that the drums had found our hiding place.

“Papa!” Wi yelled.

When we reached his house across the circle, Papa had already made it out of his front door.

“What happened?” he asked.

“K won’t wake up,” Wi said. Papa ran ahead to Ma’s house and we followed him. Several villagers who had woken up from our yelling followed us to Ma’s house, where K still lay in a pool of sweat across Ma’s arms. K’s body shook, and she kept saying those foolish things, one after the other, eyes closed tightly. Papa knelt beside her and took her from Ma. As a crowd gathered outside, an elderly man pushed through the villagers and into Ma’s house.

“What happened to the girl?” he asked Ma in Vai.

“It looks like malaria,” Ma cried to the man, exasperated.

The man walked to where they sat with K. He went back outside where he told a few others to prepare a large bucket of warm water and jollobo leaves to bathe her in.

“What’s going on?” Papa asked Ma.

“They want to bathe her in jollobo. It will lower her fever.”

“No. No country medicine.”

“Gus, please.”

Papa held K tightly as her tears and sweat saturated the surface of his shirt.

“Gus, please. At least it will lower her fever,” Ma said, attempting again to take K out of his arms.

Papa refused again as he gently wiped her face. He stood up, cradling her wet and trembling body, and walked outside and through the crowd to the back of the house, where several men and women poured boiling water from a rice pot into a tub of water from the village well. They then dropped jollobo leaves, each twice the size of their faces, into the large tub of water. Wi and I followed him as he moved toward it. The villagers surrounded the jollobo bath, and Papa, now trembling himself as K continued to melt in his arms, knelt down in front of it. Two women knelt down beside Papa, but he shook his head and blocked their hands.

“I will do it,” Papa said with a breaking voice. He peeled the thin white dress over her head, taking care. Her sweat became his, and he held K’s body over the tub of floating leaves. He lowered her into the water until her legs hid underneath the dark green plants.

“Lay her down to her neck,” Ma said, kneeling beside Papa. She dropped her hands into the water and cupped her palms for a small amount that she sprinkled over K’s head and hair. Ma did this several times, stroking K’s hair. She then took a leaf from the bath and rubbed it against my sister’s arms and legs until the water turned too cold for them to keep her in it.

“Where?” I heard Ma ask in a loud voice.

“Junde. I already asked the fishermen to use the boat,” Papa insisted. “I just came to tell you. I’m going.”

“What? If you go, the people will kill you. You hear the radio. It’s worse out there now,” Ma said, following Papa to his house across the circle. “They almost killed you coming.”

“She’s been sick for one week. If I don’t go—” He stopped. K still was not eating and every night she screamed those rambling sentences as the family gathered in Ma’s house and watched her sleep. Wi and I stayed by K’s bed, sorry now for pushing her away. Her body lay still except for the times she was screaming, and many visited her bedside during the week to offer prayers and good wishes as she slept.

“Gus, please,” Ma pleaded with him as he gathered a shirt and shoes from his bed and placed them in his backpack. He climbed back down his ladder to where Ma still stood, now crying.

“There was a clinic I saw while we were in Junde. Maybe I can find something there,” Papa said, walking out of his house