The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 25
“You scared. I scared too. All these people, everybody scared. But you can’t go back in war,” she yelled after him.
“She needs antibiotics, Ma,” he argued.
He approached Ma’s house, where Wi and I sat on the porch, watchers of K’s body.
“Papa’s going away for small, yeh?” he said into my eyes. “I’m going to find medicine for K.”
Wi nodded.
“Listen to what Ma says, yeh?” he said.
“How long?” Wi asked.
“For small small,” he said. I ran inside the house, where K lay asleep. I fought through the thick smell of her sickness for my slippers. I looked near the door, where they usually sat in a pile beside Ma’s prayer mat. When I did not see them there or anywhere on the floor, I searched the porch.
“What you looking for?” Ma asked me, but I did not respond since all of my attention was required for the hunt. When I did not find them there, I ran around Ma’s house and searched the ground for them, almost bursting into tears, at the time lost in my pursuit. It was then I remembered that the last time that I had seen them they were near the mattress where K slept. I hurried back inside the house and knelt beside the mattress. I crawled around it until finally I saw the backs of my slippers protruding from underneath the mattress. I grabbed the shoes and put them on, flustered that I had taken so long to find them. I ran out of the house and off the porch.
“Tutu! Where you going?” Ma yelled behind me as I dashed through the village circle toward Piso.
“Tutu!” she called, running after me. At the edge of the village I pushed through the bushes, scraping my arms on sharp, loose branches.
“Tutu!” Ma yelled and I heard multiple footsteps behind me. Still I continued toward the shore of the lake. I pushed the last shrub out of my way and ran to the shore, where in the distance Papa floated in a canoe along the still water toward Junde.
“Wait!” I said waving my arms. “Wait!”
Papa looked up and made a face so that even from a distance I could tell he was not pleased. Ma and Pa reached me, panting together from the long run.
“Wait!” I said once more, stomping my feet on the shore until the sand jumped and stained my shins and knees. Ma touched my shoulder to turn me around and I collapsed against her, while Papa yelled something at me that sounded like what Mam said before she left. “I will be back.”
TEN
Ol’ Pa saved all of his words for the times he knew it would matter the most, when after a question was asked everyone in the room became silent and their gaze floated toward the ceiling and sky. Otherwise he remained quiet—watched people as they spoke loudly and laughed with each other. Even sitting, he seemed taller than all of the other men in the village. He sat with his hands folded in his lap and listened to war commentary in both Vai and English, from Papa and the other men in Lai. A few days after Papa left, when it was still dark outside, I was shaken awake by Ol’ Ma. She did not have to say anything. I knew what it was. I ran out of her house to the edge of the village where Papa stood, and I hugged him until my arms hurt. He looked so tired, but he had come back.
“I told you,” he said while I cried. “I will never leave you for too long.”
After Papa successfully returned from Junde with medicine for K, which completely healed her, he and other men made trips out of the village to retrieve food and other things from abandoned stores and houses in the small town.
Pa had made one trip before with Papa, after we ran out of food and Papa believed that it was the seafood from Lake Piso that was making us sick.
On this trip Pa planned on going to Burma, where he said he could find supplies, many in the same place, so Papa would not have to continue going in and out of the village when we had needs. Pa came into Ol’ Ma’s house one August morning as we sat with her for our sewing lesson. They brought back strips of cloth from a recent trip, and the girls and I took turns with Ma’s spare needle, making what we decided would be a dress for Mam.
“Look,” K said to him, showing the stitch she had just made in the arm of the garment. Pa inspected it and handed it back to her.
“Very good,” he said to her. Ma noticed a burlap sack on his back and touched it to see if it was full.
“What you doing with that empty bag?” she asked.
“Going to Burma to find more food for the children,” Pa answered.
“Burma?” Ma asked. “What’s in Burma?”
“I will get more things than in Junde. I will come back soon,” he said and the lines in his forehead sunk as he explained.
“Who’s going with you?” Ma asked, standing up with him.
“Nobody. I will not be gone long. It will be better to go alone,” he said. “People see you walking in group they will think you rebel.”
Ma nodded, but she looked like she did before Papa left on a trip outside the village. He kissed her face as I had seen Papa kiss my mother.
He then knelt back down in front of us and stretched out his hands for us to hug him.
“What you want me bring back for you?” he asked us with serious eyes.
“Peanuts. I want some peanuts,” I answered.
“You girls want peanuts?” he asked. My sisters agreed.
“Okay, my geh. I will bring your peanuts.”
He stood up with the burlap sack hanging from his back and walked out of Ma’s house to Lake Piso. He turned around and his wrinkled skin creased as he looked at